Raven's Strike (7 page)

The children were not the only ones who had learned something about their Orders this past spring. Tier's voice sounded louder than it actually was—Seraph could feel it settle deeply into her bones, though it was not she whom he called. Even the troll stopped its flailing for an instant.

Seraph could sense the change in the weather even before rain began falling again, this time in a gentle drizzle that would eventually drain the power from the storm. She took a relieved breath. “Hennea, keep that troll dry so it burns to ash.”

“Done.”

“Papa,” said Rinnie, dazedly staring at Tier. “Is it dead?”

Tier sheathed his sword and swung down from Skew's back, grunting as he hit the ground. But his knees didn't stop him from picking Rinnie up and pulling her tight.

“Shh,” he said. “You're safe now.”

But he spoke too soon.

The troll rolled across the wards and kept coming.

Tier, with his back to the burning troll, his eyes on Rinnie, had no warning. The dying monster struck him a glancing blow that knocked him off his feet. Tier rolled over until Rinnie was below him, protecting her with his body.

But the troll knew where they were now and brought forward a three-fingered hand and wrapped it around Tier's legs.

The troll still lay across Seraph's wards, and she spoke, using for the first time in her life one of the Words that had been passed down from the Colossae wizards to their Traveler children.

“Sila-evra-kilin-faurath!”

The wards shifted and became something else, called into being by her will and the ancient syllables.

For two decades Seraph had gone out each season to walk a path around the farm while her family slept. She'd set her blood and hair into the soil and called a spell to protect her family from harm. With the Word she called that power into a single act that was the culmination of the purpose of all those nights, all that magic.

Lehr's fire died completely, leaving the troll burnt and blackened, but alive. It roared triumphantly and tightened its grip on Tier.

Someone made a dismayed sound.

“Die,”
said Seraph, in a voice so hoarse and deep it sounded unfamiliar, as if something else used her throat. There was no room left in her for anger or fear, no room for anything except power as she touched the troll.

Blackened flesh turned grey and cracked around grass-green bones. Grey turned to white ash that slid to the ground under the gentle hand of the rain and the iron-shod hooves of Skew as the battle-trained horse protected his rider as he had been trained.

Seraph took in deep breaths and tried to contain herself, but there was too much power.

“Don't touch her, Lehr,” Hennea said. “Look to Tier and the child. Seraph. Seraph.”

Slowly, Seraph turned her head to look at the other Raven, who averted her gaze under Seraph's hot attention.

“What are you going to do with the magic, Seraph?” Despite dropping her gaze, Hennea sounded serene.

Seraph found herself clinging to that serenity for a moment. “Too much,” she said. “Unwise to kill something that old with a Word.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

The force of the power the Words had siphoned into her burned and felt wondrous at the same time. The troll had been old, too old. The power of his death rippled through her along with the magic she herself had drained from her wards. Too much power to be safe.

“The wardings,” she said, her voice thick and still oddly deep. “I need to protect . . .”

“Papa?”

Lehr's voice broke Hennea's hold on her, reminding her why she'd killed the troll in the first place. She might have been too late. “Tier? Rinnie?”

Seraph turned to look at Tier, where Lehr and a couple of the bolder villagers were pulling the remains—bones—of the troll off them.

“They are alive.” Hennea's voice was calm. “And they'll remain so if you can contain the magic you hold. Control yourself, Raven.”

“Take care of them,” Seraph said harshly, resenting the part of her that understood that Hennea was correct. She had to rid herself of this magic. “I'll walk the wards.”

C
HAPTER
3

Not letting herself look back, Seraph walked briskly through the storm-tattered camp that covered their fields,
ignoring the people who scuttled out of her way. She stared at the ground to spare them her gaze until she made it into the woods that bordered the farm.

What had she been going to do?

She stood where she was for a long moment.

She had to protect . . . by Lark and Raven, she was power-sick. Couldn't think clearly.

The warding. She should reset the warding. Slowly she made her way to the place where the warding had been and knelt in the dirt.

There are two ways to set wardings.
The voice of her old teacher was as clear as if he'd been standing over her shoulder.
For a night a warding can be a simple thing, a rope that surrounds the tents and wagons and keeps them safe. But for any longer, or where dangers are greater, a warding is best worked as a chain with interconnecting links, each subtly different from the one before so that if one link fell, the others will still be effective guards.

She pressed her hands into the soil and began, ignoring the ugly whispering voice that tried to coax her to keep the power
she held. If she could kill a troll with a whisper, how great was the good that she could accomplish with what she now held?

Her hands tingled as she carefully drew a curved line. She'd never held such power.

Only as the terrible rush of the troll's death died away did she really understand how old it had been. She felt his age in the burn of magic that was not lessened even when she set wards that should keep out the shadowed for generations.

She feared that just relaying the wards would not be enough to absorb so much so she began to feed it into the forest. Too much, and she'd harm as much as she helped, but a slow trickle of magic should not cause a problem.

Gradually the discipline of redrawing the wards absorbed her. Mathematical and artistic at the same time, they required enough of her attention that the part of her that desired the rush of power was reduced to murmurs she could ignore.

She became aware of him gradually, a pale form grazing quietly beside her. The pattering of the light rain was accompanied by the grinding of teeth and grass. The familiar, peaceful sound helped somehow, and she became aware of a deep inner contentment.

She was home.

She finished the link she was working and sat back, fisting her hands against her lower back as she stretched.

“You don't look well,” she said.

“One of the tainted creatures attacked the priest,” replied the pale horse who was Jes's forest king. His voice was velvety and very deep. “I saved him, but it was a near-run thing. Karadoc's not young by Rederni standards, and he's ill even yet. Without a priest, fighting the shadow-tainted has been draining, even with the help of your daughter.”

She absorbed what he said and sorted through questions. The slowness of her thoughts told her that she was far from free of power-sickness yet.

“The troll wasn't the first of the shadow-tainted creatures to come here?” she asked. She didn't need Lehr or Jes to tell her that the troll had been tainted. Unlike the mistwight, trolls were shadow-born, creatures whose only purpose was to destroy and kill.

“No, there were other things, too, things I haven't seen since the Fall, though none as dangerous as the troll. They come to destroy and feed the Shadowed.”

Seraph stilled. “I had hoped that we were wrong. You are sure there is another Shadowed? That Volis couldn't have set up a summoning spell?”

The horse snorted. “Creatures like that troll would only come to the call of a Shadowed.” He rubbed his nose on his knee.

“You mean the Shadowed is here?” asked Seraph, then shook with the rebellion of her magic as her control of her emotions wavered. She took in deep, even breaths until everything settled down.

The forest king waited until she was through before he said, “Not now, I don't think. But he has been here. He left behind a rune in the old temple that was triggered a few weeks ago.” He lifted his head to scent the air, then shook his mane and turned his attention back to her. “I don't pay enough attention to the town. If Karadoc hadn't called me when the first of the creatures appeared, it might have taken me too long to find the rune on my own. As it was, other than destroying the rune, I could do little for them in the stone of the town, so I called them here, where your wards could do some of the work while I took care of the tainted things. I wasn't expecting the troll, so I used myself up healing the priest and driving away the little things. A troll . . .” He sighed. “A normal troll would not have been too difficult, but that one . . . Your wards kept him mostly away from the villagers until today.”

“There was a rune in the temple,” Seraph said.

“To awaken and draw those things that bear the collar of the Shadowed,” the forest king explained. “The priest took me to the temple, and we destroyed the rune. Not soon enough.”

Runes were
solsenti
wizardry mostly. Seraph was only marginally familiar with the theory behind them—though there were a few useful ones that she used sometimes. She did know that they could be drawn and set to wait until something triggered them. The temple had only been built this past winter, though, so the Shadowed had been in Redern sometime since then.

A number of the Path's wizards had come with Volis, the wizard-priest she'd killed in the new temple in the village. The other wizards kidnaped Tier, then left for Taela. The Shadowed could have been among them.

Perhaps the mistwight that killed the smith's daughter had been drawn from whatever place it had been hidden and was traveling toward Redern. After the forest king stopped the call it settled in the smith's well. Unhappily, she wondered how many other creatures were even now preying upon defenseless villages—maybe that was what Benroln had been called to fight.

The burn of power slowed Seraph's thoughts, and she returned to her wardings. The forest king followed her when she moved, grazing while she worked.

Darkness fell under the trees, though she could see patches of light where the trees were thin. The birds quieted as they settled in for sleep, but there was music coming from the farm. She smiled; let more than two Rederni get together, and there would be music.

She examined the progress of her magicweaving critically and was satisfied. Her thoughts were a little clearer than they'd been, and the wards were strong and tightly woven.

“Tier told me once that he thought Jes's forest king shared a number of traits with Ellevanal,” she told the horse casually.

Ellevanal was the god worshiped by the mountain peoples, including the Rederni. Though today was only the second time Seraph had seen him, Jes had spent his summers exploring the woods with a creature he'd called the forest king since he was old enough to run.

“Bards see things that others do not,” agreed the forest king, taking another bite of grass.

“What would the Rederni say if they saw their god of forests eating grass?” asked Seraph.

“They are not Travelers,” replied the god after he'd finished chewing. “They would not see what you do.”

She laughed despite herself. “Now that's a properly mystical answer.”

“I thought so,” he said. “But it is true for all of that.”

“Gods do not look haggard and sick to their worshipers?”

“You don't believe in the gods,” Ellevanal said. “How would you know what they do or don't do?” The teasing note fell from his voice. “They say that the Travelers don't believe in the gods because they killed theirs and ate them.”

“I've never heard that.”

“Of course not,” said Ellevanal. “You are a Traveler who doesn't believe in gods.”

“How long have you been here, guarding the forest?”

The horse raised its head and tested the wind, his rib cage rising and falling as if he'd been racing rather than quietly grazing at her side an hour or more. There was mud on his legs and belly.

“A long time,” he said. “Before the Shadowed King came and laid waste to the world. Before the Remnants of the Glorious Army of Man arrived here after the Fall and found safe harbor here, naming me god in their gratitude.” Then he cast her a roguish glance. “Before the unthinkable happened, and Tieragan Baker was born Ordered and upset the Travelers' world.”

“He hasn't upset the Travelers' world,” she said.

“Hasn't he?” The horse snorted and tossed his head. “Wait and see what an Ordered Rederni may do. Already word of you is windborne, and some will come seeking you to destroy what you may become.”

Seraph raised an eyebrow at him.

He dropped his head slyly. “A god may speak in riddles if He will.”

She shook her head at him and went back to work because the power had begun singing to her again. The forest king went back to eating.

When she came to a place where she could see the farm she was reassured to note that the camp was orderly and relaxed.

A group of men were restringing tent lines and hanging the muddy fabrics over them. Another group was setting up fires for cooking—so many people could not be fed out of her kitchen. She didn't see any of her family, but there was a cheerful energy to the way the villagers moved that told her that no one had been seriously injured: and there was music.

“If you are a god,” Seraph said, “shouldn't you have been able to take care of a troll far better than we did?”

“But I am only a small god,” said the horse, sounding amused. “I could not destroy the troll—not
that
troll, which was a minion of the Shadowed and escaped the Fall to live centuries more than a troll ought, and still keep my priest alive. Death doesn't relinquish its rightful prey lightly, and healing is not my province.”

“Why didn't you let him die?” she asked, though she had no desire for Karadoc's death. “No one has ever said that the priests of Ellevanal are immortal.”

He laughed in soft huffs at her tart tone. “He is an excellent
skiri
player, which priests seldom are. Most of them are more given to things of the spirit rather than cleverness of the mind.” The picture of a priest playing a board game with his god struck Seraph as extremely odd, but before she could ask him about it, the forest king's voice became serious. “There are no others to take his place. His apprentice will be fine in a few years, but I needed my priest now.”

The rain had stopped, and rising warmth turned the moisture in the grasses to fog where the last light of the sun peeked through to light the small clearing where the god stood. Steam rose from the white horse's flanks and ribs, ribs that were a good deal less prominent than they had been when he'd first joined her.

“You've been feeding,” she said.

The horse set his nose in a knee-high clump of grass and ripped some from the ground. He raised his head and chewed pointedly.

Seraph shook her head at him. “No grass pads ribs so quickly.”

“Where do you think the power that you've been feeding into the forest goes?” He laughed, again. “Before the first of Rederni's Bards was born here, I was little more than a very old stag who wandered about. But a Bard is a very powerful thing, if subtle. There may be more than one reason that the Travelers never stay long in one place.”

Seraph stared at him. Of course Tier wasn't the only Bard born to the Rederni, not with the way music flowed through them like blood.

“You feed off magic?” she said, setting aside the question of more Ordered
solsenti
.

“Did I say that?” asked the horse. “I would never lie to you, Raven. I feed off the land only.” His eyes lit with wicked laughter at her huff of frustration. “Careful, Raven. Anger and magic are a volatile combination. I don't understand it completely myself.”

“What
do
you understand?” she asked.

“Travelers have not come here in a long time,” he said. “Not since the Fall and seldom before that. Only when you came to live here with Tier did I notice there is something about the Orders that makes the land . . . more alive. It is not magic, not that I can tell. There.” He tossed his head. “I have told you as much as I know. The forest is my realm, and its secrets belong to me. Travelers belong to no gods and, I think, they have more secrets than most.”

He stayed with her until she completed the circle, then wandered away, swishing his tail in mild irritation at an impious bug.

Seraph staggered almost drunkenly to her feet, sympathizing with Tier, as her knees throbbed, and her back ached. She'd worn a hole in her pants, but that didn't matter. Now that they were home she'd have to go back to wearing Rederni skirts.

As Seraph picked her way tiredly down the slope toward home, Jes ran up. She heard him before she saw him because he was chanting softly, “I found her,” as he ran.