Raven's Shadow (26 page)

“I don't know why Ravens can't see the Stalker's influence, or why Larks can't either,” replied Seraph. “I can understand why the ancients didn't feel it necessary for Owls or Cormorants, but Larks and Ravens have to deal with shadowing.”

“Unto each Order . . .” murmured Hennea.

“ ‘Are the powers so given'—yes, yes, I know. It is still stupid. So Volis is most likely shadowed.” It was a very rare condition. Seraph had never dealt with someone who was shadowed, though her teacher had. He'd died before he taught her much about it because there was so much else to learn. She knew the Stalker needed some destructive feeling or act to gain influence and the amount of influence varied. The Shadowed had been different, her teacher said, because the Shadowed had invoked the Stalker's power and welcomed the shadowing.

“Let's go,” she said. “We need to get to Rinnie.”

They reached the temple finally, and Lehr tried the door.

“It's locked,” he said. “Barred from the inside, I think.”

Seraph said something short and guttural, a summoning she would not have remembered if she'd stopped to think about it, and the door blew apart, reduced to splinters and bits of metal that covered the floor of the inner chamber.

“Careful,” cautioned Hennea. “Anger and magic don't mix well.”

“Where will he take her?” Seraph knew that Hennea was right, but ever since the huntsman had come to tell her that Tier was dead she'd been more frightened than she'd been since the night her brother died—and fear, like grief, made her angry.

“Follow me.”

The temple was brightly lit with wall sconces, so Seraph had no trouble picking her way through the debris left by the
door. But the room on the other side of the curtain was quite different than the one she remembered. It was a rectangular room with a low ceiling. There were no flying birds, no arched ceiling.

“Is this the real room or is the chamber with the Orders the real room?” she asked Hennea.

“Which do you think?”

This room was more in keeping with a building that had been put up in less than a season's time. It was not too different from Willon's store, and she couldn't smell magic in it at all . . .but . . .

“The other one is real,” she said with conviction.

That room had been too detailed to have been an illusion set up just for her, but he couldn't show that room to just anyone. This chamber looked just as the villagers would expect.

Hennea nodded her head. “As I told you, he is a very good illusionist.”

There was a small door set unobtrusively near the back wall and Hennea led them through it and down a narrow stairway.

“We're close now,” Hennea said. “We should be as quiet as we can.”

“Rinnie's been here,” whispered Lehr.

“I can smell her fear,” agreed Jes, already at the bottom of the stairway.

The stair ended in a short, dark hallway that smelled of earth and moisture to Seraph; but Lehr's nose was wrinkled with disgust and he was careful not to bump against the wall. Light pooled by an open doorway.

Seraph brushed by the others to enter the room first.

Rinnie was there; like Alinath, she'd been tied and gagged, but Seraph didn't see any bruises. Relief washed over Seraph; Rinnie wasn't safe yet, but she was alive.

Several hundred candles were set out to form five circles on the floor with Rinnie in the middle of the center circle. The others each contained a bit of jewelry with a single large stone in the setting.

Volis was there, too, peering over a fragile-looking scroll laid out on a table almost too small for it. He didn't look up as they entered. As Hennea had advised, Seraph looked at his
hands and saw two rings. One of them should be Raven. Seraph focused her magic and
looked
at the rings. Raven and Owl, just as Hennea had predicted, but twisted somehow and empty. Wrong.

In the far corner of the room, Bandor sat cross-legged on the floor, rocking back and forth and muttering to himself. Owl-sick, thought Seraph. Unbound by Traveler laws, Volis had forced Bandor to do something against his will, and Bandor was paying the price.

She took another step forward and ran into a barrier of magic. With a quick flick of thought she made the barrier visible. It arched across the room, leaving Volis, Bandor, and Rinnie on one side of the barrier and the rest of them trapped on the other: trapped, because the barrier now covered the doorway and sealed them all in. At least she assumed they were all there. She hadn't seen Jes in the quick glance she'd taken.

“Volis,” Seraph said.

Her voice trembled with fury; she'd thought she had herself under better control. She was so angry at him and at those unknown men who were like him and played havoc in their ignorance. They had stolen Tier, Rinnie, and Seraph's peace; they would pay, all of them.

Painfully, she drew the serenity of her training around her like a cloak; it was Volis who had to lose his temper. When she was certain she was calm, she said, “What are you doing?”

“Summoning the Stalker,” he said, without looking up. “I've been expecting you—as you can see. Once my little Raven took flight I thought she'd bring you here. At first I was upset with her, but then I thought it would not be a bad thing to have an audience—as long as they didn't become part of the ceremonies.”

Guardians were all but immune to magic—Jes could go through the barrier. It was just possible he could get through, retrieve Rinnie, and return across the barrier with her. But if he couldn't, he would never leave her. Trapped there, he would try to protect Rinnie from Volis—and that was unacceptably dangerous. She'd send him there only if there was no choice.

She could tell that Jes had reached the end of his control
because the temperature in the room was dropping rapidly.

“You are an ignorant fool,” she said coldly. “The Eagle is not the Stalker. The Stalker is what made the Shadowed what he was. If you manage to summon it, you will not be more—you will be nothing. The Stalker has no followers, because anything that answers to it becomes a thing just as it is.”

“Don't think I don't know about people like you,” said Volis. “My first teacher liked to tell me how ignorant I was because he was afraid of me and what I could do. So for years I did his bidding as his apprentice. When the Master of the Secret Path found me and told me the truth, the first thing I did was arrange for my teacher to receive a lesson ensuring that he never had a chance to mislead anyone again.” Satisfaction colored his voice. “Take warning from that. You say I am wrong, but you don't know me, don't know what I can do.”

The growing cold made Seraph shiver, but she trusted that Jes would hold on a few minutes more. She needed to make this boy angry.

“Oh, I know what you can do,” said Seraph serenely. “Do you think that Hennea spent the whole day silent? Or do you think that I should tremble before an
illusionist
?” She saw her tone made him flush.
Solsenti
wizards looked down upon illusionists, saw their magic as a lesser thing because it neither created nor destroyed.
Solsenti
wizards were fools about many things. “A boy barely old enough to dress himself? A
solsenti
conjurer who defiles himself with the dead because he has to steal their magic or everyone would know how ignorant he was?”

“I may be an illusionist,” he said with careful dignity, “but I trapped you—both of you Ravens and your Hunter son, too. And this ignorant boy found out your secrets. I know how to summon a god.”

“You can't even keep a Raven with
geas,
” said Seraph. “How could you summon a god?”

She'd hoped to anger him with the reminder of Hennea's escape, but he was too excited about his discovery.

“It will be easy,” said Volis. “The Cormorant was the key.”

And then, pacing back and forth, he began to pontificate upon pseudo-complexities of the Orders that the wizards of his Secret Path had “discovered” over the years.

“Lehr,” Seraph said softly underneath the flow of Volis's words. “Is he shadowed?”

“Yes. Uncle Bandor, too—though not as deeply.”

Seraph nodded her understanding, then turned her attention back to the ranting Volis.

“I took the rings, one for each Order. The Secret Path only has four Healer rings, but none of them work right. So they gave me this one to do as I wish. I have one for each of the Orders, but with your daughter I don't need the Cormorant.”

He looked at Seraph, his face flushed with triumph. “I tried it with just the rings, but it didn't work because the spell calls for blood and death. Getting someone of each Order is impractical—but then I remembered something I read about sympathetic magic, using one thing to represent other things, like using a feather for air. I wrote to Telleridge and he said he thought it might work. So all I needed was one of you.”

He looked at Hennea and said spitefully, “I could have used you, but I thought you liked me. I didn't want to hurt you. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble, couldn't I?”

“You might have,” Hennea agreed mildly.

He didn't know what to say to that, so he turned his attention back to Seraph. “I thought that it would be easier to use the youngest one. It wasn't hard to persuade Bandor that she was in danger and I could help her. You should be proud, Seraph; your daughter's death will return the Eagle to the world.”

Sweat dripped from his forehead, though on the other side of his barrier, Seraph's breath fogged in the cold. Evidently the barrier blocked the effects of Jes's ire.

“
Solsenti
wizards,” said Seraph, slowly shaking her head, “always making things much more complicated than they really are. The Stalker is already here at your request.” She smiled at him. “You know I speak the truth.”

His eyes widened for an instant as his stolen Owl ring, once she'd called his attention to it, told him she was right. Then he narrowed his eyes accusingly. “You just think you speak the truth, that's all it means. You are wrong.”

“I can't give you proof of the Stalker,” agreed Seraph mildly. “You'd have to be Hunter to see what you have done in your stupidity.” He didn't like to hear the word
stupid,
especially as he knew that she meant it. But he wasn't going to lose
his temper enough for her purposes; he was too buoyed up by his plans. She'd have to bring Jes into it.

“I can show you what Eagle is,” she said.

The whole time they'd spent talking, Seraph had been sorting through the intricate work of the spell holding the barrier together. If he'd just used
solsenti
magic, she might not have been able to break it, but he'd woven Raven and
solsenti
magic together and the result was unstable.

“Jes,” she said, “go get Rinnie and keep her safe. Lehr, when you can, take Bandor.”

Volis frowned at her words. “Jes? Isn't that the name of your idiot son? He's not here.” He shivered once.

“Yes,” said Seraph, “he is. You just aren't looking. Jes, the priest wants to get a good look at you.”

The Guardian was nothing if not dramatic, coalescing out of candle smoke into the oversized wolf he favored over other forms. He stood not two paces from Volis, frost shading his coat and moving from his paws to the hem of Volis's robes. Jes growled, a low rumbling sound. Seraph's pulse picked up until she could hear the sound of her heartbeat in her ears.

Volis, who had no warning or understanding of what Jes was, cried out in terror. That fear did for Volis's magic what anger had once done for Seraph's. His control of Raven magic failed, and Seraph ripped the barrier into pieces with a sweep of power.

“This is my eldest son, Jes,” she said. “Who is Eagle and Guardian—and in no need of your summons.”

She kicked aside the carefully placed candles, breaking the circles and removing any temptation he might have had to kill Rinnie.

As she walked she continued speaking, quoting from the book of Orders. “ ‘Thus is it said that when the Elder Wizards took upon themselves the need to fight the Shadow-Stalker, that they created them the Orders. Six Orders created they them, after the six who slept forever. First, Raven Mage, second, Cormorant Weather Witch to aid their travels, and third created was Healer who is Lark that they might survive to continue the fight. They rested and then made fourth, the Bard and Owl to ease their way among strangers, fifth, Falcon the Hunter to feed them at need, last created they Eagle who is Guardian for
all to fear.' The Guardian, Volis, is an Order like any other, though, as you can see, more difficult to detect.”

Jes took back his human form and gathered Rinnie into his arms. “The priest is
wrong
,” he said, and the voice thundered in bass notes almost too deep to hear, as if he still held part-way to the wolfshape.

“He's been shadowed,” agreed Seraph.

But Seraph had given the priest too long. He threw a blast of raw magic at her and she was forced to counter it—more than counter it, because she had to protect those around her. She held the magic for a moment then returned it to him. Because it was his magic, it did not harm him, just allowed him to reabsorb it. Not an ideal solution, because he retrieved the energy he'd sent at her, but no one else got hurt.

While she'd been trying to decide what to do with it, he'd had time to gather more power and he flung it at her, forcing her back several steps. She caught it and flung it back again, but it was more of an effort. She couldn't keep doing it indefinitely because she continued to lose power and he didn't.

He also learned quickly. The third shot was no less powerful, but he broadened his target to include everyone in the room. She had no choice but to absorb the full force of his hit, or let something escape where it might hurt one of her children.