Raven's Shadow (9 page)

“My brother-in-law told me to tell you I sold him his at a copper each,” she added with a small smile. Willon was one of the few villagers she felt comfortable talking to—probably because he was an outsider too.

“Aye, and he should have paid you that,” said Willon with a snort. “Doubtless you know it, too. Taking advantage of his own kin.”

“If Tier were home, we'd have given him the honey,” she said, “which Bandor knows also.”

Willon grinned. “I'll buy what you've left for a copper each—that's a fair price. Especially if when that boy of yours finds more honey, you bring it to me first.”

“I'll do that,” she said. “Thank you, Willon.”

Thirty coppers for the honey minus ten for the boots left her with twenty coppers, almost a whole silver. She tucked the coins in her satchel as she left Willon's shop, closing the door gently on the first few notes of Ciro's harp.

Her mind more on the
mermori
she'd bought from the trader than on where she was going, she almost ran over a man who stood in the way.

“Excuse me,” she said apologetically, looking into his face.

It was a good face, even-featured and wide-mouthed. He was no one she knew, which was unusual. The village was small enough that even with as little time as she spent there she knew everyone in it—at least by sight.

“A Traveler,” he said in a tone of near delight that shocked her.

Her reaction must have been easy to read because he laughed. “I must sound like an idiot—I just hadn't expected to run into a Traveler here. I thought your people avoid coming here. Some aversion to being so near Shadow's Fall?”

Aversion to being near people so fearful of magic,
she almost answered him, but not even surprise could loosen her habitual control over her tongue.

A look of comprehension crossed his face. “You must be Seraph Tieraganswife. That's why people speak of you . . .”
he seemed to realized that however people spoke of her wouldn't exactly be flattering and stumbled to a halt.

If she had not been holding a bag of
mermori
that reminded her of the plight of the Travelers and her failure to live the life she'd been called to serve, she might have helped him. But he'd talked his way into offense, and she let him find his own way out.

“I am sorry,” he said sincerely after a moment. “When I am excited I tend to talk too much. Let me introduce myself properly. I am Volis, priest of the Path of the Five.”

“Seraph Tieraganswife,” she replied shortly, though she made no move to leave. He was distracting her from her guilt, and for the moment she was content that he continue to do so.

She'd known that there was a new priest in town, of course. Even if she'd forgotten, the new temple at the very top of the road would have reminded her. He'd come from Taela with the new Sept last fall, and stayed when the Sept returned to his duties in the capitol of the Empire. But she hadn't paid much heed to the news—she was still too much Traveler to worship in the houses of the gods.

Volis grinned at her, “I was right. I'm sorry to overwhelm you, but the Travelers are a hobby of mine, though I've only met a few of them.”

What was she to say to that? she wondered and said nothing.

“Do you have a while to spare?” he asked. “I have a wealth of questions to ask you—and I'd like to show you the temple.”

She glanced at the sun, but her business had taken very little time and the pack of
mermori
was a cold, hard thing she would have to deal with as soon as she left Redern.

So she raised an eyebrow and nodded her head. Tier would have laughed and called her “Empress” if she had done such a thing to him. This boy merely smiled, as if he'd been certain she would follow him. He had, she thought, a tithe of Tier's charm and was used to having people obey him.

He turned and led the way up the road, which was so steep that it was set in stairs.

“I would have been just as happy with something like the rest of Redern,” he said. “But the new Sept was convinced that I would be happier in something more modern looking.”

“The Sept is a follower of your five gods?” Seraph asked.

“Gods save us, no,” laughed Volis. “But he was willing to do a favor when a few of the Path's Elders twisted his arm to place a temple here.”

“Why here?” asked Seraph. “Why not in Leheigh, which also belongs to the Sept? Surely you would find more followers in the larger city.”

Volis smiled. “I have not done so badly here. Your own family attends my meetings. In fact, I was on my way to consult with Bandor when you ran into me—and I couldn't resist the chance to have a Traveler to speak to. But the main reason I am here—instead of a really big city, like Korhadan, for instance—is Shadow's Fall. We feel that there are things on the old battlefield that might enlighten us.”

Shadow's Fall?
Seraph bit back her opinion of the stupidity of anyone who wanted to explore there. Doubtless the battlefield could educate this
solsenti
fool better than she.

Like Willon's shop and many of the buildings on the steeper slopes, the temple had been built into the mountain. The facade was raw timber and crude, except for the doors, which were smooth and oiled until they were almost black.

Volis ushered her inside, and Seraph had to stop in the threshold to allow her eyes to adjust from the brightness outside.

The room was a richly appointed antechamber that would have been more at home in a Sept's keep than in a village temple. Either the—what was it Volis had called it?—the Path of the Five was a rich church indeed, or the Sept owed its Elders a lot of favors.

“There are only three temples,” said Volis, seeing her expression. “Two in Taela and this one. We intend this to be a place of pilgrimage.”

“Shadow's Fall,” said Seraph, “a place of pilgrimage.”

“Where the Five triumphed over evil,” said the priest, apparently oblivious to the doubt in her voice. “Come and see the refuge, where I hold services.”

Seraph followed him through a tapestry-curtained entrance into a room like none she'd ever seen before.

The excavations were far more extensive than she had thought. The ceiling of the chamber soared overhead like an upside-down bowl. Near the edge it was a single handspan over
the doorway, in the center of the room it rose three times the height of a tall man. The stone walls, floors, and ceiling were as smooth as polished marble.

This . . . this was built in the short season since the new Sept came to explore his inheritance?

The ceiling was painted a light sky-blue that darkened gradually to black on the walls. The light that illuminated the room seemed to emanate from that skylike ceiling.
Magic,
thought Seraph, solsenti
magic.
But her attention was on the figures that occupied the false firmament. Chasing each other endlessly around the perimeter of the ceiling were five life-sized birds painted with exquisite detail.

Volis was silent as she walked past him to the center of the room.

Lark,
she thought, chills creeping down her spine. A cormorant's brilliant eyes invited her to play in the stormy winds. An owl glided on silent wings toward the black raven, who held a bright silver and ruby ring in its mouth, while next in line a falcon began its stoop. Together they circled the room, caught in endless flight.

In the center of the ceiling, twice as large as any other, a river eagle caught the winds and twisted its head to look down upon the room as if to examine its prey.

Each bird a representative of the six Orders of the Travelers.

“Behold the Five,” said Volis softly in a language Seraph hadn't heard since the day her brother died. “Lark the healer, Cormorant who rules the weather, Owl of wisdom and memory, Raven the mage, Falcon the hunter. And above them all, trapped in darkness is the secret god, the lost god. You didn't know about the lost god, did you?”

“They are not gods,” said Seraph in her tongue. Though, she remembered, in the old stories of before they Traveled, her people had believed that there were gods as he had described. But as the Old Wizards had grown in knowledge and power they had put those fallacies behind them.

As if she hadn't spoken, Volis pointed to the eagle. “I found him, in books so old they crumbled at my touch, in hints in ancient songs. For generations the Elders of the Path have worshiped only the Five—until I found the lost god.”

“The Eagle?” said Seraph, caught between an urge to laugh
at the idea of
solsenti
worshiping the Orders as gods, and distaste. Distaste won.

“The Eagle.” He looked pleased. “My discovery led me to be honored by this appointment,” he waved a hand to indicate the temple.

“Congratulations,” said Seraph, because he seemed to expect her to say something of the sort. She glanced at the ceiling again and wondered what her father would have said if he'd seen it.

“I have gleaned some things,” he said. “The Eagle is protected by the others, so that he can rescue them in some future time, when they are all at risk and the world hangs in the balance.”

She'd taught Tier that song in translation, a child's tune to teach them about the Orders. Obviously the translation that Volis had happened upon had been less careful. He made it sound as if the Eagle's purpose as Guardian was for some single, predestined event.

Eagerly the young priest turned to Seraph and took her hands. “I see from your face that you know about the Eagle.”

“We do not speak of the Eagle to outsiders,” said Seraph.

“But I'm not an outsider,” he said waving an impassioned hand at the ceiling. “I
know
about Travelers; I've spent my life studying them. Please, tell me what you know of the Eagle.”

Seraph didn't suffer fools gladly—she certainly didn't aid and abet their stupidity. It was time to go home. “I am sorry,” she said. “I have work awaiting me. Thank you for showing me around; the artwork is very good.”

“You have to tell me more,” he caught her arm before she could leave. “You don't understand. I
know
it is the Elders of the Path of the Five who must free it.”

“Free it?” she asked, and that chill that had touched her upon seeing the Birds of the Orders in a
solsenti
temple strengthened, distracting her from the encroaching grip of his arm.

“In hiding him,” said Volis earnestly, “the Five trapped him, for his protection. ‘Sleep on, guarded be, until upon waking destroys and saves'—”

Seraph started. That bit of poetry had no business being spoken in the mouth of a
solsenti,
no matter how well he spoke Traveler. It had nothing to do with the Eagle, but . . .

“He must be freed,” said Volis. “And the Master of the Path has foreseen that it is we of the Path who will free the Stalker.”

“The Stalker is not the Eagle,” Seraph said involuntarily, then could have bitten off her tongue.
This was dangerous, dangerous knowledge. He was mistaken about the Eagle, about the Orders being gods, but the Stalker . . .

He turned his mad gaze to her. He must have been mad. Only a madman would speak of freeing the Stalker.

“Ah,” he said. “What do you know about the Stalker?”

“No more than you,” she lied.

She fought to draw in a full breath and reminded herself that this man was a
solsenti,
a
solsenti
possessed of more knowledge that he should have—but even if he were so mistaken as to confuse the Eagle with the Stalker, he still should be harmless enough.

She gave him a short bow, Raven to stranger rather than good Rederni wife to priest, and used the motion to break free of his grasp.

“I have work,” she said. “Thank you for your time—I'll see myself out.”

She turned on her heel and strode rapidly to the curtained entrance, waiting for him to try and stop her, but he did not.

 

By the time she was on the bridge, she'd lost most of the fear that her visit with the new priest had engendered. The Stalker was well and truly imprisoned, and not even the Shadowed, who had almost destroyed the human race, had been able to free it. A
solsenti
priest with a handful of half-understood information was not a threat—at least not to the world as a whole, but she would still have to consider what Volis's fancies would mean to her and hers.

Dismissing the priest as an immediate threat left her with no distraction for the burden she carried. Though the honey jars were gone, almost a hundred weight of them, her pack carried stones that weighed her soul more than her back. As soon as Seraph left the main road for the cover of the trail, she stopped and pulled out the bag of
mermori
and counted them. Eighty-three.

Her hand tightened on the last one until the sharp edge of the end drew blood. Hurriedly she wiped off the
mermora;
it
was never a good thing to expose magicked things to blood. When she was certain it was clean, she put them back in the leather bag and returned the whole bundle to her pack.

“There's nothing I can do,” she said fiercely, though there was no one to hear her. “I don't know
anything
. I have no more ability than a dozen other Ravens who have all failed to prevent the demise of the Travelers. Here, in this place, I have three children who need me. There are fields to be planted and gardens to tend and a husband to welcome me home. There is nothing I can do.”

But, by Lark and Raven, eighty-three. She swallowed. Maybe Tier would be home when she returned. She needed him to be home.

 

The land that Seraph and Tier farmed was in a very small hanging valley, most of which was too rocky to plant. They had no close neighbors. It had been virgin land when they had come there as newly married strangers.

From the vantage point of a knoll above the valley, Seraph fought back the feeling that it would all go back to wild within the decade—she was no farseer, just tired. She adjusted her pack and started down the faint trail.