Raven's Shadow (Raven Duology #1) - Page 5

Even from the vantage point of the knoll behind the house, Seraph could only pick out vague shadows of horses near the porch, but Jes said, "It's the steward and a man in the Sept's colors – ah, him. I think it's the Sept's huntsman himself, Mother."

"Well," she said after a moment, "let's go see what they want." She led her brood out of the trees and down to the trail that led from field to house.

Gura barked welcome as they neared, and Seraph saw that he'd kept the men from approaching the house too closely. Now that Seraph was nearer to the house she saw the steward's distinctive braid, which he wore to hide the balding spot on the top of his head.

"Hello, Forder," Seraph said. "Welcome."

At the sound of her voice Gura quieted, his job done.

"Seraph Tieraganswife," said the Sept's steward. "Where have you been?" He asked it as if it were her fault he'd been kept waiting, as if he had clan-father rights over her.

Part of her flexed, like a cat testing its claws. So many years in Redern and she still couldn't get used to the way women were treated – as if being a man gave them the right to hold sway over any woman who crossed their paths.

Sensitive to her moods, Gura left the porch, a low growl hovering in his barrel chest. He quieted at her gesture, but stayed on his feet.

"We break ground tomorrow," Lehr said peaceably, drawing attention away from Seraph so that the steward wouldn't notice her gathering ire. "We took time to walk the fields tonight. Pray accept our apologies for keeping you waiting. We had no idea that you would come again today. If you had sent word we would have awaited your pleasure."

"No more had I intended to return," Forder grunted. Ignoring Seraph completely he addressed Lehr. "The Sept's huntsman has found something; I thought you should hear from him as soon as possible. If I'd known you had the habit of walking the forest in the night, I would have waited for a more convenient time."

If Lehr's hand hadn't tightened on her shoulder, Seraph would have said something rash. It wasn't like her to lose control of her temper so easily, but it was easier to cling to temper than to wonder why the steward, who was a man who enjoyed his comforts, would put himself to the trouble of coming here a second time in two days.

Bad news travels fast.

"Thank you," said Lehr, though he was enough his mother's son that he didn't apologize again.

"I was out with a pair of my men," said the huntsman, who upon close inspection was vaguely familiar to Seraph. He lived in Leheigh, where the Sept's keep was, but he'd come down to Redern a number of times to hear Tier sing in the tavern at the edge of the village. "We were up past the falls, tracking a deer that had taken an arrow, when we came upon what must have been a Blighted Place." He shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

Seraph reached up and took Lehr's hand in a fierce grip.

"I tell you," the huntsman said with sudden intensity, "I, my own self, have ridden by there a dozen times, and never seen anything untoward, but I can think of nothing else but the old evil left by the Shadowed that could have done what I saw."

"What was that, sir?" asked Lehr tightly when Seraph said nothing.

"The body of a grey mare," replied the huntsman. "Her hooves were scorched as if she had been burned in a fire – and not much left but bones in front and a bit of flesh and hide behind. There was a human skull there, clean and white, and a few bones. I knew that Tier was still out trapping, and one of my men recalled that your husband had just bought a grey horse. We buried the remains where we found them, as is proper for Blight-kill but I brought what was left of the bridle in hope we could identify the man."

He took a bag from his saddle and withdrew a handful of leather, both scorched and cracked, and the half-melted remains of a copper bit.

When Seraph made no move to take it, Lehr freed himself gently from her hold and took the scraps of leather and the bit. He stared at it a moment, then knelt by the porch. He rearranged the pieces on the wooden boards until he revealed the remains of a bridle with enough of the beaded browband left that Seraph couldn't deny it belonged to her husband.

"It is my father's bridle," Lehr said. "Frost, the horse he was riding, was dappled grey."

"I regret bringing you such news," said the huntsman, as if he meant it.

"My father is usually home much earlier than this," said Lehr.

"Papa?" said Rinnie.

Her voice broke through the numbness that encased Seraph. She couldn't afford to lose herself in grief; she had children. She took a step toward Rinnie, but Jes was already there, holding her against him. He nodded at Seraph: the Guardian would watch over his sister until Seraph could send the steward on his way.

"Where did you find them? I'd like to bring Tier home," said Seraph.

The huntsman didn't look at her, instead giving his answer to Lehr. "There was nothing left but a skull, and we buried that," he said. "Shadowed magic is nothing to play with. I won't lead a boy or a woman there. One man is already dead; there is no need for more."

"I see," said Lehr over Seraph's soundless snarl.

"You know, of course, that I should serve you notice" – the steward changed the subject – "since your brother is simple and you are not yet fully of age. But it is too late to bring in another family to farm, and you are a stout lad. The Sept will give you this year as a trial."

Lehr bowed his acceptance to Forder, and Seraph bit her tongue. No one else would farm this far into the mountains. If the steward drove them out there would be nothing for the Sept. But she knew Forder, knew that if she antagonized him enough he'd send them away for spite.

"The Sept is generous," said Lehr. "We will do our best to deserve the chance he gives."

"Huntsman," said Seraph, seeing a dim reflection of her own wild grief in his eyes. "Thank you. There are very few who would have the courage to get near a Blighted Place just to identify a dead man. Knowing is better than waiting with false hope."

Few men as well would have roused the steward to bring the news as soon as it came to him. It had been the huntsman, of course, who had forced Forder to come out at night instead of waiting until tomorrow. Gratitude and grief ripped through years of habit and she sketched a glowing sigil in the air that hung between them briefly.

"Traveler's blessing upon you," she said, "and upon your house. Good fortune hold by you and yours."

In the darkness she could see the whites of Forder's eyes, but the huntsman was made of sterner stuff, as befitted a man who braved Blighted Places.

"And to yours," he said with a quick nod before he mounted his horse.

As soon as the huntsman's foot was in the stirrup, Forder had his own horse in motion. Then they were gone, disappearing into the night, leaving only the lingering sounds of trotting hooves behind them.

Seraph ushered her children into the cabin and lit the fire with a wave of her hand. A corner of her mind noted how easily she shed the cloak of good Rederni wife she'd held to since she married Tier, but she tucked the thought back with her grief as she dealt with the more immediate problem of her children.

The Guardian lurked in the room like a restless spirit, adding fear to the mix of shock and sorrow. Rinnie clung to him, sobbing heartbrokenly. Lehr was pale and still wore the air of calm he'd donned for the benefit of the steward – but his hands held the remains of Tier's bridle in a white-knuckled grip.

Tier would have known how to ease their sorrow. He would have said something wise and soothing. He would have held Rinnie until she fell asleep. Then he would have talked to his sons until there was a bandage of comfort between them and their grief.

Seraph wanted to scream and rage until she was too tired to feel any more.

"There was nothing," she said, "that Tier loved more than you three."

Lehr's face whitened and she went to him and hugged him fiercely. She knew it was the right thing when he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her so he could press his forehead to the crook of her neck.

She would keep them safe, she vowed silently, as she had not been able to keep her clan or Tier. And if she cried, only Jes could see.

Rinnie fell asleep finally. Jes carried her up the ladder to her half of the loft and rejoined Seraph and Lehr where they sat on a bench in front of the fire.

"She wasn't afraid of me," he said.

Seraph smiled and patted the space beside her. "She didn't seem to be, did she?"

He didn't sit down. "Everyone is afraid, even you and Papa."

"And me," said Lehr with a tired smile that was more in his eyes than on his mouth. "Still, it is just a general unease, isn't it? I'm not really afraid of you, just twitchy."

Seraph nodded. "She might have felt that, but there are worse things than fear."

"People don't touch me," said the Guardian, looking down at his hands as if he missed the weight of Rinnie's warm body.

Lehr looked at him sharply, because Jes almost couldn't bear to be touched most of the time.

"You comforted her," said Seraph. "You reminded her that she wasn't alone."

The Guardian looked at her and between one breath and the next became Jes again. "Oh, Mother," he whispered, "we are so sad." He dropped bonelessly to the floor in front of her and began sobbing softly with overwhelming grief.

Seraph started to put a hand on his shoulder, but caught herself. As overwrought as Jes was, he wasn't going to be able to stand her touch at all.

Instead, she got to her feet and opened the front door. "Gura," she said. "In."

The big dog gave her an astonished look – though during the day he sometimes came inside, at night he guarded the farm.

"In," she said again.

Gura padded past her to the fire. As soon as he saw Jes, he flopped out beside him with a sigh. Jes, unable to bear the distraction of human touch, wrapped his arms around the dog and pressed his face against him.

When Seraph sat back down beside Lehr he said, "Why doesn't he like to be touched – when…" he hesitated. "This is really confusing. Why didn't it bother him to be touched when he was being Guardian?"

"Jes is sensitive to the touch of others. Many of the Eagles have the gift of empathy. Because he must always keep the Guardian contained, a third person's feelings are just too much."

"You make it sound like he's two people."

Seraph nodded. "From what my oldest brother who was also a Guardian told me, it's very much like that. I don't know why the Eagle is so different from other Orders, why it is so much more difficult to bear. My teacher believed that the old wizards were trying to make something quite different – a superior warrior perhaps – and they made some mistakes: mistakes that Jes and those like him have to pay for all of their lives." She paused and glanced at Jes. He wasn't paying any attention to them, but she lowered her voice before continuing. "Most Eagles die before they reach Jes's age, so my people are very protective of them; we keep them away from strangers when we can, and don't speak of them outside of the clan. The Guardian is both the most dangerous and most vulnerable of all the Orders."

Seraph crossed her arms over her chest, realizing that his survival was up to her alone now. Lehr put an arm around her shoulder and drew her up next to him. "It will be all right, Mother," he said.

They stayed there until Jes's tears grew silent and Gura fell into a doze, snoring softly. Seraph wanted to do something, anything – but there was nothing more she could do to help Tier, nothing more she could do to help Jes, Lehr, or Rinnie. Her gaze fell upon the scraps of Tier's bridle.

She picked it up and left the bench for the better light in front of the fire.

"What are you doing, Mother?" asked Lehr.

"I'm going to see what this bridle has to tell me," said Seraph, sounding much more confident than she felt. She had failed her Order so badly that it seemed wrong that it hadn't failed her. "I told you that within each Order, there is still some variation in abilities. One of the things I could do that my teacher could not was read an object's past."

"You're going to see what happened to Papa?"

"I'm going to try," she said.

She took a deep breath and braced herself, because reading objects closely associated with death was painful. Tentatively she rested her fingers on the browband. Delicacy was more important than power in this kind of magic. She let threads of magic drift through her fingers and touch the leather.

Nothing.

Thinking she'd misjudged the necessary power, she opened herself until the ends of her fingers tingled – still nothing. She pulled her fingers away as if they had been burned.

"Lehr, could you find something…" Seraph's gaze scanned the room and brushed the corner where Tier's sword hung under Lehr's bow. The sword certainly had enough history for her to read. "The sword. Get the sword for me, please."

"What's wrong?" asked Lehr as he took the sword down and brought it to her.

Seraph shook her head and took the sword and unsheathed it. "I don't know." She set the bridle aside and lay the sword on the floor. She had to push Gura to get him out of the way, disturbing Jes, who sat up.

"Papa's sword," he said.

She nodded absently at him and rubbed her fingers together lightly, waiting until she felt the magic ready and eager – just as it had been when she touched the bridle. She opened herself as widely as she could to the traces time left on objects and touched – death and darkness.

She had a moment of fiery pain as gold light gathered under her fingers, then it was gone. She opened her eyes and had the odd feeling that time had jumped without her noticing. Her ears rang, her elbow felt bruised, and she was lying back with her head on Jes's knee.

Jes patted her cheeks gently, his eyes flickering with the Guardian's presence. "Did the sparks hurt you, Mother?"

"No, Jes," she said, sitting up on her own and resting her head on her raised knees while visions from the sword flashed behind her closed lids.

"I'm fine," she said, seeing Lehr's anxious look. "Just a bruise or two. I haven't done this in a long time, and I misjudged. The sword was a poor choice."

Solsenti warriors used their blades for generations until rust robbed the blade of its strength. They even named them, never dreaming of the pseudo-life imbued by so much death – or the danger in giving such a thing a name. There were stories about swords that held against all odds and others that tended to slip and bite their wielder, but solsenti never seemed to heed the warning. Travelers cleansed their weapons after each life taken and discarded the blades of dead men.

Tier's sword was old. Newly sensitized, Seraph could feel its hunger for Tier's hand and battle even though it lay several handspans from her skirts. But the Tier the sword longed for was a version of her husband Seraph had never seen: a cold-faced killer who let his sword drink its fill of blood.

Seraph touched the bridle again, running her fingers over the blue and red beads on the browband, lingering on the bit. After a moment she felt a dullness, the bare touch of Lehr's grief as he held the bridle, a dusting of time lacking in power. As if the bridle, bit and all, had somehow come into being just a few days ago.

"Nothing," Seraph growled in frustration. Her hand fisted on a scrap of leather, both hand and leather glowing with power, but there was no flash of vision, only emptiness, as if whatever trap Tier had sprung had wiped the bridle's history clean.

"What does it mean?" asked Lehr.

She shook her head. "I don't know. Tier's death should be emblazoned upon the bridle. I haven't done this in a very long time, but I didn't have any trouble reading the sword."

"It was Shadow Blight," Lehr reminded her. "Maybe the Shadowed's magic affected it."

Seraph frowned. It felt as if the bridle had been wiped clean of its past, not blasted with magic. "Fire or running water can clean something of its past; I suppose Shadow Blight might do the same."

Weary in spirit more than body, Seraph rubbed her face. "Jes, could you put Papa's sword in its sheath and then put it away?" She didn't want to touch it again. Logically she shouldn't sense anything unless she looked for it, but she could feel it waiting. "We'd better get to sleep. Tomorrow you two will have to start plowing. I will take word of Tier's death to your aunt and uncle."

Seraph waited until they were all asleep before sneaking out. She used enough magic to keep from disturbing Jes or Gura, both still curled up before the coals of the fire.

She walked until she was far from the cabin; the ground was uncomfortably cold on her bare feet. When she stopped, she bowed her head against the rough bark of a tree, seeking the peace resident in its stolid, slow-growing, long-lived presence – but all she felt was rage.

It seethed from the soles of her feet and coiled through her body until it was forced into the long strands of her hair. Her hands shook with it as they curled and clawed at the hapless tree. Her breath left her throat in a low, moaning growl.

And with the rage came magic, destructive and hot, and as aimless as her wrath. Because the focus of her anger, of her pain, was dead.

"Tier," she whispered and then in a voice of power that shook the ground under her feet, she asked, "Why did you leave me?"

"Listen to Jes," Seraph told Lehr the next morning. "He'll take care of Skew and see that he doesn't overdo. Skew's going to have to do the whole field and you'll have to watch to see that he doesn't hurt himself."

"Yes, Mother," said Lehr patiently. Seraph was pale, tired, and obviously dreading the trip into town – and he didn't blame her.

"Rinnie, make sure to run water out to the boys a couple of times this morning. That's more important than getting the garden done."

"Yes, Mother," said Rinnie in such a blatant imitation of Lehr's tone that he had to turn aside so no one saw his grin.

"Right." Seraph gave a quick nod. "I should be back in time to fix the midday meal – but if not, there is bread, honey, and cheese." With that she turned on her heel and began walking briskly up the path toward town, leaving her children to begin their assigned tasks.

They rested Skew rather more often than Lehr would have, but he let Jes decide when to stop. After each rest, Lehr and Jes traded who held the plow. The soil was somewhat rocky, and the plow bucked and wallowed unexpectedly until they were as tired as the horse.

By midmorning Skew's head was low, and sweat washed out from under his harness. They'd made some headway: five mostly straight furrows in and twenty-three more to go. Lehr walked beside Jes, whose turn it was to hold the handles. The long reins trailed though the metal hoops in the harness down Skew's back and wrapped around Jes's shoulders so when he stopped, so did Skew.

"He can't be tired again," protested Lehr. "We haven't come fifty paces since the last rest."

"Hush," commanded Jes.

Lehr had quit looking for the stranger inside his brother about halfway up the first furrow, but he saw him now.

Abruptly Lehr realized how still the land was. Not a bird sang; not a cricket chirruped. Silently he unbuckled the sheath that held his long knife and rested his hand on its haft. The forest seemed somehow darker than it had been just a moment earlier.

Skew's head came up and he tested the wind with fluttering nostrils. Tossing his mane uneasily, he wickered once.

Whatever it was that Lehr was watching for, it wasn't the man who stepped out of the woods. He was slight and dark, but otherwise unremarkable – until Lehr met his gaze.

Fathomless black eyes examined him coolly, and the hair on the back of Lehr's neck crawled.

"Hunter," said the stranger.

Lehr's eyes told him that the man in front of him was a nondescript man dressed, more or less, like any other man to be found wandering in the woods. But another sense was ringing like an alarm bell, warning him that he stood before a Power.

Skew shoved his nose against Lehr's arm and breathed in little huffs, ears pinned forward as if he perceived some threat and readied himself to do battle.

Lehr glanced at Jes, who stood at his back, watching the stranger steadily but without tension.

Turning back to the man, Lehr half bowed, because it felt as if he should. "Sir. What can we do for you?"

The man smiled, but his too-knowing eyes stayed cold and clear like the river in winter. "I found a child wandering my forests alone. She smells like one of yours, so I thought I would offer her to you rather than the wolves."

"Rinnie?" asked Jes, glancing toward their home, but when Lehr looked too, Rinnie was plainly visible planting the kitchen garden with Gura stretched out nearby.

"Go ahead, Jes," said Lehr. "I'll keep at the fields until you get back. She's probably one of the villagers, so you might have to take her all the way to Redern."

Jes ducked out of the reins and followed the dark man into the woods without a word. Lehr remained by Skew's head until the gelding quit staring into the trees.

Rubbing under Skew's browband where the sweat gathered, Lehr spoke quietly to the horse, "I believe you and I have just met the forest king. I always thought he was just a fancy of Jes's." So many strange things had happened in the past few days that the forest king rated no more than a shake of the head before Lehr turned to take up the plow again.

The Guardian paced beside the boar who was the forest king and tested the area for threat. Finding none, he allowed his ire full sway.

"You will leave my brother alone," the Guardian said in a voice that held the winter winds.

The boar snorted, unimpressed. "Why would I do that? Your brother's ties to the forest are closer than yours. Something has happened to him to make him aware of his power. If I had called you today as I usually do, he would have heard me. It was time to acknowledge the Hunter. I cannot say I welcome him, for it is my job to protect those within my realm. But your brother has long hunted these forests and he does not kill indiscriminately. Death is seldom a welcome guest, but it has a place in the life of the forest."

"Just leave him alone – he takes on enough without you."

The boar laughed, his hoarse voice squealing high in merriment. "Am I so chance a comrade then, Jes?"

"Who is being dragged through the forest at your whim?" returned the Guardian roundly. "I should be helping my brother coax Skew over the fields rather than chasing off after some child."

"Not that kind of child," grunted the boar, scrambling over a largish log in his path. "I believe that she's older than you." He seemed to find amusement in something, for he snorted a while before continuing. "Child of Travelers she is, though not exactly like you or your brother either. She passed me by as I was eating my breakfast this morning and the smell of her magic intrigued me, so I followed her."

The Guardian waited until he was certain the boar wouldn't continue without prompting. "Where did she go?"

"Through my lands," said the forest king. "I almost stopped at the border, but by then I was curious. I followed her to a place where magic blackened the ground and a new rip in the earth contained the body of a horse – a grey mare who used to graze in your fields."

"You know where my father was killed," said the Guardian slowly.

"Your father is dead?" The boar considered it a moment. "I tell you what I saw: it is up to you to discover what you'll take from it. But first you must deal with the child – or allow me to do so."

The Guardian knew how the boar would deal with one he must have decided might be a threat. The Guardian recognized the same grim spirit lived inside of him as well – though he'd never killed anyone. Not yet. Never wanted to kill anyone – because he was afraid that by that act, something the daytime Jes could not comprehend, he would somehow sever the ties that held the two disparate parts of himself together.

"What did you find at my father's grave?" asked the Guardian. "My mother thinks that there was more to his death than we have been told."

"Your mother may be right," said the forest king. "But that is not for my judgment."

By this time, the Guardian was fairly confident he knew where the forest king was taking him. There weren't actually all that many places to store a person safely in the woods without worrying what might happen to them – even for a spirit as powerful as the forest king.

The old building was so covered in vines and surrounded by trees that it was impossible to see from the outside. It was, as far as he knew, the only building he'd ever been in that had been built before the reign of the Shadowed. The only entrance required some undignified scrambling for anything larger than the boar.

Not knowing exactly what he would face, the Guardian chose to stay in human form and crawled under the foliage, through the crumbling tunnel that had once held water and still bore the mark of ancient algae.

Inside, the boar waited with bright red eyes that glittered in the dark interior, standing over a sleeping person who certainly was no child. Pale Traveler's hair looked more silver than ash in the faint light that poured in through the leaves that guarded the barren rafters that must once have been thatched.

"Traveler," said the Guardian, crouching down and pushing her hair aside to reassure himself that it wasn't his mother who lay there. But the features of the woman who lay sleeping in the forest king's lair were those of a stranger, younger than his mother – but as the boar had said, older than Jes was. "You say she came from town?"

"Yes. She came from the town, walked almost directly to the place where the horse lay dead then started back." He paused. "She wasn't going back to town."

"Where then?" asked the Guardian.

The boar stared at the sleeping woman. "It looked to me as if she were headed directly toward your home. But there is dark magic about her, and power. Her path would have taken her through the heart of my lands, and I decided I preferred that she not trespass unguarded."

The Guardian contemplated the woman. Was it someone his mother knew? Seraph hadn't mentioned finding another Traveler in the village the day before yesterday. Surely she would have said something if she had.

"Will you awaken her?" said the Guardian finally, deciding that her mysteries would be better answered by the woman herself. "Or do you wish me to take her away from this place first?"

"Take her." The forest king turned back toward the entrance of the building. "When you are far enough from here, I'll lift the sleep from her."

The Guardian sighed; though the woman was slight, the tunnel was narrow. Still, he gathered her up and scrambled his way out with only a few extra bruises – on him. He managed to keep her safe from harm.

In the sunlight he could see what features she shared with his mother and what differences marked her. His mother was a smaller woman, and this woman had a thinner, longer nose that gave her face an arrogant beauty.

He'd never seen anyone except his family who bore Traveler blood. He wondered where her people were, if they were among those who were killed or if they awaited her somewhere.

Walking in the woods with the sun on his back, Jes slowly filtered into being, easing the Guardian to sleep. Untroubled by his burden he continued on toward home. Mother would know what to do with her.

They were close to the edge of the woods when she stiffened. He glanced down at her and saw that her eyes were open. He smiled into pale eyes that matched her hair and continued on, ignoring her attempts to get down. If she were on foot it would be harder to bring her home, and Jes knew that he needed to take her home so she would be safe from the forest king.

When she couldn't free herself, she began asking him rapid questions that ran through his ears like rain, first in words he could have understood if he'd bothered, then in the liquid silver tongue that his mother used sometimes when she was very angry or very sad.

"Hush," he said, shaking his head, and he began humming the song his mother had used to sing Rinnie to sleep when she was a babe and fretting in the night.

She stilled at his song, then said slowly, "Who are you?"

"Jes," he said.

She stared at him a moment, "I can walk."

He hesitated. "You have to come with me."

"I'll come with you – but let me walk."

He set her down then, but kept a grip on her hand because he liked the way it felt. She was closed down so he didn't feel the annoying buzzing of her thoughts, just the warmth of her skin. His mother could do that, too.

"You don't look Traveler," she said, almost to herself.

"Mother's a Traveler," he replied. "Papa's a Rederni."

"What happened to me?"

But he'd said as much as he was going to. It was too complex and he couldn't be bothered explaining everything. He shook his head at her and continued toward home.

The field they'd been plowing was empty, the plowshare raised out of the ground and cleaned of soil and dampness to keep it free of rust. If it had looked like rain, Lehr'd have brought it in.

With a glance at the sky, Jes measured the time he'd spent in the woods. As usual, it was longer than he'd thought but not so long that Lehr should be finished plowing. Something must have happened to Skew.

He started to increase his pace, but slowed when the woman stumbled beside him. She didn't have the knack of walkin