Raven's Strike
Chapter 17

"It happened like this." Seraph gave Tier a quick smile as she used the words that he began most stories with.
He was looking better - he could hardly look worse without being dead. Watching Phoran half-carry him up the stairs, she'd realized they were running out of time even faster than she'd thought.
She condensed the story of Colossae and left out as much of the drama as she could - it looked to her as if most of them had had all the excitement they needed for the day. She also left out the part about Hennea and the Raven being one and the same. It sounded as if Hennea, at least, had figured it out. She would check later to make certain Jes knew, too, and she would tell Tier because she didn't keep secrets from him. Hennea could decide if she wanted to tell anyone else.
As she spoke, Seraph's eyes kept trying to linger on Tier. She didn't use the new seeing spell she'd learned, because it would have taken too much of her concentration, but she looked and tried not to panic at how frail Tier's Order had grown.
He knew it was bad, too - she could tell by the lines around his eyes and the too-casual pose. Panicking the others more wouldn't help anyone, so Seraph didn't wring her hands or rage, though she wanted to do both. Tomorrow, Hinnum would help them if she had to hold his beloved library hostage. Tier could hold on one more day.
She finished the story, then gave them Hinnum's insights into the Shadowed, the Stalker, and the mess the wizards had made with the mermori and the library.
"So," said Phoran heavily in the silence that followed. "My uncle was right. They killed their children and saved the books."
"To be fair," said Tier, who was watching Hinnum carefully. A Bard, thought Seraph, had a way of seeing through illusions. "I imagine they were told their families had to die - and no one said anything about the books." Then he smiled at her. "But that's not all you learned today, you're too smug, Empress."
Seraph looked at Hinnum. She'd given Hennea the choice to keep her past to herself. Somehow it didn't seem right not to do the same for the old wizard.
"Introduce me to your family," he said.
"Sir, may I make you known to my husband, Tieragan, Bard of Redern." She caught Ielian's frown and realized she should have introduced Phoran first. It was too late to correct that mistake, but she named him next.
"Emperor?" asked the Scholar.
Seraph supposed it said something about you when you could shock a wizard as old as Hinnum, even though he'd spent the better part of ten centuries buried in a library. "I forgot to tell you about him," Seraph said, quickly explaining why the Emperor was a part of their quest. When she finished, she looked around trying to remember who was next in rank for introductions. She gave it up for hopeless and decided settled for age instead.
When she had named everyone including Gura - at Rinnie's insistence - she turned to Hinnum, and said, "These are my family. My family, may I make known to you Hinnum, the Illusionist of Colossae."
"I thought you said he was an illusion?" said Tier frowning. He stared at Hinnum. "He is not real, Seraph - I can tell that much."
"This is an illusion," Seraph said, waving vaguely at Hinnum's body. "But the puppet master is Hinnum himself."
"You mean he's alive," whispered Hennea.
Seraph saw a rush of feelings that were quickly tucked away behind Hennea's impenetrable calm. Jes - or the Guardian - pulled Hennea closer to him and watched Hinnum with brooding intensity.
"Yes," Seraph told them all. "Hinnum has agreed to help us. He told me that he could definitely help with Tier's problems and the Order-bound gems." Though if Hennea had remembered everything, whatever everything was for a Raven who used to be a goddess, they might be dependent upon Hinnum's help.
She looked at the old wizard in the young boy's form. "But it is with the Shadowed he can help the most. You know him, don't you? He came here a few centuries ago, a young, powerful mage who was searching for someone who could teach him."
Hinnum met her eyes, his face impassive.
"You enjoy teaching," she said. "I don't know what his name was then, but we know him as Willon. He's smart and charming."
"He was an illusionist," Hinnum whispered. "Wizards see illusion as lesser magic - something to fool the eye rather than change the world. To be a great mage, to have so much power and to have the other wizards who could barely scry in water if they were given the Bowl of Ages to do it in snigger with contempt of your abilities is a hard thing. Even in Colossae we were looked down upon - until I showed them all what an illusionist could do."
"You taught him," Tier said, taking over. She left him to it gratefully. He'd know how to pull every last detail out.
"I did."
Tier tilted his head. "I'll wager you didn't teach him how to become the Shadowed."
"No."
"There aren't any other people here," said Tier. "Seraph told us that the Shadowed cannot hold the Stalker's power without death. Whom did he kill?"
"My other apprentice," Hinnum said. "I didn't know at first. I thought they both had left. You aren't the first to find Colossae. They come, sometimes, when I get too alone. I call them here, teach them, and bind them to silence."
"Will you help us bring him to justice? To stop his killing of the Traveler clans? To stop him from stealing the Orders?"
Seraph saw guilt cross Hinnum's face. Of course Hinnum was the one who taught Willon how the Orders worked, thought Seraph. Who else would know how to do it?
"He wanted to know about the wizards," said Hinnum. "About the gods who died. About the Orders. I didn't teach him how to take them, he didn't have that kind of power, then. He asked me about the Travelers."
"You didn't tell him about the Eagle," said Jes suddenly. "Volis didn't know about Eagles, and none of the gemstones Hennea and Mother have belong to Eagles."
"Of course not," Hinnum said indignantly. "The Eagles are to be shielded, protected. The burden you bear is difficult and not of your choosing."
"He was here, wasn't he?" asked Lehr. "Didn't he explore the city? If the Owl and the Raven have temples, didn't the Eagle?"
"The Eagle's temple was razed," said Hennea. "After they killed the god, they destroyed His temple. Why should they worship a dead god?"
"Hinnum told us that much," lied Seraph cheerfully. She wouldn't let Hennea reveal herself just because she was upset. Hinnum would know that she lied, Hinnum and Tier. Neither of them would tell.
"Papa," Jes said. "What would the Shadowed want with the Orders?"
Tier smiled, and Seraph knew they'd both caught something that she'd missed. "Right, son." He held Hinnum with his eyes. "I'm not a Raven. Nor yet a Traveler, for all I bear the Owl's Order. But I am a storyteller."
"In the story of the Shadowed it seems there were three people of interest." Tier held up one finger. "The first is you, who taught an illusionist how to use his power. You did it because you were once as he was, because you were lonely, and because he flattered you."
He raised a second finger. "Then we have Willon, who became the Shadowed for power - but I know Willon. He made a fortune as a merchant because he always planned things carefully. He always has a goal in mind. He has kept himself hidden - as opposed to the rather direct approach favored by the Unnamed King, for instance - but we know some things Willon has done. For instance, he had a secret society that purposefully increased the unrest in the Empire and stole the Orders from Order Bearers."
"Raven save us, he's trying to destroy the veil," said Hinnum with sudden intensity. Then he paled and glanced at Hennea. He cleared his throat. "The purpose of the Orders was twofold. The first was to provide the balance that kept the veil in place. The second was rendered moot by our folly when I saved the library and built the mermori."
"What was it?" asked Hennea. "I don't remember."
"The veil keeps the Elder gods from working in our world, but their power must be used. Without an outlet of some sort, eventually the veil would be overcome. So the six gods were made to drain the power of the Stalker and the Weaver. The Orders were to serve the same function, but, because of the imperfection in the veil, the Elder gods' power seeps out on its own."
"The Weaver's as well?" asked Phoran. It was a good question, thought Seraph. If destruction escaped, why not creation?
Hinnum crossed his legs and sat on his feet on the cushioned bench. "Let me tell you what I see. A Raven married to a solsenti Bard - and the Orders were tied to the bloodlines of the Colossae wizards. They have three Ordered children, each a different Order. The Orders were to scatter among the Travelers. They travel with the Emperor - who is afflicted with a Raven's Memory, which, through a strange twist, must kill the Shadowed." He looked at Hennea, then away. "You are not the first people to find Colossae - but you are the only ones whom I have not called here."
"You think that this is the Weaver's work?" asked Hennea intensely.
Hinnum nodded. "I do." He looked at Tier. "You think the Shadowed is going to try to destroy the veil by confining as many Orders as he can to these rings."
Tier nodded. "I think that depends upon the third player. The Stalk - " His face went blank.
Lehr was out of his seat before Seraph really understood what had happened. Jes pulled Tier down off the table and onto the floor. For a moment he lay still, staring blindly up at a skylight.
Hinnum caught her by an arm before she could go to Tier and jerked her back.
"There's no time," he said urgently. "Seraph, look at his Order - He's too close to losing it all. It will kill him if he does. You need to work the spell I taught you. Find out how the Shadowed is stealing the Order and stop him."
She jerked her arm free and ran to Tier. The boys were holding him down to try to keep him from hurting himself. She saw Hinnum was right; Tier's Order was almost gone. There was no time to wait until the old wizard could help with this. If Seraph couldn't find some way to stop the spell, it would be irreversible, and Tier would die of it.
She stuffed her terror deep, where it would be a source of strength rather than a distraction. Then she called the magic Hinnum had taught her and tried to ascertain what the Shadowed and his minions had done to her husband.
She'd believed the Shadowed's spell was simply destroying the connection between Tier and his Order. Now that she could view both spirit and his Order she understood she'd been wrong.
Each strand of the Shadowed's spell was cloaked in spirit; a pale gleaming sheath around a darkly-malignant core. Just as she had wrapped her magic in her Order so she could affect Tier's, so did the Shadowed wrap his spell in spirit. The spirit had hidden the spell from her earlier attempts to discover it. Tendrils of the spell insinuated themselves into the warp and weft of Tier's order, worked into its fabric as tightly Tier's own spirit.
Wrapped in spirit, the spell was able to bind to the Order as Tier's own spirit did. It had worked deeply into Tier's order, but where his spirit was passive, the spell was not. The spell wasn't attacking the connection between Tier and his Order, instead it was ripping it away from Tier by force. The threads of Tier's spirit were being slowly broken, strand by strand as Shadowed's spell inexorably rent Tier's Order from him, leaving severed bits of spirit behind.
Her old teacher would have considered the spell crude, relying on power rather than finesse. But, however crude the spell, it was working.
The Shadowed's spirit-magic twined around the threads it had stolen, forming a rope of magic, spirit and Bardic Order that stretched between Tier and, presumably, whatever gemstone the Path's Masters had attached his Order to. A small gossamer ribbon Tier's spirit broke and fell away from the Order, darkening as it did so. It curled down limply against Tier's body.
"Seraph? Let me help?"
It was Hennea. Seraph nodded twice and felt the Raven's hands close on her shoulders, feeding her power.
She could have tried to darn Tier's Order to him again, she could do a better job now because she understood what was needed - but, as before, it would only help him temporarily. Eventually both her magic and Tier's spirit would fail, and Tier, his spirit damaged beyond healing, would die.
Instead, with Hennea's strength to aid her, Seraph threw herself, magic, spirit, and soul down the twisting rope that connected Tier and the Path's gem. She lost all sense of time and place as she followed the rope, until her journey began to seem endless. Only her fierce determination to find the end of the rope kept her going.
Then, without warning, she found what she sought, a gem the color of cinnamon. Grey-green strands of Bardic Order formed a tight ball in the center of the stone, with a few stray fragments of Tier's spirit still woven in it. She had no idea how to retrieve what it had stolen.
To her magical self, the gem was enormous, but she knew physically it would be small enough to be set in a ring or necklet.
She could take it, she thought. She held it in her magic now - if she could make herself just a little more physical, she could just steal it from wherever it was and pull it back with her.
There was danger in what she intended. She might find herself wherever the gem was - and she was in no shape to face the Shadowed alone. Or she could fail to make herself real enough to take the gem and too real to go back to her own body.
As she hesitated, the cord pulsed and turned, and the ball of Tier's Order in the gem became just a little bigger.
She'd never done anything like this before, but all a Raven had to be able to do was conceive of possibilities and let magic fill the patterns she conceptualized. For a moment the stone eluded her, as if it feared her touch, but finally her fingers closed upon it, a power-warm, sharp-edged, and slick-sided garnet.
It was hers. For a moment she just held it, stunned it had worked. Then she released her hold on her magic, both the seeing spell and the power that had allowed her to follow the Shadowed's trail. She came back to herself with Tier's cry in her ears.
It took her precious moments to realize why the gem warmed until it was hot in her hands, moments while it pulled more of Tier's Order to it. The gem's proximity strengthened the effectiveness of the thieving magic.
"Hold him so he doesn't hurt himself." The Scholar's voice had altered a little, deeper tones added to give weight to his commands.
Hennea's hands slid from Seraph's shoulders and wrapped around her hands instead.
"Let me ward it, Seraph," said Hennea.
Seraph opened her cupped hands and allowed Hennea to touch the gem. A simple warding would have just severed the connection between Tier and the stone, and she was too tired to be clever. Let Hennea work the subtler magic necessary.
"There is too much of him, spirit and Order already in the gemstone," Hennea said worriedly, showing she understood as much as Seraph herself did.
"You can see it?" asked Seraph, then thought, Of course you could. Seraph was still trying to absorb the implications of who and what Hennea had been; possibly Seraph's slowness had hurt Tier. If she had just let Hennea try - Hennea, who used to be the goddess of magic. Perhaps she could have really unworked the Shadowed's spell.
"I followed your magic and remembered." Hennea released her hold and stepped back. "I couldn't have done it myself, not until I saw what you had done. What I've done to the stone should keep it from hurting Tier more for a while. But it is not a permanent situation. I don't know how to reverse the Shadowed's spell."
"Neither do I," admitted Seraph readily as she reached out to touch Tier's face. "Yet."
He opened his eyes at her touch. He smiled at her, then looked at Phoran, who sat on Tier's legs, and at Jes and Kissel, who were holding his arms.
"It's all right, you can let me go," Tier said. "I'm all right now... I think."
They looked at Seraph and waited until she nodded before letting Tier go.
"Last time we thought he was done, too" said Phoran apologetically. "He was quiet for a little while, then went into convulsions again."
"I thought you were going to break apart, this time." Lehr's voice was taut as he helped his father to stand.
Tier moved his left shoulder a little gingerly. "Nothing so dramatic - though I might have pulled a muscle or two." He looked up at Seraph with a smile of ironic amusement. "You did learn something today. I usually feel worse after one of those instead of better. What did you do?"
Seraph opened her hand, so he could see the gemstone in it. He took the unset, rust-colored garnet from her hand gingerly.
"They might have chosen a prettier stone," he quipped, then, seeing Seraph's face, he gathered her against him, letting her use his shoulder to hide her tears.
"I almost lost you," she said. "Almost."
"I'm here," he told her. "I'm right here."
She let him comfort her, but she could see the remnants of his fragile Order sway to the tugging of the gem in her hands.
Phoran eased his way out of the chaos of the general meeting that followed Tier's almost demise. Rinnie didn't need him anymore, she was clinging to her father. And Phoran, being neither Traveler nor mage, had nothing he could add to the discussion - which was currently about how to destroy the Shadowed.
He knew they wouldn't leave him alone for long, though Toarsen and Kissel had appeared to be thoroughly fascinated at the thought of meeting a wizard who was old before the Empire had even been a twinkle in the eye of the cunning old farmer who had been the first Phoran.
Phoran welcomed the silence of the old city, outside of the library's door. A sunset, pale and subdued compared to the ones in Taela, lit the eastern sky.
He thought he'd grown accustomed to amazing things on the trip - a lonely mountain haunted with the remnants of ghosts, a legendary city frozen in time, a wizard older then the Empire - but Seraph had just proved him wrong.
It wasn't the magic. Though he was sure that she had done something to help Tier, he hadn't seen anything. He'd noticed the magic Seraph worked was usually less showy than the magic of the court mages - probably because Seraph had no patron to impress.
No, what Seraph had done was even more remarkable than her magic, at least from Phoran's view.
"Introduce me to your family," the old wizard had said - obviously expecting Seraph just to announce who he was. Phoran had a lot of experience with court wizards and their sense of consequence. It would never have occurred to Hinnum that Seraph would take his invitation literally.
"This is my family," she'd said.
She hadn't meant it. She couldn't have meant it. Tier would have, but then Phoran had listened to Rinnie's stories and realized Tier's behavior with the Passerines was nothing new. He adopted any stray creature that wandered past him, be they giant black dogs or fumbling, dissolute emperors.
Phoran knew she hadn't meant it, but it was precious to him just the same. Ever since his uncle died, Phoran had known that he was alone. Oh, there was Avar, but Avar didn't make Phoran feel safe and... and loved. "My family," she'd said, as if Phoran were one of her own children.
He heard someone come out of the library and sighed to himself, though he'd known Toarsen and Kissel wouldn't leave him alone for long. A furry black head dropped onto Phoran's boot, then Gura sighed, too.
"Phoran," said Lehr, quietly from behind him.
He turned to look at the dark young man - if not the last person he expected to see, he was close to it.
"Get tired of the noise?" Phoran asked.
Lehr smiled, but didn't admit it aloud. "Hinnum thinks if Mother can round up a Lark, a circle of all six Orders might be able to call upon the Elder gods. They were supposed to work that way, to keep the power of the Elder gods from growing too great. But once the surviving wizards realized there was a hole in the veil, it didn't seem necessary, so they never developed a ceremony that worked. Hinnum thinks the Weaver's power and the six Orders might be able to destroy the Shadowed."
Phoran looked back out at the sunset. "I heard some of that. Sounds like she, Hennea, and Hinnum are going to take a good try at fixing both Tier and those stolen Orders tomorrow. They need the real names of the Elder gods, or some way to get the rest of us out of their hair, so they're planning on sending us out to find the Owl's Temple because the names are in the temple somewhere."
"Etched into the dais in reverse," said Lehr. "She says we can get a rubbing with some char and someone's shirt." Then he said diffidently. "I can do it myself. There's no need for anyone else to..."
His voice trailed off, and Phoran realized some of his irritation at having his private moment interrupted had made itself felt. Lehr thought it was because he resented Seraph's assigning him tasks without consulting - which was something, thought Phoran, he really ought to be a little upset about since he was the Emperor and she was a farmer's wife. But she had called him family: as far as he was concerned, Seraph could command him all she wanted to.
"Have you ever watched three wizards work together?" asked Phoran.
Lehr hesitated, and said cautiously, "No."
"That's because they can't. I don't want to be around when that old wizard, your mother, and Hennea start arguing." It was Jes who didn't like being touched, Phoran remembered, so he slapped Lehr on the back reassuringly.
Lehr gave him a slow smile.
"Seriously, Lehr, I don't think any of us should be running around alone in this city. It's not like the woods, where you and your brother know the kinds of things you'll face. I know we haven't run into anything threatening yet, but there's something about this city that gives me the creeps."
"All right," Lehr agreed. "Actually, I came out here because I thought you might answer a question for me. I thought I'd ask Toarsen, but since I have you alone..."
"Ask."
"On the way to the library today, Rufort and Ielian were talking about being a Passerine. Ielian said something that bothered Rufort, but I don't know exactly what it was or why it bothered him."
"Tell me," Phoran invited again.
"Rufort said that he liked being one of your guardsmen, that it was much better than being a Passerine had been. Then Ielian said he liked it, too. But being a Passerine had been better than being a clerk for his uncle. It bothered Rufort, but he didn't let Ielian see his reaction."
Phoran knew who Ielian's uncle was, but then so should Rufort. Like Phoran, he didn't see anything wrong with what Lehr had said. "Did he say why he liked being a Passerine better?"
"He said it paid better."
"I thought we'd found all of those," said Phoran, dismayed.
"All of what?"
"The only Passerines who were given coins by the Path were paid for killing people - or frightening them. Most of them were the older Passerines: Kissel and Toarsen knew who they were. Ielian is younger, from this year's crop. We didn't think that any of the youngest group were doing that sort of work."
Kissel and Toarsen had both gone out to frighten people. "Bruised a few knuckles" was what Kissel had called it. But killing - particularly the kind of killing that the Path had been behind - was a different category.
He couldn't trust Ielian anymore.
"It's all right, Lehr," he said. "Thank you for telling me. I'll let Toarsen and Kissel know."
"I like him," said Lehr. "Not many people stand up to Mother."
"I like him, too," said Phoran. "I'll talk to him about it before I decide what to do. Thank you."
Night had fallen while they talked. Phoran turned to go back into the library, and the Memory was there.
"Ah," he told it. "I hadn't realized how late it was getting."
Lehr watched the Memory, but he hadn't jumped or shrieked or anything else. Phoran remembered the first half dozen times the Memory had come to him and wished he'd been half so calm. Gura whined, but stood his ground.
Phoran rolled up the sleeve on his left arm; his right had been aching all day today, and that was his sword arm. He didn't remember the ache lingering as long when the Memory had fed before, but he might just have forgotten it.
But it felt worse again as the cold mouth closed over the wound it had made in his arm. The icy chill was more pervasive, the pain more intense than last night. Surely he would have remembered if it had been so bad last night.
Phoran found himself seated on the ground, half-leaning on Lehr.
"By the taking of your blood," said the Memory, its voice as dry as old leaves. "I owe you one answer. Choose your question."
"Phoran?" It was Lehr's voice, intensely quiet, like it got sometimes when they were nearing their prey on a hunt. "Look between those two houses across the square. Do you see them?"
Feeling dizzy and slow, Phoran stared at the houses Lehr was pointing at. Vaguely conscious of the dog, growling at Lehr's side.
"Yesterday, Hinnum warned us not to be here at night," Lehr was saying. "I'd forgotten - I'd wager Mother and Papa have as well. Hinnum said the streets belonged to the dead."
It looked almost human, thought Phoran. It was the right height and shape, but some primal instinct told him that whatever it was that watched Lehr and him from twenty yards across the cobbled avenue had not been human for a very long time.
"How do we survive this?" asked Phoran, looking at the dead man who had haunted him for better than half a year and never, ever, scared him as much as the thing - no, his eyes finally told him, Lehr was right there was more than one of them - things, then.
"Go inside," it whispered. "They are coming, and I have no power over the dead. They will come demanding a gift or your lives."
"What kind of gift?" Phoran asked. But the Memory had evidently given him his answer, such as it was, because it said nothing.
Still holding his arm, and staggering a little, Phoran stood up. "I hope your mother knows something about the dead," he said.
"I know about predators," said Lehr. "Don't turn around until we reach the door. Keep your eyes on them - and don't hurry."
Abysmally slowly they backed the few feet to the library door. Lehr opened the door, and Phoran took a last look at the gathering things slowly blending into the shadows of the buildings as twilight faded and darkness held sway on the streets of Colossae. Then he was inside, the wooden bulk of the door between them and whatever hunted them.
For the first time, the library struck Phoran as welcoming, the gentle glow of magicked lights tucked unobtrusively behind bits of carving in the ceiling and walls providing a sense of protection from the dark.
Seraph didn't hear the door open or shut over the babble of voices, but she saw Jes stiffen and look toward the stairs.
"Lehr, Phoran, and Gura," he said. "They smell of fear and blood."
His voice was loud enough that Hinnum and Hennea stopped the calm-voiced argument - an argument so heavy with unspoken guilt and anger that Jes had been forced to leave Hennea's side and stand alone away from the rest of them.
Phoran topped the stairs holding his left arm as though it hurt. Lehr stood just behind him with Gura. The dog's hackles were raised, and it kept looking behind them.
"It's night," Phoran said. "There are dead walking the streets. And I am hoping that's not as bad as I think it might be."
"Magic has no hold on the dead," said Hennea, speaking quickly, though there was no panic in her voice. "Hinnum, can they get in here?"
"They haven't bothered me before," said Hinnum. "But you, they will follow. The door might hold them for a while, but not after they've smelled blood. Magic can work on them a bit, no matter what the stories say, Hennea. Seraph, you will know what I mean when I tell you they are creatures of spirit."
She did. Difficult to work, but if the Shadowed managed to cloak his magic in spirit, then something could be done. As long as there weren't many of them.
"Of course," said Hennea, sounding rattled. "I'm sorry. I had forgotten. Like at the Mountain of Names. It's hard to remember everything. Jes, come back away from the stairway."
"I have safeguards that can keep them out of the library," Hinnum said. "But I haven't used them since your Willon left, and I cannot raise them as I am. I have no need of the safeguards myself; the dead are after flesh and blood, and, in my present form, I have none to tempt them."
"What happens if they find us?" asked Ielian. He'd gotten to his feet and loosened his sword. Steel worked against some creatures of a magical nature, but it wouldn't help against the dead.
"It's not a good thing for the dead to touch the living," Seraph said, giving them the extent of her knowledge. Her old teacher had been more worried about mistwights, water demons, and the like.
"There are a few ghosts in Colossae," said Hinnum. "But they are largely harmless and stay near their homes. I don't have a name for these - necromancy was never an art I was drawn to."
"I don't remember much about the dead," said Hennea.
"They killed all the wizards who chose to stay here with me after the city died," said Hinnum. "Running doesn't work; neither does most magic. It took me long time to learn how I might shield my apprentices, and it will take me too long to try to teach it to you. We have minutes before the doors give way, not days."
"The Memory said they will demand a payment for our lives," offered Phoran. "For whatever good that does us."
"Seraph," said Tier, his deliberately calm voice cutting through the rising tension in the library. "I left my lute in my packs at camp. Is there any way you or Hennea could fetch it for me?"
Seraph stared at him. Under the circumstances, it seemed like an odd request. Maybe she had misheard him. "What?"
He put his arm around her shoulders and smiled down at her, the tiredness in his eyes lifting a little. "There are a lot of songs about the dead, Seraph, and more stories. Phoran says the Memory told him that they are coming for a gift. The only gift I've ever heard any of the dead accepting is music."
"I've heard that," said Toarsen quietly. "My nurse used to tell us a story of a bard who tried to survive a night in a haunted castle by singing to the spirits until daybreak." He hesitated, then said, "He stopped a moment too soon because he was distracted by the song of a nightingale."
"I know that tale, but, fortunate souls that you are, there are no birds in Colossae to distract me," said Tier. "So fetch me my lute, love."
"They come," said a strange, toneless voice.
Standing in the middle of the library was a creature of blackness. Too tall and thin for a human, it was shrouded in mists of night-colored darkness that moved as if some unfelt wind blew them here and there. It looked out of place, as if it belonged along the edges of the room where shadows gathered rather than out standing in plain view.
Phoran stepped forward, between it and the rest of the room, and she realized it was Phoran's Memory. It looked more substantial than it had last night, as if it were closer to being a living creature than a dead one.
Just then there was a hollow boom, which echoed in the room and made Jes growl.
"Seraph," said Tier. "I think I'd better have that lute as soon as you can."
Seraph opened her mouth and shut it. Tier knew the state his Order was in. He knew that the convulsion fits happened more often when he sang. He didn't need her to tell him again.
She bent her head and closed her eyes.
She'd never done this before she stole the gem, and she wasn't certain how to find Tier's lute without a cord of magic, however fell, to show her the way. But it had been a day of new things, and she took her magic and told it what she wanted.
Tier's lute was almost as much a part of him as his brown eyes and his dimples. It was easier than she expected to find it and call it because it wanted to be with him. She suspected Tier might have been able to call it himself. She opened her eyes and saw it had placed itself on the polished floor at Tier's feet.
Tier bent down to pick it up. He grimaced, then rose more slowly than he'd bent down. Another thud came from the outside door.
"I'm getting too old for this much adventure," Tier said. "Thank you for the lute, my love." He looked around. "Let's get everyone gathered together here."
He took a seat on the table, and made himself comfortable.
"Sit down," he told them. "I want them looking at me, not at you. And that means you as well," he told the Memory.
To Seraph's surprise, it collapsed to the floor. When Tier said something in that tone of voice, apparently even things like the Memory listened. Seraph sat on a bench next to Tier's table as he tuned the lute.
Phoran sat down on the floor, and his guardsmen spread around him. Jes and Hennea sat on the far side of the group, and Lehr took up the other, even though it left him nearest the Memory until Hinnum settled in between them.
"Rinnie, why don't you come here next to me," offered Phoran. "I think your mother might have her hands full before this night is over." So the most vulnerable of Seraph's children was seated in the middle, and Phoran took a good hold on Gura's collar without Seraph having to ask him.
Tier was still tuning the lute when the door failed, with the shriek of nails tearing free and a crack Seraph assumed was the wood of the door frame breaking. They all looked at the stairs, but there was nothing to see, no sound except for Tier's fingers on strings.
A wave of terror washed over her, worse by far than anything Jes had ever caused.
Tier played a quick scale and began tuning again. "I left it sit too long," he muttered. "The strings don't want to stay in tune."
"Papa," said Lehr, staring at the stairs. "Play."
A mottled grey hand appeared over the top of the stair, and it pulled its body behind it.
"Run!" Ielian came to his feet, but Rufort and Kissel each caught him by an arm and pulled him back down again.
The thing emerging from the stairway looked more human than the Memory, thought Seraph, and oddly the more horrible for its increased resemblance. It had a pair of eyes and what must once have been a nose. A few strands of grey hair stuck out from the top of its head. It looked at them and snap-snapped its jaws.
"Sit," hissed Toarsen at Ielian, who fought to get up again. "Running won't help."
"No," agreed the Memory, his voice like dry leaves in the wind. "Death walks the streets of Colossae by night."
"Thanks," snapped Phoran to the Memory, as Ielian made another abortive attempt to run. "That helped. Why don't you be quiet, eh? Ielian, sit still. Gura, down."
Gura and Ielian dropped to the floor with equal unwillingness. Rinnie curled up and buried her face against Gura's side, and Phoran reached over awkwardly to pat her on the back with the hand that wasn't holding on to the dog's collar.
"Mother, the Guardian wants to come out," said Jes. "But I think everyone is frightened enough."
"Let him come," said Seraph, the dryness of her mouth making her voice crack. "He can hardly make this worse."
Someone, it might have been Ielian, squeaked, as Jes flowed into the shape of a black wolf just a hair smaller than Gura. The Guardian glanced once at Ielian and bared his fangs before looking at the thing on the stairs. His low growl was a continuous rumble that echoed oddly off the high ceiling.
Rufort jerked and slid backward a handspan before he stopped himself.
"Something touched me," he said softly.
"Tier, isn't that damned thing in tune yet?" asked Phoran just as the creature pulled its flaccid legs over the stairway and began dragging itself forward.
The pressure of the presence of the dead crowded upon Seraph, bowing her shoulders under the weight. There were more of them than the creature they could see and the one that touched Rufort. She could feel them all around her.
"Tier," said Phoran, as the thing closed the too-little distance between the stairway and their huddled group.
Jes stalked around until he stood between it and them. As he growled louder, the stench of rotting meat filled the library.
Tier grinned fiercely, and his fingers moved on the lute strings.
The thing mewled at the first note, fading from sight just as the foul odor lessened. But Seraph could feel them waiting.
Tier played a mournful song first, a song about a girl wed to a sailor who left on a ship and never came back alive. It was melodic and slow, and Tier's fingers never faltered. Nor did his voice.
Toarsen sucked in his breath once, but when Seraph glanced quickly at him, she couldn't see anything wrong. He hunched over and bowed his head, but he didn't look like he was ready to run.
The immediate crisis seemed to have been put on hold by Tier's music. Seraph worked the spell that allowed her to see spirit again - and the library lit like a field of bonfires in winter. The dead were there, a ring of shapes made of spirit and something else she could see but not define, a haze of red alternating with gold. She managed to pull her eyes away from them long enough to make certain Tier's Order was behaving itself, then returned to her watch, making certain that the dead stayed away from them.
When Tier was finished with that song, he glanced around at his audience - the one he could see. Then he began a soldier's marching song Seraph had never heard before. It had a catchy chorus, and as he started into it for the second time, Tier said, "Join in if you'd like."
Lehr and Jes both did, and Rinnie sang a soprano harmony. Seraph found herself humming along. At the top of the fourth verse, Tier said her name, instead of the word that should have been there, and she realized that he was fighting.
"Seraph," said Tier again.
She pulled her gaze away from the dead and saw his Order had pulled almost entirely away from him, held only by a few lonely strands of his spirit and the last threads of her magic. She grasped the cord that ran between Tier and the gem and pulled hard toward Tier.
"Better," said Tier, before throwing his voice into the chorus again.
She held on. She might be able to help Tier better if she knew how spirit and Order interacted on a healthy Order Bearer. She'd been too busy watching the dead before Tier called her to pay much attention to anyone else.
She looked up, intending to study Lehr - but her gaze stuck on the Memory first. She could see the Memory's form, but with her seeing spell its form was deep purple rather than black. Crouched beneath the shelter of Order was a sharp-featured Traveler who gleamed a soft spirit-blue. He met her eyes, looked startled, then whispered in her head, "Have him tell The Fall of the Shadowed as he told it for me."
"Tier," she whispered so she didn't interfere with his song. "The Memory told me to have you tell The Fall of the Shadowed the way you told it for him."
Tier looked a little surprised, but he nodded. As he sang, she noticed Tier's spirit had steadied and grown more solid where it attached to the tattered grey-green bits of his Order. Seraph wondered if, once the Shadowed's spell was restrained, Tier's music helped fight the drag of the spell.
Tier finished the song, then, striking a minor chord, began an ascending scale that built to a haunting arpeggio, the music forlorn and plaintive. His clever fingers flew over the gut frets of the lute, and the notes fell into a less disturbing tone as he began the story of Shadow's Fall.
"It happened like this."
Seraph had heard the story dozens of times before, so she paid little heed to the words. She surveyed the dead, but they seemed to be content with the lute-accompanied story, because they stayed where they were. The upper courses of Tier's lute wove bits of heroic ballads and festival songs into a single melody over a subtle throbbing bass that gradually began to take on the rhythm of a heartbeat.
"This young man was a good king, which is to say that he promoted order and prosperity among his nobles and usually kept the rest from starvation." Tier's voice blended into his music.
When she was certain the dead were satisfied with Tier's storytelling, she resumed her interrupted task of looking at Lehr to see how the Order was supposed to look in relation to spirit.
The smell didn't startle her at first, though if she'd been paying attention, she'd have realized there was no reason for the library to start smelling like horses.
"I smell flowers," whispered Lehr.
Once he said it, Seraph did, too. She looked up, but none of the dead had come closer.
Ah, she thought, returning to her examination of Lehr, no wonder the Path's Masters had such a difficult time retrieving just the Order, no wonder it took months to separate spirit from Order - spirit is woven between the threads of Order like warp and weft.
She heard the sound of sword meeting sword, but when she looked up, she could see nothing that would account for the sound - or for the sudden smell of the sweat of combat.
"None of his guardsmen or nobles could stand against him with sword or staff," said Tier.
Seraph looked at him incredulously, and she realized that even as she had restricted the magic she used for most of the two decades she and Tier had been married - so had he.
"He established libraries at every village," said Tier, and the scent of dust and mildew overwhelmed that actual scent of the library they were in, which smelled only of leather, parchment, and preservation spells. "And in his capital he collected more books than had ever been assembled together then or since. Perhaps that was the reason for what happened to him."
She was so in awe of what he was doing, it took her a moment to realize the cord of the Shadowed's magic she'd been holding steady, the one binding Tier's Order to the gem, was trying to pull away from her - and before she pulled it back, she realized it was pulling the wrong way. It was pulling back toward Tier. She released it.
"Time passed, and the king grew old and wizened as his sons became strong and wise. People waited without worry for the old king to die and his oldest son to take the crown." Tier stilled his fingers for a moment, so that his silence waited like the people had waited for the old king to die.
Two beats of silence... three, then he began a run of minor chords, echoing the melody he'd used to begin the story. "One evening the king's oldest son went to bed, complaining of a headache. By the next day he was blind and covered with boils; by that evening he was dead. Plague had struck the palace, and, before it left, the queen and every male of royal blood were dead." The familiar melody twisted with a weight of sorrow. An occasional plucked harmonic rang like a widow's wail.
Then, Lehr's startled gasp made her look away from Tier, where she'd been caught by the magic of his words and music.
She saw Hinnum and the Memory, so different from the others who huddled at Tier's feet. She saw the dead. She saw her children, Phoran, and his guardsmen. She saw Gura. She saw them all in glittering lights of spirit, Order, and the dark core that she had decided might be soul.
And before them all, untouched by Seraph's magicked sense of sight, stood the Unnamed King's daughter, Loriel. Seraph didn't know how she knew who it was, just that the woman who discovered what her father had turned into stood before them all. Brought before them, real as life, by Tier's power. Seraph watched in awe as Loriel fled the monsters who now filled her father's castle.
The music became momentarily militant, sharp percussive taps of the lute's face evoking drums and marching troops as Tier told of the army Loriel formed, one whose core would go on to fight to the end. Abrupt, discordant, wild strains starting and stopping suddenly followed by a cacophony of strident squeaks and slides, as Tier told of Loriel's death. Always, throbbing steadily beneath the other sounds, was the rhythm of the Unnamed King's heart.
It was hard to keep her attention on the reality of the Shadowed's spell when Tier's rich baritone called for her attention. Still, she watched him as the power of his music slowly forced the Shadowed's spell to yield its prey. Seraph pulled the gem out of the belt pouch where she'd put it, and it was warm in her hand.
A man's scream pulled her attention back to the battlefield the library had become. She couldn't tell if the noise had been made by one of their boys, the dead, or by some quirk of Tier's storytelling magic.
Seraph recognized the wide field they'd ridden across a few days ago, but this time there were bodies lying everywhere, and the stench of death made Seraph's gorge rise.
The bass courses of the lute continued to measure the steady pulse of the Shadowed, but the melody faltered, quieted. She saw Red Ernave fighting the Shadowed King, who was even more frightening than she'd ever thought he could be. Tier's fingers played a melody that stuttered and strained, falling a bit behind the beat, as if too exhausted to continue, the proud strains of military airs made aching and painful by their very slowness.
Under his red beard, Ernave looked like Tier a little, and Seraph thought that might have been why she cried when he died at the end of the battle. Or maybe it was because the garnet in her hand had shattered into minute shards, and Tier was covered head to toe in the grey-green fabric of his Order.