Raven's Strike (24 page)

After an hour or so, Jes began to stir restlessly. She'd been avoiding watching him sleep, because some people could feel when they were watched—and, given Jes's abilities, she assumed that he belonged to that group. But a soft sound drew her eyes, and she watched the subtle motions of muscle in his face, searching for a clue to his dreams. Slowly his face hardened into that otherness that told her the Guardian had come. She'd never seen that happen to an Eagle while he slept before.

“Jes,” she said softly. “Guardian, wake up. You're dreaming.”

He rolled so fast she almost hit him by reflex. Two arms, strong and hard wrapped around her hips so tightly she knew she'd have bruises tomorrow. His head burrowed against her midriff, and the rest of him curled around her.

“Shh.” She touched his hair lightly, but then decided if her touch were bothering him, he wouldn't have wrapped himself as close as he could get, and she let fingers sink through the dark strands in a caress. “Can you talk about it?”

He shook his head firmly.

She leaned over him and put her arms around him as best she could, given the awkwardness of moving while he was still wrapped around her middle.

“Shh,” she said. “It's all right.”

“He remembers,” said Jes hesitantly after a while. He'd relaxed somewhat, and she'd thought he was sleeping again.

“What does he remember?” she whispered.

Jes shook his head. “I don't know, but it frightens him.”

Phoran watched Jes and Hennea leave the house. He knew that something had happened, but, not speaking the Traveler tongue himself, he wasn't certain what. Later he could ask
Toarsen, who like quite a few of the former Passerines could speak a little Traveler.

For some reason, he thought, as he turned back to the map in front of him, he'd expected Tier to solve his problem overnight. Instead, he'd spent the better part of a week working on the farm. He suspected many of the tasks Tier had given him were merely to keep him busy—but not all of them. Survival, he'd discovered this week, took time and effort even when you weren't the Emperor. A farmer didn't have to worry about assassinations and political maneuvers, but Phoran found cutting wood, gardening, and washing required as much time and effort.

Toarsen hadn't been best pleased when Seraph sent them all to weed the kitchen garden—Phoran savored the memory of the expression on his captain's face—but since Phoran had gone out without a murmur, Toarsen had to do the same.

Now, he thought wryly, when Rinnie had had to show them all what to do—her eyes wide at the thought of someone who couldn't tell the difference between dill and reaverslace—
that
had stung Phoran's pride. But she hadn't laughed at them—at least not openly—and the memory of Toarsen's face had kept Phoran's sense of humor stronger than his sense of pride. Kissel hadn't needed supervision: he said his family's cook had taught him how to garden when he was a boy.

He'd learned a lot; but when Lehr and Jes returned, somewhere in his heart of hearts, Phoran had expected his trials to be over.

Lehr should have come back with the old healer in tow. She'd take one look at Phoran and give him a mysterious potion or tell him to turn around three times while wailing some unpronounceable word—like half the doctors in Taela. The Memory would leave him, and he could race home to rule in peace. He smiled to himself. At least until someone decided on a more effective method of assassination sometime when he wasn't guarded by his men. His men.

He cast a quick glance at Ielian. The man had surprised him with his passionate attack on Seraph as Phoran's advocate.

It seemed that the Emperor's total number of loyal followers was growing. At this rate, in ten years they might number over—say—twenty. Phoran was amused at himself for the
pleasure he found in knowing that Ielian, at least, served him out of something more than desire for gainful employment.

He turned his attention back to the map, but it looked the same as it had earlier. Sighing, he gave up. “If you have a sheet of paper, I'll start making lists of places this might be. There's nothing unusual about the placement of the roads. Maybe Master Willon will have more maps we can use for comparison.”

“I'll do it, Mother,” said Rinnie as she wiped her hands clean on a rough cloth.

She rummaged around, then set a sheet of paper, an ink pot and a well-trimmed pen beside him with a smile—she'd been shy of him at first. That day in the garden, though, had robbed her of any awe she might once have felt.

“Good idea,” agreed Tier. “We might see if Willon will take a look at these maps, himself, if we don't come up with anything. He's had more than half a century running all over the Empire. Maybe he'll see something that we've missed.”

“Dinner will be done soon,” Rinnie announced.

“As long as you used dill instead of reaverslace, we'll not flog the cook.” Phoran started scratching out place names. He wished that at least one of the maps had some kind of scale so he knew whether he was looking at ten-leagues mapped in great detail or a hundred leagues.

“If it's reaverslace, it's because someone weeded out the dill,” returned Rinnie complacently. “
You
can try it first. If you don't go into convulsions, the rest of us will eat.”

“Threatening your emperor is treason.” Phoran scratched out a place he'd written because it was too near the coast. If Colossae had been that near the sea, certainly one of the maps would have shown it. “Kissel, should we string this girl up?”

“Not until she finishes our dinner,” rumbled Kissel. “I'll even eat reaperslace if it tastes as good as that fish smells.”

Tier stood up and stretched. “I'll bring some water for washing to the porch,” he said. He took a step away from the table, glanced back at his map—the one covered in fine lines that seemed to be meaningless—and he froze.

“Seraph, can you hold that map up?” he said.

Phoran looked at Tier's map as Seraph pulled it from the table, but it hadn't changed. It still looked as though someone
had, very carefully, drawn hundreds of meaningless lines all over the parchment.

It was big and had been in a roll for a long time and kept trying to curl up. Phoran got up and helped Seraph hold it flat while Tier took slow steps away from it without taking his eyes off whatever had caught his attention.

“Lehr?” he said. “Son, I need you to get up and help me a minute.”

Lehr groaned and muttered something that sounded rude to Phoran, but he rolled out of the bed in the loft and dropped to the main floor without bothering with the ladder. Staggering across the room, he stood next to his father and rubbed his eyes.

“Look at that map,” Tier said. “Tell me what you see.”

“Lines,” said Lehr grumpily. “What am I suppose to . . .” He frowned, coming to alertness just as Tier had.

“It's the distance that helped me see what it was,” Tier explained.

He walked over to the map and put his finger on the lower left-hand corner. “The lines are elevations,” he said. “I bet they used to be different colors, but age turned them all dark.”

“What do you see?” asked Phoran. “Can you tell where it is?”

“It's here,” said Tier simply. “Not Colossae,” he brushed his hand over the star that marked the wizards' city. He dropped his hand until he pointed to the lower left-hand corner again. “Right here, this is Redern Mountain and the Silver River. Here's our valley.” He ran his hand up to a section about the size of his palm that had a single thick line running through the middle of it, but none of the thinner lines. “This must be . . .”

“Shadow's Fall,” said Lehr. “If the distances are right for Redern and this valley, then that's right where Shadow's Fall would be.”

Tier let his finger follow the line that bisected the flat plain of the battlefield. It connected to a second road, then took an abrupt turn north. About a finger length from Shadow's Fall, Tier's finger stopped and rested on the strange symbols that Hennea told them represented the ancient wizards' city of Colossae.

“I can take us there,” he said.

C
HAPTER
11

“You want journey bread?” Alinath came out of the baking room,
her face tight with dismay after overhearing Tier's request to her husband, Bandor.

Seraph took a step back and let Tier deal with his sister.

Tier picked up a piece of bread left out as a sample and tried it. “I'll need it as soon as you can. You know, Bandor, if you put a bit less salt in this bread”—he motioned to the plate of sample offered—“it would allow some of the other flavors to come out.”

“I'll try that,” Bandor said. “Does the journey bread have anything to do with your guests?”

Tier nodded easily, but Seraph could feel his arm tense under her hand. “Who told you about them?”

Five strangers were a hard secret to keep, but they hadn't told anyone about them, and no one had been to the farm since Phoran and his men had shown up.

“Apparently some youngsters—who should have work to keep themselves busy—were out that way a week or so ago and came back into town spouting nonsense,” said Alinath.

“Spying on us, are they?” Tier grinned, and Seraph could tell that he was honestly amused. “I hope they saw something more interesting than our guests.”

“They said they were nobles,” Bandor said. “And one of them the Sept's own brother. We had the tale from the steward, who was convinced you are after his job.”

“Gods save me,” exclaimed Tier with honest horror. “What idiot would want that job?”

“Exactly,” said Alinath with satisfaction. “And so I told the steward when he came whining to me.”

“Toarsen, the Sept's brother,
is
there with a group of bored young noblemen whom Tier met in Taela,” said Seraph, having found a story that might satisfy some of the curious. “They had nothing to do, and knew Tier would come here too late for planting. They've asked him to take them hunting in the mountains.”

“You can't take the Sept's brother up there,” said Alinath, horrified. “If something happens to him, the Sept will—”

“It's all right,” said Seraph. “We're all going. I doubt there will be trouble with all of us there.”

Alinath stopped fussing and frowned thoughtfully at Seraph. “Very well,” she said slowly. “Two dozen dozen loaves of journey bread. It'll be ready the day after tomorrow—I've put all the breadmother up for today.” She gave Seraph a sudden conspiratorial smile. “And any who ask, I'll tell them about the nobles who are paying my brother's family for an adventure up in the mountains. Only you'd better make it somewhere more interesting—like Shadow's Fall. Bored young boys might very well be stupid enough to ride from Taela to have Tier take them to Shadow's Fall. They'd have the money to tempt anyone, too. I can take Rinnie, if you'd like.”

“No,” said Tier instinctively, and Seraph smiled to herself—then at Tier when he looked at her with second thoughts in his face.
Is it fair to take her?

“She'll be as safe with us as she would be here with Alinath,” Seraph said. “I think if we try to leave Rinnie again, she'll just follow us.”

“Besides,” said Tier, relaxing a little, “the summer's getting old. Up high it's possible we could run into early snow. A Cormorant might be a very useful thing to have.”

Bandor patted his wife on the back. “She'll have a story to tell her children, if that's where you're going. I'd like to see Shadow's Fall once before I die.”

“I'll take you there,” agreed Tier. “But I've only been once myself. It's not easy to get to—and it is not a comfortable place to be. If you're serious, though, I'll take you next summer after the crops are in.”

They left the bakery with a sweet roll each.

Seraph hummed her pleasure at the sticky, warm bread.

“See,” Tier said. “If you'd been nicer to my sister all these years, you'd have had a sweet roll every time you came to the bakery.”

“Liar,” she told him cheerfully. “Until I saved her husband, it didn't matter how nice I was to her—she was convinced I used magic to steal away her big brother.”

As they wandered up the road to Willon's, Tier grew more serious. “I don't like it that those boys were out by our farm, Seraph. It was Storne and his lot, I suppose. He used to be such a nice boy before he took up with Olbeck.”

“They're not boys anymore,” Seraph said. “They're Lehr's age—Olbeck's older than that. If the Path had taken over here, doubtless they'd have recruited those boys as Passerines.”

Rinnie went out to find some tingleroot for the trip. Whatever she found this late in the year was likely to be woody and weak, but it was better than none at all—which is what they had.

Lehr was still looking thin and pale, and he was sleeping too much. Jes hadn't returned with Hennea yesterday. He was out walking, she'd said.

So Rinnie slipped out of the house while Lehr was napping and Hennea was brooding over the maps again. She hushed Gura with a stern command. She thought about taking him with her, but he didn't always listen to her when he was excited the way he listened to the boys and her mother. She didn't want to spend the day out chasing after him if he found a rabbit, so she commanded him to stay on the porch and started across the fields.

Phoran and his men were seated on the ground in front of the barn, playing some sort of game that seemed to involve a lot of laughter and wild grabbing for bone-dice. But when she walked past them, Phoran stood up and motioned his men to stay where they were.

“Rinnie Seraphsdaughter, where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked courteously.

She liked it that he never treated her like a ten-year-old brat (which was what Lehr called her in moments of extreme provocation).

“I'm hunting some tingleroot,” she told him without slowing her pace. “We've run out.”

“And this tingleroot is important?” he asked, rolling his tongue around the herb's name.

Really,
she thought,
an emperor shouldn't be so appallingly ignorant.
Then she was horrified and embarrassed when he laughed because she hadn't hidden her thoughts better.

“It's for packing in wounds,” she said quickly. “It helps keep infection out. Mother makes an eyewash with it for smoke irritation, too.”

“My eyes are delicate,” he said, batting his eyelashes at her. “By all means let us go fetch this
tingleroot
.”

“It gets its name because it makes your tongue tingle, then go numb if you chew it,” she told him. “You really don't have to come. I know the way.”

“If Jes or your parents were here, would you be off alone?” Phoran asked.

“It's perfectly safe,” she said, miffed that he'd think she wasn't capable of gathering herbs on her own.

“I should hope so. I wouldn't go with you else.” He glanced back at the barn. “I'd send Kissel, surely. He's ugly enough to frighten anything away. Or Toarsen, he's just mean.”

“Toarsen's not mean,” she said, then realized he was teasing.

“No.” Phoran agreed. “Toarsen's not mean—but don't tell him I told you so.”

She laughed. “All right, come on then.”

Rinnie was one of Phoran's favorite things about Redern. Children weren't something he had much experience with, and never having had a childhood himself, he was fascinated by her.

For one thing, she was competent, with skills that many a grown woman in Taela would envy. She could cook, sew—and weed gardens. She knew how to work and how to play, too.

He liked it best when he teased her into her grandame manner that he recognized she copied from her mother. But what was intimidating in Seraph was touchingly amusing in her daughter.

He wasn't about to let anything happen to her. No matter what she said, anyplace where a troll had been killed only a few weeks before wasn't safe. He had no idea what he'd do if they ran into a troll, mind, except run. He wasn't sure that his Memory was up to killing a troll with the same dispatch as it had disposed of his would-be assassins. Against a chance-met wolf or boggin, though, Phoran felt himself to be more than enough of a guard.

Rinnie hiked fast enough that Phoran was hard put to keep up with her—making him glad that he hadn't allowed any of his guards to come with him. More humiliating was that she noticed and slowed up. And apologized.

“Sorry,” she said. “I'm used to walking with Lehr or Jes. And you're from the lowlands—Papa says that lowlanders have trouble breathing up here near the mountains.”

“Hmm,” Phoran said. “You don't need to make excuses. Emperors aren't expected to be able to hike out in the woods.”

She turned around and walked backward so that she could see his face. “Papa says you like it here.”

He smiled. “Your papa's a pretty wise man.”

To his delight she gave him a solemn look that made her look like an owl just waking up. “My papa knows people.”

Just then a sharp sensation slid up his leg, and he jerked it reflexively away from . . . bare ground.

“That's Mother's warding.” Rinnie grinned. “It didn't used to do that until she reset them after killing the troll. You should have seen Lehr jump the first time he set foot on it afterward.”

Phoran stepped cautiously past, but other than a brief, painless jolt, nothing happened to him. “I'm still alive,” he said. “I guess that means I'm not what she was warding against.”

When Rinnie finally stopped it was none too soon for Phoran. He dropped to the ground, lay on his back, and panted. Most of it was for her benefit because it made her laugh, but lying down felt good.

“Quit fooling around,” she told him. “You can help gather.”

When he obediently rolled to his feet she drew him over to
a plant that looked somewhat like all the other plants around.

“Look, this is tingleroot, you can tell it because it has lacy edges on its leaves. It blooms with small yellow flowers in the spring—that's the best time to harvest. But even a late-harvest root is better than none.” She looked at him sternly. “We never pick more than one plant in three—so that there will be more here next year.”

“I promise not to pick them all,” he told her.

Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned forward. “Your eyes are laughing. This is serious.”

“Yes, princess, I know,” he apologized. “I'm just not used to taking orders.”

“All right,” she conceded. “I can see that. The boys don't like it when I tell them what to do—but they don't usually laugh either.”

“Possibly because they don't need your directions as much as I usually do.”

She tilted her head at him, then grinned. “You like it. All right. Go harvest. Remember to get a stick and loosen the dirt around the plant 'cause it's the root we need.”

With the first plant as a template, Phoran found two or three others that were probably tingleroot. He took the whole plant though, so Rinnie could make certain that's what he had. His search took him around a pile of boulders higher than his head, and he found a whole grove of tingleroot. Or something that looked like it to his untrained eye.

He was in the process of loosening the dirt around a stubborn plant when Rinnie's squeak of surprise brought him into a crouch. He waited to hear something more, not wanting to charge out and make an idiot of himself.

“Hey, little girl, where's your crazy brother this time?” It was a deep voice, a man's voice, and the tone had Phoran setting his harvest on the ground and loosening his sword.

The stranger's tones quieted, like a cat stalking a bird. “Or is it Lehr's footsteps I've been tracking instead? Tracking the great hunter himself, the hero who slew an ogre. Did he leave you here while he went off hunting? Did he leave behind such tender meat for me?”

The avarice in the man's voice tightened Phoran's hand on the hilt of his sword. Phoran knew that he was going to hurt
this lout now. Kill him if he was given enough excuse. Rinnie was a child; only a sick man sounded like that around a child.

“It was a troll, and my mother killed it.” Rinnie sounded calm, only a slight quiver betrayed her fear. But then she knew that Phoran was listening to them, knew that Phoran wasn't as incompetent with steel as he was with plants.

“What are you doing here, Olbeck?” she said stoutly. “Shouldn't you be in the middens with the rest of the swine?”

Something happened. Phoran heard it in the stretch of time between Rinnie's comment and Olbeck's next words. Maybe he'd struck at her, and she'd dodged his hand.

Phoran worked his way quietly around the boulders and the evergreen tree that grew next to them. He didn't want to give Olbeck warning that she wasn't alone and give him a chance to take her hostage before Phoran could get between them.

“My father will have your family out of that farm now,” he said. “I told him that Toarsen is here. Don't you think I'd recognize the Sept's brother? I'm the steward's son, bitch. I know that Toarsen and his brother don't see eye to eye. My father will tell Avar that his brother has been sniffing around here and planning treachery. Avar will believe him. Maybe he'll have your father beheaded.”