Raven's Strike (26 page)

There was a small flat area a couple of leagues ahead, just before the highest and steepest part of the pass, where Lehr could start setting up camp while the stragglers trailed in. Tier was worried about how Phoran's men's horses were going to handle the climb. In his experience, the horses felt the height of the mountains worse than the people.

Rinnie's horse, with its lighter burden, was the first to appear down the trail. She stopped it next to Tier while Gura dropped to rest, panting happily.

“Papa,” she said. “There's a storm front coming behind us with snow. I'm trying to send it around us, but I need to know which direction we'll be heading.”

“East,” he told her. “East and a little north for a couple of days yet. If you can hold it off us for the next two days, we'll be back down, so it'll come down as rain rather than snow.”

“There's some snow on the ground that direction already,” she said. “We might have trouble coming back this way.'

“We'll find that trouble when we come to it,” he told her. “We might have to come back a different way. This is the most direct route, but riding home, a few extra weeks won't make much difference.”

She nodded. When her horse started on up again, Tier said, “I'm glad we thought to take our Cormorant rather than leave her in Redern, where she'd be useless.”

She gave him a grin and turned her attention to riding the uneven surge of her horse's uphill scramble. Gura hesitated, gave Tier a long look, then took off after Rinnie.

Seraph appeared before Rinnie was quite out of sight. He kissed her as she passed and told her Rinnie was trying to hold off a storm.

“It's never quite warmed up today,” she said. “I'll make certain there's something hot for you when you come into camp.”

“I'll look forward to it. See you tonight,” he said.

When she was gone, he dismounted and slipped the bit so Skew could graze on the sparse edible vegetation. The trees so high up were all fir and pine, and grass didn't grow well under evergreens. All the horses would be a little hungry for a day or two.

He sat on his heels and waited.

Phoran came next, with Toarsen at his side. Phoran's hard-headed stallion looked none the worse for wear, but Toarsen's horse was breathing hard.

“This is hard on the horses,” Tier said. “You might have to walk some of the steeper bits.”

It was a longer wait for the next rider, Ielian.

“Is someone riding with the Emperor?” he asked.

Tier nodded. “Toarsen was. It looked as though Phoran was holding Blade back so Toarsen could stay with them.”

“Good,” said Ielian.

Hennea came next. “Jes told me to go ahead and let you know that the others are fine. Kissel and Rufort are taking the climb slower to save their horses. Jes told them to.”

“He's right,” said Tier. “Seraph and Lehr should have camp mostly up by the time you get there.”

It was getting dark by the time Tier and the others caught first sight of the campfire above them.

“Not far now, lads,” Tier told them, standing in the stirrups to loosen his knees which were stiffening from the strain of the ride.

“What's that?” asked Rufort. “Down there below us, see that flicker of light? Is there someone following?”

“Ah,” Tier said, stopping. “I'd wondered if we'd see them.”

“See whom?” asked Jes.

“What, not whom, I think,” Tier said. “When I was up here last there were lights and voices and . . . other things all night. I thought it might have been altitude sickness. I was coming from the other direction—we haven't hit the high stuff yet—and I was pretty well exhausted.”

“So we shouldn't worry about it?” Rufort's horse took advantage of the pause to rub its nose against its knee.

“I wouldn't say that,” replied Tier. “These are the Ragged Mountains, and there are some unpleasant things round about. But these didn't hurt me last time, so we'll hope for the best. Come. Camp awaits us.”

The camp was just as Tier remembered it, full of small rocks that were ready to punish people for trying to sleep and little grass for the horses.

The odd lights continued to flicker here and there, as if there were men carrying lanterns a hundred yards away.

“There's something here,” Seraph said, after Tier told them all about the lights that had followed him down the mountain the only time he'd come this way. “It doesn't feel quite like magic to me. It has no pattern.”

There were rustles in the bushes, too, that set both Jes and Gura off a couple of times, only to come back frustrated.

Seraph was banking the fire after everyone had set out their bedrolls and was trying to sleep when she jerked abruptly upright. “Did you hear that?”

“No,” Tier said, sitting up to look around.

“I heard nothing,” said the Guardian.

Seraph crawled into the bedding with Tier, and muttered, “It's bad enough to hear voices no one else does, but it's worse when you don't know what they're saying.”

“Names,” said Hennea, and Tier realized that she hadn't said anything since he'd come into camp. Travelers were like that. “I started hearing them at dusk. Don't you recognize what this place is, Seraph? When the wizards who lived fled Colossae, some of the ghosts of the dead followed them. The wizards bound them to the side of a mountain to guard the way. They called the place the Mountain of Memories or the Mountain of Names, and the ghosts stayed and kept any other spirits from following their killers. The lights, rustles, and a few voices that try to bind you to this place with their names. The magic that holds them here has faded, and in a hundred years there'll be nothing here at all.”

Seraph shook her head. “I never heard that story.”

“I've heard of the Mountain of Names,” said Tier, “though nothing that told me just what or where it was. I wish I'd known that it was some magic or other when I came here before. I thought I was losing my mind.”

“Why did you come up here in the first place, Papa?” asked Jes.
No,
Tier corrected himself, hearing the darkness in his voice, the Guardian was the one who asked. “This isn't the kind of place you find a lot of animals to trap.”

“I was on my way home,” Tier said. “It was a particularly mild winter, so I'd traveled farther than usual hunting winter furs—that's when I ran into Shadow's Fall.” He paused. “It spooked me when I realized where I was, and I headed home by straight directions rather than backtrack the way I'd come. This isn't the easiest route, but the only other way I know would take us weeks longer.”

“How did you know it was Shadow's Fall?” asked Phoran.

“It could be nothing else. You'll understand what I mean when we get there,” said Tier. “I left as fast as Skew could go, and I don't think I slept a wink until I was home again.”

“You scared Mother,” said Lehr. “I remember that a little. I think I was younger than Rinnie is. You came home and collapsed without a word. Mother thought you'd caught some illness and sent Jes and me for Karadoc.”

“That was the only time you were here?” asked Ielian. “How do you know where you're going?”

“There speaks a city man,” said Rufort, but the smile in his voice robbed it of any offense. “Men who roam the mountains
learn fast to tell east from west and gauge how far they've traveled—or they don't survive.”

“You've been in the mountains?” asked Phoran.

“Grew up not far from the Deerhavens. I had an uncle . . . well he was my mother's cousin, really. He knew the mountains.”

“Tier's a Bard,” said Seraph, snuggling down against Tier. “He remembers things.”

They tried to sleep again, most of them. Tier listened to the camp quiet down. Jes didn't bother lying down, and Tier tried to convince himself the rustlings he heard were Jes, so he could sleep. But Jes seldom made that much noise, so Tier lay awake most of the night.

The next morning Tier made everyone bundle up and had Jes double-check the horses to make certain they were in shape for the day's travel.

Peaks rose, icy-covered and barren around them as they started on the worst part of the trail. Lehr took the lead again since there was little chance for Lehr to miss where they were going: until they were on their way down, there was only one way the horses could take.

This part was hard on the horses, and Tier could make better speed on foot. His knees weren't any worse than they'd ever been after a day of riding up a mountainside; they'd handle walking better than riding.

They hit snow at midday, but it was all a few weeks old. So high up, Tier could look off and see the storm clouds that Rinnie was holding off as best she could.

“Papa, my head aches,” she told him.

“Mine, too, love. It's the heights and the glare of the sun off the snow. Close your eyes, your horse will follow the others. We'll find the top in a few hours. Once we get down the other side, you'll feel better.”

She swayed a little. “The storm doesn't like me pushing it away. It wants to come this way.”

He didn't know how much she could do without risk, and Seraph and Hennea were farther ahead.

“Be careful, love. You don't have to hold off the storm forever, just a little bit. Whatever you can do helps.”

She nodded and closed her eyes.

Ielian rode up. “My horse is sound,” he said. “She can ride with me for a while if that helps.”

“Thanks.” Tier smiled. “There's another steep climb just over that ridge, though. Best she stay where she is.”

Ielian cupped a hand across his forehead to block the sun and looked up. “Ridge? I thought that was the top.”

Tier shook his head and smiled. “Not for a little while yet. My best reckoning is that we've a league or so before we see the top.”

He wasn't off by much. A little over an hour later, he leaned against Rinnie's horse and watched as Toarsen and Kissel staged a snowball fight at the crest of the mountain. It didn't last long because it was too cold, but everyone was cheerful as they started down.

They were an hour from the spot Tier thought they should camp when Rinnie tapped him on the shoulder.

“The storm's coming,” she said.

“That's all right.” He patted her leg, then swung up behind her. “Go ahead and sleep.”

Rinnie slept until they stopped for the night. She grumbled when Jes pulled her off the horse's back, and fell back asleep as soon as he set her down on her blankets.

Lehr made sweet tea and saw to it that everyone drank two cups while Seraph busied herself making a stew of a little water, salted venison, and turnips. It took forever to soften the meat, and the tea, though it had boiled furiously, was not very hot.

With Rinnie's warning in mind, Tier sent Phoran and the boys out collecting tree boughs while he tied up the oilcloth tarp to provide some protection while they slept. The storm hit in the night and followed them down the mountain, turning from snow to rain before letting up at last.

A day off to rest and dry their clothing followed by five long days of travel found them riding on a game trail through heavily forested but mostly level ground. They saw no sign of other people. Everyone knew if they settled too near to Shadow's Fall, crops didn't grow right—as if the Unnamed King had robbed the land of some virtue. Evergreens did all right. There might have been some way to make a living cutting trees and hauling them to the grasslands in the southeast,
but the Ragged Mountains made people uneasy if they stayed in them too long.

There were several other Rederni besides Tier who collected animal fur in the fall and winter, but most of them stayed out for a shorter time than Tier. They had stories to tell about things that followed them for weeks without leaving a track or sign. Tier'd had a few odd encounters himself.

Though the trail they were on was flat, towering peaks rose around them. When Tier looked back he could see the highest mountain, a long ridge with a barren red top edged in snowy white with a narrow notch that almost bisected it—the pass they'd taken over the mountain.

Hopefully, Tier thought, as Skew forded a shallow stream, they would be riding back that way in a few weeks and return to Redern—just as the people who'd survived the fall of the Shadowed King had forged their way over that same pass to a place where they felt safe, protected by the steep slope of Redern Mountain.

Then he'd be able to sing again. Skew tossed his head, and Tier loosened his reins, letting them lie slack.

Last night Tier had been singing and lost himself—at least that's what it had felt like. One moment he was singing, and the next he was lying on the ground with Seraph patting his face.

They said he'd just stopped singing, stopped moving, then gone into convulsions. Phoran and Jes had held him down until they stopped. Hennea and Seraph had conferred for a long time last night, then decided that the fit had been brought about by his use of Order while it was under attack by the Path's mages' spell.

Tier didn't want to do anything ever to put that look in Seraph's eyes again, so he'd decided to stop telling stories and singing songs until—well, just until.

Seraph tried not to watch Tier all the time, tried not to
look
. She and Hennea had spent most of the evening trying to locate the magic that was destroying Tier's Order, but they couldn't. There was nothing to be found, just as there had been nothing to find when they had cleaned Tier of spells when they'd freed him from the Path.

Hennea knew something of the spells they'd used because she'd been there for the first part. Tier remembered a little about it as well, though the Masters had tried to blank his memory of it.

Rufort, who was older than the other three former Passerines, had been there at a ceremony when the binding of Order to gem had been done in front of an audience. He did the best he could, but he wasn't a wizard and, as Tier said dryly, about half the things the Masters did on stage were performance rather than magic.