Raven's Strike (27 page)

If Phoran's Memory were to show up again, it might be able to tell them more. However, it hadn't come back to feed since it killed Phoran's would-be assassins in Taela, though Seraph didn't know why. Since Memories were rare, formed only sometimes when a Raven died by murder or betrayal, no one knew much about them. They formed quickly after the Raven's death, usually while the killer was still in the room. Then they avenged the dead Raven and dissipated. With the Masters protected from the Memory by magic, if Phoran hadn't been nearby to feed upon when the Raven died, it would have been attached to the gem as they had planned—and become one of the gems that none of the wizards could use.

She'd never heard of a Memory feeding from anyone other than its intended prey, so she didn't know the rules that governed what it did to Phoran. Until the Memory returned, she and Hennea could only use what information they had to understand how the spell on Tier worked.

From information the former Passerines gave them, they believed the spell had been done in three parts. The first, which Hennea had seen, was a binding ceremony. It hadn't worked on Hennea, and neither the Masters nor Hennea knew why. She hadn't seen the gem bind to her Order, so she didn't know how they managed it. Tier, being a Bard, knew only that it hurt and left him feeling sullied.

The Path kept its Ordered prisoners for a year and a day before successfully stealing the Orders to bind to the gems. Some of that was because magic worked better on a person who is known to the magic wielder. Seraph could work magic on one of her family far easier than she could ensorcel someone she didn't know. But, some magics just took a long time to
work. The binding of Order to gem had to be as strong or stronger than the binding of Order to Order Bearer; it probably just took time.

The second part must have been when the gem gradually started pulling the Order to it. That's the phase Tier seemed to be in. Toarsen said both of the Ravens who had preceded Tier in captivity had begun having episodes toward the end of their stay. Hennea believed that meant someone had worked a second spell, after they'd left Taela. There was only one Path mage left after the Memory had gotten through with them: the Shadowed himself. He must have the gem that was bound to Tier's Order.

The third part of the Path's spell was where the wizard severed the tie between Order and Order Bearer. It might not need magic at all, just the death of the Order Bearer.

Both Phoran's and Tier's fates were tied together: destroy the Shadowed and both would be safe. Brewydd's last message indicated either the Shadowed was in Colossae, or they would find some way to deal with him there. Seraph glanced at Tier and away before he noticed. She would find the Shadowed, she vowed silently. She would find him and she would see that he never bothered her or hers again. Tier was riding alone in front today. He wasn't talking much, and, though she knew that he could be as comfortable in silence as he was in a storm of words, she worried about him. However, she knew her fussing bothered him more than it helped, so she let him avoid her for now.

The game trail they'd been following emptied into a broad, flat meadow half a league across and, as Seraph could judge it, three or more leagues long. Seraph's horse took four steps onto the meadow and stopped. Seraph realized she'd pulled the horse to a halt, but couldn't say why.

“I know this place,” said Jes, who'd been walking beside Hennea just behind Seraph.

Phoran came up next and stopped just beyond Seraph. He turned Blade in a rapid circle and looked through the trees as if he expected to see a waiting army. But there was nothing except a gentle breeze that moved the tops of the evergreens.

Tier looked back and saw them stopped. He turned Skew around and began cantering back to them.

“Shadow's Fall,” said Ielian in an awed voice, as Tier rode up.

“There are the remains of buildings on somewhere ahead,” Tier told them. “I don't know if we'll pass by close enough to see them. According to the map, our path lies directly through this valley. The first time I came here, I came into it from the north about two leagues from here and cut back toward home before I'd gone very far.”

“It's just a meadow,” Kissel said, sounding a little disappointed. “Though it's bigger than I thought.”

“Five hundred years doesn't leave much behind,” Toarsen said. “Leather rots and steel rusts.”

He was right, but something was calling to Seraph. She dismounted and walked forward a few steps. It wasn't magic, not really. Just something that cried out to her affinity with the past. Kneeling, she put her hand on the ground and came up with a gold ring. There was a deep mark on it such as a knife or sword might make upon the softer, more durable metal. As soon as she touched it, more of them tried to attract her attention. She'd always thought the reading of objects was a passive thing, but these remnants of a long-ago battle waited for her to read them.

“They're calling to me.” She felt as if the air she was breathing was too heavy. “All of the things left here with stories to tell, stories ending here.” She closed her hand on the ring. “He was too old to fight, but there was no one left. No one but old men, women, and children. He had arthritis in his shoulder, so he used his old sword with his left hand. His first wife, his childhood sweetheart, gave him this ring when the world was different, and he was the privileged son of a . . . some sort of mercer, but the cloth he dealt in came from across the seas.”

She dropped the ring and remounted. “It will take more than five centuries to clean Shadow's Fall. I don't want to linger here.”

Jes, who'd been shifting from one foot to the other, abruptly swung up into the saddle behind Hennea as they started off again. “I can't walk on this ground,” he said.

Gura, his tail down and tucked between his hind legs, kept close to Rinnie's horse rather than bounding around exploring as he usually did.

“I wonder if their bones still lie here,” Tier said to Seraph, his voice a little dreamy as they rode through the old battlefield. “Red Ernave and the Shadowed King, I mean. Did the remnants bury their hero, or were they too afraid of the Shadowed's dead body? Were there scavengers? Wolves and mountain cats or other things, things that had served the Shadowed like the troll Seraph killed.”

“I'd have let the dead lie,” said Rufort, who was riding beside them. “There would have been too much to do, trying to ensure remnants of the Army of Man survived. It would be a poor repayment of the price Ernave and all their beloved dead had paid to be so busy burying the past they lost their future. I've heard said that a battlefield's as dangerous a month after the battle as it was during the fighting.”

“Disease,” said Tier. “I agree with you. Best to save the living and let the dead lie. Remember them in song and story—that's a better memorial than any grave marker.”

They saw the remains of buildings, though they didn't ride close enough to see more than a few broken stone blocks that looked to be as large as their horses.

“I can almost see it,” said Phoran in a hushed voice. “The smoke and the sound of screaming. The terrible task of fighting foes who died so hard.”

But even as great a battlefield as Shadow's Fall had to end sometime. There were trees in front of them, marking the boundary between old floodplain and foothill, when Seraph stopped her horse again.

“Wait,” she said. “There's something.”

“Yes,” agreed Hennea. She rode off to the right a little, where three ragged blocks had been stacked one atop another. They were sunk into the soil a little. Hennea handed Jes her reins and, throwing a leg over the mare's neck, slid off, leaving Jes still mounted. She crouched down so she could get a good look at the stones.

“
Doverg
Ernave
atrecht venabichaek,
” she said, then translated, “Red Ernave defended us here and died.”

“They left a marker after all,” said Tier. He looked around, then he turned his horse in a slow circle, and an expression of growing astonishment appeared on his face. He gave a disbelieving laugh. “It's just as I pictured it,” he said.
“I wonder how much of the story of Shadow's Fall is true?”

“I don't like it here,” said Rinnie. “And there's a rainstorm coming soon. I don't want to be here if the sun's not shining. I don't think it would be a good thing.”

Hennea dusted off her hands. Jes gave her a hand, and she swung up behind him this time.

“I don't think so either,” Seraph told her daughter. She wanted away from the things that beckoned her with their stories of the long-ago dead.

They had to stop, though, at the end of the battlefield because, where their maps had shown a road, there was no trail at all.

Rufort got off his horse and stretched, while Tier and the women tried to compare the old maps to the current reality. He took the opportunity to look behind them at the wide flat-land with its short yellow grass.

Shadow's Fall.

How had he, Rufort Do-Nothing, come to such adventures? The third son of the fifth son of the Sept of Bendit Keep, Rufort had fought for everything he had, fought siblings and cousins until he was banished to Taela.

He'd joined the Passerines when the place was offered, hoping for somewhere to belong, to be valued. The Path had valued him, all right. He wasn't stupid. It hadn't taken him long to see that the Passerines were throwaway troops in a game the Masters of the Path were directing, but by then he'd also known there was no way out except death. But he had nothing to live for anyway, and the Path gave him a way to use the anger he kept bottled inside.

It had taken two things to make him rethink his attitude. The first was a beating that had taught him that, no matter how big and tough you are, there is always someone bigger and tougher. The second had occurred one night in the hall just outside of his room in an almost-forgotten corner of the palace, when he'd looked at the dead body of one of his fellow Passerines and decided he didn't want to die.

Rufort was a survivor.

He looked over at Phoran, who'd given up on a quick resolution and stripped his big grey stallion of its saddle and was
inspecting a place where the horse's hide had rubbed thin on the ride over the mountains. Who'd have thought that Rufort of Bendit Keep would find himself embarked on an adventure with the Emperor—and such an emperor.

Rufort had honestly thought that in the Emperor's Own he would be a simple guard, a glorified servant—which was better than dead. But Phoran had never treated him that way, not in the practice fields before this trip, and not during it. Phoran asked his advice and followed it—or explained why he didn't.

Oh, Rufort knew the things that people said about Phoran. He'd seen the Emperor passed out in a drunken stupor more than once. Had watched the careless cruelties spawned by dissatisfaction and boredom—and hadn't Rufort done the same and worse for the same reasons?

But all that had changed. Rufort wasn't certain exactly how or why it had changed—except that Tier, a farmer of Redern and a Bard, had been loosed among the Passerines and changed Rufort's life forever. He had a place now, a position he was honored to serve in, and honorable men to serve with and under.

Toarsen and Kissel were men he could follow. He looked at them a minute as they chatted softly together. Men now, both of them, not the boys that they, and he also, had been at the beginning of the summer, men directed their own destinies rather than dancing to the tune of another's piping.

Rufort
chose
to serve his emperor. He'd follow Toarsen and Kissel as his captains gladly. But Phoran, Phoran was a man that Rufort of Bendit Keep, Rufort Survivor, would lay down his life for.

He laughed softly to himself at his overwrought (however true) thoughts. He looked around and saw there was a place not far away where a line of dwarfed willows outcompeted the fir trees. Probably a creek, he thought. They'd filled their water bags and jugs that morning; but he was from drier country than this and had learned never to pass water by.

He left his horse with the others and went exploring.

Ielian found him staring down at a mostly dry creek bed.

“They're still trying to decide which way to ride,” Ielian said. “The maps disagree.”

Rufort grunted. “What do you see when you look here?” he asked.

“Rocks and mud,” Ielian said cautiously, in a manner of a man who'd been the butt of too many jokes. Being a Passerine made you wary after a while.

“I don't want to move, or I might lose this perspective,” Rufort said. “Would you go get . . .” Whom? Tier? Toarsen or Kissel? “Lehr. Would you get Lehr for me?”

Ielian nodded and ran back the way he'd come. The others weren't far, so it didn't take him long to come back with Lehr.

“What is it?” Lehr asked.

“What do you see?” Rufort asked again, nodding at the creek bed.

Lehr looked, and when he crouched, Rufort knew he was right.

“You see it, too?” he asked.

Lehr nodded, stood up, and picked his way down the bank and stood in a dry part of the creek bed, looking first one way, then the other. He reached into the sluggishly flowing water and came up with a large, squarish rock, which he carried back to Rufort.

“Good eyes,” Lehr said.

“What is it?” Ielian peered at the rock.

“A cobble,” said Rufort, patting Ielian on the back. “A cobble put in a road to keep it from getting muddy. Streams meander, Ielian, my city-bred friend, but this one runs straight as an arrow. Straight as a road.”

Lehr grinned, “Rufort's found the road to Colossae.”

Rinnie was right, it did rain. For the next four days water drizzled from the skies as if it were spring rather than late summer.

“There's too much water to keep it from raining, Mother,” she told Seraph. “And the storm is going the same direction we are. It's better for it to fall now when it can do it gently, than if I hold it off, and we get flooded.”