Raven's Strike (34 page)

Hennea wasn't the only one who had lost when Colossae was sacrificed. He hadn't gone into detail, but the damage he'd sustained from the spell had been bad enough he'd chosen to stay here alone rather than go out into the world.

The illusion he'd built to house his intellect—his spirit, he'd said, tapping the miserable book she was slogging through—was not capable of much magic. Which was why he'd begun the process of awakening his proper body as soon as he'd seen Tier and the Order-bound gems. Hinnum knew something of how to fix both problems, he'd told her, but he didn't know how long it would be before his body would recover. For the gems there was no rush, but Tier did not have much time left.

Thus she found herself sitting at a table like a fledgling
solsenti
wizard under the tyranny of his master.

“It's not that difficult,” he said now, and handed her the piece of chalk she'd thrown across the room. “An apprentice
of thirteen would be able to master this easily. But not if she was too busy throwing tantrums to listen.”

Seraph simmered with ill temper as she drew the arcane glyphs across the gleaming surface of the table again. She hadn't had a teacher since her own had died, and Hinnum seemed to take particular delight in being obscure.

This was worse than learning the runes for warding—at least then she could feel the power gathering under the runes so that the runes themselves told her if she'd drawn them correctly or not. This was just scribbling nonsense.

“That figure turns the other direction,” said Hinnum, tapping the drawing in the book. “See there? And the little bit right here needs to be a hair longer.”

“If you told me what we were trying to do,” she said, not for the first time, “this might not be necessary.”

“It's in the book,” he told her. “But you told me the book doesn't make sense to you—thus the figures.” He leaned over the marks as she made them. “That's better. Only three more figures, then I'll teach you the words.”

“Could Hennea do this?” she asked.

“I don't know,” he told her. “You can, of course, wait for someone else to fix all of your problems if you aren't willing to put in a little time and effort.”

If he hadn't been an illusionary construct, if he weren't the only hope she had of saving Tier, she would have done something unpleasant to him.

She started trying to reconstruct the next random assortment of squiggles and angles.

Hinnum gripped Seraph's cheeks and pushed, forcing her mouth into an unnatural position. “Like this. If you don't get the sounds just right, they won't work.”

She jerked her face out of his grip and tried again.
Rhythm, tone, pitch, pronunciation, no wonder
solsenti
wizards were a nasty bunch.

Staring at the meaningless shapes she'd drawn on the table, she once more focused all of her attention on getting the words just right. It sounded to her exactly as it had the first twenty times, but
this
time something happened. Magic rushed through the chalk marks and into her in a stream of
power that pushed the stool she was sitting on back a few inches.

It was different from the runes. The runes were
hers,
and they did as she bid.

The shapes and words of this kind of spell weaving distracted her, then stole her magic and twisted it into a new shape. She didn't like it—a Raven controlled her own magic. She didn't like it, but she saw and understood the pattern the symbols and sounds were trying to make of her power. There were flaws here and there, and she fixed them as she tugged her magic until it was once more
hers.

“I've got it,” she said, turning to Hinnum.

But instead of the half-grown Traveler boy, she saw instead a net of magic, a complex pattern of strings and knots that gave form to the Scholar. The violet fabric she'd always seen as the Raven Order was there as well, beneath the netting—or so she thought at first. She got up from her chair and walked toward him. She could see now it wasn't the same as the Order, not quite.

“It's not the Raven Order, but it is akin to it,” she said.

“I was goddess-touched,” he said, seeming to follow her meaning. “The gift of the Raven is very like the Raven's Order. What did you do? This magic doesn't feel like the spell you were working on should!”

“I fixed it,” she said, bending closer, fascinated. “Pardon me,” she said absently, as the reality of what she saw began to give meaning to the passages Hinnum had made her read.

“What did you do?” Hinnum sounded fascinated, examing her magic as closely as she was examining him.

“Not right now,” she said. “Let me look.” It took concentration, as if she had to pay attention in order to focus her eyes on anything. It was draining, too. She wouldn't be able to do this for long periods of the time. It was akin to the way Ravens
looked
to see Orders, but it went deeper.

“I see the spell binding you to your illusion,” she said after a moment of thought. That must be what the net that encompassed the rest of him was. “Beneath that the—Raven's touch, I suppose you'd call it—and under . . .” The violet sheathing became transparent, fading from her view as she chose to look at different things. “I see a bluish light and a dark core beneath.”

“Describe it to me.” Hinnum's voice had lost the note of caution and become eager.

Seraph lifted up her hand and pushed it through the net to stroke the light with a fingertip. “Give me your hand,” she told him. If his goddess touch worked like the Order, she should be able to show him what she had done so he could do it himself. It would be easier than trying to explain it to him.

It was her turn to be the teacher, and she hadn't forgiven him for grabbing her cheeks.

He took her hand, and for a while she wondered if his not-quite-an-Order, his not-quite-human, and his not-able-to-work-magic were going to hinder her.

She found out quickly that he was right about the magic, but if she split up what she wanted to do, everything worked. She showed him the form of the magic she used for this new, extended vision, and though he couldn't work the magic himself, she knew from his “Ah” of pleasure, that he understood. Then she showed him what she saw, the same way she could have shown it to anyone, even someone who didn't happen to be mageborn.

She took him slowly through the net of his magic and past the Raven's touch and brought him to the pale blue fire surrounding a darker form.

“The light blue is spirit,” he said. “That's what you needed to be able to see. I have no idea what the other is . . . soul? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is something that has happened because I've kept my self in this form . . .” His voice trailed off.

She closed her eyes and separated her magic gently from Hinnum, then dissipated the spell she'd used. She blinked twice before her eyes returned to working properly—and took two steps back so she was no longer nose to nose with the Scholar.

While Hinnum still had a dazedly pleased expression on his face, Seraph asked, “If the Stalker is not evil—then why is the Shadowed?” He'd avoided answering any question she'd tried about the Shadowed; she hoped taking him by surprise would yield better results.

His expression returned to alertness with disappointing speed. When Tier had that look on his face, it took him much longer to return to his usual quick-witted self.

“How would I know?” he asked. “I've been here since the end of Colossae.”

“Not quite, I think,” Seraph said. “There was a Shadowed with the wizards who survived, and the stories tell us you are the one who killed her. So why are the Shadowed evil?”

She should probably have left the questioning to Tier, but the expression on Hinnum's face had led her to try. She had nothing more to lose now by trying to bludgeon information from him. He
knew
about the Shadowed in general—and he knew about Willon in particular. She hadn't forgotten that Willon had come to Colossae. Willon had had the same maps that she had, and he was a wizard. Of course he had come to the library.

Hinnum had had a hand in the creation of her Shadowed, Willon, who had crept into her home on the pretext of his friendship with Tier and killed her daughter. Hinnum would tell her all he knew if she had to pry it from him one word at a time.

Something of that determination must have been on her face, because Hinnum sighed. “There's a flaw in the veil we drew between the Elder gods and our world when we sacrificed the city. I felt it—and so did the few great wizards who survived. One of them used the hole to draw upon the power of the Stalker.”

“What caused it?”

“We did. I did.” Guilt was one of the expressions she'd seen on his face quite often, given she'd only known him for part of two days. “It took me a long time to figure out what happened.” He sat on a bench, his head bowed. “I had been experimenting with an illusionary form that not only reproduced an object perfectly to all the senses, but could be set into a silver object to be called and recalled without degrading the illusion.”

“The
mermori,
” said Seraph.

Hinnum nodded. “I'd found that by destroying the object I intended to reproduce, the spell required very little more power.”

“Forming the
mermori
destroyed the wizards' houses.” Seraph rubbed her forehead, which ached from the spelling she'd been doing. “Since it took little power, it was not such a big thing to work it into the Raven's spell, and you formed the
mermori
at the same time the city fell. The sacrifice wasn't perfect because the wizards' houses weren't part of the eternally preserved city.”

“And then there was the library,” Hinnum said.

Seraph rubbed her forehead harder. “Stupid.”

“Yes.” Hinnum sighed.

“You were going to tell me why the Shadowed is evil.”

“A wizard—not just any wizard—but a powerful, smart, well-schooled wizard, can under certain circumstances slip through the hole in the veil and touch the power of the Stalker, can touch destruction. Being destruction, it kills any mortal being who holds it for long.”

“But the Shadowed doesn't die,” Seraph said.

“Most wizards who touch it release it immediately and never seek it again. But if the wizard gives the death that is the price of the power of destruction to another person, then he can use the power for a while.”

“He chooses to kill others to keep the power,” Seraph interpreted. “And anyone who would do that—”

“Is evil.” Hinnum glance up at the skylights. “It's getting late,” he said. “You'd better find your family.”

“ ‘The dead walk the streets at night,' ” she quoted him softly.

He nodded. “The dead have a lot to be angry with in this city.”

Lehr walked just behind his father, Rinnie's hand clutching his. She was still breathing in jerks from the tears she'd tried so hard not to let Papa see. The moment that the fit had struck his father was close to the worst moment in his life.

It wasn't the first fit his father had had, but it was the worst—and the first time it had happened without Mother there to give them direction. And after the fit was over, Papa had just lain on the pale cobbles. He hadn't been breathing until Kissel hit him in the chest.

Phoran walked just on the other side of Tier, and on some pretext or other had managed to get a firm grip on Tier's arm to steady him a little.

“Are we going back to camp?” Ielian asked Lehr in a subdued voice.

They hadn't discussed it. Phoran had helped Papa to his feet, then said, “Let's go.” But he hadn't said where.

Papa had been a little dazed, and he'd slurred his words—but he wouldn't let any of them help him further. He'd gotten better as they walked; well enough to carry on an animated conversation with Phoran.

“We're going to find my mother,” said Lehr.

Phoran caught Lehr's eye and nodded slightly.

“Papa, what's wrong?”

Lehr looked up to see Jes and Hennea hurrying over.

Papa smiled. “Do I look that bad?”

“Yes. You smell of sweat, and you are pale,” Jes answered with his usual bluntness.

Hennea wore her usual inscrutable face, but Lehr noticed that her eyes were puffy. She was almost as pale as Papa except for her nose, which was reddened. She'd been crying, which was something he could hardly imagine. On a different day Lehr would have wondered about it, but he was too worried about Papa.

“I had another fit,” Papa admitted to Jes. “Judging by the way they are all hovering around me, it must have been pretty bad.”

Phoran started walking again and pulled Papa forward with a gentle tug. Jes picked up Rinnie and put her on his shoulder, then he and Hennea fell in with Papa.

Lehr waited and took up the tail end of the procession beside Rufort. He'd come to like the quiet man; besides, he didn't want to walk too near Jes.

Sometimes Lehr reveled in the powers that had grown in him since he'd found out that he was Hunter. Sometimes, though, he wished that his senses didn't tell him quite so much.

He hadn't wanted to know what Jes and Hennea had just come back from doing. It was bad enough he knew too much about his parents; he didn't want to know about his brother, too.

Brewydd would have laughed at him, he thought. He could almost hear her voice ringing in his ears. “So where do you think the babes come from, my lad—under a mushroom?”

He could feel his ears heat up even more—his cheeks were probably bright red. Not for the first time he wished for his father's darker skin.

“I hope that your mother can help him,” Rufort said, either too worried about Tier to notice Lehr's flushed face or too polite to press him.

“Me, too,” Lehr said.

“I thought he was going to break something,” Rufort said, then gave Lehr small smile. “Possibly me.”