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Dread closed Seraph’s throat. It was starting again, as if the mermori had been harbingers of things to come. Tier had died, and now Seraph would be forced to live as she had before she met him.
“I don’t know what I can do to help you,” she said at last, because, in the end, there was no choice. “I can take a message to the clans, though I don’t know where any are at present. I will give you what aid I can.”
“You don’t understand,” He
CHAPTER 6
“You are going to help me?” asked Seraph. “With what?”
He
“Including you and Volis,” Seraph said. “Is the Sept one of the… what did you call them, something stupid… the Secret Path?”
“The Sept?” she said. “No, not him, at least I don’t think so. He’s charismatic, the Emperor’s best if not only friend, and he’s very good at political games. No one is surprised at the number of people who follow him around. Volis said that someone called in a few debts and offered a favor or two so that the Sept would agree to build a Temple of the Five Gods here.”
He
“There are six Orders,” observed Ri
“They don’t know about the Guardian,” said Jes. “Travelers don’t talk about their mistakes.”
“You are not a mistake,” said Seraph, though Jes was more right than wrong about the Travelers’ reasoning regarding the Guardians. “Travelers protect the Guardians’ secrets because your Order works better that way.” As if that settled the matter, Seraph turned back to He
He
“Volis told me they chose to set his temple here because of Shadow’s Fall.”
“I’ve heard him say that, too,” agreed He
“Indeed,” said Seraph. “My husband is proof of that.”
“No,” said He
Seraph stiffened. “Oh?” she said softly.
“There were some wizards who traveled with us from Taela. They stayed with the Sept when Volis moved us into the new temple.” She stopped her pacing to frown down at Seraph. “Understand, please, that I’ve had to take a few facts and string them together. A few days ago, Volis got some correspondence from Taela. It wasn’t signed, but from the content I think that it was from one of the wizards who came here with us. The letter devoted an entire paragraph to your family—unless there is another family with a Raven, Falcon, and Cormorant?”
“No,” said Seraph softly.
He
Seraph nodded.
“I’d been listening to talk since we came here, and I heard of a Traveler mage married to a solsenti farmer. Since it was unlikely that any other Travelers had settled here, I could only suppose that you’d been blessed with two Ordered children, half-blood or not. I decided to warn you as soon as I could, though there seemed to be no particular urgency. Then, last night, a man came to tell Volis that your husband’s dead horse had been found with a few human bones. Tier’s dead, they said, and they mourned the loss of his music.”
He
Seraph froze as her heart leapt to her throat. “By Lark and Raven,” she said, imbuing the words with compulsion, “do not mislead me on this.”
He
“My husband was Rederni born and bred—but given to the Order of the Owl,” corrected Seraph absently to give herself time to regain control. Tier was alive? “If there was Traveler blood in his lineage it was a long time ago.”
“Ah,” said He
“What did you find?” asked Seraph, her voice so soft that Lehr shifted uncomfortably.
He
“Lehr is,” said Ri
“Yes,” said He
“I don’t like leaving Ri
“She’ll be safe with Gura,” Seraph said, though she wasn’t happy with it either. “And Jes will be back soon.”
She’d certainly be safer at home than investigating a place that might have been Shadow Blighted. If Seraph hadn’t needed Lehr’s help, she’d have found some way to leave him behind, too.
Jes, she’d found excuses to send off with He
So now she only had to risk one of her children to find out if He
“There’s two places I could pick up the trail,” Lehr said. “But knowing Jes, I thought that it might be shorter to follow the path he took with the forest king than to try and follow the trail he made bringing He
“You’re the Hunter,” Seraph said. “I trust you.”
Lehr stopped where the field turned to forest. “The forest king came here,” he said, but he didn’t immediately start on the trail, just stared at the ground. “Are you certain that I’m a Hunter? Papa could… can track as well as I can.”
He didn’t look at her as he spoke.
Lehr, she thought, saw beyond the power to the cost of acknowledging his Traveler blood. He knew that a Falcon could never belong to Redern.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said gently. “We just need to track Jes to where he found the girl, then follow her trail to where… where the huntsman found whatever he found.”
“Right,” he said and started through the forest.