Raven's Strike

Seraph had been keeping an eye on him as well. She’d have left him home, but he wouldn’t stay without them. He wasn’t paying attention to them now, just staring at the ground with a distracted air.

“If you wrap a sprain for too long, you ruin the joint,” said Lehr.

“What?”

“I mean,” Lehr explained, “if Jes doesn’t ever come to town—pretty soon he won’t be able to.”

“Jes,” said Seraph, touching his sleeve.

He looked up with a jerk.

“Do you need to go home?” she asked. “Are the people too much for you?”

“No, Mother.” Jes shook his head. “I’m all right. Everyone is so excited today it feels like I have bees in my head. But we think it wouldn’t be a good thing to leave you alone in the new temple.”

He used “we” just as the priest had. Lehr started to speak, and Seraph held up a finger for quiet so she could solidify her first, nebulous thought. There was a co

Ellevanal had shadowed the priest. Was that the same kind of magic that caused the Orders to attach themselves to Travelers? She closed her eyes and thought, trying to work her way through an instinctive affirmative. The binding between the priest and Ellevanal had been temporary, but the Orders were permanent.

“I can see the Orders,” she murmured out loud to clarify her thoughts. “But I can’t see shadowing. I wonder if Lehr or Jes would have been able to tell that the forest king was riding inside Karadoc’s skin? Or is it the evil of the Stalker’s presence that they sense.” That felt right.

“You think there is a co

Seraph nodded and opened her eyes. “I think they are similar magics. Not twins or complements, but certainly in the same family of magics. Maybe, when you and I try to study the Order-bound gems again, we need to study the shadowing that the Elder Wizards did. There are books about shadowing in most of the mermori libraries. Isolde had four or five I’ve glanced through.”

He

Perhaps He

“How long have you known?” Seraph snapped.

Seraph, He

He

“But you didn’t mention it to Brewydd or me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It was not useful.”

“Or so you thought,” Seraph said icily.

There was a co

Tier’s suspicions of He

“Why should he think that?” It was He

It wasn’t an answer, and Seraph had been a parent too long not to hear the evasion and the attempt to divert the conversation away from He

“Mother?” said Jes.

He was swaying from one foot to another as he watched Seraph’s face unblinkingly.

“I have questions for you,” she told He

“You are angry,” he said.

“Mother’s angry a lot,” Ri

Jes looked down at his sister. “Not at He

“Well,” she said conscientiously, “you’re right. I still wouldn’t worry. She can do what I do, keep out of Mother’s way until she calms down.”

Lehr glanced at Seraph’s face, and she thought she saw him hide a small smile before he turned to Ri

Seraph brooded as she climbed. But the conclusions that she had come to earlier still held. He

Willon’s shop, the last building before the temple, was dark and empty when they went past it.

“He must still be in Taela,” Lehr said, breaking the uneasy silence. “I’d forgotten that he went there, too. He was going to help us. I hope he’s not still there waiting for us.”

“He could hardly help but hear that a band of Travelers rescued the Emperor,” said Seraph dryly. “I’m sure that he knows who that was. Though if I’d thought of it, I would have sent him a message before we left. He goes back to Taela every year to check on his family anyway. He didn’t go there just to help us—though he would have if we’d asked. But we didn’t need gold or information, just magic and swords; and those aren’t something a merchant could help us with. He’ll be back soon.”

They climbed past the storefront and up the steep trail that led to the abandoned temple of the Path of the Five.

The temple burrowed deep into the heart of Redern Mountain, leaving only its head to mark where the bulk of it hid.

One door lay several feet from the temple, and the other was leaned neatly against a wall. It looked as though the troll had decided to investigate the temple, though when Seraph glanced around she saw no other sign of the creature. Then she remembered that Karadoc told her Ellevanal had used him to rip open the doors and was amazed he’d come out with no more than torn fingernails.

Seraph stopped just outside the entrance. “Would you check this to see if it is shadow-tainted, Lehr?”

“I already did. There’s no shadowing I can sense.”

“Jes?”

He didn’t answer, and when Seraph looked for him, he was staring down at the roof of Willon’s store which, because of the steepness of the mountain, jutted out of the ground only a few feet below where he stood.

“Jes?” He

He turned his face away from her and looked at Seraph. “There’s nothing here,” he said shortly. “Volis is dead. The forest king and Karadoc took care of the rest. Lehr says there is nothing here—why do you bother to ask me?”

Jes was usually cheerful unless the Guardian was present. He was very seldom sullen or moody.

“He

She waited while they filed in. Then she turned her attention to Jes, who had gone back to staring at Willon’s roof.

She debated simply waiting until he was ready to talk—but this was Jes. It might be days before he was ready, and she didn’t have Tier’s patience.

“What’s wrong, Jes?”

“Nothing is wrong.” He didn’t look at her, but she could see the stubborn set to his jaw.

Tier was better at this sort of thing than Seraph, but he wasn’t here. She thought back over the climb up Redern and tried to pinpoint when Jes’s discomfort at being surrounded by so many people had turned to anger.

“He