Raven's Strike

“No.”

“Well then.” Seraph pulled the map out of the other Raven’s hands and set it on the ground in front of her. “Now if I fall to the ground shrieking, feel free to take it away again.”

“Mother? Are you sure you should do this?”

She slanted a look at Lehr. “Allow me the courtesy of knowing my limits. Unless it was an object of worship, or someone used it to kill someone else, it will be fine.”

Before someone else could object, Seraph sent tendrils of magic into the parchment.

“It’s all right,” she told them when the map’s past came to her in whispered bits and pieces rather than an overwhelming wave.

Aside from a few barely formed images, the newest history came to her first, though that was not always the case. She felt He

“Volis had this.” She could feel the cold sweat on his palms and the fear someone might see him. “He stole it.” A new image, closer to her than the theft had been, and she knew that he hadn’t been able to read any of the maps. “He had thought something so carefully hidden away would have been important, but he could see nothing useful in a pile of old maps.”

The map had been undisturbed for a long time. “It was hidden away, for safekeeping. For secret. A wizard holds it, a solsenti wizard—but he understands what he has because language is one of his gifts. A gift that has served him very well in his search for power, for…” She quit talking because she didn’t want to confuse her audience as her reading slipped from nearer past to older and back again. The years were so pale, sometimes it was hard to hold them.

“Mother?”

Seraph blinked up at Lehr’s familiar face.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded. “This is a map made by an apprentice?” The word didn’t fit quite, but it was close. “A student, perhaps. He was disappointed because his teacher judged it harshly and made him redo part of it.” She touched a section in the upper right where he’d had to scrape the parchment and redraw.

“How old is it, Mother?” breathed Ri

“It’s that old.” Seraph’s hands felt cold and heavy from the deep reading. “Once it passed out of the hands of the young man who made it, there was a succession of owners. They held it for such a short time, so long ago, and with such little passion that I could get no more than an impression of a lot of people.”

She looked up to meet He

Seraph reached out and touched the satchel that had held the map very lightly with her fingertips and a thread of magic. “It was in this satchel, which is nearly as old.”

Ri

“The preservation spell,” murmured He

“They lay together in secret, the maps and the satchel, for hundreds of years. Then a woman, a solsenti wizard, held it and puzzled over it—she was hoping for treasure, I think. When she first held it as a young woman, but her last touch is dry and aged. She kept them in a secret place, and it lay there for a time, never managing to decipher what it was she held though she knew it was old. About two centuries ago it came into the hands of another wizard.”

She swallowed and looked at the rest of the map scrolls lying about on the floor and touched them, looking for more answers. When she had read them all, she said, “He had a gift for languages. I saw the gates of Colossae, where he was searching for something he desired very badly—power? Not quite, but it was close enough.” She returned her fingers to the first map, the city map. “The next time he touched this he was held by the Stalker’s power; he was the Shadowed. He hid the maps somewhere secret, he didn’t need them anymore. Volis found them and took them—but he couldn’t read them.”

“Can you see him?” whispered He

Seraph shook her head in frustration. “No. I get scattered impressions and a glimpse of a young man’s face, but not enough to identify him. He just didn’t leave enough of himself behind. I can tell you he became the Stalker’s child almost two centuries ago.”

He

“There have been more?” asked Lehr.

Seraph nodded. “I know of three… four including this one. The U

“This is the sixth,” said He

“I may be off ten or fifteen years either way, but not more than that.” She shared He

“That is not a coincidence,” agreed He

“Mother,” said Lehr suddenly. “If the Shadowed touched other things here, could you tell?”

He

“If we had not killed Volis, he could tell us where he got that map case,” mused Seraph.

“I’ve apologized for that,” He

Seraph looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t like being tricked, He

She turned her attention back to the problem of finding the Shadowed. “However, I think if the Shadowed was able to hide what he was from Jes and Lehr for a time, if no Traveler has noticed his existence in two centuries, he has learned how to hide what he is. The impressions from the map are from when he was newly touched.”

“He went to Colossae?” said Lehr. “I thought Colossae was destroyed.”

“Sacrificed,” agreed He

Seraph hadn’t heard that part before. “What does that mean?”

He

“The Shadowed saw Colossae,” Seraph said. “So the city must still stand.”

“Do all the Shadowed go to Colossae to become what they are?” asked Ri

“I don’t know,” Seraph said, turning to He

“I’ve never heard that,” He

“Have any of the Shadowed been Travelers?” asked Lehr.

“No,” Seraph said firmly.

“The first one was,” He

“No,” Seraph said. “He was a Colossae wizard.”

He

“I don’t think so,” said Seraph slowly. “I’ve always thought it was no accident that solsenti wizards are the only ones who have been driven to become Shadowed.”