Raven's Strike

“What was it?” asked He

“The veil keeps the Elder gods from working in our world, but their power must be used. Without an outlet of some sort, eventually the veil would be overcome. So the six gods were made to drain the power of the Stalker and the Weaver. The Orders were to serve the same function, but, because of the imperfection in the veil, the Elder gods’ power seeps out on its own.”

“The Weaver’s as well?” asked Phoran. It was a good question, thought Seraph. If destruction escaped, why not creation?

Hi

“You think that this is the Weaver’s work?” asked He

Hi

Tier nodded. “I think that depends upon the third player. The Stalk—” His face went blank.

Lehr was out of his seat before Seraph really understood what had happened. Jes pulled Tier down off the table and onto the floor. For a moment he lay still, staring blindly up at a skylight.

Hi

“There’s no time,” he said urgently. “Seraph, look at his Order—He’s too close to losing it all. It will kill him if he does. You need to work the spell I taught you. Find out how the Shadowed is stealing the Order and stop him.”

She jerked her arm free and ran to Tier. The boys were holding him down to try to keep him from hurting himself. She saw Hi

She stuffed her terror deep, where it would be a source of strength rather than a distraction. Then she called the magic Hi

She’d believed the Shadowed’s spell was simply destroying the co

Each strand of the Shadowed’s spell was cloaked in spirit; a pale gleaming sheath around a darkly-malignant core. Just as she had wrapped her magic in her Order so she could affect Tier’s, so did the Shadowed wrap his spell in spirit. The spirit had hidden the spell from her earlier attempts to discover it. Tendrils of the spell insinuated themselves into the warp and weft of Tier’s order, worked into its fabric as tightly Tier’s own spirit.

Wrapped in spirit, the spell was able to bind to the Order as Tier’s own spirit did. It had worked deeply into Tier’s order, but where his spirit was passive, the spell was not. The spell wasn’t attacking the co

Her old teacher would have considered the spell crude, relying on power rather than finesse. But, however crude the spell, it was working.

The Shadowed’s spirit-magic twined around the threads it had stolen, forming a rope of magic, spirit and Bardic Order that stretched between Tier and, presumably, whatever gemstone the Path’s Masters had attached his Order to. A small gossamer ribbon Tier’s spirit broke and fell away from the Order, darkening as it did so. It curled down limply against Tier’s body.

“Seraph? Let me help?”

It was He

She could have tried to darn Tier’s Order to him again, she could do a better job now because she understood what was needed—but, as before, it would only help him temporarily. Eventually both her magic and Tier’s spirit would fail, and Tier, his spirit damaged beyond healing, would die.

Instead, with He

Then, without warning, she found what she sought, a gem the color of ci

To her magical self, the gem was enormous, but she knew physically it would be small enough to be set in a ring or necklet.

She could take it, she thought. She held it in her magic now—if she could make herself just a little more physical, she could just steal it from wherever it was and pull it back with her.

There was danger in what she intended. She might find herself wherever the gem was—and she was in no shape to face the Shadowed alone. Or she could fail to make herself real enough to take the gem and too real to go back to her own body.

As she hesitated, the cord pulsed and turned, and the ball of Tier’s Order in the gem became just a little bigger.

She’d never done anything like this before, but all a Raven had to be able to do was conceive of possibilities and let magic fill the patterns she conceptualized. For a moment the stone eluded her, as if it feared her touch, but finally her fingers closed upon it, a power-warm, sharp-edged, and slick-sided garnet.

It was hers. For a moment she just held it, stu

It took her precious moments to realize why the gem warmed until it was hot in her hands, moments while it pulled more of Tier’s Order to it. The gem’s proximity strengthened the effectiveness of the thieving magic.

“Hold him so he doesn’t hurt himself.” The Scholar’s voice had altered a little, deeper tones added to give weight to his commands.

He

“Let me ward it, Seraph,” said He

Seraph opened her cupped hands and allowed He

“There is too much of him, spirit and Order already in the gemstone,” He

“You can see it?” asked Seraph, then thought, Of course you could. Seraph was still trying to absorb the implications of who and what He

“I followed your magic and remembered.” He