Raven's Strike

“Seraph,” said Tier. “I think I’d better have that lute as soon as you can.”

Seraph opened her mouth and shut it. Tier knew the state his Order was in. He knew that the convulsion fits happened more often when he sang. He didn’t need her to tell him again.

She bent her head and closed her eyes.

She’d never done this before she stole the gem, and she wasn’t certain how to find Tier’s lute without a cord of magic, however fell, to show her the way. But it had been a day of new things, and she took her magic and told it what she wanted.

Tier’s lute was almost as much a part of him as his brown eyes and his dimples. It was easier than she expected to find it and call it because it wanted to be with him. She suspected Tier might have been able to call it himself. She opened her eyes and saw it had placed itself on the polished floor at Tier’s feet.

Tier bent down to pick it up. He grimaced, then rose more slowly than he’d bent down. Another thud came from the outside door.

“I’m getting too old for this much adventure,” Tier said. “Thank you for the lute, my love.” He looked around. “Let’s get everyone gathered together here.”

He took a seat on the table, and made himself comfortable.

“Sit down,” he told them. “I want them looking at me, not at you. And that means you as well,” he told the Memory.

To Seraph’s surprise, it collapsed to the floor. When Tier said something in that tone of voice, apparently even things like the Memory listened. Seraph sat on a bench next to Tier’s table as he tuned the lute.

Phoran sat down on the floor, and his guardsmen spread around him. Jes and He

“Ri

Tier was still tuning the lute when the door failed, with the shriek of nails tearing free and a crack Seraph assumed was the wood of the door frame breaking. They all looked at the stairs, but there was nothing to see, no sound except for Tier’s fingers on strings.

A wave of terror washed over her, worse by far than anything Jes had ever caused.

Tier played a quick scale and began tuning again. “I left it sit too long,” he muttered. “The strings don’t want to stay in tune.”

“Papa,” said Lehr, staring at the stairs. “Play.”

A mottled grey hand appeared over the top of the stair, and it pulled its body behind it.

“Run!” Ielian came to his feet, but Rufort and Kissel each caught him by an arm and pulled him back down again.

The thing emerging from the stairway looked more human than the Memory, thought Seraph, and oddly the more horrible for its increased resemblance. It had a pair of eyes and what must once have been a nose. A few strands of grey hair stuck out from the top of its head. It looked at them and snap-snapped its jaws.

“Sit,” hissed Toarsen at Ielian, who fought to get up again. “Ru

“No,” agreed the Memory, his voice like dry leaves in the wind. “Death walks the streets of Colossae by night.”

“Thanks,” snapped Phoran to the Memory, as Ielian made another abortive attempt to run. “That helped. Why don’t you be quiet, eh? Ielian, sit still. Gura, down.”

Gura and Ielian dropped to the floor with equal unwillingness. Ri

“Mother, the Guardian wants to come out,” said Jes. “But I think everyone is frightened enough.”

“Let him come,” said Seraph, the dryness of her mouth making her voice crack. “He can hardly make this worse.”

Someone, it might have been Ielian, squeaked, as Jes flowed into the shape of a black wolf just a hair smaller than Gura. The Guardian glanced once at Ielian and bared his fangs before looking at the thing on the stairs. His low growl was a continuous rumble that echoed oddly off the high ceiling.

Rufort jerked and slid backward a handspan before he stopped himself.

“Something touched me,” he said softly.

“Tier, isn’t that damned thing in tune yet?” asked Phoran just as the creature pulled its flaccid legs over the stairway and began dragging itself forward.

The pressure of the presence of the dead crowded upon Seraph, bowing her shoulders under the weight. There were more of them than the creature they could see and the one that touched Rufort. She could feel them all around her.

“Tier,” said Phoran, as the thing closed the too-little distance between the stairway and their huddled group.

Jes stalked around until he stood between it and them. As he growled louder, the stench of rotting meat filled the library.

Tier gri

The thing mewled at the first note, fading from sight just as the foul odor lessened. But Seraph could feel them waiting.

Tier played a mournful song first, a song about a girl wed to a sailor who left on a ship and never came back alive. It was melodic and slow, and Tier’s fingers never faltered. Nor did his voice.

Toarsen sucked in his breath once, but when Seraph glanced quickly at him, she couldn’t see anything wrong. He hunched over and bowed his head, but he didn’t look like he was ready to run.

The immediate crisis seemed to have been put on hold by Tier’s music. Seraph worked the spell that allowed her to see spirit again—and the library lit like a field of bonfires in winter. The dead were there, a ring of shapes made of spirit and something else she could see but not define, a haze of red alternating with gold. She managed to pull her eyes away from them long enough to make certain Tier’s Order was behaving itself, then returned to her watch, making certain that the dead stayed away from them.

When Tier was finished with that song, he glanced around at his audience—the one he could see. Then he began a soldier’s marching song Seraph had never heard before. It had a catchy chorus, and as he started into it for the second time, Tier said, “Join in if you’d like.”

Lehr and Jes both did, and Ri

“Seraph,” said Tier again.

She pulled her gaze away from the dead and saw his Order had pulled almost entirely away from him, held only by a few lonely strands of his spirit and the last threads of her magic. She grasped the cord that ran between Tier and the gem and pulled hard toward Tier.

“Better,” said Tier, before throwing his voice into the chorus again.

She held on. She might be able to help Tier better if she knew how spirit and Order interacted on a healthy Order Bearer. She’d been too busy watching the dead before Tier called her to pay much attention to anyone else.

She looked up, intending to study Lehr—but her gaze stuck on the Memory first. She could see the Memory’s form, but with her seeing spell its form was deep purple rather than black. Crouched beneath the shelter of Order was a sharp-featured Traveler who gleamed a soft spirit-blue. He met her eyes, looked startled, then whispered in her head, “Have him tell The Fall of the Shadowed as he told it for me.”

“Tier,” she whispered so she didn’t interfere with his song. “The Memory told me to have you tell The Fall of the Shadowed the way you told it for him.”

Tier looked a little surprised, but he nodded. As he sang, she noticed Tier’s spirit had steadied and grown more solid where it attached to the tattered grey-green bits of his Order. Seraph wondered if, once the Shadowed’s spell was restrained, Tier’s music helped fight the drag of the spell.