Raven's Shadow (14 page)

Jes patted her cheeks gently, his eyes flickering with the Guardian's presence. “Did the sparks hurt you, Mother?”

“No, Jes,” she said, sitting up on her own and resting her head on her raised knees while visions from the sword flashed behind her closed lids.

“I'm fine,” she said, seeing Lehr's anxious look. “Just a bruise or two. I haven't done this in a long time, and I misjudged. The sword was a poor choice.”

Solsenti
warriors used their blades for generations until rust robbed the blade of its strength. They even named them, never dreaming of the pseudo-life imbued by so much death—or the danger in giving such a thing a name. There were stories about swords that held against all odds and others that tended to slip and bite their wielder, but
solsenti
never seemed to heed the warning. Travelers cleansed their weapons after each life taken and discarded the blades of dead men.

Tier's sword was old. Newly sensitized, Seraph could feel its hunger for Tier's hand and battle even though it lay several handspans from her skirts. But the Tier the sword longed for was a version of her husband Seraph had never seen: a cold-faced killer who let his sword drink its fill of blood.

Seraph touched the bridle again, running her fingers over the blue and red beads on the browband, lingering on the bit. After a moment she felt a dullness, the bare touch of Lehr's grief as he held the bridle, a dusting of time lacking in power. As if the bridle, bit and all, had somehow come into being just a few days ago.

“Nothing,” Seraph growled in frustration. Her hand fisted on a scrap of leather, both hand and leather glowing with
power, but there was no flash of vision, only emptiness, as if whatever trap Tier had sprung had wiped the bridle's history clean.

“What does it mean?” asked Lehr.

She shook her head. “I don't know. Tier's death should be emblazoned upon the bridle. I haven't done this in a very long time, but I didn't have any trouble reading the sword.”

“It was Shadow Blight,” Lehr reminded her. “Maybe the Shadowed's magic affected it.”

Seraph frowned. It felt as if the bridle had been wiped clean of its past, not blasted with magic. “Fire or running water can clean something of its past; I suppose Shadow Blight might do the same.”

Weary in spirit more than body, Seraph rubbed her face. “Jes, could you put Papa's sword in its sheath and then put it away?” She didn't want to touch it again. Logically she shouldn't sense anything unless she looked for it, but she could feel it waiting. “We'd better get to sleep. Tomorrow you two will have to start plowing. I will take word of Tier's death to your aunt and uncle.”

 

Seraph waited until they were all asleep before sneaking out. She used enough magic to keep from disturbing Jes or Gura, both still curled up before the coals of the fire.

She walked until she was far from the cabin; the ground was uncomfortably cold on her bare feet. When she stopped, she bowed her head against the rough bark of a tree, seeking the peace resident in its stolid, slow-growing, long-lived presence—but all she felt was rage.

It seethed from the soles of her feet and coiled through her body until it was forced into the long strands of her hair. Her hands shook with it as they curled and clawed at the hapless tree. Her breath left her throat in a low, moaning growl.

And with the rage came magic, destructive and hot, and as aimless as her wrath. Because the focus of her anger, of her pain, was dead.

“Tier,” she whispered and then in a voice of power that shook the ground under her feet, she asked,
“Why did you leave me?”

 

“Listen to Jes,” Seraph told Lehr the next morning. “He'll take care of Skew and see that he doesn't overdo. Skew's going to have to do the whole field and you'll have to watch to see that he doesn't hurt himself.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Lehr patiently. Seraph was pale, tired, and obviously dreading the trip into town—and he didn't blame her.

“Rinnie, make sure to run water out to the boys a couple of times this morning. That's more important than getting the garden done.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Rinnie in such a blatant imitation of Lehr's tone that he had to turn aside so no one saw his grin.

“Right.” Seraph gave a quick nod. “I should be back in time to fix the midday meal—but if not, there is bread, honey, and cheese.” With that she turned on her heel and began walking briskly up the path toward town, leaving her children to begin their assigned tasks.

 

They rested Skew rather more often than Lehr would have, but he let Jes decide when to stop. After each rest, Lehr and Jes traded who held the plow. The soil was somewhat rocky, and the plow bucked and wallowed unexpectedly until they were as tired as the horse.

By midmorning Skew's head was low, and sweat washed out from under his harness. They'd made some headway: five mostly straight furrows in and twenty-three more to go. Lehr walked beside Jes, whose turn it was to hold the handles. The long reins trailed though the metal hoops in the harness down Skew's back and wrapped around Jes's shoulders so when he stopped, so did Skew.

“He can't be tired again,” protested Lehr. “We haven't come fifty paces since the last rest.”

“Hush,” commanded Jes.

Lehr had quit looking for the stranger inside his brother about halfway up the first furrow, but he saw him now.

Abruptly Lehr realized how still the land was. Not a bird sang; not a cricket chirruped. Silently he unbuckled the sheath that held his long knife and rested his hand on its haft. The forest seemed somehow darker than it had been just a moment earlier.

Skew's head came up and he tested the wind with fluttering nostrils. Tossing his mane uneasily, he wickered once.

Whatever it was that Lehr was watching for, it wasn't the man who stepped out of the woods. He was slight and dark, but otherwise unremarkable—until Lehr met his gaze.

Fathomless black eyes examined him coolly, and the hair on the back of Lehr's neck crawled.

“Hunter,” said the stranger.

Lehr's eyes told him that the man in front of him was a nondescript man dressed, more or less, like any other man to be found wandering in the woods. But another sense was ringing like an alarm bell, warning him that he stood before a Power.

Skew shoved his nose against Lehr's arm and breathed in little huffs, ears pinned forward as if he perceived some threat and readied himself to do battle.

Lehr glanced at Jes, who stood at his back, watching the stranger steadily but without tension.

Turning back to the man, Lehr half bowed, because it felt as if he should. “Sir. What can we do for you?”

The man smiled, but his too-knowing eyes stayed cold and clear like the river in winter. “I found a child wandering my forests alone. She smells like one of yours, so I thought I would offer her to you rather than the wolves.”

“Rinnie?” asked Jes, glancing toward their home, but when Lehr looked too, Rinnie was plainly visible planting the kitchen garden with Gura stretched out nearby.

“Go ahead, Jes,” said Lehr. “I'll keep at the fields until you get back. She's probably one of the villagers, so you might have to take her all the way to Redern.”

Jes ducked out of the reins and followed the dark man into the woods without a word. Lehr remained by Skew's head until the gelding quit staring into the trees.

Rubbing under Skew's browband where the sweat gathered, Lehr spoke quietly to the horse, “I believe you and I have just met the forest king. I always thought he was just a fancy of Jes's.” So many strange things had happened in the past few days that the forest king rated no more than a shake of the head before Lehr turned to take up the plow again.

 

The Guardian paced beside the boar who was the forest king and tested the area for threat. Finding none, he allowed his ire full sway.

“You will leave my brother alone,” the Guardian said in a voice that held the winter winds.

The boar snorted, unimpressed. “Why would I do that? Your brother's ties to the forest are closer than yours. Something has happened to him to make him aware of his power. If I had called you today as I usually do, he would have heard me. It was time to acknowledge the Hunter. I cannot say I welcome him, for it is my job to protect those within my realm. But your brother has long hunted these forests and he does not kill indiscriminately. Death is seldom a welcome guest, but it has a place in the life of the forest.”

“Just leave him alone—he takes on enough without you.”

The boar laughed, his hoarse voice squealing high in merriment. “Am I so chance a comrade then, Jes?”

“Who is being dragged through the forest at your whim?” returned the Guardian roundly. “I should be helping my brother coax Skew over the fields rather than chasing off after some child.”

“Not that kind of child,” grunted the boar, scrambling over a largish log in his path. “I believe that she's older than you.” He seemed to find amusement in something, for he snorted a while before continuing. “Child of Travelers she is, though not exactly like you or your brother either. She passed me by as I was eating my breakfast this morning and the smell of her magic intrigued me, so I followed her.”

The Guardian waited until he was certain the boar wouldn't continue without prompting. “Where did she go?”

“Through my lands,” said the forest king. “I almost stopped at the border, but by then I was curious. I followed her to a place where magic blackened the ground and a new rip in the earth contained the body of a horse—a grey mare who used to graze in your fields.”

“You know where my father was killed,” said the Guardian slowly.

“Your father is dead?” The boar considered it a moment. “I tell you what I saw: it is up to you to discover what you'll take
from it. But first you must deal with the child—or allow me to do so.”

The Guardian knew how the boar would deal with one he must have decided might be a threat. The Guardian recognized the same grim spirit lived inside of him as well—though he'd never killed anyone. Not yet. Never wanted to kill anyone—because he was afraid that by that act, something the daytime Jes could not comprehend, he would somehow sever the ties that held the two disparate parts of himself together.

“What did you find at my father's grave?” asked the Guardian. “My mother thinks that there was more to his death than we have been told.”

“Your mother may be right,” said the forest king. “But that is not for my judgment.”

By this time, the Guardian was fairly confident he knew where the forest king was taking him. There weren't actually all that many places to store a person safely in the woods without worrying what might happen to them—even for a spirit as powerful as the forest king.

The old building was so covered in vines and surrounded by trees that it was impossible to see from the outside. It was, as far as he knew, the only building he'd ever been in that had been built before the reign of the Shadowed. The only entrance required some undignified scrambling for anything larger than the boar.

Not knowing exactly what he would face, the Guardian chose to stay in human form and crawled under the foliage, through the crumbling tunnel that had once held water and still bore the mark of ancient algae.

Inside, the boar waited with bright red eyes that glittered in the dark interior, standing over a sleeping person who certainly was no child. Pale Traveler's hair looked more silver than ash in the faint light that poured in through the leaves that guarded the barren rafters that must once have been thatched.

“Traveler,” said the Guardian, crouching down and pushing her hair aside to reassure himself that it wasn't his mother who lay there. But the features of the woman who lay sleeping in the forest king's lair were those of a stranger, younger than
his mother—but as the boar had said, older than Jes was. “You say she came from town?”

“Yes. She came from the town, walked almost directly to the place where the horse lay dead then started back.” He paused. “She wasn't going back to town.”

“Where then?” asked the Guardian.

The boar stared at the sleeping woman. “It looked to me as if she were headed directly toward your home. But there is dark magic about her, and power. Her path would have taken her through the heart of my lands, and I decided I preferred that she not trespass unguarded.”

The Guardian contemplated the woman. Was it someone his mother knew? Seraph hadn't mentioned finding another Traveler in the village the day before yesterday. Surely she would have said something if she had.

“Will you awaken her?” said the Guardian finally, deciding that her mysteries would be better answered by the woman herself. “Or do you wish me to take her away from this place first?”

“Take her.” The forest king turned back toward the entrance of the building. “When you are far enough from here, I'll lift the sleep from her.”

The Guardian sighed; though the woman was slight, the tunnel was narrow. Still, he gathered her up and scrambled his way out with only a few extra bruises—on him. He managed to keep her safe from harm.

In the sunlight he could see what features she shared with his mother and what differences marked her. His mother was a smaller woman, and this woman had a thinner, longer nose that gave her face an arrogant beauty.

He'd never seen anyone except his family who bore Traveler blood. He wondered where her people were, if they were among those who were killed or if they awaited her somewhere.

Walking in the woods with the sun on his back, Jes slowly filtered into being, easing the Guardian to sleep. Untroubled by his burden he continued on toward home. Mother would know what to do with her.

They were close to the edge of the woods when she stiffened. He glanced down at her and saw that her eyes were
open. He smiled into pale eyes that matched her hair and continued on, ignoring her attempts to get down. If she were on foot it would be harder to bring her home, and Jes knew that he needed to take her home so she would be safe from the forest king.