Raven's Shadow (24 page)

She wouldn't. Not she. She who fought demons for people she didn't even know, would never, ever, shrink at anything that would threaten her second family.

“How old was your Guardian brother when he died?” asked Tier finally.

“Risovar was thirty,” she said, her hands fluttering restlessly over Jes, as if she wanted to clutch him close, but was
afraid she might hurt him if she did. “He was among the first who died of the plague.”

“Then you know how it is done,” Tier said. “Jes will stay with us, and you will teach me how to raise a Guardian who will die of ripe old age.”

Her face had come alive then, and he saw what it had cost her to be honest with him. When he cradled his family against him, mother and child, she'd whispered, “I'd have killed anyone who would have tried to take him.”

“Me, too,” Tier had said fiercely into her moon-colored hair. No one would ever separate them.

“Me, too,” said Tier, in his cell in the palace at Taela.

How best to weather this captivity? The answers came to him in Gerant's dry tenor.
Know your enemy. Know what they want so you know where to expect their next attack. Discover their strengths and avoid them. Find their weaknesses and exploit them with your strengths. Knowledge is a better weapon than a sword.

 

He smiled affably when Myrceria entered his room.

“If you would come with me, sir,” she said. “We'll make you ready for presentation. After the ceremony you'll be given the freedom of the Eyrie and all the pleasures it can provide you.”

The women who'd tried to bathe him once before were back in the bathing pool, and this time Myrceria wouldn't let him send them out. They scrubbed, combed, shaved, trimmed, and ignored his blushes and protests.

When one of the women started after his hair, Myrceria caught her hand, “No, leave it long. We'll braid it and it will look properly exotic.”

They persuaded him into court clothing, the like of which he'd have never willingly put on. He might actually have refused to wear them, even with his resolution to be a meek and mild guest while he gathered knowledge of his enemy, if it weren't for the fear in their eyes. He could see that, if they didn't turn him out pretty as a lady's mare, it wouldn't be him that suffered. So he protested and made rude comments, but he wore the silly things.

There was a polished metal mirror embedded in the wall, and the women pushed and shoved him until he stood in front of it.

Baggy red velvet trousers, tight at waist and ankles, were half-concealed by a tunic that hung straight from shoulder to knees. From the weight of it, the tunic was real cloth of gold. Under the tunic, his shirt was blood-red silk embroidered with metallic gold thread. They'd shaved his face smooth, then oiled his hair with something that left flakes of metal in it that caught the light as he moved. Then they'd braided it with gold and red cords that gradually replaced his own hair so the braid hung down to his hips, where it ended in gold and red tassels. On his feet were gold slippers encrusted with bits of red glass. At least he hoped it was glass.

After looking at the full effect, he hung his head and closed his eyes.

“Lassies, if my wife ever saw me like this she'd never let me live it down.”

Myrceria tapped him playfully with one manicured finger. “You look handsome, admit it. We did a good job, ladies, although he wasn't so bad to start out.”

Tier looked at himself in the mirror again. If he looked carefully, he could see how the outfit might have been inspired by Traveler's garments. They wore the loose pants and the knee-length tunic—but one of the things that Seraph liked about Rederni clothes was the bright colors. Her own people wore mostly undyed fabrics or earth tones.

Tier sighed, “I'm glad there's no one here who knows me. I'd never live this down.”

 

They covered his magnificent gaudiness with a brown robe and pulled its hood down to hide his face.

“There now,” said Myrceria. “You are ready.” She hesitated, and the practiced manner of a court whore faded a little. “You've made our job easier,” she said. “Let me help you a little. The wizards will be waiting when we take you out the door. Go with them quietly; they won't hurt you. They'll escort you through the Eyrie—the largest room that belongs to the Path. It's an auditorium tonight, but usually it is just a
room for people to gather in. The wizards will take you to the stage at the end and introduce you to the Passerines and whatever Raptors decided to come.”

He took her hand in his and bent to kiss it. “Thank you for your kindness, Myrceria. Ladies.”

There were four men in black robes waiting for him, just as Myrceria had promised. Like him, their hoods were pulled over their faces.

Tier hesitated in the doorway, unprepared for the fearful reluctance he felt at the sight of them and the sudden conviction that he'd seen the knobby hands of the man nearest him holding a small knife wet with blood.

He repressed his fear and the anger it called. With a small smile he set himself in the center of the procession.

“Shall we go, gentlemen?” he said pleasantly.

 

The Eyrie was made up of broad shelves of level flooring with short drops between sections; the level shelves narrowed as they neared the stage at the far side of the room.

The uppermost section, where Tier and his escort entered, was mostly occupied by a bar laden with food. Behind the bar was an open doorway where servants appeared with trays of food or armloads of ale mugs.

There were a few tables against the wall with white-robed men who watched Tier mostly indifferently. But most of the people in the room were young men in blue robes who quieted as the procession passed them by. By the time they reached the stage, the room was eerily silent.

The wizards walked Tier onto the stage and stopped in the middle, turning as one to face the audience. As soon as they stood there, the lights in the Eyrie dimmed except for the stones that lined the edge of the stage.

Squinting against the odd light, Tier saw that everyone in the room was slowly moving down to the chairs set in front of the stage. When they had all gathered, a hollow boom made the Eyrie shudder, and in a cloud of smoke and magic, a fifth black-robed man appeared: Telleridge.

He stood bareheaded before the crowd so that every man there could see him.

“My friends,” he said. “For some of you, this will be the
first introduction to the secrets of our path. Traveler Magic from the hands of the Five Gods.” He lifted his right hand up and displayed an implement that looked like a morningstar without the spiked ball. Instead, dangling on the end of the chain was a large, silver owl.

“Owl who is Bard,” he said.

The man on Tier's left front held up a similar item with a raven rather than an owl. “Raven who is Mage,” he said.

Five gods?
thought Tier. If they were using the Orders they were missing one. The other wizards called out Lark, Cormorant, and Falcon; but there was no Eagle. He would have fretted about it more, but he remembered where he'd heard of the Five Gods before: the new priest in Redern.
Seraph,
he thought in panic,
my children—who would they take next?

A flood of magic interrupted Tier's worrying.

“For centuries,” Telleridge said, his voice carried to the far corners of the room by magic, “the Travelers hid their power from us—just as the Emperor and his Septs hide their lands and titles away from us, thinking that they have rendered us powerless, helpless. But we are the Followers of the Secret Path and Hidden Gods: we worship the Birds—Raven for magic, Lark for life and death, Cormorant to rule the seas, Falcon to find our prey, and Owl to lead men into our darkness. Tonight, my friends we will all partake of darkness.”

He took a step to the side so the audience had an unobstructed view of Tier; at the same time one of the wizards who stood behind Tier pulled off his robe. He said something as well, too soft for Tier to catch, but whatever it was, it froze Tier motionless.

“Raven is flown,” said the man who held the raven symbol. “Gone from our keeping.”

At his words Telleridge flung his free hand up and the whole room erupted into howls, like a pack of hunting dogs. Tier would have been impressed if the effect hadn't had a practiced polish. This was a response trained into the Passerines, a war cry without passion.

The wizards Tier could see put the chains over their shoulder, balancing their symbols with the handle hanging down their back, leaving the birds in front where they could be seen.
With their hands free, they began to clap in a slow, restless rhythm. Fourteen beats into it there was an echo from the audience. By the twentieth beat the noise was loud enough to account for everyone in the room except for Tier. On the thirty-fifth beat, everyone stopped, leaving only Tier's heart beating still.

The wizard with the raven said, again, “Raven is flown.”

An older man in white stood up and said, “So farewell the Raven. What guest have you brought?”

Telleridge said, “We bring the Owl, cunning and beautiful, that he will give us the gift of music.”

The Passerines replied then, as if one man spoke with a hundred mouths. “By blood shall we bind him, by fire shall we seal our bargain. By blood shall we free him after a year and a day.”

“As you will,” said Telleridge. He touched the owl and a small blade shot out at the end of the owl's feet. With measured steps he walked to Tier's side. He took Tier's helpless wrist and made a shallow cut. Then he held the knife beneath the wound until the silver blade was completely covered in blood.

He went to the wizard with the raven and touched a finger to the blade and then touched the wizard's raven.

“By blood,” said the Raven wizard.

Telleridge repeated the procedure with the others. When he was finished he resumed his former position to the right of the Raven wizard.

The ceremony was nonsense as far as magic went, Tier knew. The only magic that had been done was the spell that kept him still—but Tier could read audiences. Excitement filled the room like some heady wine.

“Raptors, Passerines, Masters all, I give you the Owl!” Telleridge called, and the audience roared to their feet.

When the cheering and hooting died down, Telleridge held up his hand, snapped his fingers, and a lute appeared in his hand.

“Play for us, Bard,” said Telleridge. “And we will grant you guesting rights.”

As easily as that Tier could move.

Quickly, he considered his options and chose the one that appealed to him the most. He took the lute the Owl Master
held out to him—a beautiful instrument to look at—but when he played a few notes he shook his head.

“Myrceria, lass,” he said, letting his voice find her wherever she waited in the darkness that disguised the further rows of the audience. “Hie you back to my rooms and bring my lute, please. This one your Masters provided is garbage for all it's pretty.”

The problem with solemn ceremonies and young men, Tier knew, was that the urge to break the solemnity was almost irresistible. They greeted his informal request with a roar more spontaneous than the one they'd given Telleridge, if not as loud. As easily as that he took the crowd from the wizard and lessened the effect of the earlier ceremony in the minds of everyone present.

He wouldn't have tried it if his cell were far away, but it should only take a moment to retrieve the lute—not long enough to make his audience restless.

“Bard,” called a young man. “I thought that an Owl could play any instrument.”

Tier nodded his head. “I've heard that, too. But no one ever said they
would
play any instrument just because they could.”

It wasn't Myrceria, but one of the Passerines, who ran up with the lute from Tier's cell. Tier took up the battered lute and sat on the edge of the stage, one long leg hanging over the edge. He'd only had her a night, but the lute felt like an old friend as he cradled her and coaxed her back into tune, again.

“Now,” he said, “What kind of song should it be?” He played a rippling series of scales so quickly it was hard to pick out the individual notes. “No,” he shook his head, “No one except another musician would like that.” He tightened a peg again to bring a string back into pitch. He'd have to watch that one, he thought, probably a new string.

“War songs sound stupid on a lute,” he said, picking enough of a familiar melody out that a few heads began to nod, “at least they sound stupid without a drum.”

“Play ‘Shadow's Fall',” said someone over the suggestions in the crowd.

Tier shook his head. It'd be a while before he used that story again. “No, everyone knows that. What about a love
ballad?” He struck a few chords of a particularly flowery piece and laughed at the groans from the audience.

“Fine,” he said, “Try this one for size.” And he began the song he'd intended to sing from the very first.

It was a wickedly funny story of a lowborn killer who, on impulse, stole the clothes of a rich young man he'd been paid to kill and set himself up as a nobleman. Tier smiled to himself as he saw that the young men in the audience enjoyed rude double meanings and clever wording as much as the soldiers he'd fought with.

The lute, for all that it was battered, was easily the finest he'd ever played. Responsive and clear-toned, it sang out, complementing his voice and lending just the right accent to the words.

He started into the third verse, the crowd silent, muffling their laughter so that they wouldn't miss a word. Even with such a fine instrument, it was difficult to get the volume he needed before this many people. With his encouragement, they joined in the final chorus, making the stage vibrate with the sheer volume.

He ended it with a flourish. He could sense the wizards moving forward, but he decided to end the performance without them.