Raven's Shadow (40 page)

Satisfied that they were all safe for the moment, the
Guardian jumped off the stage to return to Hennea's side, slipping between fighters who mostly moved out of his way without ever looking at him directly.

The noise of swords clashing and men screaming excited him almost as much as the smell of blood.

A man bumped his arm and the Guardian turned on him with a snarl and a flash of fangs. If the man hadn't retreated, falling backwards over a body on the floor, even Jes could not have held the Guardian back.

Hennea stood alone near the fallen wall. He couldn't tell if her spells to avoid being seen were working on everyone else, or if they were just smart enough to stay away. Mother had told him that spells usually didn't work right on him.

There were two men attacking a boy who was stepping back rapidly to avoid being overrun. The Guardian could see that the boy wouldn't stay away from their blades for much longer. He glanced at Hennea, but she was all right. The Guardian dropped the sword he held and reached for the form of the great cat—he wanted to taste blood, not feel flesh part against steel.

He picked the nearest Raptor and leaped onto his shoulders, driving him down to the floor. As his claws sank deep into meat, the man's pain and fear washed through Jes. The Guardian reveled in the searing sensations, which only raised his bloodlust further.

The other antagonist paused to stare, but the Passerine recovered a little faster and killed his opponent before beating a rapid retreat. Death and the boy's fear fed the battle rage and Jes turned his attention to the man who lay beneath him.

“Jes!”

The great cat halted, his mouth already opened to still the struggles of his prey.

“Jes, come back. I need you!” Hennea sounded frantic.

Her hand touched his tense back. “Jes,” she said.

Trembling, fighting, Jes forced the Guardian to step away from the downed man even as the beast roared its thwarted rage.

“What?” he managed, the emotions and pain of the battle raging around him raw without the Guardian's protection.

Hennea smoothed her hands over him and the worst of the clamor faded until it was manageable. The Guardian would have been better, but Jes couldn't let him loose until he had a moment to calm down.

“Look on the stage,” Hennea whispered. “What do you see?”

There had been wizards on the stage when he'd carried Hennea's message to the Emperor. Five stood in plain view, but the other held to the shadows. When his father had lost control of them, they, like Hennea, had stood back from the battle and aided their people as they could.

Now four wizards lay crumpled on the ground, and something—something that caused the Guardian to take control again—fed on the fifth.

“What is that?” asked the Guardian.

“A Raven's Memory,” she said. “A vengeful ghost—though I've never seen one so substantial. It's almost alive.”

The sixth wizard, anonymous in his robes, slipped off the stage and toward the destroyed wall. No one looked at him, though he passed a few men quite closely.

“One of the wizards is getting away,” the Guardian observed to Hennea, calm again.

“Where?” she asked, but when he pointed, she didn't see him.

“I'll follow him,” he decided and Jes, anxious to get away from the battle, agreed with the Guardian's decision. Neither of them listened to Hennea's protest as the great cat leaped over a heap of rubble to follow the escaping man.

 

Seraph blew her hair out of her eyes wearily and kept moving forward. The large young man who had been so helpful in dispatching that first Raptor had stayed by her side as she used whatever means necessary to push through the battle.

There was a limit to her magic, and after the first blast won her only a few yards before the fighting spread into the cleared area she'd made, she decided that she was going to have to use more subtlety and less power. With a sword she scavenged from the floor, she used magic to lend force to her blows until the blade slid through bone as if it were water. She'd taken the
time to add her own
see-me-not
spell to Hennea's efforts. Blood covered her from the elbows down, weighting down her clothes with more than physical burden—but she wasn't here to fight fair. She needed to get to Tier.

“You know it's true what he said,” panted her young friend Kissel.

“What's that?” she managed, dropping another Raptor who was raising his sword to attack a blue-robed man from behind.

“A man would be smarter to face an enraged boar than to cross my wife.” The boy managed to imitate Tier's style.

“Huh,” she grunted, kicking an unsuspecting man behind his knee and dropping him onto his opponent's blade. “How flattering.”

The boy grinned wearily. “He doesn't seem to mind.”

“Can you see him yet?”

“No,” he said. “But I can see Toarsen on the stage—he'll do his best to keep him from harm.”

 

Tier knew that he should get to his feet and claim a sword, but he just couldn't manage it.

As if he read his mind, Toarsen said, “It's all right, sir. Just having Avar in here fighting for the Emperor took most of the heart out of the Raptors. All the Passerines called out his name as soon as they saw who it was—even that squid you've had Kissel and me watching was attacking the Raptors. Remind me never to let him behind me with something sharp. All that's left now is just a few of the Raptors and mercenaries who didn't leave fast enough. Avar will call quarter in a minute, as soon as he thinks that his men have had enough of killing.”

Sure enough, through the sounds of battle—all the louder for being inside the cavernous chamber—came a bass rumble still distinguishable as the words: “Quarter give quarter! Surrender or die!” picking up in volume as more voices took up the cry.

“Waste of time,” murmured Tier, just before he passed out. “They're all guilty of treason—Phoran will have to hang 'em all.”

 

He wasn't actually out all that long because there were still clashes, as a few desperate men continued to fight, when he woke up.

He opened his eyes just as an old, quavering voice said, “Woo-eyah. I see that those giggling twits were right about
solsenti
men.”

Tier stared at the oldest woman he'd ever seen, then grinned. “You must be Brewydd,” he said, “the Healer.”

“And it's a good thing for you, young man,” she agreed. “You must be the Bard that woman's been so upset about. Now let me see what this old biddy can do about making you want to stay with the living.”

She clicked her tongue against her teeth when she saw what they'd done to his knees. “Good thing you did this with a Lark nearby,” she said. “If you'd done it somewhere else you wouldn't be walking on these again.”

“I'd give you a kiss,” said Tier, then he had to stop and grit his teeth as her touch brought burning pain that was worse than the original blows had been. “Except that my wife would finish what the Path began.”

“It is good that a man knows his place,” said Seraph comfortably from somewhere behind him.

He hurt too much to turn so he could see her, so he gave her a vague wave.

She crouched down on her heels beside him. “So,” she said, “I know where there is a white robe you can have—but that might make you a target. On the other hand, parading around in nothing at all might make you a different sort of target.”

He laughed, then moaned. “Why is it that the first thing someone does when you've cracked your ribs is make a joke?”

“You don't have cracked ribs,” said the Healer, looking up from his battered knees. “You have broken ones. And hold off on that robe, girl, until I see to them as well. He doesn't have anything that I haven't seen better.”

“Hello,” said a Traveler, crouching down on Tier's other side. “You must be the Bard.”

“Tier,” said Seraph, “this is Kors. Kors, my husband, Tier. Kors, what do you want?”

Ah, thought Tier contentedly, all that in under a breath, my Seraph at her charismatic best.

“We were wondering if you'd seen the Guardian? We know he was here, but none of us can locate him.”

“Most all of what I've seen is a bunch of people from the knees down,” quipped Tier. Then he added, “Actually I saw him—or at least something that was probably him, whispering to Phoran. I suppose he was telling Phoran that Avar was waiting as planned because it was just after that that Phoran signaled the Ravens to bring down the wall.”

“I didn't see it,” said Seraph sourly. “I was trying to get down to you and I got caught in the crowd. Hennea brought down the wall by herself—I didn't even get to singe that bloody wizard to ash. By the time I got in the clear, all of the Masters were down and dead—or at least not moving.”

“Well,” said Kors, clearing his throat a little, “that's kind of why Benroln sent me over to see if you could find your son. A lot of us saw something kill the Masters, one after the other, but we couldn't quite see it. We'd all appreciate it if you could find Jes and make certain he doesn't mistake anyone else for the enemy.”

“Jes isn't that stupid,” said Tier. But he worried about what all the violence had done to the Guardian, too. “He's probably gone off to find someplace quiet.”

“Wait until I've gotten the ribs stabilized, young man,” chided the Healer, moving creakily from his knee to his side—pushing Kors out of the way. “And then you can go looking for your boy.”

It took more than a few minutes, but finally with Lehr under one shoulder and Toarsen under the other, Tier gained his feet, Seraph's robe stopping a few inches below his knees. The joints in question still felt like they'd been hit with a club—which they had—but at least he was able to shuffle over to take a look at the victims.

His first clue was the rather sick look Phoran sent him before he turned back to talking with Avar.

They'd piled all the Masters' bodies together. When Tier arrived, Kors and Kissel hauled one of the bodies out and pulled back the cowl. The dark veil that lined it, making the
robes a more effective disguise, had been ripped so that the face could be revealed.

Tier had the boys help lower him until he was sitting on the ground. The sight he had out of his good eye was getting worse, and he supposed it would be swollen all the way shut by tomorrow, but he wanted to see them, to know that they were dead.

Tier's first reaction was a dull sort of surprise. He'd never actually seen any of the Master's faces except for Telleridge's, but somehow he felt as if he ought to recognize them anyway. He didn't even know which one it was. His second was a realization that the dried, sunken look was due to more than age. Almost hidden on the man's neck were two fading puncture wounds.

“The Travelers tell us that your son is capable of this,” said Avar as he and Phoran approached. “And that he has magic that can make him hard to see—much like what they saw kill these men.”

Tier opened his mouth, then saw Phoran's pale face behind Avar and realized what had killed the wizards. “Must have been him, then,” he said, trying to hide the rush of relief. Jes hadn't been running amok—the Memory had.

Lehr stiffened, and Seraph put a hand on Tier's shoulder. He patted her hand, then Lehr's leg. “Do the rest of them look the same?”

“Yes,” said Phoran. “Just the same. As if they'd been drained.”

“Work of the Guardian,” said the Healer briskly. Tier hadn't realized she'd followed them. “Work of the Guardian to protect his own. Get that man up off the floor and don't put him down until he's somewhere he can rest comfortably. Do you have a chamber where we can store him overnight?” She asked the last question of Phoran.

He bowed. “I suspect that the one that he's been occupying will be the easiest for him. He's welcome to take as long as necessary—and as soon as he's up to it, I'd be happy to find him better accommodations.”

Brewydd looked at Seraph. “You wanted to burn him to ash, girl, do it now. It's not a good thing to leave wizard's bodies intact,” she said.

Lehr and Toarsen managed to lever Tier up once more. Seraph waved a hand and the bodies of the Masters burst into a dark blue-white flame that consumed them utterly in a moment. She gave Tier a look that told him that he'd better have a good reason to put Jes in a position that would make it even more difficult for others to accept him.

“Let's get him back to his cell,” she said. “Then Lehr can hunt Jes down and bring him to us there.”

The trip down that short hallway was miserable. Halfway there, Lehr exchanged a look with Toarsen, and with his help, shifted Tier until Lehr could pick him up and carry him the rest of the way.

Seraph sent Toarsen off to help Avar with a kiss on his cheek, ignoring Tier's indignant “Hey.”

When Toarsen was gone, she said to Lehr, “Doubtless your father will explain why he blamed Jes for that nasty business. So just find your brother and bring him back here so Tier can explain it to Jes, too, before he gets hurt by the reception he gets.”

The Healer had accompanied them, and she checked Tier over thoroughly to make sure the mending she'd done on him would hold. When she was through she patted him on the shoulder.

“Hardest thing that a Healer learns is when to stop healing,” she said. “There's always a price to pay. You're going to be very tired in a short period of time, and you'll spend the next few days more asleep than awake. So you'd better tell me quickly why you're blaming that poor lad for the work of a Memory.”

Seraph drew in her breath. “A Memory?”

“Can't,” said Tier. “Promised.”

“Promised what?” asked Phoran, slipping into the room and shutting the door behind him.

“Not to explain why he'd want his son to bear the blame for deaths caused by a Raven's Memory,” said the old Healer sourly. She took another look at Phoran. “You have the signs of being afflicted by a Memory, boy.”