Raven's Shadow

Chapter 3

PART TWO
Chapter 3
When Seraph reached the narrow bridge, the river was high and the wooden walkway was slick with cold water from the spring runoff. She glanced across the river and up the mountainside where Redern hung, terraced like some ancient giant's stone garden. Even after twenty years, the sight still impressed her.
From where she stood, the new temple at the very top of the village rose like a falcon over its prey. The rich hues of new wood contrasted with the greys of the village, but, to her, that seemed to be merely an accent to the harmony of stone buildings and craggy mountain.
Seraph crossed the bridge, skirted the few people tending animals, and headed for the steps of the steep road that zigzagged its way up the mountain face, edged with stone buildings.
The bakery looked much as it had when she'd first seen it. The house was newer than its neighbors, having been rebuilt several generations earlier because of a fire. Tier had laughed and told her that his several times great-grandfather had tried to make the building appear old but had succeeded only in making it ugly. Not even the ceramic pots planted with roses could add much charm to the cold grey edifice, but the smell of fresh-baked bread wafting from the chimney gave the building an aura of welcome.
Seraph almost walked on - she could sell her goods elsewhere, but not without offending her sister-in-law. Perhaps Alinath would be out and she could deal with Bandor, who had never been anything but kind. Resolutely, she opened the bakery door.
"Seraph," Tier's sister greeted her without welcome from the wide, flour-covered wooden table where her clever hands wove dough into knots and set them on baking tiles to be taken back to the ovens for cooking.
Seraph smiled politely. "Jes found a honey-tree in the woods last week. Rinnie and I spent the last few days jarring it. I wondered if you would like to buy some jars to make sweet bread."
Tier would have given it to his sister, but Seraph could not afford such generosity. Tier was late back from winter fur-trapping, and Jes needed boots.
Alinath sniffed. "That boy. If I've told Tier once, I've told him a thousand times, the way you let him wander the woods on his own - and him not quite right - it's a wonder a bear or worse hasn't gotten him."
Seraph forced herself to smile politely. "Jes is as safe in the woods as you or I here in your shop. I have heard my husband tell you that as often as you complained to him."
Alinath wiped off her hands. "Speaking of children, I have been meaning to talk to you about Rinnie."
Seraph waited.
"Bandor and I have no children, and most probably never will. We'd like to take Rinnie in and apprentice her."
Seraph reminded herself sternly that Alinath meant no harm by her proposal. Even Travelers fostered children under certain circumstances, but it seemed to Seraph that the solsenti traded and sold their children like cattle.
Tier had tried to explain the advantages of the apprenticing system to her - the apprentice gained a trade, a means to make a fair living, and the master gained free help. In her travels, Seraph had seen too many places where children were treated worse than slaves; not that she thought Alinath would treat Rinnie badly.
So, Seraph was polite. "Rinnie is needed on the farm," she said with diplomacy that Tier would have applauded.
"That farm will go to Lehr, sooner or later. Jes will be a burden upon it and upon Lehr for as long as he lives," said Alinath. "Tier will not be able to give Rinnie a decent dowry and without that, with her mixed blood, no one will have her."
Calm, Seraph told herself. "Jes more than carries his own weight," she said with as much outward serenity as she could muster. "He is no burden. Any man who worries about Rinnie's mixed blood is no one I want her marrying. In any case, she's only ten years old, and marriage is something she won't have to worry about for a long time."
"You are being stupid," said Alinath. "I have approached the Elders on the matter already. They know that scrap of land you have my brother trying to farm is so poor he has to spend the winter trapping so you have food on your table. It doesn't really matter that you have no care for your daughter; when the Elders step in, you'll have no choice."
"Enough," said Seraph, outrage lending unmistakable power to that one word. No one was taking her children from her. No one.
Alinath paled.
No magic, Tier's voice cautioned her, none at all, Seraph. Not in Redern.
Seraph closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to cleanse herself of anger, and managed to continue speaking more normally. "You may talk to Tier when he returns. But if anyone comes to try and take my daughter before then..." She let the unspoken threat hang in the air.
"I agree," said a mild voice from the kitchen. "Enough badgering, Alinath." Bandor entered from the baking room door with a large bowl of risen dough. "If any of Seraph's children want to apprentice we'd be glad to have them here - but that's for their parents to decide. Not you or the Elders." He nodded a greeting toward Seraph.
"Bandor," managed Seraph through her rage-tightened throat. "It's good to see you."
"You'll have to excuse Alinath," he said. "She's been as worried about Tier as you are. I've told her that it's not fair to expect a man trapping in the wild to come home on time every year. But he's her brother, and she frets. Tier's only a few weeks late. He'll show up."
"Yes," Seraph agreed. "I'd best be going."
"Didn't I hear you say you had some honey?" he asked.
"Jes found some in the woods last week. I brought a few dozen jars with me," she answered. "But Alinath didn't seem interested in it."
"Hummph," said Bandor, with a glance at his wife. "We'll take twelve jars for half-copper a jar. Then you go to Willon up on the heights, and tell him we're paying a copper each for anything you don't sell to him. He'll buy up your stock for that so he can compete. Yours is the first honey this spring."
Without a word, Seraph took out her pack and pulled out twelve jars, setting them on the counter. Just as silently, Alinath counted out six coppers and set it beside the jars. When Seraph reached out to take the money, the other woman's hand clamped on her wrist.
"If my brother had married Kirah" - Alinath said in a low voice that was no less violent for its lack of sound - "he'd have had no need to go to the mountains in the winter in order to feed his children."
Seraph's chin jerked up and she twisted her wrist, freeing it. "It has been near to two decades since Tier and I married. Find something else to fret about."
"I agree," said Bandor mildly, but there was something ugly in his tone.
Alinath flinched.
Seraph frowned, having never seen Alinath afraid of anything before - except Seraph herself on that one memorable occasion. She'd certainly never seen anyone afraid of Bandor. Alinath's face quickly rearranged itself to the usual embittered expression she wore around Seraph, leaving only a glint of fear in her eyes.
"Thank you, Bandor, for your custom and your advice," Seraph said.
As soon as the door was closed behind Seraph and she'd started up the narrow, twisty road, she muttered to her absent husband. "See what happens when you are away too long, Tier? You'd better get home soon, or those Elders are in for a rude surprise."
She wasn't really worried about the Elders. They weren't stupid enough to confront her, no matter what they thought should be done for Rinnie's benefit. Once Tier was home, he could talk them out of whatever stupidity Alinath had talked them into. He was good at that sort of thing. And if she was wrong, and the Elders came to try to take Rinnie before Tier was home... well, she might have failed in her duties to her people, but she would never fail her children.
She wasn't worried about Rinnie - but Tier was another matter entirely. A thousand things could have delayed Tier's return, she reminded herself. He might even now be waiting at home.
Even hardened by farmwork, Seraph's calves ached by the time she came to the door of Willon's shop near the top edge of the village. When she opened the homey door and stepped into the building, Willon was talking to a stranger with several open packs on the floor, so she walked past him and into the store.
The only other person in the store was Ciro, the tanner's father, who was stringing a small harp. The old man looked up when she came in and returned her nod before going back to the harp.
Willon's store had once been a house. When he'd purchased it, he'd excavated and built until his store extended well into the mountain. He'd stocked the dark corners of the store with odds and bits from his merchant days - and some of those were odd indeed - then added whatever he felt might sell.
Seraph doubted many people knew what some of his things were worth, but she recognized silk when she saw it - though doubtless the only piece in Redern resided on the wall behind a shelf of carved ducks in Willon's shop.
She seldom had the money to shop here, but she loved to explore. It reminded her of the strange places she'd been. Here was a bit of jade from an island far to the south, and there a chipped cup edged in a design that reminded her of a desert tribe who painted their cheeks with a similar pattern.
Some of Willon's wares were new, but much of it was secondhand. In a back corner of one of a half dozen alcoves she found boxes of old boots and shoes that still had a bit of life left in them.
She took out the string she'd knotted and began measuring it against the boots. In the very bottom of the second box she searched, she found a pair made of thinner leather than usual for work boots. The sole was made for walking miles on roads or forest trails, rather than tromping through the mud of a farmer's field. Her fingers lingered on the decorative stitches on the top edge, hesitating where the right boot was stained with blood - though someone had obviously worked to clean it away. Traveler's boots.
She didn't compare them to her son's feet, just set them back in the box and piled a dozen pairs of other boots on top of them, as if covering them would let her forget about them. In a third bin, she found what she was looking for, and took a sturdy pair of boots up to the front.
There is nothing I could have done, she told herself. I am not a Traveler and have not been for years.
But even knowing it was true, she couldn't help the tug of guilt that tried to tell her differently: to tell her that her place had never been here, safe in Tier's little village, but out in the world protecting those who couldn't protect themselves.
"I can't sell those here," she heard Willon say to a stranger at the front counter - a tinker by the color of his packs. "Folk 'round here get upset with writing they can't read - old traps of the Shadowed still linger in these mountains. They know to fear magic, and even a stupid person's going to notice that those have Traveler's marks on them."
"I bought them from a man in Korhadan. He claimed to have collected them all," said the tinker. "I paid him two silvers. I've had to carry them from there to here. I'll sell them for ten coppers, the entire bag, sir, for I'm that tired of them. You're the eighth merchant in as many towns as told me the same thing, and they take up space in my packs as I might use for something else. You surely could melt them down for something useful."
On the counter lay an assortment of objects that appeared something like metal feathers. One end was sharp for a few inches, almost daggerlike, but the other end was decorative and lacy. Some were short, but most were as long as Seraph's forearm, and one nearly twice that long. There must have been nearly a hundred of them - mermori.
"My son can work metal," said Seraph, around the pulse of sorrow that beat too heavily in her throat. There were so many of them. "He could turn these into horseshoes. I can pay you six coppers."
"Done," cried the fellow before Willon could say a thing. He bundled them up in a worn leather bag and handed it to Seraph, taking the coins she handed him.
He gathered his packs together and carried them off as if he were afraid she'd renege if he waited.
Willon shook his head, "You shouldn't have bought those, Seraph Tieraganswife. Poor luck follows those who buy goods gotten by banditry and murder the way those probably were."
A merchant to the bone, Willon should have objected to her buying outright from the tinker rather than cut him in for a percentage - but things like that happened when mermori were involved.
"Travelers' spells don't hurt those of Traveler blood," she said in a low voice that wouldn't carry to others in the store.
Willon looked startled for a moment. "Ah. Yes, I had almost forgotten that."
"So you think these were gotten by banditry?" she asked.
"My sons tell me that they don't call it that anymore." Willon shook his head in disapproval. "The present emperor's father declared the Travelers beyond the protection of his laws. The old man's been dead for years, but his son's not going to change anything. He shuts himself up in the palace and listens to people who tell him stories without questioning the truth from falsehood, poor boy."
He spoke as if he knew him, but Seraph let it pass without comment. Tier had told her that he thought that the caravanning business Willon had retired from had been richer than he let on. He hadn't changed much from when he'd first come, other than the gradual lightening of his hair to white. Though he must have been nearing his seventh decade, he looked much younger than that.
"Ah well," she said. "They're pretty enough, but they'll make shoes for horses and buckles for harness, sir - surely if Travelers had that much magic left they'd have used it to save themselves." She set the boots she'd selected on the counter. "Now, I need these for Jes, but I've spent my coppers on the metal bits. In my pack I have some wild honey. I've sold a dozen jars to Bandor at the bakery below for a half-penny apiece, and I've a little more than twice that left." She'd looked, and hadn't seen any honey in the section where he kept a variety of jarred and dried goods.
"My brother-in-law told me to tell you I sold him his at a copper each," she added with a small smile. Willon was one of the few villagers she felt comfortable talking to - probably because he was an outsider too.
"Aye, and he should have paid you that," said Willon with a snort. "Doubtless you know it, too. Taking advantage of his own kin."
"If Tier were home, we'd have given him the honey," she said, "which Bandor knows also."
Willon grinned. "I'll buy what you've left for a copper each - that's a fair price. Especially if when that boy of yours finds more honey, you bring it to me first."
"I'll do that," she said. "Thank you, Willon."
Thirty coppers for the honey minus ten for the boots left her with twenty coppers, almost a whole silver. She tucked the coins in her satchel as she left Willon's shop, closing the door gently on the first few notes of Ciro's harp.
Her mind more on the mermori she'd bought from the trader than on where she was going, she almost ran over a man who stood in the way.
"Excuse me," she said apologetically, looking into his face.
It was a good face, even-featured and wide-mouthed. He was no one she knew, which was unusual. The village was small enough that even with as little time as she spent there she knew everyone in it - at least by sight.
"A Traveler," he said in a tone of near delight that shocked her.
Her reaction must have been easy to read because he laughed. "I must sound like an idiot - I just hadn't expected to run into a Traveler here. I thought your people avoid coming here. Some aversion to being so near Shadow's Fall?"
Aversion to being near people so fearful of magic, she almost answered him, but not even surprise could loosen her habitual control over her tongue.
A look of comprehension crossed his face. "You must be Seraph Tieraganswife. That's why people speak of you..." he seemed to realized that however people spoke of her wouldn't exactly be flattering and stumbled to a halt.
If she had not been holding a bag of mermori that reminded her of the plight of the Travelers and her failure to live the life she'd been called to serve, she might have helped him. But he'd talked his way into offense, and she let him find his own way out.
"I am sorry," he said sincerely after a moment. "When I am excited I tend to talk too much. Let me introduce myself properly. I am Volis, priest of the Path of the Five."
"Seraph Tieraganswife," she replied shortly, though she made no move to leave. He was distracting her from her guilt, and for the moment she was content that he continue to do so.
She'd known that there was a new priest in town, of course. Even if she'd forgotten, the new temple at the very top of the road would have reminded her. He'd come from Taela with the new Sept last fall, and stayed when the Sept returned to his duties in the capitol of the Empire. But she hadn't paid much heed to the news - she was still too much Traveler to worship in the houses of the gods.
Volis grinned at her, "I was right. I'm sorry to overwhelm you, but the Travelers are a hobby of mine, though I've only met a few of them."
What was she to say to that? she wondered and said nothing.
"Do you have a while to spare?" he asked. "I have a wealth of questions to ask you - and I'd like to show you the temple."
She glanced at the sun, but her business had taken very little time and the pack of mermori was a cold, hard thing she would have to deal with as soon as she left Redern.
So she raised an eyebrow and nodded her head. Tier would have laughed and called her "Empress" if she had done such a thing to him. This boy merely smiled, as if he'd been certain she would follow him. He had, she thought, a tithe of Tier's charm and was used to having people obey him.
He turned and led the way up the road, which was so steep that it was set in stairs.
"I would have been just as happy with something like the rest of Redern," he said. "But the new Sept was convinced that I would be happier in something more modern looking."
"The Sept is a follower of your five gods?" Seraph asked.
"Gods save us, no," laughed Volis. "But he was willing to do a favor when a few of the Path's Elders twisted his arm to place a temple here."
"Why here?" asked Seraph. "Why not in Leheigh, which also belongs to the Sept? Surely you would find more followers in the larger city."
Volis smiled. "I have not done so badly here. Your own family attends my meetings. In fact, I was on my way to consult with Bandor when you ran into me - and I couldn't resist the chance to have a Traveler to speak to. But the main reason I am here - instead of a really big city, like Korhadan, for instance - is Shadow's Fall. We feel that there are things on the old battlefield that might enlighten us."
Shadow's Fall? Seraph bit back her opinion of the stupidity of anyone who wanted to explore there. Doubtless the battlefield could educate this solsenti fool better than she.
Like Willon's shop and many of the buildings on the steeper slopes, the temple had been built into the mountain. The facade was raw timber and crude, except for the doors, which were smooth and oiled until they were almost black.
Volis ushered her inside, and Seraph had to stop in the threshold to allow her eyes to adjust from the brightness outside.
The room was a richly appointed antechamber that would have been more at home in a Sept's keep than in a village temple. Either the - what was it Volis had called it?  -  the Path of the Five was a rich church indeed, or the Sept owed its Elders a lot of favors.
"There are only three temples," said Volis, seeing her expression. "Two in Taela and this one. We intend this to be a place of pilgrimage."
"Shadow's Fall," said Seraph, "a place of pilgrimage."
"Where the Five triumphed over evil," said the priest, apparently oblivious to the doubt in her voice. "Come and see the refuge, where I hold services."
Seraph followed him through a tapestry-curtained entrance into a room like none she'd ever seen before.
The excavations were far more extensive than she had thought. The ceiling of the chamber soared overhead like an upside-down bowl. Near the edge it was a single handspan over the doorway, in the center of the room it rose three times the height of a tall man. The stone walls, floors, and ceiling were as smooth as polished marble.
This... this was built in the short season since the new Sept came to explore his inheritance?
The ceiling was painted a light sky-blue that darkened gradually to black on the walls. The light that illuminated the room seemed to emanate from that skylike ceiling. Magic, thought Seraph, solsenti magic. But her attention was on the figures that occupied the false firmament. Chasing each other endlessly around the perimeter of the ceiling were five life-sized birds painted with exquisite detail.
Volis was silent as she walked past him to the center of the room.
Lark, she thought, chills creeping down her spine. A cormorant's brilliant eyes invited her to play in the stormy winds. An owl glided on silent wings toward the black raven, who held a bright silver and ruby ring in its mouth, while next in line a falcon began its stoop. Together they circled the room, caught in endless flight.
In the center of the ceiling, twice as large as any other, a river eagle caught the winds and twisted its head to look down upon the room as if to examine its prey.
Each bird a representative of the six Orders of the Travelers.
"Behold the Five," said Volis softly in a language Seraph hadn't heard since the day her brother died. "Lark the healer, Cormorant who rules the weather, Owl of wisdom and memory, Raven the mage, Falcon the hunter. And above them all, trapped in darkness is the secret god, the lost god. You didn't know about the lost god, did you?"
"They are not gods," said Seraph in her tongue. Though, she remembered, in the old stories of before they Traveled, her people had believed that there were gods as he had described. But as the Old Wizards had grown in knowledge and power they had put those fallacies behind them.
As if she hadn't spoken, Volis pointed to the eagle. "I found him, in books so old they crumbled at my touch, in hints in ancient songs. For generations the Elders of the Path have worshiped only the Five - until I found the lost god."
"The Eagle?" said Seraph, caught between an urge to laugh at the idea of solsenti worshiping the Orders as gods, and distaste. Distaste won.
"The Eagle." He looked pleased. "My discovery led me to be honored by this appointment," he waved a hand to indicate the temple.
"Congratulations," said Seraph, because he seemed to expect her to say something of the sort. She glanced at the ceiling again and wondered what her father would have said if he'd seen it.
"I have gleaned some things," he said. "The Eagle is protected by the others, so that he can rescue them in some future time, when they are all at risk and the world hangs in the balance."
She'd taught Tier that song in translation, a child's tune to teach them about the Orders. Obviously the translation that Volis had happened upon had been less careful. He made it sound as if the Eagle's purpose as Guardian was for some single, predestined event.
Eagerly the young priest turned to Seraph and took her hands. "I see from your face that you know about the Eagle."
"We do not speak of the Eagle to outsiders," said Seraph.
"But I'm not an outsider," he said waving an impassioned hand at the ceiling. "I know about Travelers; I've spent my life studying them. Please, tell me what you know of the Eagle."
Seraph didn't suffer fools gladly - she certainly didn't aid and abet their stupidity. It was time to go home. "I am sorry," she said. "I have work awaiting me. Thank you for showing me around; the artwork is very good."
"You have to tell me more," he caught her arm before she could leave. "You don't understand. I know it is the Elders of the Path of the Five who must free it."
"Free it?" she asked, and that chill that had touched her upon seeing the Birds of the Orders in a solsenti temple strengthened, distracting her from the encroaching grip of his arm.
"In hiding him," said Volis earnestly, "the Five trapped him, for his protection. 'Sleep on, guarded be, until upon waking destroys and saves' - "
Seraph started. That bit of poetry had no business being spoken in the mouth of a solsenti, no matter how well he spoke Traveler. It had nothing to do with the Eagle, but...
"He must be freed," said Volis. "And the Master of the Path has foreseen that it is we of the Path who will free the Stalker."
"The Stalker is not the Eagle," Seraph said involuntarily, then could have bitten off her tongue. This was dangerous, dangerous knowledge. He was mistaken about the Eagle, about the Orders being gods, but the Stalker...
He turned his mad gaze to her. He must have been mad. Only a madman would speak of freeing the Stalker.
"Ah," he said. "What do you know about the Stalker?"
"No more than you," she lied.
She fought to draw in a full breath and reminded herself that this man was a solsenti, a solsenti possessed of more knowledge that he should have - but even if he were so mistaken as to confuse the Eagle with the Stalker, he still should be harmless enough.
She gave him a short bow, Raven to stranger rather than good Rederni wife to priest, and used the motion to break free of his grasp.
"I have work," she said. "Thank you for your time - I'll see myself out."
She turned on her heel and strode rapidly to the curtained entrance, waiting for him to try and stop her, but he did not.
By the time she was on the bridge, she'd lost most of the fear that her visit with the new priest had engendered. The Stalker was well and truly imprisoned, and not even the Shadowed, who had almost destroyed the human race, had been able to free it. A solsenti priest with a handful of half-understood information was not a threat - at least not to the world as a whole, but she would still have to consider what Volis's fancies would mean to her and hers.
Dismissing the priest as an immediate threat left her with no distraction for the burden she carried. Though the honey jars were gone, almost a hundred weight of them, her pack carried stones that weighed her soul more than her back. As soon as Seraph left the main road for the cover of the trail, she stopped and pulled out the bag of mermori and counted them. Eighty-three.
Her hand tightened on the last one until the sharp edge of the end drew blood. Hurriedly she wiped off the mermora; it was never a good thing to expose magicked things to blood. When she was certain it was clean, she put them back in the leather bag and returned the whole bundle to her pack.
"There's nothing I can do," she said fiercely, though there was no one to hear her. "I don't know anything. I have no more ability than a dozen other Ravens who have all failed to prevent the demise of the Travelers. Here, in this place, I have three children who need me. There are fields to be planted and gardens to tend and a husband to welcome me home. There is nothing I can do."
But, by Lark and Raven, eighty-three. She swallowed. Maybe Tier would be home when she returned. She needed him to be home.
The land that Seraph and Tier farmed was in a very small hanging valley, most of which was too rocky to plant. They had no close neighbors. It had been virgin land when they had come there as newly married strangers.
From the vantage point of a knoll above the valley, Seraph fought back the feeling that it would all go back to wild within the decade - she was no farseer, just tired. She adjusted her pack and started down the faint trail.
Trees gave way to grass and field. As soon as she started on the path above the cabin, a joyous bark preceded Gura as he charged up the trail to welcome her home.
"Hello, fool dog," she said, and he rolled at her feet in rapture at her recognition of him, coating his thick fur in spring mud.
He was huge and black, covered with hair that needed daily grooming. Tier'd come home from town one evening with a black eye and a frightened, half-starved puppy with huge feet. Always collecting strays, was her husband.
Seraph bit back tears, and shook her head at the dog. "Come, Gura, let's see how my lad did on his own today."
The huge dog lumbered to his feet and shook himself off, sloughing off the puppy antics with the mud. He accompanied her to the cabin with solemn dignity.
With Gura's welcome to warn her family, Seraph wasn't surprised to find Lehr and Rinnie quietly working in the cabin.
"Ma!" said her youngest in tones of utter relief. "Lehr was so mean. He yelled at me when I was already doing what he asked me to."
At ten, Rinnie had recently adopted the role of family arbitrator and informant - which was having the expected results with her siblings. She took after Seraph more than anyone in the - family at least in looks. Rinnie was short with Seraph's pale hair that stood out so in Redern's dark population. In temperament she more resembled her father, sharing both his calm good sense and his flair for drama.
Seraph hugged her and looked up at Lehr.
"We finished turning the garden," said Lehr repressively. "And we planted a good third of it before Rinnie whined so much I let her go inside."
"He made me work hard," said Rinnie, still not giving up the hope of getting her brother in trouble.
When Rinnie stuck her tongue out at Lehr, he ignored it. Last year he would have retaliated - or smiled at her, knowing that her reaction would be worth whatever trouble he'd get in.
"Thank you, Lehr," Seraph said, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. "I know it's not an easy job to keep this lazy girl working. I can tell by the stew on the hob and the pile of carded wool that the both of you came inside and rested like the high-born."
He laughed and hugged her. "She was fine. We'd have gotten the whole garden done, Mother, if Jes had stuck around. He left sometime after lunch - I didn't even see him go."
"I can talk to him," she offered.
Lehr shook his head. "No, it's all right. I know he does the best he can. It's just that with Papa gone, we need him. When he can keep his mind on it, he can work as well as Papa does. Mother, the Sept's steward was here today."
"Forder?" Seraph asked, taking her cloak and hood off and hanging them on the cloak tree by the door. "What did he want?"
"He looked at the fields and asked if Papa was back yet. When I told him no, he said the new Sept was demanding quarter again as much for our tithe payment this year as last - of the garden and the fields. He said that it's almost past time to get the fields plowed."
Seraph put her pack against the wall. "I know, Lehr. We've waited as long as we could. We'll just have to break ground without Tier. We can start tomorrow - no, day after tomorrow so I have time to look at the harness and plow to make repairs. Don't worry about the increased tithe; Tier said to expect some kind of increase with the new Sept."
"Forder said the Sept had a horse we could lease, if we needed."
"No." She shook her head. When he'd left, Tier had taken the young mare they'd bought last year, leaving their old gelding to his retirement. "Skew knows these fields, and old as he is, he'll do the job until Tier gets back. We can't afford to start leasing a horse, not if the Sept is taking more of the harvest."
Outside the door, Gura gave a howl more suited to a dire wolf than a dog, which was answered by a wail both higher and wilder.
"Jes is home," said Rinnie unnecessarily, for the door flew back on its hinges and Seraph's oldest child bounded in the door.
"Mother, Mother," he sang out. "I found a rabbit for dinner." He held out an enormous jackrabbit, already gutted, beheaded, and skinned.
"Jesaphi, my love," Seraph said. "I am very glad that you found a rabbit. But you need to shed some mud before you come inside."
Of all her children, Jes looked the most like his father. Taller by a head than Lehr, Jes was lean and dark. Lehr was lean, too, but he had Seraph's pale hair. Like Tier, Jes was not handsome; his nose was thin and too long. A deep dimple peered out of his left cheek, and his eyes were dark, velvet brown.
"I'm sorry, Mother," he said shedding his exuberance like a coat. "I didn't mean to - to get muddy."
It was Jes's voice that gave him away even to the least observant. There was something wrong in the pitch and the singsong way he talked.
He wasn't simple, like the cooper's son, but his affliction appeared very similar and people assumed they were the same. Seraph had seen no reason to confuse anyone but Tier with the truth.
"Not to worry." Seraph soothed Jes with one of the light touches, which were usually all he could bear. "While the others set the table, you and I'll go clean you up."
"Did I do something wrong?" he asked anxiously.
"No, love, come with me." She took his hand and led him outside to help him scrub off.
In the middle of the night, unable to sleep, Seraph rose quietly out of her too-empty bed in the loft and dressed. She opened a trunk and took from it a large bag that dangled heavily from its worn cords. The ladder steps were tight and let out no sound that might wake Lehr, who was a light sleeper.
The pack by the door still held the boots she'd gotten Jes; she'd forgotten to give them to him. Seraph took them out and set them to the side. She put the bag she'd taken from her room into the pack where the shoes had been, then quietly let herself out.
On the porch, Gura watched her with glittering eyes that hinted at wolf somewhere in his background.
"Shh," she said. "Stay and watch."
Gura subsided and dropped his face back down on his forepaws, jowls sliding loosely to either side.
"I'll be back soon enough," she explained as if he'd understand. "I just can't sleep. There are things I have to work out."
Gura closed his eyes - sulking, she knew, because she hadn't asked him along.
She followed a path behind the cabin that led into the forest. The moon was high and her night vision was better than most so she had little trouble finding her way.
She walked a mile or so until she came to the meadow she sought. She set her pack down and opened it.
"Eighty-three," she said to herself, taking out the leather bag she'd gotten in town as well as the bag from her trunk, "and a hundred and forty-one."
She took one of the mermori out and stuck it into the ground, point down, so it stuck up like a short fencepost. She took another out and measured it with her fingers then paced out a distance from the second. She did the same with the third and the fourth as the moon crept across the sky.
"What do you do, Mother?"
She'd been so involved in the mermori that she hadn't heard him. The low, velvety voice sounded so much like Tier's that she had to swallow. Despite her excellent eyesight and the moon she couldn't see Jes in the night.
"I've told you some stories about the Travelers," she said, setting the last mermora she held into the earth, and walked back for more.
He didn't reply immediately. She heard no footstep, but was not surprised that he'd followed her back to the pack.
"Yes," he said close enough that the warmth of his breath touched the back of her neck. Traveler-bred though she was, the vast difference between her daytime son and this, more dangerous Jes disconcerted her; a mother should not fear her child.
"We are the descendants of the wizards who lived in Colossae long before the Shadowed came to destroy mankind," she said, ignoring the shiver Jes's voice had sent down her spine.
"Yes," he acknowledged, pacing beside her as she took a handful of the mermori to an empty spot in the meadow and continued to measure out distances. He was barefoot.
Only she and Tier knew what her gentle-natured child became away from the safety of the cabin.
"Colossae was a great city of learning, and wizards came from all the earth to study and learn there. For generations they gathered and learned magic and forgot wisdom, until at last they created the greatest evil their hearts had ever imagined."
She had told her children very little about the Travelers, hoping that they would all become Rederni, like Tier. But Lehr and Rinnie carried the Traveler's looks, and Jes carried the Traveler's curse.
It had occurred to her, lying awake in her bed before she'd left it, that with a priest who knew too much and garbled truth with lies, it might be a good idea to teach her children more. She'd start tonight with Jes.
"By the time the wizards realized what they had done, it was too late to undo their making, almost too late to control it. As it was, only a great sacrifice could stop their creation, and Colossae was killed to imprison the Stalker, before it could destroy the world," she said. "The wizards who survived were sent to Travel the earth and keep it free of the Stalker's corruption, because such evil, even bound, was not without power. Even so great a sacrifice as a city of light and knowledge could not hold it completely, nor keep it forever."
"Yes," Jes said again. This time she caught a glimpse of eyes glowing a bit red in the night.
"What is it?" she asked. "Is there someone here?"
"Not now," he said, at last, a growl in his voice that wasn't quite human. "But there have been hunters in the forest who do not belong. They hunt for sport and that offends the forest - and they've come too near to the cabin for my liking."
"The new Sept is supposed to be quite a hunter," she told him. "Some of the nobles the Sept brought with him from Taela stayed when he left. Is this hunting something that you must stop?"
"No," he replied after a moment. "The forest king told me he will take care of these men if necessary." Seraph shivered a little at the tone of her son's voice when he said "men" - it told her that her son, in this aspect at least, did not consider himself one. "This forest yet has the power to keep out killers who hunt wastefully," he said.
Seraph set another mermora.
"You were talking about Colossae," he reminded her after she'd placed the mermora she held and was walking back for another handful.
"Ah, yes." She decided it was too much trouble to keep coming back so she transferred all that were left into the largest bag and carried that with her.
"It was decided after the wizards left and the city died, that they should meet in secret every year. But they had truly bound the evil, and there was no great need of the wizards in those early years so the meetings began to take place every two years, then every five.
"The mermori" - she sorted through and held up a fragile-seeming mermora no longer than her index finger - "were created by the wizard Hinnum and gifted to each of the wizards who left the city. They were passed down to the eldest of each family and in the beginning it is said they numbered five hundred and four. Until the Shadowed rose to power, some five centuries ago, each mermora was held by a large clan, but when the Army of Man gathered to fight the creatures the Shadowed had gathered, Travelers were forefront in the armies - because the Stalker, still imprisoned in Colossae, controlled the Shadowed. More than half of the army fell that day, taking with it most of the Travelers who fought there."
"You never told me that before - that the Shadowed was caused by the thing the wizards bound in Colossae."
She smiled a little grimly, "It's not something that we talk about openly. If people knew that we Travelers held ourselves responsible for the Shadowed, they'd make certain we suffered for it. Even some of the clans claimed there was no connection between the two - or that the Shadowed was the Stalker itself and that we should be freed of our tasks."
She set another mermora into the ground. "I remember a discussion at the last Gather I went to. One of the Clan Fathers proposed that we quit searching out evil. He said things like, 'We destroyed the Shadow, completed the tasks the Old Ones gave us. We should settle while there is still good land unclaimed.' Then my father stood up and said, 'Arrogance has always been the Traveler's Bane. The Shadowed was not the Stalker, but merely a man corrupted by it. My grandfather had this story through his line. When the Raven who faced the Shadowed and reduced him to ashes returned to his circle, he told them that the creature he'd killed had never touched the stones of Colossae. We fought true evil on that day, but our task remains.' "
Seraph laughed a little at the memory. "My father was a showman. He didn't wait for the debate that followed, but excused himself to his tent and would speak no more about it. My grandfather always said that if you don't argue, you can't be proved wrong."
"So your father was the only reason the Travelers kept Traveling?"
Seraph shook her head. "No - it wouldn't have worked if they'd really wanted to settle down. It was hard enough for me to stay here - and I would have followed your father through the Shadowed's Realm if I'd had to. Staying was more difficult. Travelers are well named."
Jes followed her silently as she began her task again. Jes was good at silence.
"I remember going to two Gathers as a child," she said, taking out another mermora and setting it upright. "There were two hundred and thirty mermori held by just over two hundred clans at the first one. I can remember my mother fretting about how few there were. She died before I went to the second Gather, when I was thirteen. There were fewer than two hundred then - and many clans carried more than one."
The largest mermora she had saved for last, having left an extensive corner of the meadow for it. "The mermori were too dangerous to allow them to exist without safeguards, so Hinnum spelled them so that, eventually, they would find their way into the hands of the eldest of the closest relatives of those who had died and left the mermori lost."
"Mother," said Jes, after a bit. "There are two hundred twenty-four mermori here."
"I know," she whispered. "I've been acquiring them a few at a time since I married your father. Today I bought eighty-three from a tinker."
"Eighty-three," he said, startled into losing, for a moment, the aura of danger he carried. "How did you pay for them? They are solid silver and worth more than - "
"People don't always see that they are silver," she said, trying to pace off the area for the largest of them again - she kept losing count. "Sometimes they appear to be iron or even wood. Most people dislike them on sight. I paid six coppers for them, and the merchant I bought them from will shortly forget exactly what it was I bought, except that he came out ahead on the deal."
"Ah," he said and walked beside her for a while, gradually blending into the darkness until she couldn't see him if she looked straight on.
She caught glimpses of him sometimes when she wasn't quite looking. Sometimes she saw a man who looked like her husband, but more dangerous. At others she saw a dark animal that prowled on four legs. Sometimes if she turned her head and looked at him directly for too long, he disappeared into the night. It was only illusion, she knew, though he could take on shapes of animals if he chose. But illusion or not, it was disconcerting.
"What do they do?" he asked finally.
She set the last one in. "I'll show you. Come with me."
The meadow was set on a rise and she took her son to the highest point. She had never done this with so many before. At the Gathers, the elders from all the families would stand in a circle and chant together.
She held out both hands and shouted imperiously, "Ishavan shee davenadre hovena Hinnumadraun."
It had been so long since she'd allowed herself this much magic. She did only a little magic now and then - when they planted their crops, and when she warded the farm to keep the more dangerous creatures of the mountains away.
Even after so long, it came eagerly to her call, thrumming from her bones to the earth, reverberating through the dirt, rotting vegetation, and newborn sprigs of grass.
Jes let out a startled snarl as the meadow lit up with the windows of two hundred and twenty-four houses. Some were smaller than their cabin, but most were as large as the largest of the houses in Redern. By chance she'd put two in such a way that they blended into each other, sharing a wall - it looked so right that Seraph wondered if the houses might have stood in just such a relative location in Colossae. In the very corner of the meadow stood a small castle. The architecture of the houses was distinctly foreign, the windows open and rounded, the roofs covered with some kind of green pottery tiles.
"It's all right," she reassured Jes, though her eyes were held by the castle. "They are all illusion. The wizards could take only the most necessary of articles because they could not risk giving warning to the enemy before they fled. They couldn't take any of their libraries - So Hinnum created the mermori, which remember the homes of the wizards as they stood in Colossae so long ago. Come with me."
She led her son to one of the smaller ones, a brick-faced home no bigger than Alinath's bakery, though much more gracile. Ebony wood doors were worn near the latch, giving testimony of the age of the building. "This was the mermora my father carried from his father. It belonged to Isolda the Silent, who died when they sealed the city." Seraph pulled the door latch, felt the metal cool against her fingers. The door opened with a soft groan, and she stepped inside.
"Illusion?" Jes questioned, stepping in beside her. The light from Isolda's oil lamps showed a young man rather than a beast. "I can smell oil and herbs - some I know, like anise, henbane, but there are many I can't identify."
"Hinnum was a very great illusionist. Legend says he was four hundred years old when the city fell," she said, trailing her fingers over the familiar shawl that hung neatly on the back of a chair as if it only waited for Isolda to return from some errand.
"But all that this is, is illusion." She turned to her son. "If it is raining outside and you come in, you will not feel the rain - but when you walk out you will be wet. If you are freezing to death and come in, you'll feel warm and still die from the cold."
"How long ago did the city die?" asked Jes, touching a carved table.
For a moment Seraph allowed herself to see the house anew, recognizing how alien it appeared to him. Perhaps a lord's house would be furnished with wooden tables and shelves polished like the surface of a windless lake, but no dwelling in Redern held such treasures.
"I'm not certain," she replied. "It was long before the Shadowed came to rule - and that was about six hundred years ago if the stories crediting him with a hundred-year reign are correct. Colossae was a city with over a million people, three times the size of Taela, and only the Travelers remember its name."
"Where did it lie?"
"I don't know," answered Seraph. "It doesn't matter. The city is protected against intruders."
"Is?"
"As far as I know the city is still there - if it weren't, the Stalker would be free. The people died along with the less tangible things that make up a community and the bones of the city seal the Stalker's prison.
Jes turned from where he was examining one of the walls, which had a mural depicting a forest scene. "If this is all illusion, then why were the ancient wizards so concerned about the mermori?"
Seraph smiled and headed through a narrow doorway. The room beyond was twice as big as the first room and the walls were lined with shelves of books.
"This is what they tried to save - within these buildings is all that they knew of magic. But many of the languages the books are written in were lost. I know only four or five. My father knew more - and I fear they are lost with him, and with the others who are gone, because I hold almost half the mermori that were made."