Raven's Strike

Chapter 12

They left the farm while the sun was still a faint hope in the silvery sky. Phoran's horse danced and pranced and pretended to be afraid of the packs that hung here and there from his saddle. Seraph's horse, one of the new ones, started and skittered in response.
She whispered reassurances and talked to it. It was a little inexperienced, but basically even-tempered and settled down quickly. Unlike Phoran's stallion.
"Warhorse," explained Phoran, when his horse finally began walking instead of bouncing.
"So was this one," Tier said, motioning to Skew, who had only twitched an ear toward the misbehaving animals. "If you ever actually go to war, you might consider a different horse."
Phoran smiled. "He settles down fast enough when there's work for him. He's just showing off for the mares."
Tier shook his head. "The Fahlarn used to ride mares to war just to give us fits because so many of our nobles rode stallions."
"I'd heard that," Phoran said. "But if I rode around on a gelding or, worse yet, a mare, my protocol minister would have fits." He hummed a happy little tune to himself as the big grey reared up then quick-stepped sideways. "Might be a good reason for doing it, at that. But Blade does his job - which is to make me look like a good horseman and make himself look athletic and expensive."
He sounded disparaging, but Seraph noticed he had enjoyed the performance at least as much as his horse had. Once they had been riding for a few hours, the hot-bred stallion settled down to a few jitters.
Hennea watched the sun bring out gold and red highlights in Jes's dark hair and wondered at the unexpected gift of him, an almost unwelcome but greatly desired gift.
Jes walked beside Hennea's horse, Gura at his heel. The pace seemed to give Jes no trouble, though the horses had set out at a rapid walk. She hadn't exchanged a private word with him since the afternoon when she'd guarded his sleep, but somehow she felt as if they had both accepted that as a new step in their courtship.
He was hers now.
The natural rhythms of travel had broken them into small groups - Seraph and Tier at the head: Phoran, Rinnie, Lehr, and Ielian: Toarsen, Kissel, and Rufort: Hennea, Jes, and the dog bringing up the rear.
She could hear the sound of the conversations in front of her, but could make out only a word here or there. Since she and Jes traveled behind them with a light wind in their faces, no one else would hear anything they said to each other.
She didn't know what to say to him. She was seldom awkward, though it was getting to be a familiar state around Jes. Not that she talked all the time - like Tier - but she was comfortable with her silences. Or had been. Now she wanted to speak to Jes, but she didn't know what to say or how to say it - so she stayed quiet.
Jes patted her knee. "Don't worry so much," he said.
It was so unexpected - although why she couldn't have said, since she knew he was an uncommonly powerful empath - that she laughed.
"I'll try not to," she said. She couldn't see his face to read what was there, but his shoulders were relaxed and easy. "It's just that I feel as though there is a lot to say - but whatever I need to talk about won't reach my lips."
"I do that a lot," he said gravely. "Usually I wait it out. If it's important, it'll come sooner or later. Running helps."
"I think I'll just enjoy the sun on my shoulders," she told him.
He turned his head then so she could see his smile. "I told you about the sun," he said.
"Sometimes you're a wise man."
He laughed. "Sometimes. Usually I'm stupid."
All desire to laugh left her. "Who says so?" she asked.
He turned around to walk backward and grinned. "No need to draw your dagger, sweet lady. I say so. Most times I can hardly hold a conversation."
"You're not stupid," she told him.
His grin faded into a gentler expression that she couldn't read - though for some reason it caused her pulse to quicken.
"All right," he said. "I'm not stupid."
Then he turned around, and she could think of nothing more to say: but she wanted to, if only to see that unreadable expression on his face again.
They set up camp while the sun was still a few hours from setting because Tier knew from experience it would take them longer to set up camp the first few days than it would later on. Also, Lehr was still recovering from the illness he'd suffered at Colbern, and the lowland horses that Toarsen and his boys were riding were tiring faster because they weren't used to the heights. An early day or three in the first part of the trip would give them time to acclimatize and Lehr time to heal completely.
"Besides," he explained to Seraph, as he stretched out beside her on a fallen tree with a twig in his mouth. He put his head on Seraph's lap. "I like this camp. There aren't a lot of rocks in the ground, and that lake is full of trout for supper."
"The boys are enjoying it," said Seraph, as a wave of excitement rose among the intrepid fishermen as Toarsen jerked on his fishing line - but Tier was watching his daughter.
"For a man who's likely never been around a child, he's good with Rinnie," he said.
"... not like that, Phoran," Rinnie was saying, trying to teach the Emperor how to bait his hook. "If you don't get the grub stuck on good, it'll just fall off."
"He lets her get away with ordering him around," said Seraph dryly. "I think it amuses him, but it's not a habit that'll serve her well with her brothers."
Tier took the twig out of his mouth and pointed it at Rinnie, who had both hands on her hips and was shaking her head in exasperation at something Phoran had asked. "He'd better be careful. I know my Rinnie. If he loses that meek posture and starts laughing, he'll be in for a drenching."
Gura barked at a flopping fish that Toarsen pulled onto the shore.
"Toarsen's been fishing before," Seraph said. "And Kissel, too."
"Leheigh's right on the river, same as Redern." Tier adjusted his head so he could watch the boys more comfortably. "It would be more surprising if Toarsen couldn't fish - and Kissel does whatever Toarsen does. Rufort can't fish, but he's been in the woods - did you see how quickly he had that fire built? You don't learn that in the city. Our Ielian, though, is a city boy through and through. Sensitive, too. We'll have to keep Rinnie away from him - he won't think it's funny when a ten-year-old girl tells him what he's doing wrong. I'll have a talk with Lehr."
"You can talk to Rinnie, too," advised Seraph. "She's pretty considerate of people if she knows what will bother them."
"Where did Hennea and Jes go?"
Seraph bent her head toward him and brushed his cheek with hers. "Since we had more fishermen than hooks, Hennea said they'd go out and gather firewood or greens."
He wiggled his eyebrows at her. "We could go gather firewood."
She laughed. "My mother told me about men like you."
When the fish were all caught and eaten and the sun setting, they gathered around the fire. Tier tuned the lute he'd brought back with him from Taela.
"Play 'The Marcher's Retreat,' please, Papa?" asked Rinnie.
And so began the singing. They were into the second verse before Seraph's soft alto joined in. She didn't like to sing in public, he knew, though she sang with him when it was just family. It was a sign of how much she'd taken to Phoran and the boys that she sang at all.
The soft lamenting tones of "The Marcher's Retreat" gave way to the rollicking "Big Tag's Dog's First Hunt." He liked that one especially because he'd spent a whole month learning the quick-fingering for the tricky runs from his grandfather the summer before he'd left to soldier. It was the last song his grandfather had taught him.
Lehr pulled out his pennywhistle and played the descant, while Rinnie used a pair of sticks for rhythm accents. It was too fast for the boys who didn't know it, but Toarsen kept up with them until the last chorus, which was sung twice as fast as the rest.
Tier picked a soft ballad next, a common one that everyone would know. There was a duet on the second chorus that Jes and Lehr took. Their voices were almost identical in timbre, and Tier always enjoyed listening to the unusual texture that similarity added to the music.
On the third chorus, Tier's fingers failed him, and he missed a note.
He continued as if there were nothing wrong, and no one seemed to notice. It wasn't as if he played the wrong note, after all. His fingers had just hesitated a moment too long.
He'd played it hundreds of times and never missed a note - still, a missed note should have been nothing to worry about. That is what he told himself as he finished the last verse and swept into the chorus again, but he couldn't put aside that for that bare instant, while his fingers stilled, he'd had no idea who he was or what he was doing.
He finished the song with a flourish and a grin, then sent everyone to bed.
"Morning comes early, and we'll not wait for the sun," he told them.
He smiled at Seraph and teased her about something that he forgot a moment later. He hid his fear behind a smile and words as he'd learned to do during his years as a soldier. But this was an enemy that he had no idea how to engage in battle.
When Seraph curled beside him, he held her too tightly. She kissed him, wriggled to loosen his grip, patted his hand, and went to sleep. He held his wife against him and hoped the warmth of her body could relax the knots in his belly.
He'd been so worried about losing her, he hadn't thought he might lose himself first.
Jes got up from his bedroll and walked to him. He crouched down by Tier's head. "What's wrong, Papa?" His tone was soft as the night air.
"I'm fine," Tier whispered. "Go back and go to sleep."
Jes shook his head. "You don't think you're fine. I can feel it."
Tier found himself wishing it were the Guardian he was dealing with because Jes was the more stubborn of the two. He wouldn't leave without an explanation for whatever he'd sensed of Tier's fears.
"Tonight, while we were singing, I felt the effects of what the Path did to my Order," he said finally, hoping his voice wouldn't awaken Seraph. He didn't want her to worry any more than she already did. "It didn't last long, and it didn't hurt. It just frightened me."
Jes nodded his head, "All right. Don't worry so much. We won't let anything happen to you, not if we can help it."
Tier smiled, feeling absurdly better for talking to Jes. "I know that. Go on back to sleep."
Two days later, Tier was in the middle of telling the story of a boy who found a phoenix egg when it happened again. One moment they were riding up the trail, Kissel laughing, and the next the horses were stopped and Kissel had his hand on top of Tier's.
"What's wrong?" Kissel asked urgently.
Tier shook his head, smiled, and hoped he hadn't done anything too stupid. "I just forgot the next part of the story. Likely, I'll remember in a bit and finish it for you tonight after supper, if you'd like."
Kissel nodded slowly. "That would be fine."
Toarsen caught up to them. "Why did you stop?"
"Waiting for you," Kissel said, and started a conversation with Toarsen about the relative merits of two different types of saddles as he urged his horse forward.
Seraph had been just behind Toarsen. She coaxed her gelding until she and Tier were riding shoulder by shoulder. "My mending isn't holding," she told him. "I'll try to fix it later."
After dinner, she tried to patch it again, but, to her frustration, the tigereye Lark's ring would not or could not cooperate again, and she could do nothing.
Even so, when he took out the lute and played a few tunes, he had not the slightest bit of difficulty. Seraph didn't sing, just sat near him and stared out into the darkness.
When it was time to try and sleep, Tier held her and wiped the tears from her eyes. "If I can't sing, will you still love me?" he quipped.
"I'd love you if you couldn't talk." She thumped his chest lightly. "Perhaps more."
He stifled his laugh so he didn't wake the whole camp. "I love you, too."
The next afternoon they came to the beginning of the worst part of the trip, a high pass that lay between them and Shadow's Fall. The steep climb spread the distance between riders until Tier could look down the face of the mountain and see nearly a half a league between him and Jes, who was walking behind the last rider. Tier stopped Skew at a wide spot in the trail and sent Lehr, who had been with him, riding on ahead while Tier waited to bring up the rear with Jes.
Lehr's chestnut mare's coat was dark with sweat, but her breath came easy. It bothered her not at all when Skew stopped and she had to go on alone.
There was a small flat area a couple of leagues ahead, just before the highest and steepest part of the pass, where Lehr could start setting up camp while the stragglers trailed in. Tier was worried about how Phoran's men's horses were going to handle the climb. In his experience, the horses felt the height of the mountains worse than the people.
Rinnie's horse, with its lighter burden, was the first to appear down the trail. She stopped it next to Tier while Gura dropped to rest, panting happily.
"Papa," she said. "There's a storm front coming behind us with snow. I'm trying to send it around us, but I need to know which direction we'll be heading."
"East," he told her. "East and a little north for a couple of days yet. If you can hold it off us for the next two days, we'll be back down, so it'll come down as rain rather than snow."
"There's some snow on the ground that direction already," she said. "We might have trouble coming back this way.'
"We'll find that trouble when we come to it," he told her. "We might have to come back a different way. This is the most direct route, but riding home, a few extra weeks won't make much difference."
She nodded. When her horse started on up again, Tier said, "I'm glad we thought to take our Cormorant rather than leave her in Redern, where she'd be useless."
She gave him a grin and turned her attention to riding the uneven surge of her horse's uphill scramble. Gura hesitated, gave Tier a long look, then took off after Rinnie.
Seraph appeared before Rinnie was quite out of sight. He kissed her as she passed and told her Rinnie was trying to hold off a storm.
"It's never quite warmed up today," she said. "I'll make certain there's something hot for you when you come into camp."
"I'll look forward to it. See you tonight," he said.
When she was gone, he dismounted and slipped the bit so Skew could graze on the sparse edible vegetation. The trees so high up were all fir and pine, and grass didn't grow well under evergreens. All the horses would be a little hungry for a day or two.
He sat on his heels and waited.
Phoran came next, with Toarsen at his side. Phoran's hard-headed stallion looked none the worse for wear, but Toarsen's horse was breathing hard.
"This is hard on the horses," Tier said. "You might have to walk some of the steeper bits."
It was a longer wait for the next rider, Ielian.
"Is someone riding with the Emperor?" he asked.
Tier nodded. "Toarsen was. It looked as though Phoran was holding Blade back so Toarsen could stay with them."
"Good," said Ielian.
Hennea came next. "Jes told me to go ahead and let you know that the others are fine. Kissel and Rufort are taking the climb slower to save their horses. Jes told them to."
"He's right," said Tier. "Seraph and Lehr should have camp mostly up by the time you get there."
It was getting dark by the time Tier and the others caught first sight of the campfire above them.
"Not far now, lads," Tier told them, standing in the stirrups to loosen his knees which were stiffening from the strain of the ride.
"What's that?" asked Rufort. "Down there below us, see that flicker of light? Is there someone following?"
"Ah," Tier said, stopping. "I'd wondered if we'd see them."
"See whom?" asked Jes.
"What, not whom, I think," Tier said. "When I was up here last there were lights and voices and... other things all night. I thought it might have been altitude sickness. I was coming from the other direction - we haven't hit the high stuff yet - and I was pretty well exhausted."
"So we shouldn't worry about it?" Rufort's horse took advantage of the pause to rub its nose against its knee.
"I wouldn't say that," replied Tier. "These are the Ragged Mountains, and there are some unpleasant things round about. But these didn't hurt me last time, so we'll hope for the best. Come. Camp awaits us."
The camp was just as Tier remembered it, full of small rocks that were ready to punish people for trying to sleep and little grass for the horses.
The odd lights continued to flicker here and there, as if there were men carrying lanterns a hundred yards away.
"There's something here," Seraph said, after Tier told them all about the lights that had followed him down the mountain the only time he'd come this way. "It doesn't feel quite like magic to me. It has no pattern."
There were rustles in the bushes, too, that set both Jes and Gura off a couple of times, only to come back frustrated.
Seraph was banking the fire after everyone had set out their bedrolls and was trying to sleep when she jerked abruptly upright. "Did you hear that?"
"No," Tier said, sitting up to look around.
"I heard nothing," said the Guardian.
Seraph crawled into the bedding with Tier, and muttered, "It's bad enough to hear voices no one else does, but it's worse when you don't know what they're saying."
"Names," said Hennea, and Tier realized that she hadn't said anything since he'd come into camp. Travelers were like that. "I started hearing them at dusk. Don't you recognize what this place is, Seraph? When the wizards who lived fled Colossae, some of the ghosts of the dead followed them. The wizards bound them to the side of a mountain to guard the way. They called the place the Mountain of Memories or the Mountain of Names, and the ghosts stayed and kept any other spirits from following their killers. The lights, rustles, and a few voices that try to bind you to this place with their names. The magic that holds them here has faded, and in a hundred years there'll be nothing here at all."
Seraph shook her head. "I never heard that story."
"I've heard of the Mountain of Names," said Tier, "though nothing that told me just what or where it was. I wish I'd known that it was some magic or other when I came here before. I thought I was losing my mind."
"Why did you come up here in the first place, Papa?" asked Jes. No, Tier corrected himself, hearing the darkness in his voice, the Guardian was the one who asked. "This isn't the kind of place you find a lot of animals to trap."
"I was on my way home," Tier said. "It was a particularly mild winter, so I'd traveled farther than usual hunting winter furs - that's when I ran into Shadow's Fall." He paused. "It spooked me when I realized where I was, and I headed home by straight directions rather than backtrack the way I'd come. This isn't the easiest route, but the only other way I know would take us weeks longer."
"How did you know it was Shadow's Fall?" asked Phoran.
"It could be nothing else. You'll understand what I mean when we get there," said Tier. "I left as fast as Skew could go, and I don't think I slept a wink until I was home again."
"You scared Mother," said Lehr. "I remember that a little. I think I was younger than Rinnie is. You came home and collapsed without a word. Mother thought you'd caught some illness and sent Jes and me for Karadoc."
"That was the only time you were here?" asked Ielian. "How do you know where you're going?"
"There speaks a city man," said Rufort, but the smile in his voice robbed it of any offense. "Men who roam the mountains learn fast to tell east from west and gauge how far they've traveled - or they don't survive."
"You've been in the mountains?" asked Phoran.
"Grew up not far from the Deerhavens. I had an uncle... well he was my mother's cousin, really. He knew the mountains."
"Tier's a Bard," said Seraph, snuggling down against Tier. "He remembers things."
They tried to sleep again, most of them. Tier listened to the camp quiet down. Jes didn't bother lying down, and Tier tried to convince himself the rustlings he heard were Jes, so he could sleep. But Jes seldom made that much noise, so Tier lay awake most of the night.
The next morning Tier made everyone bundle up and had Jes double-check the horses to make certain they were in shape for the day's travel.
Peaks rose, icy-covered and barren around them as they started on the worst part of the trail. Lehr took the lead again since there was little chance for Lehr to miss where they were going: until they were on their way down, there was only one way the horses could take.
This part was hard on the horses, and Tier could make better speed on foot. His knees weren't any worse than they'd ever been after a day of riding up a mountainside; they'd handle walking better than riding.
They hit snow at midday, but it was all a few weeks old. So high up, Tier could look off and see the storm clouds that Rinnie was holding off as best she could.
"Papa, my head aches," she told him.
"Mine, too, love. It's the heights and the glare of the sun off the snow. Close your eyes, your horse will follow the others. We'll find the top in a few hours. Once we get down the other side, you'll feel better."
She swayed a little. "The storm doesn't like me pushing it away. It wants to come this way."
He didn't know how much she could do without risk, and Seraph and Hennea were farther ahead.
"Be careful, love. You don't have to hold off the storm forever, just a little bit. Whatever you can do helps."
She nodded and closed her eyes.
Ielian rode up. "My horse is sound," he said. "She can ride with me for a while if that helps."
"Thanks." Tier smiled. "There's another steep climb just over that ridge, though. Best she stay where she is."
Ielian cupped a hand across his forehead to block the sun and looked up. "Ridge? I thought that was the top."
Tier shook his head and smiled. "Not for a little while yet. My best reckoning is that we've a league or so before we see the top."
He wasn't off by much. A little over an hour later, he leaned against Rinnie's horse and watched as Toarsen and Kissel staged a snowball fight at the crest of the mountain. It didn't last long because it was too cold, but everyone was cheerful as they started down.
They were an hour from the spot Tier thought they should camp when Rinnie tapped him on the shoulder.
"The storm's coming," she said.
"That's all right." He patted her leg, then swung up behind her. "Go ahead and sleep."
Rinnie slept until they stopped for the night. She grumbled when Jes pulled her off the horse's back, and fell back asleep as soon as he set her down on her blankets.
Lehr made sweet tea and saw to it that everyone drank two cups while Seraph busied herself making a stew of a little water, salted venison, and turnips. It took forever to soften the meat, and the tea, though it had boiled furiously, was not very hot.
With Rinnie's warning in mind, Tier sent Phoran and the boys out collecting tree boughs while he tied up the oilcloth tarp to provide some protection while they slept. The storm hit in the night and followed them down the mountain, turning from snow to rain before letting up at last.
A day off to rest and dry their clothing followed by five long days of travel found them riding on a game trail through heavily forested but mostly level ground. They saw no sign of other people. Everyone knew if they settled too near to Shadow's Fall, crops didn't grow right - as if the Unnamed King had robbed the land of some virtue. Evergreens did all right. There might have been some way to make a living cutting trees and hauling them to the grasslands in the southeast, but the Ragged Mountains made people uneasy if they stayed in them too long.
There were several other Rederni besides Tier who collected animal fur in the fall and winter, but most of them stayed out for a shorter time than Tier. They had stories to tell about things that followed them for weeks without leaving a track or sign. Tier'd had a few odd encounters himself.
Though the trail they were on was flat, towering peaks rose around them. When Tier looked back he could see the highest mountain, a long ridge with a barren red top edged in snowy white with a narrow notch that almost bisected it - the pass they'd taken over the mountain.
Hopefully, Tier thought, as Skew forded a shallow stream, they would be riding back that way in a few weeks and return to Redern - just as the people who'd survived the fall of the Shadowed King had forged their way over that same pass to a place where they felt safe, protected by the steep slope of Redern Mountain.
Then he'd be able to sing again. Skew tossed his head, and Tier loosened his reins, letting them lie slack.
Last night Tier had been singing and lost himself - at least that's what it had felt like. One moment he was singing, and the next he was lying on the ground with Seraph patting his face.
They said he'd just stopped singing, stopped moving, then gone into convulsions. Phoran and Jes had held him down until they stopped. Hennea and Seraph had conferred for a long time last night, then decided that the fit had been brought about by his use of Order while it was under attack by the Path's mages' spell.
Tier didn't want to do anything ever to put that look in Seraph's eyes again, so he'd decided to stop telling stories and singing songs until - well, just until.
Seraph tried not to watch Tier all the time, tried not to look. She and Hennea had spent most of the evening trying to locate the magic that was destroying Tier's Order, but they couldn't. There was nothing to be found, just as there had been nothing to find when they had cleaned Tier of spells when they'd freed him from the Path.
Hennea knew something of the spells they'd used because she'd been there for the first part. Tier remembered a little about it as well, though the Masters had tried to blank his memory of it.
Rufort, who was older than the other three former Passerines, had been there at a ceremony when the binding of Order to gem had been done in front of an audience. He did the best he could, but he wasn't a wizard and, as Tier said dryly, about half the things the Masters did on stage were performance rather than magic.
If Phoran's Memory were to show up again, it might be able to tell them more. However, it hadn't come back to feed since it killed Phoran's would-be assassins in Taela, though Seraph didn't know why. Since Memories were rare, formed only sometimes when a Raven died by murder or betrayal, no one knew much about them. They formed quickly after the Raven's death, usually while the killer was still in the room. Then they avenged the dead Raven and dissipated. With the Masters protected from the Memory by magic, if Phoran hadn't been nearby to feed upon when the Raven died, it would have been attached to the gem as they had planned - and become one of the gems that none of the wizards could use.
She'd never heard of a Memory feeding from anyone other than its intended prey, so she didn't know the rules that governed what it did to Phoran. Until the Memory returned, she and Hennea could only use what information they had to understand how the spell on Tier worked.
From information the former Passerines gave them, they believed the spell had been done in three parts. The first, which Hennea had seen, was a binding ceremony. It hadn't worked on Hennea, and neither the Masters nor Hennea knew why. She hadn't seen the gem bind to her Order, so she didn't know how they managed it. Tier, being a Bard, knew only that it hurt and left him feeling sullied.
The Path kept its Ordered prisoners for a year and a day before successfully stealing the Orders to bind to the gems. Some of that was because magic worked better on a person who is known to the magic wielder. Seraph could work magic on one of her family far easier than she could ensorcel someone she didn't know. But, some magics just took a long time to work. The binding of Order to gem had to be as strong or stronger than the binding of Order to Order Bearer; it probably just took time.
The second part must have been when the gem gradually started pulling the Order to it. That's the phase Tier seemed to be in. Toarsen said both of the Ravens who had preceded Tier in captivity had begun having episodes toward the end of their stay. Hennea believed that meant someone had worked a second spell, after they'd left Taela. There was only one Path mage left after the Memory had gotten through with them: the Shadowed himself. He must have the gem that was bound to Tier's Order.
The third part of the Path's spell was where the wizard severed the tie between Order and Order Bearer. It might not need magic at all, just the death of the Order Bearer.
Both Phoran's and Tier's fates were tied together: destroy the Shadowed and both would be safe. Brewydd's last message indicated either the Shadowed was in Colossae, or they would find some way to deal with him there. Seraph glanced at Tier and away before he noticed. She would find the Shadowed, she vowed silently. She would find him and she would see that he never bothered her or hers again. Tier was riding alone in front today. He wasn't talking much, and, though she knew that he could be as comfortable in silence as he was in a storm of words, she worried about him. However, she knew her fussing bothered him more than it helped, so she let him avoid her for now.
The game trail they'd been following emptied into a broad, flat meadow half a league across and, as Seraph could judge it, three or more leagues long. Seraph's horse took four steps onto the meadow and stopped. Seraph realized she'd pulled the horse to a halt, but couldn't say why.
"I know this place," said Jes, who'd been walking beside Hennea just behind Seraph.
Phoran came up next and stopped just beyond Seraph. He turned Blade in a rapid circle and looked through the trees as if he expected to see a waiting army. But there was nothing except a gentle breeze that moved the tops of the evergreens.
Tier looked back and saw them stopped. He turned Skew around and began cantering back to them.
"Shadow's Fall," said Ielian in an awed voice, as Tier rode up.
"There are the remains of buildings on somewhere ahead," Tier told them. "I don't know if we'll pass by close enough to see them. According to the map, our path lies directly through this valley. The first time I came here, I came into it from the north about two leagues from here and cut back toward home before I'd gone very far."
"It's just a meadow," Kissel said, sounding a little disappointed. "Though it's bigger than I thought."
"Five hundred years doesn't leave much behind," Toarsen said. "Leather rots and steel rusts."
He was right, but something was calling to Seraph. She dismounted and walked forward a few steps. It wasn't magic, not really. Just something that cried out to her affinity with the past. Kneeling, she put her hand on the ground and came up with a gold ring. There was a deep mark on it such as a knife or sword might make upon the softer, more durable metal. As soon as she touched it, more of them tried to attract her attention. She'd always thought the reading of objects was a passive thing, but these remnants of a long-ago battle waited for her to read them.
"They're calling to me." She felt as if the air she was breathing was too heavy. "All of the things left here with stories to tell, stories ending here." She closed her hand on the ring. "He was too old to fight, but there was no one left. No one but old men, women, and children. He had arthritis in his shoulder, so he used his old sword with his left hand. His first wife, his childhood sweetheart, gave him this ring when the world was different, and he was the privileged son of a... some sort of mercer, but the cloth he dealt in came from across the seas."
She dropped the ring and remounted. "It will take more than five centuries to clean Shadow's Fall. I don't want to linger here."
Jes, who'd been shifting from one foot to the other, abruptly swung up into the saddle behind Hennea as they started off again. "I can't walk on this ground," he said.
Gura, his tail down and tucked between his hind legs, kept close to Rinnie's horse rather than bounding around exploring as he usually did.
"I wonder if their bones still lie here," Tier said to Seraph, his voice a little dreamy as they rode through the old battlefield. "Red Ernave and the Shadowed King, I mean. Did the remnants bury their hero, or were they too afraid of the Shadowed's dead body? Were there scavengers? Wolves and mountain cats or other things, things that had served the Shadowed like the troll Seraph killed."
"I'd have let the dead lie," said Rufort, who was riding beside them. "There would have been too much to do, trying to ensure remnants of the Army of Man survived. It would be a poor repayment of the price Ernave and all their beloved dead had paid to be so busy burying the past they lost their future. I've heard said that a battlefield's as dangerous a month after the battle as it was during the fighting."
"Disease," said Tier. "I agree with you. Best to save the living and let the dead lie. Remember them in song and story - that's a better memorial than any grave marker."
They saw the remains of buildings, though they didn't ride close enough to see more than a few broken stone blocks that looked to be as large as their horses.
"I can almost see it," said Phoran in a hushed voice. "The smoke and the sound of screaming. The terrible task of fighting foes who died so hard."
But even as great a battlefield as Shadow's Fall had to end sometime. There were trees in front of them, marking the boundary between old floodplain and foothill, when Seraph stopped her horse again.
"Wait," she said. "There's something."
"Yes," agreed Hennea. She rode off to the right a little, where three ragged blocks had been stacked one atop another. They were sunk into the soil a little. Hennea handed Jes her reins and, throwing a leg over the mare's neck, slid off, leaving Jes still mounted. She crouched down so she could get a good look at the stones.
"Doverg Ernave atrecht venabichaek," she said, then translated, "Red Ernave defended us here and died."
"They left a marker after all," said Tier. He looked around, then he turned his horse in a slow circle, and an expression of growing astonishment appeared on his face. He gave a disbelieving laugh. "It's just as I pictured it," he said. "I wonder how much of the story of Shadow's Fall is true?"
"I don't like it here," said Rinnie. "And there's a rainstorm coming soon. I don't want to be here if the sun's not shining. I don't think it would be a good thing."
Hennea dusted off her hands. Jes gave her a hand, and she swung up behind him this time.
"I don't think so either," Seraph told her daughter. She wanted away from the things that beckoned her with their stories of the long-ago dead.
They had to stop, though, at the end of the battlefield because, where their maps had shown a road, there was no trail at all.
Rufort got off his horse and stretched, while Tier and the women tried to compare the old maps to the current reality. He took the opportunity to look behind them at the wide flat-land with its short yellow grass.
Shadow's Fall.
How had he, Rufort Do-Nothing, come to such adventures? The third son of the fifth son of the Sept of Bendit Keep, Rufort had fought for everything he had, fought siblings and cousins until he was banished to Taela.
He'd joined the Passerines when the place was offered, hoping for somewhere to belong, to be valued. The Path had valued him, all right. He wasn't stupid. It hadn't taken him long to see that the Passerines were throwaway troops in a game the Masters of the Path were directing, but by then he'd also known there was no way out except death. But he had nothing to live for anyway, and the Path gave him a way to use the anger he kept bottled inside.
It had taken two things to make him rethink his attitude. The first was a beating that had taught him that, no matter how big and tough you are, there is always someone bigger and tougher. The second had occurred one night in the hall just outside of his room in an almost-forgotten corner of the palace, when he'd looked at the dead body of one of his fellow Passerines and decided he didn't want to die.
Rufort was a survivor.
He looked over at Phoran, who'd given up on a quick resolution and stripped his big grey stallion of its saddle and was inspecting a place where the horse's hide had rubbed thin on the ride over the mountains. Who'd have thought that Rufort of Bendit Keep would find himself embarked on an adventure with the Emperor - and such an emperor.
Rufort had honestly thought that in the Emperor's Own he would be a simple guard, a glorified servant - which was better than dead. But Phoran had never treated him that way, not in the practice fields before this trip, and not during it. Phoran asked his advice and followed it - or explained why he didn't.
Oh, Rufort knew the things that people said about Phoran. He'd seen the Emperor passed out in a drunken stupor more than once. Had watched the careless cruelties spawned by dissatisfaction and boredom - and hadn't Rufort done the same and worse for the same reasons?
But all that had changed. Rufort wasn't certain exactly how or why it had changed - except that Tier, a farmer of Redern and a Bard, had been loosed among the Passerines and changed Rufort's life forever. He had a place now, a position he was honored to serve in, and honorable men to serve with and under.
Toarsen and Kissel were men he could follow. He looked at them a minute as they chatted softly together. Men now, both of them, not the boys that they, and he also, had been at the beginning of the summer, men directed their own destinies rather than dancing to the tune of another's piping.
Rufort chose to serve his emperor. He'd follow Toarsen and Kissel as his captains gladly. But Phoran, Phoran was a man that Rufort of Bendit Keep, Rufort Survivor, would lay down his life for.
He laughed softly to himself at his overwrought (however true) thoughts. He looked around and saw there was a place not far away where a line of dwarfed willows outcompeted the fir trees. Probably a creek, he thought. They'd filled their water bags and jugs that morning; but he was from drier country than this and had learned never to pass water by.
He left his horse with the others and went exploring.
Ielian found him staring down at a mostly dry creek bed.
"They're still trying to decide which way to ride," Ielian said. "The maps disagree."
Rufort grunted. "What do you see when you look here?" he asked.
"Rocks and mud," Ielian said cautiously, in a manner of a man who'd been the butt of too many jokes. Being a Passerine made you wary after a while.
"I don't want to move, or I might lose this perspective," Rufort said. "Would you go get..." Whom? Tier? Toarsen or Kissel? "Lehr. Would you get Lehr for me?"
Ielian nodded and ran back the way he'd come. The others weren't far, so it didn't take him long to come back with Lehr.
"What is it?" Lehr asked.
"What do you see?" Rufort asked again, nodding at the creek bed.
Lehr looked, and when he crouched, Rufort knew he was right.
"You see it, too?" he asked.
Lehr nodded, stood up, and picked his way down the bank and stood in a dry part of the creek bed, looking first one way, then the other. He reached into the sluggishly flowing water and came up with a large, squarish rock, which he carried back to Rufort.
"Good eyes," Lehr said.
"What is it?" Ielian peered at the rock.
"A cobble," said Rufort, patting Ielian on the back. "A cobble put in a road to keep it from getting muddy. Streams meander, Ielian, my city-bred friend, but this one runs straight as an arrow. Straight as a road."
Lehr grinned, "Rufort's found the road to Colossae."
Rinnie was right, it did rain. For the next four days water drizzled from the skies as if it were spring rather than late summer.
"There's too much water to keep it from raining, Mother," she told Seraph. "And the storm is going the same direction we are. It's better for it to fall now when it can do it gently, than if I hold it off, and we get flooded."
Everything they owned was wet or damp by the second day. Since they had been heading more north than east since they left Shadow's Fall, Seraph figured that they would be fortunate if they didn't run into more snow before they found Colossae.
In some places, Rufort's road had become so overgrown it was impossible to tell roadbed from undisturbed forest floor, as it disappeared under years of soil and reappeared a half mile later. Following the old road was made harder when the forest thickened until it was difficult to see more than a hundred yards in any direction.
In the early afternoon of the fourth day of rain, Jes, who had taken Gura ahead to check out the trail, came loping back from his explorations.
"River ahead," he said. "Road goes across."
"We can't get any wetter," said Phoran, with a grin. "I just hope it's shallower than the last river we crossed. I'd hate to float away when we've come so far."
Seraph looked closely at Jes, who was even wetter than most of them from the waist downward. The dog panting happily at his feet was soaked through. "Did you try to cross it, Jes?"
He nodded. "It's fast," he said. "Not too deep for the horses, though."
"We could have sent one of the horses across," complained Hennea. "You don't have any more dry clothes."
Seraph, who had been about to make the same complaint, closed her mouth.
Jes looked down at himself and shook his head. "It's only water, Hennea. We are all wet."
"Wait until you're chafed in all the wrong places from wearing wet clothes," Hennea said. Then, "I'll try and dry out some things tonight when it isn't raining."
Seraph smiled to herself.
As Jes promised, the road took them to the edge of a river, where the bank led gently down into the water. Upstream and downstream, where mountains arose on either side, the river was narrow and swift, but here it spread out to twice its normal width.
"They must have had a bridge here," said Tier, riding beside Seraph. "In the spring you wouldn't have been able to ford it at all. I'd not want to try and take a wagon across here even now."
"It feels as though no one has ever been here before," said Ielian, just behind them.
"I feel it, too," Seraph agreed. "Even the things that are man-made - the road and such - feel as if they've been around so long that they've been cleaned of human touch."
"We'll find a good flat area to camp," Tier told Seraph, when Jes, who had waited until everyone else had safely crossed, arrived dripping and smiling. Tier started up the rise of land that edged the river, still talking. "If Rinnie can put a hold on the rain for a few hours, we'll rig something to hang up clothes around a fire..." His voice trailed off, and he stopped his horse.
Seraph stopped her horse beside him and looked down into the valley stretched below them. It was a sight worthy of a Bard's silence.
Colossae.