Raven's Strike

CHAPTER 9

Tier watched quietly as Phoran fell silent at last, leaning against one end of the table and watching the flames in the fireplace leap and crackle. He moved less like an overweight courtier and more like a fighter than he had when Tier had last seen him. He still carried extra weight that left his face softened, but there was muscle now under the padded shoulders of his velvet tunic.

“I notice Toarsen and Kissel are with you and not at Gerant,” commented Tier.

He saw Toarsen hide a grin.

Phoran smiled. “I told them to find a few of the Emperor’s Own who could be trusted, and they decided they trusted themselves the best. Gerant and Avar are keeping the rest of the Passerines… of the Emperor’s Own busy while we’re off running about.”

The smile died and he walked to the fireplace, bracing himself on the mantel. “I’ve come here,” he said in a low voice, “hoping that you can save me again.”

“I don’t know much about Memories,” said Tier. “Seraph might be more help, and Lehr is riding to find Brewydd tomorrow morning.”

“Who is Brewydd?” asked Toarsen.

“The healer from the Traveling clan that helped us with the Path,” explained Tier.

“The old woman?”

Tier nodded. “They left us before we got quite this far. It might take Lehr a couple of days to find them.” He thought a moment. “Brewydd told us the Memory would leave when it had its vengeance. Maybe it doesn’t feel its vengeance has been fulfilled yet.”

“The wizard who escaped,” said Phoran.

Tier nodded. “The Shadowed.” Tier had told the Emperor about their suspicions before he’d left Taela, but Toarsen started at the name. “We’re not happy about his escaping either. If that’s what’s keeping the Memory around, then maybe we can help. We’ve been looking for him ourselves.”

“The Shadowed?” asked Toarsen harshly. “He was killed a long time ago.”

“Not the same Shadowed,” said Seraph, her voice husky with fatigue. “Not the Nameless King. This is another wizard who found a way to tap into the power of the Stalker. He doesn’t seemed to have amassed the same kind of power yet—and we don’t know why.”

“You’re certain there is another Shadowed?” asked Phoran.

Tier nodded, but he didn’t tell the Emperor their certainty was based mostly upon the word of Ellevanal. Somehow he thought Phoran would find it more believable if Tier didn’t explain too much.

“What is the Stalker?” asked Toarsen.

“The guilt of the Travelers,” she said. “Though I’d ask you to keep it to yourself. A very long time ago, before there were Travelers, there was a city of wizardry, where mages collected to learn from each other and from the library there. They were an arrogant bunch, trusting to their great power to save them when they delved into things best not touched.”

“They created something,” said Lehr. “Something that all of their power and learning could not control. So the wizards sacrificed the city and everyone in it, except for themselves, and bound the Stalker. Then, knowing that the bindings were imperfect, the surviving wizards vowed to fight the damage it could still do. They became the Travelers—and the Shadowed is one of the things they fight.”

Phoran rubbed his face, and Tier could see the fatigue that bore down upon him. “So we have to kill this Shadowed in order to rid me of the Memory?”

Tier shrugged. “I don’t know for certain. Have you asked the Memory?”

“It hasn’t shown up since it killed my attackers.”

“It’s not feeding from you?” asked Seraph, straightening. “That’s dangerous, Phoran. If it’s still bound to you and quits feeding, it will fade.”

“That’s good, though, isn’t it?” asked Toarsen.

“It’ll take the Emperor with it when it goes.” Seraph’s voice had a bite to it, but Toarsen didn’t seem to mind.

“If it killed enough people, it wouldn’t have to feed for a while. A mage might feed it for longer—and since the Masters were the ones who killed the Raven who spawned the Memory, that feeding might hold it longer than other people’s death.” Hennea’s voice sounded calm and alert, with none of the fatigue that dragged at his wife’s.

There was a rustle of her mattress, and Hennea emerged, her hair hanging in tangled skeins over her shoulders. It made her look nearer to Rinnie’s age than Seraph’s.

“Phoran, you remember Hennea,” Tier said.

The Emperor nodded. “Of course. Raven.”

“Your Highness,” Hennea said, as composed as if she had been wearing court dress instead of a thin nightshirt. “Can you summon the Memory if you wish?” she asked.

“No.” Phoran had tried to call it every way he could think of.

“Well enough,” said Seraph. “It’ll come eventually. Hennea, did you hear Phoran’s story?”

Hennea nodded. “How much of this do your men know, Phoran?”

“Toarsen knows it all, of course, and Kissel,” Phoran said. “I’ve told the others I’ve had a spell of some sort laid upon me by the Masters and you”—he swept his hand to include everyone in the room—“might be able to help me.” His mouth tightened. “I don’t dare trust them with the whole of it.”

“It always surprised me that Rufort was recruited by the Path,” said Tier. “I’d stake my life that he’s as honorable as any man I’ve known.”

“He’s calmed down a lot this past year,” said Toarsen. “He used to have a terrible temper. He’d go out and have a few at some tavern, then pick a fight with the biggest fool he could find. He quit doing that after Kissel beat the—”

Phoran cleared his throat and Toarsen ducked his head. “Beg pardon, my ladies. Kissel beat him pretty badly, and he stopped picking fights. Rufort told me once a man with a broken leg had a lot of time to lie on his back and think about what he was doing with his life.”

Toarsen paused, then said, “They’d have had him killed soon—the Raptors and the Path’s Masters. I think they might have already tried. One of the other Passerines was found dead not far from Rufort’s room a few weeks before Tier was brought to us. He was a nasty piece of work, and no one missed him—but Kissel, who saw the body, told me the person who killed him was a big man like Rufort. We didn’t think about it much, until you showed us the Path killed more of the Passerines than it graduated to Raptor status.”

“Ielian I don’t know as well,” said Tier. “I remember him being quiet—and one of the better swordsmen.”

“He’s a good man,” Toarsen said. “He gave an excellent account of himself in the battle in the Eyrie. There are few men I’d rather have at my back.” He yawned.

Seraph stood up. “It’s time for sleep. Phoran, you can take our room—”

But he was already shaking his head. “No, my lady. That I won’t do. I’d never drive a lady from her bed. The barn is good enough for us—a bed of hay will be far softer than anything we’ve slept on these last weeks.”

“Fast riding,” commented Tier, “to make that trip in so short a time.”

“Toarsen knows all the shortcuts, and our horses are grain-fed,” said Phoran. He took a step toward the door, then stopped. “You didn’t tell me why you were already sending Lehr out for the Healer.”

“I brought back a gift from the Masters,” said Tier. “Hopefully Brewydd will be able to take care of it. Nothing for you to worry about. Jes, can you take them out and get them settled with the others?”

“Wait,” said Jes. “Hennea, before you slept you said to remind you about Papa, maps, and Colossae. You said it was important.”

She frowned. “I don’t remember.”

“You will.” Jes said confidently.

Lehr closed his eyes and let his body absorb the rhythm of the mare’s trot. He’d never ridden a horse like this one.

Akavith may have sold her for far less than she’d have fetched from a nobleman’s house, but it was still more money than Lehr had ever held in his hand before.

The chestnut mare shied a little, and Lehr opened his eyes to see what startled her. He didn’t see anything, but he watched her mobile ears. There was something in the woods to the left.

It might have been nothing. But they’d been moving for several hours, and she’d handled flapping pheasants and a startled rabbit with remarkable aplomb.

He asked her to walk, and she shook her head in protest before slowing to a prance. See, she told him with each dancing step, I am not tired, and this is too slow.

Lehr breathed in and out slowly, as Brewydd had taught him. Quiet your mind, boy. Let your senses talk to you.

He smelled it then, wild and frightening, the monster lurking in the shadows to eat you when you weren’t cautious enough.

“Jes,” he said, drawing the mare to a halt. “What are you doing here?”

The wolf emerged from the trees as if he had just been waiting for Lehr’s call. Cornsilk raised her delicate head and watched him, but she didn’t tense under Lehr’s hands. The wolf looked at him with Jes’s dark eyes.

“I don’t need protection,” Lehr said, answering his own question.

The wolf sat down and scratched his ear with a hind leg, then rose to his feet with a snort that might have been a mild sneeze. He trotted up to the mare, ignoring Lehr entirely, and exchanged a muzzle-to-muzzle greeting. Then he started on down the narrow hunting trail without a backward look.

“Curse it, Jes,” muttered Lehr. “I don’t need help.”

The wolf had disappeared behind a curve in the trail.

“Company is not so bad, though,” he told the mare.

She snorted and leapt forward into a canter when he shifted his weight. Lehr grinned and squeezed a little with his calves. With a joyful toss of her head, she took off like a startled jackrabbit. When they blazed past Jes, he gave a joyful yip and joined in the chase.

It took them three days to reach Colbern.

As promised, the city was walled. It looked to be smaller than Leheigh, but Lehr supposed that was an effect of the wall itself. The space within would be limited, so the people lived closer together.

The gates of the city were not as impressive as the wall, being both lower and less sturdy. A battering ram would have them down in short order. There hadn’t been a war in the area for generations, though, so Lehr supposed the gates were adequate. They were shut tight with makeshift yellow flags hanging over the top as a clear warning to passersby that the inhabitants were fighting a plague.

Jes flattened his ears and growled low.

“I smell it, too,” Lehr told his brother. The stench of death—disease and rotting bodies. He pulled his tunic up so it covered his nose and dismounted.

Cornsilk appeared undisturbed by the smell, but she had been trained as a hunter. Blood and death would not fret her as they would most horses.

“You’d better be a human, Jes, when someone opens the gate,” Lehr glanced over his shoulder when he spoke—to meet his brother’s bland, human face.

“I like this mare,” Jes said as he rubbed underneath the cheek strap of Cornsilk’s sweaty headstall. “She’s pretty.”

Lehr pounded on the gate again, but no one answered. He backed up a few steps and leapt up to catch the top edge of the gate. He swung his legs and hooked a heel, then rolled over the top and landed on his feet on the other side.

Two- and three-story buildings looming over narrow streets gave the town a claustrophobic air, which was not helped by the utter lack of movement. Lehr looked around warily, but saw no signs of watchers.

He pulled the heavy bars off the gate and opened it.

“I haven’t seen anyone,” he told his brother. “Keep alert.”

The Guardian gave him a smile full of teeth and led Cornsilk onto the cobbles of the town road. “Can you tell if the Travelers were here?”

Lehr walked back to the dirt path around the gate. He took a deep breath and sat on his heels to contemplate the ground. It took him a while, because there had been a rainstorm sometime in the past week that had blurred and thinned the traces he was looking for.

“They’re here,” he said, coming back to take Cornsilk’s reins. “They came in and never left.”

The Guardian looked around the silent town. “I’m not sure that is a good thing.”

Lehr had been feeling the same way, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He tried to dismiss the eerie feeling of the town as a side effect of Jes’s Order—but if that were so, why did he have such a strong urge to move closer to his brother?

He kept his eyes on the road, trusting that the Guardian would keep watch so that he could concentrate on following the traces the clan had left as they walked on the narrow, cobbled streets.

They came to an inn with a stable attached, and the Guardian caught his arm.

“Wait here a moment, I want to check something,” he said then disappeared inside the stables. He was out almost as quickly as he was in. “The horses are all dead,” he said briefly. “Killed, but not by disease. They’ve been dead at least a week judging by the maggots. No effort made to butcher them. There were a couple of people in there, too. One dead of stab wounds, the other of disease. I didn’t get close enough to tell how long they’ve been dead.”

“Let’s find the Travelers and go home,” said Lehr, increasing his pace down the road. He didn’t think they’d find the Clan of Rongier the Librarian alive, but he had to find them anyway. He owed Brewydd that much.

As they got farther into Colbern, the stench grew worse. There were barricades across some of the streets, futile stacks of household goods to keep plague victims away. They saw scavenger birds, rats, and once, a feral dog, but no people.

They found Rongier’s clan in one of the small squares of land left open for grazing and forage of such animals as the townspeople kept. The Guardian knelt beside the first body and sniffed, without touching.

“They’ve been dead for a week, more or less. Like the horses.”

Lehr crouched by a woman who lay facedown, her pale hair reminding him too closely of his mother’s. She, like the rest of Rongier’s clan, hadn’t died of plague. They’d been killed by the people they had been trying to help.

He touched her hair—as long as her face was downward, she was a stranger. “Someone thought they might carry the disease like the horses you found in the stable, and, I suppose, the cats, dogs, chickens, and goats we haven’t seen.”

He turned her body over gently, as if she might be hurt if he were too rough. He’d seen her cooking beside his mother, and straightening the shirt on a toddler, but he didn’t know her name.

He rose to his feet and walked by the bodies, putting names together for the death roll running in his head. “Here’s Benroln,” he said.

Lehr could tell by the dead villagers who surrounded him—and by the way his body had been mutilated—that the clan leader had given good account of himself.

“Isfain,” said the Guardian in such an odd voice that Lehr looked up. Isfain, he remembered, was the one who had been set to watch Jes when he’d been held by the foundrael.

“Are you all right?” Lehr asked.

The Guardian nodded. “I thought I wanted him dead,” he said, then walked on to the next body. “Kors.”

They were all dead, men, women, and—heartrendingly—children. The red-haired twins who had always been up to some mischief or other were laid out formally, their throats neatly cut. The toddler who had sucked her thumb whenever she caught his gaze was crumpled in a little broken ball.

There were townsmen among the dead here, too. A few armed with swords might be guardsmen, but most of them had been armed with cudgels or tools. Desperate men do desperate things, was one of Papa’s sayings.

Lehr turned from the body of a dead man who held a sharp saddler’s knife and almost stumbled over a woman’s body.

Her ice-blue eyes had gone to the crows, but he recognized the sharply defined nose and wide mouth. Igraina, who had taken special delight in ordering him about and used the opportunity to flirt with him gently. Beside her was the clan smith, Lehr couldn’t remember his name, but he remembered the man’s shy smile.

By the time they were finished, the Guardian was leaving frost behind on the ground where he walked. Lehr couldn’t tell if it was because he was angry or sad. There was no one left for the Guardian to defend or to seek vengeance upon. From the empty streets they’d seen coming through the city, the people who’d done this were most likely already dead.

The one person they didn’t find was Brewydd. Lehr didn’t find that a hopeful sign. Doubtless she’d been out trying to heal someone when the madness had taken the townspeople.

“There are too many for us to bury,” said Lehr helplessly. “But we can’t leave them like this.”

The Guardian stared around them. “I remember… battlefields thick with bodies. Honorable soldiers who deserved better than to be carrion for the vultures. Come here, Lehr. Beside me where you’ll be safe.”

Lehr got as close as he dared, until the cold of his brother’s talents bit his fingers, and dread made it hard to breathe. Cornsilk flattened her ears in distress, but she stood beside Lehr. Apparently they were close enough because the Guardian began singing, a strange atonal sound more akin to a wolf’s howl than to any song Lehr had ever heard.

It hurt Lehr’s heart, and the tears he’d been fighting fell from his cheeks as if he were a child no older than Rinnie. He’d known these people—hauled firewood with them, fought beside them. And they were all dead. Had died trying to save this town, who had killed them.

The ground shook beneath his feet in answer to the Guardian’s song.

Magic surged up through Lehr’s feet in a sudden, almost-painful wave that left his ears tingling. All around him the earth broke open around the bodies of Travelers and townsfolk alike and swallowed them down, leaving only turned earth to mark where they had been.

The Guardian’s song ended.

“What—” Lehr abandoned his question and set his shoulder beneath Jes’s as his brother, pale and sweating, started to fall. Jes sobbed hoarsely as Lehr helped him to a crude bench beneath a small maple tree.

“Shh,” he said, kneeling in front of him, wishing he could do more. But Jes had pulled away from him as soon as he sat on the bench, and Lehr knew that no touch of his could comfort his brother. “They’ll feel no more pain now, Jes. Nothing more can hurt them.”

Jes raised his dark eyes. “So much sorrow,” he gasped. “Brewydd, I think. Nearby.”

Lehr remembered then that Jes was an empath.

He stood up and looked around slowly. If Jes felt Brewydd hurting, it meant she was still alive. His eyes fell on a small covered cart that could be pulled by hand or horse—Brewydd’s karis.

He put Cornsilk’s reins in Jes’s hand. “Hold her for me,” he said. “She’s probably unhappy, too, Jes.”

His brother leaned forward until his forehead rested against her front leg. The mare turned to lip the back of his shirt.

Deciding he’d left Jes cared for as best he could, Lehr made his way to the karis—mindful to avoid the places where the earth was soft.

When he opened the door, he was met by the smells of illness. Brewydd took up so little space he almost dismissed her as an odd lump in the bedding before she moved.

“You came, boy,” she said. “I worried you would come too late, but then I felt the earth welcome her children home by a Guardian’s call. I knew you were here then.”

He gathered her into his arms and took her out into the sunshine, hoping its warmth would aid her. She looked as though she’d lost half her body weight since he’d seen her last.

“We should have come with you,” he said. “Rinnie was safe with Aunt Alinath. If we’d come with you, this wouldn’t have happened.”

She reached up to touch his cheek, then patted it gently, and he realized she was blind.

“Who knows what would have happened? That is already written, boy, and not for you or me to change.”

“Brewydd?” Jes had left his bench. Lehr looked up and saw that whatever had been tearing at his brother was better now. “We’ll take you home, and Mother will fuss over you like she does Papa.”

“No, boy,” she said gently. “I stayed to talk with you. One of my gifts was farseeing—a weak gift, but it told me I had to wait. Don’t mourn me, Lehr—” She brushed away a tear with her thumb. “I’m an old, old woman. Too old to see this illness for what it was. I should have: I knew there was a new Shadowed.”

“What went wrong?” Lehr asked. He carried her over to the maple tree and its bench and sat, cradling her as if that might protect her somehow.

“I healed, and they were back the next day worse than before. It was shadow plague, boy. Deaths to feed the Shadowed’s power. I knew what to look for, but I’d forgotten, old woman that I am. By the time I thought of it, I was sick myself and half the clan with me. Healed them, then healed myself, but it was too late. The healing took more than I had to give, so I’m dying anyway. Just as this town all died. Shadow-killed. I saw it.”

“Mother said Lark can’t see shadow,” said Lehr, his voice gentle.

She shook her head. “Can. We all can a little, it’s just hard for us who don’t have Hunter eyes or Guardian instincts. Orders have more in common than not, for all that the Ravens like to pretend differently.”

“The Shadowed killed this city,” said Jes.

Brewydd nodded. “Those who weren’t killed by knife or club. The Shadowed will be up to full strength now. Tell your mother to be careful of him.”

“It is a man?” asked Lehr.

She shook her head. “Don’t know. Shouldn’t assume anything. Could be anyone. You had questions for me to answer. Important enough for me to stay for them, I think.”

“Phoran’s Memory isn’t gone,” said Jes.

Lehr explained about the aborted assassination attempt that led Phoran to flee Taela.

“Papa thinks that the Memory won’t leave until the Shadowed is destroyed.”

The old woman nodded again. “If the Memory didn’t leave when the others died, that is probably so. But it’ll get stronger, too, more like the man it once belonged to. It might be that even the Shadowed’s death will not set it free—like the Ordered gems.” She swallowed. “Tell your mother that. The Memory is like the Ordered gems—but the Order is attached to Phoran rather than a gemstone. It might help her.”

She rested for a minute, her breathing slow and shallow. “What else?” she said, sounding impatient. “There were two things, I know there were.”

“Papa,” said Jes. “Lehr knows.”

Lehr said, “Mother thinks something the Path did is weakening the connection between Papa and his Order. She said to tell you she sees holes in it as if it were fabric. She was able to patch most of them.”

“She did? Tell me how?”

“She told me to tell you she persuaded one of the Lark gems, the tigereye, to help her. You’d know which ring it was.” He cleared his throat. “She said she used magic to make yarn and the Lark’s Order became a needle wielded by her own Order and she darned the holes to close them. Does that make sense to you?”

Brewydd made an odd sound that frightened Lehr before he realized she was laughing. “Audacious child,” she said when she could. “She’s lucky the Lark half-trapped in that gemstone didn’t kill her while she held it.”

“She says the mending is temporary and won’t last. She was hoping you could do better.”

“No, boy,” she said. Her hand fell from his face, and he felt bereft of it. “Not even if I were twenty again. The Orders are beyond my touch as they should have been beyond hers. No. What she needs was lost when Colossae fell.”

Lehr felt a chill go down his spine.

“Is it still there?”

Lehr jerked his head to stare up at the Guardian—but met his soft-eyed brother’s gaze instead.

“In Colossae?” she asked. “I don’t know.” She gasped for breath while Lehr rocked her in his arms. She was too light; it was almost as if he held a child.

Her breathing settled. “I’ve been dreaming of Colossae while I waited for you. I’ve never dreamed of Colossae before. You were there. You and your black dog and a tower.”

“We found maps of Colossae,” said Lehr. “In the Path’s temple in Redern.

“Yes, yes,” said the old woman smiling. “The dream was for you. That’s why I had to stay for you. To tell you that you have to go to Colossae.” She paused and relaxed. “Yes. That was it. You may not find your answers there, but if you do not go—you will find nothing.” Power, raw and hot, slammed into Lehr’s body where it touched the blankets wrapped around Brewydd, robbing him of breath as she said, her voice ringing through him as if he were a bell, “If you do not find Colossae, Tier will fade, and the Emperor’s head will adorn his enemy’s wall.”

Her body went limp in his arms, and the strange power slid away until it was gone.

“Brewydd?” Lehr whispered.

He was afraid she was dead, but she stirred at the sound of his voice.

“I’m still here, boy. Tell your mother. I’ve been thinking about those Ordered gems. A few days ago something occurred to me. I didn’t think it was important, but if you go to Colossae, maybe it will help.”

She closed her eyes and breathed for a moment. When she opened them again her color was a little better. “Tradition has it that there is nothing about the Orders in the libraries of the mermori, and from the searching your mother, Hennea, and I have done over the years, I’d have to agree. Nothing. Yet when the Elder Wizards left Colossae after sacrificing its inhabitants, they were able to create the Orders. Solsenti magic—and the magic the Elder Wizards had was solsenti magic—requires great study and forms. Things to be written down. A great magic like the Orders, which have lasted for tens of centuries, would require, oh, so much work, my children. What else could the Elder Wizards have been working on?”

“The Stalker?” said Jes.

She nodded. “That might be, of course. But they knew how to create the Orders; they must have written something down. A Raven shouldn’t need much. There was a library.”

“Rongier the Librarian,” said Jes.

She nodded. “Tell your mother this, too; if Tier loses his Order, it will destroy him. His body won’t die, not if there’s folk to care for it, but the Order will take Tier with it. Leaving nothing. Nothing. If that happens, you’d best take care of it, Hunter. Your father will be dead, his body should be as well.”

She closed her blind eyes again and patted Lehr’s hand. “There now,” she said. “I’ve had my part in this. I can leave the problem of the Shadowed to those more fit.” Her breath caught as if it hurt her. “There’s a bag in my karis. Give it to your mother, she’ll know what it is and what to do with it.”

“Shh,” Lehr said. “Rest.”

Instead her left hand closed over his. “Jes,” she said, holding out her free hand. “Come here, and take my hand. Now listen you both.” But she didn’t say anything, just sent her magic through him like a flame that warmed almost to the point of pain, but not quite. From Jes’s startled expression she was doing the same to him.

“Safe now,” she said at last, panting a little. “The plague cannot kill you or pass from you to anyone else. Best I could do. When you leave. Close the gates. Two weeks before this town will be safe to enter. Make certain. Keep people out.”

“I remember how,” Lehr promised. “I can keep people out for two weeks.”

“Careful.”

“Always, grandmother,” he said.

She squeezed his hand, but didn’t speak again. After a moment he felt her relax into sleep.

Jes cleaned out the karis while Lehr held the old woman. He found fresh bedding from somewhere—Lehr didn’t ask where. Then Lehr put her in her karis and sat with her.

Jes put a hand on his shoulder, then left them.

When the light headed toward evening, Lehr bestirred himself to look after Cornsilk, but he found her unsaddled, brushed, and fed in a smallish corral that had, from the height of the fences, served to keep goats rather than horses. Jes was nowhere to be seen, so Lehr went back to Brewydd.

She had saved him when he’d been wounded to the soul.

He’d killed men. He snuck up on them under the cover of night and sliced their throats from behind before they had even known he was there. He’d killed them coldly, planning out each of his moves ahead of time. No honest, fair fight because he could not afford it at the price of his mother’s life.

Brewydd had taken him under her wing afterward and taught him about being Hunter and human—and he was almost certain she’d practiced some of her healing art on his soul. Under her overbearing manner and sharp tongue lurked a soft heart.

“Here,” Jes said.

Lehr looked up and took the dry flatbread Jes handed him. It was from their packs, not from this town. Lehr took a small bite and swallowed. “Where have you been?”

“Checking for the living,” Jes said, his gaze sliding away from Lehr’s. “We couldn’t leave anyone. But everything is dead here. Human and animal.”

“I won’t leave her here,” Lehr said. He didn’t say that she was dying or that moving her would be senselessly cruel. Jes would know.

“I’ll wait with you,” said his brother, and sat down on the ground to do so.

She didn’t awake again, but drifted off sometime in the night while Lehr was dozing.

Jes found a shovel and helped Lehr dig a proper grave near the maple tree. He buried her wrapped tightly in the bedclothes.

Jes stood beside him when he was finished. “Somewhere,” he said, “a new lark flies.” He squeezed the back of Lehr’s neck with gentle affection, though he released him quickly. “We need to leave before others come.”

Lehr saddled Cornsilk and walked beside her and Jes until they came to the gates. Then he sent Jes out with the mare while he shut the gates and barred them. Climbing over the top from the town side was easier than from the outside, and he dropped to the ground near Jes.

He put both hands against the wall and did the easy part first. Walls are built to keep people out, and he reinforced that with power. No one would be able to get over them or through them until the energy he left here wore away. That would probably take a month or more, he thought. Those walls had been stoutly built: they wanted to keep people out.

The gate was more difficult. By the time he finished, both the mare and Jes were getting impatient.

“At least there’s only the one gate,” Lehr said, when he was finally satisfied. The wall had shown him that much.

“Walls and gates,” said Jes. “Why, Falcon?”

“Because Hunters set traps.” Interpreting Jes’s aborted speech without much trouble, Lehr climbed tiredly into the saddle. He patted an apology on Cornsilk’s neck for his awkward mount. “Brewydd told me that fences, walls, doors, locks, and gates listen to me because they keep things in, so they fall under my Order.”

“Hunters trap or cage their prey,” said Jes thoughtfully.

Lehr set Cornsilk on the trail toward home and concentrated on staying on. He’d not slept much last night, and the magic he’d worked had drained him.

“The bag,” he said suddenly worried. “Did you get the bag Brewydd wanted us to give mother?”

“Yes,” Jes said. “It holds mermori. Rongier the Librarian’s and the others that Benroln had. There were five of them. Mother won’t be happy. She already has too many of them.”

The sun was warm, and Lehr found himself fighting to keep his eyes open. His eyelids burned, and his throat hurt.

“Go ahead and doze,” said the Guardian at Cornsilk’s shoulder. “Jes and I’ll keep you safe. There’s nothing more you have to do.”

“I’m sick,” said Lehr in surprise.

“Yes,” said the Guardian. “Rest.”