Raven's Strike

CHAPTER 4

Hennea came back a while later, a slender book in her hand. Warned by Gura’s happy barks, Seraph met her on the porch.

“We didn’t do a very good job looking through the temple,” Hennea said, staggering a little as the big, black dog welcomed her home. “Down boy, good boy. Yes, I’m here. Now go lie down.”

“You went to the temple looking for some way to find the Shadowed.” The disapproval Seraph felt spilled into her voice, though she had no real authority to disapprove. Hennea was an adult, and a Raven. There was no reason she should feel obligated to talk to Seraph before she explored the temple. It should have been safe enough.

She cleared her throat, and said, “I know we didn’t find the rune that summoned the tainted creatures. Did we miss something else that was dangerous? There weren’t any Order-bound gems left, nor any shadow-touched items.”

“The rune was my fault,” said Hennea. “I should have thought to check for it.” She wiggled the book she held. “And I certainly should have thought of the library. It just didn’t occur to me that the books were dangerous.”

A wizard would never have left the temple without taking every book in sight. Hennea was no wizard; she was Raven. All the Shadowed were wizards, so she wasn’t the Shadowed either. Not that Seraph really believed the Shadowed could live so near Lehr and Jes without alerting one or the other of them.

Seraph hadn’t realized that she had still been worried by Tier’s observations—but she wouldn’t have felt such relief otherwise. If Hennea was old, as Tier felt, there would have to be another explanation for it.

“What did you find?”

Instead of answering, Hennea handed her the book.

Sitting on the porch bench, Seraph opened the slender volume at random. On the left page was a drawing of a meadowlark. On the right was a page of closely written script in a language that looked vaguely familiar. The solsenti of the Empire spoke a little over thirty dialects in four languages—though Common was spoken by most of them. She spoke a smattering of them, some better than others, and read more than she spoke.

“I don’t know this language,” she said.

Hennea took the book from her and began reading. “Unto the Lark it is given to Heal all things and to make right the heart and head. First are fourteen things that all Lark are blessed to bear. Sweet breath for he who has breathed in water. Blood sealing—”

“The Song of Orders?” Seraph interrupted. “But it’s forbidden… sorry, I’m being stupid. Obviously someone did write it down. But if he had the Song of Orders, why didn’t Volis understand what the Orders were?”

“Maybe he couldn’t read it either?” suggested Hennea. “Or maybe he thought it was wrong—as he thought we were wrong. It is incomplete—only the Lark, Cormorant, and Raven are here, and only in partial form. The rest of it is a hodgepodge of Traveler legends.”

“Do we destroy it?” Seraph found herself curiously reluctant to do so; it was a beautifully bound book.

“Not until I read the legends to the Bard,” Hennea conceded. “Let him hold the stories and pass them on to the next generation. What we need to do—you, I, and your Ordered family—is go through that temple from top to bottom. We can look for the Shadowed and search for less obvious dangers than shadow taint.”

They headed out early the next morning, leaving Gura to guard the farm. Jes didn’t want to go back, and grumbled to himself all the way to Redern. He did not like cities. But when Seraph told him he could stay home, he’d liked that even less. She kept a close eye on him, but the Guardian stayed safely asleep. Rinnie skipped next to her glowering oldest brother and tried to tease him into a better mood.

Hennea led—mostly, Seraph thought, to stay away from Jes. Lehr walked beside Seraph, giving her his arm. Among other things, Brewydd had taught him to mind his manners even with his own mother. It made Seraph want to smile, but she restrained herself and tucked her hand in the crook of his arm.

The Rederni greeted them as they climbed up the zigzag streets, mostly with shy smiles and averted eyes. When Hennea started directly for the new temple, Seraph caught her elbow.

“We need to talk to Karadoc. I should have talked to him while we had him at our home, but I didn’t think of it. Ellevanal told me that he used Karadoc to destroy the Shadowed’s summoning rune. He might know something interesting. I also want to stop and tell Tier what we’re doing.”

“Ellevanal?” Hennea stopped dead and stared at Seraph. “You believe a god directed the priest Karadoc?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“The priest?”

“Ellevanal,” said Lehr with a small smile. “Didn’t Mother tell you that she had a conversation with Him?”

“Ellevanal’s the forest king,” said Jes unexpectedly. Seraph hadn’t known that he’d realized that much. “I don’t know about being a god, though.”

“He told me he was only a little god,” Seraph told him.

“There are no gods, Seraph,” said Hennea softly, almost to herself. “They are all dead.”

Travelers did not believe in gods—demons and shadowed in all forms, but not gods.

Seraph shrugged, her years in Redern had softened her attitudes toward gods. “Hennea, this village has worshiped Ellevanal since Redern was settled. Ellevanal is most certainly the forest king—ell vanail means lord of the forest. From what he said to me, I think he was originally a Keeper or perhaps just an elemental who escaped the devastation the Shadowed King brought upon them. When men settled here after the Fall, Ellevanal used the forest to protect them from the shadow-touched things that escaped as well.”

“He is no god, no matter what he told you,” Hennea said.

Seraph shrugged. “I don’t worship him, but I’m grateful that he fights at our side and not against us. If he wants to call himself a god, I can’t see the harm in it. Come, we need to talk to Karadoc before we start messing around in the temple.”

They found Karadoc wrapped in blankets and banished to sit in the sunshine outside of the temple while a number of people were cleaning inside.

“Greetings, Seraph Tieraganswife,” he said with a mischievous grin that made him look more battered and pale in contrast. “Greetings also Jes and Lehr Tieraganson, and Rinnie Seraphsdaughter.”

Seraph bowed her head. “Priest Karadoc, may I make you known to my compatriot Hennea, Raven of the Clan of Rivilain Moon-Haired.”

“Priest,” said Hennea in a low voice.

Karadoc tilted his head, and replied, “Welcome, daughter. I’ve seen you before, I think. In the new temple?”

She nodded. “I served the would-be-Priest Volis.”

“Until she had Mother kill him,” added Lehr in an undertone. But the old priest heard him.

“Yes,” Karadoc said. “You look much healthier than you did that night.” He turned back to Seraph. “How is it that I might serve you, daughter?”

That “daughter” grated. Even after all these years in Redern, the tendency of the menfolk to diminish any woman and patronize her bothered Seraph. Especially after the past months spent in Travelers’ company.

Lehr’s hand touched her shoulder—likely he knew just how she felt, having tasted something of the same treatment in the Traveler camp. Karadoc didn’t mean to demean her, Seraph knew, but still it grated.

She squatted on her heels in front of him—something she wouldn’t have done if she’d been wearing her Rederni skirts as she should have been, because they tended to tangle in her feet and make it difficult to rise again. The move put her head level with his, and gave her time to quash her temper. Anger had no place in the heart of a Raven—though it resided full often in hers.

“I need you to tell me about the new temple and how you stopped it from calling more tainted creatures to it,” she said baldly.

He leaned back farther in his chair, and the merriment faded from his face. “Do you now? Why is that?”

“Because when Hennea and I went through the temple that night we saw no magic that should have called to the shadow-touched. Either we missed it, or it wasn’t there then. That rune was drawn by the Shadowed.”

“The Shadowed died five centuries ago,” he said, not arguing exactly, more as if he were horrified than as if he didn’t believe her.

Seraph nodded. “The Unnamed King died at Shadow’s Fall. But he is not the first to contain the Stalker’s curse, and, unfortunately, he won’t be the last. We have a new one—ask Ellevanal if you do not believe me.”

He stared at her and pursed his lips. But he didn’t ask her what the Stalker was that its curse could create the Shadowed, he just said, “We’d already been having trouble—mostly with the kinds of things we’d usually only see in the outlying areas—goblins and the like. They killed a few goats, scared some boys who were too near the new temple. Then the bigger things started coming—an ogre that Ciro’s grandson killed with that axe he’s so proud of. We’d just finished burying one of the boys who died in the battle when Ellevanal called me to him.”

He stopped and smiled with remembered pleasure. “I thought I was too old for him to call me that way anymore.” He blinked and came back to himself. “He told me something in the new temple was summoning these beasts. He couldn’t enter the building except through me, and he asked permission to share my body.”

Hennea hissed in through her teeth. Seraph tapped the other woman’s knee in a demand for silence. The Colossae wizards once had a word for such body sharing—shadowing, they’d called it.

“So you let him accompany you,” Seraph said.

Karadoc nodded. “We went into the temple—I’d had the doors boarded up after Volis died, but Ellevanal pulled the boards off.” He glanced at his hands, and Seraph saw his nails had been broken past the quick. He saw her look, and said, “It didn’t hurt when he did it. He led me through the temple—” He closed his eyes as if he could see it again.

“We went from room to room. Sometimes we would stand in the middle of the room and do nothing—I had the feeling he was listening very hard to something I couldn’t hear. We came at last to a room just barely large enough to stand upright in—almost a cupboard. We knelt in the hallway just outside the door. Ellevanal waved my hand over the floor of the little room, and I could see it, too—a scattering of strange shapes that looked almost like writing, except they weren’t organized right to left in straight lines as we write. Instead the symbols were organized into odd shapes. Ellevanal put our hands on the shapes and…” Air left his lungs in a wheeze.

“Fire,” he said in a low voice. “Ice and fire flowing through my veins like shards of glass.”

“By Lark,” whispered Hennea. “I wonder that he dared.”

Karadoc looked at her.

“He worked magic through a man with no affinity for it,” she said. “If you had failed him, it likely would have killed the both of you”—she looked at Seraph pointedly—“god or no god.”

“I don’t know how long it took,” Karadoc said. “It felt like years. But I remember seeing the marks fade from the floor before I fainted. When I awoke, Ellevanal was there beside me.”

“In the temple?” Seraph asked. “I thought he couldn’t go there.”

“He told me we’d cleansed it,” said Karadoc. “He picked me up and brought me here to His own temple in the blink of an eye. Frightened my apprentice nearly to death.” He smiled a little. “After that, few new creatures came. But the ones already here were bad enough. Something, I don’t know what, attacked me here in the temple itself. I would have died if He hadn’t saved me. That’s when Ellevanal told us to go to your farm where your Traveler magic would help us. We hadn’t been there two days when the troll came.”

“I don’t know much about wizardry”—Seraph turned to Hennea—“but I think I would have noticed such a spell if it were present while we were looking through the temple. That means that the Shadowed was here after we searched the temple the night the false priest died.”

Hennea nodded.

“Thank you, Karadoc,” Seraph said, getting to her feet.

He laughed. “I’m glad to be helpful.” He tipped his head to the temple behind him. “They won’t let me clean,” he said. “I was feeling old and useless.”

“Let them clean,” said Seraph. “I have it on the best authority that if it weren’t for you, a lot more people would have been killed.”

“Whose authority would that be?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “He says you play skiri well.”

He paused and looked at her thoughtfully before gifting her with a secretive smile. “Maybe your informant is right.”

“So sit and rest,” she told him. “Enjoy the fruits of your labors for a day or two more. They’ll work you hard enough later. I expect that attendance at Ellevanal’s temple is due for an increase.”

He laughed. “That may be, daughter. That may be.”

“Shadowed,” said Hennea, when they’d left Ellevanal’s temple behind them.

“Karadoc is not tainted,” said Lehr.

“Ellevanal is not of the shadow,” agreed Seraph. “He’s been Jes’s friend for years. But Hennea knows that already.”

“What’s wrong?” Seraph heard Rinnie ask Jes. “Why is Hennea so upset?”

“Ellevanal shadowed that priest,” said Hennea, keeping her gaze firmly on the road before them.

“What?” asked Lehr. “The forest king isn’t of the shadow. Jes and I would know.”

Seraph sighed. “The Colossae wizards knew how to ride in the heads of others. They called what Ellevanal did with Karadoc welaen. Shadow, the kind of shadow that you see on a sunny day is laen. Welaen then, translates best into Common as ‘shadowing.’ Its meaning to the Elder Wizards was broader and encompassed a whole range of magical ability. For us, only the touch of the Stalker or the Shadowed brings shadow-tainting.” She directed that at Hennea.

“What your Mother means,” said Hennea, “is that the Colossae wizards could ride with unsuspecting people or simply take over their bodies without permission—just as the Stalker does. Because of the misuse of welaen, the Colossae wizards forbade it—and there wasn’t much that they forbade.”

Seraph had forgotten the endless debating about what kind of magic was allowable. It came, she supposed, because the lack of morality among the Colossae wizards had destroyed the city and began the endless guilt-bound wandering of the Travelers. The other Orders just used their abilities as they could, but Ravens must endlessly debate about what was right and proper.

“Here is the bakery,” Seraph said, with something like relief. She’d always been a practical Raven, especially after her teacher died and she became her clan’s only Raven. Whatever it took to survive was not a moral line she expected Hennea would approve of.

They found Tier elbow deep in dough. He listened as Seraph explained what they were going to do.

“I’ll follow you in a couple of hours. We’ve a lot of hungry folk to feed.”

Seraph leaned over and kissed him lightly, careful to keep out of the flour. “You’ll do no such thing. I won’t have you climbing the mountainside with your knees still healing. When you’re through here, why don’t you wait for us at the tavern?”

He thought about arguing, she saw it in his eyes. “Fine,” he said instead. “Just you be cautious up there. I don’t want to have to trek up there and find our Jes as a frog.”

“Can’t do frogs,” said Jes seriously. “Can’t do horses either. Only animals with fur and fangs.”

They started back up the streets. Since Redern was dug into the side of a mountain, new buildings had to be built above the rest of the village, and Volis’s temple was the newest building in Redern.

“Maybe Jes shouldn’t be here,” Hennea said. “There’s a lot of people.”

Seraph had been keeping an eye on him as well. She’d have left him home, but he wouldn’t stay without them. He wasn’t paying attention to them now, just staring at the ground with a distracted air.

“If you wrap a sprain for too long, you ruin the joint,” said Lehr.

“What?”

“I mean,” Lehr explained, “if Jes doesn’t ever come to town—pretty soon he won’t be able to.”

“Jes,” said Seraph, touching his sleeve.

He looked up with a jerk.

“Do you need to go home?” she asked. “Are the people too much for you?”

“No, Mother.” Jes shook his head. “I’m all right. Everyone is so excited today it feels like I have bees in my head. But we think it wouldn’t be a good thing to leave you alone in the new temple.”

He used “we” just as the priest had. Lehr started to speak, and Seraph held up a finger for quiet so she could solidify her first, nebulous thought. There was a connection between shadowing and the way the Guardian Order worked, she could almost see how it was so.

Ellevanal had shadowed the priest. Was that the same kind of magic that caused the Orders to attach themselves to Travelers? She closed her eyes and thought, trying to work her way through an instinctive affirmative. The binding between the priest and Ellevanal had been temporary, but the Orders were permanent.

“I can see the Orders,” she murmured out loud to clarify her thoughts. “But I can’t see shadowing. I wonder if Lehr or Jes would have been able to tell that the forest king was riding inside Karadoc’s skin? Or is it the evil of the Stalker’s presence that they sense.” That felt right.

“You think there is a connection between the Orders and shadowing?” said Hennea.

Seraph nodded and opened her eyes. “I think they are similar magics. Not twins or complements, but certainly in the same family of magics. Maybe, when you and I try to study the Order-bound gems again, we need to study the shadowing that the Elder Wizards did. There are books about shadowing in most of the mermori libraries. Isolde had four or five I’ve glanced through.”

Hennea stared into the summer sky for a moment. “Yes, you’re right.”

Perhaps Hennea meant it to come out as if she’d just come to the same conclusion. But to Seraph, it sounded suspiciously as if she’d known all along.

“How long have you known?” Seraph snapped.

Seraph, Hennea, and Brewydd had spent days trying to discover what the Path had done to bind the Orders to their gems. There was nothing in any of the libraries on the Orders; they had been created after the Colossae wizards had left and were no longer writing down their studies. If Hennea had known there was a connection between shadowing the Colossae wizards had used and the Orders, she should have told them.

Hennea met Seraph’s gaze. “A while. But I couldn’t find anything specific. The wizards wrote a lot about how to get themselves into another person’s mind and how to shield themselves from such abuse perpetrated by another wizard. Nothing useful in our situation.”

“But you didn’t mention it to Brewydd or me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It was not useful.”

“Or so you thought,” Seraph said icily.

There was a connection, she could feel it; but that wasn’t what bothered her. Tier liked to tease her about the secretive nature of Ravens, but Seraph had never had that facet of her Order turned on her before. She didn’t like it. She’d become a Rederni—people who kept secrets couldn’t be trusted.

Tier’s suspicions of Hennea rattled around in Seraph’s head, but she couldn’t see any pattern to them. “Tier thinks you are older than you look.”

“Why should he think that?” It was Hennea’s turn to speak coldly.

It wasn’t an answer, and Seraph had been a parent too long not to hear the evasion and the attempt to divert the conversation away from Hennea and direct it onto Tier.

“Mother?” said Jes.

He was swaying from one foot to another as he watched Seraph’s face unblinkingly.

“I have questions for you,” she told Hennea. “But they will wait for another time. Jes, it’s all right.”

“You are angry,” he said.

“Mother’s angry a lot,” Rinnie told him. “Unless she’s angry with you, it’s all right.”

Jes looked down at his sister. “Not at Hennea.”

“Well,” she said conscientiously, “you’re right. I still wouldn’t worry. She can do what I do, keep out of Mother’s way until she calms down.”

Lehr glanced at Seraph’s face, and she thought she saw him hide a small smile before he turned to Rinnie, and said, “This might be a better conversation to have when Mother’s not here.”

Seraph brooded as she climbed. But the conclusions that she had come to earlier still held. Hennea was merely a Raven with secrets—and that was bad enough.

Willon’s shop, the last building before the temple, was dark and empty when they went past it.

“He must still be in Taela,” Lehr said, breaking the uneasy silence. “I’d forgotten that he went there, too. He was going to help us. I hope he’s not still there waiting for us.”

“He could hardly help but hear that a band of Travelers rescued the Emperor,” said Seraph dryly. “I’m sure that he knows who that was. Though if I’d thought of it, I would have sent him a message before we left. He goes back to Taela every year to check on his family anyway. He didn’t go there just to help us—though he would have if we’d asked. But we didn’t need gold or information, just magic and swords; and those aren’t something a merchant could help us with. He’ll be back soon.”

They climbed past the storefront and up the steep trail that led to the abandoned temple of the Path of the Five.

The temple burrowed deep into the heart of Redern Mountain, leaving only its head to mark where the bulk of it hid.

One door lay several feet from the temple, and the other was leaned neatly against a wall. It looked as though the troll had decided to investigate the temple, though when Seraph glanced around she saw no other sign of the creature. Then she remembered that Karadoc told her Ellevanal had used him to rip open the doors and was amazed he’d come out with no more than torn fingernails.

Seraph stopped just outside the entrance. “Would you check this to see if it is shadow-tainted, Lehr?”

“I already did. There’s no shadowing I can sense.”

“Jes?”

He didn’t answer, and when Seraph looked for him, he was staring down at the roof of Willon’s store which, because of the steepness of the mountain, jutted out of the ground only a few feet below where he stood.

“Jes?” Hennea reached out, but stopped just short of touching him. “Are you all right?”

He turned his face away from her and looked at Seraph. “There’s nothing here,” he said shortly. “Volis is dead. The forest king and Karadoc took care of the rest. Lehr says there is nothing here—why do you bother to ask me?”

Jes was usually cheerful unless the Guardian was present. He was very seldom sullen or moody.

“Hennea, take Rinnie and Lehr into the temple, Jes and I have some things to talk over,” Seraph said, forgetting for a moment she wasn’t just talking to one of her children. “Please,” Seraph added hastily when Hennea stiffened. “We’ll join you in a few minutes.”

She waited while they filed in. Then she turned her attention to Jes, who had gone back to staring at Willon’s roof.

She debated simply waiting until he was ready to talk—but this was Jes. It might be days before he was ready, and she didn’t have Tier’s patience.

“What’s wrong, Jes?”

“Nothing is wrong.” He didn’t look at her, but she could see the stubborn set to his jaw.

Tier was better at this sort of thing than Seraph, but he wasn’t here. She thought back over the climb up Redern and tried to pinpoint when Jes’s discomfort at being surrounded by so many people had turned to anger.

“Hennea is entitled to her secrets,” Seraph said tentatively.

“Of course.” The words were clearly enunciated, but Seraph knew that the Guardian was still at rest because she felt none of the dread that came with his presence.

“I don’t like it when she hides things that might be important,” she tried. She couldn’t tell if he was angry at her or Hennea.

“Sorry.”

Seraph picked up a small rock and tossed it down the mountainside.

“You’ll hit someone,” Jes said. “Papa says don’t.”

“Tier’s usually right.”

“Papa’s always right,” said Jes bitterly.

Ah, thought Seraph. “Your father doesn’t disapprove of Hennea, Jes. He talked to me about several things he’d noticed about her—remember, he doesn’t know her as well as we do. One of the things was that he thought she was older than she admitted.”

“Does that matter?”

“That depends upon a number of things,” said Seraph.

“Don’t tell me,” said Jes, kicking a clod of dirt onto Willon’s roof. “I’m too stupid. If it’s important, tell Lehr or Hennea or Rinnie. Or you could wait for the Guardian, he’s smart.”

Hmm, she thought.

“I thought your father was mistaken about Hennea’s age until I asked her about it just now. She didn’t answer me, Jes. She could have lied, but she didn’t want to.”

“Why does it matter?” he asked again.

“The problem is that I know of only three ways that Hennea could be older than she appears. At least, enough older that it attracted your father’s attention.” Seraph sat on the ground beside Jes, and after a hesitation, he sat down, too. “The first is impossible, because Hennea is no Healer. The second is equally unlikely. The Shadowed can be very old and still seem young. But Hennea touches you all the time. You’d know if she were the Shadowed. The third isn’t much better. Wizards—not Ravens—but solsenti wizards who are very powerful sometimes live longer than usual.”

“Hinnum was centuries old when Colossae fell,” Jes said.

“I’ve heard stories that say he was as much as three centuries old,” Seraph agreed. “But he was the greatest wizard of Colossae, the wizards’ city. Still, it is not uncommon for wizards to live to well over a hundred years.”

“Hennea could be a wizard,” he said. “You told me Ravens have to be mageborn, just like Guardians have to be empaths.”

“I don’t think she is,” she said. “If she were a wizard, she’d never have left Volis’s library the night we killed him. No matter how tired or anxious she was, a wizard wouldn’t have forgotten about another wizard’s library.”

“You and she are using the mermori libraries to try and free the Order-bound gems,” he said.

Seraph nodded. “But wizards are obsessed with books, Jes. Books are the only way they can do their magic. They have to know all about the nature of fire before they can light a candle. That makes books very important. Hennea knew about Volis’s library—she’d lived here. But it was only yesterday she realized that his library might be dangerous.”

“She came here when she ran away from me,” he said. “I embarrassed her. I didn’t mean to.”

That was it, she thought, the real reason he was upset. Hennea had been avoiding him all day. Seraph looked at her son and wished she knew how to make the pain of living easier on him.

“That’s right.” She’d never found that lying about hurtful things made them hurt any less.

“But I embarrassed her, anyway.”

Seraph considered it. “If, say”—she glanced down at the roof below—“Willon told me I could touch him anytime I wanted, do you think I would run off in embarrassment?”

Wide-eyed, Jes was obviously having trouble imagining Willon saying any such thing to her. He shook his head. “They’d be picking up Willon pieces for years.”

She grinned. “Do you know what I think, Jes? I think if she hadn’t wanted to touch you, they might be picking up pieces of Jes all over the place. I think she wanted to touch you, and that’s what embarrassed her.”

Jes gave a long sigh. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But you aren’t always good at seeing why people do things. You’re just like me.”

“Probably,” she conceded. She weighed the possible harm of telling him more. “But your father knows people. Do you want me to tell you the other thing he told me about Hennea?”

He looked at her, his dark eyes sad.

“He asked me why she was still with us. She came with us to Taela to fight the Path, but after the Path was gone, she still stayed with us.”

“For me?” he whispered.

“Jes, I want you to listen until I finish, will you do that?” Seraph said. “Promise.”

“I promise.”

“Your father told me she would not have stayed for you.”

Jes surged to his feet and took a step away, and Seraph continued quickly. “He said she would have left as soon as she could because of you, and I told him she was staying to help me with the Ordered gems and because of the Shadowed.”

“She’d have left because of me.”

“Because she’s worried for you. Will you listen?” She kept her voice soft.

“All right,” he said, not looking at her—looking away from people while he talked to them was a habit of his. But he was not looking rather more pointedly than usual.

“You know there are very few Guardians who live as long as you have,” she said. “Of those who survive adolescence, most are women. As you said, the Eagle Order comes only to empaths, for whatever reason. Yet the Eagle, of all the Orders, is the most prone to violence—something that no empath can live with easily.”

“Stupid,” said Jes, with understandable emphasis.

Seraph shrugged. “The Elder Wizards created the Stalker, Jes. I don’t know of anything more stupid, do you? Maybe there is a good reason for the Guardian Order to be so difficult to bear, but I can see none.”

He didn’t say anything.

“The Travelers have tried a lot of things to help the Eagle,” she continued. “When an Eagle is born, the child is adopted out to another clan. They believe strangers won’t have a strong emotional attachment to a child who is not of their blood.”

“Sorry you didn’t have a clan to give me to,” said Jes hotly.

“Jesaphi, that’s enough.” Seraph snapped. She had no patience for self-pity. She took a deep breath. “Do you know that when your father and I were first married, I thought I had made the wrong decision when I accepted his proposal. I was Raven and had abandoned my duties out of cowardice.”

Jes turned to look at her, obviously surprised.

“I was a coward, Jes. I had responsibilities, and instead of trying to fulfill them, I hid in your father’s shadow, where I was safe from the consequences of further failure. I hadn’t saved my clan. I hadn’t even managed to save my brother. I was afraid to fail again.”

“You tried. Trying is good enough,” Jes told her.

Seraph shook her head. “Not when people die. When people die, trying doesn’t feel like it is good enough.”

He thought about it. “If Papa had died in Taela, I would not have felt like trying was good enough.”

She nodded. “But when I held you in my arms and realized the gift I had been given, I knew there was a reason I was in Redern.” She leaned toward him, willing him to feel the utter certainty that had come to her with his birth. “I knew your father would never make me give up my child in the mistaken belief that someone else, someone who didn’t care as much, could do a better job of keeping you safe. From that day, I never felt I should go back to the clans. I had my home—in your father and in you.”

“Is that why I’m not dead, like the other Guardians?” he asked. “Because you didn’t give me away? Were they wrong to give away their babies?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “If there were a way to help other Guardians, I would tell the clans—but I think the answer is simpler. Too simple to help those others who bear the Eagle Order. The answer is you. You are strong, Jes, strong enough to bear a burden that would break other people. You can anchor the Guardian Order without losing your balance.”

Jes sat down next to her again and stared at Willon’s roof some more.

“Hennea knows I am dangerous?” he asked after a while.

“She knows Guardians are vulnerable,” Seraph corrected firmly. “She knows there are things that are very dangerous for Guardians—very strong emotions, even good ones, are difficult. When you are falling in love, Jes, you have nothing but strong emotions. One minute you’re happy, the next you’re sad.”

Jes nodded in emphatic agreement.

She wished Tier was here, to say the next part. But she needed to warn Jes, and this was as good a time as any other.

“Another thing that will be very difficult for you is sex,” she told him.

Jes stiffened beside her, and Seraph kept her face a little averted so he couldn’t see the rising color in her cheeks. She cleared her throat. “You have a hard enough time controlling the volatile nature of the Guardian without dealing with your own emotions running wild as well.” And that was all she was going to say about that, she thought firmly. “Hennea knows this last adventure was dangerous for you, because the Guardian was called out so often. The Eagles who have lived the longest avoid situations that might call on the Guardian. We depended upon your abilities while we were trying to save Tier, and there were consequences. You must have noticed some changes in yourself.”

“The Guardian is closer,” he told her. “He used to sleep a lot, but now he’s always near. We switch more often, too.” He hesitated. “He listens to me better, though, and when he takes over, I can still be there with him. I used to wake up walking in the woods and not know why, but now he usually lets me stay if I want to.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Seraph. “It sounds like a good thing to me.”

He nodded. “To me, too.”

“Hennea doesn’t know about that part,” said Seraph. “She only knows you are very vulnerable right now. She believes she is too old for you—however old that is. She thinks what you feel for her is”—her command of the Rederni tongue twenty years in the gaining failed her, and she waved her hands before she found the word—“mooncalf love; which is, maybe, even more emotional than real love, but not permanent. Something you would recover from if she were gone.”

“She wants to leave to save me,” he said, and, from his aggravated tone, he wasn’t appreciative of the idea.

“She wants you to be safe because she loves you,” said Seraph.

His head jerked around.

“Your father told me she loves you,” she told him, knowing he’d trust Tier’s judgment.

He took a deep breath, his shoulders softening with some emotion Seraph thought might just be simple relief.

“She loves you too much to trust in your strength when it is your life at risk. She doesn’t see what a gift she is to you: a woman who is not afraid of the Guardian, a Raven who has enough control she can touch you without causing you distress, a woman who is strong enough to love an Eagle.”

A slow smile crept across his face. “Pretty,” he said, and Seraph felt an answering smile rise in her.

“Very,” she agreed.

Jes stood up and started for the temple, but then stopped and turned back to her. Seraph got to her feet—slowly, because the hair on the back of her neck told her it was the Guardian who watched her out of her son’s eyes.

“Why is she still here?” he asked. “If she wanted to leave to save us, why doesn’t she just leave? The puzzle of the gems is more important than Jes is?”

“The gems are more than just a puzzle,” answered Seraph. “Guardian, the Travelers are dying. We can’t afford to lose so many Orders when the Orders may be the only thing that can save us. I don’t know why she hasn’t told me everything she knows, but I think she has earned the right to expect me to trust her judgment.”

The Guardian nodded and retreated behind Jes’s eyes. “It’s all right if Hennea has secrets,” Jes said in his usual cheerful voice. “Ravens are happier with secrets. Papa says.”

Seraph raised her eyebrows and started walking toward the temple. “Oh, he does, does he?”

Jes laughed.