Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(26)

"What do you do, Mother?"

She'd been so involved in the mermori that she hadn't heard him. The low, velvety voice sounded so much like Tier's that she had to swallow. Despite her excellent eyesight and the moon she couldn't see Jes in the night.

"I've told you some stories about the Travelers," she said, setting the last mermora she held into the earth, and walked back for more.

He didn't reply immediately. She heard no footstep, but was not surprised that he'd followed her back to the pack.

"Yes," he said close enough that the warmth of his breath touched the back of her neck. Traveler-bred though she was, the vast difference between her daytime son and this, more dangerous Jes disconcerted her; a mother should not fear her child.

"We are the descendants of the wizards who lived in Colossae long before the Shadowed came to destroy mankind," she said, ignoring the shiver Jes's voice had sent down her spine.

"Yes," he acknowledged, pacing beside her as she took a handful of the mermori to an empty spot in the meadow and continued to measure out distances. He was barefoot.

Only she and Tier knew what her gentle-natured child became away from the safety of the cabin.

"Colossae was a great city of learning, and wizards came from all the earth to study and learn there. For generations they gathered and learned magic and forgot wisdom, until at last they created the greatest evil their hearts had ever imagined."

She had told her children very little about the Travelers, hoping that they would all become Rederni, like Tier. But Lehr and Rinnie carried the Traveler's looks, and Jes carried the Traveler's curse.

It had occurred to her, lying awake in her bed before she'd left it, that with a priest who knew too much and garbled truth with lies, it might be a good idea to teach her children more. She'd start tonight with Jes.

"By the time the wizards realized what they had done, it was too late to undo their making, almost too late to control it. As it was, only a great sacrifice could stop their creation, and Colossae was killed to imprison the Stalker, before it could destroy the world," she said. "The wizards who survived were sent to Travel the earth and keep it free of the Stalker's corruption, because such evil, even bound, was not without power. Even so great a sacrifice as a city of light and knowledge could not hold it completely, nor keep it forever."

"Yes," Jes said again. This time she caught a glimpse of eyes glowing a bit red in the night.

"What is it?" she asked. "Is there someone here?"

"Not now," he said, at last, a growl in his voice that wasn't quite human. "But there have been hunters in the forest who do not belong. They hunt for sport and that offends the forest - and they've come too near to the cabin for my liking."

"The new Sept is supposed to be quite a hunter," she told him. "Some of the nobles the Sept brought with him from Taela stayed when he left. Is this hunting something that you must stop?"

"No," he replied after a moment. "The forest king told me he will take care of these men if necessary." Seraph shivered a little at the tone of her son's voice when he said "men" - it told her that her son, in this aspect at least, did not consider himself one. "This forest yet has the power to keep out killers who hunt wastefully," he said.

Seraph set another mermora.

"You were talking about Colossae," he reminded her after she'd placed the mermora she held and was walking back for another handful.

"Ah, yes." She decided it was too much trouble to keep coming back so she transferred all that were left into the largest bag and carried that with her.

"It was decided after the wizards left and the city died, that they should meet in secret every year. But they had truly bound the evil, and there was no great need of the wizards in those early years so the meetings began to take place every two years, then every five.

"The mermori" - she sorted through and held up a fragile-seeming mermora no longer than her index finger - "were created by the wizard Hinnum and gifted to each of the wizards who left the city. They were passed down to the eldest of each family and in the beginning it is said they numbered five hundred and four. Until the Shadowed rose to power, some five centuries ago, each mermora was held by a large clan, but when the Army of Man gathered to fight the creatures the Shadowed had gathered, Travelers were forefront in the armies - because the Stalker, still imprisoned in Colossae, controlled the Shadowed. More than half of the army fell that day, taking with it most of the Travelers who fought there."

"You never told me that before - that the Shadowed was caused by the thing the wizards bound in Colossae."

She smiled a little grimly, "It's not something that we talk about openly. If people knew that we Travelers held ourselves responsible for the Shadowed, they'd make certain we suffered for it. Even some of the clans claimed there was no connection between the two - or that the Shadowed was the Stalker itself and that we should be freed of our tasks."

She set another mermora into the ground. "I remember a discussion at the last Gather I went to. One of the Clan Fathers proposed that we quit searching out evil. He said things like, 'We destroyed the Shadow, completed the tasks the Old Ones gave us. We should settle while there is still good land unclaimed.' Then my father stood up and said, 'Arrogance has always been the Traveler's Bane. The Shadowed was not the Stalker, but merely a man corrupted by it. My grandfather had this story through his line. When the Raven who faced the Shadowed and reduced him to ashes returned to his circle, he told them that the creature he'd killed had never touched the stones of Colossae. We fought true evil on that day, but our task remains.' "