Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(51)

He resumed his efforts as he continued the story. "One day, after the last of his grandsons died, the king went to sleep an old, broken man and woke up a young man of eighteen again. They called it a miracle at first, some kind god's deliverance from the ghastly illness that killed two of every three that came down sick. But the plague spread further, unaffected by the king's miraculously returned youth. It traveled across borders, devouring the royal houses of the kingdoms all around, until there was only one kingdom and one king."

Tier's voice stuck there, as the magic of the generations-old words caught him in brutal understanding of the numberless dead whose death had fed the evil that was in the king.

"He ate their lives," said a voice abruptly from the ceiling above Tier.

A shiver ran down Tier's spine, though the words were the exact ones he'd intended to use himself. Somehow the oddity of his listener knowing the words to a Rederni story was part of the strange shape the story was taking.

The soft, sexless voice continued relentlessly, "He ate them all to preserve himself - and so he lost himself in truth."

Tier waited, but when his visitor said nothing more, Tier continued the story himself.

"As the years passed and the king lived far beyond his life span, what few of his old advisors who escaped the original plague died, old men that they were, one by one. As they did the king replaced them with dark-robed, nameless men - it was these who gave him away at last."

"The king's youngest daughter, Loriel, discovered them feasting upon a child in her father's antechamber," Tier said, drawing the horror of that into his dark cell. He could hear the sound of fangs crunching the fragile bone in his soul.

He could see it.

A woman, older than he'd pictured her, stood in an open doorway. Her hair, like Seraph's, was pale, though washed in sunlight rather than moonlight. Two figures crouched before her, anonymous in heavy brocade robes. They were too occupied with what was before them to notice that they had been seen. Between them lay a boy of ten or twelve years whose freckles stood out against his too-white skin. His shoulders jerked rhythmically back and forth in a mockery of life as the king's councillors buried their heads in his abdomen and fed.

Tier's shock kept him from holding the image, though the wet sound of their feeding accompanied his voice. "And she fled to the last of her father's advisors, a mage."

He stopped speaking and tightened his control until the only sounds remaining in the cell were the ones that belonged there.

"And so they gathered," said his listener.

"And so they gathered," repeated Tier, and the repetition felt right, felt like the rhythm of the story. He relaxed; it was only a story, one that he knew very well. "The remnants of people who had survived the plague. But the sickness had taken the experienced warriors, the lords, and commanders, leaving only a broken people. Loriel led the first attack, herself."

"She died," whispered the listener and the magic coaxed Tier as well, raising needs he'd never realized he'd felt.

"She died," Tier said, "but left behind a handful of men who had learned what leadership meant, left them with the ancient mage who taught them and fought by their side. They battled the minions of the Shadowed. As his followers died, the king called upon a host of evil; ancient creatures woke from their slumbers to fight at his behest."

Tier let his magic free, finding the places where he had bound it too tightly over the years. The bindings, he saw, had been the reason he'd had such difficulty. As the magic swept through him, exhilarating and frightening by turns, the words came to him, as well-worn and soft as an old cotton coverlet, but full of unexpected burrs that pricked and stung.

"He lost himself and his name. There remained only a title, given by the men who died fighting him. They called him the Shadowed."

"Numberless were the heroes..." The other's voice became part of the story, too. Tier felt his magic rush up to envelope his listener.

"Numberless were the heroes who fell," continued Tier. "Their songs unsung because there was no one left to sing." He paused, letting the other do his part.

"Then came Red Ernave who fought with axe and bow..."

"A giant of a man," said Tier. "He gathered them all, all the men, women, and children who could pick up a stick or throw a stone. He called them the Glorious Army of Man, and he taught them to fight."

As if there were no walls in his cell, the people of the Glorious Army gathered before Tier. Gaunt-eyed and battered, they stood in silent, unmoving defiance of the evil they fought. There were a few men, but most of them were hollow-cheeked women, old men, and a small, precious gathering of children worn by hunger and fear.

Tier knew, by the Owl-borne bond that formed by magic between storyteller and audience, that his listener saw them, too.

"And in the first days of autumn the king's old mage took council with Red Ernave. They talked alone all night, and when the morning sun came, the mage's days had found their number. He was burned in great ceremony, and as the last coals died, Red Ernave assembled his army. He brought them to a flat plain, just beyond the Ragged Mountains."

Tier had been there, once. He'd been following the track of a deer and found himself, unexpectedly, on the plain of Shadow's Fall. There was no marker to warn the unwary, but he'd known where he was. Even so many centuries later, under a blanket of pure white snow, there was death in that place. He could almost feel the soil of the wounded land under his feet.