Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(64)

"I'm rather finicky in my food choices," said Phoran with mock sadness. "I'll never manage to be properly terrifying."

"You wouldn't have to suck the marrow from their bones the way the Nineteen - ah, excuse me - Twenty did," said Tier solemnly. "I suspect a cooked heart or two would do just fine."

"I don't eat heart," said Phoran firmly. "Though I suppose I could feed it to the grieving heir - that might have a similar effect."

Tier and Phoran gave each other a look of mutual approval.

"I already owe you a favor," said Phoran, "but your experience is different than my own. I'd like your opinion on my problem." He waved at the Memory.

"I am, always, your servant, my emperor," Tier was rather pleased to find that he meant it.

"For the past three months," Phoran began, "I've had this creature. Not that it follows me all the time, you understand. Usually, it just visits me once a night." He smiled grimly and sat down on the bed.

Tier followed his example and collapsed on the other end of the bed. He should have waited until the Emperor bid him sit, but between whatever happened during the time he couldn't remember and the jolt the doorway had given him, his joints were all but jelly.

"Sometimes when I can't sleep," Phoran said, "I go exploring the shut-off places in the palace. I have this key," he took one out of his pocket. "It's supposed to open every door in the palace. It didn't do yours, but it opened the turnkey's box that had your key in it."

He put it away and began his story again. "Anyway, one night a few months ago I was wandering through the Kaore wing - that's one of the ones my father shut down, I'm told. It's usually pretty boring: long corridors with identical rooms on either side, that sort of thing. But this time I heard some noise at the end of one of the corridors.

"No one's supposed to be there - but sometimes people are. I sneaked down to a door that was ajar." He pulled the velvet fabric of his pants and absently rubbed it between thumb and index finger.

"There were a number of people in dark robes with hoods over their heads. They were standing in a loose circle, chanting. A seventh man was kneeling, blindfolded and bound in the center. If I'd known what they were going to do, I'd have tried to stop it somehow. But by the time I saw the knife it was too late. One of the robed men had already slit the bound man's throat."

Phoran got off the bed and began to pace restlessly. "There was blood everywhere - I hadn't realized... It was too late for the dead man, and I thought that they might not be too excited at having a witness so I left as quickly as I could. The Memory came to me the next night."

Phoran looked at the creature solemnly, then sank back onto the bed and began rolling up his sleeve. "It comes to me every night," he said, showing Tier marks on the inside of his wrist that climbed in fading scars to the hollow of his elbow.

"After it feeds it tells me that in return it owes me the answer to a question. Usually its answers aren't very useful. Tonight I asked if it knew someone who could tell me something about the Sept of Gerant's lands and it brought me here."

Tier said, "You think that you interrupted them killing their last Traveler prisoner." He considered it. "I think you are right - how many groups of dark-robed men do you have going around killing people in the palace?"

"There might be as many as five or ten," he said. "But not that manage to summon or create something like this." He pointed at his dark comrade. "This is wizardry."

Tier nodded slowly. "I'm not a wizard, but I've dealt with them. If this was something that might result from their meddling, I'd think they'd be careful that it would not attach itself to them. Maybe some magic. That would mean that you were the only one there it could attach itself to."

He got off the bed and walked closer to the Memory. His eyes wouldn't quite focus on it, reminding him forcibly of the way Jes could fade into the shadows when he wanted to.

"How did you know that I could answer the Emperor's question tonight?" asked Tier.

The thing shifted restlessly. "You fed me true," it said at last. "I know you as I know Phoran, twenty-seventh emperor of that name."

"I fed you?" Tier asked.

" 'Numberless were the heroes who fell,' " whispered the Memory in a voice quite different than it had been using: it was no longer without inflection. The change was remarkable.

"You were my listener?" said Tier.

"I was Kerine to your Red Ernave," agreed the Memory.

"What else are you?" Tier took a step nearer to it.

"I am death," it said and was gone.

"Did you understand what it meant?" asked Phoran.

Tier rubbed his hands together lightly. "Only a bit of it," he said. "Apparently it feeds on more than just blood. I gave it a story and it took more than I offered - which is how it knew that I'd been one of Gerant's commanders."

He'd invoked magic in that story - more magic than he'd ever brought forth before - and it had only been shortly after that when Telleridge had informed him that his magic was contained. He'd thought that Telleridge had meant that they'd taken his magic away - but perhaps it was more subtle than that.