Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(72)

Guardians were all but immune to magic - Jes could go through the barrier. It was just possible he could get through, retrieve Rinnie, and return across the barrier with her. But if he couldn't, he would never leave her. Trapped there, he would try to protect Rinnie from Volis - and that was unacceptably dangerous. She'd send him there only if there was no choice.

She could tell that Jes had reached the end of his control because the temperature in the room was dropping rapidly.

"You are an ignorant fool," she said coldly. "The Eagle is not the Stalker. The Stalker is what made the Shadowed what he was. If you manage to summon it, you will not be more - you will be nothing. The Stalker has no followers, because anything that answers to it becomes a thing just as it is."

"Don't think I don't know about people like you," said Volis. "My first teacher liked to tell me how ignorant I was because he was afraid of me and what I could do. So for years I did his bidding as his apprentice. When the Master of the Secret Path found me and told me the truth, the first thing I did was arrange for my teacher to receive a lesson ensuring that he never had a chance to mislead anyone again." Satisfaction colored his voice. "Take warning from that. You say I am wrong, but you don't know me, don't know what I can do."

The growing cold made Seraph shiver, but she trusted that Jes would hold on a few minutes more. She needed to make this boy angry.

"Oh, I know what you can do," said Seraph serenely. "Do you think that Hennea spent the whole day silent? Or do you think that I should tremble before an illusionist?" She saw her tone made him flush. Solsenti wizards looked down upon illusionists, saw their magic as a lesser thing because it neither created nor destroyed. Solsenti wizards were fools about many things. "A boy barely old enough to dress himself? A solsenti conjurer who defiles himself with the dead because he has to steal their magic or everyone would know how ignorant he was?"

"I may be an illusionist," he said with careful dignity, "but I trapped you - both of you Ravens and your Hunter son, too. And this ignorant boy found out your secrets. I know how to summon a god."

"You can't even keep a Raven with geas," said Seraph. "How could you summon a god?"

She'd hoped to anger him with the reminder of Hennea's escape, but he was too excited about his discovery.

"It will be easy," said Volis. "The Cormorant was the key."

And then, pacing back and forth, he began to pontificate upon pseudo-complexities of the Orders that the wizards of his Secret Path had "discovered" over the years.

"Lehr," Seraph said softly underneath the flow of Volis's words. "Is he shadowed?"

"Yes. Uncle Bandor, too - though not as deeply."

Seraph nodded her understanding, then turned her attention back to the ranting Volis.

"I took the rings, one for each Order. The Secret Path only has four Healer rings, but none of them work right. So they gave me this one to do as I wish. I have one for each of the Orders, but with your daughter I don't need the Cormorant."

He looked at Seraph, his face flushed with triumph. "I tried it with just the rings, but it didn't work because the spell calls for blood and death. Getting someone of each Order is impractical - but then I remembered something I read about sympathetic magic, using one thing to represent other things, like using a feather for air. I wrote to Telleridge and he said he thought it might work. So all I needed was one of you."

He looked at Hennea and said spitefully, "I could have used you, but I thought you liked me. I didn't want to hurt you. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble, couldn't I?"

"You might have," Hennea agreed mildly.

He didn't know what to say to that, so he turned his attention back to Seraph. "I thought that it would be easier to use the youngest one. It wasn't hard to persuade Bandor that she was in danger and I could help her. You should be proud, Seraph; your daughter's death will return the Eagle to the world."

Sweat dripped from his forehead, though on the other side of his barrier, Seraph's breath fogged in the cold. Evidently the barrier blocked the effects of Jes's ire.

"Solsenti wizards," said Seraph, slowly shaking her head, "always making things much more complicated than they really are. The Stalker is already here at your request." She smiled at him. "You know I speak the truth."

His eyes widened for an instant as his stolen Owl ring, once she'd called his attention to it, told him she was right. Then he narrowed his eyes accusingly. "You just think you speak the truth, that's all it means. You are wrong."

"I can't give you proof of the Stalker," agreed Seraph mildly. "You'd have to be Hunter to see what you have done in your stupidity." He didn't like to hear the word stupid, especially as he knew that she meant it. But he wasn't going to lose his temper enough for her purposes; he was too buoyed up by his plans. She'd have to bring Jes into it.

"I can show you what Eagle is," she said.

The whole time they'd spent talking, Seraph had been sorting through the intricate work of the spell holding the barrier together. If he'd just used solsenti magic, she might not have been able to break it, but he'd woven Raven and solsenti magic together and the result was unstable.

"Jes," she said, "go get Rinnie and keep her safe. Lehr, when you can, take Bandor."