Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(81)

Hennea waited until they were walking again and the fuss of adding new members had died down before approaching Seraph.

"You were less than forthcoming," Hennea said quietly. "And Skew's never objected to me."

"But they don't need to know that. I'd rather not have people ruffling through our packs. There's something off about this clan," Seraph replied. "Though it's been a long time since I walked with Travelers, so perhaps I'm misreading something."

"Perhaps you are right to be suspicious," agreed Hennea thoughtfully. "They certainly aren't going to be looking for Lehr and I to be Ordered, not when they know that two of us are Order-Bearers. Although if they have a Raven who looks at us, they'll know what you are up to."

"I've been looking," said Seraph. "The only Order-Bearer I've seen is Benroln himself."

"I suppose there will be no harm done," said Hennea.

"No harm to whom?" asked Benroln.

Seraph carefully maintained her smile. "To us. It's a relief to find a clan to journey with - but it bothers me that we might need your protection. This is a main road, there should be no danger for Travelers here - but I worry all the same."

"It's not just those hotheaded men either," said Benroln in grim tones. "There hasn't been a Gathering in a long time. The last one was disrupted by solsenti soldiers, and the clans felt that another Gathering might just be setting ourselves up for a solsenti sword. The illness that swept through our clans twenty years ago took out more than just your clan. If the solsenti have their way, in another twenty there will be no Travelers at all."

The clipped note in his voice when he said "solsenti" reminded her forcibly of the way some of the more frightened Rederni said "magic."

"Then it is their doom," said Hennea indifferently. "Travelers exist to keep the solsenti from paying the price of a failure that was not theirs."

"What failure?" said Benroln explosively, but Seraph saw calculation in his eyes. He was playing to his audience. "A story nattered at by the elderly? It is only a story - and it was old before the Shadow's Fall. It's a myth, and no more accurate than the twaddle the solsenti spout about the gods. There are no gods and there was no lost city. There is no evil Stalker. We have paid and paid for a crime committed in an Owl's tale. If we don't wise up we'll be nothing more than a solsenti minstrel's tale ourselves, something told to frighten small children."

"Wise up and do what?" asked Seraph.

"Survive," he said. "We need to keep food in our mouths and clothes on our backs. We need to teach the solsenti to leave us alone - as you did to that solsenti bastard who tried to injure Hennea." He paused, then said softly, "You taught that man and his sons to leave us be. If you had allowed your Eagle to teach them, the rest of the solsenti in that group would have taken the story to his village and they all would have trembled in fear."

"Maybe someone did," said Seraph coolly. "Maybe that's why, instead of welcoming us and looking to us to help them when my brother took us into the village years ago, the villagers feared us so much that they burned my brother."

"The solsenti already fear us, that is the problem," said Hennea. "Fear leads to violence. The villagers who killed Seraph's brother were very afraid and too ignorant to know that they had nothing to fear from a Traveler. Perhaps because, in the last few generations, we have taught them that they should fear us."

"Rot," said Benroln curtly before turning his attention back to Seraph. "You have lived among them for what?" He glanced at Jes and Lehr and came up with an accurate guess, "Twenty years or more? You are beginning to sound like one of them - or worse, one of the old ones who sit around the fire and say, 'We are supposed to protect them.' " The anger in his voice was honest now. "Let them protect themselves. They have wizards."

"Who are helpless against the evil we fight," said Seraph.

Benroln's lip curled. "When solsenti soldiers caught my father and our Hunter and Raven out alone, there was nothing we could do but bury them. Had my father not believed the old folktales, he could have taught that village what harming a Traveler might mean. When those villagers killed your brother - you could have saved him. Could have made them so afraid that the thought of harming one of us would never occur to them again. How many of us died because you didn't teach them what you taught that man today? How many more will die because you didn't loose the talons of your Eagle upon them instead of tricking them into thinking you'd set a spell on them?"

Part of Seraph agreed. Part of her had wanted to burn the village to the ground. She had spent most of that first night at Tier's side wondering how long it would take her to get back to the village and avenge her brother.

She could have killed them all.

"Your father was killed?" said Hennea softly, taking Benroln's arm in sympathy and distracting him from Seraph.

He nodded, his anger dissipating under Hennea's attention. "Our Clan Guide took us to the Sept of Arvill's keep. My father said that they'd never admit a whole clan, so he, who was Raven, took our other Raven - my cousin Kiris who was only fifteen - and our Hunter to see what was amiss. They didn't even make it to the gate of the keep before they were shot from ambush."