Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(109)

She could take it, she thought. She held it in her magic now - if she could make herself just a little more physical, she could just steal it from wherever it was and pull it back with her.

There was danger in what she intended. She might find herself wherever the gem was - and she was in no shape to face the Shadowed alone. Or she could fail to make herself real enough to take the gem and too real to go back to her own body.

As she hesitated, the cord pulsed and turned, and the ball of Tier's Order in the gem became just a little bigger.

She'd never done anything like this before, but all a Raven had to be able to do was conceive of possibilities and let magic fill the patterns she conceptualized. For a moment the stone eluded her, as if it feared her touch, but finally her fingers closed upon it, a power-warm, sharp-edged, and slick-sided garnet.

It was hers. For a moment she just held it, stunned it had worked. Then she released her hold on her magic, both the seeing spell and the power that had allowed her to follow the Shadowed's trail. She came back to herself with Tier's cry in her ears.

It took her precious moments to realize why the gem warmed until it was hot in her hands, moments while it pulled more of Tier's Order to it. The gem's proximity strengthened the effectiveness of the thieving magic.

"Hold him so he doesn't hurt himself." The Scholar's voice had altered a little, deeper tones added to give weight to his commands.

Hennea's hands slid from Seraph's shoulders and wrapped around her hands instead.

"Let me ward it, Seraph," said Hennea.

Seraph opened her cupped hands and allowed Hennea to touch the gem. A simple warding would have just severed the connection between Tier and the stone, and she was too tired to be clever. Let Hennea work the subtler magic necessary.

"There is too much of him, spirit and Order already in the gemstone," Hennea said worriedly, showing she understood as much as Seraph herself did.

"You can see it?" asked Seraph, then thought, Of course you could. Seraph was still trying to absorb the implications of who and what Hennea had been; possibly Seraph's slowness had hurt Tier. If she had just let Hennea try - Hennea, who used to be the goddess of magic. Perhaps she could have really unworked the Shadowed's spell.

"I followed your magic and remembered." Hennea released her hold and stepped back. "I couldn't have done it myself, not until I saw what you had done. What I've done to the stone should keep it from hurting Tier more for a while. But it is not a permanent situation. I don't know how to reverse the Shadowed's spell."

"Neither do I," admitted Seraph readily as she reached out to touch Tier's face. "Yet."

He opened his eyes at her touch. He smiled at her, then looked at Phoran, who sat on Tier's legs, and at Jes and Kissel, who were holding his arms.

"It's all right, you can let me go," Tier said. "I'm all right now... I think."

They looked at Seraph and waited until she nodded before letting Tier go.

"Last time we thought he was done, too" said Phoran apologetically. "He was quiet for a little while, then went into convulsions again."

"I thought you were going to break apart, this time." Lehr's voice was taut as he helped his father to stand.

Tier moved his left shoulder a little gingerly. "Nothing so dramatic - though I might have pulled a muscle or two." He looked up at Seraph with a smile of ironic amusement. "You did learn something today. I usually feel worse after one of those instead of better. What did you do?"

Seraph opened her hand, so he could see the gemstone in it. He took the unset, rust-colored garnet from her hand gingerly.

"They might have chosen a prettier stone," he quipped, then, seeing Seraph's face, he gathered her against him, letting her use his shoulder to hide her tears.

"I almost lost you," she said. "Almost."

"I'm here," he told her. "I'm right here."

She let him comfort her, but she could see the remnants of his fragile Order sway to the tugging of the gem in her hands.

Phoran eased his way out of the chaos of the general meeting that followed Tier's almost demise. Rinnie didn't need him anymore, she was clinging to her father. And Phoran, being neither Traveler nor mage, had nothing he could add to the discussion - which was currently about how to destroy the Shadowed.

He knew they wouldn't leave him alone for long, though Toarsen and Kissel had appeared to be thoroughly fascinated at the thought of meeting a wizard who was old before the Empire had even been a twinkle in the eye of the cunning old farmer who had been the first Phoran.

Phoran welcomed the silence of the old city, outside of the library's door. A sunset, pale and subdued compared to the ones in Taela, lit the eastern sky.

He thought he'd grown accustomed to amazing things on the trip - a lonely mountain haunted with the remnants of ghosts, a legendary city frozen in time, a wizard older then the Empire - but Seraph had just proved him wrong.

It wasn't the magic. Though he was sure that she had done something to help Tier, he hadn't seen anything. He'd noticed the magic Seraph worked was usually less showy than the magic of the court mages - probably because Seraph had no patron to impress.

No, what Seraph had done was even more remarkable than her magic, at least from Phoran's view.

"Introduce me to your family," the old wizard had said - obviously expecting Seraph just to announce who he was. Phoran had a lot of experience with court wizards and their sense of consequence. It would never have occurred to Hinnum that Seraph would take his invitation literally.