Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(79)

She swayed a little. "The storm doesn't like me pushing it away. It wants to come this way."

He didn't know how much she could do without risk, and Seraph and Hennea were farther ahead.

"Be careful, love. You don't have to hold off the storm forever, just a little bit. Whatever you can do helps."

She nodded and closed her eyes.

Ielian rode up. "My horse is sound," he said. "She can ride with me for a while if that helps."

"Thanks." Tier smiled. "There's another steep climb just over that ridge, though. Best she stay where she is."

Ielian cupped a hand across his forehead to block the sun and looked up. "Ridge? I thought that was the top."

Tier shook his head and smiled. "Not for a little while yet. My best reckoning is that we've a league or so before we see the top."

He wasn't off by much. A little over an hour later, he leaned against Rinnie's horse and watched as Toarsen and Kissel staged a snowball fight at the crest of the mountain. It didn't last long because it was too cold, but everyone was cheerful as they started down.

They were an hour from the spot Tier thought they should camp when Rinnie tapped him on the shoulder.

"The storm's coming," she said.

"That's all right." He patted her leg, then swung up behind her. "Go ahead and sleep."

Rinnie slept until they stopped for the night. She grumbled when Jes pulled her off the horse's back, and fell back asleep as soon as he set her down on her blankets.

Lehr made sweet tea and saw to it that everyone drank two cups while Seraph busied herself making a stew of a little water, salted venison, and turnips. It took forever to soften the meat, and the tea, though it had boiled furiously, was not very hot.

With Rinnie's warning in mind, Tier sent Phoran and the boys out collecting tree boughs while he tied up the oilcloth tarp to provide some protection while they slept. The storm hit in the night and followed them down the mountain, turning from snow to rain before letting up at last.

A day off to rest and dry their clothing followed by five long days of travel found them riding on a game trail through heavily forested but mostly level ground. They saw no sign of other people. Everyone knew if they settled too near to Shadow's Fall, crops didn't grow right - as if the Unnamed King had robbed the land of some virtue. Evergreens did all right. There might have been some way to make a living cutting trees and hauling them to the grasslands in the southeast, but the Ragged Mountains made people uneasy if they stayed in them too long.

There were several other Rederni besides Tier who collected animal fur in the fall and winter, but most of them stayed out for a shorter time than Tier. They had stories to tell about things that followed them for weeks without leaving a track or sign. Tier'd had a few odd encounters himself.

Though the trail they were on was flat, towering peaks rose around them. When Tier looked back he could see the highest mountain, a long ridge with a barren red top edged in snowy white with a narrow notch that almost bisected it - the pass they'd taken over the mountain.

Hopefully, Tier thought, as Skew forded a shallow stream, they would be riding back that way in a few weeks and return to Redern - just as the people who'd survived the fall of the Shadowed King had forged their way over that same pass to a place where they felt safe, protected by the steep slope of Redern Mountain.

Then he'd be able to sing again. Skew tossed his head, and Tier loosened his reins, letting them lie slack.

Last night Tier had been singing and lost himself - at least that's what it had felt like. One moment he was singing, and the next he was lying on the ground with Seraph patting his face.

They said he'd just stopped singing, stopped moving, then gone into convulsions. Phoran and Jes had held him down until they stopped. Hennea and Seraph had conferred for a long time last night, then decided that the fit had been brought about by his use of Order while it was under attack by the Path's mages' spell.

Tier didn't want to do anything ever to put that look in Seraph's eyes again, so he'd decided to stop telling stories and singing songs until - well, just until.

Seraph tried not to watch Tier all the time, tried not to look. She and Hennea had spent most of the evening trying to locate the magic that was destroying Tier's Order, but they couldn't. There was nothing to be found, just as there had been nothing to find when they had cleaned Tier of spells when they'd freed him from the Path.

Hennea knew something of the spells they'd used because she'd been there for the first part. Tier remembered a little about it as well, though the Masters had tried to blank his memory of it.

Rufort, who was older than the other three former Passerines, had been there at a ceremony when the binding of Order to gem had been done in front of an audience. He did the best he could, but he wasn't a wizard and, as Tier said dryly, about half the things the Masters did on stage were performance rather than magic.

If Phoran's Memory were to show up again, it might be able to tell them more. However, it hadn't come back to feed since it killed Phoran's would-be assassins in Taela, though Seraph didn't know why. Since Memories were rare, formed only sometimes when a Raven died by murder or betrayal, no one knew much about them. They formed quickly after the Raven's death, usually while the killer was still in the room. Then they avenged the dead Raven and dissipated. With the Masters protected from the Memory by magic, if Phoran hadn't been nearby to feed upon when the Raven died, it would have been attached to the gem as they had planned - and become one of the gems that none of the wizards could use.