Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(83)

She'd constructed possibilities for what they would find in the wizards' city a hundred times on this trip. She'd been prepared for anything except what they found.

Three-quarters of the way across the lightly wooded valley, perhaps a full league away, a hillock arose, cliff-edged and flat-topped. The city covered the entire ridge of the higher land, and spilled out to the valley below, as perfect as it had been on the day the Elder Wizards had destroyed it to save the world from their folly. Rose-colored stone walls surrounded the entire city, protecting it from invaders who had never come.

Even from this far away, the city felt empty and waiting.

"Anyone could have found this," said Ielian.

Hennea turned her head to look at the smallest of Phoran's guards. "No," she told him. "Only Travelers."

"Only if the city wanted to be found," said Jes, in an odd voice. It wasn't the Guardian, not quite.

The gates of the wizards' city were built of polished brass and were nearly as tall as the wall. They looked just as they must have when the wizard Hinnum had spelled them closed so many centuries ago. Etched into the top of the left gate, in the language of the Colossae wizards, were the prosaic words Low Gate.

Hennea looked up at the gate towers that loomed on either side of the gate and could almost imagine a face looking down at her.

There were few cities in the Empire older than the Fall of the Shadowed, and few cities that old outside of it; the Shadowed King's claws had sunk farther than the boundaries of the Empire. The older sections of Taela were supposed to have been built by the first Phoran, and they proved that even well-built stone buildings shifted and moved over centuries. The stones in the walls of Colossae sat squarely one atop the other, as if they'd been placed there yesterday.

She shivered, and Jes wrapped a warm hand around her calf in a manner that had grown familiar. "Are you cold?"

"No, it's not that," she told him. "This is wrong. Where are the cracks in the wall? Why is the brass still bright without people to polish or wizards to preserve?" She could feel the power here, but it was oddly distant - a memory of magic rather than the real thing.

"Illusion?" said Seraph, dismounting. "It doesn't have that feel, though there is some magic here, right enough."

She touched the gates, then jumped back as they began to open. Not swinging inward or outward as the city gates of most places did; nor did they rise up like the smaller gates of a keep or hold. These slid back on oiled tracks set below the road surface and into the walls themselves until the only remnant of the gate was a handspan-wide bar of brass up the middle of the wall edge.

A wagon length in front of them was another wall wider than the gate, that blocked them from the city so people entering would have to go to the left or the right of it. On either side of it, set between the city walls and the inner wall were two wooden gates of the sort a farmer might use to keep livestock in or out. One was open, the other shut.

Tier dismounted and crouched beside the brass door's track, bending down to sniff. "If this is an illusion, it's on par with the mermora," Tier said. "This oil smells fresh."

"There are people here," said Kissel. He loosened his sword and tipped his head from side to side, loosening his neck muscles in preparation for battle. "This can't be a deserted place. Not looking like this." He pointed at the dirt just the far side of the gate and Hennea saw what he had - there were lines on the ground as if someone had just finished raking the ground clear of debris.

"It's too quiet," protested Toarsen. "A city is never this silent, Kissel. Not even a city the size of Leheigh. You can hear the sounds of Taela miles away."

"It's magic," said Jes quietly. "The city was left this way. That's what the Guardian says."

"He's been here?" Tier gave his son a surprised look.

Hennea was startled as well. She knew the Guardian had been remembering things he should not have known, not if the Order had been cleansed after the death of the previous Guardian who bore it. She'd started to believe that might be most of the trouble with the Guardian Order.

If so, then when she and Seraph solved the mystery of what to do with the Ordered gems, they might also stumble upon a way to help make the Guardian Order less dangerous to its bearer. Not that she wanted to change Jes or the Guardian, just keep him safe. But if the Guardian knew about Colossae, then it wasn't just bits of the previous bearer that the Order contained - it was the first one, one of the survivors of the death of Colossae.

Jes stared determinedly down at the ground for long enough that she thought he'd not answer Tier's question. Finally, he said, "He doesn't know. He just remembers that the wizards left the city as it was."

"Let's go in," said Phoran, with all the impatience of a young man, reminding Hennea that, for all his cleverness, he was only a few years older than Jes. "Let's see what this wizards' city looks like."

Tier got to his feet and stared at the rake marks before he nodded. "All right. Loosen your swords, boys, those of you who have them. Be alert. Remember that according to Traveler stories there is something evil here. It may be bound, but the Travelers didn't trust those bindings."

Jes didn't wait for the others but went to the closed gate and jumped over it; his dog followed him. Seraph led her horse through the open gate.