Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(84)

Hennea hung back. Let Jes and Seraph see to the front guard, she would take the rear. There were other people thinking about safety, too. She noticed Toarsen rode in front of Phoran and Kissel behind. Since Rinnie was riding next to Phoran as usual, that left the most vulnerable of their group well guarded from physical harm. Rufort and Ielian looked at her, and she waved them through ahead of her.

Lehr waited.

"Go ahead," she told him.

He smiled. "I'm not telling Jes I let his lady take rear guard."

She stiffened. "I can protect myself."

"Doubtless," he agreed, and held his chestnut mare where she was.

She smiled and shook her head, but urged her gelding through the gate ahead of him anyway.

The narrow passage dumped them in a large plaza cobbled in the same reddish stone as the walls. Water puddled in the spaces between the cobbles and splashed under the horses' hooves.

In the small houses that crowded together around the plaza and continued to line narrow streets were some of the signs of age Hennea had expected when they'd approached the city. The wood of the doors and windows was cracked, and weeds poked up here and there around the houses. Roofs looked as though they were decades beyond where they had first needed rethatching. Decades, though, not ten centuries.

By the time Hennea and Lehr arrived, everyone else had dismounted and was looking around.

"It still doesn't look deserted enough," said Phoran, rubbing his stallion's neck absently. "There are places in Taela that look worse than this."

"And it doesn't smell," agreed Toarsen.

Lehr hopped off his horse as well and wandered over to one of the houses. "I can't get the door open," he said in surprise.

"Is it locked?" asked Tier, going to see.

Hennea dismounted slowly, still waiting for some danger or attack. The vast emptiness of the city gave her chills.

"I tried that. I can feel locks, and there are none here, Papa," Lehr said. "It just won't open."

Hennea bent down to look at weeds growing along the edge of the wall between them and the gate. A raindrop fell on a leaf, joining a puddle that had formed there. The weed was knee high and fragile-looking, but it didn't bend at all under the weight of the rain. It didn't move.

She reached out to touch it, and it didn't give under the weight of her finger either, even when she pressed down on it.

"Try the window up there," she heard Phoran say to Lehr. "It's got an open-air window."

She glanced behind her and saw Lehr jump to catch the lintel of a window and chin himself up. He dropped back down after a moment. "There's a curtain across, but it feels more like a wall."

"I know what's wrong with your door and the window," she said, standing up and looking around the streets again. When she knew what she was looking for it was obvious. The thatch on the houses was dark and grey with age, but not with rain. The wood of the walls of the houses was not wet either - and none of the horses were nibbling at the weeds.

Seraph frowned at her.

"The Elder Wizards somehow froze the city in time," said Hennea certain that she was right, though she could barely feel a trace of magic. "Everything is exactly as it was the day the Elder Wizards sacrificed it. You'll have to find an open entrance if you want inside these buildings because there isn't a door that will open or a curtain that you can move."

They spent a while exploring the little square. None of them seemed to feel the way Hennea did about the city - except for Gura, who whined and settled in the middle of the square with his muzzle on his paws. It made him sad, too. She left Jes and Lehr trying to figure out how to get across a small yard full of grass time-stiffened to sharp spikes so they could take a closer look at a shed with an open door.

Seraph had taken the map satchel under the overhang of a building for protection from the rain. When she saw Hennea wander back toward the square, she called her over.

"You're the only one who can read this," she said, handing Hennea the city map. "Can you figure out where we are and how to get somewhere that might do us some good?"

Hennea took the map and looked at it. "The gate said 'Low Gate,' so we must be here." She pointed. "It calls this area Old Town."

"I'd have thought they'd build first on top of the ridge," said Seraph, distracted from her original question.

Hennea looked around again and saw, not the dilapidated buildings, but how they once had been built against the solid wall of cliff face that curved around them protectively.

"They might have wanted to be near their fields," Hennea said. "Or maybe the oldest sections had been on top, but were razed and built over."

Seraph grinned at her, an expression Hennea still wasn't used to seeing on the face of a Raven - but Seraph herself admitted that she didn't have the control she ought. It didn't seem to hamper her - much, thought Hennea, remembering the table that had slammed the floor when Ielian had made Seraph too angry.

Seraph's expressions tended to be sudden, breaking out of the cold reserve that should have been a Raven's calm like the sun from a storm cloud or lava from a volcano, then gone just as quickly as they had come.

"Tier will make up stories for us," she said, then lost her grin, and, at first Hennea thought it was because she'd remembered that Tier had quit telling stories or singing.