Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(85)

But then she said, "Tier?" and thrust the maps at Hennea.

Hennea looked over at Tier, who stood near his horse looking at nothing, his face as empty as any she'd ever seen. Hennea shoved the map back in the case and set it on the dry ground beneath the overhang before following Seraph. Not that there was anything she could do to help.

He'd been having this kind of episode a couple of times a day. Nothing as dramatic as the thrashing fit he'd had a few days before they'd come to Shadow's Fall, but frightening even so.

"Tier?" Seraph's quiet voice was pitched so as not to disturb the happy explorations the boys were pursuing. Jes, Hennea saw, looked up anyway.

Seraph touched Tier's arm. "Tier?"

Gradually, personality leaked back into his face, and he blinked, looking slightly surprised. "Seraph, where did you come from? I thought you were looking at maps with Hennea?"

Seraph smiled as if there were nothing wrong. "This is Old Town, Hennea says. These buildings were already old when the city died."

Tier must have seen something in her face Hennea had missed because he touched her cheek, and said gently, "I did it again, didn't I? That's the second time today."

Third, thought Hennea, but she didn't correct him.

"Let's look at the map and see if we can find the library," he said, when Seraph didn't speak. "If we're here looking for information in a wizards' city, the library is the place to start." He looked up at Hennea. "Can you read the city map well enough to tell us how to get there?"

There was nothing in his face except for cheerful interest. Brave, Hennea thought. She cleared her throat and answered from memory. "It's in the north center of the city. Several miles away, if the map is to scale. Let me go look at it and find the shortest path there."

If she hadn't summoned them to continue through the city, Seraph thought that the others would have been content to spend the rest of the day exploring Old Town. But, once she'd caught their attention they were happy enough to mount up and set off to look for the library instead.

The horses' hooves rang unnaturally loud on the cobbles, the sound echoing off the buildings that rose around them. As they got farther from the gate, the houses grew larger and more elaborate, some as large as the richest of the merchants in Taela, and, for the first time, Seraph saw the green pottery-tiled roofs that she recognized from the mermori.

On one street where all the houses were built wall to wall, there was an empty place where a building should have been. As they got closer to it, Seraph could see that not only was a building missing, but there was a hole half a story deep filled with the crumbled bones of a building. Seraph could see the marks on the walls where a roof had once touched on either side of the hole.

"It's as if, in this one place, the magic didn't protect this building, though the ones on either side are fine," Hennea said. "These ruins are what the whole city should have looked like."

They found other holes in the perfect preservation, places where buildings should have been but were no more. Sometimes there was nothing except bare earth, other places they could see stone foundations or piles of rubble.

"Papa, look. It's an owl." Rinnie said, pointing down a narrow side street that ended at the base of an open building made of granite. A pillar stood before the center of the building, in front of the door. On top of the pillar was an oversized carving of an owl, its wings half-furled, as if any moment it would take off in flight.

Unable or unwilling to miss the call of curiosity, Tier turned Skew down the street.

A few moments more or less would make little difference, Seraph told herself. Even if they found the library and managed to get into it - something not as promising after their troubles with the buildings they'd tried to explore so far - it might take months before she found what she was looking for. Years.

Tier wouldn't have years. Maybe not even months.

She kept her face blank and rode after the others, reminding herself, a little desperately, that Brewydd had believed something here could help them.

"The door's not closed," announced Lehr, who'd taken the lead. He disappeared into the building before Seraph could caution him.

Seraph dismounted.

"Leave the horses," suggested Tier, though Lehr had already done so. "Skew, Cornsilk, and Blade will all stand, and the other horses won't leave them."

He offered his hand to Seraph and escorted her up the half flight of stairs and through the double doors. Despite her worries, she found herself hurrying, eager to see the inside of one of the buildings here at last.

Mosaic tiles of vibrant colors covered the floor of a cavernous room. Great, sweeping arches lifted a ceiling far above them. There was light coming in from somewhere, and Seraph searched for a while before she saw how it had been done. Shaded by yellow glass, glowing stones cast their light as brightly as the sun had ever shone through an open window.

"It's a temple," said Tier, when no one else found words to speak.

"I don't know anything about Colossae's gods," Seraph said. "None of the books in the mermori talk about them." But all of the mermori books she'd read were about magic. They gave little insight into the lives of the wizards who had written them.

"Look over there." Tier nodded toward the far side of the room, and she followed his gaze. She'd been too dazzled by the lights and color to notice the raised dais on the far side of the room. On the dais was a statue.