Patricia Briggs - Raven's Strike

Ielian appeared again, blood staining his shirt. He had a limp Rinnie over one shoulder and an expression as peaceful as any Hennea had ever worn. As he left them there, he softly whistled one of the songs Tier had sung last night.

“No,” said Hennea. “I don’t feel anything. What’s wrong?”

“The Shadowed is here,” Hinnum said. “I know the magic of my apprentice.”

Tier’s hands tightened on Seraph’s shoulders. “Here? In Colossae?”

Hinnum nodded and looked at Hennea. “I am no match for the Destroyer’s power, not in a man who has had it for two hundred years. I can buy you time to run, my lady, but you must run far and fast. Find your six Ordered and destroy this monster I helped to make.”

“We can’t go without Rinnie and the boys,” said Seraph.

Hinnum looked at her and nodded toward the city where a group of low-lying clouds were forming. “He has them already,” he said gently. “There is nothing you can do. A Falcon and a Cormorant have no chance against him. No more do two Ravens, a Bard, and an Eagle. Even if one of you used to be a goddess, even if I give you all the help I can. I tell you that I have seen the power of the Shadowed before. If the Unnamed King had not been mad, Red Ernave and Kerine would never have been able to kill him. Our Shadowed is no Unnamed King. I’ll do my best to delay him, but you have to run.”

Seraph’s hand closed on the tigereye ring. “We need a Lark,” she said. “I have one here. My daughter or whoever this Order once belonged to would have given her life to destroy the Shadowed. If you can help my children, we can destroy him now.”

Phoran stood in helpless, hopeless anger. He had promised Seraph no harm would come to her daughter. An emperor should keep his promises—but Willon’s spell held him firmly.

Willon was an illusionist. What had he said? Tier could see through his illusions. Did he mean that this spell would not have held Tier? Could this spell be some form of illusion?

Phoran had grown up in a court littered with mages of one sort or another. The illusions he’d seen had been minor magic, when it wasn’t outright legerdemain and not magic at all. It was common knowledge that disbelief would break an illusion—one of the reasons that illusionists were considered second-rate mages.

Phoran tried to convince himself the spell was just an illusion, something he could break. Of course I can move—I’ve done so all my life. How can a magician stop me with one word?

The problem with disbelief was that Willon quite obviously had managed to stop him with one word—it was hard to disbelieve something true. This would be a story to tell his children—whose future existence was in serious doubt: The story of how the lowborn wizard overcame the Emperor with one word—because the Emperor was so weak-willed as to allow it.

Anger began to stir, and Phoran welcomed it. He was Emperor, no wizard had the right to force his will upon him. Phoran pushed aside his recent realizations of how little difference there was between a farmer and the Emperor. He wasn’t a Bard. This wasn’t about truth, it was about a peasant-born trader-illusionist who thought he had the right to command an emperor.

No one commanded him . Hadn’t he killed thirteen Septs who believed they had more power than the Emperor?

Phoran closed his eyes and took the deepest belief of the drunken sot he’d once been and held it to his heart. An emperor was superior to any wizard born. He was Emperor Phoran the Twenty-Seventh of that name. No one, no one commanded him!

He stepped forward, knowing with utter certainty, that his right foot would lift, and his weight would shift. He stumbled forward and opened his eyes. He’d done it.

He rolled Rufort over, but his body was limp, his eyes open and covered in the blood he was lying in. Phoran closed Rufort’s eyes.

“Sleep sweet, my friend,” he said, and went to tend Ielian’s other victims.

Kissel had the handle of a knife sticking out of his chest, which was covered in blood.

Phoran hurriedly drew his own knife. “Don’t worry,” he said as Kissel’s eyes widened. “I’m not putting you out of your misery. I’m just getting bandage material before I pull that knife out.”

He stripped off his own shirt and sliced it into strips. The fashion for sleeves was full that year and he thanked the tailors for it as he folded the sleeves up into a pad. A quick glance at Kissel’s back showed him there was no blood. The knife hadn’t gone through then, so he only had one wound to worry about. He tried not to think of internal damage as he tied pieces of his silk shirt together until he had a long strip of bandaging. He cut Kissel’s shirt so he could get a good look at the wound.

Stop the bleeding, he told himself. The others would have to see to the rest.

“I’m going to take the knife out,” he told Kissel. “Brace yourself.”

He did it from behind, so if he overbalanced Kissel, the captain would just fall against Phoran. He pulled it as fast as he could, and cringed at the sound of steel against bone. When it was out, he dropped Ielian’s knife to the ground and held the pad made of his sleeves as hard as he could against the wound as he wrapped Kissel’s chest with the strip of cloth.

When he had the bandaging tied as tightly as he could, he rocked Kissel back against him. Kissel was not a light man, but though he easily outweighed Phoran, Phoran managed to lay him on the ground without banging him up much.

As soon as he’d taken care of Kissel, he went to Gura. The big black dog was still breathing, but his eyes were closed, and there was too much blood on the cobbles.

“I have to get Rinnie,” he told the dog, hesitated, then took his knife to Toarsen. “I need your shirt.”

It took him too long to bandage the dog, but at last he was satisfied that he’d done what he could.

“Don’t come after me,” he told them. “I require your obedience as your emperor. If and when this spell wears off, go get Tier and Seraph and tell them what has happened. I’ll get Rinnie if I can. If not, I doubt that Willon will kill her, not if he wants Seraph to do anything for him.”

He started to go after Rinnie, then stopped and turned back. He couldn’t leave without telling them what he’d learned.

“The spell is an illusion,” he told them rapidly. “As soon as you believe, really believe you can move, then you can break the spell.”

He walked backward as he spoke. When he finished he turned and ran.

Phoran was not Lehr, but he didn’t need to be. He could see the tower Willon had pointed out; it rose from the top of the cliffs above them. Ielian had walked in Rufort’s or Gura’s blood, and though the blood trail didn’t last for more than three or four steps, it gave Phoran all the direction he needed. He headed for the alleyway that looked to be where Ielian had been heading.

The alley was narrow—only wide enough for two men walking abreast, and it ended against the cliff edge, where a steep, zigzagging stairway had been carved into the cliff face. He shielded his eyes and saw a small figure climbing near the top.

Phoran drew his sword and started up the cliff. There were no railings on the side of the stairway, which was narrower than that alley had been. By the time he’d passed the third flight, he was high enough to make misstep fatal. He kept his eyes on the steps before him and tried not to look over the edge.

The past few months had melted much of the self-indulgent fat from his body, but even in his best shape, Phoran would never be a great runner. His build was more like Kissel’s, good for power but not stamina; but with Rinnie’s life at stake, he made the best speed he could. Lack of air made him dizzy and forced him to slow his pace. Legs aching, a stitch in his side, focused on climbing, he might not have noticed the Memory if it had not grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop.