Patricia Briggs - Raven's Shadow

By the time four days had passed only Seraph and her brother Ushireh were left to bury the dead. Ushireh worked until he passed out. She’d been so afraid that he was dead, too; it had taken her a long time to convince herself that he was only unconscious. She’d dragged him away from the dead they’d gathered together in the center of the camp, then she’d burned it all—camp and bodies alike. It had been weeks before she could work enough magic to light a fire.

When she managed it at last, Ushireh’s body sat up in the pyre, and his head turned until he could fix his glowing eyes on her. Seraph shrank back and tried to close her eyes. As if in death he’d acquired the magic he’d so envied her in life, his will kept her from looking away from him.

“You left me,” he said. “You left your duty. You cannot run forever, Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent.”

She awoke with a gasp and a cry and was gathered into warm arms and rocked gently.

“Shh,” said Tier, “it was a dream. You’re safe.”

She buried her head in his shoulder and gave up a lifetime of self-control to sob raggedly against him. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I don’t want to be a Traveler. They all die, and I have to burn them and bury them. I’m so tired of death and duty. I want… I want…” What she wanted was tied away from her in strands of guilt and duty, but she found a fair approximation of it in the safety of Tier’s arms.

“Shh,” he said. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

His words passed over and around her, the sense lost to her grief and guilt, but the sound of his voice comforted her.

From the third of the three windows that looked out into the garden, Alinath watched her brother hold the witch he’d brought home and she clenched her fists before she turned away.

When the worst of it had passed, embarrassment made Seraph turn away and wipe her face with the corner of the blanket.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “It was a nightmare.”

“Ah,” said Tier as he let her pull away from him. “It sounded worse than that to me.”

She shrugged, not looking at him. “Memories make the worst nightmares, my father always said.”

“You don’t have to go find another clan,” he said. “You can stay here.”

She tried to stifle her involuntary laugh. It wouldn’t be polite to disparage the hospitality of his family. “No, I can’t. Thank you. But no.”

“I can’t leave now,” said Tier. “But I fear it won’t be long. Mother complains and frets until it’s hard to believe that she’s sick at all—but she’s losing weight and her color is much worse. Can you wait?”

Seraph held herself still. Could she wait to take up her duties? Oh, yes. Wait forever if she could. But was it the right thing to do?

At last she nodded. “I’ll wait.”

“Good.”

Tier sat with her a bit, while the sweat dried on her back. With the air of a man coming to a decision, he took something from around his neck and put it into her hands.

“This came with me into war and kept me safe enough through any number of battlefields. As I am unlikely to need it now, I’d like you to take it.”

She fingered the collection of large wooden beads carefully.

“They’re not much to look at,” he said hastily, and with a little embarrassment, she thought. “But they carry the blessing of our priest. You’ve met Karadoc?”

She nodded. The priest had sought her out to give her his sympathies on the death of her brother. The only Rederni aside from Tier who had. She hadn’t been quite sure how to deal with a priest—Travelers had little use for the minions of the gods—but he’d seemed like a good person.

“Karadoc gave me that for helping him tend his garden after he broke his wrist one summer.”

“It must have been more than that,” Seraph said thoughtfully. “People don’t give gifts like this lightly.”

He stiffened, “It’s just a bunch of wooden beads, Seraph.”

She put them against her face and rubbed against them like a cat, soaking in the warmth that emanated from the battered wood. “Old wooden beads,” she said. “I can’t tell exactly how old, but they’ve been given in love and worn that way for a long, long time. They comfort me—did they comfort you while you were far from your home?” She didn’t wait for his answer, “Tell me the story of your gardening for Karadoc?”

“I was young,” he said finally. “Karadoc is… well, you’ve met him. He always took time to talk to me, listening to me when my father and I fought.”

His voice hadn’t fallen into the cadences of storytelling; he told this story hesitantly. “Karadoc broke his wrist; I told you that. His garden is his pride and joy, and it started to get overgrown almost immediately. I suppose being the priest of the god of green and growing things has a certain influence on your garden.”

“He hired a boy to tend it, but when harvest season came the boy had to help his father in the field, and Karadoc couldn’t find another one. So I started getting up a little earlier in the morning so I could work on it a bit.”

Seraph smiled a little; the beads and Tier’s company had worked their own magic. “He didn’t know you were doing it.”

“Well, I wasn’t certain that I would do it more than once or twice. A baker gets up early to miss cooking in the heat of the day. I didn’t want to promise something I couldn’t do.”

“And Karadoc found you out,” said Seraph. “When you wouldn’t take any pay, he gave you these.”

He nodded.

Seraph put the necklace around her throat. Gifts could not be returned, only appreciated. She would find something she could do to repay him for his kindness to her and his gift. A Traveler’s blessing could be a useful thing.

“Thank you for this,” she said. “I will treasure it as long as it remains in my hands and pass it on as you have, as Karadoc did.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence.

“A man asked me today what I’d do if I could do something besides baking and soldiering,” he said at last.

“What did you answer?”

“Farming,” he said.

She nodded. “The land gives back everything you put into it and a little more, if you have the knack.”

“If you could do anything, be anything, what would it be?”

She stilled. She knew about villages, knew that most men’s fates were set in stone when they were little more than children and apprenticed to a trade—or else they were cast off never to be more than itinerant workers or soldiers. Women’s lives were dictated by their husbands.

Travelers were a little more free than that usually. A bowyer could decide to smith if he wanted to, as long as he continued to contribute to the clan. There were no guilds to restrict a person from doing as he willed. And women, women ran the clan. Only the lives of the Ordered were set out from the moment a Raven pronounced them gifted at birth.

No Traveler would ever have asked a Raven what she wanted to be.

The silence must have lasted too long because he said, “That question took me aback, today, too. But I learned something. What would you do?”

“Ravens don’t marry,” she said abruptly. He was easy to talk to, especially in the dark. “We can’t afford the distraction. We don’t do the normal chores of the clan. No cooking or firewood gathering. We don’t darn our own clothes or sew them.”

“You cook well,” he said.

“That’s because Ushireh couldn’t cook at all. I learned a lot when we were left on our own. But being a Raven’s not like being a baker, Tier. You could leave it and become a soldier. You can leave it now and become a farmer if you want. But I can’t leave being a Raven behind.”