“No one knows about the forest king,” said Lehr, turning over the last spade of dirt. “But Hennea said that whoever sent the letter to the priest knew what we are.”
“Yes,” agreed Seraph. “How did they know, not only that I am Raven, but exactly what my skills are? Most Ravens cannot read the past in an object. These men knew what trail Tier would take home—and it’s not the way he left.”
Lehr frowned. “Not even I knew what path Papa takes home. He kept it quiet because the furs are worth a lot of money—did you notice that there is no trace of the furs? They would have been packed over Frost’s hindquarters, which weren’t even scorched.”
“No, I hadn’t noticed,” said Seraph. “So thrifty of them.”
Lehr packed in a layer of dirt with his foot. “I suppose that someone could have overheard Jes talking about the forest king—but Jes seldom talks to anyone but the family. No one else really pays attention to what he says anyway. And if none of us knew what magic you could do until Forder brought back Frost’s bridle, who would know what you could do?”
She waited, watching him think about it. If he came up with the same answer as she did…
“Bandor used to hunt with Papa, didn’t he?” Lehr whispered it. “During the first years when the bakery used to have to support the farm, too? Jes was just a baby.”
“That’s right,” Seraph said.
“And, after you and Papa got married, Bandor was the only one who used to talk to you. He knows a lot about the Travelers—did you tell him what kinds of things you could do?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And Bandor knows about Jes’s stories of the forest king—but he doesn’t believe them, Mother.”
She smiled at him grimly. “Do you know who your father thinks the forest king is? I mean aside from Jes’s dealings with him?”
“No.”
“What if I told you that in a very old language, ell means king or lord and vanail is forest. If you put them together—”
“Ellevanal?”
Seraph had never seen anyone’s jaw drop before; it was an unattractive expression.
“Do you mean,” whispered her son, “that Ellevanal, god of the forest and growing things, the Ellevanal, Karadoc’s Ellevanal, is Jes’s forest king?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Today is the first time I’ve met him, and I didn’t ask. He doesn’t look like a god, does he? But I know that Tier was convinced of it, and he told your Aunt Alinath what he thought.”
Alinath had been at her worst, telling Tier that Seraph couldn’t give Jes the kind of attention that he needed. That Seraph encouraged Jes’s problems by listening to his stories about his made-up friend. A boy, she’d said, needed to understand that lying was not acceptable. She hadn’t liked it when Tier suggested Jes hadn’t lied at all.
Seraph smiled grimly. “Bandor was there when he said it.”
But Lehr was still worried about other matters. “But the forest lord belongs here, to our forest. Ellevanal is worshiped everywhere—I mean, Karadoc has had apprentices, and there’s a larger church in Korhadan.”
“I don’t worship gods,” said Seraph. “You’ll have to take it up with the forest king next time you meet him.”
Lehr thought about her answer, but it seemed to satisfy him because he changed the subject. “Uncle Bandor loves us, loved… loves Papa. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Papa.”
“So I believe,” agreed Seraph. “But you and I both came up with his name. He’s become one of Volis’s followers. I think that we need to be cautious around him until we know more.”
“So what are we going to do now?”
“First we’ll finish here, then I have a few questions for the priest. Can you take us by the quickest route to Redern?”
“Yes,” he said. “But we won’t make it before dark.”
“No matter,” Seraph said coldly. “I don’t mind waking up a few people.”
Or tearing them limb from limb if she had to. Tier had been taken, alive—because she couldn’t bear it otherwise—and she intended to find out where he was. And tearing someone limb from limb sounded very, very good. Let Volis face a Raven who knew what he was when he didn’t have a cadre of wizards to protect him. Oh, she would have her answers from him before she slept this night.
“What about Rinnie?” asked Lehr.
“Jes will have gotten back from taking Hennea to the village by now. Rinnie will be safe with him.”
Gura barked, and Rinnie looked up from her gardening. But whoever had disturbed the dog was on the other side of the house.
Rinnie jumped to her feet and dusted off her skirt. She put her hand on Gura’s collar and set off to see who had come.
CHAPTER 7
He opened his eyes to utter darkness and a cold stone floor under his cheek, though he didn’t remember going to sleep. He took a deep, shaken breath and tried to determine how he got here, wherever here was. The last thing Tier remembered was riding Frost down the mountain on the way back home.
Undeniably, he was no longer on the mountain. The stone floor beneath his hands was level, and his fingers found the marks of a chisel. He was in a room, though he could hear water flowing nearby.
He rose cautiously to hands and knees and felt his way forward until his hands closed on grating set into the floor, the source of the sound of water. The bars were too close to let him put anything wider than his finger through and the water flowed well below that. He tried to pull up the grate, but it didn’t so much as shift.
Hours later he was hungry, thirsty, and knew that he was in a room six paces wide by four paces long. An ironbound wooden door was inset flat against one of the narrow walls with the hinges on the outside.
The stonemason responsible for the walls had been very good, leaving only the smallest of fingerholds. Tier’d fallen three times, but he finally climbed the corner of the room until he touched a wooden ceiling. By his reckoning it was about twice his height to the floor. With a foot braced on adjacent walls he couldn’t put any significant pressure against any of the boards, though he tried all the ones he could reach from his perch.
At last he climbed back down, convinced that the room he was in wasn’t anywhere in Redern—or Leheigh either for that matter. He’d been inside the Sept’s keep a time or two, and the walls in this room—which had obviously been designed as a prison cell—were better formed than the walls of the great hall in the Sept’s keep.
Why had someone gone to the trouble of hauling him off the mountain and imprisoning him? It wasn’t as if he, himself, would be worth money to anyone, not the kind of money that would be important to anyone who could afford a cell built like this one was.
He had a long time to think about it.
Emperor Phoran the Twenty-Seventh (Twenty-Sixth if he didn’t count the Phoran who united the Empire—it was the first Phoran’s son who had declared himself emperor) stretched his feet out before him and cast a practiced leer at the woman sitting on him. She was all but baring her breasts at him, the stupid cow. Did she really think that his favors were likely to be won by such as she?
He snagged a mug from a nearby serving tray and drank deeply, closing his eyes to the party that had somehow spread from the dining hall to his own private rooms. The laughter of a nearby woman cut through his spine with its falseness.
He wondered what his so-long-ago ancestor would have thought about such decadence. Would he still have set aside his plow to organize his fellow farmers into a militia to defend themselves against bandits? Or would he have turned back to his farming, ashamed that his loins could breed such a degenerate creature as the current emperor?
Phoran sighed.
“Am I boring you, my love?” asked the woman on his lap archly.
He opened his mouth to inflict the kind of cruel remark that had become second nature to him over the past few years, but instead he sighed again. She wasn’t worth it—dumb as a sheep and oblivious to fine nuances of language.