Seraph could sense the change in the weather even before rain began falling again, this time in a gentle drizzle that would eventually drain the power from the storm. She took a relieved breath. “Hennea, keep that troll dry so it burns to ash.”
“Done.”
“Papa,” said Rinnie, dazedly staring at Tier. “Is it dead?”
Tier sheathed his sword and swung down from Skew’s back, grunting as he hit the ground. But his knees didn’t stop him from picking Rinnie up and pulling her tight.
“Shh,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
But he spoke too soon.
The troll rolled across the wards and kept coming.
Tier, with his back to the burning troll, his eyes on Rinnie, had no warning. The dying monster struck him a glancing blow that knocked him off his feet. Tier rolled over until Rinnie was below him, protecting her with his body.
But the troll knew where they were now and brought forward a three-fingered hand and wrapped it around Tier’s legs.
The troll still lay across Seraph’s wards, and she spoke, using for the first time in her life one of the Words that had been passed down from the Colossae wizards to their Traveler children.
“Sila-evra-kilin-faurath!”
The wards shifted and became something else, called into being by her will and the ancient syllables.
For two decades Seraph had gone out each season to walk a path around the farm while her family slept. She’d set her blood and hair into the soil and called a spell to protect her family from harm. With the Word she called that power into a single act that was the culmination of the purpose of all those nights, all that magic.
Lehr’s fire died completely, leaving the troll burnt and blackened, but alive. It roared triumphantly and tightened its grip on Tier.
Someone made a dismayed sound.
“Die,” said Seraph, in a voice so hoarse and deep it sounded unfamiliar, as if something else used her throat. There was no room left in her for anger or fear, no room for anything except power as she touched the troll.
Blackened flesh turned grey and cracked around grass-green bones. Grey turned to white ash that slid to the ground under the gentle hand of the rain and the iron-shod hooves of Skew as the battle-trained horse protected his rider as he had been trained.
Seraph took in deep breaths and tried to contain herself, but there was too much power.
“Don’t touch her, Lehr,” Hennea said. “Look to Tier and the child. Seraph. Seraph.”
Slowly, Seraph turned her head to look at the other Raven, who averted her gaze under Seraph’s hot attention.
“What are you going to do with the magic, Seraph?” Despite dropping her gaze, Hennea sounded serene.
Seraph found herself clinging to that serenity for a moment. “Too much,” she said. “Unwise to kill something that old with a Word.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
The force of the power the Words had siphoned into her burned and felt wondrous at the same time. The troll had been old, too old. The power of his death rippled through her along with the magic she herself had drained from her wards. Too much power to be safe.
“The wardings,” she said, her voice thick and still oddly deep. “I need to protect…”
“Papa?”
Lehr’s voice broke Hennea’s hold on her, reminding her why she’d killed the troll in the first place. She might have been too late. “Tier? Rinnie?”
Seraph turned to look at Tier, where Lehr and a couple of the bolder villagers were pulling the remains—bones—of the troll off them.
“They are alive.” Hennea’s voice was calm. “And they’ll remain so if you can contain the magic you hold. Control yourself, Raven.”
“Take care of them,” Seraph said harshly, resenting the part of her that understood that Hennea was correct. She had to rid herself of this magic. “I’ll walk the wards.”
CHAPTER 3
Not letting herself look back, Seraph walked briskly through the storm-tattered camp that covered their fields, ignoring the people who scuttled out of her way. She stared at the ground to spare them her gaze until she made it into the woods that bordered the farm.
What had she been going to do?
She stood where she was for a long moment.
She had to protect… by Lark and Raven, she was power-sick. Couldn’t think clearly.
The warding. She should reset the warding. Slowly she made her way to the place where the warding had been and knelt in the dirt.
There are two ways to set wardings. The voice of her old teacher was as clear as if he’d been standing over her shoulder. For a night a warding can be a simple thing, a rope that surrounds the tents and wagons and keeps them safe. But for any longer, or where dangers are greater, a warding is best worked as a chain with interconnecting links, each subtly different from the one before so that if one link fell, the others will still be effective guards.
She pressed her hands into the soil and began, ignoring the ugly whispering voice that tried to coax her to keep the power she held. If she could kill a troll with a whisper, how great was the good that she could accomplish with what she now held?
Her hands tingled as she carefully drew a curved line. She’d never held such power.
Only as the terrible rush of the troll’s death died away did she really understand how old it had been. She felt his age in the burn of magic that was not lessened even when she set wards that should keep out the shadowed for generations.
She feared that just relaying the wards would not be enough to absorb so much so she began to feed it into the forest. Too much, and she’d harm as much as she helped, but a slow trickle of magic should not cause a problem.
Gradually the discipline of redrawing the wards absorbed her. Mathematical and artistic at the same time, they required enough of her attention that the part of her that desired the rush of power was reduced to murmurs she could ignore.
She became aware of him gradually, a pale form grazing quietly beside her. The pattering of the light rain was accompanied by the grinding of teeth and grass. The familiar, peaceful sound helped somehow, and she became aware of a deep inner contentment.
She was home.
She finished the link she was working and sat back, fisting her hands against her lower back as she stretched.
“You don’t look well,” she said.
“One of the tainted creatures attacked the priest,” replied the pale horse who was Jes’s forest king. His voice was velvety and very deep. “I saved him, but it was a near-run thing. Karadoc’s not young by Rederni standards, and he’s ill even yet. Without a priest, fighting the shadow-tainted has been draining, even with the help of your daughter.”
She absorbed what he said and sorted through questions. The slowness of her thoughts told her that she was far from free of power-sickness yet.
“The troll wasn’t the first of the shadow-tainted creatures to come here?” she asked. She didn’t need Lehr or Jes to tell her that the troll had been tainted. Unlike the mistwight, trolls were shadow-born, creatures whose only purpose was to destroy and kill.
“No, there were other things, too, things I haven’t seen since the Fall, though none as dangerous as the troll. They come to destroy and feed the Shadowed.”
Seraph stilled. “I had hoped that we were wrong. You are sure there is another Shadowed? That Volis couldn’t have set up a summoning spell?”
The horse snorted. “Creatures like that troll would only come to the call of a Shadowed.” He rubbed his nose on his knee.
“You mean the Shadowed is here?” asked Seraph, then shook with the rebellion of her magic as her control of her emotions wavered. She took in deep, even breaths until everything settled down.
The forest king waited until she was through before he said, “Not now, I don’t think. But he has been here. He left behind a rune in the old temple that was triggered a few weeks ago.” He lifted his head to scent the air, then shook his mane and turned his attention back to her. “I don’t pay enough attention to the town. If Karadoc hadn’t called me when the first of the creatures appeared, it might have taken me too long to find the rune on my own. As it was, other than destroying the rune, I could do little for them in the stone of the town, so I called them here, where your wards could do some of the work while I took care of the tainted things. I wasn’t expecting the troll, so I used myself up healing the priest and driving away the little things. A troll…” He sighed. “A normal troll would not have been too difficult, but that one… Your wards kept him mostly away from the villagers until today.”