“I see what you mean.”

“What else has happened that is unusual?” Hennea turned back to the book she’d been looking at.

Seraph looked at her hands. I should just stop the conversation here, she thought, because the rest of it is almost too painful to bear.

“Tier and I had five children,” she told her hands. “One was stillborn, and Mehalla, who died when she was three years old. Jes is Eagle. Lehr is Guardian. Rinnie is Cormorant. Tier is Owl. I am Raven. What Order do you think my Mehalla who died of lung sickness bore?” She looked up as she asked the question.

Hennea was staring at her. “Lark?”

Seraph nodded. “I don’t know of any clans who had all six Orders, let alone a small family. I’ve never heard of any family who birthed only Ordered children. The Orders don’t follow parentage. That’s one of the few things we do know about the Order. So why is my whole family Ordered? And why do we all bear different Orders? There are many more Ravens than there are Larks, or even Cormorants and Eagles.”

“Maybe it is the solsenti blood?” Hennea hazarded.

“Or the magic that clings to the mountains here. Or that the Travelers generally avoid Shadow’s Fall and our farm is only a couple days’ journey from it. Or it is the will of the gods. Or it is fate.”

“There are no gods,” Hennea said flatly. “It is chance.”

“Fine,” said Seraph. “What clan did Kerine belong to? The Traveler Raven who fought beside Red Ernave at Shadow’s Fall, do you know?”

“Isolde’s.”

“You might be interested to know that Tier’s family claims to be descended from Red Ernave’s only surviving child.” Before Hennea could say anything, Seraph waved her hand impatiently. “I know, I know. Mythology. Every noble in the Empire, except the Emperor himself, traces their family lineage back to Red Ernave. But there’s a stone in the bakery with a crude carving of an axe and Verneiar’s name just below it. It’s old, the carving on the stone, and the man who placed it there thought of himself as Red Ernave’s son—I’ve touched it, just as I touched that map.”

Hennea was quiet.

“I have over two hundred mermori, Hennea. Two hundred and twenty-four of five hundred and forty-two.” Seraph felt tears touch her eyes, but blinked them away. “Why should I bear the burden of almost half the mermori Hinnum made? Why aren’t they scattered among other clan leaders? Benroln had only three. Surely there are Travelers more closely related to Torbear the Hawkeyed or Keria the Four-Fingered than I am. Or how is it that my family—farmers from a small village half the Empire from Taela—became involved with the Emperor himself just when he was endangered by this new Shadowed?”

Seraph waited while the silence gave weight to her question, then she opened her neglected book to a random page. “I don’t know either. But I can’t help but wonder if there are forces shaping the events of our lives. I hope I’m wrong. I hope we all die of old age, but I don’t think we will.” She stared at a random page without seeing it. “Although maybe we’ll be killed by lung fever or trolls first.”

It felt good to talk about this to someone who could see the patterns only another Traveler would recognize. Not that Hennea would know anything more about what was happening than Seraph did, but it felt good to tell her anyway.

Seraph looked at the page she’d opened to—and suddenly remembered where she’d seen the book before. “Huh. This is a copy of a book I found in Kiah the Dancer’s mermora—that’s the fourth mermora that came into my hands. I used to keep track.”

CHAPTER 6

Seraph wiped a hand across her forehead. No doubt, she thought, leaving an attractive smear of dust behind. She glanced at Hennea, who was picking through the contents of a chest, her face pale and set.

After sorting the books in the library and taking a careful look at the mostly empty rooms comprising the innards of the temple, they’d collected Rinnie and the boys and set them to hauling the books of solsenti wizardry and the books neither she nor Hennea could translate down to Jes’s secret room. Then she and Hennea set out to look at the two rooms they’d left for last.

The closet where the Shadowed had set his summoning runes told them nothing. Given a few years, the dissipating powers might clear enough to allow Seraph to read the wooden slats and find out more about the Shadowed, but right now the only past that they wanted to tell her about was the past of Karadoc carrying the forest king into the temple and cleaning the runes.

She had learned something interesting though not important to their search for the Shadowed.

She’d thought the excavation was too extensive to have been dug in the short time between the arrival of the new Sept of Leheigh, who had brought Volis and assorted mages belonging to the Path among his retinue, and the opening of the Temple of the Five. She’d been right.

The lower tunnels told her they had been dug in secret, many years earlier, as places to hide goods from the Sept’s tax collector. When Volis had brought hired men into Redern to dig the temple, they must have happened into the tunnels by chance. She wondered if Willon knew about the tunnels here, since the lower layer should be on the same level as his store.

By unspoken consent, they saved Volis’s bedroom for last; Seraph because it was the most likely place, after the library, to hold something of interest, but she thought Hennea put it off it for another reason.

Seraph found a yellowish sapphire set in a wristband, fallen among the cushions of Volis’s bed. It wasn’t an Order-bound gem, so she left it there. Dropping the bedding she’d searched, Sraph looked at Hennea.

She was sifting through one of a pair of trunks that sat against a wall and avoiding looking at the bed. If Seraph had been in any doubt as to some of the uses Volis had put Hennea to, one look at Hennea’s face when they’d first come into the room would have been all she needed. Hennea hadn’t said anything, and Seraph didn’t pry. Sometimes silence was all the help she could offer.

When they finished, Seraph let Hennea take care of spelling Jes’s secret room with its new treasure while Seraph and Rinnie packed Traveler books.

Jes bounded into the library. “It’s a good secret room, now,” he said, as Hennea and Lehr followed him into the library.

“I’m glad it pleases you,” Seraph told Jes. “Grab a pack, and we’ll start down.”

“I get to carry my maps,” said Rinnie smugly. Maybe it was the knowledge she’d found the most interesting thing in the temple, but Seraph suspected that at least some of the self-satisfied expression was because the satchel with its maps was a lot lighter than the books.

The tavern was a very old building, perhaps the oldest in Redern, and built near the bottom of the mountain. As Seraph put her foot on the bottom step of the porch, Lehr touched her arm. When he had her attention, he nodded toward Jes, who was pale and swaying—always a bad sign.

“Why don’t you head on home,” Seraph told Lehr. “I can get Tier and follow the rest of you.” She gave him her pack of books to carry along with his own. He gave her a half smile that told her he understood she didn’t want to have to explain to everyone in the tavern just what it was she was doing carrying a pack full of books from the temple.

“Back to the farm sounds like a good idea,” Hennea said. She took a step toward Jes, hesitated, then took his arm. He started as if he hadn’t noticed her until she touched him. “Come, Jes,” she said, her voice a little softer than usual. “We’re going home.”

Worried, Seraph watched them go. Jes had never liked the town, but she’d never seen him this bothered by it, either. Was he getting worse? Was there anything she could do to help? She felt like she’d spent half her life asking herself those questions, and she no more had the answers now than she’d had twenty years ago.