They were an hour from the spot Tier thought they should camp when Rinnie tapped him on the shoulder.

“The storm’s coming,” she said.

“That’s all right.” He patted her leg, then swung up behind her. “Go ahead and sleep.”

Rinnie slept until they stopped for the night. She grumbled when Jes pulled her off the horse’s back, and fell back asleep as soon as he set her down on her blankets.

Lehr made sweet tea and saw to it that everyone drank two cups while Seraph busied herself making a stew of a little water, salted venison, and turnips. It took forever to soften the meat, and the tea, though it had boiled furiously, was not very hot.

With Rinnie’s warning in mind, Tier sent Phoran and the boys out collecting tree boughs while he tied up the oilcloth tarp to provide some protection while they slept. The storm hit in the night and followed them down the mountain, turning from snow to rain before letting up at last.

A day off to rest and dry their clothing followed by five long days of travel found them riding on a game trail through heavily forested but mostly level ground. They saw no sign of other people. Everyone knew if they settled too near to Shadow’s Fall, crops didn’t grow right—as if the Unnamed King had robbed the land of some virtue. Evergreens did all right. There might have been some way to make a living cutting trees and hauling them to the grasslands in the southeast, but the Ragged Mountains made people uneasy if they stayed in them too long.

There were several other Rederni besides Tier who collected animal fur in the fall and winter, but most of them stayed out for a shorter time than Tier. They had stories to tell about things that followed them for weeks without leaving a track or sign. Tier’d had a few odd encounters himself.

Though the trail they were on was flat, towering peaks rose around them. When Tier looked back he could see the highest mountain, a long ridge with a barren red top edged in snowy white with a narrow notch that almost bisected it—the pass they’d taken over the mountain.

Hopefully, Tier thought, as Skew forded a shallow stream, they would be riding back that way in a few weeks and return to Redern—just as the people who’d survived the fall of the Shadowed King had forged their way over that same pass to a place where they felt safe, protected by the steep slope of Redern Mountain.

Then he’d be able to sing again. Skew tossed his head, and Tier loosened his reins, letting them lie slack.

Last night Tier had been singing and lost himself—at least that’s what it had felt like. One moment he was singing, and the next he was lying on the ground with Seraph patting his face.

They said he’d just stopped singing, stopped moving, then gone into convulsions. Phoran and Jes had held him down until they stopped. Hennea and Seraph had conferred for a long time last night, then decided that the fit had been brought about by his use of Order while it was under attack by the Path’s mages’ spell.

Tier didn’t want to do anything ever to put that look in Seraph’s eyes again, so he’d decided to stop telling stories and singing songs until—well, just until.

Seraph tried not to watch Tier all the time, tried not to look. She and Hennea had spent most of the evening trying to locate the magic that was destroying Tier’s Order, but they couldn’t. There was nothing to be found, just as there had been nothing to find when they had cleaned Tier of spells when they’d freed him from the Path.

Hennea knew something of the spells they’d used because she’d been there for the first part. Tier remembered a little about it as well, though the Masters had tried to blank his memory of it.

Rufort, who was older than the other three former Passerines, had been there at a ceremony when the binding of Order to gem had been done in front of an audience. He did the best he could, but he wasn’t a wizard and, as Tier said dryly, about half the things the Masters did on stage were performance rather than magic.

If Phoran’s Memory were to show up again, it might be able to tell them more. However, it hadn’t come back to feed since it killed Phoran’s would-be assassins in Taela, though Seraph didn’t know why. Since Memories were rare, formed only sometimes when a Raven died by murder or betrayal, no one knew much about them. They formed quickly after the Raven’s death, usually while the killer was still in the room. Then they avenged the dead Raven and dissipated. With the Masters protected from the Memory by magic, if Phoran hadn’t been nearby to feed upon when the Raven died, it would have been attached to the gem as they had planned—and become one of the gems that none of the wizards could use.

She’d never heard of a Memory feeding from anyone other than its intended prey, so she didn’t know the rules that governed what it did to Phoran. Until the Memory returned, she and Hennea could only use what information they had to understand how the spell on Tier worked.

From information the former Passerines gave them, they believed the spell had been done in three parts. The first, which Hennea had seen, was a binding ceremony. It hadn’t worked on Hennea, and neither the Masters nor Hennea knew why. She hadn’t seen the gem bind to her Order, so she didn’t know how they managed it. Tier, being a Bard, knew only that it hurt and left him feeling sullied.

The Path kept its Ordered prisoners for a year and a day before successfully stealing the Orders to bind to the gems. Some of that was because magic worked better on a person who is known to the magic wielder. Seraph could work magic on one of her family far easier than she could ensorcel someone she didn’t know. But, some magics just took a long time to work. The binding of Order to gem had to be as strong or stronger than the binding of Order to Order Bearer; it probably just took time.

The second part must have been when the gem gradually started pulling the Order to it. That’s the phase Tier seemed to be in. Toarsen said both of the Ravens who had preceded Tier in captivity had begun having episodes toward the end of their stay. Hennea believed that meant someone had worked a second spell, after they’d left Taela. There was only one Path mage left after the Memory had gotten through with them: the Shadowed himself. He must have the gem that was bound to Tier’s Order.

The third part of the Path’s spell was where the wizard severed the tie between Order and Order Bearer. It might not need magic at all, just the death of the Order Bearer.

Both Phoran’s and Tier’s fates were tied together: destroy the Shadowed and both would be safe. Brewydd’s last message indicated either the Shadowed was in Colossae, or they would find some way to deal with him there. Seraph glanced at Tier and away before he noticed. She would find the Shadowed, she vowed silently. She would find him and she would see that he never bothered her or hers again. Tier was riding alone in front today. He wasn’t talking much, and, though she knew that he could be as comfortable in silence as he was in a storm of words, she worried about him. However, she knew her fussing bothered him more than it helped, so she let him avoid her for now.

The game trail they’d been following emptied into a broad, flat meadow half a league across and, as Seraph could judge it, three or more leagues long. Seraph’s horse took four steps onto the meadow and stopped. Seraph realized she’d pulled the horse to a halt, but couldn’t say why.

“I know this place,” said Jes, who’d been walking beside Hennea just behind Seraph.

Phoran came up next and stopped just beyond Seraph. He turned Blade in a rapid circle and looked through the trees as if he expected to see a waiting army. But there was nothing except a gentle breeze that moved the tops of the evergreens.

Tier looked back and saw them stopped. He turned Skew around and began cantering back to them.