Phoran’s voice broke off, and Tier was suddenly looking up at the branches of a tree.

“Papa?” Rinnie’s voice was small and scared.

“I’m all right,” Tier said, instinctively answering the fear in his daughter’s voice before he’d had a chance to assess the situation.

He hadn’t realized he was being held down until his arms and legs were released. He was lying on his back in the street, with the boys crouched around him and Rinnie’s tearful face looking over Lehr’s shoulder.

“Another fit, eh?” he said. He sat up too suddenly, and if Phoran’s hand hadn’t shifted unobtrusively behind his back, he would have fallen again. There was blood in his mouth, and he could feel a cut on the inside of his cheek.

“This one was bad, Papa,” said Lehr. His voice didn’t tremble, and there were no tears, but Tier could see he’d scared Lehr as much as he’d scared Rinnie.

“Kissel caught you before you fell,” said Toarsen. “But it looked to me as if you hit your head pretty hard before I could steady you.”

“Thank you,” Tier said, putting a hand on Phoran’s shoulder and using it to pull himself to his knees. When he didn’t feel any dizziness, he got to his feet.

“I’m all right,” he told the worried faces gathered around him, and Bard that he was, he knew that he lied.

“The Raven could have set the magic upon Colossae herself,” said the Scholar, answering Seraph’s question as he paced the short distance between Seraph’s bench and the stairway. “But that would not have been a sacrifice capable of binding the Elder gods. Only the wizards could make the proper sacrifice of the wizards’ city. The Raven directed the spell, and Hinnum served as the focus—but the power of the spell came from the wizards of Colossae.”

“They killed their loved ones,” said Seraph, trying to imagine how it was. “They destroyed all they held dear. How did you persuade them all?”

“We gathered them in the Raven’s temple and explained what had happened. They knew the Weaver and the Stalker were unbound—no one could deny it by then, all of nature was in tumult.”

“They didn’t all agree,” said Seraph, trying to imagine a roomful of Ravens agreeing on anything.

He stopped at the head of the stairs. “No,” he said heavily, and she heard death in that one word and saw it in his bowed shoulders. He took a deep breath, though she didn’t think he really needed to breathe. “We left Colossae by the University Gate. And then we sacrificed her.”

“But not the library, not even the wizard’s personal libraries,” she said slowly putting together the pieces as a Raven did, taking facts and using them to intuit beyond what she knew for certain. She remembered the way the Scholar focused on Hennea, and his voice as he spoke of his goddess. As if he were here, she could hear Tier say that he thought Hennea was old.

“And not the Raven. She planned on dying, didn’t she?” Seraph whispered, awe rushing through her. Hennea was the Raven. “After she’d seen the whole of the business finished, she wanted to die like the other gods.”

“I couldn’t bear it,” said the Scholar. “I couldn’t bear that she die, too. I loved her.”

“So what did you do?”

“I took her memory instead. As you have seen, she still doesn’t remember. I changed her face—just for a while, until all of those who would have known her for what she was were gone. So many of the wizards died that night, and those who lived were all damaged one way or another. She wasn’t the only one to have lost her memory. There were wizards who never again worked magic, a handful who went blind. One who never said another word.”

“Isolde the Silent,” said Seraph.

He turned then and stared at her. “How do you know of Isolde? Are you of her house?”

Seraph nodded.

He smiled, remembering something with pleasure, she thought. “No. It wasn’t Isolde who was struck dumb. Isolde could have studied under the Owl’s wing—she had a singing voice like crystal strung to sound in the wind. In the days after Colossae fell, her songs comforted us all. We called her the Silent because she never said a word that didn’t need to be said.” He paused. “You don’t look like her, but you have something of her manner.”

Seraph pursed her lips. “I don’t know how you are doing it, but you are Hinnum, himself.”

“Yes.”

Seraph leaned back, assessing the situation. She had in front of her the greatest wizard of Colossae, and she was going to make good use of him.

“Man is made of spirit, mind, and body,” said Seraph, “To see spirit, the wizard must push past the barriers that block his sight.” She set the book down with an ill-tempered thump. “Nonsense,” she told it—and her new instructor—irritably. “Moreover, it is useless nonsense. No real details, nothing except a collection of high-sounding poetical nonsense. I have done everything it says to do, and I cannot see anything other than my Order—which is not spirit.”

“It isn’t nonsense,” said the illusion Hinnum wore mildly. “And if you are to keep your husband alive until I am capable of working magic, you need to know how to see spirit. All it takes is a little study and self-discipline.”

She turned to look at him, and he smiled at her—just like Tier. No one else laughed at her temper.

For Tier she would learn how to do this or die trying. And Hinnum, she reminded herself firmly, was the only wizard who could teach her—unless Hennea suddenly recalled herself. Seraph thought it would have happened already if it were going to.

It would probably be a kindness, Seraph thought, if Hennea never remembered. From what Hinnum had told her, Hennea had no more power now than any other Raven: her memory of what she had been would gain her nothing but pain.

Hennea wasn’t the only one who had lost when Colossae was sacrificed. He hadn’t gone into detail, but the damage he’d sustained from the spell had been bad enough he’d chosen to stay here alone rather than go out into the world.

The illusion he’d built to house his intellect—his spirit, he’d said, tapping the miserable book she was slogging through—was not capable of much magic. Which was why he’d begun the process of awakening his proper body as soon as he’d seen Tier and the Order-bound gems. Hinnum knew something of how to fix both problems, he’d told her, but he didn’t know how long it would be before his body would recover. For the gems there was no rush, but Tier did not have much time left.

Thus she found herself sitting at a table like a fledgling solsenti wizard under the tyranny of his master.

“It’s not that difficult,” he said now, and handed her the piece of chalk she’d thrown across the room. “An apprentice of thirteen would be able to master this easily. But not if she was too busy throwing tantrums to listen.”

Seraph simmered with ill temper as she drew the arcane glyphs across the gleaming surface of the table again. She hadn’t had a teacher since her own had died, and Hinnum seemed to take particular delight in being obscure.

This was worse than learning the runes for warding—at least then she could feel the power gathering under the runes so that the runes themselves told her if she’d drawn them correctly or not. This was just scribbling nonsense.

“That figure turns the other direction,” said Hinnum, tapping the drawing in the book. “See there? And the little bit right here needs to be a hair longer.”

“If you told me what we were trying to do,” she said, not for the first time, “this might not be necessary.”

“It’s in the book,” he told her. “But you told me the book doesn’t make sense to you—thus the figures.” He leaned over the marks as she made them. “That’s better. Only three more figures, then I’ll teach you the words.”

“Could Hennea do this?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he told her. “You can, of course, wait for someone else to fix all of your problems if you aren’t willing to put in a little time and effort.”