“What was it?” asked Hennea. “I don’t remember.”

“The veil keeps the Elder gods from working in our world, but their power must be used. Without an outlet of some sort, eventually the veil would be overcome. So the six gods were made to drain the power of the Stalker and the Weaver. The Orders were to serve the same function, but, because of the imperfection in the veil, the Elder gods’ power seeps out on its own.”

“The Weaver’s as well?” asked Phoran. It was a good question, thought Seraph. If destruction escaped, why not creation?

Hinnum crossed his legs and sat on his feet on the cushioned bench. “Let me tell you what I see. A Raven married to a solsenti Bard—and the Orders were tied to the bloodlines of the Colossae wizards. They have three Ordered children, each a different Order. The Orders were to scatter among the Travelers. They travel with the Emperor—who is afflicted with a Raven’s Memory, which, through a strange twist, must kill the Shadowed.” He looked at Hennea, then away. “You are not the first people to find Colossae—but you are the only ones whom I have not called here.”

“You think that this is the Weaver’s work?” asked Hennea intensely.

Hinnum nodded. “I do.” He looked at Tier. “You think the Shadowed is going to try to destroy the veil by confining as many Orders as he can to these rings.”

Tier nodded. “I think that depends upon the third player. The Stalk—” His face went blank.

Lehr was out of his seat before Seraph really understood what had happened. Jes pulled Tier down off the table and onto the floor. For a moment he lay still, staring blindly up at a skylight.

Hinnum caught her by an arm before she could go to Tier and jerked her back.

“There’s no time,” he said urgently. “Seraph, look at his Order—He’s too close to losing it all. It will kill him if he does. You need to work the spell I taught you. Find out how the Shadowed is stealing the Order and stop him.”

She jerked her arm free and ran to Tier. The boys were holding him down to try to keep him from hurting himself. She saw Hinnum was right; Tier’s Order was almost gone. There was no time to wait until the old wizard could help with this. If Seraph couldn’t find some way to stop the spell, it would be irreversible, and Tier would die of it.

She stuffed her terror deep, where it would be a source of strength rather than a distraction. Then she called the magic Hinnum had taught her and tried to ascertain what the Shadowed and his minions had done to her husband.

She’d believed the Shadowed’s spell was simply destroying the connection between Tier and his Order. Now that she could view both spirit and his Order she understood she’d been wrong.

Each strand of the Shadowed’s spell was cloaked in spirit; a pale gleaming sheath around a darkly-malignant core. Just as she had wrapped her magic in her Order so she could affect Tier’s, so did the Shadowed wrap his spell in spirit. The spirit had hidden the spell from her earlier attempts to discover it. Tendrils of the spell insinuated themselves into the warp and weft of Tier’s order, worked into its fabric as tightly Tier’s own spirit.

Wrapped in spirit, the spell was able to bind to the Order as Tier’s own spirit did. It had worked deeply into Tier’s order, but where his spirit was passive, the spell was not. The spell wasn’t attacking the connection between Tier and his Order, instead it was ripping it away from Tier by force. The threads of Tier’s spirit were being slowly broken, strand by strand as Shadowed’s spell inexorably rent Tier’s Order from him, leaving severed bits of spirit behind.

Her old teacher would have considered the spell crude, relying on power rather than finesse. But, however crude the spell, it was working.

The Shadowed’s spirit-magic twined around the threads it had stolen, forming a rope of magic, spirit and Bardic Order that stretched between Tier and, presumably, whatever gemstone the Path’s Masters had attached his Order to. A small gossamer ribbon Tier’s spirit broke and fell away from the Order, darkening as it did so. It curled down limply against Tier’s body.

“Seraph? Let me help?”

It was Hennea. Seraph nodded twice and felt the Raven’s hands close on her shoulders, feeding her power.

She could have tried to darn Tier’s Order to him again, she could do a better job now because she understood what was needed—but, as before, it would only help him temporarily. Eventually both her magic and Tier’s spirit would fail, and Tier, his spirit damaged beyond healing, would die.

Instead, with Hennea’s strength to aid her, Seraph threw herself, magic, spirit, and soul down the twisting rope that connected Tier and the Path’s gem. She lost all sense of time and place as she followed the rope, until her journey began to seem endless. Only her fierce determination to find the end of the rope kept her going.

Then, without warning, she found what she sought, a gem the color of cinnamon. Grey-green strands of Bardic Order formed a tight ball in the center of the stone, with a few stray fragments of Tier’s spirit still woven in it. She had no idea how to retrieve what it had stolen.

To her magical self, the gem was enormous, but she knew physically it would be small enough to be set in a ring or necklet.

She could take it, she thought. She held it in her magic now—if she could make herself just a little more physical, she could just steal it from wherever it was and pull it back with her.

There was danger in what she intended. She might find herself wherever the gem was—and she was in no shape to face the Shadowed alone. Or she could fail to make herself real enough to take the gem and too real to go back to her own body.

As she hesitated, the cord pulsed and turned, and the ball of Tier’s Order in the gem became just a little bigger.

She’d never done anything like this before, but all a Raven had to be able to do was conceive of possibilities and let magic fill the patterns she conceptualized. For a moment the stone eluded her, as if it feared her touch, but finally her fingers closed upon it, a power-warm, sharp-edged, and slick-sided garnet.

It was hers. For a moment she just held it, stunned it had worked. Then she released her hold on her magic, both the seeing spell and the power that had allowed her to follow the Shadowed’s trail. She came back to herself with Tier’s cry in her ears.

It took her precious moments to realize why the gem warmed until it was hot in her hands, moments while it pulled more of Tier’s Order to it. The gem’s proximity strengthened the effectiveness of the thieving magic.

“Hold him so he doesn’t hurt himself.” The Scholar’s voice had altered a little, deeper tones added to give weight to his commands.

Hennea’s hands slid from Seraph’s shoulders and wrapped around her hands instead.

“Let me ward it, Seraph,” said Hennea.

Seraph opened her cupped hands and allowed Hennea to touch the gem. A simple warding would have just severed the connection between Tier and the stone, and she was too tired to be clever. Let Hennea work the subtler magic necessary.

“There is too much of him, spirit and Order already in the gemstone,” Hennea said worriedly, showing she understood as much as Seraph herself did.

“You can see it?” asked Seraph, then thought, Of course you could. Seraph was still trying to absorb the implications of who and what Hennea had been; possibly Seraph’s slowness had hurt Tier. If she had just let Hennea try—Hennea, who used to be the goddess of magic. Perhaps she could have really unworked the Shadowed’s spell.

“I followed your magic and remembered.” Hennea released her hold and stepped back. “I couldn’t have done it myself, not until I saw what you had done. What I’ve done to the stone should keep it from hurting Tier more for a while. But it is not a permanent situation. I don’t know how to reverse the Shadowed’s spell.”