and rubbed her fingers together lightly, waiting until she felt the magic ready and eager - just as it had been when she touched the bridle. She opened herself as widely as she could to the traces time left on objects and touched - death and darkness.
She had a moment of fiery pain as gold light gathered under her fingers, then it was gone. She opened her eyes and had the odd feeling that time had jumped without her noticing. Her ears rang, her elbow felt bruised, and she was lying back with her head on Jes's knee.
Jes patted her cheeks gently, his eyes flickering with the Guardian's presence. "Did the sparks hurt you, Mother?"
"No, Jes," she said, sitting up on her own and resting her head on her raised knees while visions from the sword flashed behind her closed lids.
"I'm fine," she said, seeing Lehr's anxious look. "Just a bruise or two. I haven't done this in a long time, and I misjudged. The sword was a poor choice."
Solsenti warriors used their blades for generations until rust robbed the blade of its strength. They even named them, never dreaming of the pseudo-life imbued by so much death - or the danger in giving such a thing a name. There were stories about swords that held against all odds and others that tended to slip and bite their wielder, but solsenti never seemed to heed the warning. Travelers cleansed their weapons after each life taken and discarded the blades of dead men.
Tier's sword was old. Newly sensitized, Seraph could feel its hunger for Tier's hand and battle even though it lay several handspans from her skirts. But the Tier the sword longed for was a version of her husband Seraph had never seen: a cold-faced killer who let his sword drink its fill of blood.
Seraph touched the bridle again, running her fingers over the blue and red beads on the browband, lingering on the bit. After a moment she felt a dullness, the bare touch of Lehr's grief as he held the bridle, a dusting of time lacking in power. As if the bridle, bit and all, had somehow come into being just a few days ago.
"Nothing," Seraph growled in frustration. Her hand fisted on a scrap of leather, both hand and leather glowing with power, but there was no flash of vision, only emptiness, as if whatever trap Tier had sprung had wiped the bridle's history clean.
"What does it mean?" asked Lehr.
She shook her head. "I don't know. Tier's death should be emblazoned upon the bridle. I haven't done this in a very long time, but I didn't have any trouble reading the sword."
"It was Shadow Blight," Lehr reminded her. "Maybe the Shadowed's magic affected it."
Seraph frowned. It felt as if the bridle had been wiped clean of its past, not blasted with magic. "Fire or running water can clean something of its past; I suppose Shadow Blight might do the same."
Weary in spirit more than body, Seraph rubbed her face. "Jes, could you put Papa's sword in its sheath and then put it away?" She didn't want to touch it again. Logically she shouldn't sense anything unless she looked for it, but she could feel it waiting. "We'd better get to sleep. Tomorrow you two will have to start plowing. I will take word of Tier's death to your aunt and uncle."
Seraph waited until they were all asleep before sneaking out. She used enough magic to keep from disturbing Jes or Gura, both still curled up before the coals of the fire.
She walked until she was far from the cabin; the ground was uncomfortably cold on her bare feet. When she stopped, she bowed her head against the rough bark of a tree, seeking the peace resident in its stolid, slow-growing, long-lived presence - but all she felt was rage.
It seethed from the soles of her feet and coiled through her body until it was forced into the long strands of her hair. Her hands shook with it as they curled and clawed at the hapless tree. Her breath left her throat in a low, moaning growl.
And with the rage came magic, destructive and hot, and as aimless as her wrath. Because the focus of her anger, of her pain, was dead.
"Tier," she whispered and then in a voice of power that shook the ground under her feet, she asked, "Why did you leave me?"
"Listen to Jes," Seraph told Lehr the next morning. "He'll take care of Skew