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