Raven's Shadow by Patricia Briggs

outsiders,” said Seraph.
    â€œBut I’m not an outsider,” he said waving an impassioned hand at the ceiling. “I know about Travelers; I’ve spent my life studying them. Please, tell me what you know of the Eagle.”
    Seraph didn’t suffer fools gladly—she certainly didn’t aid and abet their stupidity. It was time to go home. “I am sorry,” she said. “I have work awaiting me. Thank you for showing me around; the artwork is very good.”
    â€œYou have to tell me more,” he caught her arm before she could leave. “You don’t understand. I know it is the Elders of the Path of the Five who must free it.”
    â€œFree it?” she asked, and that chill that had touched her upon seeing the Birds of the Orders in a solsenti temple strengthened, distracting her from the encroaching grip of his arm.
    â€œIn hiding him,” said Volis earnestly, “the Five trapped him, for his protection. ‘Sleep on, guarded be, until upon waking destroys and saves’—”
    Seraph started. That bit of poetry had no business being spoken in the mouth of a solsenti, no matter how well he spoke Traveler. It had nothing to do with the Eagle, but . . .
    â€œHe must be freed,” said Volis. “And the Master of the Path has foreseen that it is we of the Path who will free the Stalker.”
    â€œThe Stalker is not the Eagle,” Seraph said involuntarily, then could have bitten off her tongue. This was dangerous, dangerous knowledge. He was mistaken about the Eagle, about the Orders being gods, but the Stalker . . .
    He turned his mad gaze to her. He must have been mad. Only a madman would speak of freeing the Stalker.
    â€œAh,” he said. “What do you know about the Stalker?”
    â€œNo more than you,” she lied.
    She fought to draw in a full breath and reminded herself that this man was a solsenti, a solsenti possessed of more knowledge that he should have—but even if he were so mistaken as to confuse the Eagle with the Stalker, he still should be harmless enough.
    She gave him a short bow, Raven to stranger rather than good Rederni wife to priest, and used the motion to break free of his grasp.
    â€œI have work,” she said. “Thank you for your time—I’ll see myself out.”
    She turned on her heel and strode rapidly to the curtained entrance, waiting for him to try and stop her, but he did not.
    Â 
    By the time she was on the bridge, she’d lost most of the fear that her visit with the new priest had engendered. The Stalker was well and truly imprisoned, and not even the Shadowed, who had almost destroyed the human race, had been able to free it. A solsenti priest with a handful of half-understood information was not a threat—at least not to the world as a whole, but she would still have to consider what Volis’s fancies would mean to her and hers.
    Dismissing the priest as an immediate threat left her with no distraction for the burden she carried. Though the honey jars were gone, almost a hundred weight of them, her pack carried stones that weighed her soul more than her back. As soon as Seraph left the main road for the cover of the trail, she stopped and pulled out the bag of mermori and counted them. Eighty-three.
    Her hand tightened on the last one until the sharp edge of the end drew blood. Hurriedly she wiped off the mermora; itwas never a good thing to expose magicked things to blood. When she was certain it was clean, she put them back in the leather bag and returned the whole bundle to her pack.
    â€œThere’s nothing I can do,” she said fiercely, though there was no one to hear her. “I don’t know anything . I have no more ability than a dozen other Ravens who have all failed to prevent the demise of the Travelers. Here, in this place, I have three children who need me. There are fields to be planted and gardens to tend and a husband to