Behind him, as usual, were Kissel and Toarsen. Ielian would be somewhere near, but not too near, always aware of where the Emperor was. Tier saw him leaning casually on a garden wall on the other side of the street. Rufort had taken the other side of the block and, like Tier, had found a position that allowed him to keep an eye on everyone. Tier smiled, proud of his Passerines. They would do to guard the Emperor’s back.
Rinnie was getting closer, and Tier’s smile widened to a grin as Ielian fell in to trail casually behind Toarsen and Kissel. He knew they were guarding Phoran, but to an outsider it would look as though Rinnie were very important.
She stood on the street just under Tier and shaded her eyes. “Papa,” she said, “Lehr says he’s solved the mysteries of the places where the buildings have fallen, but he won’t tell me until you come.”
“All right.” He knew the chances of anyone else being in Colossae were slim, but the silence made him wary, and he took one more good look around before dropping off the wall.
He followed his daughter, her emperor, and his guards down the cobbled street to the end of the block, where Lehr awaited them. Rufort, he noticed out of the corner of his eye, was strolling along behind them.
“Look, Papa,” Lehr said, his voice tight with excitement as soon as Tier could see around the bushes to the small plot of land with another of the rubble-covered places where a house had once stood.
Lehr pointed to the surrounding fence that was modest in comparison to its neighbors, being only waist high and made of wood. The fence was elaborately painted with green vines and small white flowers that wove in and out of the evenly cut slats.
Tier frowned; he’d seen a fence like that before, but for a moment he couldn’t think just where. Lehr waited expectantly while Tier put a hand on the wood and bent to look more closely at one of the painted flowers. No, he thought, it hadn’t been a fence. If his memory had been its usual self he would have had an easier time of it.
“Benroln’s mermora,” he said at last. He’d seen it virtually every night on the trip from Taela until Benroln had led his people to Colbern. “Rongier the Librarian’s house has this pattern on the windowsills.”
“And the lines of the building match the house, Papa. I think the buildings that have fallen are all the wizards’ houses. If we get Mother, I bet we could figure out where all her mermori belong.”
“What’s a mermora?” asked Phoran.
Rinnie and Lehr both started to explain. Rinnie would have stopped and let Lehr continue, but Lehr reproved her for being rude and talking over the top of him.
Tier let them work it out while he took a few steps out into the middle of the road and tried to see, in his mind’s eye, what it would have looked like with Rongier’s house in place of the scattered stones that were all that was left of his house.
He wondered if Rongier’s house had been here first, and all the estates had grown up around it—or if the estates had been here and one of the owners of the properties on either side had given this land for Rongier’s use. Certainly the relatively modest house must have looked out of place while Rongier had lived there.
He half closed his eyes and visualized it. His hands warmed and tingled as the picture formed—no, not just picture. Suddenly the sounds he’d been missing were here, the wind in the trees and the birds twittering. He smelled the sweet scent of herbs and flowers and a faint tang of manure. The street wasn’t busy, only the people who lived on it and the people who did business with them came here.
A horse was tied outside Rongier’s house, smaller than the horses Tier was used to, and lighter built. Its mane was plaited with ribbons, and the horse’s tack was whitened leather. It flicked its tail and stomped a back hoof, trying to dissuade some irksome insect.
“So the wizards found a way to take their libraries with them when they fled?” Phoran’s voice broke Tier’s concentration. “All I managed was two changes of clothes, my sword, a fat purse, and four guards to spend it on.”
“They were killing their families,” said Rufort slowly. “Libraries seem…” He floundered for the right word.
“Petty,” supplied Ielian.
“They couldn’t bear to lose everything.” Tier said. The scene of the past had gone as soon as Phoran caught his attention. “If I were forced to kill my family and survive them, which is almost the most terrible fate I can imagine, then I would want some keepsake—something to show that once they had lived.”
“Isn’t that what they sacrificed?” asked Lehr holding on to the fence. “Mother says magic is about patterns, and along with the lives of the people who lived here, it was the patterns of everyday life, all the things that made Colossae their home, that they sacrificed.”
“The library wasn’t sacrificed,” said Rinnie. “It’s not part of the spell. Maybe the mermori are like the library.”
Phoran smiled, and said wryly, “Maybe, but my uncle said if a wizard had a choice between rescuing a book or his only child from a flaming building, the wizard would save the—”
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.