Raven's Strike by Patricia Briggs

heard that.”
    â€œOf course not,” said Ellevanal. “You are a Traveler who doesn’t believe in gods.”
    â€œHow long have you been here, guarding the forest?”
    The horse raised its head and tested the wind, his rib cage rising and falling as if he’d been racing rather than quietly grazing at her side an hour or more. There was mud on his legs and belly.
    â€œA long time,” he said. “Before the Shadowed King came and laid waste to the world. Before the Remnants of the Glorious Army of Man arrived here after the Fall and found safe harbor here, naming me god in their gratitude.” Then he cast her a roguish glance. “Before the unthinkable happened, and Tieragan Baker was born Ordered and upset the Travelers’ world.”
    â€œHe hasn’t upset the Travelers’ world,” she said.
    â€œHasn’t he?” The horse snorted and tossed his head. “Wait and see what an Ordered Rederni may do. Already word of you is windborne, and some will come seeking you to destroy what you may become.”
    Seraph raised an eyebrow at him.
    He dropped his head slyly. “A god may speak in riddles if He will.”
    She shook her head at him and went back to work because the power had begun singing to her again. The forest king went back to eating.
    When she came to a place where she could see the farm she was reassured to note that the camp was orderly and relaxed.
    A group of men were restringing tent lines and hanging the muddy fabrics over them. Another group was setting up fires for cooking—so many people could not be fed out of her kitchen. She didn’t see any of her family, but there was a cheerful energy to the way the villagers moved that told her that no one had been seriously injured: and there was music.
    â€œIf you are a god,” Seraph said, “shouldn’t you have been able to take care of a troll far better than we did?”
    â€œBut I am only a small god,” said the horse, sounding amused. “I could not destroy the troll—not that troll, which was a minion of the Shadowed and escaped the Fall to live centuries more than a troll ought, and still keep my priest alive. Death doesn’t relinquish its rightful prey lightly, and healing is not my province.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you let him die?” she asked, though she had no desire for Karadoc’s death. “No one has ever said that the priests of Ellevanal are immortal.”
    He laughed in soft huffs at her tart tone. “He is an excellent skiri player, which priests seldom are. Most of them are more given to things of the spirit rather than cleverness of the mind.” The picture of a priest playing a board game with his god struck Seraph as extremely odd, but before she could ask him about it, the forest king’s voice became serious. “There are no others to take his place. His apprentice will be fine in a few years, but I needed my priest now.”
    The rain had stopped, and rising warmth turned the moisture in the grasses to fog where the last light of the sun peeked through to light the small clearing where the god stood. Steam rose from the white horse’s flanks and ribs, ribs that were a good deal less prominent than they had been when he’d first joined her.
    â€œYou’ve been feeding,” she said.
    The horse set his nose in a knee-high clump of grass and ripped some from the ground. He raised his head and chewed pointedly.
    Seraph shook her head at him. “No grass pads ribs so quickly.”
    â€œWhere do you think the power that you’ve been feeding into the forest goes?” He laughed, again. “Before the first of Rederni’s Bards was born here, I was little more than a very old stag who wandered about. But a Bard is a very powerful thing, if subtle. There may be more than one reason that the Travelers never stay long in one place.”
    Seraph stared at him. Of course Tier wasn’t the