The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (21 page)

It was a chatty bunch that morning, unfortunately, which Ari thought kind of ruined the mood, but at least everyone was cheerful.  A night of frank admiration hadn
’t hurt Cerise’s temperament any and Loren was in veritable verbal ecstasies.  He had not only found the female companionship a pleasant change from Fleetman muscle, hair, and sweat, but the Fortress Gardens had been, apparently, a rich, lush, varied oasis of flora, a gem of greenery amongst all the stone.  He rapturized over their delights until he was reduced to reluctant silence by Rodge’s, “Marek’s moneybelt, Lor, they were trees and flowers.”

It wasn
’t long before Melkin was slowing his ugly roan, and they all peered interestedly up at the Academy of the Magi, rising whimsically out of the swirling grey mist in pale, ornate stone.  Irregular abutments and towers popped up here and there all over it; compared to the city full of stern, defense-oriented (if beautifully adorned) buildings, it was almost absurdly fanciful.  Inside was just as bad.  The Northerners were convinced that if Melkin hadn’t obviously already known his way, they never would have found the second Eastern Tower, South Wing, third floor.  The hallways meandered like stream beds, the rooms sprouted off in an utterly disordered fashion, and stairwells appeared nonsensically in the middle of nowhere.  The square corner was as rare as a double tirna. 

The
classrooms and laboratories were familiar enough, though, with their universal scholastic sounds of dictating voices and quills on parchment…it almost made Ari nostalgic.  It was strange, now, to think of those regulated days, of knowing exactly where you were going to be at any given hour for weeks on end.

At last
they came to the door of the First Mage’s Tower.  Melkin knocked in a brief concession to politeness, and then proceeded to barge in.  A neat, silver-haired man was already moving to meet them, looking unperturbed at the invasion.  He had warm blue eyes that picked up the color from the deep folds of his robes and the smooth, rolling, instantly recognizable Merranic voice.

“
Welcome!  Welcome all.  I am Perraneus, and you are most welcome to the highest font of learning in Merrani.”  The boys glanced at Cerise, sure this would inspire commentary of some sort, but she merely gazed around benignly, flicking dust off of the crisp beige of her newly cleaned riding outfit.

“
Please, feel free to look around; all here is for the purpose of teaching,” the First Mage said after a short pause, his eyes already seized by the look of simmering intensity Melkin was focusing on him.  “Old friend…” he said, torn between bewilderment and amusement.  “Let us talk…”  And without further delay, which Melkin probably wouldn’t have stood for anyway, they headed into an adjoining room.  Ari, watching them, thought it more likely the two would be reversed in their respective roles of popularity.  It was Perraneus that was dignified, courteous, well-spoken, slightly stooped from carrying around that big brain, while Melkin, tall and commanding, with his caustic comments and air of barely controlled energy, seemed much more inclined to raving heresy. 

At the
Imperial University, the Magi had been roundly denounced as superstitious dabblers in petty magic, useless as sources of knowledge except for a few admittedly brilliant advances in astronomy and the like.  But, there was a virtual treasure trove of finely wrought mechanical wonders cluttering the room, some moving and whirring softly, some recognizable as compasses or astrolabes or telescopes.  Rodge’s face was excitedly stuck to the biggest one of these Ari had ever seen, resting grandly before the big east window.  Deserted after that one sentence of introduction, the Northerners began to rather aimlessly wander around looking at the curiosities, while Kai and Banion went over to one of the windows to have their own low-voiced conversation.  Most of the contraptions Ari couldn’t identify.  He picked up a cone-shaped device and peered into its tiny mechanical insides.  It looked so much like the earhorns old people used that he idly put it up to his ear.

“
—and you were the one that mentioned the Empress to begin with,” Melkin said right next to him, and he jumped, head swiveling in surprise.  But there was no one there; in fact, Melkin and Perraneus could still be seen deep in the other room, voices inaudible.

Puzzled, Ari put the device back up to his ear. 
“—then ‘
foresee’
me some answers about this Statue,” Melkin was saying with derogatory heat.  You know what I think about your games—but this time you happened to be right.”

“
These are no ‘games,’ friend,” Perraneus answered, amused.  “I have been lucky enough to have been granted a great gift, a gift of foresight so sure that it makes reading the stars as uncertain as casting bones!”  He chuckled, and even Ari, not knowing him, could feel the wrongness in the sound.  There was a pause before Melkin said, low and tight, “What
gift
?”

There was no answer, and Melkin continued,
“I don’t know what you mean, but you had better lay off these inflammatory pronouncements, especially in a Realm like Merrani.  You’re walking a dangerous path, and provoking Kane—you’re going to force his hand.”

“
I do not fear the King, nor Vangoth,” the Mage laughed softly, and again an eerie shiver ran up the back of Ari’s neck at the sound.  It sounded suspiciously like…madness.  “And as for playing with fire, no pun intended, you’re one to talk…” Perraneus chuckled.  “Does he know?”

“
No,” Melkin’s voice was clipped, impatient, as if he preferred the conversation back on its previous track.  “We have bigger things on our plate than that.  We must be ready for war, if it is to come, and you will not be able to share your knowledge with a king who can’t trust you—”

“
Ari?”  He jumped guiltily, realizing in horror what he’d been doing, and put the horn down so quickly that Selah raised her eyebrows.  He looked absently at the beautiful conch shell she’d brought to show him, his mind whirling over what had just drifted through the earhorn.   What gift?  Was prophecy really something Magi could do?  And did who know what?

Abruptly, Perraneus swept into the room and over to the big telescope, raising his gilt voice in the unmistakable tones of instruction.  Melkin followed more slowly, face glowering blackly.  Ari had the distinct impression he
’d not been done with his conversation.

“
As I’m sure you know, the heavens can be divided up into twelve quadrants, corresponding logically with other events split into twelves,” Perraneus began saying, in such blatantly instructive tones that out of ingrained habit, Ari drew closer to listen.

“
This is more than coincidence,” the Mage said as everyone gathered around, his twinkling eyes and animated face devoid of any sense of distress over his talk with Melkin.  “The study of the heavens is a complex and deeply revealing discipline, giving us insight and perspective into current—and future—events.”

“
You mean foretelling the future?” Cerise supplied in a drawl sodden with sarcasm.

The First Mage seemed unoffended. 
“There are, of course, those who use it for such cheap circus tricks, but its value is much more profound for those who know its science as well as its art.  Now, if you’ll—”

“
So, what do the stars predict for
our
future?” Cerise persisted, thin lips slightly upturned with condescension.  “Master Melkin would have us believe we are tottering on the brink of war, despite the fact that there’s been peace for centuries.  Surely something that momentous should be written in your skies.”

Ari blanched, sure he would never have dared mockery with Melkin a lowering thundercloud
nearby.  Perraneus took the question with disturbing gravity, the animated sparkle fading from his face and his whole body going still.  He didn’t speak for several long seconds, clasped hands hidden beneath the deep cowls of his sleeves and the fabric glimmering where bits of gold were strewn through it.

Eyes glittering oddly, he said in a different voice,
“You are very right…Uranus is in Scorpio right now, a very rare event that presages great, and violent, upheaval.  It is one of the many indicators that make us believe things are changing, and perhaps not for the good…”

Ari felt another chill creep up his spine.  Uneasy, he looked away, his eye happening to fall on Melkin, and
he blinked in surprise.  Instead of the dark glower he’d expected to see, the Master’s face had an inexplicable look of searing, intense curiosity.  He was staring hard at something on Perraneus’s big, cluttered desk, and Ari followed his gaze.

It was immediately obvious what had captivated him; Ari felt his eyes almost seized by it as
they drifted over the messy work surface.  It stood out from the papers and odd objects with a darkly fascinating clarity, a beautifully worked trinket box of bronze with a dark, rounded jewel set in its top.  In this room full of practical and sterile science, it seemed to almost seethe with artistic life, with a kind of morbid beauty.  Ari didn’t know why he would get such a feeling of blackness from such airy, lovely artistry, but then something happened that drove any objective analysis out of his mind.  In the dark, faceted opacity of the big jewel, a light gleamed suddenly, an oily, reddish light that was gone as soon as it appeared.

Fascinated
, not believing he’d really seen it, Ari took a step toward it—

And the floor began to tremble.  Surprised, he looked down.  The stones were solid enough, but even as he looked, the whole thing seemed to shudder and blur under his eyes.

Around him, the group was exclaiming, Rodge yelping, Cerise strident.

“
Earthquake,” Perraneus warned, voice low-pitched and unpanicked.  “Get against a wall.”

Everyone scrambled, uncoordinated in a shifting world, across the room to grab a piece of wall.  Stones began to rasp and grate as they moved against each other, and dust sifted down in a thick screen from the ceiling.  Ari
’s heart was pounding.  What if the ceiling gave way?  What if the FLOOR gave way?

He
’d barely had time to run through a set of catastrophes when all motion ceased.  Dust settled.  A deep, wary silence descended.  Several people started to cough, and Ari peered anxiously through the murky air, looking for the members of the party.  Down the curved wall a good space, he could see Kai, his black hair and broad, well-muscled shoulders piled with dust.  He was spread protectively over a small person, and with a start, Ari recognized Selah.  She was standing quietly mere inches under him, staring very seriously up into his face.  Ari rose abruptly from his crouch against the wall, earthquake forgotten.

“
Everyone out.  Get downstairs.  The aftershocks can be worse than the original quake, and the tower is the last place you want to be for that,” Perraneus instructed, still calm.  There was a relatively mad rush for the door, and Ari was grabbed by Loren before he could get any ideas of his own.  He didn’t see Selah until they were outside, the halls clogged with the rush of students and the press bearing him out like a wave in the sea.  She found him out there, coming up to him with a reassuring smile.  He took her hand.

With common purpose and no need for discussion, they all made their way to the
stables, where Melkin and Cerise were already leading the horses out. 

“
Let’s get out of here,” Melkin said needlessly, and even Banion mounted with an impressive rapidity.  They rode, away from the Academy of Magi, away from the distressing trembling of the very foundation of their world, away from the unsettling predictions of an out-of-favor Mage. 

And the box on Perraneus
’ desk was forgotten for many long months.

CHAPTER 11

The capital of Merrani seemed to go on forever, but finally the last dribbles of stone buildings had faded behind them and the wide open road stretched out under the summer sun.  The earthquake was forgotten, swept away by the brisk breeze off the ocean, and burned off by the brightness of midday.  Before them, the road alternated between dense patches of evergreens and rocky, windswept plateau where the Eastern Sea could be seen glistening all the way to the horizon.

Merrani was literally composed of the Ethammers, a granite plateau riddled with peaks more rough than tall, clumped with firs and pines and cleared occasionally by small croftholders.  Loren, heir to Harthunters, pointed out the poor soil and stunty crops with a jaundiced eye as they passed.  The scenery was not near as grand as the Wilds, neither trees nor hills
invoking that sense of soaring magnificence, but the smell of the sea, the intermittent beckoning of its dazzling expanse, the bright crowds of wildflowers and brilliant sun, all eased Ari’s tenseness.  He began to enjoy their adventure again.

“
Cerise,” Melkin directed when they were a few moments out, “take rearguard.”

Her chin rose proudly and she quickly turned her horse, the mare
’s white stockings flashing in the sun.

“
That means we’re in no danger,” Rodge observed as she passed.

“
You’re just jealous.”  She shot him a haughty look.

“
Oh, yes, please let me eat dust and get attacked and snatched up by pursuit from behind,” Rodge answered, rolling his eyes.

“
I thought there was no danger,” she tossed over her shoulder.

Banion had passed to the front of the group
and he and Melkin rode close, talking.  Kai, striding effortlessly alongside, occasionally tossed a comment up to the two.  Ari almost burned with curiosity, aching to join them. 

Then Selah rode up next to him, and he forgot they existed.  Kane had given her a pretty little bay, as well as outfitted them all in traveling clothes (he could get used to being clothed by royalty once a month)
, and they rode companionably, chatting and pointing out exceptional bits of Merrani to each other. 

The
road was easy, the weather held fair, and, truthfully, it felt good to be back in the saddle again.  They’d been riding south for several days before they dropped off the heights and down into a little valley.  Ahead of them, the road flattened out for almost a league, and they could see the big dust cloud of an approaching party.

“
Knights,” Banion said, reining in his big horse.  He’d changed out the plowhorse for something a little more dignified and, improbably, larger yet.  Ari and Loren shared a glance, then looked avidly toward the dust, straining for their first glimpse of armor or lance.  Real Merranic Knights…

“
Can you make out who it is?” Melkin growled, keeping his own excitement under admirable control.

Banion shook his head. 
“Not yet, though it’s at least a chevric, with that guidon, and a full half-steeding behind him…moving fast,” he trailed off, sounding surprised.

They were flat out running.  Ari could see it as the strangers quickly drew closer, and a vague sense of unease filtered through his eagerness.  Suddenly, he recognized the flag streaming out in front:  pale
turquoise-green, the silver lion in the center looking like it was dancing as the fabric was tossed in the wind.  From the Silver Hills?

Banion stepped into the middle of the road—bravely,
considering the mass of men and metal hurtling towards him—holding up his hand authoritatively.  They had to pull back noticeably to check themselves, but they did it.  And as they came to a stop and the dust stilled, the boys’ mouths drifted open in wordless awe.

Five columns abreast, ten deep, of champing, foaming warsteeds, each larger than Banion
’s big mount by a good hand, stood prancing restlessly in formation.  The fine, long hairs of their manes and tails and fetlocks stirred and floated in the stiff breeze, playing around the powerful necks and gleaming flanks and legs.  And on their backs, in full armor, sat Knights of Merrani, visors down, lances gripped in rigid metal hands, sun glancing brilliant off polished steel. 

They loomed over the awed Northerners, the world full of their lathered, sweaty scent, the stamping of huge hooves, the jangling of a half-hundred fine harnesses.  In front, the leader crashed a steel gauntlet into his breastplate, making them all jump, and snapped his visor open.

“
My lord Steelmists,” he panted in surprise.  Under him, his huge black charger, chest heaving, pawed restlessly at the ground, his steel-shod hooves the diameter of a dinner plate.

“
Finnansterne,” Banion said in clipped military tones.  “What passes?”

“
My lord,” he said, and then his sweating face crumpled in a suspiciously overwrought way.

“
Report, Chevric!” Banion snapped in a tone that made Ari straighten reflexively in his saddle.  It also seemed to quell any inappropriate emotion in the Knight. 

“
My lord,” he began again, with considerably more firmness, “we’ve been riding all night.  The Castle of the Silver Hills is besieged—by Mohrgs.” A touch of terror crept through the professionalism, not very comforting to the Northerner contingent of Melkin’s party.  “I took half my Steeding and made a break for it to bear news and beg reinforcements from the King.”

“
Go,” Banion commanded instantly, “Ride.”  He yanked his horse out of the way and Finnansterne clanged a salute, throwing his visor down.  The column leaped into motion after him as he thundered ponderously back into a gallop.  As they flowed past, Ari could see, even through the rising dust, that some of the bright armor was dented and battered.  Several Knights wore bandages and the great Warsteeds were scraped and marred with dried blood along their sides and legs, the rich caparisons of silver and seagreen torn and dirty.

“
I’m going to take this as a bad sign,” Rodge observed as silence settled with the dust.  “No star-gazing needed.”  Ari glanced at him.  He was as skinny as ever, but neither pale nor shaking.

After the pounding reverberation and the choking, blinding dust of
several hundred hooves, the road was very empty once they’d gone.  The sun didn’t seem nearly so bright, the breeze had a bite, and the specter of the Chevric’s report hung in the air.  They all gathered worriedly around Banion, who was sharing glances with the other men.

“
Our route passes nowhere near Kraemoor’s Castle,” he said slowly into the weighty silence.

“
If the Mohrgs are out and in enough numbers and bad enough tempers to attack fifty mounted Knights, I want to be nowhere near the Silver Hills,” Melkin snapped.  Flawless reasoning, Ari soundlessly agreed.

“
So,” Rodge said conversationally, “what are Mohrgs?”

“
There is a cut-off, the little used path just at the edge of the Hills,” Kai said quietly.  Melkin met his eyes, nodding without expression when he added, “It is our only choice if we wish to make the Kingsmeet.”

They looked to Banion, who said,
“If we push the horses, we should be through the foothills by nightfall.”

“
Alright,” Melkin grated out.  “Stay together.” He turned his long-legged roan sharply.  They all took off after him as he sprang into a gallop, inspired by visions of imagined monsters probably much worse than any reality.

Ari glanced back once, wondering about Kai, but he
’d disappeared into the tree line.  A short time later, when Melkin drew the panting, blowing horses down to a walk, he saw him flitting past and shook his head in amazement.  Once the horses had settled into their pace, as if on an unseen signal, the Northerners all drew close around Banion.

“
So,” Cerise suggested bitingly, “Perhaps some answers.”

Banion sighed, and took a swig of water from his waterskin. 
“The Hills of the Silver Lions are kind of a wild place,” he admitted.  “They say there’s still leftover magic there from the Upheaval, when the gods created men and beasts.  You’ll find strange things there—creatures the wrong color, unicorns, and sometimes, animals gone bad.  It’s the only place outside the White Wastes you’ll find Warwolves—”

“
Wait, what about these animals gone bad?” Rodge interrupted.

Banion hesitated. 
“That’d be the Mohrgs.  The rest have pretty much been hunted off…they say there used to be Wolven—” Melkin shot him a quick glance of alarm, and he added hastily, “but there haven’t been any of those seen for centuries.”

“
WHAT,” four voices said almost in unison, “are Mohrgs?”

“
They’re like wild boars,” Banion finally said, resigned.  “Only plated, with a rim of horn protruding up behind their heads and yard-long tusks.  They’re very aggressive, and every once in a while you’ll hear of a lone traveler being gored.  Fortunately, they usually travel in small groups and don’t attack unless provoked.”

“
So, it’s pretty unusual for a large herd to attack, say, a castle?” Loren prompted.

“
Very,” Banion said, trying without success to sound blasé.

They ran again for a while, then, and when next Melkin pulled them back to a walk, pacing the horses, Ari asked,
“Why did he call you Steelmists?  I thought you were the Jarl of Ransok?”

“
That’s my personal title.  Steelmists refers to my, er, job title.”

“
And what exactly is your job?” Rodge asked sarcastically.

Banion
’s whiskery face moved into his wolfish grin. “Making war,” he growled.  The grin faded and he muttered dolefully, “Temporarily unemployed.”

They rode straight through lunch—with no complaints—and the talk dwindled as the tension mounted.  They were, it had occurred to them all, running
full speed straight towards a nightmare.  By early afternoon, they had topped out on a little rise and could make out what was surely the Silver Hills beginning to rise in front of them.  They were pretty to look at, all covered in pale green foliage and silvery grasses, white birch trunks gleaming out of the thick, sage-colored undergrowth.  They could see a narrow road cutting off to the west, skirting the Hills and disappearing into a copse of blue spruce.

Dra Kai, whom they hadn
’t seen in hours, stepped calmly out of the trees as they approached the intersection.  His rolling brown muscles were coated with sweat, waistband soaked with it, and though he wore the same expression he had in Kane’s smoking room, Ari could feel the difference from several yards away.  He was taut as a drawn bow, feral and intense.  He said nothing, merely shook his head at Melkin’s inquiring glance.

“
Keep it quiet,” Melkin said unnecessarily, and turned down a rough, narrow track too uneven for galloping.  Banion rode next to him, looking considerably more dangerous when he wasn’t snoring.  Nervously, Ari moved the brown between Selah and the Hills, rigorously scanning the underbrush and smiling encouragingly in alternating cycles.  Kai stayed close now, ranging back and forth in the Hills off to their left and flushing small game with his roaming—which made them jump in their saddles no matter how many times it happened.  Tension sat heavily, tightening shoulder muscles, cramping legs where they gripped the horses so hard, drying eyeballs from the constant staring into the Hills.

It was a shame, because it was stunning country.  Sometimes the two sides of their path
stood out in dramatic contrast: on the left, the pale, feathery underbrush, long silver-green grass and crystal-clear streams tripping over white stones, and on their right, the black rock, thin, sandy soil and scraggly larch and pine.  The offended wildlife running from Kai’s boots was several shades lighter as well, bunnies a pretty, pale beige, big squirrels so light a grey they looked white in the sun.

But it didn
’t get really strange until they rounded a sharp turn in the boulder-strewn trail—and came face to face with a huge, brilliant white tree.  Ari had been in and around the woods his entire life, and he knew that it was an oak…but the trunk was as white as a birch, the leaves looked covered in snow, and the budding acorns were a weird, flesh-colored pink.

“
The White Oak,” Banion turned and whispered proudly, as if it was a Merranic landmark.  Ari and Selah shared a glance.  Original.  It was ghostly beautiful, though, and he turned several times to look back at it.

The sun was far down on the horizon when Banion finally stopped them.  The rough track they were on had gotten narrower and more clogged with pebbles and rocks the farther west they
’d gone.  The footing was tricky, and the horses, already out of shape from all their penned-up time onboard ship, were so tired they didn’t even bother to spook anymore.  In fact, they were barely awake when Banion finally brought them all to a stop for the night in front of a big cave.

Sunk into the rock of the Ethammers, it
was apparently a popular stopover; there was a well-established firepit set a good ways into the interior and even a nice stockpile of cut wood piled nearby.  They fell wearily into preparing camp, Ari gathering up armfuls of pine-needles for Selah’s bed and throwing his greatcloak over the top of it.  Feeling almost rabidly protective, he scraped out a hollow in the sandy soil between her and the cave entrance for himself.