The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (22 page)

They lingered over the campfire despite their fatigue that night, reveling in the security of the cave, the lack of abnormal creatures around, the comfort of
their well-habituated presence to each other.  Selah’s cooking had never tasted so good.  Finally, everyone bedded down, but Ari still couldn’t sleep.  A tiny part of him, to be honest, wouldn’t mind a Mohrg attack, and that faint and irrational hope was inspiring just enough adrenaline to keep him awake.  Finally giving up, he rose and made his way to the cave mouth to see if he could relieve Kai. 

The Dra
was almost invisible in the moon shadows, but when Ari finally picked him out and offered to take his watch, he noticed he was wet.  Dripping, even.  “You bathed,” he said in whispered surprise.

Kai
’s eyes glittered as they turned briefly to acknowledge him.  “Humans have an unmistakable scent,” he said in a voice like leaves rustling in the wind.  “Most animals in the wild run from it…but not all.”

Ari stared at him.  His and Loren
’s forays into the wilderness were excuses NOT to bathe.  Then the import of what the Dra had said sunk in and he gave a little thrill of a shiver.  “This place feels like it’s from a different world,” he said, hushed.  It was hardly the right time for conversation, but, then, it was hardly believable that the reticent Dra was having one.

“
They say that this was once the site of Ethlond.”

Ethlond? 
The
Ethlond…of First Settlement fame?  He thought about that for a moment, of all the things he’d learned over the past few weeks, finally muttering half in disgust, “How does a god lose control of his creation?”

Kai
’s keen ears caught it.  “It is said that Laschald was the most gifted with creation, that Vangoth had…a heavy hand.  Lacked some of the fine tuning.”

“
That would explain the Merranics,” Ari whispered without thinking, and a quicksilver look passed fleetingly over the hawk-like features of the Dra.  Astonished, Ari hissed, “You laughed!”

Kai shrugged, expressionless as ever, and then did something Ari
would never forget.  He clapped him briefly on the shoulder with a hand heavy as iron, whispered, “Wake Banion in two hours,” and glided silently into the cave.  Ari stood motionless, speechless, eyes full of moonlight, chest swelling with pride.

And he was exhausted the next morning.  Nobody slept well, judging from the sour silence at breakfast, and more than Rodge groaned
as they all mounted up.  They’d been out of the saddle long enough that the intensity of yesterday’s ride was causing a whole chorus of muscle complaints. 

Within the hour, the trail was widening and flattening as it came down
off of the high ground, pleasant broadleaf trees taking the place of the prickly, pungent evergreens.  Tekkara, Cerise’s mare, possibly the only one with enough energy for it, took a notion and spooked, tossing her head with a squeal and half-rearing.  Easily the best horseman among them, Cerise rode it out with irritated expertise while the boys rolled their eyes.  The other horses moved uneasily, like siblings watching a spoiled sister throw a tantrum.  Ari turned away, lack of sleep making him cranky and intolerant…and so he was the only one that saw it.

There was no warning,
nothing to raise alarm except the nervous mare.  But as he looked, the empty trail ahead of them suddenly filled with a creature that defied comprehension.  He got only the impression of immensity, of gaping, snarling, fanged jaws and huge golden eyes, a sleek, four-legged missile of madness speeding right towards them.  Before his mind could even register what it saw, the huge, hairy form lunged forward, utterly silent—and leaped, easily topping the height of a horse’s back.  Kai, somehow sensing the menace, whirled, moving so fast the eye could barely follow him.  He drew his sword and lunged sideways in time to impale the creature’s chest to the hilt as it leaped past him.

It happened so fast, Ari
’s mind was still numb.  The horses went wild at the sight and smell of what was obviously a predator just dropping out of the sky.  Kai was knocked down by the impetus of that enormous body, and it was several minutes before anyone could quiet their mounts enough to get to him.  By that time, the Dra had extricated himself from the still mound of corpse and was standing looking down at it thoughtfully, as unconcerned as if he’d just snared a rabbit for dinner.  Melkin rushed over to him—or rather the creature, as he completely ignored Kai and knelt quickly at the beast’s side, placing a fearless hand on the big chest.

“
What is it?” Rodge demanded shakily.  “One of those mutations the gods misread the recipe on?”

“
No,” Melkin’s voice was quiet and cold as stone.  There was a long pause.  “It’s a completely normal, healthy…Warwolf.”  He was checking the eyes, the teeth, running his hand over the great head, as big as a horse’s, with a scientist’s sure hand.  Everyone else just stared.  Even dead, it was magnificent, a ghost of legend from the Ages of War.  It was the semblance of the woodland wolves one caught glimpses of around Harthunters, but its paws were the same size as Ari’s spread hand, the coat a thick, rough brindle of white and grey, the canines in that row of gleaming teeth the thickness of his finger.  Standing, it would probably be almost as tall as Rodge’s pony.

“
Your shoulder,” Selah said quietly into the awed silence.  Everyone looked at Kai, and saw immediately his left shoulder had been grossly displaced by the impact it had absorbed from the hundreds of pounds of leaping lupus.  She moved purposefully over to him, and as one they all turned away.

“
Ugh,” Rodge said weakly at the muted pop of its replacement.  “At least it’s not your sword arm,” he said absurdly, trying to sound staunch.

“
That’s the only kind Drae have,” Loren hissed at him.

It took several of them to drag the
massive beast into the underbrush.  Melkin wordlessly handed Kai’s blade back to him as soon as Selah had finished slinging the Dra’s arm, and a strange, meaningful look passed between the two men. Soberly, they all remounted, Tekkara throwing her head up and down as if to say, “I tried to warn you.”

For a moment, staring down the trail where it had just happened, Ari seemed to see it all again
.  With it safely dispatched and in the bushes, he could spare a little admiration for the pure predatory power of the beast.  Airborne, it had leapt so high that it could have soared over Banion, even on that towering horse of his.  The wolf had bypassed both him and Melkin, though…something scrabbled madly at the back of Ari’s mind, like this wasn’t quite right.  But, then, they’d just been attacked by a Warwolf, while running from Mohrgs, through countryside washed of anything even resembling natural color—
nothing
about this was right.

CHAPTER 12

Within a few days, they
’d come down out of the last of the Ethammers, called the Bitterns here at their southern end, and out into the golden Imperial summer on the plains of Daphene.  The rough, ribbed track of the past few days met up with the sharply demarcated Southern Way, a no-nonsense hard-surface road capable of conducting proper business all the way to the Dragonspine of Cyrrh, if so desired.  Golden fields of grain, hops, and the famous Imperial vineyards stretched endlessly away to their north, while close by to the south sparkled the great, broad Daroe River.

Ari,
now in the opposite corner of the Empire from Harthunters and Archemounte, who had never seen the country in his life, still felt like he knew it intimately.  They’d studied it in Geography, History, Natural Sciences with Melkin, and most importantly, Economics.  University students took a Business or Economics course every single term, and the Daroe had been in all of them:  the beloved, all-important, sole trade artery from Cyrrh.

Like the
y’d passed through a gate, normalcy settled almost instantly over the group, tensions dissolved, easy chatter started up.  Ari (and possibly Banion) was the only one not thrilled to be back in the North. Looking around, he felt hemmed in by the placidity, oppressed by that undefined sense, that unease, of a job never done—part and parcel of Northern mentality.  There was no room to stretch, to grow, to fly here…and no ground for a man without roots.

“
There’s nothing for me here,” he admitted to Selah when they stopped for lunch.  She had joined him on the raised bank of the Daroe, away from the rest of the group, and sank down beside him as he squatted despondently in the tall, gold-green grass by the river.  Crickets talked all around them, and the peaceful chuckling of the Daroe made a soft symphony in the background.

“
You don’t have to live here,” she said practically.  He glanced at her, lightening a little.  “The Wilds…” he murmured.

“
Or Cyrrh,” she said playfully, but he didn’t hear, taken by surprise at how near she’d settled.  How near her face was to his.  By the smooth curve of her cheek, the rich tendrils of hair beginning to curl around her face, the warm, understanding eyes.  In the bright midday sun, he realized for the first time that those eyes weren’t black at all.  There was green there, a deep, forest green, like a shadowed evergreen glade shot with a sunbeam…

“
Ari!” she laughed, putting a hand on his chest in protest.  He started, embarrassed to realize he was somehow inches from her face and falling closer all the time.  His face heated under the deep tan.

She was talking again, as composed as ever. 
“—of places that you don’t need a reference to start out.  It’s just that the trades you know—the rural farmers, the landed gentry, the politics of Archemounte—none of
these
seem like possibilities.”

“
I’m not even interested in any of them,” he said, flustered awkwardness evaporating in the face of that familiar, lonely despair that had haunted him off and on over the past several months.  Since Loren’s mother had forcibly brought to his attention that he was a useless parasite, to be exact.  Nothing was worse to a Northerner than an unproductive member of society, especially one that was an empty vacuum, sucking up coin.  In addition, so private that Ari wouldn’t even bring it into his consciousness, was the deep hole that his groundless past could never fill.  Loren could trace his heritage back twenty generations.  Harthunters family gatherings overflowed the entire estate.  His family was huge, full of characters, trials, sagas…
life
.  Ari had nothing and nobody except barely remembered memories.

And here, back in the North, it was virtually impossible to
forget.

It would have taken more dedication to glumness than Ari possessed, however, to stay
morose in the agrarian southern Empire in the middle of summer.  Brilliant blue skies arched overhead, the ground swept away in every direction in folds of golden green, and birds swooped and sang through the air as if their little bird brains would explode from happiness.

Rodge was positively frolicsome, he was so happy to be out of Merrani
, and Ari felt his spirits rising in spite of himself.  They
were
going to a Kingsmeet.  There’d probably be Rach and Cyrrhideans there, and then, if Melkin didn’t send them home…maybe Cyrrh, like a magic gold carrot dangling enticingly just out of reach.

It was hot in the southern Empire and soon they were riding along in just their blouses, tails loose in their waistbands and billowing in the brief, welcome breezes.  Banion was in the rear again, and without his cloak sat like a vast, inanimate, blue-grey pile of
hairy laundry.  That occasionally snored.  Even the increasing congestion on the road—and the nearby river—didn’t seem to be able to keep him awake.  Ships in full sail passed regularly, incongruous amongst all the fields of grain, one of them no doubt holding King Kane.  Banion, in a rare moment of consciousness, informed them that the Sapphire Crown was too deep-keeled for the Daroe and that Kane would be in a merchant vessel.

Lodgings proved to be almost impossible to find, unfortunately, as a direct result of
the concentrated migration to the Kingsmeet.  After trying several small towns and finding nothing, for any price, they ended up camping out again that night.  Even the roadside meadows were littered heavily with fellow travelers, the air thick with the anticipatory excitement of a big fest. 

The night air was impossibly balmy as they settled into a corner of
a grassy clearing, the thumbnail moon hanging lazily on its back in a star-sprinkled sky, the energetic chirruping of frog courtship surrounding them with its summer chorus.

The boys
tussled around in the grass, just because they were breathing, while Selah cooked up something tantalizing over the little fire.  She smiled warmly at Ari when he came to the fire, which he assumed was his natural charm—until she laughingly withdrew an entire dandelion, roots, stem, and flower, from his mussed hair. 

“
It’s getting long,” she noted, smoothing the thick mass that was glowing molten red in the ruddy light from the fire.  He thought his heart was going to beat right out of his chest.

She went back to the fire, dishing up, and Ari noticed Rodge and Loren staring at him with bright interest.

Hurriedly, he said, “What is it that Perraneus has done that’s so bad?”

Melkin scowled at his
dinner, as if finding fault with the lentils, and as usual it was Banion that answered.  He finished his bite, roughly a quarter of the contents of his bowl, and said, “I think he’s always been sort of dependent on his soft speech and tremendous knowledge to protect him…he’s valuable to Kane, and he knows it.”

“
But what’s his crime?” Ari persisted.  He’d angered a
god.
  Maybe it was just Ari, but that seemed like a big deal, something one should try and avoid.

“
He can’t keep his mouth shut, is his crime,” Melkin growled.

Banion said, as if smoothing things over,
“He’s pretty accurate with his foretelling, especially lately, in a way that Merrani hasn’t seen in a long time.  That’s its own issue, causing its own little maelstrom of adherents and opponents and accusations and endorsements, but then, recently, he began with this…disrespect for the gods, implying a certain ineptitude, a powerlessness…”

“
There’s not much implying,” Melkin corrected waspishly.  “He’s pretty much come out and said as much.”

Ari
pondered as he ate.  That’s exactly what he’d been stewing about these past few weeks, the imperfection of the gods.  He’d thought it was just his new-found memory that he was Illian that had made him so contemptuous, and them so unsatisfactory.  He wanted to ask more about the mysterious conversation he’d overheard in the Mage’s Tower, but that might have been a little difficult to explain.

“
I don’t suppose Perraneus said anything, er, relevant, in your talk with him?” Banion asked casually, as if he’d read Ari’s mind.  “Like where the Statue might be?  Anything about the Peace? Perhaps a hint or two about the end of the world?”

“
We don’t seriously,
seriously
, think Raemon is imprisoned in a statue,” Rodge said breezily.

“
I’m not concerned with what WE think,” Melkin snapped at him.  “I’m worried about what the Enemy thinks.  If the Sheel bubbles over with war-hungry Sheelmen because they’ve smashed this Statue and are convinced Raemon is howling through time and space to join them—well, it doesn’t really matter what WE think.”

“
Maybe it’s all a plan made up by the Empress eons ago,” Rodge rattled on, undeterred and shamelessly happy to be on Northern soil.  “In order to let the Whiteblades move freely around Realms torn by the anguished thought of war, converting everyone to Il—”

“
You don’t believe in the Empress,” Loren reminded him absently, peering with tremendous interest at the dessert Selah was piecing together.

“
Seal your ignorant lips,” Melkin raged at him in a hiss.  “You’re babbling like a cretin with that incompetent brain of yours.”

“
What?” Rodge asked innocently, its own kind of bravery in the face of Melkin’s wrathful scowl.  “The Empress?  Well, then instruct me.  What exactly do we know about her, anyway?”

Melkin looked like he wanted to finish off what their intruder had started
in Archemounte.  Rodge turned to beseech the storyteller of the group and Banion stared back at him, deadpan.

Ari felt a breathless hope
warring with his disgust at Rodge…everyone knew very well that little to nothing could be said about her.  She was a shadow, more ancient, more mysterious than any of the Whiteblades, name the embodiment of legend.

Banion
finally gave a reluctant shrug, admitting gruffly, “No one knows.  She’s been gone so long even the fact that she existed is barely remembered.”

“
Why the ‘Empress?’” Loren asked, stuffing the caramelized dessert into his mouth.  “That’s kind of boring…”

Banion looked at him with dry disgust. 
“Because she was supposedly concerned with all the Realms and more powerful than any of their rulers.  In her heyday, it was just Merrani, the City of the Seven Falls in Cyrrh, Archemounte, a few isolated, scattered towns in the North, and the Rach running crazily all over the border with the Sheel …the North hadn’t adopted their peculiar, grandiose affectation of being an “empire” yet.”

Rodge pretended outrage, mouth
(thankfully) too full to properly express it. 

The
group went quiet while the last of dinner was consumed, then Rodge and Loren wandered off to talk to a couple girls, Selah gathered the dishes and headed to the Daroe, and Cerise marched importantly across the meadow, bent on the correction of improper camping techniques.

“
So,” Ari said, hardly daring to believe he had Banion virtually to himself, “why don’t you hold the Empress in as much disdain as you do the Swords of Light?”  Banion looked up from tamping his pipe.  He exchanged a look with Melkin.  “You’re rather an astute young man, Ari.”

Ari just stared at him expectantly, determined to dig out as much story as possible in the next few minutes.

“Well, for one thing, she’s not still around tormenting us.  The young women styling themselves ‘Whiteblades’ are still a religious nuisance.”  He lit the pipe after this hardly novel observation, fragrant smoke drifting into the beautiful summer evening.  “But to be truthful, the role of the Empress in legend—from what I know of it—was never really evangelism.  Don’t get me wrong—there was plenty of conversion.  Without her and the Swords of Light, the cult of Il would probably have stayed an almost unknown religious aberration, relegated to the far reaches of the High Wastes.  But her main goal, from what I understand, was more adviser to the Realms.  She was driven by the politics of the times, and the times were black and full of endless fighting.  Stories of the Empress are set smack in the Ages of War, as they went from dark to darker.  The Ramparts were nowhere near intact back then, so Sheelmen regularly overran the southern defenses, as well as leaking through all the other points of the compass.”

“
In fact, that’s how the Swords of Light supposedly started.”  He waved a big paw vaguely at the velvety countryside around them.  “The Empress was so dismayed at the regular devastation suffered by the common people, so dissatisfied at the inadequate protection provided by the formal militaries, she thought there was a need for a sort of roving guerrilla force just for them.  She was right,” he allowed.  “The Realms were losing ground when it came to feeding themselves—all the crops kept getting burned—and when it came to producing enough soldiers to defend themselves—those kept getting burned, too.”

Loren came back and flopped companionably down next to Ari
in time to hear that last.  “The days when every man was a warrior,” he said dreamily.

“
If they survived to reach manhood,” Banion said dryly.  “It was considerably more desperate than it was romantic.  That’s why Empress and Ivory are all women.  Every male that reached fourteen, thirteen, even twelve sometimes, immediately went to join a military.”