The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (28 page)

             
She waited.  No one spoke for several seconds and she began to feel a little foolish.  Despite the rampant Mohrgs and gryphons and dragons and one phoenix that had been trotted out in the last few hours, fairytales still didn’t come easily out of any self-respecting Northern mouth.

             
Then Khrieg said slowly, “That Statue once stood in Archemounte, did it not?”

Her face brightened. 
“Yes, so the Shepherd claimed, though we have no record of it.  You’ve heard of this, then?  Do you know of its whereabouts?  Where it was taken?  Melkin was given instruction to hunt for it in Cyrrh by a, er, Whiteblade.” 

             
“Then you must come to Cyrrh,” Khrieg said expansively.  Her face fell.  “We will do everything in our power to aid you,” he told the Wolfmaster.

             
“Very kind,” Sable murmured disconsolately.

             
Kyr, musing across the table, said thoughtfully, “If it is not found in Cyrrh, perhaps we should mount a force and search Zkag…many of the omens discussed today suggest Raemon may be very near free, if not already.  Perhaps the Tarq already have it.”

             
This was greeted with astonishment from around the room, some of the spectators even crying out.  Sable’s mind raced.  Zkag.  What was that?  Where had she heard that?  Trying to keep up with all these stories was making her dizzy.

             
“The Sheelshard??!” Kane bellowed in amazement, helpfully, and the light clicked on in her tired, hungry little mind.  The ’Shard.  The legendary home of the Enemy, hidden somewhere deep in the Sheel.  Convenient for the purposes of storytale plots, it had never been found, despite the pages’ worth of effort by Great and Lesser Heroes.

             
Kyr’s bright eyes met Kane’s.  “We think we may have found it, or at least the path to it.”

             
Khrieg exclaimed wordlessly.

             
“I thought it was legend…” Kane said wonderingly.  Me, too, Sable echoed in wry silence.  They were nothing but overgrown boys, all of them.

             
“It may be,” Kyr admitted, looking so endearingly sheepish that Sable had to fight the sudden impulse to give him a warm and very un-royal smile.  “But they have to live somewhere.”

             
Kane grinned at him wolfishly.  “That they do.”

CHAPTER 14

The bottom had fallen out of Ari’s world.

He rode along numbly, mind like a lump of wet dough.  Around him, the rest of the party laughed and talked, the brown gelding frisked energetically, and the hot summer sun burnished the world.  But Ari felt nothing, a shadow of nerveless, unthinking disbelief.

Rodge and Loren, with the bracing commiseration of eighteen-year-old males, had clapped him on the shoulder right afterwards and murmured, “That rots…”  Loren, to his horror, had tried to start a conversation with, “Well, you’ve always wondered about your parents—maybe one of them had some Enemy blood…”  Ari had hastily changed the subject.

Cerise, indeed devastated that she hadn
’t been called to the ’Meet, had to hear about everything, wanted to know every inflection of every voice, how people looked, what they said, who sided with whom.  Rodge and Loren obligingly rambled on—and on and on—as the horses ambled away from Crossing on virtually deserted roads.

Rodge said, early in the dialogue,
“You would have been in misery, Cerise.  The most ridiculous things were said in that room—in complete seriousness.  They say Cyrrhideans indulge in mind-altering substances, and I believe it.  While on
gryphon
patrol one day, a Taloner saw ‘smoke rising from the dragon’s lair!’  But no one seemed to know if there was a dragon there or not, and if he was, well, we could pretty much all go home, ‘cuz it was all over.”

“
Oh!” Loren cut in, with remembered hilarity, “They’ve found the Sheelshard!”

“
And Ari’s a Sheelman!” Rodge chortled, right on top of him.

Ari
’s heart, heavy as a rock in his chest, sank to somewhere around his kneecaps.  Cerise looked at him sharply and he affected a casual shrug.

“
The Rach think he looks like the Enemy,” Loren rolled his eyes, elaborating as it became apparent they had momentarily lost her attention.  She looked at Ari consideringly, and for a second, her sharp features softened so that she was almost pretty.  “Don’t let it get to you.  They’re ignorant savages that can barely see beyond the ends of their sabres.”

He blinked.  She turned her attention back to the recital and he gave himself a mental shake. 
There’d been times she’d been almost human in the last few weeks—ever since they’d gotten off the Merranic Warsloop.  He figured she’d probably eaten some humble pie somewhere on that trip—or brought some up, more likely.

T
hey rode through the long summer days, each more endless than the last.  He was vaguely aware that his surroundings were beautiful, back amongst the trees again, and the road empty of traffic.  Everyone was still at the Kingsmeet, which would go on for several more days. 

Like in the north
, the countryside here grew more forested the closer one drew to Cyrrh, and the Daroe was lined now with huge, drooping willows and leafy cottonwoods.  Increasingly, they passed through wooded glens where great oaks and maples, ash and beech, filtered the hot sun off their burning heads.  Ari was aware of it only for the sense of concealment it offered.  He felt, frankly, like the lowest point in a barnyard, where all the mud and manure and unmentionables pool.  A cowardly part of him longed for the recent days of blissful ignorance—how could so much change in a few seconds? 

All his life he
’d known he was different, for his coloring, for the fact that he was an orphan; he’d wiled away hours wondering who his parents were and what his story was…especially lately.  Now that void was doubly deep, triply dark, and with no happy endings even possible anymore.  The practical Northern part of him, of course, was unhappy—Imperials didn’t like puzzles and complications.  It interfered with business.  But the worst part by far was this new knowledge…this vicious dagger digging around in the black hole of his past.  He had Sheelman blood.  Tarq.  The Enemy.  A race of the cruelest, most violent, heinous men known to mankind.  He was the embodiment of evil, to the casual observer.

Melkin
sought him out one afternoon by the banks of the Daroe.  They’d taken to stopping in the shade during the blistering heat of midday, then riding late into the night.  Under the stark shadow of a big willow, the Wolfmaster came and squatted down by him.  Grizzled hair showed out of the blouse at his neck, and his harsh voice was quiet and low.

“
There’re some things we should probably talk about.”

Ari
stared, unseeing, out at the rippling river.  “You knew,” he said dully.

“
No,” Melkin denied it.  “But I suspected.  When there wasn’t any other reason for that intruder in your boys’ room, it started to make me suspicious.  No one’s seen Enemy in the North since Montmorency, but in the writings they’re always dark people…with ‘hair of fire’ and ‘sea-emerald eyes.’  It’s a fairly consistent description.”

“
So you just decided to drag me around all over the Realms to see if I’d break out into a killing spree?”  He didn’t even have the energy to be bitter.  He felt like someone had stepped on the world, squashing all the color out of it.

“
I didn’t know what role you were playing, if any.  If mercenaries were after you, you obviously had some value, to somebody.  You could have been a pawn.  Still could be.  There’re so many question marks punctuating the air right now, I have no idea where you fit in.”  He sounded more like the usual Melkin, irascible and impatient.  “I was hoping that brainless young chit of a Whiteblade might drop a hint about you.  They’re notorious for playing games with people’s lives, knowing things they have no right to know.”

Whiteblades, Ari thought
with a dull stab.  Well, there went that secret hope.  No Illian that lived to destroy the evil forces of Enemy was going to raise one.  It wasn’t like it had been a serious possibility anyway, he sighed in silent resignation. 

“
Perraneus knew you, though.” Melkin’s eyes narrowed and his lip curled.  “Had ‘foreseen’ you,’ though he shed about the same amount of light on that as anything else.”

Ari suddenly remembered his bout with eavesdropping, but apathy seized him before he thought to confess.  Why bother?

“The Warwolf,” he said dully instead, several things suddenly becoming clear.  It had leaped past three people, ignoring them to try and pounce on him.

Melkin looked out at the Daroe. 
“Aye,” he growled softly.

“
Not letting me go out at the Kingsmeet…”

“
If you’d stumbled into a party of Rach…well, you saw what almost happened outside the Meeting Chamber.”  He turned to fix his piercing grey eyes onto Ari’s.  “I suggest you never go to the Ramparts.”

Breathe, Ari told himself.  Just breathe.  He nodded calmly.
  “That’s why we were called to the ’Meet.”  He’d been wondering about that…why the boys but not Cerise.

He gave a faint nod, but only said,
“Cyrrh would be a good home…they’re an accepting sort of people.”  He stood, looking down at the glowing, miserable red head.  “I have no doubt about your innocence now. I just have no idea where you fit into this mess.  I’ll do everything I can to buffer you from any ignorance or violence we may meet,” he said gruffly, then turned quickly on his heel as if embarrassed.   Ari experienced a little jolt of amazement through his pain, that this man, concerned with items of state and secrets of Realmswide security, would spend so much time considering
him.

If anything, the days grew hotter, and the humidity skyrocketed.  Their blouses clung fitfully to them and the horses
’ coats grew damp early and stayed that way all day.  The Daroe was narrowing too, as it approached its source in the foothills, and they missed the cool breezes that had come off of its wider version downstream.  Now, the big country stretching beyond it to the south was nothing but flat pastureland, simmering with heat waves, where Rach worked their enormous herds of cattle.  The breezes from there felt like they’d skipped that section of terrain and were right off the Sheel far beyond.  The bugs took advantage of the shade, and they weren’t shy about their affection for the Northerners, either.  The whole party was covered in welts from mosquitoes, gnats, deerflies and a host of the unnamed…one could say the average Northern spirit was sinking a little. 

None of it made any difference to Ari.

One night, as the breeze ruffled their sweaty hair and the frogs chorused deafeningly around them, they broke through a rare opening in the trees just as the moon was rising.  A huge, torrid, orange-red moon, it was shocking, almost eerie.  Ari had never seen a moon that color or size.

“
Ugh,” Rodge said, staring at it.  He absently slapped at a mosquito.  “How ghastly.”  But he was as fixated on it as any of them; there was a sort of primal fascination with it, an instinctive awe at such an enormous cosmic oddity.  They all jumped when an owl gave its haunting call from almost over their head.

A red moon, Ari though
t dully.  How appropriate: the color of Enemy hair, of the Sheel, of Raemon’s Triele.  He SO needed a reminder.  But, face lifted to look at it like everyone else, it occurred to him—desperation, maybe—that there was a sort of beauty to it.  It made him think of Il, strangely, because he hadn’t for so long.  Selah claimed He saw all the happenings in the world, to the smallest detail, had a plan for everybody.  Which made Ari think rather unkindly of Him for the choices concerning
him
, but on the other hand…to whom else was he supposed to go?  He obviously did not belong anywhere in the Realms now, including at the feet of their various gods.  What would Vangoth, who got mortally peeved at indiscreet Magi, do to him, of Enemy blood?  Why now, when he was miserable enough he could use a little divine comfort, was there none available?  Where was Il?

He missed Selah so bad it hurt.

The next day he rode up beside Melkin’s blue roan, whose long legs always paced it out in front.  The Wolfmaster had been edgier than ever, keen eyes roving constantly, as if feeling either an increased threat or the lack of means to handle it.  Ari and Loren were pretty good now with a blade, but they were no Kai or Banion, still back at the Kingsmeet.

“
Do you think the gods actually
talk
to
people, like King Kane and Vangoth?” he asked after a few minutes of companionable silence.  “Give them signs, listen to them?  Or do people just imagine it?  Sort of WISH it into happening?”

He got a glance, scalpel-sharp. 
“I leave the gods alone, boy, and hope they do the same to me.  They’re real enough,” Melkin added warily, “but dangerous, unpredictable, like spoiled children that hold the keys to the world.”

“
So,” he guessed sardonically, “no Great Deed?”

Melkin snorted. 
“I don’t care what the priests say, Marek doesn’t keep track of who’s done their One Great Deed or not.”

“
Il doesn’t require one, and he’s all about charity and compassion,” Ari said, hardly aware he was thinking aloud.

Melkin shot him a look
of disbelieving scorn.  He rattled on, “So, what’s the truth?  How can there be all these different gods, each one saying different things, each one claiming to be right?”

“
The truth is what every man makes it,” Melkin growled.  “Take your comfort where you can—and keep your own counsel about it.”  He loosened up the reins, done with theology, and his horse began drawing away.

Ari stared after him.  How could it be truth if it changed for every single person?  Wasn
’t there something universal out there, say, like justice, that wasn’t susceptible to individual perception or the phases of social fashion?  It seemed to him, with his world on its head, that there
should
be.

Tekkara screamed suddenly, crow-hopping and whirling viciously to bite at her flank,
such a violently contorting combination that anyone but Cerise would probably have been thrown.  A horsefly roughly the size of a robin had assaulted her, and the other horses switched their tails nervously.  It all reminded Ari so strongly of the incident with the Warwolf that he felt a quick rush of adrenaline, cold fingers of premonition running down his spine.  He snapped his head forward, scanning the trail. 

He
’d just started to laugh at himself when the incoherent version of
no, this can’t be
flitted like quicksilver through his mind. His voice cracking, he yelled, “AMBUSH!!!”

A short distance
ahead, where the party would already be if it hadn’t been for the horsefly, armed men were coming out of the trees—and they weren’t a lost party of lumbermen.

“
Behind us!” Cerise cried, shrill with fear, and fumbled for her bow.  He couldn’t believe this.  He threw his head around to look wildly behind him, then quickly back to the bigger group of men in front.

“
Run!” Melkin roared, and set his heels to his horse’s flanks.  Reacting more than thinking, they plunged after him towards the group taking over the trail ahead, the boys awkwardly drawing swords and feeling very much like they were in a nightmare.  This kind of stuff just didn’t happen, especially not repeatedly.