The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (45 page)

“
You trail the Statue of the Empress, is that right?” the Foxlord asked quietly.

“
Yes,” Melkin bit off, not even marginally appeased by this perfectly intelligent question.  “There is a legend that Five Hundred years after the making of the Statue at Montmorency, which supposedly imprisoned Raemon, the fire-god would return to bring the world back to war.  This time is close—may have already come to pass.”

“
The Five Hundred Years of Peace,” the Sentinalier murmured, lips pursing thoughtfully over his long chin.

“
It is fated,” Khrieg whispered in tragic overtones, eyes on the golden goblet spinning idly in his fine-boned fingers.

Melkin spared him a rancorous gla
re.  “There is some fear that if the Statue is found by the Enemy, they may use its destruction as impetus to recommence hostilities, believing Raemon will once again be with them.”

“
Why this urgent quest, then, my friends?” Khrieg asked bleakly.  “If they have found the Statue, it has already passed beyond our power to do anything, and if they haven’t, the end of the Five Hundred Years makes war inevitable anyway.”

“
If it is not yet found,” Traive mused, strong voice so steady and reassuring after the Skylord’s trembling tenor that it didn’t even sound like a contradiction, “we have a chance to prevent war—perhaps indefinitely, though that may be optimistic.  If we can find it first, perhaps deny them the power to end the Peace…”

“
The Sheelmen are deeply superstitious,” the Foxlord said in his unassuming voice, picking up neatly where Traive trailed off.  “Not only that, but they live in mortal fear of Raemon.  Never have they made moves without his direct command, and it is doubtful they would dare to engage us after all these centuries without some very positive indicators—”

“
Like Raemon shouting ‘Attack!’” Traive added wryly.

“
—that those are his wishes,” the Foxlord finished, nodding in agreement.

Ari looked around the Circle, confused.  Didn
’t they already have evidence that the Sheelmen were making moves?  Wasn’t that what the whole Kingsmeet had been about?

“
Seems we could learn as much or more from the Sheelmen as we could chasing after the Statue,” the Sky Captain mused.

“
YES!” Melkin almost shouted, “and if we could invite the Enemy up for tea, chat him up a bit, and determine what’s on his scorched, devilish little brain, then we wouldn’t have to waste all this time wandering blindly over the face of the Realms and sitting in useless councils!”

The boys exchanged nervous glances, longing for the safe distance of a top-row seat in a big classroom.

The Foxlord cleared his throat in mild objection.  “We think we know where the Sheelshard is now.  It’s a possibility that we may have real-time intelligence on the Sheelmen in the very near future.”

“
The Sheelshard,” Melkin almost spat.  “It took us how long to think we
may
have found the Sheelshard?  Three thousand years?  At that rate, we won’t have to worry about spies discovering the Enemy’s movements—they’ll be in our backyards letting us know exactly what they’re doing before we ever get close to them!”

“
How about the Ivory?” the Sentinalier took a turn, jaw bobbing up and down as he talked.  “They have untapped reserves of knowledge concerning the Enemy—the Empress, after all, was their leader…”

“
How about the Ivory?!” Melkin threw up his arms.  “Do you know why their knowledge is untapped?  BECAUSE WE CAN’T FIND THE FLAMING GITS!  How long’s it been since you’ve seen one?”

No one answered.  Ari shifted uncomfortably, wondering again why now, just when the Realms really needed them, the
Whiteblades would disappear.  As high as the Swords of Light sat in his secret imaginings, it filled him with dread to think of them as unreliable, as foolish young actresses incompetent to truly handle the shiftings of fate, or, worse, playing at some game of their own in this bubbling cauldron of gods and prophecies and Enemy and Ivory.

The cat at the Sky Captain
’s feet, its toy having gotten snagged on some out-of-reach embroidery, wandered over to Kindri and jumped up on her lap.  Ari, mind musing unhappily on all this unsettling talk, watched it absently.  The Skyprincess began to stroke its muted seal brown fur without any sign she was aware of it, and if Ari’s eyes hadn’t been on it, watching it knead her priceless gown, he would never have caught the slip.

Kindri
’s father muttered, “So true.”  No one else was looking at her, and a lightening change swept through the Skyprincess and was gone, so fast Ari wasn’t sure he’d really seen it.  It was nothing specific, not really anything she’d done or even a change of expression.  In fact, it was so indefinable a feeling that he blinked, looking at her closely out of the corner of his eyes.  She looked as vapid, as comatose as ever.  And yet…without being able to put a finger on why, he was suddenly sure that she was faking.

Why anyone would try so hard to appear
apathetic and incompetent, he had no idea.  It wasn’t really a Northern concept.  But the gap between Cyrrh and the North went a lot deeper than flora and fauna, and he had too much else on his mind to worry about Cyrrhidean social games.

“
Let’s focus on what we can do,” Traive said into the Circle, with such dry sarcasm that Ari wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t known the Regent so well from their days on the trail.  “While the Fox work on their lead at the ’Shard, how can we help Master Melkin’s hunt for the Statue?”  He looked at his Foxlord.

“
We have no records of such a thing,” the man admitted.  “Were it not that common folklore has it hidden somewhere in Cyrrh’s jungles—”

“
And that Adama told Melkin his answers were here,” Traive interjected, shocking Ari with the sound of her name.  All the bright, shallow glitter around him seemed to fade at the thought of her.  He’d give it all for another glance from those laughing eyes, for a chance that she might be part of a memory of a life now forever beyond his reach.

“
—I would say the hunt for the Statue has little hope of bearing fruit in Cyrrh,” the Foxlord finished.  “Nor, as you say, are there Ivory around to question.”

Traive, looking faintly satisfied, startled them all then. 
“I suggest we use the only source left to us, then.”  He looked around a Circle gone quiet.  The only sound was the tinkle of water and the purr of Kindri’s cat.  Everyone looked at him expectantly.

“
The Centaurs.”

CHAPTER 21

“
Why are we surprised?” Rodge asked later as they trudged across the valley of the Falls, the three of them released to spend the evening as they wished.  “I mean, after the Cyrrhidean jungle and all its snakes, stags, baboons, beetles, toxic flowers…and the eyries and
gryphons
and this little cultural fetish of using priceless gems to decorate your external architecture—I mean, what’s so shocking about consulting oracles?  In the form of centaurs?” Rodge shrugged, miming indifference.

“
Why not?” Loren laughed expansively.  He was in high spirits.  He’d managed to sit next to Kindri for the entire meeting.

The Circle hadn
’t lasted long after Traive’s suggestion.  No one had been surprised when the Skylord had protested it, citing the improbability of finding such creatures, but they were all a little taken back when the Regent informed them he’d set Fox on the trail of the Centaurs and had their location pinned down.  Which would imply that they actually existed.  While the Northerners were struggling with this revelation and Khrieg’s resistance was sputtering down, Kai mentioned that a long, dangerous trip through northern Cyrrh was hardly timely right now (to Melkin’s barely restrained approval) and the Circle had dispersed with the intent to work something out.

Personally, Ari had trouble believing anything could be more
life-threatening than a long, dangerous trip through
southern
Cyrrh, but he was all for experiencing everything he could in this Realm…and centaurs?!?!

Right now, it was a beautiful Realm.  The
fast-falling dusk of autumn settled about them like a cool cloak as they walked under aisles of dark, thick-boled tree trunks and their canopies of glowing leaves.  The air was crisp as you sucked it into your lungs, the dead leaves crunching under foot or floating with timeless grace in a dance of oak and ash and maple and sycamore.  The Falls played a symphony in the background and the light became a shivery, silver-salmon gleam.  Ari paused, caught up in the play of color and shadow and the memories of all the autumns he’d had—the smell of apple cider, the rainy days pattering against the gathered, golden sheaves of wheat, the archery competition he’d won that last Harvest Fair…

“
Ari,” Rodge called peevishly.  “Stop dawdling.”  They were waiting for him a short bit ahead and he picked up his pace, catching up with them at an intersection overshadowed by the great trees, some with bare branches already starting to show black against the darkening sky.

But no one was looking at trees.  Coming down the road towards them…were a group of girls.

“I love it when they come in threes,” Loren whispered.  The boys stared at them avidly, unable to believe their luck.  They were single (meaning currently unaccompanied), young, and gorgeous.

They walked up, and each party started smiling at the other at such fortuitous and portentous
a meeting.  “Hello,” one of them said, in that musical accent of her Realm that made a man’s hair curl around his ears.  The other two giggled, huddling close to each other and staring wide-eyed at Rodge’s pale skin.  “You must be the Northern visitors.”

“
How d’ja know?” Loren said, throwing his arms wide and showing a lot of his perfect teeth.  All three of them giggled at that, their slim shoulders lifting and their layered silk gowns gliding marvelously over their slender forms.  Ari watched them, fascinated.  Why did they always giggle? 

“
We’re headed to the Dens.  If you’d like us to show you around, you’re welcome to come with us,” the first one said.  She had an exotic, wide, flat face with a charmingly pointed chin and huge green eyes, possibly the prettiest girl Ari had ever seen.  “It’d be a shame for you to spend your time in Lirralhisa…alone,” she dared, and Rodge and Loren, affecting over-acted ‘why-not?’ faces to each other, readily agreed.

Ari fell in with them, suddenly reluctant.  Entrancing as they were, what company was he for girls?  He had nothing to offer them, didn
’t even know who he was.  There was only one girl out there for him…and he’d probably never see her again.  Ears inundated with chatter and surrounded with companionship, he felt aloneness sweep over him.  Where was his Selah now?  There wasn’t even any comfort in the thought of her following them—that’d mean she was currently engulfed in the dangers and discomfort of the jungle while he was cavorting around unfaithfully with a bevy of pretty foreign females.

They made their way through one of the picturesque little hamlets, Ari not paying much attention to the conversation and comforted by the fact that no one was paying any attention to him.  He wasn
’t sure he could have stood for stares and whispers behind those slender fingers.   Under a big gaslight in the central square that turned the silvery evening goldish, they met up with a group of men, brown-skinned and about the same age as the girls.  There was more talking, laughing, the sound of nearby music, then they all turned and trooped down the street, stopping and stooping to enter a shadowy building with a low doorway.

Almost immediately, Ari
’s nose started to tickle.  It was a long, low room, full of people and talk and the stirring music of Cyrrh, which seemed either to have a toe-tapping beat or was slow and haunting and lyrically nostalgic.  He’d never heard Northern music half so moving.

But the room was thick with irritating, odd-smelling smoke and already his eyes were starting to feel dry.  A light-headedness was seeping into him, making him a little disoriented so that
it took conscious effort to control his movement across the room.  The girls led them over to a low, well-cushioned bench, over and around all kinds of bodies.  Some were sleeping, some were in animated conversation and oblivious to others trying to pass, and some were just staring smilingly into space.  It was really crowded, but the worst was the funny disassociated feeling in his mind.  Loren, as athletic as they come, stumbled, laughing, over nothing.

Once they were settled, cut-glass tumblers full of cool water were passed around, and someone offered them pipes.  Rodge laughed outright at this
.  “We don’t smoke,” he said drolly, the unquestionable center of attention and enjoying it immensely.  In the North, it was usually only old men that smoked pipes.  It was funny to see boys their own age, and especially girls, with pipes in their teeth.

“
Oh,” the kitten-faced beauty said huskily, “You’ll want to smoke this…”

The boys looked at each other. 
“Why?”

“It’s
dasht
,” she explained, then laughed at the look on their faces.  “Don’t worry.  It won’t hurt you.  You just use a little and it takes that anxious edge off.  You can relax, be more…you.”

Ari
’s eyes watered as one of the boys they’d met blew an encouraging cloud of smoke into his face.  His head felt thick and muddled, like he was trying to think underwater. 

“
I don’t want to end up like the Skyprincess,” Rodge remarked, diplomatic and discreet as ever; fortunately, everyone thought this was hilarious and in the resulting wave of goodwill he accepted a pipe and sucked in a mouthful of smoke.

Ari looked around, peering through the thick air.  Everyone seemed happy enough, but well over half of the people he saw had that vacant, vacuous look
that was so familiar from Kindri’s face.  Why did they do this?  The stress of living in Cyrrh?  What was that compared to what he had to live with inside himself?  Is this what his mother had meant in the dream—hiding behind insensible stupor until he was a useless, lifeless lump?  Worse…what if he lost control of the madness he was still half-convinced was lurking somewhere inside his genes?  What if he turned into—

Suddenly, and probably irrationally, he was panicked, as if he was slipping right then and there into murderous insanity.  He stood abruptly, heart pounding, feeling trapped and frantically claustrophobic.  Unsteadily, he w
ove his way across the room, ignoring the mild protests as he overturned pillows and pipes and people, his head seeming to swell by the second in the thicker haze of smoke collected under the low roof.  The music droned heavily, hypnotically, no longer a thing of tripping beauty but a numbing, dulling aid to the earnest endeavors of a room trying to escape reality.  Plunging rather inhospitably out the door, Ari came to an uncoordinated halt, sucking in great lungfuls of clear air…and wishing desperately to escape reality himself.

Escape, relaxation…he swayed there miserably as the door shut behind him, the music and the light and the laughter ending as abruptly as his life of carefree normalcy had. 
For a moment, he just stood quietly, shaking his head (gently, so he didn’t fall over), mind grinding slowly.  Feeling utterly unhappy, he began to walk mindlessly through the cool, misty night. He wished powerfully that he could be in there laughing with his friends, wished he had no secrets to hide and no dirty past threatening to loom out of its cage in an unguarded moment.  Wished he was anything but what he was.  But wishing wasn’t going to change anything, and neither was losing all sense of himself so that he could pretend for a few short hours that he was just like everybody else.  It felt like someone was squeezing his heart in two.

“
Ari?”  He looked up from his ground-locked gazing, recognizing the voice.  In his wandering, he’d come back to the intersection, and now a cloud scuttled away from the misty face of the moon to show a stocky, athletic man standing at its center.  It was Traive, a cloak around his shoulders for the autumn chill, but still dressed in his practical shadowcloth uniform.  He was looking intently at Ari, whose fuzzy mind was having trouble with the transition from drenched self-absorption to normal conversation.

“
Where are Rodge and Loren?” He had a steadying voice, unperturbed and practical, as if the world was completely normal and Ari had just lost sight of the fact.  It was so equalizing that Ari managed to stammer lamely, “We met some girls…” before trailing off.  The forces couldn’t use
dasht
, and the place, the Den, had had such a furtive, shady air about it, that he wasn’t sure how much he should say.

“
Ah,” Traive said, with calm and complete understanding.  “I’ll get someone to take them back to the Palace.”  He made a small gesture behind him and the shadowy form of a man—a

Fox, no doubt—materialized from the deeper shadows of the path and headed back the way Ari had come.  Ari slumped dejectedly.  On top of everything, he
’d left Rodge and Loren, though arguably they were the ones having fun.  What if something had happened to them?  What if he’d gotten them in trouble? 

“
They’re in no danger,” Traive said, softly slapping his gloves against his palm, “but we have a long day tomorrow and they’ll not want to be…er, recovering.”  Ari stared glumly at the ground, wishing it would separate and he could fall into it. 

Traive, staring searchingly at him, said casually,
“I’m on my way to my sister’s house for dinner.  She always cooks like she’s feeding a Tor…I don’t suppose you’d come along and help me eat it?”

Ari hesitated, depressed and unsociable and
yet very aware of his dream-mother’s warning of slipping into uselessness.  Really, whom did he know more grounded than the Lord Regent of Cyrrh?

“
Thanks, I would,” he said, which came out more determined than gracious.  They started off in the direction Traive had been heading, passing through patches of fog and moonlight, walking companionably for several minutes before Traive said, “You didn’t try any.”

“
No,” Ari said without thinking, and then immediately wondered how he’d known.

“
Your clothes,” the Lord Regent said calmly.  “
Dasht
has a pretty distinct way of clinging to them.  And there’s a well-known Den in that direction.”

Ari, feeling an awkward silence looming, said,
“It made me feel…disconnected.”

“
Yes,” Traive said, covering a laugh by saying gravely, “I believe that’s the intent.  It’s rather rare to find that undesirable.”

Well, Ari wasn
’t about to explain himself there, but it felt a little dishonest to sense Traive admired him for it.  He certainly wouldn’t if he knew what was behind it. 

Traive
’s sister lived in a large, butter-yellow house that wound almost completely around the trunk of a gigantic old oak.  An intricate, twining wooden staircase led to the second floor, where they entered the big main room, plush with soft furniture and pillows in oranges and golds.  Traive’s sister, her hair blonder but with the same mossy green eyes and sardonic eyebrows, came to meet them.  She had a big, ginger-colored apron, a wide smile, and an unself-conscious embrace for the Lord Regent.  Ari looked around, a little embarrassed, while they spoke briefly; the room was both foreign and familiar, rich with Cyrrhidean art but full of the scents and sounds of a home.  It was enough to bring a pang of terrible longing to his overtaxed emotions—the smell of stew, the sound of children playing in the background, the fire on the hearth.  Searingly aware that it was all forever beyond his reach, he had the sudden desire to run, his heart so full of ache that he didn’t think he could stay.

Then
his hosts separated and Traive said, “This is Triivinesse, Triivi,” and she came over and took his hands in her little warm ones…and he thought maybe he could stay for a little while.

“
Welcome, Ari.” She had the same unaffected warmth and steady eyes as her brother, and she rolled them when he teased, “Triivi misses her menfolk, so you’ll be promptly adopted, believe me.  I’d leave now if you don’t want to be mothered.”

She headed back to the kitchen, saying,
“We have two little brothers in the Forces, one a Jageer and the other just completed his Fox run—following in his brother’s footsteps, for some unimaginable reason—and my husband’s a Silver Torlord.”  She’d been pouring a deep amber liquid, and now came towards them with two big glass mugs with frothy heads, saying practically, “You’ll want your beer on the porch.  Dinner’ll be a little bit yet.”

They wandered out onto a railed verandah, the great oak
spreading overhead for a roof and the cool night throbbing peacefully around them.

“
She’s well-trained,” Traive said in a complacent undertone, and they both grinned when she called from inside, “I heard that.”

They settled into chairs so delicately carved they didn
’t look like they’d take their weight, setting their mugs on the table snugged up against the oak and staring out over a grassy sward striped with moonlight.  Contentment snuck up on Ari like the wisps of fog starting to blur the scene in front of them.  How strange…to go from such despair to such homey ease, such longing to such odd peace of mind.  Lulled by the sense of privacy and Traive’s utterly informal tone as he made casual small talk, Ari had to ask.

“
Dasht
…it’s not illegal, is it?” 

Traive murmured a negative, taking a gulp. 
“It’s only forbidden to the Forces because it dulls alertness, slows the reflexes, gives a false sense of well-being.  You’ve seen some of what Cyrrh has to offer in the ways of thrills and chills,” he said with a chuckle.  “You know that’d be a death sentence.”

“
No,” he continued in his strong, mellow voice, “it’s not even close to illicit.  Taloners and Sentinels can use it off duty now.”  Ari glanced at him.  His blunt face was dappled by oak leaf shadow and moonlight, but there was nothing mysterious about the sarcastic disapproval in his voice.  He caught Ari’s eyes on him and shrugged, elaborating, “Cyrrhideans have known
dasht
since Laschald introduced them a couple thousand years ago.  He wanted some leisure for his people, a way to relax in Cyrrh’s endlessly stimulating jungles, so he showed them how to harvest it.  At first, it was just for religious festivals.  Once a year.  In small doses.  This was tradition for centuries—out of necessity, obviously.  A Realm fighting day by day for its very life didn’t have the luxury of extended oblivion. But once the Peace came and attacks started dropping off, whole months, then years, would go by without seeing the Enemy.  A sense of security, which even our elaborate defenses have never been able to ensure, began to steal over the Lirralhisel.”

“
And now,” he finished sardonically, “now we’re to this.  An unprecedented number of young men with nothing to do and young women who think bearing children went out with the Days of Old.  There’s no mandatory service in the Forces anymore, so given the choice of a life of hardship and discipline—and purpose—or a sedentary ease sprinkled liberally with
dasht
…well, the latter’s winning out.”

“
It’s not actually harmful, though, right?” Ari said, worried about his friends and trying to come to grips with this whole concept.  A non-functioning, leisure-loving chunk of society was an unimaginable thing to the North.

“
No,” Traive conceded slowly, “not to the individual body that uses it.  Its damage is more general…to the society that values its pleasures more than it does its own life.”

Ari shook his head, still bewildered. 
“It’d never catch on in the Empire.”

For some reason this made Traive choke on his beer.  After he
’d cleaned his face up some and stopped coughing, he managed to say seriously, “No.  No, it probably wouldn’t.  But, then,” he cautioned, face growing still, “I never would have thought to see it eat away so ravenously at Cyrrh, either.  We are like a bright green apple that crumbles into soft, brown rottenness when you get to the core.”  He stared fixedly into the night, into a future that Ari was suddenly edgily aware of.  Below them, the open space was filling with mist, softening the sharpness of the moon-etched shadows,

This was eerily reminiscent of Flyr
’s conversation.  Ari began to wonder why this Realm, profoundly more aware of its security and the threat of danger than the North, should be so much more worried about it.  Why did the Empire seem to be the only Realm that felt itself perfectly capable of handling whatever came down the road?  Why were they the only ones that dealt with Raemon and the Sheel and the Empress and Ivory with such intellectual dismissal?  Were they missing something, or was their level of knowledge really that advanced?

He took a big swallow of beer.

A child’s voice suddenly cried out in the room behind him, and turning absently to look, he set down his beer with a thump.

Dra Kai was sitting on the e
dge of one of the chairs, double-hipped swords hanging like fangs on either side of his muscular legs.  And between the steel vice of his black-clad knees, the color of death in every Realm, stood a small girl.  She was very young, with more yellow-gold ringlets than anything else, and had a little hand imperiously on one of those knees.  Her face was upturned, babbling with clear incoherence and utter trust up into that face.  Kai, looking soberly down at her, was giving her all the respectful attention he’d paid Lord Khrieg a few short hours ago.

Traive
’s low chuckle sounded out of the deepening night.  “Relax, Ari.  Drae love children.  There’s nowhere she’d be safer.”  Ari looked uncertainly at the Lord Regent, then to the coiled Dra, then back to Traive.

“
He probably stopped by to give Triivi news of Gris—that’s her husband.”

“
He’s a…er, friend of the family?” Ari asked, still eyeing Kai warily.  He hadn’t moved, despite the one-sided, animated conversation going on a few inches from his face.

“
Dra Kai?  Very much so,” Traive said, waving a hand easily.  “He’s an unusual Dra—very vocal at the Throne of Trees and a good friend to the Realm.  Not only that, but he’s interested in more than just Cyrrh and the immediate needs of the Drae.  They rarely leave Cyrrh, but Kai has travelled the Empire, made friends with her Wolfmaster and her Queen.  He’s nothing short of…visionary.  The Drae are lucky to have him.  Especially at this particular junction of the stars.”