The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (54 page)

“They
’ve only been here since the Peace,” Traive said calmly.  He’d just finished dismissing a Fox, the third since they’d surprised the Asps in the little village, and all of which had had their attentive ears filled with several minutes of instructions. 

“This was once all jungle?” Loren asked.  Having cleared an acre or two of land in his disciplinary days, he could appreciate how much work these leagues must have taken.

“All the way to the Swamps in the south.”

Ari
’s ears perked up.  About those Swamps, he wanted to say.  About those slaves—at least now he knew where in the Realms slavery existed, which had baffled him.

But Loren cut in, “Hard to believe the Enemy could survive weeks of jungle travel, after being so accustomed to the desert, and still arrive with enough of an attack force to be a serious threat to the Torques.”

Rodge raised one black eyebrow disparagingly.  “Thanks, General.”

“They
’re adaptable little devils, tough as iron,” Traive said mildly.  “I think it’s more surprising they took to the sea, myself.”

Banion, on his third helping and probably the only one present whose appetite hadn
’t been affected by the day’s activities, looked appeased.  He grunted in agreement.

“From the east…” Ari said slowly.  “From the south.  We know the Addahites fought them in the north in the Old Ages.  But you never hear about them attacking from the west.”  He looked curiously at Traive.

“Northern Cyrrh is virtually impassable—we’ve talked about it—and Western Cyrrh is home to the wild gryphons.”  He grinned darkly.  “They’ll kill a man on sight and have the eagle eyes to search him out.”  Loren and Ari grinned back.  Rodge looked queasy and put down his chicken leg.

“That stretch of coast,” Banion added, “just north of the Swamps all the way up to Addah and beyond the charts, has the most inhospitable shores of the known world.  Most of the Cyrrhidean
coastline is a wall of solid rock, and the areas that men could land are treacherous as a woman—” he paused, glanced at Cerise, and decided to let it stand.  “Merranic scoutsloops reported all kinds of shipwrecks broken up on those rocks and shoals back in the Ages they were exploring over there.”

Traive smiled a mirthless smile.  “Fangvine seems to love the salt air, too.  Grows like a jungle along the coast.”

That made more than one of them shudder.

The plantations finally ended and nice, normal oaks and beech and maple and sycamore filled the countryside.  The days pooled into a relaxed muddle, drifting by without any further incidents, only Melkin retaining the steel-sharp edge of urgency.  It helped that they had a definite goal, knew exactly where they were going, and in some vague sense, knew they were almost there.

Or so they thought.

One day they came up on Kai, who usually ranged out of sight, scouting.  He was definitely done scouting, standing patiently waiting for them.  The trail faded away in front of him, bushes and weeds growing casually as if just a yard away there wasn’t an obvious cleared path.

They drew around him, wondering, and he said, “This is as far as we can go with any certainty.”  They all stared at him perplexed, but that was nothing to his next statement.  “The Forbidden Forest cannot be found unless it wishes to be.”

There were several seconds of blank silence as most of the party tried to figure out exactly what that meant.  Rodge inserted a finger into one of his ears in an attempt to loosen the wax before asking, “Did you say, ‘unless it
wishes
to be?’”

Had it been anyone but Kai making this sort of pronouncement, there would doubtless have been a rapid-fire
, scorn-filled commentary going on already.  Melkin turned in wordless outrage to Traive, who was looking faintly amused at the looks on their faces. 

“This is true,” he said, breaking it to them as gently as he could.  “Many Cyrrhideans have sought the Ivory
’s Garden over the centuries, and not all have found it…of course, in the stories, it’s only those in direst need who—”

“Of course,” Melkin barked, patience snapped.  “What else would we expect on this trip but a little translocatable geography!”  He glared around at Cyrrh while Cerise made completely empathetic sounds of affront.  Such things, obviously, were not acceptable in the North.

Melkin whirled accusingly back to Traive.  “How much more dire need can anyone get than the threat of the Wars restarting!?” 

“Comes from dealing with witches,” Banion rumbled, sucking his teeth in disgust.

Ari looked at him thoughtfully.  Witches…

The group stirred around, restless and wrathful and having no idea what to do with this particular challenge.  Ari screwed up his courage.  He was going to look like a fool.

“The Ivory are Illians…” he said.  Kai shot him a level glance.

“That
’s right, Ar,” Rodge said.  “Thanks for joining the group.”  His fat pony was trying to snack as long as they were just standing around, and he yanked its head up impatiently.  “We’re not staying,” he hissed at it.

“Maybe,” Ari continued doggedly, feeling his face start to heat, “Maybe we should pray.  To Il.  I mean, that
’s what they do, right?  They’ve got to get home somehow.”  His face had to be as red as his hair from the heat he could feel coming off of it. 

Jaws almost dropped off of faces all around the group.

Traive looked at him with a touch of surprise.  “That’s not a bad idea…unless someone’s got a better one?”

That seemed to galvanize everyone back to life.

“I am NOT praying to some cult figure--!” Cerise began hotly.

“We don
’t have time for this!” Melkin spat.

Loren confessed, “I don
’t even pray to Marek.”

“I thought you said you knew where it was,” Rodge accused Kai.

“Blasphemy,” Banion muttered unhappily into his beard.

Ari took a deep breath, amazed at the riot of noise.  “I
’ll do it,” he said nervously.  Anything to get them to stop.  They did, everyone looking at him, most of them in some state of offense.

“Well, get on with it then,” Melkin said impatiently.

Ari’s throat was dry.  He hadn’t thought it would be so…
public
.  “Uh,” he said.  “Uh, I...I, um, that is, we…”

“He can hear silent prayers,” Traive suggested.

“Oh.  Right,” Ari mumbled.

“How do people come up with these things?” Cerise snorted quietly.  “A god that
’s never been seen but hears your thoughts.  Why would anyone even want a god that knows what you’re thinking all the time?”

Traive leaned on his crossed arms over his saddle horn, surveying her in amusement.  “Good thing He
’s a forgiving sort of God, hm?”

“You don
’t need forgiveness from Marek,” she pointed out smugly.

“Marek doesn
’t require anything of you but gold…” he reminded her.  She narrowed her eyes at him, feeling vaguely like she’d lost the encounter, but not sure why.

Ari, meanwhile, was frowning in concentration.  He wasn
’t that sure about Il to begin with, and then, he’d been a little angry with Him lately…the whole life He’d picked out for him, and all.  He tried to remember everything Selah had said (which made him suddenly miss her so bad it was like a charlie horse of the heart): compassion…power…knowledge.  Well, if He already knew everything, what was the sense in telling Him?  And why didn’t He just give it to them?  Wasn’t He supposed to be merciful?  And surely He was on their side in this little…Ari took a deep breath, refocusing.  Personal.  She had said He was a personal God, who wanted personal things.  Well, OK.  Here he was, being personal. 
Help us find
, he began and came up against a wall.  There, in the deepest, quietest part of his thoughts, he realized suddenly that he didn’t want to find the Statue.  Despite what he’d thought was panic up at the meadow with the centaur…he didn’t want the adventure to end and all his friends to go back to their normal lives and leave him alone, still questing.  He still had no answers.  He didn’t even know all the questions yet.

“Come on, Ari, hurry it up over there,” he heard Rodge complain.

He forced away all the murky uncertainty and finished up quickly,
Help us to find the garden.  And the Statue.  And the answers to everything.  Please.
He opened his eyes.  Everyone was moving around restlessly.  Banion looked doleful.  Traive, however, smiled brightly.  “All ready?” he inquired solicitously.

“Uh, I think so,” Ari said doubtfully.  It seemed like a pretty dumb idea, in retrospect.  Immediately, though, Kai and the Regent both turned and set off into the trees.

“What are we doing now?” Cerise demanded.

“This,” Traive called cheerfully over one broad shoulder, “is called faith.”

“That’s not a verb,” Rodge muttered, but he fell in line quick enough.

Four hours later, Traive
’s faith was tried.  Melkin’s patience was exhausted.  And Banion was considerably more open-minded. 

“Are you sure you were respectful enough?” he asked Ari anxiously.

Ari, sighing, didn’t think it was a matter of courtesy.

They couldn
’t even see anymore, it was so dark, and Melkin stopped them in disgust.  It was a glum and tight-lipped group that swallowed a cold dinner and turned in.  There just didn’t seem anything more to say.

And as he lay in his blankets that night, Ari had to come face to face with his inner squirmings—it was either that or see the whole thing fail, everything they
’d worked and traveled and fought through for so long.  Not to mention the danger to the Realms and the threatening mass of Enemy looming on the horizon.  They had nothing else to go on…
this
thread was thin enough, and it depended, he was somehow sure, on him.

He was in a quandary.  He was well aware his heart wasn
’t in the right place…but it wasn’t like he could force himself to want something he didn’t.

He sighed, stretching his arms up dispiritedly to rest his hands behind his head. 
What do I do?
he asked of the empty sky.  There must have been cloud cover, because as he gazed up, it began to drift off.  Stars began to come out, dozens of them, then hundreds, millions.  Brilliant, ephemeral lights, so far away he couldn’t even imagine it.  It came rushing back to him, the memory of that other night all those months ago, when his problems were laughably insignificant and the world still made sense.  That night under the endless skies of the High Wilds, when he’d felt that Presence…His skin goose-bumped at the memory.  That feeling of power had been so vast, as if the stars were really holes in the night sky that His splendor was blazing through.  Remembering that sense of awesome, all-knowing timelessness, a sudden rush swept through him, a jumble of wordless longing for answers to their questing, for safety from the sinister Sheel, for some kind of resolution to his turmoil…for a god that could really be what he promised.  His heart ached in his chest for things he couldn’t even put a name to, let alone ask for.

The night
’s rest did absolutely no good for Northern morale.  Zero.  No one had ever seen Melkin’s temper so black—it kept everyone else’s complaints down to an undertone.

“What are we supposed to do?” Cerise hissed at Traive as they all mounted up.  “Just ride around in circles down in southern Cyrrh the rest of our lives?”

He looked at her mildly.  “Would you like to go home?”  She drew herself up stiffly, reproachfully thinning her lips.

Ari, on the other hand, had never felt so calm.  Maybe it was resignation.  Whatever it was, it had settled deep and he looked out at the morning with a matter-of-fact air.  Il was either going to grant this or He wasn
’t. 

It did shake him up for a moment when Kai looked directly at him and asked, “Which way?”

He blinked.  “It doesn’t matter.”  Now, why had he asked him?

There were several snide comments about his beseeching skills as the morning wore on, the majority of the party being in a shockingly unpleasant mood, but it rolled off of him.  He
’d never claimed to be a Shepherd.

They thrashed through undergrowth all morning, no longer on stags that slipped through jungle without stirring a leaf.  It wasn
’t doing much for the general temper, unfortunately, being run into branches and scraped through prickly underbrush.  More than one horse earned some new and unprintable names that morning in southern Cyrrh.

Strangely, Ari
’s certainty grew deeper the harder things got.

They were all more than ready to give it up and stop for lunch when Melkin growled suddenly, sharply, “Are we on a trail?”

Kai tossed him a look over his shoulder.  He’d stayed barely a horse-length ahead since yesterday—which was probably extremely foresightful.  Ari wouldn’t have been surprised if they could lose each other in this crazy place.

Hope stirred in mutinous chests.  Rodge and Banion sat up straight in their saddles.  Everyone stared at the grass under them, willing trees and bushes out of the way.  It definitely looked like a path.  The grass was getting more and more worn.  Traive
’s mare hit bare dirt with a satisfying clop of a hoof, then there were more clops.  Within moments they were all clopping and everyone was straining ahead, looking expectantly for—actually, only Ari knew what to expect, and he didn’t recognize it at first.