The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (69 page)

The blond Northerner was looking around their circle, searching faces.  “Am I the only one who sees this?  They all know what the others are thinking.   They finish each other
’s sentences—”

“They don
’t even talk in sentences,” Rodge corrected.  “They just say a couple unrelated words, or look at each other, and everyone seems to magically know what’s on everyone else’s mind.”

“What
’s your point?” Melkin asked abruptly.

“They
’ve worked together…for a long, long time,” Loren said, theatrically dropping his voice.  “Think of Rodge’s little spell in the bog.  The night it started raining in the Swamps.  Dorian wasn’t handing out orders—everyone
knew
what to do.  The scrub condors.  We haven’t been through a single emergency where you haven’t seen it.”  He sat back, daring anyone to contradict him.  “And Voral—” he paused.  Even he was a little uncomfortable with Voral.  It was one thing to get misty-eyed over the romantic idea of ageless women warriors…it was another to see quite skilled bloodlust where it should not logically exist.

“What is the big deal about that?” Cerise said critically.  “So she
’s good with a sword.”

Banion
’s eyes peered disbelievingly out of his hair cover.  “She’s an 18, 20-year-old girl.  Men that live their whole lives practicing every day with a blade, like, oh, I don’t know—a
Dra
—don’t get that good.  She has fought for years, and she has killed.”

“Well,” Cerise insisted stubbornly.  “This place is crawling with Sheelmen that everyone seems intent on killing.  It doesn
’t seem so improbable to me.”

Traive, chuckling, started to say something when suddenly he lifted his head sharply.  He peered into the warm dark of the surrounding trees, Cyrrhidean senses alerting him to something none of the rest of them were aware of.

Ari got a tickle of premonition scant seconds before his eyes made them out.

They were
suddenly there, in the silent way of the Whiteblades, three women sitting wordless and still on horseback.  They might have been there for hours, they were so much a part of the surroundings.  As the group at the fire stared at them, they slowly began to move, walking the horses out of the shadows of the trees and bringing them to a halt a few yards away. 

They dismounted smoothly and stood, staring back, and a gravitas seemed to settle over the camp.  The unsmiling faces in front of them made the other Whiteblades suddenly seem flighty as children.  An incomparable sense of distance, of formidable and unapproachable self-possession hung about them, and their perusal was not the curious interest of the other girls.  It was more a…weighing. 

Ari had the uncomfortable feeling of being found wanting.

In the lead, closest to them, was a Cyrrhidean, a short young woman of nut brown with honey-colored streaks in her thick brown hair.  She would have seemed small if she hadn
’t been built so stoutly, with such a…presence.  The woman next to her was also solidly built, with big, dark eyes and lustrous, brassy curls falling to her shoulders.  The last was the most remarkable of all, a tall Merranic bigger even than Voral.  Thin, fine, mousy brown hair cut in a straight bowl and skin like porcelain were the setting for a pair of enormous, deep-set, heavy-lidded eyes.  She should have been homely—none of them should have been pretty, not the sort you’d cross a street to meet.  But somehow, they radiated that inexplicable attraction all the Whiteblades seemed to have, as if something beyond physical beauty was at work when you looked at them.

“Look at their swords,” Loren whispered almost inaudibly.  Ari, who
’d yet to get beyond those still, arresting faces and piercing eyes, jerked, dragging his eyes away with an effort.  There was no clanking and shifting and adjusting of weapons with these women.  It was as if they had an extra half-dozen arms here and there about their persons, so much a part of them you didn’t even notice they were as loaded down as the rest of the girls.  But, on each hip sat a shining creation they hadn’t seen on any of the others:  scabbards of bleached white leather.  Rising out of them were polished white bone handles over guards of dull gold, the grips crisscrossed with gold braid.

Whiteblades.

The northerners were so caught up in their awed examination that not a single word had broken the silence yet.  There’d been no welcome, no greetings…the camp was frozen with measuring silence.

Dorian must have been alerted somehow, though, and her calm, dignified person striding into camp broke the rapt tension.  They didn
’t say anything to each other, the four women, just gravely extended hands and fingers in greeting.  You could see an instant likeness between these four faces; that subtle difference that had set Dorian apart, made her indisputably in charge, was echoed in the three opposite her.

Then, as one, the three strangers turned and glanced at the group of stupefied northerners, then in unison back to Dorian.  One, the middle one with the brass-colored curls and full lips, said, “Art thou mad?”

Dorian’s shoulders flexed in a graceful shrug.  “Who am I to refuse a man the right to seek glory and honor?  They wished to come.”

Ari could almost feel Loren
’s chest expanding with pride next to him.  Even Rodge, who’d probably never had an honorable thought in his life, straightened up a little.

Then, Dorian did something she
’d never done before.  She turned to the northerner party and said, “These are the Swords of Mercy:  Tamaren, Ariella, and Ashaura,” pointing to each of them in turn.

None of the northerner party said a word, except Traive, who dipped his head and murmured, “Ladies Ivory…”  The silence lasted even after they
’d walked a short distance away with Dorian, heads together.

Ari got up from the fire, no longer hungry for either food or company.  Restless, he wandered into the trees, staring moodily up at the sky through their branches. 
Swords of Mercy…how much did they know?  How much knowledge of the world and the gods and one orphan Sheelman did they carry in those awe-inspiring heads? And if they were really as old as they claimed…Bark flaked off under his fingers, and he looked down at it, crumbling it in his hand.  He knew what would happen—or rather what wouldn’t.  Here were three more potential sources of information and guaranteed he would never have a chance to speak to them.  He was never going to find anything out, and it didn’t help that Dorian’s assessment—

“
‘Tis better boiled.”

             
Ari jumped.  So close he could reach out and touch her was one of the new women, the one that had spoken and that Dorian had named Ariella.  She was almost invisible in the shadows, barely discernible from the night.  Her eyes, gleaming faintly in reflected moonlight, dropped to the handful of bark he still held.

             
“Tho’ ‘tis a fair stew Yve canst make of it, if ye prefer.”

             
The bark?  Her deep, quiet voice was so thick with accent he could hardly make out the words.  “That seems unlikely,” he said, barely aware of what he was saying. You could hardly call it a smile, but her full lips twitched and her face lightened a little.  She had a rounded face that would be jowly as she got older—if she got older—but for now was just strong, and handsome.  Her eyes seemed enormous in the darkness under the trees and they just stood for several minutes, looking at each other.

             
Finally, she took a step toward him and said, even more low-voiced than before, “Thou art troubled by thy birth.”

             
He swallowed.  This was what he’d been wanting, a wide-open door to his past, and a nice, quiet secluded place with no interruptions to hash it out.  The only problem was that this was not the sort of person you poured out your life’s troubles to.  She was worse than Dorian, so reserved it surrounded her like a wall, her eyes remote and uncompromising.  Alone in the dark with her, he felt more danger flowing out of her than compassion.

             
“I don’t know much about it,” he countered warily.

             
“I found thee, but a babe, in the forests of southern Cyrrh.”

             
His heart thunked spasmodically in his chest. 
She
had found him?  “Did you know my parents?” he asked instantly and illogically, hope and excitement all tumbling around together and getting in the way of his words.

             
“Nay, though they wert surely Tarq.”

             
“But you don’t know
for certain,
” he shot back.  She’d found him…abandoned?

             
She came closer, looking up into his face.  “Thy physic,” she said softly, “canst only be from two of the Sheelpeople.  Never hath it been seen so with mixed parentage.”

             
He slumped.  That’s what Traive had said, but he’d felt it was worth a try.  “So, I was abandoned…” he said glumly, trying to ignore the disruption her substantial presence was causing in the immediate atmosphere.               

“
Nay, for I found thee close on the Forest, as if one had sought those inconstant paths for sanctuary.”

             
Ari blinked.  The Forbidden Forest?  Was she saying his mother had been trying to find it?  “That could have been chance,” he murmured, not sure why it mattered.

             
“Again I sayeth nay,” she said, settling into the ready squat of the Whiteblades.  He sank down beside her.  “Had it been her thought to abandon thee, she wouldst have done in Skoline, for there she surely must have been to ken the paths to the Forest of Il.  Nary a whisper of Light nor joy penetrateth the foul dark of Tskag; only through Skoline couldst she have heard of Il, and sanctuary.”  He could feel her eyes on him.  He was several words behind, trying to translate.  “Such means a terrible necessity drove her, to risk running from a Skoline master, to risk the wilds of strange and frightful lands.  ‘Tis not unknown that Tarqinas come to love a child, but neither ‘tis common.  In thy case, ‘twas extreme.” 

             
That made his eyes grow hot and scratchy, once he worked out what she meant.  He cleared his throat, saying more huskily than he’d intended, “So…you took me to the clearing…the Forbidden Forest?” 

             
“Thou neededst tending, so to the Tendress thou wast brought.  She hast told thee what passed hence.”

             
“Was there ever anything else…I mean, did you ever find out anything more…?”  How was he supposed to ask this without sounding like he thought his little problem outweighed all the other issues currently lighting up the world?  These were
Whiteblades
, busy with matters of kings and Realms and the occasional misbehaving god.

             
She sat there for a moment, long enough he figured either she was done talking or whatever she was going to tell him was momentous.  Maybe there was something about his father…

             
“We couldst find nothing out at the time, eventually assuming thou wert but an orphan…but of late…”

             
She trailed off, and Ari picked up insistently, “Something’s changed.  Why else would Dorian want me, not just any random Enemy orphan, but ME, to accompany you all to the Sheelshard?”  She sat silently, gazing into the darkness.  “What do you know about me?” he whispered, leaning toward her.

             
“Some lives art lived in peace and quietude,” she finally said, “knowing not change nor tempest but embraced by kin and constancy.”  Her depthless eyes sought his in the mottled moonlight of the glade.  “That, it is my thought…is not thy path.”

             
“That doesn’t answer—!” he began, with some heat, before the look in her eyes halted him and he trailed off, feeling foolish.  She was definitely worse than Dorian.

             
“‘Tis the Chieftess that hast discovered thy past.  ‘Twill be she that tells it.”             

             
“And in the meantime…” he said, a little dazed.  To have come this close, to almost know…  “I will just have to be content with what I do know.”  He didn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice very successfully, despite that intimidating aura of her presence.  She cocked her head at him.

             
“Thou thinkest…that thou art born of evil blood,” she said, with an almost gentle inflection.

             
“Aren’t I?” he demanded.

“
I have a secret for thee…all art born of evil blood.  Thine is no worse than any’s.  None art pure enough to stand before the Lord Il…thou art just aware of thy lacking.”

She moved a hand, hanging it casually over her propped knee so that it fell into a patch of moonlight.  It was a strong hand, fingers thick and competent with muscle, dark with weather.  A commoner
’s hand.  A commoner’s face.

“How did you come to join the…Followers?”  He didn
’t want to think about Il just right then, what with his ‘evil blood’ and his current resentment over the opaque cauldron of a future the God was throwing him into.