The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (72 page)

He stared at her wordlessly. 
Il?
  This was all about Il?  Was that all she cared about—was there nothing there for him?  Around him, the leaves scurried about in a rising wind that reflected rather nicely his own agitation.

“You think I
’m
lucky?
  To be the cast-off son of a Sheelman and his woman who—by some rare chance—happened to be one of the few that thought enough of her offspring to—to  abandon him in the forest?!  You think I’m lucky to have the blood of monsters in my veins!?”

“Ari,” she sa
id placatingly, trying to hide surprise, “I only meant to show that there was a good side—”

“A good side?!” he stared at her angrily, having to raise his voice over the moan of the wind and the rattle of branches.  It was getting dark and ugly fast, bruised clouds covering the late sun, the air alive with electricity.  “Selah, I can never step foot in the Ramparts—the Rach at the Kingsmeet almost killed me on sight!  I can never walk the hills of the White Wilds!  If the Warwolves catch a whiff of me they
’ll hunt me down until one of us is dead!  Because they were created to kill MONSTERS LIKE ME!”

“You
’re not a monster!” she cried in distress.  They had both jumped to their feet.  Her eyes were full of pain and alarm, and for a minute, he calmed.  Maybe she really did feel something for him.  Why else would she be so concerned?

“Sheelmen have committed the greatest atrocities ever known,” he said
feelingly, staring down into those beautiful eyes.  Around them the meadow was alive with motion, the grasses tossing, the bare branches of the trees raking the dark sky.

“You
’re not a Sheelman,” she cried firmly.  “You’re a wonderful, generous, self-less man that has been created just exactly as Il intended.”

The inner glow that had been starting to warm him ceased abruptly.  Il.  Again.  He didn
’t want to be what Il intended, if it meant this!  And who was Il to spread misery and horror so liberally amongst the people he was supposed to love so much?  Ari jerked away from her, brow black as the thunderous sky overhead.

“It
’s easy for you to say, easy for you to see ‘Il’s hand’ in everything,” he threw his arm wide.  “You don’t have to LIVE with being this particular creation!”

“Ari,” she said
, bewilderment fading into firmness. “Self-pity will not help you through this—you are using this as an excuse!” she cried as he turned angrily from her.

“What would you have me do?” he demanded.  “Just pretend everything
’s sweet as      cherry pie, that who I am doesn’t matter, that I’m an Illian and just have to put everything in Hands greater than mine?” he cried, half-desperate.  She didn’t understand.  He was a fool to think anyone could understand this, could understand what it meant to carry this knowledge around inside of you.

“No,” she was saying stridently, “Pretense is never the answer!  You are clinging to this as if your very…identity depends on it!”  Any concern she had for him was hidden under a layer of obvious frustration, and he turned to glower blackly down at her.  The wind tugged insistently at his clothes, whipped his hair into his eyes, moaned in his ears.

“It.
Is
. My. Identity!” he ground out.

“You are no different than anyone else!” she cried, disbelief warring in her eyes with…pity.  She would
pity
him?!  Well, he didn’t need her pity, or her compassion—he didn’t need anybody or anything!  Furious, he spun away from her and strode across the meadow.

Behind him, he heard her cry out beseechingly, “You
’re a man like any other, Ari!”

And something let loose in him.  He whirled on her, fury and self-loathing and loneliness a maelstrom inside of him.

“I’M A TARQ!” he screamed, from the bottom of his soul.

They stared at each other across the heaving meadow, each as shocked as the other. Lightning struck nearby, the crash deafening, and a few hard pellets of rain belted into them.  Neither of them noticed.  Slowly, Ari sank to his knees, face a mask of the confusion tearing at his insides.  Then, somehow, he was sobbing and Selah had run to him and was holding him and murmuring with her cheek against his hot one and the great raw wound inside of him was finally all the way open and could be cleansed.  The storm quieted abruptly around them as the heavens opened their floodgates, pouring out a deluge of rain.  Quietly, it calmed the shrieking trees, stilled the seething grass.  Its soothing flood washed away the temper of the storm, and the anger and the fear and the unknowing from the fragile humans clinging to each other in the middle of the meadow.  

CHAPTER 34

Logically, the tunnels beneath the Sheel couldn’t go on forever, and they didn’t.  The first voices she heard, Sable ignored, assuming she was hallucinating.  She’d started doing that; the continual deprivation of everything essential to life—sleep, food, water—was starting to take its toll after all these weeks, even on her strong young body.

             
But they came again, a background murmur of voices and movement, an echoing, and a faint roaring sound.  Wearily, Sable raised her head, more dully curious than hopeful.  A light was growing ahead of them.  Invigorated just by the thought of something besides endless sandstone walls to look at, her steps picked up. 

             
The sounds grew louder.  She could make out individuals now—an argument, a woman’s cry.  The chill passageway began to grow warmer and lighter and the Tarq carrying the torch put it out on the ground and left it.  Neither one of them had ever spoken in all these long weeks, not to her, not to each other.

             
They spoke now, for suddenly they had come out into a room.  A sense of space soared up all around them, then a man loomed abruptly up into her view over her captors’ shoulders.  She stared at him, starved for sensory input, dimly amazed there were things in the world that weren’t the color of sand. 

             
He was obviously a different kind of Sheelman, with none of the reserved, deft ways of her shrouded captors.  In a harsh language she’d never heard, he demanded something of her companions, barring their way with his feet spread and his hands on his flabby sides.  His body was darkly tanned and gleamed as if it was oiled, and there was quite a bit of it on display.  A greasy cloth hung like a skirt to mid-thigh, and that and sandals were all he had on.  But his hair was deep, rich red and the insolent eyes scanning her face were like the clearest aqua-colored gems she’d ever seen.  If it weren’t for the current situation and the nasty expression on that dark face, he would have been beautiful—as much so as the boy Melkin was dragging around with him all over the Realms.

             
His eyes were rich with expression—unlike her two friends of the past endless weeks—and they were running the gamut now, going from a sort of disgusted scorn, to disbelief, to unfettered, malicious glee.  He crowed something triumphantly in his grating tongue, and several more people came into view.  The room beyond him, she saw, was lit with enormous, glowing braziers.  That was where the heat was coming from, and why the light was so dim and smoky…and such a sinister red. 

             
Two men, more fit but also shiny and draped with little skirts, came suddenly up on each side of her.  They took her arms and the rope from the two wrapped Sheelmen, and just like that, her long journey was over.

             
Fully and apprehensively awake now, heart pounding, she scrabbled for dignity as the two hustled her across the big room.  Was she being taken to parley?  Was this the long dreamed-for chance to treat with the Sheelmen?  Hopeful, she dragged the tattered remnants of her composure around her.  This could be the most historic moment of her Empire’s—the Realms’—entire existence.

             
They passed through several more brazier-lit rooms, Sable gathering her wits.  It was getting warmer and it…smelled.  Like a charnel house.  The occasional screams, near and far, were a little unnerving, too.  An increasing number of people passed by, some staring but many more not paying attention to their surroundings at all.  They were trim or flabby, swathed or half-naked, oily or dust-covered.  There were even some women, ratty-haired, dirty, with loose, dull-colored gowns, and these moved so quickly it was more of a scurry, eyes downcast, expressions furtive.

Her escort brought her to a halt in a little room that looked like it was carved out of solid rock.  It was almost empty of furnishings except for a largish fire, which had it so hot she began sweating immediately—even in the thin, barely decent rags her clothes had become.

Encouragingly, one of the men removed the ropes from her wrists.  But before she’d even had the pleasure of rubbing where they’d worn for weeks and weeks, they pulled her arms back behind her and shoved her toward the wall, so close to the brazier that she shied back in renewed fear.

Pushing her down, they did something behind her back, and the clink of chains and the feel of new fetters on her hands…wasn
’t so encouraging.  The heat from the fire made her wince—she was barely out of spark range—and as they turned unmistakably to leave, she cried out, “Wait! Aren’t you--!”

Whirling, one of them slapped her across the mouth, with no malice and hardly any thought, to look at his face.  Still, it slammed her head into the wall and she would have passed out except that as she slid downward, the pain of her arms being pulled back brought her sharply back to consciousness.  In time to see the door to the room swinging shut.

Oh, good, she thought in dull despair, that will keep those cold drafts out.  What now?  Dread crept up, replacing what had been a rather hopeful anticipation.  She strongly suspected, from the triumphant glee on that first naked Sheelman’s face, that they knew who she was.  Was this the audience chamber?  To soften her up, make her more tractable to what they had to say?  Well, no matter how much they tortured her, she wasn’t giving them anything but fair terms…if they thought a little heat and pain were enough to turn a Northerner to mush over a treaty, they had a surprise coming.

But they had chained her at a very awkward angle.  To sit on her folded legs made her too low, to kneel on her knees pulled at her shoulder sockets
unbearably from a different angle.  And the heat…it was so wiltingly, frightfully hot that it almost took her mind off her positioning.  She tried desperately not to think of water, of the cool oasis of the Don Eshaid, of the feast celebrating her arrival at the Hilt…of the magic between her and Kyr when they looked into each other’s eyes…

She was starting to feel a little sorry for herself when the door swung open.  Three women entered with their furtive scuffle, carrying tubs and rags of cloth.  They came right to her, settling around her with all their things, but not a one of them even glanced at her.  Something about their faces made her pause in gushing out any effusive greetings, either.  All three had red or orange hair and those brilliant blue-green eyes, but it was their expression that made her hesitate.

Two of them immediately began to hiss at each other in their strange words, a guttural anger kept low.  The third had a dull purple bruise that took up one entire brown cheekbone and swatted at them, looking like she was trying to bring them under control.  One of them lashed back at her, knocking Sable aside accidentally, and sudden agony seared through her shoulders.  They felt like they were dislocating and she cried out with the sudden, sharp, wrong feeling.  And then all three did look at her.

And very deliberately, with a sneer curling her lip, one of them pushed her again.  But she was ready this time
, and looked back into those molten aquamarine eyes with a look so frigid it could have been right off the slopes of the snowy Crown Mountains.

Roughly, face twisted with disdain, the one with the bruise reached out and ripped her dress off of her. The others helped, tearing it up right in front of her where she could see it, as if to say,
there’s no going back
.

She barely had time to wonder what this was going to mean before two of them picked up one of the tubs, and half-rising, dumped it over her.  She had to fight not to scream—it was scalding hot.  They must have just got done boiling it. 
Grilled, then boiled,
she thought in breathless agony, skin a riot of stinging pain.

But the last was probably the worst: a huge tub of grease that they daubed and smeared over her whole body until she felt like a basted turkey.  It smelled so horrible that she gagged several times, unable to stop herself, which made them push her more, waving the brushes
tauntingly under her nose.  Vindictively, she wished she had something in her stomach so she could spew it on them.

Lastly, they slipped a long, featureless piece of cloth with a rough hole for her head over her, fastening it around her slender waist (even more slender now) with a string of stones that glinted in brilliant, fiery red in the light from the brazier.  Rubies, she thought in
distracted amazement...enough to ransom a queen.

There was more pushing, sneers, what were probably taunts and insults judging from the looks on their faces as they delivered them.  Then they were rising, gathering their things as Sable watched with a wary kind of hope.  At the door, they turned, taking one more look at her.  But there was a different expression on their faces, every one of them, there at the last.

As they finally left, unfortunately closing the door firmly behind them, she breathed a shaky sigh.  What kind of place was this?  If she wasn’t mistaken, that had been
jealousy
on those women’s faces.  Her shoulders throbbed with the effort of keeping her arms in their sockets, the pressure in the joints building agonizingly as her legs trembled with the effort at keeping her level.  Her entire body felt like it had a first degree burn, and the skin she could see was bright red.  And she didn’t think relations were going to be quite what she’d hoped between Empire and Sheelmen.

Hunger, thirst, and weariness came back with a vengeance. 

Irise joined them the next afternoon, litter-borne between two horses.  She was happy, winsome, and paralyzed, a confusing mix to the Northerners, and she chattered delightedly with anyone who stopped by her pallet.  It was only her right arm that wasn’t working, the blow to her back having severed or impaired the nerves to that area, and she laughingly pointed out how shrunken her tiny little biceps were on that side.

             
“I can’t tell much difference,” Loren admitted to Ari out of earshot.  Ari just smiled benignly.  His mind couldn’t really understand what had happened in the meadow last night, but his heart was at greater peace than he’d ever known.  It wasn’t like his life had changed; it was just that he understood it better.  Like he was standing above it somehow, watching someone else live it out.  Overwhelmed with the forgiveness, the acceptance that he’d been given, he sort of helplessly gave it back in the form of fond affection for those around him.

             
It was obvious to even the most uninitiated in the arts of war that those around him were now in preparation for it.  There was enough weaponry spread over the meadow to fill a castle armory, and every single Whiteblade not on guard duty was bent over her collection, polishing and sharpening anything steel, tightening bindings, replacing lacings, stringing fresh bowstring.  Several of the white scabbards, startlingly bright amongst all the steel and leather, were in sight, but none of the swords were ever drawn.  Sylvar even refused Loren flat-out when he asked to see it.

             
“They’re not toys,” she told him, her cheerful voice implacable.  “Nor are they drawn but in grave need.”

             
“Are they really white?” Loren asked Banion.  Inspired by all the activity and bored out of their skulls, most of the northern group had their own relatively scant collection out, bending over it attentively with sharpening stones and oiled cloth. 

             
“Legend has it there’s a whitish sheen to them,” he allowed, “but it’s probably just a hyper-reflectivity.  It’s easy to do, just change the proportion of the steel alloy—but it weakens the blade.”  He scowled disapprovingly and Ari and Loren shared a look.  It went without saying that there was nothing worse than a Weak Blade.

             
“Nonsense,” Melkin growled and the boys turned to look at him in surprise.  He wasn’t talking to them, however.  Wasn’t even looking at them.  He was seated a few yards away with Rowena, the healer, deep in some discussion.  Her face was a study of tranquil beauty, even while putting a razor edge on a wicked-looking dirk.

             
“How can it be nonsense,” Ari heard her ask him, voice gentle and practical, “when there is evidence of it in your own life?”  Melkin stared hard at her—granted, not an unpleasant pastime—and Ari had to strain to hear her say quietly, “How else do you explain how a lonely young boy, drawn to the wilderness to avoid the disappointments of growing up, should become so captivated by the wild creatures that lived there, should set his hungry heart so unshakably on the companionship of the great Warwolves?  Should revere them so much that his life would entwine with theirs, so that he would even face the foolishness of the Imperial government just to be at their sides?  Should turn back to them with a thousand times stronger ardor when his sole human companionship was taken early from him?  Should know them so well that their instincts would become his, that their wordless, unreasoning knowledge would drive him across the world in a hunt that he barely understood to come at just the right moment to a critical meeting of the Dark and the Light?”

             
Melkin’s face was like a slab of stone.

             
“You may never know just how crucial your timing was,” she continued, looking very deeply into those hard grey eyes, “but I will tell you now…that you are not here, at this time, by accident.”

             
“Only the Healer would try to tame that old wolf,” a voice said almost in his ear, and he jumped guiltily.  It was Adama, rolling her eyes at the two sitting alone a short distance away.  “Her or Rox.”