by Kari Cordis
“No,” Melkin’s voice was quiet and cold as stone. There was a long pause. “It’s a completely normal, healthy…Warwolf.” He was checking the eyes, the teeth, running his hand over the great head, as big as a horse’s, with a scientist’s sure hand. Everyone else just stared. Even dead, it was magnificent, a ghost of legend from the Ages of War. It was the semblance of the woodland wolves one caught glimpses of around Harthunters, but its paws were the same size as Ari’s spread hand, the coat a thick, rough brindle of white and grey, the canines in that row of gleaming teeth the thickness of his finger. Standing, it would probably be almost as tall as Rodge’s pony.
“Your shoulder,” Selah said quietly into the awed silence. Everyone looked at Kai, and saw immediately his left shoulder had been grossly displaced by the impact it had absorbed from the hundreds of pounds of leaping lupus. She moved purposefully over to him, and as one they all turned away.
“Ugh,” Rodge said weakly at the muted pop of its replacement. “At least it’s not your sword arm,” he said absurdly, trying to sound staunch.
“That’s the only kind Drae have,” Loren hissed at him.
It took several of them to drag the massive beast into the underbrush. Melkin wordlessly handed Kai’s blade back to him as soon as Selah had finished slinging the Dra’s arm, and a strange, meaningful look passed between the two men. Soberly, they all remounted, Tekkara throwing her head up and down as if to say, “I tried to warn you.”
For a moment, staring down the trail where it had just happened, Ari seemed to see it all again. With it safely dispatched and in the bushes, he could spare a little admiration for the pure predatory power of the beast. Airborne, it had leapt so high that it could have soared over Banion, even on that towering horse of his. The wolf had bypassed both him and Melkin, though…something scrabbled madly at the back of Ari’s mind, like this wasn’t quite right. But, then, they’d just been attacked by a Warwolf, while running from Mohrgs, through countryside washed of anything even resembling natural color—nothing about this was right.
CHAPTER 12
Within a few days, they’d come down out of the last of the Ethammers, called the Bitterns here at their southern end, and out into the golden Imperial summer on the plains of Daphene. The rough, ribbed track of the past few days met up with the sharply demarcated Southern Way, a no-nonsense hard-surface road capable of conducting proper business all the way to the Dragonspine of Cyrrh, if so desired. Golden fields of grain, hops, and the famous Imperial vineyards stretched endlessly away to their north, while close by to the south sparkled the great, broad Daroe River.
Ari, now in the opposite corner of the Empire from Harthunters and Archemounte, who had never seen the country in his life, still felt like he knew it intimately. They’d studied it in Geography, History, Natural Sciences with Melkin, and most importantly, Economics. University students took a Business or Economics course every single term, and the Daroe had been in all of them: the beloved, all-important, sole trade artery from Cyrrh.
Like they’d passed through a gate, normalcy settled almost instantly over the group, tensions dissolved, easy chatter started up. Ari (and possibly Banion) was the only one not thrilled to be back in the North. Looking around, he felt hemmed in by the placidity, oppressed by that undefined sense, that unease, of a job never done—part and parcel of Northern mentality. There was no room to stretch, to grow, to fly here…and no ground for a man without roots.
“There’s nothing for me here,” he admitted to Selah when they stopped for lunch. She had joined him on the raised bank of the Daroe, away from the rest of the group, and sank down beside him as he squatted despondently in the tall, gold-green grass by the river. Crickets talked all around them, and the peaceful chuckling of the Daroe made a soft symphony in the background.
“You don’t have to live here,” she said practically. He glanced at her, lightening a little. “The Wilds…” he murmured.
“Or Cyrrh,” she said playfully, but he didn’t hear, taken by surprise at how near she’d settled. How near her face was to his. By the smooth curve of her cheek, the rich tendrils of hair beginning to curl around her face, the warm, understanding eyes. In the bright midday sun, he realized for the first time that those eyes weren’t black at all. There was green there, a deep, forest green, like a shadowed evergreen glade shot with a sunbeam…
“Ari!” she laughed, putting a hand on his chest in protest. He started, embarrassed to realize he was somehow inches from her face and falling closer all the time. His face heated under the deep tan.
She was talking again, as composed as ever. “—of places that you don’t need a reference to start out. It’s just that the trades you know—the rural farmers, the landed gentry, the politics of Archemounte—none of these seem like possibilities.”
“I’m not even interested in any of them,” he said, flustered awkwardness evaporating in the face of that familiar, lonely despair that had haunted him off and on over the past several months. Since Loren’s mother had forcibly brought to his attention that he was a useless parasite, to be exact. Nothing was worse to a Northerner than an unproductive member of society, especially one that was an empty vacuum, sucking up coin. In addition, so private that Ari wouldn’t even bring it into his consciousness, was the deep hole that his groundless past could never fill. Loren could trace his heritage back twenty generations. Harthunters family gatherings overflowed the entire estate. His family was huge, full of characters, trials, sagas…life. Ari had nothing and nobody except barely remembered memories.
And here, back in the North, it was virtually impossible to forget.
It would have taken more dedication to glumness than Ari possessed, however, to stay morose in the agrarian southern Empire in the middle of summer. Brilliant blue skies arched overhead, the ground swept away in every direction in folds of golden green, and birds swooped and sang through the air as if their little bird brains would explode from happiness.
Rodge was positively frolicsome, he was so happy to be out of Merrani, and Ari felt his spirits rising in spite of himself. They were going to a Kingsmeet. There’d probably be Rach and Cyrrhideans there, and then, if Melkin didn’t send them home…maybe Cyrrh, like a magic gold carrot dangling enticingly just out of reach.
It was hot in the southern Empire and soon they were riding along in just their blouses, tails loose in their waistbands and billowing in the brief, welcome breezes. Banion was in the rear again, and without his cloak sat like a vast, inanimate, blue-grey pile of hairy laundry. That occasionally snored. Even the increasing congestion on the road—and the nearby river—didn’t seem to be able to keep him awake. Ships in full sail passed regularly, incongruous amongst all the fields of grain, one of them no doubt holding King Kane. Banion, in a rare moment of consciousness, informed them that the Sapphire Crown was too deep-keeled for the Daroe and that Kane would be in a merchant vessel.
Lodgings proved to be almost impossible to find, unfortunately, as a direct result of the concentrated migration to the Kingsmeet. After trying several small towns and finding nothing, for any price, they ended up camping out again that night. Even the roadside meadows were littered heavily with fellow travelers, the air thick with the anticipatory excitement of a big fest.
The night air was impossibly balmy as they settled into a corner of a grassy clearing, the thumbnail moon hanging lazily on its back in a star-sprinkled sky, the energetic chirruping of frog courtship surrounding them with its summer chorus.
The boys tussled around in the grass, just because they were breathing, while Selah cooked up something tantalizing over the little fire. She smiled warmly at Ari when he came to the fire, which he assumed was his natural charm—until she laughingly withdrew an entire dandelion, roots, stem, and flower, from his mussed hair.
“It’s getting long,” she noted, smoothing the thick mass that was glowing molten red in the ruddy light from the fire. He thought his heart was going to beat right out of his chest.
&nbs
p; She went back to the fire, dishing up, and Ari noticed Rodge and Loren staring at him with bright interest.
Hurriedly, he said, “What is it that Perraneus has done that’s so bad?”
Melkin scowled at his dinner, as if finding fault with the lentils, and as usual it was Banion that answered. He finished his bite, roughly a quarter of the contents of his bowl, and said, “I think he’s always been sort of dependent on his soft speech and tremendous knowledge to protect him…he’s valuable to Kane, and he knows it.”
“But what’s his crime?” Ari persisted. He’d angered a god. Maybe it was just Ari, but that seemed like a big deal, something one should try and avoid.
“He can’t keep his mouth shut, is his crime,” Melkin growled.
Banion said, as if smoothing things over, “He’s pretty accurate with his foretelling, especially lately, in a way that Merrani hasn’t seen in a long time. That’s its own issue, causing its own little maelstrom of adherents and opponents and accusations and endorsements, but then, recently, he began with this…disrespect for the gods, implying a certain ineptitude, a powerlessness…”
“There’s not much implying,” Melkin corrected waspishly. “He’s pretty much come out and said as much.”
Ari pondered as he ate. That’s exactly what he’d been stewing about these past few weeks, the imperfection of the gods. He’d thought it was just his new-found memory that he was Illian that had made him so contemptuous, and them so unsatisfactory. He wanted to ask more about the mysterious conversation he’d overheard in the Mage’s Tower, but that might have been a little difficult to explain.
“I don’t suppose Perraneus said anything, er, relevant, in your talk with him?” Banion asked casually, as if he’d read Ari’s mind. “Like where the Statue might be? Anything about the Peace? Perhaps a hint or two about the end of the world?”
“We don’t seriously, seriously, think Raemon is imprisoned in a statue,” Rodge said breezily.
“I’m not concerned with what WE think,” Melkin snapped at him. “I’m worried about what the Enemy thinks. If the Sheel bubbles over with war-hungry Sheelmen because they’ve smashed this Statue and are convinced Raemon is howling through time and space to join them—well, it doesn’t really matter what WE think.”
“Maybe it’s all a plan made up by the Empress eons ago,” Rodge rattled on, undeterred and shamelessly happy to be on Northern soil. “In order to let the Whiteblades move freely around Realms torn by the anguished thought of war, converting everyone to Il—”
“You don’t believe in the Empress,” Loren reminded him absently, peering with tremendous interest at the dessert Selah was piecing together.
“Seal your ignorant lips,” Melkin raged at him in a hiss. “You’re babbling like a cretin with that incompetent brain of yours.”
“What?” Rodge asked innocently, its own kind of bravery in the face of Melkin’s wrathful scowl. “The Empress? Well, then instruct me. What exactly do we know about her, anyway?”
Melkin looked like he wanted to finish off what their intruder had started in Archemounte. Rodge turned to beseech the storyteller of the group and Banion stared back at him, deadpan.
Ari felt a breathless hope warring with his disgust at Rodge…everyone knew very well that little to nothing could be said about her. She was a shadow, more ancient, more mysterious than any of the Whiteblades, name the embodiment of legend.
Banion finally gave a reluctant shrug, admitting gruffly, “No one knows. She’s been gone so long even the fact that she existed is barely remembered.”
“Why the ‘Empress?’” Loren asked, stuffing the caramelized dessert into his mouth. “That’s kind of boring…”
Banion looked at him with dry disgust. “Because she was supposedly concerned with all the Realms and more powerful than any of their rulers. In her heyday, it was just Merrani, the City of the Seven Falls in Cyrrh, Archemounte, a few isolated, scattered towns in the North, and the Rach running crazily all over the border with the Sheel …the North hadn’t adopted their peculiar, grandiose affectation of being an “empire” yet.”
Rodge pretended outrage, mouth (thankfully) too full to properly express it.
The group went quiet while the last of dinner was consumed, then Rodge and Loren wandered off to talk to a couple girls, Selah gathered the dishes and headed to the Daroe, and Cerise marched importantly across the meadow, bent on the correction of improper camping techniques.
“So,” Ari said, hardly daring to believe he had Banion virtually to himself, “why don’t you hold the Empress in as much disdain as you do the Swords of Light?” Banion looked up from tamping his pipe. He exchanged a look with Melkin. “You’re rather an astute young man, Ari.”
Ari just stared at him expectantly, determined to dig out as much story as possible in the next few minutes.
“Well, for one thing, she’s not still around tormenting us. The young women styling themselves ‘Whiteblades’ are still a religious nuisance.” He lit the pipe after this hardly novel observation, fragrant smoke drifting into the beautiful summer evening. “But to be truthful, the role of the Empress in legend—from what I know of it—was never really evangelism. Don’t get me wrong—there was plenty of conversion. Without her and the Swords of Light, the cult of Il would probably have stayed an almost unknown religious aberration, relegated to the far reaches of the High Wastes. But her main goal, from what I understand, was more adviser to the Realms. She was driven by the politics of the times, and the times were black and full of endless fighting. Stories of the Empress are set smack in the Ages of War, as they went from dark to darker. The Ramparts were nowhere near intact back then, so Sheelmen regularly overran the southern defenses, as well as leaking through all the other points of the compass.”
“In fact, that’s how the Swords of Light supposedly started.” He waved a big paw vaguely at the velvety countryside around them. “The Empress was so dismayed at the regular devastation suffered by the common people, so dissatisfied at the inadequate protection provided by the formal militaries, she thought there was a need for a sort of roving guerrilla force just for them. She was right,” he allowed. “The Realms were losing ground when it came to feeding themselves—all the crops kept getting burned—and when it came to producing enough soldiers to defend themselves—those kept getting burned, too.”
Loren came back and flopped companionably down next to Ari in time to hear that last. “The days when every man was a warrior,” he said dreamily.
“If they survived to reach manhood,” Banion said dryly. “It was considerably more desperate than it was romantic. That’s why Empress and Ivory are all women. Every male that reached fourteen, thirteen, even twelve sometimes, immediately went to join a military.”
“Bet the Merranics didn’t mind the Whiteblades back then,” Loren said mischievously.
“They were useful back then,” Banion sallied.
“What happened?” Ari pressed.
“The Peace came and they turned into a proselytizing scourge—” Banion began heatedly.
“No, I mean with the forming of the Whiteblades. First there were the Swords of Mercy, right?” Ari said hurriedly, foreseeing distraction.
Banion stared at him. “You know this.”
He felt Melkin’s eyes boring into him, and Selah, who’d come back from the river, lifted her head from where she sat listening in the background.
He colored. “I read it.”
“Where?” Banion asked, in rather insulting disbelief.
“The Book of Ivory.” They were getting close to a rather private part of him. He felt like a boy with a secret crush. After all, it wasn’t very socially acceptable to have such ardent, brotherly fondness for a pack of gorgeous female warriors. At least, he remembered them as gorgeous. “It was in the library at Harthunters.”
Loren, not the most scholastic of heirs, looked at him in surprise. “I don’t think I ever read a book out of there…”
Banion, if looking
at him a little too closely, was at least back on track now. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “The Empress formed the Hand of Mercy several hundred years before the rest of the band existed. She took a Merrani, a Cyrrhidean, two from the North and one from the deep south and formed them into the Hand of the Empress—supposedly fierce fighters. Their stories are almost always of deliverance from the Enemy, arriving in the nick of time, saving an old couple’s last child, averting whole towns’ certain death and disaster…that sort of thing.
“Why don’t they call them ‘Bane of the Tarq,’ or ‘Steel for Sheel,’ or something more militant?” Loren pondered.
Banion looked at him, pained. Ari threw his handful of plucked grass in the air. Selah giggled.
“Because they threw the name of Il around like a magic amulet. You hear ‘Light of Il,’ ‘Mercy of Il,’ ‘Love of Il’ enough, it’s bound to make you go doe-eyed and soft in the head!” Banion ground out.
That ended that. Ari, banking the fire as everyone finally bedded down, was aware of a deep longing. Surrounded by Imperials again, he was once more acutely conscious of his too-bright hair and wrong-colored eyes, of the stares, and of the lack of family that surrounded him like a moat of emptiness. It seemed he couldn’t even hear talk of the Swords of Light without instantly seeing them in the little garden of his childhood. He was quite sure there was some sort of mental block going on under his cursed red hair; no normal eighteen-year-old male should have looked on Adama’s pretty face in Alene…and longed for a sister.
King’s Crossing was raucous, an exuberant, sparkling display of barely organized chaos. They knew this from almost a half-day’s ride away. They could hear it, smell it from the vendors’ food stalls, see it in the packed crowds on the Southern Way, and most of all, sense the crackling excitement of it in the bright summer air.
They rose at dawn that last day and were still far from being the first on the road. Bluebirds warbled, people laughed and chatted and possibly the only person in the entire southern Empire that wasn’t happy…was Melkin.