The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1)

by Kari Cordis

  “I thought we were in a hurry,” Cerise challenged unpleasantly as stagriders began laying out what looked like a picnic.

  Traive responded equably, “Yes, my Lady, but we will have to make a run for the Torque anyway—” he glanced at Melkin apologetically “—so we might as well stretch our legs a minute.” Was there no end to the man’s patience? Ari liked him—he was unaffected and even-tempered and obviously well able to deal with the occasional burr under the saddle. So to speak.

  Melkin, for his part, seemed faintly surprised. “We can make the first Torque a day’s ride from Jagstag?”

  “We go in by an eastern Gate…with Cyrrh as, er, restless as she’s been of late, I am reluctant to spend any more time outside the Torques than need be. Her entertainments can prove disruptive to a time schedule,” he added wryly.

  “Just to a time schedule?” Melkin drawled, equally wry and with an odd air of camaraderie. He seemed as comfortable with Traive as he had after weeks with Banion.

  “And what exactly is a torque, aside from a sort of necklace?” Cerise demanded, turning deliberately to Rhuq with the air of one bestowing a favor. If Traive was devastated at the loss of her attention, he covered it manfully.

  “The protective walls around the settled areas of Cyrrh, my Lady,” Rhuq said readily, completely oblivious to her games. “The outermost wall is the Copper Torque…we will rest easier within its arms.”

  Cerise just raised an eyebrow. “Is there Enemy behind us or something?” Ari shot her a look of disgust. Little Blue could have been bird droppings for all she was choosing to remember of it.

  “My arm’s numb,” Rodge said suddenly.

  For as stoic as the stagriders had been up until now, this seemed to incur a disproportionate amount of concern. To the man, they looked over at him sharply, then immediately began to scour the nearby ground, the trees, his stag—one even started picking quickly through his clothes.

  “What is it?” Loren asked, vaguely alarmed at this sense of industry.

  Rhuq shrugged, peering under some leaves and saying conversationally, “Could be anything—spider, snake, insect, bird, bee, plant—”

  “Fangvine,” a stagrider announced triumphantly.

  Rhuq had them all come look at it. To Ari, it looked like the young, green branch of a rose, thorns soft and innocuous-looking. It was wound around a tree at elbow level.

  Rodge, looking offended, muttered, “I don’t even remember touching it.”

  “It’ll wear off after a few hours,” Rhuq said lightly. “Just don’t make a bed out of it.”

  Rodge glared. “I’m not PLANNING on snuggling up to it. I’d rather never see it again; I’d rather not make another single bed out of plant matter in my life.” His voice was rising. “In fact, now that you mention it, we’re supposed to be back at University right now—” he shot Melkin a seething look of accusation “—not being accosted by malevolent herbage and at the homicidal mercy of half the known world!”

  “Easy, Rodge,” Ari murmured, though he couldn’t help wondering why Rodge and Loren were still there. Was Melkin really that in doubt about the intruder’s intent in Archemounte—after everything he’d told him under the willow tree? Because Ari…Ari was becoming fairly certain it hadn’t had anything to do with Rodge or Loren.

  Rhuq, looking uncertainly on this little display of temper, ushered them over to where people were settling around Traive. Ari sat right next to him, trying not to look like he was listening intently to the conversation he was having with Melkin.

  “There isn’t anything IN the Statue, is there?” the Master was asking Traive.

  Just as thoughtful, the Cyrrhidean answered, “I’ve never heard mention of it, if there is. We should keep our minds open to possibilities…but there is one thing we can be sure of. The mercs aren’t interested in it, or in preventing you from finding it, unless it is of tremendous benefit to them to do so. The White Asps aren’t cheap…either there is fabulous wealth somehow intrinsic to the Statue, or someone is making it extremely lucrative for them to BE interested in it.”

  “Maybe they’re planning on blackmailing the Realms with it,” Loren offered.

  “The Realms just found out about it,” Cerise snapped condescendingly. “And I doubt they’d pay anything for its return…nonsense…I have trouble believing all this interest—to the point of murder—could exist for a hunk of stone. Even if it is a masterpiece,” she allowed disdainfully, picking up a piece of jerky between thumb and finger and looking at it suspiciously. “And I’ve heard nothing along THOSE lines.”

  “I think,” Traive said, in his even, neutral voice, “that it is only the North that thinks of it so.”

  “All right then,” she persisted, meeting his eyes challengingly, “even if it has some value as a mythico-religious figure, that is not enough to attract the attention of a group out for profit.”

  “Mythico-religious?” Rodge looked at her askance. “Only a politician would make up a word like that.”

  Loren shook his head at him. “That’s low.”

  “If the Asps are out for profit,” Traive said thoughtfully. “Perhaps their motives are more complex…power and wealth often wind round each other indiscernibly. At any rate, Lady, your assessment of its value explains why the Ivory removed it from Archemounte.”

  Melkin stilled. Ari’s head came up. Looking like a hawk ready to pounce on a mouse, the Master repeated slowly, “The Whiteblades took it from the North?”

  “The Empire,” Cerise corrected sullenly. If people would stop interrupting, she could be having a nice, satisfying, screaming fight with Traive right now.

  “Without a doubt. There is no record of it, of course, but they are the only ones that could have taken it from under the nose of both Fox and Drae.”

  Ari had to gulp water for the glob of venison that had suddenly turned to glue in his throat. Melkin’s high-arched nose was almost quivering with the scent of this new trail.

  Cerise broke the silence with a derisive snort. “Am I the only one that wonders how some bored milkmaid runs off, joins the cult of Il, decides she’s going to play the part of—I don’t know, Elinore—”

  “There isn’t an Elinore,” Traive and Ari said at the same time.

  “MY POINT IS that these eighteen-year-old girls, from completely unremarkable, normal lives, up and join the Whiteblades and are suddenly endowed with legendary physical skills, death-defying heroic feats, overwhelming compassion and self-sacrifice…”

  “They’re stories,” Loren said exasperatedly. “Who wants to listen to tales of needlework projects and recipe collections?”

  “Bah,” she snorted ineloquently.

  The venison was delectable, spicy and soft, utterly delicious after the weeks of smoked fish they’d picked up in Merrani, but it could have been shoe leather for all Ari noticed.

  “Do you know where they took it?” Melkin asked urgently. They all looked at the Cyrrhidean, who was slowly shaking his head. Ari saw that he had a scar on his temple. In fact, if you looked closely, his face was rather thoroughly used, with that noticeable aplomb that comes from a vast and varied range of life experiences. Or, in some, the complete lack thereof.

  “Fox,” he said in his quiet voice. Ari looked up, sweeping the forest with a faint interest—they were rarely seen on the eastern side of the Dragonspine. But Traive wasn’t commenting on the sly critter with the bushy tail, and Ari about jumped out of his skin when he turned back to find a strange man squatting mere inches from him. He was bare-chested and in obviously good physical condition, just casually kneeling in his indeterminate-colored clothing with his eyes on Traive’s face.

  “Run north,” Traive told him, low and thoughtful, while they all tried to figure out where he’d come from. “Scout out the Wise Ones. I want to know where they are at all times for the next couple months.”

  The strange man may have secretly acknowledged this, but all the Northerners saw was him rise and disappear, quick and soundle
ss, into the surrounding forest.

  “Break camp,” Traive said into the stillness, barely any louder, so that it was a little startling when the stagriders leaped to their feet like he’d screamed it. They swept the picnic into saddlepacks in a record amount of time—a prompt kind of people, apparently—and before the Northerners had hardly time to get to their feet, their stags were being led over to them.

  As they started off again, Rhuq attempted to answer the barrage of questions from a demanding Cerise, who was showing every sign of spending her time in Cyrrh perpetually peeved.

  “So, they’re a branch of the Sentinels,” she summarized impatiently.

  “No, no. The Silver Fox are an entire different branch of the Cyrrhidean tree of forces,” he disclaimed, riding close to her as the party picked up a fast walk.

  “Like the gryphon riders,” Loren cut in happily.

  “Taloners,” Rhuq corrected amiably.

  Ahead of them, Traive briefly raised his hand, and as a herd they picked up the pace. Almost immediately, they turned down one of the trails to the west, wide and well-used despite its steepness, and began to head down off the side of the Dragonspine.

  Right away, Cyrrh became noticeably closer and thicker around them, underbrush growing into an almost solid wall, vines starting to dangle frequently into the trail and to wind in and out among the trees. Cerise, probably remembering Little Blue now, kept glancing up apprehensively. All she saw was birdlife—tons of it, most in gaudy plumage and with such raucous cries that Rodge started wincing at the steadily increasing cacophony.

  Ari began to be a little glad for the high-pommeled saddles, even if they chafed. His legs ached from gripping the narrow, uncomfortable stag, they were going so unrelentingly downhill; he was sure Rodge would never have been able to hang on.

  Within that first day in Cyrrh, however, those stags made their value known. The warm, golden light of afternoon had turned the heat and ratcheting humidity into an oven. No cool breezes could penetrate the dense vegetation where they were now and they were all getting more and more uncomfortable the lower they dropped. Then, over the vibrating, 360º blanket of insect and bird song, they heard a strange, barking cry. The Northerners probably wouldn’t even have noticed it, except that it made the stags lift their heads alertly, flicking back their big ears.

  It was followed quickly by another, and though this one was fainter, the great, antlered heads swung up, searching for the source.

  “What was that?” Rodge, Loren, and Cerise all said at once.

  The sound came again and every Cyrrhidean-born creature there glanced over their shoulder in its direction.

  “Sounds like Redfangs,” Rhuq said, after what seemed an interminable span filled with growing apprehension and several more cries. The Sentinels all seemed composed and calm, but Ari was learning that was not necessarily a good indicator of threat level. And the stags were definitely uneasy.

  “What are—” Cerise began, when another of the cries, much closer, cut her off. The Sentinels didn’t even look this time, they just loosed the stag’s reins and the animals bounded into a lope. The Northerners’ beasts, firmly entrenched in herd instinct and probably not interested in being left behind anyway, went right with them, so quickly that Rodge barely had time to yelp and grab for his saddle horn.

  They ran. And ran. The lack of shock absorption that Ari had noticed earlier quickly became glaringly manifest, rather painfully accentuated by the steep decline. They jolted and jounced and jarred downhill, Rodge stuttering in choppy protest. Worse, a lot of the background noise had gone quiet, which made the strange cries much more clear. They were more urgent, too, drawing closer and reminding Ari so much of hounds baying after their prey that he felt the hair on the back of his neck come up.

  The stags were tireless, keeping up their lope as the minutes dragged edgily on, managing the steep, uneven ground without a stumble. Sometimes overcome by a spasm of instinct, they would swerve and dart through each other, as if eluding a predator, before being drawn sharply back in line. It was still a remarkably disciplined group, to Ari’s mind, with the Northerners firmly in the middle of the whole leaping dance of flying hooves and swinging antlers, racing downhill.

  Anxiety and adrenaline began to mount, though, keeping pace with that unshakable, barking clamor. It was the ominous tenacity that was so chilling, and as dusk deepened and the gloom of the jungle became a pressing, living thing, the sound swelled behind them in a sinister wave. It drowned out the sound of smacking leaves and vines, the drumming of sharp hooves into the soft, rich soil, the clack of agitated antlers, and the sounds of Ari’s harsh breathing. He and Loren were both glancing back behind them to see if they could catch a glimpse of their pursuers, but they had to stop as another chilling crescendo sent the stags into a burst of inspired speed. It took all their concentration just to hang on as the animals hurtled downhill, intent on outracing gravity as well as the looming specters behind them; he was beginning to see the reasoning behind the leg straps.

  When he next had a chance to throw a glance over his shoulder, he was rewarded with a sight that chilled him to the bone. Shadows…a score, it seemed to him, filling the jungle behind them, bigger and taller than a man, with long arms and misshapen legs, flitting almost faster than the eye could follow—in the trees. Whatever Redfangs were, they didn’t walk on the ground like men. The building pandemonium of dreadful screams and strange, vicious barks only added to the horror. Eyes wide, mouth dry, he jerked his head back around, hunching instinctively low in the saddle, wondering in frantic panic what they were, how they could keep up with stags…what they would do to them if they caught them…

  The Sentinels around were not at all reassuring—to the man they now rode with their reins secured to their pommels and hands full of axe and knife. Their compact bodies clung so easily to the lunging stags that Ari was tempted to draw his own sword, pretty sure he’d feel safer with steel at hand. Preferably in hand. But then a vine slashed across his face, his nerves almost snapped from the terrified tension, and so close behind them that he could hear the whuffling grunt that followed it, a bestial, snarling cry rent the thick air. Cerise screamed and adrenaline jetted through him even as his blood curdled.

  The stags leapt forward in lightning-fast response, digging in with their haunches just as one of the phantom man-things—creatures—airborne monsters—whatever they were, gave an inhuman scream. It echoed, a paean of terror, through the almost utter darkness, the embodiment of every nightmare ever had, the essence of the unknown night that man has feared from his creation.

  Cerise screamed again at the sound, choking it down in a sob, then more of the spine-shuddering, demonic cries sounded out. But, they were different from the previous ones, as if pain was wrapped up in the malice. One, then another, then a third and fourth, in quick succession over the rising background din that Ari was sure was drawing even with them. After the last, his overwrought senses were sure they heard, or felt, or half-sensed, a thump behind them. He jerked his head around, unable to stop it, deathly afraid one of the things had taken to the ground in pursuit. As if that would somehow be worse.

  Outside the jungle, there was a full moon, and in a sudden break of the thick canopy of tree tops, the ghostly half-light illuminated for a second a puzzling, shocking scene: a black, mannish shadow shape lying unmoving in the middle of the trail. In that momentary glimpse, Ari was sure he’d seen a short, feathered shaft protruding from the creature’s breast.

  Fragile as a flower in a black gale, hope blossomed in his own chest. Aid? Was someone helping them? His adrenaline-jacked brain flew to the memory of the mysterious archer on the other side of the Dragonspine—what he wouldn’t give to be running from a nice, normal, bloodthirsty thug right now.

  Things were moving so fast, his senses could barely register them; the cries were becoming so constant it was like a sheer wall of bedlam rising behind them, but he was sure that there was a note of desperation, of frustrated fury
in the predatory wails. And then, suddenly, there was the impression, the flickering sense, of solid walls rising around them in the darkness, the muting of the horrid screams. So fast it was akin to a slap in the face, the stags flashed through that dimly sensed passage of solidity and came to a shuddering, jolting, milling halt.

  The Northerners, still panting with terror, gasped at the abruptness. There was torchlight. People. Eyes wide, they stared around them at relative calm, at a murmur of soothing voices, at hands moving to unstrap their legs and still the restless, blowing stags. Cerise, crying openly, dropped her face into her hands.

  Traive himself helped her dismount and held her for a few moments, unembarrassed and speaking softly into her rather alarming hair. Rodge just sat there, eyes bulging, breath racking his chest, but Ari and Loren, staring at each other in confusion, began to laugh. Relief flooded through them in a great wave. They were alive. They were safe.

  CHAPTER 16

  They headed south into a dry and desiccated land. The landscape, wavering with heat, was as parched as an old bone, empty as a wasteland, and smelled of nothing but hot. They were a large party and the dust kicked up by the delicate hooves of all those horses hung in the motionless air like a screen. It choked off their air. It almost completely obstructed vision. It stuck to her clammy skin like flour to a wet roast.

  Sable couldn’t remember when she’d been happier.

  There were several reasons to explain this curious state of being. First off, she’d persuaded the Queensknight, who had ultimate charge of her security, to ditch Sneed. Her parade horse didn’t have nearly the interest in forward motion necessary to keep up with the feisty Aerachs everyone else rode. Delightfully, along with Sneed’s stately plod she’d managed to leave behind the vast majority of the cloying entourage that she’d been saddled with en route to the Kingsmeet. Her entire party now consisted of her maid Evara, a very nervous Queensknight, and one Lieutenant Waylan, Androssan’s military attaché; she was positively heady with the unfettered freedom. Sugar on the melon was the springy little piebald mare she’d been loaned, bright white coat covered with rich, reddish-brown blotches, so energetic compared to Sneed’s narcoleptic pace that she was almost skipping under her saddle.