The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1)

by Kari Cordis

  “It’s such a shame,” Khrieg said dolorously, shaking his silvery head and seeming oblivious to the finer mysteries being laid out in front of him here. “He had a fine mind; what a waste to have it destroyed…and after he risked so much to tell us what he knew.”

  What he knew? The way Ari remembered it, the Mage’s contribution to the proceedings had involved a few scant geophysical facts and a whole lot of unsupported and over-dramatic predictions of the end of the world. How exactly had that changed anything? But then, maybe it was simply the deep pessimism that was so pleasing to his Skylordship. Ari looked at the sorrowing face in amazement. It was hard to see how he summoned the strength to keep up breathing. Between him and his daughter, Ari wondered if Cyrrh could even muster if there was a war.

  “We must be ready for the power he predicted Raemon would return with,” Kai said, eyeing the Cyrrhidean ruler sternly.

  Lord Khrieg gave a weak, humorless laugh. “Ready? My dear Kai, you have been a friend to this Throne for many years, but even you cannot create defense when we have so little. We seem unable to acquire any more gryphons, and with barely four full Talons, we will be at the mercy of any dragons that rise with Raemon. Our Sentinel forces, at maximum recruitment, are still many thousands short of the force fielded in the Days of Old—there is no more we can do. Am I right, Traive?”

  He turned to whom was apparently the Lord Regent of all forces of Cyrrh, with that noticeable lack of formality that had Cerise stiffening angrily a couple pillows away. Before their companion of the past few weeks—whom they thought they had known pretty well—could speak, a tall, lantern-jawed man on the other side of the Skylord said, “We have talked about a draft, discussed extending our patrols, increasing our stagrider numbers…” He was staring narrowly at Traive, too, not his monarch, and it was the Lord Regent who said in that familiar, understated voice of quelling command:

  “Yes. We have discussed it, Sentinalier.” It was obvious to everyone that it wasn’t going to happen again now.

  Khrieg looked from one to the other. “You discussed,” he said almost plaintively. “But it would be to no avail. Why risk precious Cyrrhidean lives to no purpose?”

  “There are men who would gladly die to make Cyrrh safe,” a slender man with a face so fine-boned it was almost feminine, said. The long, pale blue honors of the Taloners draped over his pillows and knees, a nearby cat batting interestedly at one of the ends. There were cats everywhere in the Skypalace, though Ari had yet to see a single dog in the entire Realm. “And right now there is no way to assure ourselves of Cyrrh’s safety without knowing where, how, and when she will be attacked.”

  “And Master Melkin now brings us the chance to discover some of this information with the quest he brings to our door,” Traive said smoothly, steering the council nicely back on track and possibly saving Melkin’s sanity.

  The Master glowered at the Circle, voice a parody of courtesy, ground out between his teeth like sandpaper over steel. “I don’t see how our being here has changed anything; we’ve got nothing but more questions with every step on this cold trail we’re following. Apparently, we have the only known clue as to what lies behind this sudden unrest of the Enemy, which everyone seems to be aware of and no one certain as to its cause.” He swiveled his head around like he was measuring target distances, glaring. He didn’t say it out loud, but his eyes were shouting clearly that the majority of the brainless lot of them didn’t care why the Sheel should suddenly be so full of menace.

  “You trail the Statue of the Empress, is that right?” the Foxlord asked quietly.

  “Yes,” Melkin bit off, not even marginally appeased by this perfectly intelligent question. “There is a legend that Five Hundred years after the making of the Statue at Montmorency, which supposedly imprisoned Raemon, the fire-god would return to bring the world back to war. This time is close—may have already come to pass.”

  “The Five Hundred Years of Peace,” the Sentinalier murmured, lips pursing thoughtfully over his long chin.

  “It is fated,” Khrieg whispered in tragic overtones, eyes on the golden goblet spinning idly in his fine-boned fingers.

  Melkin spared him a rancorous glare. “There is some fear that if the Statue is found by the Enemy, they may use its destruction as impetus to recommence hostilities, believing Raemon will once again be with them.”

  “Why this urgent quest, then, my friends?” Khrieg asked bleakly. “If they have found the Statue, it has already passed beyond our power to do anything, and if they haven’t, the end of the Five Hundred Years makes war inevitable anyway.”

  “If it is not yet found,” Traive mused, strong voice so steady and reassuring after the Skylord’s trembling tenor that it didn’t even sound like a contradiction, “we have a chance to prevent war—perhaps indefinitely, though that may be optimistic. If we can find it first, perhaps deny them the power to end the Peace…”

  “The Sheelmen are deeply superstitious,” the Foxlord said in his unassuming voice, picking up neatly where Traive trailed off. “Not only that, but they live in mortal fear of Raemon. Never have they made moves without his direct command, and it is doubtful they would dare to engage us after all these centuries without some very positive indicators—”

  “Like Raemon shouting ‘Attack!’” Traive added wryly.

  “—that those are his wishes,” the Foxlord finished, nodding in agreement.

  Ari looked around the Circle, confused. Didn’t they already have evidence that the Sheelmen were making moves? Wasn’t that what the whole Kingsmeet had been about?

  “Seems we could learn as much or more from the Sheelmen as we could chasing after the Statue,” the Sky Captain mused.

  “YES!” Melkin almost shouted, “and if we could invite the Enemy up for tea, chat him up a bit, and determine what’s on his scorched, devilish little brain, then we wouldn’t have to waste all this time wandering blindly over the face of the Realms and sitting in useless councils!”

  The boys exchanged nervous glances, longing for the safe distance of a top-row seat in a big classroom.

  The Foxlord cleared his throat in mild objection. “We think we know where the Sheelshard is now. It’s a possibility that we may have real-time intelligence on the Sheelmen in the very near future.”

  “The Sheelshard,” Melkin almost spat. “It took us how long to think we may have found the Sheelshard? Three thousand years? At that rate, we won’t have to worry about spies discovering the Enemy’s movements—they’ll be in our backyards letting us know exactly what they’re doing before we ever get close to them!”

  “How about the Ivory?” the Sentinalier took a turn, jaw bobbing up and down as he talked. “They have untapped reserves of knowledge concerning the Enemy—the Empress, after all, was their leader…”

  “How about the Ivory?!” Melkin threw up his arms. “Do you know why their knowledge is untapped? BECAUSE WE CAN’T FIND THE FLAMING GITS! How long’s it been since you’ve seen one?”

  No one answered. Ari shifted uncomfortably, wondering again why now, just when the Realms really needed them, the Whiteblades would disappear. As high as the Swords of Light sat in his secret imaginings, it filled him with dread to think of them as unreliable, as foolish young actresses incompetent to truly handle the shiftings of fate, or, worse, playing at some game of their own in this bubbling cauldron of gods and prophecies and Enemy and Ivory.

  The cat at the Sky Captain’s feet, its toy having gotten snagged on some out-of-reach embroidery, wandered over to Kindri and jumped up on her lap. Ari, mind musing unhappily on all this unsettling talk, watched it absently. The Skyprincess began to stroke its muted seal brown fur without any sign she was aware of it, and if Ari’s eyes hadn’t been on it, watching it knead her priceless gown, he would never have caught the slip.

  Kindri’s father muttered, “So true.” No one else was looking at her, and a lightening change swept through the Skyprincess and was gone, so fast Ari wasn’t sure he’d really seen i
t. It was nothing specific, not really anything she’d done or even a change of expression. In fact, it was so indefinable a feeling that he blinked, looking at her closely out of the corner of his eyes. She looked as vapid, as comatose as ever. And yet…without being able to put a finger on why, he was suddenly sure that she was faking.

  Why anyone would try so hard to appear apathetic and incompetent, he had no idea. It wasn’t really a Northern concept. But the gap between Cyrrh and the North went a lot deeper than flora and fauna, and he had too much else on his mind to worry about Cyrrhidean social games.

  “Let’s focus on what we can do,” Traive said into the Circle, with such dry sarcasm that Ari wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t known the Regent so well from their days on the trail. “While the Fox work on their lead at the ’Shard, how can we help Master Melkin’s hunt for the Statue?” He looked at his Foxlord.

  “We have no records of such a thing,” the man admitted. “Were it not that common folklore has it hidden somewhere in Cyrrh’s jungles—”

  “And that Adama told Melkin his answers were here,” Traive interjected, shocking Ari with the sound of her name. All the bright, shallow glitter around him seemed to fade at the thought of her. He’d give it all for another glance from those laughing eyes, for a chance that she might be part of a memory of a life now forever beyond his reach.

  “—I would say the hunt for the Statue has little hope of bearing fruit in Cyrrh,” the Foxlord finished. “Nor, as you say, are there Ivory around to question.”

  Traive, looking faintly satisfied, startled them all then. “I suggest we use the only source left to us, then.” He looked around a Circle gone quiet. The only sound was the tinkle of water and the purr of Kindri’s cat. Everyone looked at him expectantly.

  “The Centaurs.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “Why are we surprised?” Rodge asked later as they trudged across the valley of the Falls, the three of them released to spend the evening as they wished. “I mean, after the Cyrrhidean jungle and all its snakes, stags, baboons, beetles, toxic flowers…and the eyries and gryphons and this little cultural fetish of using priceless gems to decorate your external architecture—I mean, what’s so shocking about consulting oracles? In the form of centaurs?” Rodge shrugged, miming indifference.

  “Why not?” Loren laughed expansively. He was in high spirits. He’d managed to sit next to Kindri for the entire meeting.

  The Circle hadn’t lasted long after Traive’s suggestion. No one had been surprised when the Skylord had protested it, citing the improbability of finding such creatures, but they were all a little taken back when the Regent informed them he’d set Fox on the trail of the Centaurs and had their location pinned down. Which would imply that they actually existed. While the Northerners were struggling with this revelation and Khrieg’s resistance was sputtering down, Kai mentioned that a long, dangerous trip through northern Cyrrh was hardly timely right now (to Melkin’s barely restrained approval) and the Circle had dispersed with the intent to work something out.

  Personally, Ari had trouble believing anything could be more life-threatening than a long, dangerous trip through southern Cyrrh, but he was all for experiencing everything he could in this Realm…and centaurs?!?!

  Right now, it was a beautiful Realm. The fast-falling dusk of autumn settled about them like a cool cloak as they walked under aisles of dark, thick-boled tree trunks and their canopies of glowing leaves. The air was crisp as you sucked it into your lungs, the dead leaves crunching under foot or floating with timeless grace in a dance of oak and ash and maple and sycamore. The Falls played a symphony in the background and the light became a shivery, silver-salmon gleam. Ari paused, caught up in the play of color and shadow and the memories of all the autumns he’d had—the smell of apple cider, the rainy days pattering against the gathered, golden sheaves of wheat, the archery competition he’d won that last Harvest Fair…

  “Ari,” Rodge called peevishly. “Stop dawdling.” They were waiting for him a short bit ahead and he picked up his pace, catching up with them at an intersection overshadowed by the great trees, some with bare branches already starting to show black against the darkening sky.

  But no one was looking at trees. Coming down the road towards them…were a group of girls.

  “I love it when they come in threes,” Loren whispered. The boys stared at them avidly, unable to believe their luck. They were single (meaning currently unaccompanied), young, and gorgeous.

  They walked up, and each party started smiling at the other at such fortuitous and portentous a meeting. “Hello,” one of them said, in that musical accent of her Realm that made a man’s hair curl around his ears. The other two giggled, huddling close to each other and staring wide-eyed at Rodge’s pale skin. “You must be the Northern visitors.”

  “How d’ja know?” Loren said, throwing his arms wide and showing a lot of his perfect teeth. All three of them giggled at that, their slim shoulders lifting and their layered silk gowns gliding marvelously over their slender forms. Ari watched them, fascinated. Why did they always giggle?

  “We’re headed to the Dens. If you’d like us to show you around, you’re welcome to come with us,” the first one said. She had an exotic, wide, flat face with a charmingly pointed chin and huge green eyes, possibly the prettiest girl Ari had ever seen. “It’d be a shame for you to spend your time in Lirralhisa…alone,” she dared, and Rodge and Loren, affecting over-acted ‘why-not?’ faces to each other, readily agreed.

  Ari fell in with them, suddenly reluctant. Entrancing as they were, what company was he for girls? He had nothing to offer them, didn’t even know who he was. There was only one girl out there for him…and he’d probably never see her again. Ears inundated with chatter and surrounded with companionship, he felt aloneness sweep over him. Where was his Selah now? There wasn’t even any comfort in the thought of her following them—that’d mean she was currently engulfed in the dangers and discomfort of the jungle while he was cavorting around unfaithfully with a bevy of pretty foreign females.

  They made their way through one of the picturesque little hamlets, Ari not paying much attention to the conversation and comforted by the fact that no one was paying any attention to him. He wasn’t sure he could have stood for stares and whispers behind those slender fingers. Under a big gaslight in the central square that turned the silvery evening goldish, they met up with a group of men, brown-skinned and about the same age as the girls. There was more talking, laughing, the sound of nearby music, then they all turned and trooped down the street, stopping and stooping to enter a shadowy building with a low doorway.

  Almost immediately, Ari’s nose started to tickle. It was a long, low room, full of people and talk and the stirring music of Cyrrh, which seemed either to have a toe-tapping beat or was slow and haunting and lyrically nostalgic. He’d never heard Northern music half so moving.

  But the room was thick with irritating, odd-smelling smoke and already his eyes were starting to feel dry. A light-headedness was seeping into him, making him a little disoriented so that it took conscious effort to control his movement across the room. The girls led them over to a low, well-cushioned bench, over and around all kinds of bodies. Some were sleeping, some were in animated conversation and oblivious to others trying to pass, and some were just staring smilingly into space. It was really crowded, but the worst was the funny disassociated feeling in his mind. Loren, as athletic as they come, stumbled, laughing, over nothing.

  Once they were settled, cut-glass tumblers full of cool water were passed around, and someone offered them pipes. Rodge laughed outright at this. “We don’t smoke,” he said drolly, the unquestionable center of attention and enjoying it immensely. In the North, it was usually only old men that smoked pipes. It was funny to see boys their own age, and especially girls, with pipes in their teeth.

  “Oh,” the kitten-faced beauty said huskily, “You’ll want to smoke this…”

  The boys looked at each other
. “Why?”

  “It’s dasht,” she explained, then laughed at the look on their faces. “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you. You just use a little and it takes that anxious edge off. You can relax, be more…you.”

  Ari’s eyes watered as one of the boys they’d met blew an encouraging cloud of smoke into his face. His head felt thick and muddled, like he was trying to think underwater.

  “I don’t want to end up like the Skyprincess,” Rodge remarked, diplomatic and discreet as ever; fortunately, everyone thought this was hilarious and in the resulting wave of goodwill he accepted a pipe and sucked in a mouthful of smoke.

  Ari looked around, peering through the thick air. Everyone seemed happy enough, but well over half of the people he saw had that vacant, vacuous look that was so familiar from Kindri’s face. Why did they do this? The stress of living in Cyrrh? What was that compared to what he had to live with inside himself? Is this what his mother had meant in the dream—hiding behind insensible stupor until he was a useless, lifeless lump? Worse…what if he lost control of the madness he was still half-convinced was lurking somewhere inside his genes? What if he turned into—

  Suddenly, and probably irrationally, he was panicked, as if he was slipping right then and there into murderous insanity. He stood abruptly, heart pounding, feeling trapped and frantically claustrophobic. Unsteadily, he wove his way across the room, ignoring the mild protests as he overturned pillows and pipes and people, his head seeming to swell by the second in the thicker haze of smoke collected under the low roof. The music droned heavily, hypnotically, no longer a thing of tripping beauty but a numbing, dulling aid to the earnest endeavors of a room trying to escape reality. Plunging rather inhospitably out the door, Ari came to an uncoordinated halt, sucking in great lungfuls of clear air…and wishing desperately to escape reality himself.

  Escape, relaxation…he swayed there miserably as the door shut behind him, the music and the light and the laughter ending as abruptly as his life of carefree normalcy had. For a moment, he just stood quietly, shaking his head (gently, so he didn’t fall over), mind grinding slowly. Feeling utterly unhappy, he began to walk mindlessly through the cool, misty night. He wished powerfully that he could be in there laughing with his friends, wished he had no secrets to hide and no dirty past threatening to loom out of its cage in an unguarded moment. Wished he was anything but what he was. But wishing wasn’t going to change anything, and neither was losing all sense of himself so that he could pretend for a few short hours that he was just like everybody else. It felt like someone was squeezing his heart in two.