The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1)

by Kari Cordis

  “I doubt your Marekite Priesthood is concerned about people becoming more honest,” he suggested, eyes bright with suppressed laughter.

  “That’s very astute of you.” She was still tart. “Tell me, why is it that religion—a completely personal decision—seems to be of so much concern to those in politics, economics, and government???”

  “Power is a bewitching thing,” he answered, falling into eloquence with that unsettling lack of warning so typical of the Rach. “It’s like a pet animal that grows despite your intentions otherwise, that can end up numbing you to all things honorable. Il wishes only to rule in His people’s hearts…but to those who think ruling can happen only in the Realms of this world, He is no doubt a threat.”

  “Hearts are where he belongs,” she said moodily, arms crossed.

  “Yes, they are.” He stared at her pointedly. She gave him a sharp look and his broad shoulders and black brows rose with matching innocence.

  She chatted idly with Krysta later as she reluctantly prepared for bed. She was sure she was far too restless to sleep, though the reason for it eluded her.

  “What is that?” Sable asked, after tripping for the third time on a blackened groove in the stone flagging.

  Not even looking up from her duties, Krysta remarked casually, “That was from the firespear that killed Relle and the boys.”

  Sable stared at the slim, busy back in horror, a thousand images crowding through her overactive brain. “This…these are Kyr’s wife’s rooms?”

  Krysta tossed her a smile. “Rach men don’t live apart from their women.”

  That wasn’t precisely what she’d meant. She looked around shrinkingly. She was staying in the same room Kyr and his wife had lived and slept and fought and made up, where they’d probably broke their fast in the morning and trained their children in table manners at night. The very scene of his family’s horrendous murder…

  “Though,” Krysta said thoughtfully, “he always was a little different that way.” She’d finished with the flowers, which like the fish from some far-distant ocean arrived fresh every day from some far-distant garden.

  “How so?” Sable said faintly, not sure she wanted any more information on this particular subject tonight. She tottered over to her favorite pile of cushions, placed before an arched window that looked out over the changing face of the Sheel, and sank rather bonelessly into them. They’d been killed, right here. Maybe the furniture had been moved to cover bloodstains…how was she supposed to sleep in here now?

  “It’s just that most boys his age were busy courting, you know, making up love songs, quoting poetry, crooning at windows. My eyes have been compared to moonbeams so many times, they’re starting to cross,” she said dryly, rolling them at Sable. Sable blinked. She couldn’t picture any Northern boy in her entire range of experience that had done even one of those things. At any age.

  “Kyr had to be reminded to choose a mate,” she continued. “Because he was the Rach and needed sons and had to set an example, you know.” She shook her head, half affectionately, as if at the antics of a little brother. “He was just thinking of other things.”

  “How old was he?” Sable asked. He had had two sons, she knew.

  “Oh, Kyr was Banded as soon as he turned fourteen and Rode Out—Rach Koorel was killed in that same engagement.”

  ‘Rode Out,’ Sable had already discovered, was the euphemism for risking your life outside the Rampart walls, seeing your friends and horses die, and impaling other humans with your blade. She thought it was a horribly inadequate way to describe what combat must really be like.

  “Fourteen. He hadn’t fallen in love and had the girl of his dreams picked out at fourteen?” she asked sarcastically.

  “No,” Krysta said conspiratorially, as if they were in incomplete understanding and weren’t men the oddest things.

  There was a silence as Sable pictured the Rach boy Kyr, probably as full of dreams and plans and ideas as the Rach man.

  “I’m sure he was devastated at her death,” Sable said a little wistfully, holding a cushion to her. “—their deaths. His sons, too. I mean, all of them.”

  Krysta grunted unconvincingly, plumping pillows.

  “He did love her, didn’t he?” Sable pressed. Rach men were conspicuously and demonstratively enamored with their wives, from what she’d seen.

  But Krysta was still noncommittal. “No one knows what’s in another’s heart,” she side-stepped neatly, “but their wedding night there was an attack. He rode out, taking half the Hilt, and didn’t return for three weeks.”

  “He’s the Rach,” Sable spoke up swiftly. “It’s his duty to lead his people in war, and certainly he’s admirable for pursuing the Enemy.” She couldn’t believe even one Rach would gainsay that.

  Krysta shot her an even look. “He forgot her name.”

  Sable stared at her aghast, and winced.

  “No one ever told her—she loved him desperately—but Kore had to remind him who he’d married.”

  “I’m sure things were different by the time this happened,” Sable said weakly, gesturing at the long, scorched gouge in the floor.

  “Doubtless.”

  CHAPTER 24

  When Sable asked to see the alarm gong the next morning, Kyr concurred so readily that she was left trailing from his hand, panting and laughing as they rushed up the stairs like it was being sounded as they climbed.

  It was a big brass disc, complete with mallet, sitting venerably right in the center of the Hilt. Archemounte had one, too, the only one left of the four that used to sit on each wall. But even at the Palace, arguably the least militant capital in the Realms, the gong was manned.

  “No warrior…?” she looked around it questioningly.

  Kyr snorted. “They moan and cry like babies if they’re forced to tend the gong: ‘Are we Cyrrhideans to stand Sentinel?’” he mimicked in a querulous voice. “So we use the widows.” He gestured to a woman standing several yards away conversing with a warrior.

  “Widows?” She hadn’t heard a whisper of this. “Is that code for something? Some sort of women warrior society?” Outside the Swords of Light, she didn’t think such a thing existed anywhere in the Realms…and after what Taneh had said at the oasis…

  Kyr’s animated face split in a rakish grin. “It’s code for losing your husband.”

  She rolled her eyes, wishing him a shade less handsome. “Are they not allowed to remarry?”

  “Oh, for certain. But Aerach mates tend to be very attached to each other.”

  “Really,” she said coolly. After last night’s enlightening conversation, she wasn’t sure what she thought of Kyr’s attachment ability. Not that it mattered.

  “Consider the widow,” Kyr said, suddenly expansive and oblivious to the drop in temperature. “Here we have this immense portion of society, overflowing with strong opinions about Tarq, anxious—nay, desperate—to serve, and very often having no other demands on their time. Some have no children, some have lost their children, and some have naught but grown children.”

  “You’re encouraging vengeance!” Sable accused.

  “I’m encouraging a healthy release of frustration,” he corrected. “Well, not healthy for the Tarq.”

  “You’re exploiting their passions.”

  “Passion should not be wasted.” He looked at her with velvety eyes. “It takes their mind off their sorrow. Gives them purpose and channels their energy. And is of profound benefit to the general population…of Rach. Hard on the Tarq,” he temporized.

  Cheeks pink with more than the heat, she turned and gazed out at the Sheel. It was almost midday and the vast orangeish sands spread out below her seemed to seethe with heat waves. She shook her head slowly, saying as if seeking confirmation, “They come running out of that…oven to throw themselves against these walls. What madness.”

  “Not anymore,” he said softly, sobering to match her mood. He turned to face the desert beside her, his arm brushing hers. A dozen pe
ople could be jostling around her and she would know if he touched her.

  “They used to steal in at night or dusk or dawn, throw their firespears, launch their flaming arrows—they’re not very good archers, but with all those tents it’s pretty hard not to hit something—sometimes try to scale the wall, sometimes try to blow through it. They can climb like beetles, straight up and silent as sand.”

  She shivered in the roasting heat of the sun, awed and chilled. All those months ago Kane had told her, He’s lost his family to an Enemy you don’t even believe in. Shame pricked at her conscience.

  “Now,” he was continuing, in that same low, distant voice, “we have to flush them, like sandgrouse in the bush.”

  “How do they fight?” she almost whispered.

  “Like ghosts. They wear clothes the color of the Sheel, wrap their tell-tale heads so only their eyes can peer through slits in the cloth, and hide under what you’d swear was only a scuff of sand on the rock. They like to spring ambushes, when suddenly they’re surrounding you. You’re always, always outnumbered, no matter how many men you have. Our blades can shear one of theirs almost in half, but if you’re busy with two to your front, three slipping into your ribs from behind will still kill you, Sheelsteel or not.”

  He was staring unseeing out into the desert, as if he’d forgotten her.

  “They can live for days on a canteen of water and they know every spring there is. They eat dry rations, but there’s never any tirnal in their purses. I don’t even know if they have an economy.” He winked at her, remembering her after all. “They have to be the toughest, most resourceful, resilient people anywhere. We’d almost respect them if they weren’t…”

  “The Enemy,” Sable finished. “You’ve caught some?” She was thinking of the purses.

  “Mm. Though none from the Sheel have ever made it back here—every time we’ve snagged one out on patrol, he’s been rescued. It’s like they crawl out of the air. Hauling along a captive Tarq is the one way to assure you’re going to see more on the way home.”

  “What have you learned from them?”

  “Nothing,” he said moodily. “They can’t be made to talk. And there’s an…emptiness, almost, to them. You’ll notice it sometimes even in the midst of battle, a dazed, unfeeling look to them. I think Raemon plays with their minds, somehow.”

  Now Raemon was supposedly imprisoned…but what a thought. A mindless horde of merciless killers.

  “The only information we’ve ever gotten directly from them is from a very few women Rach Kyle captured before he ran the whole race into the Sheel—”

  “You remember information from the time of the Four Brothers?” she asked archly, quickly substituting out the word ‘trust’—Rach were touchy about honesty.

  “It’s of interest to us. Even back then, Tarq didn’t treat their women very good—some of them seemed more fugitive from their own people than captives. They were kept constantly pregnant, and never had less than four children at a time, usually six, seven or even eight, year after year until their bodies were used up. Kyle found it so unnatural a process that he called it ‘spawning.’

  Sable gave him a skeptical frown. “That’s hard to believe. I mean, even if they belong to Raemon, they’re still human, and that’s just not something that happens.”

  “It is hard to believe. Until you mow down uncountable numbers of them only to see them attack again with twice as many an hour later. It is markedly inhuman, as if they propagate from their dead comrades. I dread to think,” his voice dropped, “what these last five hundred years, with attacks dwindled down to nothing, have brought about in their numbers.”

  In the wilting, breathless heat of the Sheel at noon, Sable again felt goose bumps come up on her arms and a cold chill shudder through her. “Maybe,” she said quickly, “it was Raemon’s influence that caused such a high childbirth rate…maybe they’ve finally run out of their huge population and that’s why things are quieter.” Oh, if her Council could hear her now.

  “Maybe,” he said, without much conviction. He was still thinking about combat, she could tell. “I think Raemon drives this obsession they have with fire, too. They will start a fire on a man or horse almost before he reaches the ground, and before you can get to him, he’s lost forever. You can’t go down,” he said seriously, as if she was a young warrior ready to Ride Out for the first time. “Don’t ever go down.”

  He turned towards her, looking gravely down into her face. “There are men who like to fight and men who like to kill, but the Tarq like the cruelty. They torture just to cause pain.” He was the Rach again, and she was the Queen of the North and they could have been back at the Kingsmeet—a professional state of affairs that she should have approved of and instead left her with a hollow ache somewhere deep inside.

  “That’s why we must fight. They will not allow coexistence, and if they overcome us when Raemon breaks free, the world will be overrun with evil. We must be ready.”

  They stood in the midst of rippling heat, exposed to the blistering sun on the top of the Ramparts, and gazed soberly into each other’s eyes. “I have had my Imperial General ready our Forces. We will be as ready as I can make us,” she finally told him.

  His face lit in a blaze of incredulous joy and he impulsively grabbed her shoulders. For a moment, she was afraid he was going to do something even more demonstrative, but he released her.

  Feelingly, still staring into her eyes like he was trying to see through her, he said, “And we will ride for the Empire until our horses drop, until our arms fail us and our steel is dulled from bone and blood.”

  She smiled despite herself. Lovely. “You mean for the Ramparts.”

  But he shook his head. “Of what use are the Ramparts without their Empire? What sense is their existence without her to protect?”

  Sable laughed in protest and embarrassment. “The North does not need such dedication to its defense. It can protect itself! Or,” she teased, wanting for self-preservation to draw that serious look out of his eye, “is it because its ruler is a woman that you feel it needs such help?”

  Now he looked genuinely surprised. “Not at all,” he said emphatically. “It seems right that you are a woman. While we are here on this earth, the Empire, like woman, is our providence, our joy; she sustains us and makes life full of meaning and purpose. Her rich lands bring us endless delight. The works of her hands captivate us. And her beauty…her beauty breaks our heart.”

  They were all alone, but even if they’d been in a crowd of people, Sable would probably not have noticed. No one had ever looked at her so deeply in her life, as if trying to determine the very composition of her being. What hopeless romantics Rach were, she thought to herself. A little shakily.

  It was her last warning. It was dangerous, this affection that had been growing in her heart these past weeks, affection for the stark purity of this wild, hot country, for the warm and simple people, and for their Rach. It was dangerous for its depth, because it was unavoidable that she must leave it. Already Rorig was pleading that it was time to start the return journey. Taneh had heard it and cried that it was too soon, that they had only been there for a couple weeks and that it had taken them that long to get there.

  Which seemed perfectly logical to Sable.

  “It seems amazing it can be so still,” she murmured that evening. They were in the big common room, a breeze riffling through it like it was a causeway, and the Sheel silver and indigo in the bright light of the moon.

  Kyr was pacing restlessly—no doubt counting up troops in his head. They’d been talking war all afternoon, which was slightly out of Sable’s league, but she was giving it a royal try. She knew she should leave, knew instinctively it wasn’t safe to be alone like this, with either the haunting beauty of the Sheel or the Rach. Both of them tore at a heart bound by iron to another place, to a place so different it was almost another time.

  He came up beside her. “Oh, it’s not,” he teased. “Right there on the horizon
is where you’ll see the Phoenix.” He pointed over her shoulder. The Rach had an underdeveloped sense of personal space at the best of times, and Kyr was no exception. Except with him, she was acutely aware of every move he made, of the heat from his arm, of his soft breath stirring the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

  A bit unsteadily she asked, “You don’t really see a flaming bird, do you?”

  He chuckled, so close she could feel the reverberations through her neck bones. “Do you believe in nothing that’s not written in your textbooks?”

  “That’s not fair,” she objected, turning around quickly because she was so on edge…and the riposte died on her lips.

  He was so close she was virtually in his arms. And instead of backing away, like an intelligent and far-seeing monarch, she found herself saying softly, “I believed in you…enough to come down here and see your world…”

  Time seemed to hang suspended. They looked at each other from mere inches away, as if spellbound. In the warm, close, deep silence, it seemed to Sable they balanced on a knife edge. A perfect and agonized understanding crept into their eyes simultaneously, as if they were in Crossing again, being kept in time as they mounted the Compass. If she lived a thousand years, she would never forget the look on his face, those vibrant, liquid, expressive eyes, mute with longing, frozen with sadness.

  Don’t say it, she pleaded dully in her mind. Don’t say it out loud. We can never go back once you say it…

  Numb from head to toe, she very deliberately took a step away from him. Then another, and in a ghastly mimicry of normalcy, whispered hoarsely, “I think…I’ll turn in.” He said nothing, just looked at her. Tearing her eyes from his was like ripping her arm off. The sense of loss, of yawning emptiness, almost blinded her as she tried to make it down the short passageway to her room.

  She’d fallen in love with the Lord Rach. What an idiotic thing to do, because she must go back and make a marriage and bear children with a man that could only ever be a shadow of this great love, and he would choose another wife and do the same, and the pain and the sorrow were drowning her.