by Kari Cordis
Dorian’s face went very still. Not a sound was heard amongst all that press of people.
“Cinders,” Voral swore quietly. Obscenity aside, it seemed to pretty much sum up everybody’s feelings.
Dorian lifted her fair chin, luminous eyes gazing far out over the hills back north, as if searching out what was happening so far away. “They have little enough time as it is,” she murmured. Then, as if coming back to the present, she turned and swept the gathered girls with her piercing gaze. “Arboress, Spear,” she said crisply.
“What do you expect me to do, swim them through?” Brook asked, to grins and chortles, but she and Nerissa were already moving off back down the trail to the north.
“Not her,” Rodge whispered tragically.
“Will they hold us up?” Melkin asked cagily.
“Nothing happens until we are all gathered,” Dorian answered smoothly. “Let’s get going.”
Camp that night was as if in a different world from the meadow. But, as it was also a different world from the Swamps, nobody minded. And Cerise was in a positive ecstasy of ablutional rapture. She spent two hours in the Pools.
“What is she doing up there?” Loren moaned for about the fifth time. The rest of the group hadn’t even seen the Pools yet. When she finally came down the trail, she looked like she had scrubbed every ounce of tan off her skin. Her pale hair was in the neatest pile they’d seen since Lirralhisa and she had the self-satisfied smile of a freshly cleaned woman anywhere in any world.
The rest of the group tromped past her with nothing save a scowl or two. It took the men all of about ten minutes, because they had to share the soap, to finish and head back down again. Except Ari. He dawdled deliberately, calling out, “Don’t wait,” when the rest of them glanced over at his half-dressed person. He wanted to be alone just for a minute at this…oasis. This paradise.
The Pools of Tiramina were set into the red hills, great western-facing slabs of rock forming the background for the fall of spring water about five yards or so up. Big slabs formed the ground, too, in this part of the mountains, the crevices between them filling up into two- and three- and four-yard deep pools of the most beautiful turquoise water he’d ever seen. Palm trees and primordial ferns grew lushly at the edges, and brilliant birdlife swept through the air, riding the cool breezes. Now, as the sun headed down, its rays turned the place into a scene of such glorious beauty that he could have stayed there forever.
The rocks were blushing, bared to the direct gaze of the setting sun, when a voice said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s one of my favorite places in the world.” He expected it to be a Whiteblade—who else would it be?—but he did not expect what met his eyes when he turned around.
Long, dark, whipping hair. Wild, golden-brown oval of a face. Eyes as dark a grey as dawn before the sun. He would know her face standing a hundred yards apart, from a thousand years away. She came to him and he wrapped his arms around her, trying not to do something stupid like sob, and she laughed low and deep in his neck—she was shorter than he would have thought, shorter than she’d seemed in his dream.
He finally released her. “What do I call you?” he asked huskily. He’d heard her laugh a hundred times in his memory, knew the sound of her voice now like he’d just heard it saying his prayers with him last night, but he’d forgotten her name.
“Though others call me Mother, I think it might be confusing if you did,” she said mischievously out of that beautiful face. “My name is Roxarta.”
“You raised me.”
“I did. You were a terrible child, with the most single-minded desire to find trouble I have ever seen. I see that’s not changed much.” Her eyes danced with delight.
His stomach dropped and he felt his smile turn wooden. “Surely…surely you knew what I was…?”
She looked at him, only her eyes still laughing. Her face was haunting as a Dra’s in repose. “We knew very little about you, Ari, only that Il had given you to us for a short while. I…it broke my heart…to let you go. But I had to. What kind of a life could you have lived with us? No man should grow up surrounded entirely by old women, secluded in a forest far from all that makes a young man’s heart beat fast. It was for the best—I still believe that…though I have missed you every day of your life.”
He was getting uncontrollably mushy on his insides. Quickly, he said, “But you know who I am now. Tell me what is going on. Why does Dorian want me? What possible purpose can I have?”
“You have a great destiny in Il’s plan, as we all do,” she answered soothingly, and when he looked at her with his great greenish-blue eyes alight with frustration, she hastened to add, “Ari, please do not ask me anymore. It is not my story to tell.”
And with that he had to be content. The sun had set when they finally, hand in hand, picked their way down the rocky trail and came back into camp. There was a flurry of greetings as Roxarta was spotted, and Ari separated from her to find the northerners.
They were all heading in to the fire to see and hear what was going on, but they stopped at Ari’s excited look. “That’s her,” he said breathlessly. “That’s the woman who raised me!” They stared at him, eyes drifting to Roxarta’s slim, dark-haired figure, and back to him.
“Ari,” Cerise said carefully, “she’s our age.”
‘Rox,’ as everyone called her, reported to Dorian in private. The Northerners had to pick up second-hand that the Aerach Ramparts were in an uproar and that Kyr was almost out of his mind with fury and grief and frustration, ‘restless enough to hunt Phoenix,’ as Adama put it, though no one would say why.
“They’d settle down if they could do a little focused fighting,” Jordan said, and the entire camp echoed agreement.
But Roxarta’s companion was stealing the show while they were waiting to find all of this out. Yve, a healthy, hearty Merranic with a cap of friendly brown curls and a smattering of freckles, was bent over the fire from the moment they met her. As unlikely as the necessity of having a Cook would seem to be to an operation like the Whiteblades, that was apparently her role.
She was sublimely gifted, incidentally. The cookfire became, for the rest of the trip, the very center of activity. It saw more business and population density over the next several weeks than all the fires of the long months of the Northerners’ whole trip. The northerners themselves weren’t exactly strangers.
It was the day after Roxarta and Yvetta had come in that Ari became aware of the faint rumbling behind them. It was more a vibration or a sense than an actual sound, but there’d been a whole aviary’s worth of bird calls flying around for the past couple of hours, so he knew something was up. When Dorian pulled them over earlier than usual that afternoon, he was sure it had something to do with it.
Yve was always an hour or so ahead of them now, so they had the luxury of riding into camp with the fire and dinner already started—difficult to get used to, but one did what one could. The rumbling grew all the way through dinner, and just as the light was softening into evening, the source finally came into sight.
It was a herd of horses, and at their head rode a proud, straight-backed woman on a coal black stallion. She had the narrow face and dark hair, pulled into two midnight braids on each side of her face, of a Rach, but eyes that color green had never been seen outside Cyrrh. Every inch of her was covered with dust, except those eyes, and when she slipped off the stallion’s bare back and came walking toward Dorian and a gathering crowd of Whiteblades, it puffed off of her with every step.
She also had a pronounced air of self-assurance. She walked straight up to Dorian and extended her hand, palm out, fingers spread. Very formally, Dorian did the same, their fingertips meeting in what must have been the Whiteblade greeting. Watching it unfold so clearly, Ari realized he’d been seeing it for days now. They all did it; he’d just assumed it was some fond form of hand-clasping.
“Verrena,” Dorian said business-like.
“Dor,” the woman opposite her said. She had
a quiet, strong voice. “I got held up at the Western Wings. The Rach hadn’t seen the horses in a while.” Taciturn as a Dra, her words still brought rueful laughs from everyone around.
After a few seconds she added slowly, “Spirit wouldn’t come.” This was apparently bad news. Everyone sobered, looking at her quietly. Dorian swallowed hard, which was the equivalent of a Northerner screaming, “What?!” but didn’t say anything.
Voral broke the clearly troubled tension by drawling, “Well, what good are you? A Rider who can’t even catch horses?” A smile pulled at Verrena’s dusty countenance, and she stretched her hand out to greet her. “Voral.”
Dorian’s eyes were on Adama, who was pulling somberly at her lower lip. She met her gaze with her own apple-cider tart one. “The Ways of the Empress have ever diverged from ours,” she said slowly. “It should not surprise us to see it here again, now.”
“He has been with the herd since the Peace,” Verrena said quietly. “Why leave now?”
Silence permeated the wide, open space they were making camp in, disturbed only faintly by the homey sound of horses slurping at the nearby spring or chomping hungrily at the wiry yellow grass.
Adama raised her chin. “The Empress will be there,” she said quite firmly, as if reassuring them all. “And if she is not in need of Spirit afterwards…well, we also will not be in need of the horses.”
This brought a few snorts and a chuckle or two, and then people began drifting back to Yve and the food, Verrena and Dorian walking close together and talking low.
The Empress. In these lazy days drying out from their saturation in the Swamps, Ari had forgotten their real mission (which had shown a remarkable tendency to stay obscure). The Empress…the Statue that had drawn them all this space and time across the Realms, that hadn’t even existed in that form for months before it had been a glare in Melkin’s eye. Was she to remain an enigma until they walked into Zkag and were finally introduced? How exactly was the whole Sheelshard thing going to work, anyway? If the Sheelmen would kill them if they caught them…did that mean they were going to sneak into the very center of Sheelman civilization? That seemed to defy belief. And even if the Whiteblades could do it—and there didn’t seem to be much beyond them—most of the northerner group was definitely not in the same survival skill class.
Mind churning ponderously, unwilling to join the rather raucous group around the fire, he wandered thoughtfully out into the meadow. A short distance away, the horses were rolling and grazing and doing horse things, Verrena’s stallion guarding them alertly. They had the fine bones and glossy, jewel-toned coats of Aerachs, and every one of them a beauty, worth a small fortune in the North.
The stallion blew out his breath at him, shaking his silky black mane in warning as Ari approached. Ari’d never been afraid of horses, though, even when very young, and he’d never known one that didn’t eventually come to him. This one was a little stubborn, his powerful, slender legs sidestepping him away when Ari got too close.
“Fine,” Ari said, low and soothing. Smiling, he moved past him towards the herd, which wasn’t nearly as suspicious. The stallion objected behind him, realizing he’d been outfoxed, but by then, Ari was wandering into the midst of those gleaming sides and lustrous manes and tails. Some of them nuzzled him, most ignored him, and he gazed around in wonder. Even through the faint coating of reddish dust that hadn’t been completely scrubbed off yet, they were gorgeous animals. There was a softly golden palomino with a glow like a halo in the fading sunlight. A gorgeously dappled grey with pure white mane and tail. A bay the color of oozing blood, he was so red. Looking closely at them, Ari frowned—almost half the herd were stallions. But then, why would he expect the Whiteblades to lay claim to a herd of horses that followed normal rules of nature?
“You’re a brave man,” a woman’s voice said quietly behind him. He turned, surprised to see Verrena, cleaned up and looking at him unsmilingly. In the soft gloaming, his senses seemed muted, as if he was half-asleep, and she was like a dream…all soft edges and glowing eyes. The comfortable munching and blowing and tail-swishing of the horses was almost hypnotically calming. “A kick from one of these hooves could kill you.”
“I’m not afraid of horses,” he answered, his voice deep and mellow.
Slowly, she joined him at the side of the cream-colored mare he was petting, close enough he could smell her wild, clean scent. “Nor I,” she said softly.
His awkwardness had faded, too. Maybe it was the night. Maybe it was the utter confidence of this particular Whiteblade.
“You’re a Rach?” he asked, for something to say, and was mildly surprised when she shook her braids.
He was even more surprised when she said, “My father was a Dra. My mother was Cyrrhidean.”
“I didn’t think Drae…rode.”
She turned to look directly up at him, her eyes green as spring leaves in the warm dusk.
“They do not ride…out of shame, for a long past dishonor. Il frees us from those burdens. He takes our shame on Himself…and destroys it.”
He stared at her, benumbed, his senses so full of her presence that his mind was having to race to deal with the import of her words. He’d been born with a little shame of his own that he’d rather not be thinking about right now.
“How…nice,” he managed finally, trying to sound neutral. A casual night, a casual conversation—and suddenly they were as deep into theology and his inner life as if they’d known each other for years. He didn’t know quite what he thought about that, with all its suddenness.
“It is not a distant occurrence that happens just to other people,” she said drolly, reading him very correctly. “It is a service He provides for everyone…”
“I…haven’t done anything to deserve that…” Ari laughed self-consciously. He was so far from what he’d seen in Illian devotion—he wouldn’t really even consider himself, you know…if it came right down to it…
“No,” she agreed. “None of us have. It is a gift.”
He stared at her. “There’s nothing given for nothing.”
“You sound like a Northerner,” she said dryly. “A lot of them decline His joy and the peace of life with Him for that very reason. Sometimes it’s easier to cling to ‘too good to be true’ than it is to accept truth itself.”
“It’s not like I don’t want it,” Ari protested. How had they gotten into this conversation when seconds ago he’d been so relaxed and happy he could have draped himself over one of these beautiful backs and snored? “But you can’t just wake up one day and say, “OK, today I’m going to be an Illian. It wouldn’t mean anything…” he trailed off, a little flustered to think that that was exactly what he had done when he remembered that he’d been raised by nuns.
“You are right. You cannot. The secret to being an Illian…is Il. It’s about what He does, and has very little to do with what YOU do…”
That made no sense at all.
“It is like being trapped in the bottom of a deep well,” she said, eyes drifting off of his face and into the thick, warm night. “The only way out is a rope that must come from the top. Some people spend their whole lives denying they are in a well. Some deny there is a rope. And some realize the well is filling with water or want something more out of life than a small, dark, enclosed space…and look up. And ask for the rope to be lowered.”
They looked at each, for a minute, an hour, an age. Ari couldn’t remember later. He just remembered he felt all murky and unclear inside.
Maybe because she was looking back at him so steadily, so expectantly, he said, “I don’t know if I…I can do that.” His voice was very low, and hers was even more so when she replied, “You are right to be afraid. His love will change your life…and turn it upside-down and backward from all you thought you knew.”
CHAPTER 31
At lunch the next day, Ari wandered over to the edge of the trail. The escarpment plunged abruptly here, and in a break of the brush and trees, you could walk righ
t to the edge. It was a heady feeling, standing there on the edge of the world. Far below, at the seam of mountain and desert where there were sharp, crusty wallows of dry river beds, rank after rank of the feathery tree-bushes that gave the mountains their name were in full bloom. It was like a delicate pinkish-white lace edging the skirt of the reddish hills. And then, beyond, like a magnet that drew his eyes, lay the endless stretches of glowing sand. He wasn’t sure the attraction was all healthy…it was, he couldn’t help thinking bitterly, his homeland.
“It’s probably not a good idea to silhouette yourself for too long,” Dorian’s smooth voice said next to him. “We are trying to escape detection for as long as we can.”
“The Sheelmen’ll probably just think it’s one of their own,” Ari said, not very civilly.
He felt her eyes on him like a physical pressure.
“Petulance suits you ill,” she remarked.
He didn’t follow when she turned away, his tanned cheeks warmer than just the heat of the sun could account for. Petulance? She knew what he was. It wasn’t like he was throwing a tantrum over not getting a sweet. But shame twisted uncomfortably in him. He didn’t know why he was in such a horrible mood, why he couldn’t stop thinking about his conversation with Verrena, why his past should be haunting him again now when his most fervent daydreams had come true and life had a purpose again. Much more than it had before, actually.
When he stepped back out of sight, Kai was there. The Dra glanced at him—the equivalent of a long gaze into the soul—and said, “You have been made as was intended.”
Normally, the Dra was the most undemanding company imaginable, but that comment was enough to make Ari glower at him. It smacked uncomfortably of divine purpose to his sensitized ear. It was several moments of characteristic silence later that he added, “What you become is largely up to you.”
Great. Just what he needed. More moralizing. Did he have a big sign on his forehead today proclaiming helpless child in need of instruction?