The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (36 page)

“
And then it was that the Rach’s mind was cleared, and he saw that the wisdom of Il was greater than the longings of man.  With sadness, for dearly do the Rach love their freedom, he agreed, and Kaskari was commissioned to build as fast and as thick and as high as he could.”

“
So the Eastern Ramparts began to spread their strong arm across the mouth of the Sheel, and greatly was Kaskari honored, and when Rach Killayon was steelslain, the Rachar Stood for Kaskari, for his skill and his persistence and his humility and his wisdom.  Never again would there be a Rach who could not ride, but his reign, while it lasted, was filled with great and fierce joy.”

“
And it is said,” Noska dropped his voice, “that the day Kaskari was Banded Rach, a white gazelle came to the Ramparts, and, confused by the noise and mass of people, sought escape up the stairs to the Inner Ramparts and could be seen running along them in the dawn all along their many leagues…”

A slow, sly smile spread over his face as he scanned his grinning audience
, and his voice changed into the lilting refrain of a song.  He chanted, “
A white gazelle—”

Which was apparently a well-known favorite, for by the second line the entire camp seemed to have picked it up,
“
Mounts the Ramparts new—

It rose, swelling with a heady, toe-tapping beat as Rach picked up guitars and began to strum rich accompaniment.  Refrain after refrain drifted through the star-studded night, telling how the gazelle shook his horns at the new day, defying the Tarq, how he ran, tossing his head, to christen the great new thing under his dark hooves, how his coat shone white as starlight, his horns swung black and long and true, and his eyes gleamed like pools
in moonlight…

And how, from that day forward, neither gazelle nor the Empress was seen in all the Sheel, save for dire need.

CHAPTER 17

“We were being chased by man-eating monkeys?” Cerise stared at Rhuq in offended disbelief.

From the safety of several days in the future, the Northerners were finally able to bring themselves to talk about that dark first
day in Cyrrh—that plunging, terrified night of mounting horror that had been awash with a hundred things sensed rather than seen, devoid of reason, fraught with primitive emotion.  It hadn’t been a difficult subject to avoid, having made no more impression on their Sentinel escort than a windy day or a chicken bone in the dumplings.

When they had dismounted
, after that terror-stricken run, into the torch-lit courtyard of Choletta Tor, Copper Torque East Southeast, the stagriders had almost immediately begun laughing and joking in their low-voiced, unassuming way, drawing a crowd of Sentinels from the Torque.  Bright-eyed, eager-faced, the younger Sentinels begged the story from them with such casual banter that the Northerner youths had started to feel a little foolish, then ashamed, then flat out resentful that this intense, bone-chilling fright was being so lightly and enthusiastically bandied about.  Several of the party felt that they had been subjected to a completely unreasonable trial of mortal danger, and that all this frivolity was, frankly, inappropriate.  Rodge fumed under his breath as they were led inside the Tor, overhearing the soft boast that the first kill had been a 300 yard shot—in the dark, no less.

             
“Which I’m sure is very impressive,” he hissed virulently.  “So glad they’ve had such good sport.”

             
The boys lay awake a long time that night on the thick, rough stone of the Tor, unwilling to speak, unable to sleep with the adrenaline still perking through their systems.  They were ripe with sweat from the heat and the fear, quivering with memory, and wide-awake at every harsh cry from the nearby jungle, despite the comfortingly solid walls that enclosed them.  Rodge sat straight up on his mussed furs at the first couple.  The night was not particularly restful.

             
Melkin, though he hadn’t seemed near as perturbed as the rest of them, didn’t look like he’d had any sleep at all the next morning.  He came out with Traive and the Torlord through the same door he’d gone in the night before, baggy-eyed and ferocious, scorning the quick early breakfast and swinging wordlessly into his saddle.  And it seemed like they’d hardly been off the stags ever since.

             
Now, Rhuq was looking faintly insulted by Cerise’s assessment.  “The red-breasted gorilla is hardly a
monkey
.  They are but nodding cousins.”

             
Loren protested mildly, “But, isn’t it unusual for any of the ape family to be so…so…predatory?”

             
Rhuq half-shrugged, shaking his head.  “It is a very aggressive, purely carnivorous ape, true, but it is of Cyrrh.  And, well,” he said apologetically, “three-quarters of every living thing in Cyrrh is known to harm humans.  Most of them on purpose.”  Cerise and Rodge shared identical sarcastic looks:
oh, well, that explains EVERYTHING
.

             
Ari and Loren, used to hunting in a nice, sane world where the only things that didn’t run from them were the wild boars and the occasional irritable bear, found it strange to be…prey. 

             
Rodge was also not adjusting well to this new role in the food chain.  Melkin had had to flat out order him to leave the Tor’s compound that first morning, and he’d been complaining bitterly and with great constancy ever since.  The subject of his studies, his parents’ distress, the abuse of his personal rights—all had come up several times.  A day.

             
Cerise, to everyone’s shock, had taken the opposite tack.  She’d ostentatiously strapped herself into her own saddle every day.  She acquiesced demurely to every hint of command.  She never, ever interrupted.  The boys had not seen her perfectly–positioned teeth arranged in a smile so much since the attentions of the Merranic royalty, and it was all directed at Traive.  She became inseparable from him, chatting charmingly, shooting coquettish looks his way from under her lashes.  All the Sentinels were mesmerized by her blue eyes, and poor Rhuq was becoming more besotted the more she ignored him.

             
“That’s disgusting,” Loren muttered, watching her ride close to Traive.  “Surely he can see…”  He had his own case of hero-worship going on.  Not only was Traive quietly and immensely confident and in the possession of so far faultless judgment, but he was just plain likeable.  In such close and constant companionship, it was impossible not to see exactly what kind of men they were with, and it was strikingly obvious with what respect he was treated and how inerrant his decisions were turning out to be.

             
And at the end of a long, wearisome day in the saddle, around their small cookfire with Cyrrh closing around them like a stifling, black emerald shroud of shifting shadows and threat, it was Traive whose easy conversation brought reluctant chuckles.  Utterly unconcerned with the myriad potential dangers wheeling around them in the dark, he would speak calmly and normally of the everyday, joke with his men, courteously engage the Northerners…and tirelessly bend his mind to their puzzle.

             
“I wonder,” he mused one short night, and Melkin’s eyes immediately sought his across the fire.  Improbable as it was, they seemed to have formed a remarkable cohesiveness of thought, even if one mind went at a smooth and steady gallop and the other was on blast.

             
“I wonder if it’s not so much something hidden in the Statue,” he continued, bringing the rest of the Northerners’ attention to rivet on his steady face, “as something ON it.”

             
“An engraving!” Loren said, obviously thinking him brilliant.  Rodge curled his lip.  He was under the increasingly vocal opinion that this venture was a stupid reason to get killed.

             
“Or writing of some sort,” Cerise offered, eyes large and soft and fixed on the Sentinel leader. 

             
He nodded, not paying near enough attention to their contributions to suit either one of them.  “I know the written word is fundamentally important to Illians, perhaps—”

             
“They’re hardly going to write something on the Statue that would aid the Enemy in destroying it,” Melkin said bluntly.

             
“No,” Traive agreed, “but there might be an inscription that the Sheelmen could interpret to their own purposes, one that has convinced them that they could alter the time frame of prophecy, hasten the release of their god.”

             
“How would Tarq know more about the Statue than we do?” Ari asked, forcing himself to say the hated word.  He had better get used to it.

             
Several Sentinels glanced at him and Traive gave him a self-mocking half smile.  “We don’t use that word in Cyrrh—we’re a superstitious lot.  If you say it out loud, you’ll spontaneously combust, bring the Enemy to the Torques, set your house on fire…that sort of thing.”  His smooth, low voice was wry and several of the Sentinels chuckled at themselves.  “As far as their knowledge, well, Raemon had his spies.  And you can be sure the Enemy has spun a thousand stories of their own since their god disappeared.  True or not, they will have captured the Sheelmen’s imagination no less than our stories have ours.”

             
“That’s the problem,” Melkin muttered darkly.  “We don’t have any stories.  The Peace has faded into nothing more than an irrelevant tradition with origins we can barely even trace.”

             
Traive sat silent, thinking.  The firelight flashed warm gold across his blunt brown features, picking out the lighter glints in his thick hair.  “The Siren’s Song talks of the Empress as being deeply, mysteriously familiar with the ways of the Sheel,” he said eventually, in his even, moderated voice.  “She, of course, was Raemon’s deadly enemy, hated him and his minions and gave her life—literally, in the end—to fighting the evil he brought to whatever he touched.  It would be logical that she would have more knowledge of him than anyone.”

             
He gave a chuckle.  “The Fox were on her tail for centuries, trying to figure out how she came to know so much.  Her detractors claimed it was arcane knowledge, that she was a witch, an enchantress—one step short of Raemon himself and just as evil—but the fact exists that without her and the Ivory over the long Ages, there were many times Cyrrhideans would have perished.  In large numbers.”

             
“What’s the Siren’s Song?” Cerise asked sweetly, at the same time that Loren said, “But the Empress is gone.”

             
“But the Ivory are not,” Traive answered him meaningfully, before explaining, “The Siren’s Song is the national story of Cyrrh, an epic poem about how she came to be settled, the draw of her beauty—” Rodge snorted loudly “—her Great Heroes and Lesser Heroes, all the typical lore that goes with any Realm’s coming to be.  It’s a piece of great pride for us; we have a grand retelling of it every year at the Feast of Lirralhisa.”

             
“There’s nothing in there about the Statue, I suppose?” Loren asked hopefully.

             
Traive shook his head.  “The Siren’s Song was written centuries ago, back when it was only the Empress and her Hand, the Swords of Mercy.  It was before the rest of the
Ivory
came to be, let alone Montmorency.”

             
The Northerners bedded down for the night soon after that.  They were all exhausted from the apprehension attendant with this little sight-seeing trip and from its heat and discomfort, and usually fell into their blankets early.  Where they proceeded to toss and turn and wake wearily from all the apprehension attendant with trying to sleep in the same conditions.  The heavy Sentinel guard and the unsurpassable vigilance of their stags hadn’t as yet put anyone’s mind at ease.

             
Ari was the exception.  He was sure he was beginning to show signs of derangement, swerving unpredictably from morose conviction of his evilness to thrilled, adrenaline-pounding delight at the challenge and danger of the lush jungle around them.  It made him feel deeply, guiltlessly alive, this exotic adventure, a pure kind of intrepid enjoyment that could ignore his murky past, ignore his present genetic mess, ignore the unanswerable demands of a probably unpleasant future.  He could just
be
, thoughtless, in the moment.  Cyrrh was an equalizer; he could see now why Illians and Drae sought sanctuary here.  Red-breasted gorillas didn’t care anything about your lineage once they caught your scent.  Mirror-spotted bark frogs and passion-flower wasps were indiscriminate poison to white and dark skin alike.

             
Underneath all of that swirled another, blacker eddy of thought.  He could happily face Cyrrh’s dangers the rest of his life…and what if that life was short?  Who would mourn him?                These profound, if maybe not particularly healthy, thoughts allowed him to sleep blithely through the deep black, seething nights, several yards from his huddled companions, with only his own stag and the intermittent roving sentry between him and a dozen varieties of death.  The Sentinels looked at him in approval, except for Traive, whom he’d caught staring shrewdly at him several times.

             
He didn’t notice any of them tonight as he wandered off into his dangerous solitude.  He was stewing over the conversation, becoming less and less convinced that the Statue was really the key to this whole venture.  When it came right down to it, he was beginning to suspect that what Melkin really wanted was knowledge of the Enemy.  The Master was convinced, for whatever reason, that war was looming…and the Statue was the only lead he had, the only connection to the Sheelmen that would play the part of the enemy. So, what if there was another connection?  Others who knew about the Enemy?

             
He frowned at the thought, absently shooing a long, multi-legged critter away from his chosen bed-down spot.  They’d met a Whiteblade, had actually talked to her and asked her this very thing.  And she had told them nothing, told them to seek out Cyrrh, on the other side of the world.  Why?  Didn’t she know?  Was she playing with them?  The Whiteblades, the Ivory, were Illian, with an unimpeachable reputation for honor and honesty, but they were also known to play the games of power.  Banion claimed they manipulated people like toys, worse than any politician.

             
His thoughts swirled slower as he settled onto the soft ground, barely aware of the prickle of thick grass through his blanket.  Adama…he remembered piercingly that feeling of light and laughter and normalcy that had glittered in the air around her.  How could there be malice there?  Wearily, he pushed another thought out.  What if she didn’t know?  What if they had to find the Hand of Mercy—one of the first five Whiteblades?  Maybe this kind of knowledge was considered too precious for just any one to have…

             
He drifted, conscious thought blurring with unconscious, gaze mottling with sleepiness as he stared in a half doze into the night around him.  Fireflies had come out, twinkling magically against the backdrop of layered, impenetrable gloom that was the jungle.  Insects and frogs—several of them carnivorous—hummed and whirred and sang a frightful tumult of a song that was a lullaby to a mind empty of fear and purpose.