The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (47 page)

They were flying!!

Shakily he loosened his stranglehold on Pior, who threw him a good-natured grin over one slight shoulder.  He wasn’t very big, Pior, but he was definitely in control of this situation, sitting easily on the muscled animal and holding on to nothing but a very insignificant silken cord attached to an almost imperceptible bridle.

Ari started breathing again, feeling the thrill of this whole unbelievable episode begin to permeate his terror as he looked around.  The gryphons were headed almost due north, flying steadily, their lion bodies swaying gently in the rhythmic motion of those endless wings.  For a moment,
they settled into a glide as they caught an air current and all movement stilled.  Pale blue wings stretched out four yards on either side of Ari.  There was perfect silence and time seemed to stop as they hung suspended innumerable leagues off the ground.  Far below, the valley had disappeared, their flight already having taken them over the cliffs that bordered it, and the high forests of northern Cyrrh stretched out in glorious, rich greens and yellows and oranges, vast tracts of color laid out under a flawless sky.  He hadn’t felt this free, hadn’t seen such soaring perfection, since the High Wilds had captured his senses.  Elation filled him, blossoming inside him until he couldn’t contain it.  When the great wings began another stroke, he let out a whoop of pure joy.

Immediately, Zhimesse
’s ribcage swelled underneath him and the gryphon uttered a shrieking bugle that made him grab at Pior, half-appalled, half-exultant.  The sound was so fierce, so wild and free and so much more evocative of what he was feeling that a part of him couldn’t help approving.

“
Sorry!” he yelled at Pior over the rushing wind.  “I didn’t upset him, did I?”

The wind tore a laugh out of the rider
’s mouth. “Nah!  We don’t know why they make that sound—it’s only when they’re flying, when nothing’s wrong, so we just assume it’s love of life!”

Love of life.  Ari grinned, the wind dry
ing his teeth.  He was beginning to feel a current of affinity for these awesome creatures.

They flew for hours, the unimaginably vast panoply of the world rolling out beneath them.  The dwarfing enormity of it, the unbounded space, reminded him of that night at the Shepherd
’s Hall and the limitless infinity of stars…and the strange sense of Il.  It came again here, the indefinable nearness.  Curiosity couldn’t help but seep through his euphoria.  What was it about Il?  He existed in a totally different way than the other gods, followed different, grander rules.  The Illians were as odd as their religion—and why were they always outcast?  As if their ways were somehow incompatible with the rest of the Realms’.  He could understand why girls would have left hearth and home in the Ages of War.  Girls had a bum deal, for the most part, he’d always thought.  No chance for adventure or way to prove themselves…being a Whiteblade would be fabulous just for that.  And then, life was an uncertain thing anyway, back then.

But why now?  Why would any girl born in the last century give up comfort and ease and predictable peace for a life of scorn, sanctuary in the inhospitable shadows of Cyrrh at best and a price on her head at worst?  Did Il require this of those who followed him? 
How about the Addahites?  Maybe they had their own Realm, in a sense, but they were just as outcast as the Ivory, welcomed in neither the North nor Merrani and considered backward savages by everyone. 

The sun climbed in the bright sky, war
ming the world and bringing it into ever more brilliant focus, but it was still bone-chillingly cold up this high.  He couldn’t believe the temperature difference as they began to drop down in elevation.  He didn’t pay too much attention to their slow angle towards the ground until he realized it was coming up sharply to meet them. 

And i
t was a little unbelievable when, out of the leagues of identical tree-clad hills and gullies and rolling landscape, he realized they were aiming right at one high meadow at the top of a rocky peak…and a lone human.

It was the Fox.  The one that Traive had dispatched weeks ago, Ari saw as they honed in on him.  He looked pretty rough, hair unkempt, clothes even better camouflaged by the wilderness covering them, but he seemed perfectly composed, as if he was expecting them to drop in out of broad, empty sky
right to his little spot.  He and Traive put their heads together as soon as the gryphons landed.

Ari dismounted reluctantly.  Not only did it seem wrong to have those wings furled, their power and promise hidden, but there was a certain denial possible while soaring through clear skies.  He
’d left several problems back at Lirralhisa that now seemed to be catching up with him.  Regretfully, he patted the muscled flank as he stepped away.

They were on a flat, open place on the side of an otherwise steep hill, thickly forested and looking out over a vista that fell away in luscious rumples and curves.  Before them
, a grassy clearing of Cyrrhidean green was still bright and lush despite the crisp autumn air, smooth boulders of varying sizes scattered here and there.  The surrounding trees were in full, vivid fall color, cascades of bright yellow leaves twinkling like stars on the aspen trees and the maple leaves so red they looked like embers caught on the ends of the branches.

It looked like a painting.  An unreal setting for the unreal being that walked out of the woods.
  The Fox had disappeared into the trees while the Northerners were dismounting and learning how to walk again.  Now, before they could even get used to the resplendent surroundings, before Rodge had found his vocal cords again, the Cyrrhidean returned.

And
by his side walked a centaur.

The Northerners froze, staring.  His body swayed just like a horse as he sedately and with great dignity entered the
meadow, materializing out of legend into light.  Immediately, the little clearing seemed to shrink, and not just out of a sense of awe, overwhelming enough in its own right.

He was a Merranic-sized man,
affixed to a horse the size of a Northern draft horse, though considerably more graceful, and made even the gryphons seem regular-sized.  The horse part of him was silvery grey, a snowy white tail flicking elegantly at flies and swishing around the long, feathery white hairs of his fetlocks.  The face that sat on the broad, white-bearded chest gave off an air of deep, almost menacing solemnity, and the eyes…the eyes were old.  Old as the hills, old as the trees or skies.  Old as time, and deeply, humanly intelligent.

He came slowly to a halt, looking at each of them in turn, unhurried, as if seeing past their Northernness, their humanness
, into their insides.  His face was so stern it was a shadow short of a scowl and Ari waited with mounting trepidation for the eyes to reach him.  He didn’t feel quite up to a dissecting evaluation just now.  The centaur did look at him long and closely, but with no more change of expression or clue to what he was thinking than with any of the others.

No one said anything.  The air of intimidating authority was almost palpable.  Birds twittered, the underbrush rustled with small lives, but no human
voice upset the silence.  Not even Traive made an effort to speak and Ari figured he was probably the best versed of any of them in centaur social habits.  Who knew what cultural idiosyncrasies centaurs had?  Two-thirds of the party would have denied their existence a few minutes ago.

Tension began to mount, the
Northern contingent not used to such long silence in a social situation, until it was a positive relief when the centaur finally spoke.  His long, silky white beard, that joined into a long, silky white strip along his belly until they merged into the shimmery grey horse coat below his navel, moved and flowed with his speech like a rippling brook.

“
I am Silverene,” he said, his voice smooth and deep as the bowels of the earth.  “And I am the oldest of my kind.  This is Ebon, my great-great-great-great-grandson.”  They hadn’t even noticed the second centaur, standing quietly at the edge of the trees, so thoroughly did Silverene dominate the whole place.  The other centaur did look younger, and was coal black, even his skin so dark that Ari wouldn’t have thought it possible—much darker than his own.  His human hair was black, too, and tightly curled, and he had to be the most beautiful man any of them had ever seen.  His face was absolutely flawless, and still as stone.

Traive finally said something.

“We are deeply honored, Horselord.  We know it is no wish of thine to be sought out and disturbed, nor do we intrude on thy peace without good reason.  Long has it been since man has sought thy council, but we are sorely in need of it now.  We beg audience.”

Which was apparently still negotiable, despite the fact that he was there and they were there and they were talking to him. 
The tense air of anticipation crept back into the clearing as he remained wordless and unmoving.  He seemed to be brooding, weighing Cyrrh’s Lord Regent with those deep eyes.  Finally, he slowly and gracefully folded his four legs underneath him and seemed to settle, soft as a thistle head, to the ground. 

“
I will hear thee,” he pronounced, voice rolling out rich and smooth across the meadow.

With no urging, everyone sank into a seat on the carpet of grass.  He just wasn
’t the sort of being one felt one should be standing over.  The whole clearing was affected by this aura of awed respect, even the gryphons sitting as if on parade, wings maximally extended straight up, proud heads bent and motionless.

A reverent stillness settled across the clearing.  Even Rodge and
Cerise were temporarily tongue-tied.  Into this almost ceremonial atmosphere, Traive began to speak.

“
Cyrrh stirs, my lord,” he began in his smooth tenor.  “Enough that even the dull, crude senses of man can detect it.  Our beasts are restless, our dreams tormented.  The Dragons’ Lairs smoke, and the Ivory are vanished.  Long has there been peace in the Realms, but now even the Rach have thirsty blades and the Warwolves breed packs at a time.  The High Wilds tense in alertness and a Shepherd of Il has proclaimed the Peace is ended.  The First Mage foretells the coming of Raemon, with a new power that will destroy even the gods.”

“
And the Imperial Wolfmaster,” Traive gracefully indicated Melkin, “remembers an old legend.  The Legend of the Empress, and her sacrifice that entrapped the ruby god, and the origins of the Five Hundred Years of Peace.”

Silence built again as Silverene
’s penetrating eyes moved to Melkin’s craggy, watchful face.  Grey eyes met grey.  Ari couldn’t help but wonder if the centaur wasn’t just a little curious about what was happening out there in the rest of the world.  They obviously preferred isolation, but even so…

To everyone
’s surprise, Melkin spoke.  “It’s an imperfect memory, Horselord,” he began in his gravelly voice, watching the centaur closely.  “The Shepherd had to remind us of the Empress’s Statue and that the time of its effectiveness has drawn to a close.  But we are hoping there is a way to convince the Sheelmen that Raemon stays imprisoned, to forestall their rise to war.”

Still Silverene considered, looking at Melkin so long that Ari was sure if it had been him he would have fidgeted under that
direct gaze.  There was nothing more to say, it seemed.  They all sat waiting under the welcome sun, the breeze a cool, shivery thing this high and this far north.

Finally, after a silence so long that the sound of his voice startled them, Silverene spoke.  Solemnly, deliberate, he said,
“Thou speakest many truths, though thou dost not believe all of them.  Many more art left unspoken.  Why dost thou not tell me of the words of the Swords of Light?”

Melkin blinked.  He exchanged a fleeting look with Traive, who looked just as nonplussed and who answered quickly,
“We can find no Ivory to ask these things of.  Only one has the Wolfmaster met, who would say merely that the answer to his riddles lie in Cyrrh.”

There was another breathless wait. 
“And dost thou not consider she couldst say no more because thou wouldst not
believe
more?”

They all stared at him
, dumbfounded.  No, none of this had considered this.  In fact, it seemed highly irrelevant, all things considered.

“
Raemon no longer lies imprisoned; this is truth.”  Ari’s heart began to beat heavily at the centaur’s words.  There was a bliss to ignorance, he realized, dread beginning to weave through him like rising smoke as the words sunk in.  “But neither hast he returned.  He waits.” He surveyed them with those too-perceptive eyes, though it didn’t take much effort to read the varying shades of despair on every face but Kai’s. 

“
Thou must find the Statue.”  His words dropped like stones, each one like an individual omen, full of portent and cold as ice.

Melkin
’s eyes were snapping hungrily.  Hurriedly, as if afraid information was slipping away with every pause, he asked.   “Where is it, Horselord?  What is it about the Statue that holds power over Raemon?  How do we activate—or prevent—it?”

Silverene gave him a look of disturbing astuteness, as if he knew
the Master had questions Melkin wasn’t even aware of.  Another pause stretched out interminably.  “I do not know.  Il did not consult with me.  Nor did the Empress.”