The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (50 page)

             
“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 people 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.

She fumbled her way into her room at last—it was at least a league further down than she remembered—and closed the door and locked it behind her.

“Your Majesty,” Evara said in alarm, rising to her feet.

“I won
’t require anything tonight,” she managed out of unfeeling lips.

“Are you all right, Your Maj—”

“You may retire.”

Bewildered and worried, her maid hesitated, wringing her hands and staring at her mistress for what seemed an Age before finally withdrawing.  Then, finally, Sable could move shakily around the chamber, blowing out the lamps until the room was blessedly dark and no one could see her loss of control streaking down her face.  She was a Queen, she told herself, and a grown woman.  I will not cry like an overwrought teenager, she told herself numbly, insensible of the wet tracks racing down her cheeks.

She stumbled over to her favorite cushions, thrusting her head out the window as if at least that part of her might escape this crushing, hopeless ache threatening to smother her.  A cool wind feathered her face with the fine grains of sand they called sheeldust, like an invisible mist.  She didn’t care.  Didn’t care that her face would be a muddy, tear-tracked mess.  There was a cavernous hole in her heart that could never, ever be filled.

To have looked all these years for this, without eve
n knowing she was searching…then to have found and lost it within the space of a moment.  What a funny, cruel world it was.  She wept without knowing it for a long time, dwelling on the richness of the man she loved, the surge of feeling sweeping through her, the utter void at the knowledge that she had to leave him.

It was very late and her mind was dulled and spent from the onslaught of emotion when a thought came drifting to her, like a puff of breeze off the Sheel.  It was the memory of her conversation with the
Aerach women over a dead crocodile. 
They will speak of Il as men do,
Taneh had said, with the eyes of a woman twice her age. 
Of His might and will and honor and strength.  But we know the truth.  That He is the God of endless comfort, the God of more-than-death, the God of life-goes-on.

The God of life-goes-on.  The Shepherd had made alive that vision of a
God of great love and it had struck her forcibly, beguiled her with the thought that there was more to life than duty.  And now, now she understood.  The thought of that love that had upended her nice, ordered little royal life sent a fresh lance of pain through her tattered heart.  Through it, a dull rebellion seeped.  If He was a god of love, in charge of all things that had been and were and were yet to come, why would He let this happen?  This crippling sorrow that drained her like an upended bucket?  Wearily the question ricocheted around the emptiness inside of her. 

It shouldn
’t have surprised her that Karmine came to mind—sometimes she felt like she never left it—and suddenly another thought sifted through the gloom of her despair.  Karmine had perhaps been asked to give up her throne for her all-seeing God…maybe Sable was now being asked to take hers up.

But, she owed no allegiance to Il. 
Her brow furrowed, eyelids feeling puffy after all the weeping.  Wide-eyed, she stared out at the huge, silent, moon-silvered world.  A whisper stirred her mind, like a breeze that couldn’t be felt, and gradually a great Presence moved through her, around her.  She couldn’t breathe at the immensity of it…
He was there.
  All around her.  She was enveloped by a sense of vast support, of timeless love, of a Presence so enormous that it surpassed everything that was.   This was not the dry collection of ideologies she’d always pictured Him as, but a rich, pervasive, living…BEING.

And her tears changed from the hot, stinging acid of self-pity to
a warm, gentle, healing flow of wonder, of comfort, of gratefulness.  It was going to be all right.  She would be able to live a semblance of a normal life, perform her duties—not because she had no choice, but because He had given her the strength to make the choice.  Indescribable peace washed over the rough, raw wound of her sorrow.  In the sudden certainty of His existence, where there had once been only dry, shriveled skepticism, she knew, with a sense of profound wonder, that she would be able to handle anything—war, Kyr falling, the loss of her Empire.  Unthinkable things—it was as if nothing could shake that inner surety, that calm power that seemed to buoy her up.

No wonder all the words to describe Il had always seemed so sentimental, so incredible
; they were so inadequate.  For all the superlatives offered by the power of speech, they were just shadows, like seeing Il through a mist.  He was so
big
. So beyond any human experience.

When the Sheel began to lighten under her unseeing gaze, she came back to herself and rose stiffly from her cushions.  She wanted to be out there, out in that huge land of no boundaries where Il could flow around her in His own immensity.  The room suddenly seemed a prison, a reminder of a life of sadness and useless toil that she was now free of.

She cleaned her face and changed, heart beating quiet and steady despite the dull ache of the thorn of her love for Kyr.  She must leave, of course.  It would be unbearable to stay.  But first she needed this morning.  One last, brilliant morning in a land she loved, with the power of Il a bright sunrise around her.

Far before sunrise, the Hilt was up and active, though she passed down the stairs without acquiring Rorig.  Outside, Kore had just come out of his tent
, and he stopped mid-stretch when he saw her.  He came over, transfixed by the look on her face.

“My Lady Queen?” he asked softly, touching her arm.  She understood now, all the touching the Rach did.  Why would you not, when people were so precious?  She felt like her heart would burst from the love she
’d been shown.

“Kore,” she said warmly, “I would like to ride in the Sheel this morning.  Can you arrange it?”

The slightly puzzled smile disappeared right off his handsome face.  “My Lady Queen,” his voice was stilted and serious, “the Sheel is danger itself—it is no place for a casual ride.”

She gazed up at him peacefully, teasing gently.  “It has been many months since any Enemy has been seen around the Ramparts, despite your ardent hopes to the contrary.  I haven
’t the faintest doubt that it is safe.”

He was shaking his head.  “It is impossible to predict the Sheel.  I would not endanger you out of a false sense of security—”

“I am choosing it.”  She was tranquil, sure, and unswayable. 

He began to look concerned as he realized she was determined to
go through with it.  “You do not understand,” he tried urgently.

“I wish it, Kore.”

For a moment, he just stood and stared in disbelief, half-hovering over her as if already protecting her.  Torn between obedience, duty and honor, conflicting emotions raged across his open face.  What a friend he was! 

“Now, Kore,” she said, very gently.  To see the sun rise on the Sheel…

Looking like someone who was ripping his own guts out, he spun sharply away from her and called to his rillian, “Tarran!  Get a cyclone spun up.  We ride from the gate in five.”  The man’s eyes went huge in his brown face, but he dashed off.  Kore turned to look for one of the ubiquitous stable boys, one of the youngsters that hung out at the Stables just to have anything to do with the horses.  One had been listening and with a shocked face was already scurrying towards Filigree’s stall with a saddle.

It literally was no more than five minutes before she was mounting Filigree, who tossed her pretty head in delight at the outing, and heading toward the big, iron gate in the Ramparts, a grim Shagreen tautly by her side.

Six warriors waited for them there, decked out in leather armor over back and chest, thighs and forearms.  No threads or tidbits of metal decorated these bridles or saddles, nothing to catch the sun and give away a position.  There were no billowing white blouses, either, and not a whisper of laughter or joking or pranks.

Sable barely even noticed them, eyes fixed on the peachy-pink sands beginning to show as the heavy points of the portcullis were pulled up into the air.  It was like a portal opening, revealing the way to a new world, a new life.

“Lady Queen,” Kore said, low and pleading.  “Let us ride the Eshaid.”

But she shook her head wordlessly, knowing all Rach knew instinctively what she had just recently learned.  The Eshaid was a safe, lifeless wasteland, the Don a green pearl in all its still folds.  The Sheel…the Sheel was a wild, fierce, vibrant infinity, like the Rach, full of life itself.  Like her God, breaking through all her defenses so she might know His love.

It was exquisite to walk those sands, to feel the breath of eternity brush her cheek, to gaze on endless horizon in three directions.  It was awesome to see the sands blaze into brilliant orange as the rays of the sun crept over them.  Overwhelmed, she rode lost in thought and wonder, everything new and fresh, her life flooding with understanding and thankfulness.

Finally, she looked around and saw that they were riding basically a hand
’s breadth from the wall of the Ramparts.  Stifling a sardonic smile, and realizing at last what an uncomfortable outing she was making for the conscience-stricken Rach, she reached out and patted Kore’s strong brown hand.  His face was a mask of intensity; she’d never seen him like this.

“All right, Kore,” she said ruefully.  “We can go back.”  She hadn
’t even finished speaking when he’d snapped out a command and the group began to tightly turn, seemingly on top of itself.  “Thank you, my friend, I know this—”

The world exploded in sand.  Horses shrilled, and suddenly, the Rach were shouting, and there was blurred action all around her.  What had happened?  Where there had been nothing but utter peace and silence, now everywhere was bedlam.  She couldn
’t make out a thing for all the fine, blowing sand—then she heard the unmistakable crash of blades and felt cold terror grip her heart.

NO. 
What had she done?!

Confusion held her motionless.  She wouldn
’t have known what to do even if she could comprehend what was going on.  Her brain was numb.  And then, she felt dry, strong hands clutching at her, her legs, her waist, her arms, coming like disembodied claws out of the swirling clouds of fine sand.

She screamed in fear and revulsion and gave Filigree her head more out of accident than choice.  Instantly, the little mare reared, neighing her outrage and almost unseating Sable.  Sheel-bred to her dainty hooves, she lashed out with her forelegs and Sable felt the jolt as she made a very solid connection.  But still, the hands were unrelenting.  Kyr
’s words came back to her, revitalizing her with desperate energy.  Frantically she fought them off, wanting to climb up on the saddle to get away from that ceaseless, psychotic, faceless grasping.  But then one got a good hold that she couldn’t shake, around her arm—and pulled her from the saddle.

Instantly, she felt them pressing in close around her, stifling the breath from her, confining her so that she could hardly struggle, a claustrophobic nightmare.  A hand closed over her mouth and, jerking and straining with all her might, she was dragged down, down, down, through sand and choking sheeldust, down into the utter, silent blackness of a tomb.