The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (58 page)

“Look!” Rodge shouted, pointing deeper back into the pool, where the water was rippling madly.  The ripples were heading right toward the two in deep water, and whatever was causing them was moving fast. Several people began to yell, urging Cerise out.  Tekkara had pawed herself into an even deeper hole and Cerise was so low in the water now that her legs were covered to her knees, black, gooey water sloshing up into her lap.  She had seen the ripples.

Then, the water parted here and there, revealing a water serpent the diameter of Ari’s leg, propelling itself through the pool so fast that Ari realized the two were never going to be able to get out before it reached them.

“Cerise!” Ari yelled, adding his desperate warning to everybody else
’s, and Dorian’s voice cut sharply across the din in a freezing command, “Stay out of the deep water!” as he nudged his gelding instinctively toward the two trapped in the pool.

Cerise herself was screaming, white face turning in panic from the snake to her horse, then back to the oncoming monster.  Tekkara, half-maddened with fright, could not get enough purchase in the slippery mud to get back up on the ridge of firmer ground. The whole pool for yards back into the trees was roiling now, whether because there was more than one snake or, terrifyingly, because this one was so big.  A quick, frantic look showed segments of grey-green coils surfacing out of the water as far back in the gloom as the eyes could see, a seething mass of undulating, perpetual waves.  

Suddenly, there were Whiteblades everywhere.  Bows snapped and arrows sang so fast it seemed like the trees themselves were firing.  The snake blossomed with arrows, the water turned reddish with blood from dozens of wounds…but it still sped on, not even slowing, bristling like a porcupine.  Tekkara had lost her mind, whirling Cerise around in a circle as she plunged madly in an attempt to escape the horror hurtling towards her.  Barely two yards from the mare, the snake’s triangular head erupted from the oily black water, big as Banion’s outstretched hand, mouth yawning open in a silent song of horror. There was a sick, lethal kind of beauty to it, that sleek-scaled face, the curved fangs almost a foot long, the slit pupil of its eye gleaming with a dead, intent light.  Ari had time to study it at length, it as it made gratuitous entrances into his dreams for the next several nights.

Cerise, barely hanging on in the churning water, saw the open mouth and screamed with such terror that it pierced Ari
’s heart to the quick.  For years, whenever a woman screamed, the picture in front of him now blazed into his mind, the sound the essence of every unthinking fear of every diabolic happening of their journey.

  It was the worst nightmare Ari had ever been awake for.  And though it was happening at what seemed like the speed of light, time seemed to slow.  So clearly that it might as well have already happened, they all could see the inevitable assault, that point when the water snake would reach either Cerise or the mare.  Some of the Whiteblades had waded in, rushing toward it and still firing, but it was as if the serpent was propelled by evil itself, an invincible speed denying the laws of physics, unswerving and implacable.  Kai, too, ignored Dorian
’s warning and plunged back into the pool.  He reached Tekkara just as the snake did.  Momentarily protected from it by the mare’s pivoting body, he reached up and grabbed Cerise, paralyzed by her terror despite the hysterical screams.  He yanked her off the mare just as the hideous thing rose up and struck—sinking the entire length of its fangs into the floundering neck of the mare.

Someone threw a beautifully aimed axe at that exposed head, biting deep into the snake
’s body just behind it.  Immediately, it gave a great spasm, releasing its hold and wallowing around in a tidal wave of slopping black water.  It had happened so fast that waves almost engulfed Kai, who’d already been knocked aside by Tekkara and almost gone down.  A dozen hands reached out to him, pulling him up the slippery bank, taking Cerise from off his shoulder. 

Tekkara, within seconds, was strangely, utterly calm.  She was abruptly motionless, the wildness completely gone from her, head beginning to droop despite the heaving waters and the thrashing coils of snake brushing up against her. 

Cerise was lifted up to Banion’s saddle.  She was sobbing uncontrollably, staring wide-eyed into space and shaking so badly she could hardly get a breath.  They gathered worriedly around her, trying to soothe, but she seemed beyond them, her terror so real and raw that Ari felt his eyes water.

“We must move,” Dorian said, her voice carrying clearly over the other sounds.  Melkin whirled on her, glaring furiously, and Ari quickly interfered, pleading, “Can we give her just a few minutes?  She can
’t even ride like this.”

“There are many more predators than prey in the Swamps, and they will not waste opportunity.  Do you want to be around when the things that eat
that
come to feast?” she answered gravely.

Ari looked out at the pool.  The serpent had stilled, its body wound over and around itself in such a tangled mass of coils as it floated on the surface that it must have been endless yards stretched out.  He gulped.  As he watched, Tekkara, very peaceful, sank down to her knees in the water, her muzzle disappearing beneath the surface, her eyes gazing blank and calm at nothing.

“She’s already dead,” Dorian said gently, following his gaze.

“And so was Cerise almost,” Melkin spat, splashing over to her.  “Is this the price you
’re willing to pay to save a few extra days?  Is it worth this?”  He flung his hand out at the scene.

She looked him steadily in the eye, articulating clearly and firmly, “You are not under my authority.”  She turned and walked away, pausing to look back and add, “You have chosen this trail; know that on it, we do not have the luxury of regrets.”

Melkin, breathing hard, spun on his heel and crossed back to his ugly blue roan, flinging himself up on its back.  They moved out, Cerise cradled protectively in huge Merranic arms.

The horror hung over them like a cloud, impossible to forget with Cerise
’s dry, heaving sobs sounding out hour after hour.  Finally, thankfully, she fell into exhausted sleep, but the tense vigilance didn’t fade.  Every pool was a potential snake pit, every vine and drapery a malignant evil ready to drop and snare.

Kai continued, with amazing unconcern, to plunge into the water, making Ari shake his head in wonder.  What was it about the Dra that could ignore something as deeply repulsive as
that thrashing pit of water full of serpent?  Ari’s admiration for him grew the longer he rode the trail with him.  He wanted to be down on the ground, too, bearing more of the burden of dragging his friends into this cauldron of peril.  How could Dorian be so calm?               

Dark thoughts swirled restlessly in his unhappy brain as they pushed on.  But, then the scenery around them began to change and he looked around with dread, paranoia doubled.   Downed trees rose in enormous, tangled, ghost-like piles around them.  It must have been a huge storm, a windfall, because they were everywhere.  For once, their trail lay very clear in front of them.  Others had used it, for it been cleared, the sharp ends of cut logs showing dark and slimy as they passed through what was little more than a narrow corridor between them.

Almost an hour they trod carefully, warily, between the haphazard lengths of colossal trunks, their branches and roots wound and crushed and enmeshed together like an impassable fence of vegetation.  It was worse than the endless vista of gloomy pools; at least there they’d been able to see what was all around them.  Here, the cleared path was barely wide enough for two horses to pass, the maze of trunks and branches rising sometimes over their heads—and capable of hiding all sorts of imagined terrors.

As the afternoon dragged on, mist began to filter in, making the passage even more creepy.  Half-seen phantoms and half-heard sounds came
spookily to brains whose eyes and ears had never registered them.  Then they came around a corner of brush, and Dorian and Kai both slowed warily.  There was something solid up there.  The mist was getting thick, but not that thick…and it didn’t resolve as they drew closer.  They came to a stop within a few seconds, able to make out the shape of a huge fallen tree trunk.  It was so big around that resting in the boggy water it still rose high over their mounted heads.  Blackish mud coated everything nearby, and the surrounding tangled landscape showed marks of recent trauma, freshly broken branches jutting sharply in the air, others in crushed splinters beneath the giant’s own.

In despair, several of them looked back over their shoulder.  It was a long way to backtrack around this maze, with no idea of how far around they
’d have to go to find another route.  But to cut this, clear it…it would take days even using every bit of steel they had with them.

Dorian stood, musing, while Kai worked his way to the top of the trunk, standing up to report, “The trail goes on.”

Nobody wanted to say what was in their minds.  To leave the horses not only seemed a desperate step, but positively cruel if you considered what they’d be leaving them to.  But they were all wary of Dorian by now—her judgment was proving alarmingly harsh.

It was the silence that was so uncanny, Ari decided, hunching down in his saddle while they waited.  In the jungle there
’d been a cacophony of sound, so unrelenting that strange ones didn’t really have the chance to affect you before a hundred others had replaced it.  Here, there was just the occasional burst of noise, each one alien and disturbing.  He was looking around, trying to pierce the dense, spectral landscape, and that’s why he saw her.  She oozed out of the grey mist between two logs, making everybody else jump, and walked up to where Dorian stood.

“It
’s Nerissa!” Rodge said in hushed amazement.  Looking closer, Ari thought he might be right.  The rippling waves of black hair were in a thick braid, but the face was the same that the Sentinel’s picture had brought to Ari’s memory.

She was talking quietly with Dorian, and they saw her put out a slim brown hand and touch the log.  She was tiny, coming only to Dorian
’s shoulder, but she had that same easy-moving confidence of the other Whiteblades.

“It
is
black-hearted hickory,” they heard her say with a touch of excitement, “freshly downed.  There’s a chance, but we’ll have to move fast, while the heart still beats.”

This didn
’t seem particularly clear to the party following.  While they were trying to makes sense of it, Dorian nodded as if it was all perfectly logical, and stepped out of the way.  Immediately, Nerissa began to feel along the log, running her hands rapidly along the smooth grey trunk, her dusky little face held close and attentively to the surface.  She came to the edge of the cleared trail, logs rising up like a twisted, impenetrable wall in front of her.

She frowned, telling Dorian hastily, “I need Sylvar.”

Sylvar.  The boys exchanged looks in recollection.  This was turning into a veritable re-creation of Cyrrhidean storytales.

Without waiting to be called, another tiny little person wormed her way through the log barrier—a rather shocking person.  The mist didn
’t help, but she was disconcertingly colorless.  Her hair was flat out white, pulled off her temples with a leather thong, and her skin didn’t have an ounce of pigment.  Light grey eyes dancing with life glanced at the group, stopping when she noticed Traive.

“Hello, Lord Regent,” she said gaily.

His tanned face broke into an amused smile and he bent courteously over his arm.  “Lady Dancer,” he drawled.

“Can you pay attention for two minutes?” Dorian asked her, a little touchily, and she wiped the smile off her face and hurried over to Nerissa.

“They found a replacement quick,” Loren muttered.  She was unexpectedly lively for a corpse thrown up on a wall of fangvine.

She and Nerissa muttered for a second, bright white and silky black heads looking strange bent together, then she took off like a stream of smoke through the obstructing branches, writhing so lithely through the gaps that she seemed almost to flow. 

Everyone waited nervously back on the trail.  The place seemed to eat things up, to consume like it consumed hope and light.  But in a minute, a happily disembodied voice called out, a little muffled, “Got it ‘Rissa.  Just chop right over the top of it?”

Nerissa called back, “Yes, but carefully—and be ready to move out of the way!”

The little white wraith had left her bow and quiver behind, but the rest of her load of equipment had gone with her, and they began to hear the muffled sound of an axe biting into wood.  And then something stranger than anything they’d seen yet began to happen.

The tree began to moan.  There was no denying it.  It was coming right out of the big log and it was accompanied by the unmistakable signs of trembling.  Mouths dropped open, eyes went wide, and they all backed the horses (who needed no encouragement) up a couple paces.

Kai still stood boldly up on top of the thing, his corded body riding the agitated log like surf.  Nerissa spared him one worried glance, but her attention was almost completely on the tree.  It was becoming impossibly mobile, writhing around enough to lift itself out of the few inches of water it lay in.

“A little more, Sylvar!” Nerissa cried encouragingly.  The dull, bass moaning grew louder, the movement more pronounced
, until the trunk literally leaped out of the water.  Then, surpassing even that astonishing act of arboreal agility, it threw itself wildly to one side, almost pinning Nerissa.  Dorian yanked her back so swiftly the eye couldn’t even follow it.