The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (6 page)

“
Now, there are four gods.  Eldest and chief amongst them is Marek.  Also, Vangoth, Laschald and Raemon.  Of them all, Raemon was ever the most restless, pushing the gods to teach man more, to teach him faster.  More and more his voice was ruled against in their councils, for he wished things that seemed more than unwise—dangerous and ill-intentioned.  In those days, the gods appeared often to men, and when Raemon, forever reaching beyond his bounds, proposed to take a wife from amongst them, the council ruled in outrage against such unthinkable sacrilege.  It grew into a fierce and angry debate, until the council was driven to such shocked fury at his intemperance that they charged him never to appear to man again.”

“
Raemon left them in a storm of anger, and appearing to those of his people loyal to him, led them from their homes to disappear into the wilderness.  Now, the settlement of man was called Ethlond, and though the first chords of strife had been struck, it continued to thrive, full of peace and beauty and only faintly touched by sadness.  For years, the people looked for the lost ones gone with Raemon, but never found a single sign of them…until…”

“
War came.  Driven by resentment, pride, revenge, and worst of all, ambition, Raemon had trained those loyal to him to take by force what had once been freely theirs.  They fell on the grandsons and granddaughters of those who had once been their neighbors, and great was the innocent blood spilled that day, for always it has been their way to kill heedlessly, with no thought of honor or mercy.”

“
The gods were deeply saddened.  It was to avoid war that they had wished to keep simple the lives of men.  Many years had they searched in vain for Raemon, hoping to make amends, but when they met him that day they found no hope of reconciliation.  Enmity had come to the world.  With sad and heavy hearts, feeling they had no choice, the gods taught Ethlond to fight back, lest they be destroyed.  Raemon’s men, whom he called Tarq—”

“
Tarq?” Cerise interrupted.  “I’ve never heard them called that.”

“
Shhh!” Loren hissed.

“
That’s what the men who fight them call them,” Melkin growled darkly.  She frowned, the firelight barely softening her thin features.

“
What’s that supposed to mean?”

“
RAEMON’S MEN,” Banion continued doggedly, “had brought with them their strange, soft metal, forged far beyond the lands of Ethlond.  In the necessity of countering these blades, the gods moved man forever from his first home.  Far to the north they traveled, to the mouth of the Kendrick where the iron ore lay thick and the land lay rocky, and rough, and defensible. And there they taught him how to forge steel and to make such blades as could never be defeated.”

“
But Raemon’s hunger was unquenchable, his quest for domination so relentless that the war of men became the war of the gods as well.  Raemon made the women of the Tarq to bear many children, so that his people swelled up like blood from a wound.  He gave them the thirst for fire so that they struck terror into the hearts of men with their cruel desire to burn all in their path.  He taught them how to throw fire with catapults, on arrows, at a quick touch of liquid.  To save their people, the gods were forced to respond.  They brought great Warwolves, born to hunt Tarq, from these wild lands around us.  They gave us fire-shedder and the knowledge of building with stone and of building ships to fight them at sea.”

“
And so it went.  On and on without hope of end, until all man knew was fighting and all the span of his years was spent in defense against the Enemy.”

“
Now, the Royal Line still lived, and in fact had borne men who became mighty heroes, of great valor.  There arose amongst them the mightiest yet, three brothers who had never known defeat, men of great skill with arms and keen judgment: Kendrick, Karl and Khristophe.”

Cerise snorted softly and Loren shot her an ugly look.

“I didn’t say anything,” she protested.

“
Well, roll your eyes quieter.”

“
There burned within their hearts,” Banion continued—he had the patience of a professional—“a great discontent and a desire to seize more aggressively the reins of their destiny.  So, they formed a plan and went to plead it before the gods.  At the Triele, for so the Temple was called when all three gods resided in it, they besought the priest, who in turn cried unto the gods until the Diamond, the Sapphire, and the Emerald began to glow and the gods came and stood among them.

“
What is it, my sons?” Marek asked of them.

“
O my lord Marek,” Kendrick, the eldest, implored, “We are sick and heartsore of ever defending against a dishonorable Enemy that moves about at his will, doing what he wills, as he wills.  Each of you, we beg now, take of us a people and lead us out against the Enemy, searching until we find his home and finally destroy him forever.  We are many thousands, and while these cities along the sea can be easily defended, a full two-thirds of our people might be moving forcefully to end this endless war!”

“
Now, the gods were greatly surprised by this, and not happy as you would think.  For always had it been their wish that man live in peace and ever had they hoped to win over their brother with soft words of reason and diplomacy.  They had taught man to live in harmony; they’d taught him the facts and skills necessary for survival, moderation and kindness and tolerance to strange ideas.  But man seemed to fall easily, eagerly even, into the ways of war.  They’d taught him nothing of courage, of honor, of boldness, yet the desire for these things seemed to well out of him of its own accord.”

“
What about women?” Cerise asked pointedly.

Loren ground his teeth. 
“Women aren’t in stories because we get quite enough of them in our real lives.  Now, be quiet!”

“
Unhappy with the war and saddened at the inexplicable turn to the ways of men,” Banion continued with hardly a pause, “the gods refused them.  But the Line of Kings is not so easily quelled.  The Brothers led many, many of their people who thought as they did.  They gathered them together and went again to the Triele.  When the gods came once more and stood among them and saw the fearlessness and determination of their people, they realized they were not to be dissuaded.  With great sorrow and reluctance, they finally relented.”

“
Marek chose for himself Kendrick and those who would follow the High King.  West they headed, into the wildlands, the huge Diamond Triele wrapped carefully in many hides so that its tremendous power would not destroy those who carried it.  Laschald chose the great archer Khristophe to lead his people south and west—for always their north had been free from attack.  They carried his great Emerald mounted boldly on a wagon (against his will, for he is a humble god), daring the Tarq to attack.  Karl had ever loved the rolling waves and endless horizons of the Eastern Sea, and so Vangoth, the most understanding of war of all the gods, chose him and his people as his own, knowing for a surety that battle would always be found at the edge of the Sea.”

“
But there was another brother, not yet a dozen years of age at the time of the Going Out.  His name was Kyle and his heart beat more fervently for war than any of his brothers.  Desperately he begged for a people to lead, to more thoroughly search the lands for the homeland of the Enemy, and furiously he denounced the gods when they refused him.  Nor did his spirit fade as he gained years.  At barely twenty, a fierce warrior, the most skilled horseman in the lands, and more deeply impassioned than any of his elder brothers, Kyle gathered troops about him of his own will.  By now, Kendrick was far in the northwest, finding fewer and fewer Tarq the farther he went.  Khristophe, too, fighting south of west, was running out of Enemy when he hit the Dragonwall.  Convinced the Tarq homeland lay on the other side, his last message read that they prepared to cross.

“
But Kyle, keen despite his youth, doubted his elder brothers’ logic.  With deep conviction he led his men, with neither Triele nor any guidance at all from the gods, straight south…and there his instinct was proven true, for there he found the endless swarms of Enemy.  There the Tarq had made their homeland—if such black hearts can be said to have a home—and there Kyle and his men had such a fight as had never been known.  They trickled around him, they set sail, they passed over the Dragonspine unseen…but their heart he had found, and their heart he drove before his sabre until they came to the lips of the burning Sheel itself.  And there, Kyle’s descendants fight to this day.”

Silence settled.  The boys were staring into the fire, dreaming of
blades and conquest and the Enemy and the gods.  Even Rodge said, with a vague, resigned sort of disappointment, “Don’t stop now.”  But Banion was quiet.  Beside him, Melkin looked barely human in the firelight, face like stone, dark thoughts gleaming unreadably through flinty eyes.

“
Hmmph,” Cerise said, unfortunately conversational enough for all of them.  “Utter nonsense.  No one knows how the world began, and the gods aren’t likely to be pushed around by a bunch of burly, brainless men.”

“
Ah,” Banion said with studied politeness.  Ari and Loren, disgusted at the instantly ruined mood, stood up and started clearing the area around the fire for sleeping.  “And what do they teach in the Empire?” Banion asked cordially.

“
Not stories—they teach facts for history,” she said with a touch of snobbery.  “They teach us how to think.”

Banion grunted, hefting his huge bulk off the log he
’d been using.  “In Merrani, the children know how to think.”

She shot him a look
laced with glass shards.

While Loren showed Rodge how to pad the ground with pine boughs under his greatcloak, Ari wandered one last time into the tree
line.  He almost stumbled into Dra Kai, and instantly felt remorse.  Here he was acting the child, listening to stories and headed blithely to bed, when there were men in the dark and cold standing guard.

“
Uh, I’ll take a turn at watch…” he offered awkwardly, and then, as the silence stretched and the Dra said nothing, he began to wonder what in the world he was doing.  Alone, in the dark, with a Dra.  He seemed bigger up close, the whip-cord body radiating menace, the dark, steady, dangerous eyes suddenly more predator than human.  Ari felt his mouth go dry.

“
There is little danger tonight,” Kai finally said, his low voice both chilling and oddly comforting.  It was almost inconceivable at that moment to think of anything that the Dra couldn’t handle.

Ari wondered about him as he snuggled into the thick curls of sheepskin lining his greatcloak.  What about the Drae?  Where did they fit into the story of the Upheaval?  Which of the Four Kings had they owed allegiance to… or had they? 
Which had they followed Out?  All he knew about them was their reputation as mercs, assassins, the most treacherous race known to man.  And what about these mysterious Addahites, hopefully hiding out somewhere in the surrounding vertical countryside?  When had the cult of Il started?

He dreamed that night as he hadn
’t in years, vivid and sharp, of the garden of his childhood, of a rollicking happiness that was more sensed than pictured…of the carefree contentment of a life before life’s awareness.   

CHAPTER 3

It may have been almost July, but you wouldn
’t have known it the next morning.  It was a stiff, chilled group that moved out into the brilliant sunshine and back onto the path.  Butterflies wandered among the wildflowers that lay in great swathes across the flanks of the hills, and the lacy green of the evergreens moved in a brisk morning breeze.  Bare trunks rose around them like columns in a temple as they entered a thick stretch of forest, bright sunlight filtered by the sweeping, fragrant green boughs of cedar and pine.  It was so exquisitely peaceful that Ari began to hope their search might keep them up here the whole summer.  What a place.

They lunched
sitting on a soft carpet of pine needles, and were still riding through forest that afternoon when a plume of smoke became visible through the thinning trees.  Once they’d broken into the clear, they saw it was attached to a little log cabin, nestled a short distance away into the flank of a steep hill.  Everybody sat up alertly, the desultory conversation ceasing.  The dreamlike peace of the ride had lulled all of them but Kai (and probably Melkin, who didn’t seem the sort to notice flowers and butterflies unless he was pinning them to specimen boards).

There was something poignant about that little
cabin all alone in the huge, silent, desolate wilderness.  It seemed absolutely appropriate that a doddling, white-bearded mountain man would come out of the door as they approached, or perhaps a work-worn couple with gnarled hands and faces old before their time, taciturn and suspicious of visitors.

Instead, as they neared, they saw neat fencing, a modest herd of contained sheep, and a single—young—man kneeling busily on the ground in the center of the
m.  He raised his head at the sound of their horses’ hooves, released what turned out to be an extremely relieved lamb, and came over to them with a broad, welcoming smile.  He couldn’t have been more than 17 or 18, and was not at all dirty, shaggy, or crawling with visible lice.  His figure was clothed in rough homespun, but was well-formed, with the right number of appendages, and neither halt nor twitchy.  And the warm brown eyes that greeted them sparkled with lively intelligence and good humor.  If he was an uneducated, malformed savage, he was sadly lacking in the appropriate regret.

“
Well met, friends,” he greeted them genially, his husky voice rich with accent.

He reached over the fence to
shake the hand offered by Melkin, who’d dismounted, and then turned to Cerise.

“
My Lady,” he said, with such profound reverence that Cerise decided she could dismount with the rest of them.

“
Forgive me, but I’ve only the contents of my backbag to offer as refreshment,” he began hospitably, but Melkin waved him silent.

With shocking graciousness, the Master said,
“We are well fed and rested.  Our thanks.  What do ye here?”

“
Ach,” he shook his head in boyish ruefulness.  “We lent our ram to a needy neighbor this spring and he got to these ewes late.  The lambs are just now ready to travel.”

Loren peered around Ari with a smirk to see how Cerise was taking this earthy
bit of information.  As long as she wasn’t talking, Ari figured they were doing well.

“
What brings ye to these parts, may I ask?” the young man said, with a courtesy you rarely heard in the more civilized North.

Melkin, completely out of character, leaned casually on the fence rail, watching the sheep and looking more human than the boys had ever seen him.

“We’re looking for the old lore,” he said quietly, conversationally.  “We’re from the University at Archemounte, researching stories of the Empress.  Addah seemed a good place to start.”

The group looked at their first Addahite expectantly, waiting for the derision, a cloud of disbelief across that open face
perhaps, a patronizing smile…instead, his eyes lit up and a big grin flashed even white teeth into view.  “Ah!” he cried in delight.

Rodge glanced at Ari, raising eyebrows that said volumes.

“Alas,” the smile faded a little as the young man shook his curly brown head.  “I am the only son in my family and never had the chance to acolyte.  I know of Il and His Ways, but of other things…not as much as I would like.  What you need, friends, is a Shepherd.  If any were to have lore of the Realms, it would be he.”  He glanced behind him at the sheep.

“
If ye are willing to walk a slow pace, I will lead ye as I take these to the high pastures.  There is a Shepherd’s hut on the way and ‘twould be my pleasure to have your company.”

“
Kindly offered,” the stranger in Melkin’s body demurred. “But we would not hold you up if we could help.  I have been much in this country and would find it fair if ye could just point the way.”  The boys glanced at each other.  Where was Melkin?

The young man laughed, a little surprised. 
“That is an unusual thing for a Northerner!  How come ye to know this trackless country?”

“
Wolf,” Melkin answered quietly, which not only seemed explanatory, but earned him a respectful dip of the head.  Ari’s red brows knit.  What did that mean?  How many faces did their Master have, anyway?

“
Well,” the young man turned briskly to face north, towards the endless tiers of rising mountains.  He pointed a little east of north, towards a faint path that seemed to shoot perpendicularly up the side of the nearest hill.  “Take this path to the Wanderway—naught but an overgrown creek by now—cross, then turn towards Clawside and ride, oh, around eight hours or so.  If you’ve not found it by tomorrow evening,” he said cheerfully, “you’d probably better head back to the creek and start over.”

Rodge, used to directions in terms of street numbers and distances in terms of blocks, hissed,
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” as Melkin thanked him.  He was still muttering in disbelief when they reached the base of the hill a short distance away…at which point he seemed to lose the power of speech.  It
was
an almost ludicrous incline. 

“
Dismount,” Melkin tossed over his shoulder as he flung a leg over his blue roan.  “Save the horses.”

“
For what?” Rodge demanded.  “Isn’t this what they’re FOR?”

Banion rumbled from behind him,
“You’ll want them with enough energy to outrun wolves or bears or the like.”  He sounded optimistic at the prospect.

Rodge
dismounted promptly.

They started up
, and within minutes, everyone but the inhumanly fit Dra was panting, the horses blowing and tossing their heads in protest.  Rodge, in a horrible mood, had to tug his fat, lazy pony every step.  Every other step, he panted, “Stupid horse!”

Loren
turned and grinned back at him, unable to resist saying, “You’re the one who chose an oversized radish to head into the wilderness on.”

Despite the long legs on Melkin
’s roan and Cerise’s spirited mare, it wasn’t long before Ari and Loren passed them all, their nimble Aerach half-bloods agile as mountain goats on the steep, uneven trail.  They were the first to top out into the broad green meadow at the top, and with legs and lungs on fire stood gasping until the rest of the party showed up.

A good-sized stream, shallow enough for an easy ford, lay across the little meadow
, and after the horses had cooled enough to drink, Melkin led them across.  On the other side, he turned unhesitatingly east and Ari saw through a cleft in the trees the jagged, scarred surface of a mountain’s granite face.  It was a strange feeling, stepping away from that track, faint as it was, and into the unmarked wilderness.  Ari and Loren had been doing it for as long as they could remember in the forests around Harthunters, but it was a little different up here.  Starkly more wild, for one, the country raw, and unpeopled, and dangerous. 

They didn
’t travel long.  Dusk fell like a curtain and, despite their weariness, everyone scurried to make camp and a fire before the dark closed in around them.

Maybe
it was the excitement of their travels that had relaxed his dedication to social muteness, because as Ari began to put a dinner together, he dared to ask Melkin, “Did you study wolf up here?”  They were all gathered close around the fire, bonding in solidarity against the huge night.  There was no answer, not surprisingly, but Melkin’s face, when Ari glanced over at him, seemed…sad.  A trick of the firelight, surely.

“
This is home to the great Warwolves,” Banion said into the ensuing silence and Cerise immediately threw her head back as if to implore the stars.

“
Oh, great,” she muttered.  “Not again.”

“
Warwolves are real,” Loren told her belligerently.  “There are still people alive that have seen them.  We just don’t use them anymore.”

“
I know that!” she snapped back.  “But I hardly think we were about to receive an educational lecture on their physiological make-up!”

“
No,” Banion agreed, heading off an argument.  “Perhaps you’d rather discuss gryphons?” he suggested.  Cerise lifted her lip like she wanted to growl at him.

Ari gave him a grin and got a broad wink back.

“Gryphons are real, too,” Loren said obstinately and Rodge and Ari both shot him level looks.

“
Now you’re just being cantankerous, or whatever you country people say,” Rodge accused him.  Everyone was tired and quarrelsome, and Ari, already hearing a night of bickering ahead, pleaded suddenly, “Banion, tell us about King Khris and Cyrrh, and the gryphons.”

Cerise groaned.

“Ah…” Banion said with pleasure, probably foreseeing the same sort of evening.  “…A land woven out of legend, screened from the rest of the Realms by mist and myth and mystery…”

“
And the Dragonwall,” Rodge noted dryly.

“
Indeed, indeed,” Banion agreed.  “Khristophe thought them but a great range of mountains, not knowing they were a spine, splitting what would become Cyrrh and the Northern Realm—”

“
The Empire,” Cerise corrected primly.

“
—all the way from the Bay of Baeroon to the Swamps in the south.  But the biggest surprise lay on the other side, for no sooner had they crested the pass at Jagstag than a whole new world met them—a world of strange trees and stranger creatures, a world of torpid heat and tempestuous weather.  The few messages that made it back to the people at the Sea were full of excitement, for there were no Tarq and great beauty in the new land.”

He paused for effect, unneeded as everyone was already waiting for him to say the words.  Even Cerise seemed resigned to her fate.

“Then the message pigeons stopped coming.  For years, nothing was heard from King Khris.  When word finally came, it was grim and fierce.  They had not found Tarq, as everyone feared, but they had found…dragons.  Great scaled reptiles were these, with maws of fire and huge clawed feet that shook the ground as they walked.  Taller than the trees they were, and full of hate.  So relentlessly did they hunt man that Khristophe called them Steeds of Raemon.  In terror for his people and in great peril, he consulted the Emerald, whose brilliant rays alone seemed to deter the monsters pursuing them.  Laschald, in great sadness at the evil thing Raemon had done, confirmed that the creatures were his watchdogs…and then he gave Khris the secret to their defeat.  To a great valley he took them, deep in the heart of the new land, and there, where seven falls tumbled over sheer rock cliffs, the most beautiful creatures ever seen flew in the spray.  They were gryphons, natural enemies of the dragons and fierce and dangerous beasts.  Laschald taught his people how to tame them, how to ride them, and how to fight with them.  And that is why the King of Cyrrh is called the Skylord, for that is his true Realm, and only by owning it can he hold the gem of a land beneath it.”  He wrapped it up quickly, as Ari was starting to dish out dinner.

Loren sighed happily, testiness forgotten.

Cerise clucked her tongue in irritation, delaying her first bite to say, “What is it with you all and your stories?  When there are real issues out there needing our attention.  Now.”

“
They’re interesting, and they teach us history,” Loren said around his mouthful of beans, good temper restored.

“
They’re
stories,
” she emphasized. “There’s nothing factual about a single bit of that
and
it all happened thousands of years ago.  We’re here now on important business.” She may have faltered just a bit at that last.  Seeing as they were chasing down the legend of the Empress.

“
Queen’s business,” Rodge agreed gravely.

They found the Shepherd by the next afternoon.  A faint trace of activity worn into the grass turned into a faint path that eventually grew distinct enough you could call it a trail.  Near its end they met a grey-haired man coming out of a cozy little hut, similar to the young Addahite’s only smaller and more ornate.  The door was gorgeously carved for a place sitting out in the middle of nowhere.  In fact, it was more than a little disconcerting to travel leagues and leagues through empty, unmarked wilderness—then run smack into a single, solitary individual.