The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (61 page)

Her pale, silken yellow eyebrows rose, “Are you talking physics?”

At which point such a torrent of technical jargon filled the air that it was barely recognizable as intelligible.  Her canoe drifted away.  Ari wanted to hit himself on the head with a paddle.

He heard them all afternoon, jabbering away in delight about mass and velocity, and was so glum by the time they beached the boats that night that he didn
’t say a word to anyone.  Why could he never get a moment alone with these women? 

All of them came in that night, except Adama and Brook, a silent materializing at the periphery of camp just as the party was finishing up dinner.  The group from the north went quiet, looking around.  Especially in the fog, and when none of them were moving or speaking, it was more than a little ethereal, like something out of a dream.  They had met everyone there—well, not been
introduced
—but there was an unmistakable otherworldly quality to them in that light, in that setting, that made them seem like strangers, like they were hardly real.  Like they were something out of a fairytale.

Sunny Jordan was there, unsmiling and
spectral.  Next to her, Rowena shimmered with almost celestial beauty in the misty light.  There was the lovely Dra Vashti, the one Rodge and Loren had nick-named Brown Beauty, hair stirring faintly in the currents of mist.  Across the clearing, the other Dra, the tall lioness named Atlanta, stood so absolutely immobile she could have been a statue in a garden of fog.  There was tiny, raven-haired Nerissa, and impish Sylvar, trying to weave a black-heart bracelet.  She was the only one moving at all, her little pink tongue protruding as she tried to grab the mewling, darting ends of the hickory twigs.

“Nothing has changed,” Dorian addressed them without preamble.  “The word the Messenger brought is not for us.  Nothing must swerve us from this path, nor are the stones that are being moved now all on our game board.  Our way lies straight before us.”   She had stepped away from the fire to the almost phantom-like circle of the other Whiteblades, and her voice floated back oddly disembodied, as if she
’d stepped into a place that lay at the boundary of northerner senses.  

The faces, bright in that odd way that had nothing to do with the ordinary five senses, showed no emotion.  Even Sylvar was still now, and the northerners were struck by the supernatural aura of the scene.  How long had it been since such a gathering had been witnessed?  For once it seemed perfectly appropriate that Dorian
’s words were veiled, her meaning hidden.  

Jordan broke the silence.  “I don
’t suppose we could put a rush on this…it
is
an unprecedented opportunity, their being so distracted and all.”

“How can we?” Dorian said huskily, fine voice thrumming with faint frustration.  “We are less than half.”   She gestured with one of her elegant hands at the circle of girls, mere whispers of vision in the quivering, mist-strewn light.  

Jordan, who was either a confidante or third-in-command, or something, said as if in reassurance, “Voral and Rhoda will be in soon after we’re out of the Swamps.  Verrena should be there shortly after with the horses.  And Rox and Yve will meet us at the Falls of Tiramina.”

Loren started, glancing at Ari. 

Dorian didn’t respond.  Without any word of dismissal or farewell, the Whiteblades melted back into the mist, and blinking, the northerners looked around at each other, like they were all waking up from the same dream.

Loren said in awe, “Voral…”

Ari scratched absently at his legs, itchy from where his trousers had been soaked in filthy swamp water.  Voral was one of the Great Heroes of the Realms, from the Ages of War.  Every Northern boy wanted to be Voral in the bruising game of Heroes Chance. 

“Yeah,” Loren said slowly, face lighting with excitement.  “Remember the rumor that he
’d been a woman in disguise all those years, had joined the Whiteblades after he was supposedly killed in that Merranic battle?”

Banion gave a great snort, hair flying up around his face.  “He was the finest blade that ever swung steel,” he said crushingly.  It obviously followed that he couldn
’t be female, or a Whiteblade.

Loren
’s eyes brightened.  He grabbed Rodge’s arm.  “Rodge!  Voral was the finest swordsman that ever lived!”

“Yeah, Lor, I know,” Rodge said impatiently, trying to extract his bicep.  “I was sitting right next to you in class when we learned about him.”

“The
greatest swordsman ever,
” Loren repeated buoyantly.  “Don’t you see?  There’s no way any girl playing a part could ever get to be that good—it’ll be obvious!”

Rodge looked at him like he was crazy.  “You wave a blade around in the air—it
’s not that hard.”  Ari, Loren and Banion all looked at him.  He was possibly not the best judge of swordwork in the Realms.

“Voral started at, what, seven or something, at the Merrani Academy
of Knights?” Loren asked Banion, who grunted an affirmative.  “How many girls you think get that kind of training today, could sneak through a crowd of Merranic boys pretending she was one?”  Banion frowned darkly.  “It was a once-in-a-five-hundred-year chance she got away with it.”  Banion glowered threateningly.  “Or
he
,” Loren said appeasingly, noticing the large and unhappy Merranic nearby.  “Maybe it’s all just make-believe.  All I’m saying is, we’re going to know.  For sure.”

“We still, however, won
’t know about your brain,” Rodge quipped, rolling his eyes.

A vague feeling of well-being accompanied the Northerners to bed that night, deepened by the memory of the mystical gathering of their escort.  Lying under the sweltering, bug-infested sky, Ari had the fleeting impression that they were coming to the end of this part of the journey, that these endless, grey days were finally coming to a close.  Maybe, finally, the emergencies and catastrophes and life-threatening dangers would taper off and he
’d have a chance to talk to one of these elusive women.

CHAPTER
29

Ari’d hardly been asleep more than an hour when it began to rain.  Stirring, awakened by the pattering, the Northerners sat up suddenly in surprise—the camp was seething with quiet activity.  Dorian was bending low over the fire, trying to bring it back to life.  Rowena darted in as they watched, arms full of long rope.  Her gentle face was a mask of intensity, the beautiful big eyes dilated with the dark—and alarm.

“We need to go,” Dorian said to them, noticing they were awake.  “Now.”

“It’s just a little rain,” Rodge protested.  It felt good, actually.  It wasn’t even cold.

Nerissa dashed into camp.  She was carrying all the wood she could, long, thick, knobby sticks of it.  She dumped it next to the rope and was followed promptly by Sylvar, who couldn
’t even see around her armful.  Deftly, Dorian thrust one of the sticks into the reluctant coals, and it flared into light.  She handed it to Kai, standing nearby.  Traive—they were the only two up—scooped up the rope and they disappeared down to the waterline.

Ari sprung up, rolling his blankets and readying his saddlebags, which seemed to inspire the others.  Something was going on, you could tell by the feeling of urgency, but he didn
’t know what.  Surely it was more dangerous being out on the water in this pitch blackness than it was to wait out the rainstorm in camp.

“What
’s going on?” Rodge said plaintively.

“It
’s raining.  Get down to the boats,” Dorian said briskly.

Banion stopped by the fire once everyone was ready, grabbing two more of the smoky torches, and they all headed down to the muddy shore.  Loren and Melkin
began to help tie the canoes together, and Ari, feeling useless, went back for an armload of torches.  At camp, Dorian scuffed dirt in the direction of the fire even as he bent to gather the last load, and without waiting, whisked off down the trail in front of him.

“Will these stay lit if the rains get worse?” Ari asked, for something to say as he
trotted after her.  Here was a few, brief moments to talk—

“It
’s greasewood,” she said laconically.  So much for a heart-to-heart.

The rain was coming down harder, and as they all got carefully into the canoes, a gust of wind sent the torchlight into ghoulish contortions.  Ari, with a faint sense of uneasy awe, thought they made the darkness even darker.  He couldn
’t believe they were doing this—you couldn’t see a thing. 

It was a slow, awkward start, partly because of the nonexistent visibility and partly because of the unfamiliar tugging of their connecting rope.  It wasn
’t long before they realized the dead, still water of the Swamp that had become so drearily familiar was completely different this night.  It surged under the canoes, fighting the paddles, driven by the rising gusts of wind and whatever other forces stirred its black depths.  The rain pattered harder, steadier, and the air was filled with the moan of trees and the keen of the wind through their branches.  Great swathes of the gauzy moss, torn loose, whipped through the air, swinging like vengeful ghosts out of the blackness so suddenly that it had them all on edge.

Cerise had already screamed several times when she let out such a prolonged, really meaningful one, that everyone turned to see what the matter was.  Ari, in the boat just ahead of theirs, saw Banion martially attacking a rat the size of a tom cat
that was trying to climb into their canoe. After flattening every inch of wood around it, he finally connected and it slid in limply two-dimensional form back into the water.

“Row, Ari!” Dorian shouted over the storm and he set to the oars with a renewed sense of purpose.  It seemed a long, long time before daylight began to slowly lighten things up,
and the Swamps (arguably not the most well-lit place on their best day) stayed deep grey as the day dragged on.  Although the usual heavy fog was in tatters from the rising wind, the sky was so stormy that it was dimmer than even a normal day in the swamps.  Dorian kept the torches lit.

They rowed, and rowed, and rowed.  They had all expected the weather to calm down as the day wore on, but it was growing unmistakably worse.  They were all drenched to the skin, but in the torrid
heat that wasn’t much of an issue.  It was the unrelenting energy of the storm that was so disturbing.  The deathly still water of the Swamps was surging now, tossing the canoes around and sending them back a stroke for every two pulls on the oars.  Limbs and logs and various creatures were being flung through the water, helpless in the current, careening off their boats and in the case of the bigger varieties, knocking them off course.  Airborne denizens, ability to navigate destroyed by the growing gale, smashed into them if the humans couldn’t see them coming in time to duck, and the flying branches became a real hazard.  One connected solidly with Banion’s head, snapping in half with a thunderous crack.  Ari turned in his seat in time to see the Merranic scowling at it and rubbing his forehead.  The end that had fallen in his canoe was the size of a small log and would’ve brained a normal human.

Through the rain, which lashed against them in great sheets, they could make out the Whiteblade canoes.  None of this appearing mysteriously out of the trees today.  They clung within sight of them, paddling skillfully to mirror the party
’s path when waves pushed them off course.  Ari didn’t even know how Kai was keeping track of their course.  He personally was so disoriented by the heaving water and the blinding rain and the occasional unhappy swamp bird in his face that he could barely follow Dorian, in the same canoe. 

Suddenly, Banion let out an enormous roar of warning.  Ari swiveled to look at him and his gaze snagged on what was undoubtedly the cause; plunging right toward them at an unbelievable speed was a whole tree, root system clawing the air.  It was almost a dozen yards long, and by some misfortune, they were traveling through an area open enough for it to
float almost unimpeded.  One of the two Whiteblade boats upstream from them aimed right toward it, suicidally trying to block it.  A whirl in the quite powerful current caught them—or it—and twisted the two apart.  Which was a relief for the watching Northerners, but didn’t solve the problem rushing toward them.

“Cut the ropes!” Ari heard Dorian screaming faintly.  Of course.  So they didn
’t all go down.  Frantically, he disentangled his axe, feeling like he had 25 thumbs.  He took a good swipe, hoping the razor sharp edge would part the rope with just one—and missed completely. Appalled, he set the edge of the blade right against it and began to saw frantically.  Banion was shouting at him to hurry, Cerise was staring unmoving just a few feet from him, her eyes fixed in horror on the arboreal death sweeping towards them, and beyond them, Melkin’s face was fierce as his rope parted under his blade.

Finally, Ari was through and almost instantly the boat behind sprang away, Banion roaring like the entire forces of the Stone were going to battle.  Huge muscles rolling under his soaked tunic, he projected himself and Cerise over the water like a catapult—Ari couldn
’t believe the raw power, or the speed.  For a moment, he was reminded so strongly of the Seawolves on the Merranic Fleet Sloop that it seemed perfectly right and proper for the little canoe to ram itself full into that log.

Banion did not spring from the greatest seafarers in the Realms for nothing, though, and this was no heroic suicide run.  He
’d hit the tree, floating lethally broadside, at such an angle that the current caught it, straightening it, and reducing the size of the missile hurtling toward them so that the newly mobile canoes could, with a bit of scrambling, avoid it.

Ari sent up a great, roaring cheer, and heard Loren take it up behind him.  He waved his paddle triumphantly at Banion, but the local hero was facing another attack—this one from a furious
, reenergized Cerise.  It was impossible to hear what she was saying, but it probably had something to do with using her seat as a battering ram.

Fortunately, it was one of the quieter spells, when the squalls died down, and Dorian got them all together and with considerable difficulty tied back together again.  And they went on.  Rowing and rowing and rowing and endlessly rowing.  Ari had once thought he could row forever.  It was so effortless, and with his big shoulders he had just never once gotten tired doing it.  By afternoon, his deltoids were on fire, cramping so badly he didn
’t know how he was going to go on.  Traive kept up a killing pace in front of him, grabbing at the roiling water with his oars, and only Ari’s pride in keeping the rope between them more slack than tight was keeping him going.

Fortunately, there were plenty of adrenaline-producing distractions that helped keep his mind off the discomfort.  Large water-borne missiles became the norm as the day stretched on.  The winds and rain worsened and grew
somehow wilder still.  The two Whiteblade canoes upstream moved farther out, to intercept more of the large-scale debris, but the current made for a capricious field—there was still plenty that slipped through or whisked in from the sides. 

They were so busy trying to stay alive that they didn
’t notice until several hours afterwards that night had fallen and that they were back to full dependence on the torches.  It was brought to mind by Dorian passing out replacements from her pile.   And the nightmare went on.   And the chaos continued.  And Ari began to wonder if it were the end of the world, or at least if there would ever be another world than this one…this rain-soaked wind-torn tree-tossing ever-twilight world of screaming turmoil.

He couldn
’t remember when there had been peace.  He couldn’t remember the sound that silence made.  He couldn’t remember when his shoulders hadn’t ached, though in truth they were so far beyond pain now that he could barely feel them.  Were it not that somebody kept moving the hands on his oars he would have assumed they’d fallen off.  The party hadn’t even taken a moment to eat for over twenty-four hours, and not only was the hunger another ache in his body, but he was getting lightheaded. 

His mind began to drift.  He warded off rats and half-drowned birds reflexively, kept rowing because that
’s all he’d ever done…for as long as he could remember, he was pretty sure he’d been rowing.  Hours passed.  Days, years, for all he knew.  And gradually, his dulled mind became aware, again, of that greater Presence, of Something Out There that was aware of him.  It was like he was lying out under the stars again, his mind overwhelmed by the majesty all around him, only this was a quieter, deeper kind of feeling.  He didn’t have the energy for euphoria. But in his utter weariness, he could see, in a sense.  See all of them down below, as if he’d been pulled up into the heart of the storm.  They were so…little.  In that entire great, deadly, swirling maelstrom, they were specks.  Why,
why
had they not been killed?  The chances were all against their survival, but that didn’t seem to matter.  Because a different surety was growing in his mind now, the same certainty he’d had the morning they’d found Cyrrh’s only spot of forbidden real estate.  They were being watched over, protected…and cared for.

An eternity passed.  He began to notice something.  He could see his feet.  They
’d been missing for hours, swathed in black.  He’d even tried moving them just to see if maybe he’d left them someplace.  But now here they were, growing clearer by the minute right at the end of his legs where they belonged.

It was getting light.  Blearily he looked around.  Not much had changed, except that sometime in the night the rain had stopped.  The local environment was still plenty frisky.  Dorian was looking at him closely and he spent a minute gazing at her.  She was glorious,
luminous.  She had risked—what?—on their behalf; it was indisputable that the Whiteblades would have been far ahead by now if they weren’t baby-sitting them.  The new warmth in his heart opened his eyes.  He gave her a dewy look, trying to convey his gratitude, how wonderful she was, how wonderful they all were.  She blinked at him, her eyebrows arching into her hairline.  Shaking her head in concern, she turned back around.

Another infinity passed.  He may have still been rowing.  He was sort of losing touch with himself.  The gloomy shadows of this never-ending world could have been dawn or dusk or anytime in between.  The storm-tossed trees and water all around could have changed slightly or might have been this way since the Upheaval.  Maybe this
was
the Upheaval, or another one—

This rather unproductive train of thought was broken by an event that had not happened in ages.  Maybe never.  The light around them grew bright, then
yellowish
.  Ari looked around stupidly.  It was everywhere.  He looked at Dorian for an explanation.  She was directing Traive, scouting while Kai spelled him at the oars, between some very close-growing trees.  And then, he suddenly realized what it was.

The sun was out.

And Traive had jumped out on dry land and was pulling his canoe up and out of the way.  Ari came back to himself with a start.  They were here?  They had made it?  Disbelieving, he forced shoulders suddenly very much in agony just a couple yards farther, then Dorian leaped light as a gazelle off the prow and Kai pulled him in.  Traive wearily helped him up, which was fortunate because his feet, in their wandering out of his consciousness, had forgotten how to do some of their required functions.  Stiff-legged, he walked up the sunny trail a short space—and collapsed.