The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (24 page)

Karmine, last of the
Royal Blood, last of the Imperial title, enveloped by the stark realities of the Ages of War, had given up everything:  all responsibility and all ability to help, lead, or protect her people.  This was an inexplicable act, literally an impossibility for any Northerner.  But in the moldy remains of History in that little room in the Archives, Sable had found a few short, unbelievable sentences of corroboration.

And why?  Why would she do this
?  

For love of Il
.

Sable had
not fully accepted the reasoning by any means, sure there was some essential element to understanding that girl’s brain that she’d probably be forever ignorant of…but she’d surprised herself by coming to a sort of truce with the ideology.  Perhaps Il existed as the
concept
of love.  Whatever the specifics, just accepting the strange idea of love being a power, a sort of force all of its own, had changed things.  Her sterile life of duty and politics and service and ceaseless striving seemed suddenly lighter, brighter, undercut with meaning and oddly aglow with hope.  So, now, the diamond-hard determination with which she faced this Kingsmeet was overlaid with a fine lacework…of peace.

This was the Royal mental state when Melkin was announced the afternoon before the Ceremony.  She rose, smiling, and crossed the room to greet him, but he rebuffed her with such an i
rascible glare that she changed tactics and settled for a soothing murmur of welcome.  Behind him walked a boy she hardly recognized.  The flaming hair and brilliant eyes had to belong to the scared, speechless student Melkin had dragged into her sitting room months ago, but there the similarity faded.  This was a confident young man, tall and broad of chest and shoulder.  He met her eyes squarely and even managed a passable bow.  Far from looking overwhelmed, he seemed…preoccupied.

“
You’ve stirred up a snake pit with this,” Melkin accused her bluntly, in his chatty way.

“
I thought it necessary.”  She read wariness in the lined face.  Of her?  Of the Kingsmeet?  Well, she hadn’t done it to earn popularity points. 

“
Cerise has been keeping you in touch?” He was terse to the point of rudeness, a pleasant change after all the fawning and manipulations of the past few weeks’ road trip.

“
Mm,” she affirmed.  “It doesn’t look like your discoveries have eased your mind any.  Give me your report…I have a feeling your point of view may differ from Cerise’s.”

So he talked about the statue—Cerise had barely mentioned it, and very dismissively—and of Kane and Perraneus and Vangoth and the sudden friskiness in the Silver Hills.  He told her about the suspiciously motive-less bandits and Selah and Rodge and Jaegor and the Whiteblade Adama.

Ari wasn’t paying much attention, rather busy with self-pity, but he perked up his ears at that.  All the wonder, the thrill, the hunger for answers that Adama’s presence had stirred came back to mind, a searing longing across his life.

Finally, too late in the evening for any hope of seeing the
festival outside, they took their leave.  The only good part of the night was when the two decided that the boys and Cerise—Melkin seemed much more resigned this time—would accompany him on to Cyrrh. To pour salt in the wound, when Ari crawled into bed shortly after, dejected and resentful, he had to listen to Rodge and Loren go on and on and on, rehashing their entire glorious afternoon’s adventures.

CHAPTER 13

They hadn’t been asleep long when Banion was nudging them awake, saying something at an uncompromising noise level.  They sat up blearily and sat staring for a moment before their sleep-fogged minds pieced together the clues around them—the Kingsmeet!

Banion had been through the wild pasturelands of their heads with the shears last night, so they didn
’t have to worry about combs, and Sable had provided them—no surprise—with new breeches and doublets in the sturdy browns of the Northern commoner.  They tumbled downstairs in an excited thunder of big boots and elbows to each other’s ribs, grabbed buns from the breakfast table and rushed into the common room where they were supposed to meet.

Cerise was there, and they came to a skidding halt
when they saw her, eyes wide, buns halfway to their guts.  She spun condescendingly for their benefit, pleased at their reaction.

“
Do you like it?  Real Cyrrhidean silk, at a price you could
never
get in Archemounte.”

The boys just stared, aghast. 
“It looks like someone’s been sick on it,” Rodge said.

It was an excellent time for Melkin to stride in
, neither speaking nor pausing, and go right out the front door.  Banion followed, long legs making up in ground what Melkin covered with pure energy.  Ari looked around. 
No Selah
.  This just wasn’t going to be the same without her.

“
Where’s Kai?” is what he asked, though, and Banion tossed over his shoulder, “With the Drae.”  He was resplendent in formal dark blue and grey, with immense black highboots that probably could have held Selah…if she’d been there.

Drae.
  It took a moment for that to sink in, and Ari felt a tremor of anticipation ripple through him.  Today was going to be the most exotic, exciting, wonder-filled day of his life—he could feel it to the toes!

They pushed out into the street, already alive with talk and vendors chanting and people in their bright good clothes starting to line the processional route.  A juggler tossing three balls the colors of the Trieles sidled across the road in front of them on stilts.

“I don’t know why they call it a Kingsmeet, when there’ll only be one King,” Rodge said as they wound through the crowds behind Melkin and Banion.  “We got a Queen, a Skylord, a Rach…”

“
Hush up, Rodge,” Loren said happily.  He and Rodge, amongst other adventures, had fallen in with a group of drunken Cyrrhideans last night.  He was now convinced as if by augury that it was his destiny to love a Cyrrhidean princess.  Privately, Ari thought the Daphenian wine their companions had shared with them had probably played a small role in this newest obsession.  Ari scowled a little as Cerise regally moved up to the front of the group, her nose so high in the air he was surprised she didn’t trip.  How was it she’d had a chance to get out last night and indulge her horrible taste in festwear while he was stuck in an endless recap of their last months’ adventures?

“
Marek’s moneybelt,” Loren breathed.  They were walking down the main Northern approach to the Compass—the central square where the ‘Kings,’ such as they were, actually ‘met’—and they could see clearly that for almost a hundred yards on each side of the road, stretching to the square, the street was lined with Drae.  Dozens of immobile, lethal, silent sentinels.  The crowd was hushed here, hanging back behind the partition of killers a little uneasily.  The lurid panoply of color inescapable along any other Crossing street seemed to fade, stilling into lines of unmoving bronze skin and black leathers.  There were no weapons at a Kingsmeet—they’d left theirs back in the rooms—but every Dra wore double-hipped swords, tied down.

Melkin, not to be intimidated by a couple assassins, walked right down the center of the street, all the way to the Compass, where they found Kai in the northeast corner.  Eyes roving the crowd, he almost absently stepped aside when they walked up, making room for them to pass into the spectator space right behind him.

The boys looked at each other in joyous disbelief—front row seats!  The wealthy and probably high-born members of the crowd behind them grumbled and shot them nasty looks, but nobody was going to get too worked up with all the Drae around.

“
Really,” Rodge mused, thinking along the same lines, “they’re perfect crowd control.  Who’s going to start trouble with a Dra?”

“
And they owe allegiance to no Realm,” Loren agreed breathily.

“
Don’t swoon on us, Lor.”

“
Rodge,” Loren almost begged, “Please keep your mouth shut.  Just for today.”  This was right out of his and Ari’s daydreams.  They might as well have been reliving history from the Ages of War.

“
Me?” Rodge asked innocently, then said, “Look: there’s that First Mage guy with all the prediction problems.”  Across the road, the northwest corner was apparently reserved for Merranics, milling around behind the wall of lean Drae like a herd of turkeys hemmed in by hunting hawks.  They could see Banion over there with Perraneus, still in his long blue robes, from the glimpses they got between his oversized countrymen. 

The Drae lined the roads in from every direction, Ari noticed,
and wondered with awe how the Realms could ever have been in danger with that kind of fighting force available.  Their numbers must have been low, too, back then, worn thin by the attrition of war.

They waited, shifting impatiently.  Mornings in the south were not the cool, fresh, crisp things of summer in the north of the Empire, and the afternoons were sweltering.  These crowds and the stifling, packed activity of Crossing would only make it worse.  Ari was glad Kingsmeets
started early.

Suddenly the familiar throb of drums, still faint with distance, began to pulse through their boot
soles.  The desultory conversation picked up and people started craning their necks and fidgeting.  The Drae, unaffected as steel, stood motionless.

With agonizing slowness, the drums drew closer
, and soon a rush of excitement swept down to the center of the square.  The various monarchs had been spotted, though still out of sight for those near the center, the drums keeping them in step so they arrived simultaneously at the Compass.  Over the gurgling babble of the throngs of people, music came faintly across the air.  It was an old, old processional, played by every Realm’s band so that it crescendoed from every direction in unison.  It was stately, dignified music, but Ari felt his blood stir as the sound of wild piping—definitely not from the North—began to arc impishly over the sedate melody, whispering of adventure, of exotic climes, of a wild freedom.

The music swelled, becoming so
loud you could hardly hear anyone talking even in your ear.  Rodge nudged him and he swiveled his head to see Queen Sable coming into sight from the north, walking slim and erect in crisp snow and scarlet, the sun blazing off the jewels nestled in her dark hair.

Then Loren was pulling at his arm from the other side, so crazed Ari figured he
’d been stung by a bee or was having a seizure or something.  He turned to find the heir of Harthunters literally unable to form words, eyes bulging.  Exasperated, Ari had to lean around him to see what he was so spasmodic about…and then he understood.

Stalking proudly towards the Compass from the
west was the biggest, most brilliantly beautiful creature he’d ever seen.  Its head looked like a gigantic eagle’s, set with fierce golden eyes and with a huge beak that was bridled in intricate gold.  That head and the enormous wings—held rigidly straight up for a towering four yards or so into the air—were covered in silken feathers of dark emerald, the underside and the breast brightening into vivid tropical green.  Somehow, the deliberate pacing of talons almost a yard across looked nothing like the awkward steps of a grounded eagle.  And melding smoothly with this beautifully plumaged front…was the tawny body and flanks and long, lashing, tufted tail of a lion.

Ari had to remind himself to breathe.  It was gorgeous.  It was unbelievable, a shattering of everything that qualified as
ordinary.  The crowd on either side of this wondrous creature drew back behind its curtain of Drae, eyes wide and mouths in almost universal O’s. Most of them, Ari saw, looked terrified.  There
was
a distinct air of lethality about it, stunningly beautiful or not.  That beak, those razor-sharp talons…they were big enough to be a threat to a horse, let alone a man.   Ari spared a glance at Rodge and burst out in unheard laughter.  Both he and Cerise probably would have lost their lower jaws if they weren’t securely attached by overused muscles.  Their lives would never be the same.

The gryphon, for that was surely what it was, drew closer, and Ari noticed a man walked next to
it, overshadowed in every sense of the word.  Dignified, slight, with a thin gold circlet on his white hair and dressed all in inky dark green, he paraded next to the creature’s shoulder.  The glowing gold back was taller than his waist.  Behind him, huge velveted paws kept easy, graceful pace with the ponderous forefeet.  There were two gryphons that walked under the evergreen, turquoise, and gold banner of Cyrrh, the second a smaller, more delicate and strikingly paler version of the glorious creature in front.  Its wings were a soft, pale green like new leaves, the lion’s end fawn-colored.  This one was accompanied by a young woman and Ari glanced at Loren knowingly, hardly surprised to find him with his lips between his teeth and staring in avid interest.  Ari hoped for her sake she wasn’t royalty.  Or even available.  Loren could be hard to shake once he got set on something.

The drums were so loud now
you could barely think.  All the monarchs had reached the edge of the square, at least the ones Ari could see, and so suddenly that it seemed like he’d stopped breathing, the music ended.

Of all that vast throng of people,
no one made a sound.  A bird flew irreverently overhead, but otherwise silence hung suspended like a physical pressure over the square.  The boys gazed raptly, trying to take it all in.  Then the Merranic drums started a slow, trilling roll, and as one all the monarchs recommenced their march…four zephyrs…blowing in from every point of the compass, to meet, and whirl, and coalesce into…what?  A storm?  A soothing breeze that would calm the clamor?  The whole world seemed to be holding its breath as the drums rolled on and on in an agony of suspense.

At the center of the square, at the Compass, there was a
low, raised dais of worked stone.  Each monarch, in measured, mirrored steps, mounted his or her respective side and came to a halt facing each other over the center.  Ari strained to see around bodies and gryphon wings to the Aerach approach.  From the glimpses he’d had, the fabled Rach looked like just a more expressive version of Drae, though their leathers were natural-colored.  The drums suddenly sped their tempo, lilting briefly, then ending in a crashing, triumphant flourish that made the previous silence insignificant. 

Tension mounted almost unbearably. 
A tiny, teasing breeze barely ruffled the hair on Ari’s forehead.  No one even blinked, they were so afraid of missing something.  Finally, Sable’s clear, deliberate, feminine voice split the silence.

“
I am Queen Sable, of the Northern Empire, and I do summon thee, my Brethren, to this Meet of Kings.”  She reached out one arm, draped in sheer white, and held it palm down over the center of the circle.

“
I am Kane, King of the Eastern Seas, Defender of the East, and I do hear thy summons and come to Meeting,” Kane thundered, so Merranically that several people jumped.

In a much feebler voice, though wonderfully pure, the man who
’d paced the green and gold gryphon called out, “I am Khrieg, of the endless forests of Cyrrhidia, Lord of the Skies and Sentinel of the West, and I do hear thy summons and come to Meeting.”

Of all the strong voices that rang out over that square, Ari thought the last the most affecting of all.  It was vibrant with energy, throbbing with life and power and purpose, and he bent his neck around in a renewed urge to see what sort of man it came out of.  It clanged through the silence like a call to arms,
“I am Rach Kyr, of the unchanging vigilance of the Ramparts, Shield of the Sheel.  I do hear thy summons and come to Meeting!”

As each man spoke, they had reached out their hands to cover Sable
’s, and now they all said in unison, “Welcome, Brethren.”

The nudging Ari had been subconsciously aware of fulminated abruptly into an elbow in his ribs.  It was Loren, physically towing him along after Melkin and Rodge, who were already disappearing into the crowd behind them.  Cerise gave them a withering look as they passed—probably jealous she wasn
’t accompanying them.  Melkin had told him last night they’d leave before the ceremony was complete.  He threw more than one regretful glance over his shoulder as he followed in the Master’s wake, now even more sorry that he was going to miss any of this.

The Kingsmeet itself was held underground
.   This was supposedly to protect it from attack, four Kings in one swoop being considered quite a prize in the old days.  The monarchs would enter from the Compass, the raised dais sliding back to reveal the broad ceremonial stairs.  But there were stairs from north, south, east and west for the non-royal attendees, and the North’s was now set at the back of a fine jewelry store.  The owners had decided the advertising value of such a thing far outweighed any benefits of tactical disguise, and had decorated the brand new door with the Triple Mountain in garish real silver.  Melkin rolled his eyes as he swung under the gaudy, red and white ribbon-bedecked lintel.

They hurried down the well-lighted staircase and out into a broad, high corridor, coming to a stop outside a remarkably spacious
assembly chamber.  Inside, it was so thoroughly graced with gaslights and fresh flowers that it hardly seemed like they were underground at all.  The hall continued on and Ari assumed that would be the direction the Kings—and Queen—would arrive from.  Sure enough, within a scant few minutes, sounds of activity began to drift down from that way.  Another few moments and Queen Sable appeared, Prime Councilman in tow, sweeping up to them and then past, into the chamber on their right.  Behind her came the Rulers of the Realms, a surreal parade of magnificence, of Blood, of the very Line that had led people for three thousand years—all in front of Ari, the lowest-born commoner imaginable.  They were impossibly, overwhelmingly regal, and he was so lost in the sensory overload of what was happening that he almost missed it.

Suddenly, Melkin threw an arm out in front of him and Loren, saying quickly,
“The boys are with me.”  Bewildered, Ari looked over in time to see the eyes of the Rach and his Councilman just sliding off of them, their faces identical masks of startled intensity.  The Rach’s companion had his hand on his belt, as if he’d reached for the sword that wasn’t there.