The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (56 page)

“At Montmorency, it sounded again, a call to arms as the Empress and Raemon were being transformed.”

“You said it couldn
’t be blown,” Loren said, confused.

“Yes,” she said with a patience they would all come to know very well.  “That
’s why we felt it was significant.”

A profound silence, rich with unsaid comments, suffused the group.  It was difficult to know where to begin, several of them felt, breaking such nonsense into bits that could be dealt with.  And there was something a little intimidating about Dorian
’s vast self-composure, her utter confidence, that made the silence stretch on for a minute.  It would be unrealistic, however, to expect her little tale to pass
completely
without comment.

  Delicately, Cerise asked, “You were there, I suppose.  Saw all this for, er, yourself.”

“No,” Dorian averred, and a quick flash of triumph swept across Cerise’s face.  “The Followers had split their camp, supporting different flanks of the attack.”

“Who are the Followers?” Rodge asked absently, not having been paying too much attention the past months.

“They are,” Banion grunted exasperatedly.

“But,” Ari protested, feeling like they were getting off subject, “how did you KNOW?”

She shrugged liquidly.  “That is the way Il works.  Such knowledge is His to give.” 

“You told an entire warring world they
’d have centuries of peace based off a stream of coincidences and a highly unlikely event that you didn’t even witness?”  Melkin summarized with barely suppressed acrimony.

She looked at him steadily.  “Il is not a man, who comes to us in person and sits down for conversations.  His Ways are not ours.  Before you came to know the woods, did a scuff of dirt or an overturned leaf mean anything to you?  No, they were nothing but part of the scenery.  But after you could read the signs of the wild, you could say clearly that an animal had passed here or a wolf made its kill there.  Like the forest, Il is not a book to be read, whose pages can be flipped and whose purpose is to answer the questions of His creations.  He becomes known through His ways, and by the grace He imparts.”

Who knows how long the stare-down between her and Melkin may have gone on if Banion hadn’t asked, “What happened to the Statue after the, uh, transformation?”

“For a while she stood in the Palace courtyard at Archemounte, guarded closely, but as the centuries wore on, the memories wore off, and she was moved into a side yard in the Western Gardens.  We took her from there, bringing her back to southern Cyrrh and hoping the
secrecy of the jungles and forests would serve as better protection than all the publicized pretensions of the Realms.”

“What would have happened if the Sheelmen got to her?” Melkin asked.  Dorian, to everyone
’s further amazement, shrugged.  “We don’t know.”

Eyebrows went up around the fire.  “We chased that Statue all over the Realms like the waters were coming in from the Eastern Sea—for no reason?”  Melkin said, low and tight.

“I didn’t say there was no danger.  I doubt the Tarq would have destroyed the Statue with the risk of destroying Raemon with it, but for them to be in possession of it would have been grave enough.  That means the Empress would have awoken….in their hands.  Besides, your sense of urgency brought you here with extraordinary timing.”

“How long has she
not
been a statue?”  Banion asked in a resigned sort of sarcasm.

“Quite some time,” was the poised and unapologetic answer.

As they readied slowly to bed down that night, Rodge admitted, “I’m not sure things are all that much clearer, now that we know everything.”

“It
’s ridiculous,” Cerise half-hissed.  “This elaborate deception and over-involved storyline to explain what I’m SURE is a reasonable explanation for five hundred years of no conflict—one that doesn’t involve broken horns and teenage girls out saving the world.  Something a little unwholesome about a bunch of girls hanging out together…”

“Let them play their roles,” Loren chided her mildly.  “You can
’t tell me there’s anything unwholesome about Dorian, or that one we met in Merrani—”

“Adama,” Ari supplied absently.  He was wondering how to get Dorian alone.  Maybe if he offered her his cloak to sleep on…

“Adama,” Loren said easily.  “They ooze goodness…”

“They
’re not painful to look at, either,” Rodge added, and he and Loren exchanged contented glances.

Dorian was nowhere about, and Ari finally, reluctantly, turned in.  She had informed them all that there was no reason to post guard shifts, and Kai, tellingly, had bedded down with the rest of them, an almost unprecedented event.  So perhaps she was standing guard.  Traveling through the jungle, Ari had missed the thick padding of the greatcloak to sleep on, but he would have gladly given up a pile of down mattresses for a chance to ask a few questions of that Whiteblade.

It was pitch black when Ari opened bleary eyes the next morning, wondering for a minute what had woken him.  What with the late night, they’d barely been asleep even a few hours.  Then the soft sound of voices and rattle of pans over the fire made him sit up in surprise. 

Dorian had not left them.  She was sitting, uncompromisingly beautiful this early in the morning, fussing with the fire.  Kai and Traive were both with her, murmuring, and as Ari watched, Melkin rose and joined them.  He threw off the corner of cloak he
’d been laying under and rushed, without much grace, to join them.

“Ari,” Dorian greeted him quietly, looking squarely into his eyes as he hurried up.  Without a lot of social dexterity, he blurted, “Why are the Asps after me—us?” 

She raised one of those exquisite brows.  “You don’t believe in waking up slowly, do you?”

He flushed, mumbling an apology, realizing he
’d probably interrupted other conversations.  But Traive flashed him a grin, and even Melkin didn’t say anything, perhaps out of self-interest.  Melkin could forgive a lot for a few answers.

She moved back a little as Traive began with breakfast, but, to her credit, didn
’t try to avoid the question.  “The White Asps are mercenaries—to think they are personally interested in you or your activities is almost without doubt inaccurate.”

“Then who
’s hiring them?” Melkin demanded, his low voice even more gravelly after a night’s sleep.

She hesitated.  “We are not completely certain.  They are being paid quite well, though,” she said at length, “which explains why they
’ve been so conscientious in their pursuit of you.” 

“They are after me, aren
’t they?” Ari asked quietly.  In the face of her obvious interest in him and her matter-of-fact tone, it didn’t seem so ridiculous to say it out loud.  None of the men around the fire thought so either, their eyes all glancing over to the goldenesque creature sharing their fire, waiting for confirmation.

She nodded.

“
Why?”

“We don
’t know for sure,” she said again.

“For women willing to forecast a lengthy world peace on the strength of a hunch, I would think you could go out on a limb and make a guess here,” Melkin observed acidly.

“We don’t know,” she repeated, serene as ever.  “We do not have a script.”

There was so much more he wanted to ask, but not in front of anybody.  And the rest of the party was stirring, wandering over to the fire with various expressions of befuddlement.  Rodge observed the sun wasn
’t even up yet, to which Loren replied in a cracking voice of affected cheer that they were and wasn’t that the best way to start the day (with an ingratiating smile at their hostess)?  The resulting argument lasted well into mid-day, and whenever the trail widened, Ari moved as far up the column away from them as he could.  There was a great jockeying to be up front, however, where Dorian strode trim and tireless just behind the close-scouting Dra, so he couldn’t usually get very far.

It was a long, long day.  Dorian pushed them harder and longer than Melkin, or even Traive in his rush to get through the Torques, ever had.  They had lunch in the saddle and didn
’t leave them until well after dark again.  Had they not been so conditioned already by the weeks of travel, they all would have been in deep hurt.

There was hardly any conversation that night.  Melkin asked with a marked lack of sweetness where exactly their trail led, to which Dorian responded, “Straight south, into the Tamarisks and then along their length.  The Sheelshard lies just east of them, but one hard day
’s ride.”

Which made the majority of them wonder if she counted their current traveling routine as “hard,” or if it had to be more taxing to really qualify as difficult.

“Straight south of here,” Melkin repeated with narrowing eyes, “takes us right through the Swamps.”  His glance met Traive’s quiet one across the fire.

She looked at him steadily.  “That is the route Ari and I must take.  Your way is your own.” 

Banion and the young Northerners exchanged disheartened looks.  Without even knowing what the Swamps entailed, it didn’t sound very promising.

“I don
’t do well in overly moist environments,” Rodge mentioned, pained.

Dorian gave him an unimpressed look.  “Do you mold?”

Loren and Ari burst out laughing—which hadn’t happened in so long that Ari went to bed feeling better than he had in weeks.

By their second full day on the trail with Dorian, the novelty of the adventure was wearing thin.  They were all saddle sore and exhausted, the answers had dried up, and they were headed right to the heart of Enemy territory without any idea why or what they were going to do when they got there.  Even Ari, as enamored as he was with Whiteblades, was not feeling particularly enthusiastic.  He still hadn
’t had a single moment alone with her; she hung like a topaz jewel, shining just out of reach.

They had all begun to scrounge around in their saddlebags for trail food in the late morning, resigned to another endless day on horseback, when the column came to a stop.  Inquisitive, hoping for something to break the monotony—like a lunch break—they all pushed up curiously to see what was going on.

Dorian was staring moodily into the forest ahead of them, which looked exactly like the boring scenery they’d been passing through for almost a week now.  Then Rodge wrinkled his nose.

“What
’s that smell?”

Traive pointed wordlessly to the trail immediately inside the next patch of trees.  A thick, blackish mud puddle lay there in a wallow, the edges slimed with a greenish crust.  Beyond it,
the trail looked normal, but it grew darker, as if the trees were thickening beyond.  The boys and Cerise looked at each other in uncomfortable silence.

Dorian turned, looking west as if for an optional route, and Ari jerked, startled.  There, out of nowhere, without even a whisper to herald her coming, stood a woman. 

Rodge, no slacker when it came to situational awareness, said, “Hey, there’s another one.”  Unlike fair-skinned Dorian, this one was deeply tanned, with a wealth of fine, crinkly brown hair done into small braids at her temples.  And unlike Dorian, she was loaded with weapons:  a sword, a hunting knife, four daggers in boot sheaths, axes across her back, a bulging quiver, and a hunting bow in one hand.

She glided up to Dorian, graceful as a dancer, and the blonde asked her a low, inaudible question.  They all heard her answer, though, staring at her as intently as they were.

“No sign,” she said, with a slight shake of her brown head.  The long hair danced around her in a cloud, as if it had a life of its own.

“How are our flanks?”

“Some of them are rather nice,” Rodge said, and Cerise shot him a dark look.  He patted his dumpy pony in innocent explanation.  After the fruitful pickings of Lirralhisa, these last weeks with Cerise as the only feminine company had seemed especially hard to the boys.

“Quiet so far,” the girl answered.  “All the interesting stuff is ahead.”  She had a rich, velvety voice and a very…still face.  She glanced at them all, then back to Dorian with a look of disbelief, before melting back into the bushes the same way she
’d come out—imperceptibly.

That one full-on glance had them all surprised enough they didn
’t pay much attention to her leave-taking.  Beautiful brown eyes…a perfect oval of expressionless face…

“What do you call a Dra woman?”  Loren asked, stunned, of no one in particular.  It was rare enough to see Drae in the Empire.  You never, ever, saw their women.

Kai didn’t bother to respond, circling the mud puddle waiting ahead of them and trotting down the trail.

“A Draina,” Banion answered, sounding a little surprised himself.  He glanced blankly at Melkin, continuing as if his mind were on other things, “though it
’s a term usually reserved for the mate of the Dra.”

A Dra.  Ari
’s mind raced as they all continued on, the horses’ hooves churning up a terrible smell as they plunked through the mud puddle.  What else had he forgotten from the Book of Ivory?