The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (59 page)

Again, then again, the tree rose, jerking out of the water, the crashing of the surrounding branches making riotous background music to its bass howl.  But it was getting weaker, the
jumps not as dramatic, and it finally quit altogether, its cry rising eerily into an unearthly, almost human, scream.

When it finally fell silent, the group waiting on horses were shaking almost as bad as Cerise had been. 

“No way,” Loren had been muttering for several minutes.  “No way.”

“Anything, Kai?” Nerissa called up to him.  He nodded quickly, easing down the length of the now quiet log
to where a mass of roots burst out like spokes on a wagon wheel.  Warily, he jumped down into the space left by all of those unlikely contortions, which had separated it from the surrounding clog of brush.  He appeared in a second between two massive roots, looking out at them.  “We need just a few strokes here.”

I
mmediately, Traive jumped down.  He handed Kai one of his crossed axes and they went to work.  Meanwhile, Nerissa was calling into the disturbed mass of limbs at the other end of the log, “Are you okay?  Sylvar!  Can you hear me?”

“I
’m fine,” came a distant reply, and within another couple minutes she popped back out between two logs.  “I guess I hit the black heart,” she said ruefully.  Her hands and front had dark, tarry looking stuff on them.

“Get that poisonous sap off,” Dorian cautioned her. 

She shook her white head, murmuring blithely, “Black-hearted as a Sheelman’s whor—” before clapping her hand over her mouth, wide eyes flying to Dorian and then the group of northerners.

Dorian, stern as they
’d ever seen her, gave her a look so utterly Imperial that Ari almost laughed.  She said nothing, just pointed rigidly back the way Sylvar had come, and the smaller girl went without another word, face besmeared now, grabbing her bow on the way.  Services for the sake of the group apparently forgotten.

Ari urged his brown up to the now quiescent tree and jumped down, relieving Kai of his axe and setting to work with a passion on the cage of roots.  Loren was right behind him, spelling Traive.  It felt really good to whale away on that wood, and they fell to it with an almost visceral relief at having something to do.  Distantly, over the noise of axes, Ari heard Rodge and Nerissa talking, he making a fool of himself, she calmly explaining what had just happened.

“They’re some of Raemon’s attempts to out-create Laschald.  They’ve got a limited mobility—they can’t move from where they’re rooted…he wanted something to help him control the Swamps.  That’s part of what this thick, evil feeling in the air is—the Swamps are full of his creatures.”

She had a soft, velvety voice, thick with Cyrrhidean accent.  He couldn
’t remember her origins or her story from the Book of Ivory, but he’d never seen black hair on a Cyrrhidean.

He tuned the two out, pouring his energy into the multiple root branches that needed the attention of the axe and shrugging the Dra away when he came back to take a turn.  Soon, there was a narrow passage hacked through the root system, oozing with weird, nasty black sap, and he and Loren made quick work of heaving aside the lopped wood.  He led the brown through, and everyone did the same except Banion, who was still propping up the unconscious Royal Handmaiden and stayed mounted.

Despite all the delays, it wasn’t even dark yet when Dorian stopped at a rise of ground large enough for all of them and the horses.  Around them, the downed forest had been slowly fading out, the landscape highlighted by the occasional vertical tree.  Melkin pulled his horse up to her, saying quietly, “Should we push on?”  All trace of hostility had vanished since their altercation by the inky poolside where Tekkara had been bitten.

Dorian responded the same whether he was spitting enraged insults or politely asking about sleeping billets.  She turned to look up at him, saying, “It is not healthy to spend the night anywhere in the Swamps; it
’s pure foolishness to bypass the very few safe spots along the trail.  We’ll travel until we reach them—no more and definitely no less.” 

It was amazing to have firm ground under their feet again, but their enjoyment of a camp and hot food was dampened by Cerise.  She was awake, but just sat, staring into nothingness, looking scared and shattered and fragile.  The boys felt helpless.  Dorian, after watching her all through dinner, moved over to her and knelt gracefully in front of her.

“Cerise,” she said, in a voice none of them had ever heard before—a rich, warm, persuasive voice that made you limp, made you want to roll over and have her scratch your belly.  “Cerise, it’s all right.”  The topaz eyes shone like jewels in the thick grey air, full of life and love and all that was sweet and true—Ari had never seen such a transcendent look on anyone’s face.  A lump of longing swelled his throat...no one had ever looked at him like that, ever.

It was all wasted on Cerise.  She just sat, unresponsive, with that blank, horrified stare in her icy blue eyes.  Dorian tried gently shaking her, touched her face…but after a few minutes, had to sit back in defeat.

“How far out is the Healer?”  She asked, in that disconcerting way, of thin air.  Even more disconcerting, someone almost always answered.  This time it was Jordan, standing with soaked leggings on the outskirts of the camp. 

“A couple days,” she said quietly.

Dorian’s eyes scanned once more the tragic face in front of her.  “Send ‘Lanta for her.”

No one woke with anything resembling enthusiasm the next morning.  The Swamps stretched drearily, ominously, out all around them, and the day never seemed to end.  They could have been wandering for years under that sunless blanket of grey, so disassociated did everything become.  Ari put Cerise, barely aware enough to sit a horse, up on his brown before anyone could make a decision about her.  Loren and Traive hemmed her in on each side and Banion and Melkin each followed and led close around her. 

He was so glad to be on the ground, fixing his mind on the intricacies of finding their watery path, that he didn’t even mind the oily water, or the leeches, or the bugs, which were much worse close to the water.  The distraction was almost welcome.  His mind had begun to plunge into guilt beyond his ability to stop it.  What if Cerise had died?  What if she never recovered?  What if someone was to never come back from this trip?  Why had he not tried to stop any of them?  He wasn’t sure he could handle it if one of them was killed because of him.  Prowling back and forth across the morbid landscape, his mind couldn’t shake that one thought, lodged like a hot dagger of dread in his chest.  The road wasn’t exactly going to get any safer the closer they got to the Sheelshard.

The hours dragged by.  Once, he saw bubbles rising from the pool in front of him.  He pointed it out, and felt a small surge of ridiculous pride when Dorian nodded and led the group around another way.  It was nothing, but it felt good to be of some use.  Especially if they were going to risk their lives for him. 

They could see their campsite from far off that evening; someone had started the fire, and it made for a merry beacon in the dank melancholy of the Swamps at dusk.  Nothing remarkable had happened that day, but Cerise’s unchanging condition made it seem like that whole nightmarish incident had been just a few hours ago.  More than one person let out a disappointed sigh when they came up onto the dry ground of the camp; there was no one there.  No one tending the fire and certainly no healer.

Last night
’s camp had been little more than a hummock covered with sickly grass.  Tonight, several of the great-trunked trees encircled the place and there were even a few spiky bushes and faintly green ferns.  No one was much in the mood for talking, even though there was fresh meat from someone’s bow and Ari had made a pretty tasty potato stew.  Only Dorian seemed unaffected by the despondency that seemed to spread like a miasma over the group.  The greyer the air, the brighter she seemed, as if she was somehow out of reach of the colorless world closing in on them all.

She bowed her head and prayed that night, which she had never done, and which nobody, not even Banion, objected to.

“Lord Il, great is the darkness that presses in around us…but greater still art Thou.  Give us surety in your Strength, peace in your Will, and a light to shine on this, Your Path. Thy will be done.”

They were glumly finishing up the meal when several birdcalls sounded simultaneously from the
quiet swamp around them.  Dorian, in a desultory conversation with Traive, looked up quickly.  Ari and Loren shared suspicious glances, and sure enough, within minutes a faint splashing could be heard.  Then a new Whiteblade came out of the trees, and to the man, they rose eagerly to their feet.

You could tell even from across the clearing that this was the healer.  It seemed to roll off of her in waves, a gentleness, a sort of physical aura of nurturing that shone from her big eyes.  She was also, incidentally, stunningly beautiful.   Piles of fluffy blonde hair, the softest blue eyes Ari had ever seen, a blushing, curved cheek—she was the most feminine creature any of them had seen in a long time. 

And she looked at absolutely none of them, not even Dorian.  She entered the clearing, took one look across it to Cerise’s traumatized figure, and walked straight to her.  She helped her to her feet, led her a little ways away, and resettled, talking quietly and earnestly to her.

Dorian gave a little sigh.  “She
’ll bring her back to her own mind,” she said reassuringly. 

“Is she telepathic?” Loren said eagerly, active mind alive with possibilities.

The ghost of a smile curved Dorian’s mobile lips.  “No,” she said evenly.  “But Healing is her Gift.”

A forceful panting interrupted them, and they all turned in surprise to see another Whiteblade coming out of the trees.  She stopped, hand on her side, gasping, when she saw them.

“We ran,” she wheezed.  “All day.”  This was followed by several seconds of ragged breathing.  She leaned against a tree.  “I was sure someone was dying,” she managed to get out all in one breath.

Dorian frowned at her and in the first playfulness any of the group had seen out of her, said in amusement, “You
’re out of shape.”

“My shape,” the girl gasped, moving away from her support and closer to the light of the fire, “you
’ll remember…was meant for the water.”

The boys didn
’t know what
that
meant, but their eyebrows went up as the firelight revealed the shape under discussion.  If they hadn’t just seen the Healer, they would have said this was surely the loveliest woman ever created.  Thick waves of blue-black hair framed a flawless face.  She had sparking blue eyes fringed with lashes so dark she looked like she was wearing eye-black.  Soft, full, red lips were responsible for all that rapid exchange of air.  Curved in every possible appropriate place, her
shape
was enough to do dangerous things to a young man’s temperature.

Rodge, gaping, pulled his collar away from his neck.

“All is well?” Dorian asked her.

“No, Dor,” she answered, still heaving attractively. “I can
’t
breathe
.”

One of the Whiteblades called from the bushes and she turned and made her way—gracefully, for all that theatrical shortness of breath—back into the dark outside the campfire.

“Who,” Rodge said mistily, “was that?”

“Brook.”

“Why,” he said, with great emphasis, “did she leave?”

Across the clearing, the sudden sound of crying made them all turn their heads.  It was as if a huge weight was lifted off their shoulders when they saw Cerise wailing noisily and clinging to the other Whiteblade.  Upset, maybe, but at least it was something other than that unseeing stare.

“And that?” Melkin asked, brooding.

“Rowena,” Dorian answered, her own relief patent in her voice. “Excellent woman,” she murmured contentedly.

They all turned in that night feeling better than they had in days.  Maybe everything would be all right after all.

CHAPTER 28

The next morning, Cerise was pale and subdued but seemed otherwise normal.  If she noticed that they all kept glancing at her out of the corners of their eyes, she didn’t acknowledge it.

Ari was down washing out the breakfast pans in the swamp—which he wasn
’t sure could count as cleaning—when a whispery sort of sound caught his attention.  Instantly on edge, he backed away from the water, hand dropping to his sword.  He searched through the mist, a great obscuring bank of it, his heart pounding.  Something was out there.  And it sounded like it was getting closer.

He was so increasingly certain of it that he was about to shout a warning back to the camp when it came into view.  It was a canoe, just floating through the swamp—no, no, there was a tiny person poling it, coalescing out of the mist like she was being created in front of him.

Sylvar.  She grinned broadly when she saw him, waving as cheerfully as if he were on the docks of Merrane and she was returning from the morning catch.  He just shook his head in wonder; for being so mist-colored herself, she shone like a lamp in the Swamps.  The canoe bumped into their camp hummock and, quick and graceful, she leaped off the bow.  Grabbing the bow rope, she whirled into it, bending her full diminutive weight into pulling it in.

Ari felt a smile tugging at his face.  Reaching around her, he grabbed the rope and with one hand hauled it halfway up the bank.  She turned and beamed at him, so close his chin had to almost touch his chest to look down at her.  Up close, you could see the fine, ghostly skin was chalk-white, almost translucent.  Delicate blue veins throbbed in her temple and jaw.  The pale grey of her eyes were lit with an impish silvery sheen, and her lips emerged out of her white face like a pale rose out of a snow bank.

“I’m not sure we’re all going to fit in there,” Traive said in quiet amusement almost at Ari’s elbow.  Ari jumped a little, hurriedly getting a little space between him and the exquisite creature staring up at him with such affection.

“Fit?” she quipped.  “It
’s just to hold on to.  You all will be swimming alongside.”

“Sylvar,” Dorian
’s unmistakable voice said.  Ari turned around and saw that everyone had followed her down to the water, doubtless drawn by the strange sound of the canoe scraping up on the bank.    

“Ambassador,” Sylvar said in a deep, impressive voice, sinking swan-like into such an elaborate curtsy her gleaming hair almost dragged in the mud.  The effect was only slightly ruined by the clank and shift of her extraordinary collection of weaponry.

Dorian stared over her head, her face a mask of Patience.  “I want those orchids disarmed before we reach them.”

Sylvar popped erect.  “So let it be done,” she delivered in solemn tones, and turned and trotted lightly out of sight around the hummock.  They heard a faint splash as she entered the water on the other side, and Ari thought the Swamps had gotten a little dimmer again.

“She made of mist?” Rodge said, having gotten a good look at her.

“She
’s made of whimsy,” Dorian said smartly.  “We’ll need to unload this fodder for the horses, then get your saddlebags.  We’ll be traveling the rest of the way by boat.”

Banion made the first approving sound they
’d heard out of him in a week.

“What about the horses?” Melkin asked.

“Adama and Brook will bring them another way.  It’s a much longer, more difficult route, but there’s firm ground and without carrying riders they might be able to gallop it.  They may get through before we do.”

“Brook?” Rodge
’s head came up alertly.

There were actually several canoes, tied together.  Ari wanted to go with Kai, in the scout boat, but Dorian seated him firmly with her and Traive got the honor.  Or maybe he had the honor; he was torn between wanting to establish his usefulness and the amazing feeling that he was of considerable value…finally to someone in the world beside the Asps.

They went quite a bit faster by canoe, but there was a trade-off in being so close to the water.  The bugs were horrendous, no see-ums, midges, gnats that flew in every unprotected orifice, flies, winged insects of every size.  A dragonfly the size of a robin buzzed so suddenly into Ari’s face that he almost dropped his paddle.  Dorian stood like a golden pillar in his bow, statuesque as a Fleet ship figurehead, and unbothered by the bugs.

Unbelievably, out of all the leagues of water, all the endless pools in every direction, a Whiteblade messenger found them around midday.  She came whizzing up to them in a wily canoe powered by Jordan, so quickly that they
’d barely registered the soft slap of paddles before she was on them.

Jordan whisked her boat around, back-paddling expertly so that the lithe, beautiful woman standing in her bow was brought within inches of Dorian.  She was another Dra, and the whole contingent of canoes stopped to get a look at her.  Unlike Vashti, she was tall, almost as tall as Dorian and reed-slender, with dark eyes.  A great tawny mane of hair was pulled off her face by a band, stirring romantically in the canoe
’s contortions as she balanced with one foot up on the prow.  A long ashbow clung to her back, and Ari raised his eyebrows in surprise when he spotted it.  He would not have thought a woman could pull the Imperial warbow, with its formidable draw.    

She was murmuring unemotionally to Dorian, in such an imperceptible voice and tone that Ari could barely make anything out.  He thought he heard “Queen,” and saw a sharp spasm of concern move fleetingly over Dorian
’s face.  Straining forward, not caring if he looked obvious, he stared until his eyes watered, but the new Whiteblade’s lips were barely moving, her voice pitched so low it was drowned out just by the sound of the water against the sides of the canoe.

Dorian gave her some instructions, and Jordan began to move away. 

“What is it?” he asked her.  She ignored him, dignified face a mask of concentration.

“
’Lanta!” she called after the two, as if she’d just thought of something. The beautiful woman turned with perfect balance in her canoe’s bow, not even wobbling or putting out her arms to steady herself.  Ari was afraid to even move too quickly, sitting—these canoes were as narrow as a blade edge.

“Did Rox make it?” Dorian asked urgently.

She didn’t answer, but neither did she look away.  Those expressive eyes, set in that wild, silent Dra face, stayed on Dorian’s until she’d faded back into the mists.

Dorian was similarly communicative, regardless of how many times or different ways Ari asked.

It seemed increasingly improbable the floating landscape could produce anything even resembling solid ground as night drew on, but Dorian was unfailing.  It had trees and enough earth on it that there was even a faint strip of trail worn into the sickly grasses.  When they disembarked onto the foul-smelling mud bank late that afternoon, she cautioned them, “Follow right behind me.  Do not leave the path.”

Which was a generous name for what they were on.  They were meandering down it when Rodge cried in delight, “Blueberries!” and darted into the scattered bushes.

“Do not leave the path,” Dorian’s voice floated back to them with the patience of a primary teacher, “and please do not eat the poisonous berries.”

“They look like blueberries,” Rodge said in disappointment, fingering them.

“What’s that?” Loren said from the trail.  About a foot away from Rodge something was sticking out of the mud, entangled in the nearby brush.

“I think it
’s a thigh bone,” Ari said, peering.

“EEEW!” Rodge said with emphasis, dropped the berries, and went to back hastily away.  But his feet were firmly encased in the local mud and he had to windmill violently not to fall over.  He stood there for several minutes trying to extricate himself while Ari and Loren laughed themselves breathless from the trail.  Finally, he complained, “I
’m stuck.  No, seriously, I can’t get out.”

His voice changed.  “I…I think I
’m sinking.”

Loren and Ari stopped laughing.  He was.  He was in over his ankles.

“DORIAN!” Loren yelled, all seriousness now.  Ari walked tentatively toward Rodge, testing the ground.  It was all muddy, but he hadn’t gone more than a step or two before he felt it change under his feet.  He backed quickly away as it pulled at him.

“Stay on the trail,” Dorian
’s voice snapped out crisply behind him, and he jumped.  He hadn’t heard a whisper of her approach.  In seconds there were four more Whiteblades on the trail, materializing soundlessly out of the fog.  In one smooth move, Vashti and Rowena shrugged out of their weapons and with just axes in hands, trotted together to a nearby tree.  Nerissa began darting here and there, looking at trees, fingering them, then moving rapidly on.  Dorian and Jordan split around the mud pit, testing the ground for its boundaries.

The rest of the party from the north came running back up.

“Quicksand,” Loren explained breathlessly.  The sound of chopping began, and Ari and Loren whirled around, nerves on edge from the infectious, focused energy of the Whiteblades.  The thick sapling Vashti and the healer were working on wasn’t very big, but it had about the largest diameter of any tree they could see.  The boys rushed over and the Whiteblades let them take over the chopping, which was enacted with so much vigor that the tree was downed before Rodge had sunk more than another inch.

Traive was already skimming branches off of it before it even hit the ground, his Cyrrhidean axe flying like it was self-propelled, while the Whiteblades looped the cut end with a long coil of rope.  They started hauling it toward Rodge while Traive was still working on it.

A scratchy shriek sounded, and everyone stopped to look worriedly at Rodge.  But he was standing there quietly, albeit a little forlorn, mud climbing towards his knees.  The sound came again; it was coming from Nerissa.  More precisely, it was from the freshly cut bush in her hands, which was squalling and twisting bizarrely around in her firm grip.

“Black-hearted hickory?” about five dubious voices asked in unison.  She nodded, trotting agilely up to them.  “The sap is actually more caustic in the younger plants.”  She nodded with hurried encouragement at Jordan, who was walking rapidly toward them, trimming a branch with a flying knife
as she came.

“Hurry,” Rodge said plaintively.  He was up to his knees and a shudder of horror went through Ari.  He couldn
’t die.  Especially not like that. 

Jordan carefully held out the branch, exposing one of the cut ends, and Nerissa upended the hickory, centering it over the top of Jordan
’s branch so that black sap dripped on the pithy part in the middle.  The stick began to steam, and the Northerners gathered around watched in amazement as the nasty sap began to dissolve the center of it.  It was bizarre, like something out of a witch’s cauldron, Nerissa struggling to hold the shrilling plant, tarry black liquid dropping out of it to burn its way into the other wood…

Rodge, who should have valued the science of it more than any of them, seemed unappreciative.  He licked his lips nervously.  “Uh,” he said, “I hate to nag, but…”

“He’s going faster!”  Loren said in alarm.

“Rodge,” Dorian said calmly.

“Yeah, right here.” 

“The mud you
’re in should be watery.”

“Yeah, but I
’m really not interested in geology right now,” he begged a little desperately.

“It
’s creating a suction around your feet and legs—”