The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (79 page)

Melkin was coming towards them from up the passage with a torch, and in its thick yellow light Ari looked at what was left of them.  Next to him, Kai was crosshatched with bloody streaks where steel had gotten through the twin blades of his defense.  Banion and Melkin and Traive were all scored and bleeding, but moving as if unhurt.  Loren leaned weakly on Rodge, right arm heavily bandaged and blood starting to seep through.  Cerise, a few feet away, was looking at Ari with wide, traumatized eyes red with weeping.  Hardly aware of what he was doing, he gently wrapped his arms around her, and she buried her face in his chest, hands pulling his shirt into wads.

After a second, she pulled back, wiped her nose and turned back to the weary monarch
sitting at her feet.  Ari just shook his head; women were amazing creatures.  A man in that state of emotional distress would have been incapacitated for hours.  She was back to full efficiency, composedly supporting Sable and murmuring soothingly.

It wrenched at Ari
’s heart to see Queen Sable.  He knew she could walk, but she was painfully thin, her drawn face a parody of the fresh-faced, snapping-eyed sovereign he’d met in Archemounte.  At first he thought she was weeping just from her traumatic experience, but in a second, he realized she was sobbing over the body of the Rach leader, who alone of all the bodies had been brought with them.

In the few seconds it had taken for him to assure himself everyone was there, Melkin had reached the group, the acrid reek of the torch covering the stench of sweat and blood.

“Can you Heal him, Empress?” Melkin said.  His rough voice was hoarse, raw from smoke and shouting.

Sable, more alert than Ari would have thought, raised her head as the Empress knelt down across from her. Gazing at her with wide eyes, the Queen murmured, “You found her…” then, to her directly, “I thought you were a Statue.”

“It was temporary,” Selah said in her calming voice, fingers flying over the Rach’s muscled, mutilated chest.  Peering closer, Ari saw that the ribcage was still lifting, that he still breathed, though faintly.  He looked ghastly, the healthy brown skin a sickly grey and the lips purplish blue.

“Please heal him,” Sable pleaded, tears starting afresh.  “Please,” she whispered.  “It is my fault that he is here.”

“Heal him?” the Empress said.  “He shouldn’t even be alive.  He’s ruptured a lung, amongst other things.”  Her fingers flew over the wreckage of his chest, tearing off strips of cloth from the hem of her tunic, stuffing wounds, binding.

The Rach
’s eyes fluttered, shocking them all, and when they opened, Sable leaned over him in a rush, sobbing out words so uncontrollably they were barely comprehensible.

“Kore!  Kore!” she cried, “Forgive me, my friend.”

Slowly, out of a very dry-sounding mouth, he formed barely audible words.  She went quiet instantly, tears dropping on his lean face.

“He couldn
’t come,” he whispered.

Sable bit her lip, whispering back, “Please don
’t talk.”

“No, don
’t,” the Empress agreed.

“He gave his word…”

“It’s all right, Kore, please save your strength,” she sobbed.  He faded into silence, though the chest still moved.

“Please heal him,” she said again, claw-like hand grabbing Selah
’s wrist.  “You are the Empress.”

“It doesn
’t work like that,” Selah said gently.  “Il heals who He wills.  He is not a box we reach into and pull out power to do whatever we want, whenever we want.”

“I know He can do this!” Sable cried.  “I have seen His power—felt it!  He must…” she choked on her sobs, convulsed suddenly with weeping.

Selah took the hand clutching hers and held it.  “We do not demand from Him,” she said, soothing as a mother with a child, “We submit.  For love of Il, we submit to His greater wisdom.”

The Queen stopped sobbing like she
’d been slapped, slowly raising her head, rank with grease, until her pansy blue eyes were staring into Selah’s.

“We should move,” Kai said restlessly from the door.  “They will be searching for us.”

“For love of Il,” Sable whispered brokenly, unwavering gaze still on Selah.

“Let
’s make a litter for him,” Selah said, looking pointedly at Banion’s oversized tunic.  He began to slip out of it, revealing his shockingly hirsute pectoral region, damp with sweat and blood.

“
For love of Il,
” Sable said again, sounding stunned.  “You’re the Empress,” she murmured, and a suddenly worried Cerise began to say something comforting in her ear, gently rubbing her shoulder.

Selah glanced at her.  “I have many names.”

Ari sighed.

“No,” the Queen said, strong enough that everyone glanced at her.  “I mean, you are the last Empress, the Empress Karmine, who gave up her throne 2000 years ago…for love of Il.”

Selah paused in sliding Kore onto the makeshift litter, green eyes flying up to meet swimming blue.  For a moment their eyes locked. 

“I am.”

There was no more time for talk.  Melkin and Traive took first turns at the litter, and they all hurried down the passageway.  It was immediately apparent that they were in a maze of them, a confusing, directionless web of identical intersecting hallways.  Sometimes rooms opened off them, and Selah would poke her head in, give a brief glance around, and then move on.  Ari began to worry about getting out.  The Rach Kore and Loren were getting weaker all the time.  When he relieved Melkin at one end of the litter, the Wolfmaster grunted wearily, almost stumbling as they traded places. 

Once they turned down a hall and almost instantly saw torchlight and heard shouted commands from down its length.  They turned and rushed back barely in time to avoid being seen—it was only one of several close calls.

They were trapped under leagues of Sheel, in a swarming beehive of angry Tarq, with no idea how to get out.  They had traded out at the litter twice more when Ari saw Loren stumble and called out, “Selah, we have to rest!”

She paused in her headlong flight, turning back to scan the bloodied, panting group behind her, and then her face froze, eyes fixed on an open doorway behind Kai.  Slowly, mesmerized, she moved towards it, and when everyone moved to see what she was staring at, a half-dozen breaths were sucked in at once.

It was a big room, heated (were these people really that chilled all the time?) and lit by the standard seething red brazier.  An enormous table took up most of the room, covered in papers and styluses and measuring sticks.  A few chairs had been overturned and the walls were covered in papers full of a weird, angular script in thick black ink.  And on the big wall opposite the doorway hung a map that needed no translation.  There were a few odd marks on it, a few wooden pieces impaled on key areas, but what lay in the center was what had captured everybody’s attention.

Clearly running from thousands of different sites in the Sheel, joining at the Ramparts, and plunging right into the center of what was obviously the Imperial North, streamed a great, thick, monstrous red arrow.

Ari swallowed, mouth dry.

“Well,” Traive said portentously, “now we know.”

“This is what we were seeking,” Selah said quietly.

“I thought we were seeking a way out,” Rodge muttered, shifting Loren
’s weight around on his skinny shoulders.

She turned to look at them all.  “And this is no doubt why you all are here.  This information must get to the Realms.  There may still be time.”  She hurried quickly out, but the rest paused for one last look at the violation planned for them before following, Kai grabbing maps off the table as he went.

It was not five minutes later that the passageway dead-ended into a wide, open hallway.   Ari and Melkin, who found themselves suddenly out in the middle of it, shrank quickly back to the shadows.

“There!” Melkin said, pointing down the hall.  Huge doors gleamed in the reflected light of braziers, a scant two guards at post.  The sounds of shouting were everywhere, but none close, and the guards were craning their necks and walking around restlessly, obviously wanting to be part of something a little more exciting.

“I’ve got one,” Cerise said grimly, and pushed through them all, notching an arrow.  Kai left with the arrow, reaching his man before the Enemy had even realized his companion had grown fletching.

There was no time for good-byes, for thank-you
’s or good-lucks, or for Ari to explain that, by the way, he wouldn’t be coming with them; it was just a rush for the doors already creaking open, Banion and Traive running as quickly as they could with the awkward litter between them.  Ari stood desolate as they all left him, feeling maudlin and abandoned until the Empress called him softly from the cover of their narrow passageway.  He was standing at the edge, fairly completely exposed, but she only said, “Whenever you’re ready, Ari.”

He was almost thankful to have something to do, his mind a chaos of impressions and sorrows and tragedies and triumphs, crammed full of things he
’d never thought he’d know.  They pelted back down the narrow halls of their secret warren, unencumbered now by those weary from heavy fighting.  Selah was looking for something again, dashing down different hallways until Ari was sure they were going around in circles.  But she came to a skidding halt at the doorway to a room he
knew
they hadn’t been to before.  A kitchen.

Suddenly ravenous, he dashed into the room, stuffing a fresh-baked roll into his mouth and following it with as much sausage as would fit.  His stomach cramped resentfully at his neglect.

“Water, Ari,” Selah whispered urgently, “as much as you can carry.”  He followed her pointing finger to a whole rack of waterskins hanging from their straps.  He started filling them at the spring in the corner of the room and hanging them around his neck and shoulders until he couldn’t fit anymore.  When he stood, thunking like a drum set, Selah was waiting for him with two enormous, bloated bags of food over her shoulders. 

He raised his eyebrows and she said, “We
’ve got a long way to go.”

He grabbed another roll.

CHAPTER 37

              Ari didn’t know how long they walked that first day.  There was no way to judge time in the lightless, hewn-rock passages.  They were not long out of the kitchen when another red light flashed across Selah’s face and she stopped like she’d run into a wall, eagerly pulling Ari into the space she’d been in.  When that door closed behind them, the last sounds of the Sheelmen were left behind.  So was any other whisper of life, the silence so deep and pervasive and the passages so empty and echoing that they seemed more like a tomb than a refuge.

It was immediately apparent that they were in a whole different part of Zkag.  The walls were not blackened with soot, the charnel smell was all but gone, and the floors were evened and smooth.  Very few passages led off of theirs, and soon none at all.  There was only the sound of their breathing and Selah
’s faint scent and the motion of their bodies in all that endless underground stillness.  They saw no one else.

Once the adrenaline wore off, he was exhausted.  He could not believe things could change so radically in a day.  Last night the Followers had danced a dance of transcendent joy, today they had danced death, and now they would never dance again.  Selah, the one bright, happy constant in his life, had become the Legendary Empress of the Ages of War and silenced the Ruby god.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked wearily.

They were walking side by side, as companionable as ever.

“About what?” she asked, rather relevantly since there were several things he felt he’d been deceived about.

“About how you
’re the Empress.  About why you lied to me.  About why you didn’t tell us you were the Statue and we didn’t have to go running all over the Realms looking for you,” Ari morosely listed off the ones right at the top of his head.

“I never lied to you,” she said, woman-like.  “And if I deceived you, you must believe it was for your own good and necessary.”  She slowed, stopped, sighed.  Lowering the food bags, she sank wearily to the ground, and he joined her, collapsing against the rock wall.  Without any forward momentum, he was suddenly beat, sure he couldn
’t take another step.

Her face would never be the same again, he thought, watching her as she handed him another roll.  The memory of that reflective brilliance clung to it, beautifying the plain, making extraordinary the unaffected simplicity.  “Don
’t you miss them?” he asked quietly.  He barely had the energy to talk. 

She glanced at him.  “We were together a long, long, time, Ari.  We
’d known for years before Montmorency that something like this might be possible.  You have to understand, life can get wearisome after untold centuries of it, even with wonderful friends.  We were all as anxious to join Il as could be and still be effective here.”

Questions crowded through his mind, warding off the drowsiness muffling his brain like a down comforter.  “What happened to Raemon?  Is he…dead?”

“That’s probably the closest we could understand it.  The Trieles channel the gods’ power.  Only rarely do they ever use enough to drain themselves, but if they do, they simply stop using them until they’re…recharged.  The rational ones, at least.  That’s why Raemon had to be kept talking.  His fanaticism was most helpful, but still, it was crucial that he not realize he was expending himself down to the very last, critical, dregs.”

“How did you know it would take…just twenty?” he asked heavily.

“Because there were twenty,” she said quietly.  “That is the way Il works.”

“You guessed?” he demanded, too tired to be upset.  “What if you were wrong?  What if he still lived after all of them had wasted their lives?”

She dropped her head back against the wall, weary and endlessly patient at the same time.  “There are different kinds of knowledge, Ari.  Not all of it comes in the form of scientific facts.  I knew because it was given to me to know, the same way that you know He has come for you and you are His.”

Ari swallowed against that flash of Light in the gloom.  “We didn
’t avert a war, did we?” he asked after a minute, thinking of the map room even while the deep, bright joy that her words brought sparked somewhere beneath the bone-deep fatigue.

“No, that is inevitable.  Even with Raemon gone, the Tarq are fundamentally entrenched in this way of life.  It will take several generations, probably, before they start considering other options.  What we have done,” she added, dropping her voice so that he could hear the power thrumming through it once more, “is give the Realms a chance in the fight…which they have not had since Raemon tore that first fragment of peoples out of Ethlond.”

Androssan was beginning to understand Alaunus.  Here he was, riding back north to intercept his crawling Armies for no reason other than looming insanity if he stayed still.  They had just ridden into the Winnowing Hills, happy to be off of the chill and windswept Plains of Daphene, when his wry thoughts on his own lack of discipline were interrupted by one of the Cyrrhidean Fox. 

             
He came walking out of the woods a few yards ahead in the inconspicuous way of such men, in unremarkable, muddy homespun.  The only thing at all notable about him was the deep brown skin of his face.  All but the most weathered Northern farmers had lost their summer tans by now.   Androssan dismounted unhurriedly—the Fox wasn’t going anywhere—and gave the reins to an adjutant, heading wordlessly up to walk with the intelligence agent at a discreet distance from the rest of his entourage.

             
“Lord General,” the man said respectfully in a tone that wouldn’t travel more than a half-yard.

             
“You have news?”

             
“My lord, the Queen had been rescued.”

             
Androssan’s head whipped around to look him in the eyes.  They weren’t a smiley bunch, but this Fox flashed him a quick grin.  They never wasted time in jest, either, so the General didn’t bother with expletives of disbelief.  He felt his heart hammering double-time in a wave of relief.

             
“When?  Where?” he said, voice rough with emotion denied.

             
“A Rach rescue party brought her to the Sharhi-Tir less than a week ago.”  The Fox’s voice took on a faint glimmer of awe. “She’d been taken to the Sheelshard.”
              Androssan looked at him out of the corner of his eyes.  “That should produce some interesting revelations for the Council.”  Who didn’t even believe such a place existed.

             
“For us all.  While there, she and her rescue party gained access to the war plans of the Enemy.”  The General made it a point not to stare directly at those giving a report, preferring the objectivity offered by the disconnected listener, but for the third time in less than a minute, his eyes snapped onto the messenger’s.

             
“A massive surge, Lord General, their entire force punching straight up through the Ramparts and into the southern Empire.  There are no diversionary attacks, no flanking maneuvers planned-—their intent is to drive their full force north and overwhelm the Realms with numbers.”

             
“Well, that’s a relief.  With the Queen safe I was wondering how I was going to convince the Council that almost 600,000 soldiers needed to be kept mobilized in the backyard of the Ramparts,” the General said.  His tone was light, but his mind was striving to work through the stunned disbelief that war was, now, finally, going to be a reality.  In his bedlam of thoughts, dread and excitement were inseparable strands in a noose around his neck.  Terrible as the consequences of such a plan of the Enemy’s would be, he realized, even worse would be the consequence of assuming it would proceed unchanged.  He doubted very much the Rach had made off with Queen Sable without anyone in the ’Shard being aware…and if the Enemy knew the Queen of the North was gone, they would surely assume their war plans were compromised as well.

             
“That will please the Lord Regent,” the Fox said, with some appreciativeness.  “He said that unless the Northern Army was already on the road and marching, he doubted the Realms could be ready in time to ward off this threat.”

             
“That was Queen Sable’s doing,” Androssan said wryly.

             
“I suspect a little effort was required on your part, Lord General,” the Fox said, tone absolutely neutral.  The Fox weren’t obsequious, but they were well aware of how things worked in the Palace.  Androssan had got the impression more than once that they resented being openly denounced as “devious” and “untrustworthy” and Cyrrhidean “spies”—followed closely by the underhanded, dark-corner meetings that attempted to bribe them into one politician’s or another’s personal service.

             
“There are messengers on their way to Archemounte, I assume,” the General changed the subject.

             
The Fox nodded, adding obliquely, “Though they were not under the same time constraint as I.”  Androssan swallowed a grin.  Whether that was Sable’s order or an internal decision amongst the Fox, who was he to interfere?

             
“Then can you run a message back to the Imperial Queen and the Lord Regent?”  It didn’t even occur to Androssan to send a Northern messenger.  Even on horseback, they were no match for a Fox, especially traveling cross-country, as the straightest route back to the Western Ramparts was.  He’d made great strides improving the coms and intel abilities of messengers within the Army, but racing around a wargame drill was a whole different world than the long days of wintery travel and the desert conditions ahead of this messenger.

             
The Fox nodded, a barely perceptible motion you had to be looking for to catch. 

“Tell them the Northern Army will encamp where Kamitan Way greets the Daroe,” Androssan lowered his voice, minimizing lip movement.  “Let the Queen know I am eager to
meet her there, if she is agreeable and able.  And tell your Lord Regent that if he can mobilize Cyrrh in time, we would be glad to see whomever he can gather on our right flank.  We will hold War Council as soon as he can manage, and in the meantime, he knows where I’ll be.”

“They’re
privates
, Sir,” his Point Sergeant explained painstakingly, as if they were back in the days when Androssan was a raw young Captain and needed lessons in the way the real Army worked.  “Their only thought processes involve chow, girls, sleep, girls, dice, girls, and getting out of guard duty.”
              “Spere, we don’t hang Imperial soldiers,” Androssan repeated patiently.

             
“The flaming Merranics do it!”

             
“Is that supposed to persuade me?”  Spere was the typical crusty, weather-beaten sergeant if there ever was one; the General didn’t know if he was serious, but he wouldn’t put it past him.  The entire enlisted Army lived in fear of the man.

             
But he was the best Androssan had ever seen at his job, and with the Imperial Corps settling in along dozens of leagues of the Daroe, with all the logistics issues and the endless stream of administrative and disciplinary problems that strangled a standing army in the field, he was grateful to have him.  They were training rigorously, and not just because of all the new recruits.  This many men gathered together, given sharp steel and encouraged to think high-testosterone thoughts, and then left standing around waiting for battle—well, it was a nightmare waiting to happen.  Training kept them alert, sharp…and busy.  Still, even rotating back up north to wargame, there were issues.  He expected Spere to handle them.

             
“Find another way,” Androssan told him.

             
All at once, he heard a rush outside the tent and the flap was thrown forcibly open.  Lt. Waylan’s wide-eyed face appeared in the door.

             
“Sir,” he said hurriedly, “I think you’d better see this.”

             
Androssan rose, reaching for his heavy cloak even as he asked, “What is it?”

             
For a second, Waylan just stared at him, licking his lips, then managed, “Ranks of the Ram, Sir.”

             
Androssan paused in his stride across the room, throwing a glance at Spere to see if he’d heard correctly.  Not much caught the Point Sergeant unawares, but he was surprised now.  “Burn me,” he muttered.  “How’d they get through our sentries?”

             
That was not the most pressing question on Androssan’s mind.  What in Sheelfire were they
doing
here? He threw the tent flap out of his way and entered the chill drizzle of a wintry afternoon in the southern Empire.  Striding through the mud with Waylan silent and nervous at his elbow, he tried to recollect everything he knew about the Ram.  In all his studies of military history, to his knowledge they had never, ever, been south of the Kendrick.  It was just a given; they stayed, fought, and died in Addah.  There was little enough written about them, too, regardless of where they were, as big or bigger a neglect than omitting Aerach military techniques.  The North had fought side by side with the Addahites for centuries, and the only thing in the histories was the fact that they were probably the finest guerilla warriors in the Realms.  The Merranics were obsessed with them, to the point of running unauthorized raids up into the Wastes north of Alene, but all they’d found out was that they used horses, were deadly shots with spear and bow, and were as elusive as smoke.  They’d never found a single settlement, except those of the sheepherding civilians.