Free The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) by Kari Cordis Page B

hit her, engulfing her body, and she cried out, bending away from him.  Mightily she resisted, bending further and further back until one hand touched the ground even while the other was raised as if to ward him off.  And then, his laugh faded.  Raemon frowned and threw his hand more insistently at his prize.  Still she held her pose, though her face was twisted as in agony.  Before another moment had passed, a look of fear came to Raemon’s blue-black eyes.  The gathered armies then saw clearly that the stream of power had changed, turned a white gold that pushed back against the flow of flaming red, that somehow she was now drawing him to her.  And then the armies saw something else…that a change was coming over the Empress.  She was solidifying, her essence stilling.”
    “ Suddenly, Raemon gave a great, “NO!” and with a deafening clap of sound, he was gone.  The light was gone.  There was no sound.  And where the Empress had been stood a stone statue in her exact likeness, arched backwards as in her last defiance.  Like the sound of the ocean came a roar from the Tarq, and with great confusion and distress, they turned as one body and fled.”
    When Galeb finished, there was utter silence.  For one thing, the information just presented required some adapting of thought processes.  Some of them didn ’t even know where to start, and her voice was the first heard.

“ So,” Cerise said with a smooth and awed sarcasm, “you’re saying the Empress turned to stone, killed a god , and saved the world from certain destruction…?”
                  “Oh, no,” the Shepherd corrected mildly.  “Raemon is not dead…only imprisoned in the statue that had once been the Empress.” 
    While the rest of them were chewing over these juicy improbabilities, Ari saw the outline of Melkin and Banion, silhouetted against the tremendous mountain background, turn their heads and look at each other.
    “ Is that where the promise of peace arises?” Melkin asked.  “Of all that story, that is the only part that survives—and that only in bits—in the Northern Histories.”
    “ The Merranic, too,” Banion said, surprised or maybe embarrassed. They were dancing gingerly around full acceptance of this tale, hungry for any usable information without wanting any commitment to the more outlandish parts.
    “ Yes,” Galeb confirmed.  “That came several days later, brought by the Followers as the Armies of the Realms rested and recovered from their decades, centuries actually, of war.  The Followers rode up to the Tents of the King one morning, when the mist lay like a soft blanket over the exhausted land.   They were battered and bruised, it is said, for in those days they fought alongside the Realms and were much honored.”  His voice had dropped back into the deep, resonant sing-song of the story.
    “ King Kamron came out to greet them, and bent a knee to the Chieftess.  ‘We owe you our unending gratitude,’ he said simply.”
    “ Rise, High King, for you are delivered by none that yet walks the earth,’ she answered.  The Statue of the Empress sat nearby, and all present turned to gaze upon it.”
    “ She gave her life for us,’ the King began.”
    “ She gave her life to Il.  Now, High King, hearken unto me.  Five hundred years the Statue shall bind Raemon, and in that time there shall be peace.  As has not been since the days of Raemon’s Taking Out, so shall it be again.  Yet, if the Statue were to fall into the hands of the Tarq, all will be surely lost.  You must guard it more surely than you do your own borders.”
    “ King Kamron sank again to a knee, promising, “I accept this sacred trust, and will hold true faith to this great sacrifice, I and all my generations.”
    Silence fell again.  The acolytes, unbeknownst to any of them (except perhaps Kai, who stood alertly at the edge of the verandah), had started a fire in the verandah’s pit.  Its evocative