Legacies

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Alucius nodded politely.

  The man returned the nod, before turning and walking toward the nearest produce wagon.

  When the horses had had enough, Alucius reclaimed the buckets and took them back to the pump, where he rinsed them out before replacing them in the back of the wagon. Then he walked toward the endmost cart, where two boys stood, admiring the display of knives on the dark cotton.

  One of the boys looked up. His eyes scanned Alucius, and he used his elbow to touch the other, before whispering something. Both nodded to the itinerant knife-smith and stepped away.

  'Are you interested in something, young sir?" asked the gray-haired man.

  'I don't have any coins, sir," Alucius said. "You don't mind if I look, do you?"

  The man, younger than Royalt, smiled. "Look all you want. I come here every Septi during the spring, summer, and harvest seasons. I'll even make special knives when you're ready for one."

  Alucius could sense the friendliness—and a hint of something else, sadness perhaps. "Thank you." He looked over the array of knives. Most were for use in a kitchen or stead, but a handful, on one side, were clearly weapons. Alucius thought that the two on the end were a matched pair of throwing knives, but there was no reason to ask.

  After a time, he nodded to the knife-smith. "Thank you, sir."

  'Thank you, young sir."

  Alucius rejoined Royalt by a cart containing a few small baskets of breads and some half-bushels of early cherries from the south.

  Royalt glanced down at the boy. "I was thinking…"

  'She'd like the soft bread, with all the raisins and the browned sugar… and the cherries."

  Royalt raised his eyebrows.

  'I heard her talking to Mother. They won't ever ask for anything, Grandfather. And Grandma'am won't let Mother ask for her, either."

  Royalt burst into a loud laugh. "You know more at ten than I did at twice your age." He turned to the redheaded woman at the end of the wagon. "How much for the cherries?"

  'Had to bring them up from south of Borlan. I'd say three silvers, but I'd not want to carry them back."

  Royalt nodded. "What about two silvers, and throw in two loaves of the soft current bread there?"

  The woman pursed her lips, calculating, as her eyes ran over the nightsilk covered herder's jacket that Royalt wore.

  Alucius waited for a moment, then added. "It's for my grandma'am. I have one copper."

  The woman shook her head. "Done. Two silvers and a copper." She looked at Alucius ami added, "Let your grandsire pay them."

  Alucius noted that his grandfather actually handed over two silvers and a pair of coppers, not just one.

  'You carry the bread, Alucius."

  'Yes, sir."

  The two walked back toward the wagon through a mist that was getting cooler and heavier, under clouds that had once more thickened and lowered.

  'I'd stay longer," Royalt said, "but there's not as much here as I'd hoped. Happens when you come midweek. We need to go out to the mill for the flour and hope Amiss has some salt."

  'Yes, sir." Alucius didn't know what else to say.

  'The produce woman, she wasn't going to let those go for less than two silvers and five." Royalt stopped beside the wagon. "You knew that, didn't you, you imp?"

  'Yes, sir."

  Royalt covered the bushel with a cloth before easing it into the covered bin behind the wagon seat. He wrapped the two loaves of bread in another clean cloth before easing them onto a position on top of the coarse sacks of potatoes and yams he had apparently gotten while Alucius had been looking at the knives.

  While Royalt untied the horses, Alucius climbed up into the wagon seat.

  Then the herder swung up into the driver's seat. He released the wagon brakes, and gave a gentle flip to the reins. "Won't take long for us to get out to Amiss's place. Should make it easy for us to be back to the stead by late afternoon. That way, your mother and grandma'am won't be worrying. And if it starts to mist more, you need to put the cloak back on."

  'Yes, sir."

  As Royalt guided the wagon onto the westbound road out of the square, Alucius could see the two boys returning to the knife-smith's cart.

  'Why do people think we're different?" Alucius asked.

  'You saw that, didn't you?"

  'Yes, sir."

  Royalt sighed. "Herders are different. You know when the horses have had enough to drink, don't you? Or when a nightsheep is hurt? Sometimes, even when people are hurt inside?"

  'Sometimes," Alucius admitted cautiously.

  'Most people can't do that. To be a herder you have to have some Talent. Not much, but some—I've told you that—and most people don't have even that much Talent. People are afraid of the Talent. Some of them even think that Talent was what caused the dark days."

  'It didn't, did it?" asked Alucius.

  'It doesn't matter whether it did or didn't, boy. What matters is how people feel. If they think the Talent caused the Cataclysm, then they're going to be afraid of people with Talent, and nothing we say is going to change things. That's why some people don't care much for herders. Something you have to get used to, if you want to be a herder."

  'Is that why herders wear the wristguard?"

  Royalt laughed. "No, boy. We know we're different. You can tell a herder, young as you are. It's a symbol, in a way, something to remind us who we are."

  Royalt eased the wagon to the right edge of the road as a rider neared, coming from the west. The man tipped his battered felt hat to Royalt. The herder returned the gesture.

  Alucius nodded to the rider, as well, even as he still wondered why people would want to believe things that weren't true.

  The full moon that was Selena cast a pale pearly glow across the stead, softening the hard edges of the fences, the main dwelling, the maintenance barn, and the sheds that held the nightsheep. Not even the cicadas or the distant howl of a sandwolf disturbed the silence. The dark-haired woman sat on the porch, slightly crosswise on the wooden chair she had carried out from the kitchen. She cradled the four-string gitar and looked out into the patterns of moonlight and darkness. After a time, she began to sing, softly.

  'Don't be lookin' for soarers free, dear, with anyone else but me…"

  In the loft above, Alucius listened through his window, a window open to catch the light night breeze. He liked to hear his mother sing.

  She often sang that song, softly, late at night, when everyone else in the stead was sleeping. Or supposed to be sleeping.

  'Don't be seeking the distant sea dear, with anyone else but me…"

  His mother never sang when Asterta was in the night sky, and Alucius wondered if that were because the green-tinged Asterta had once been considered the horse goddess—the one who offered both death and glory to the horse warriors.

  'Don't be off'ring the homestead key dear, to anyone else but me…"

  At the gathers and the fests, there was always someone asking his mother to sing and play. Alucius was always amazed at how many songs she knew—from the upbeat and cheerful ones to some so mournful that even the eyes of the hard-edged Militia riders brightened.

  'Don't sit under the loving tree, dear, with anyone else but me… with anyone else but me…"

  As the words from the porch below faded, Alucius lay back on his pallet bed, recalling that, of all the songs she knew, he had never heard her sing that song at the fests or when the growers got together after harvest. She only sang it at night and when she was alone.

  A yellow-orca arrow knifed through Alucius, searing through his stomach, and then running in a line both through his shoulders and arms, and down his back and his left leg. He woke abruptly and sat up in the darkness, panting, sweating, and recalling the intensity of the pain, a severity he recalled, but no longer felt. Except that it was still there… somewhere.

  Voices drifted up the ladder.

  '… hurts so much, Royalt…"

  'I know… I know."

  Sensing the
helplessness in his grandsire's voice, Alucius crept out of his bed and to the top of the ladder that led to the end of the hall below. Although his grandparents' room was a good five yards away from the base of the wooden ladder, the door was ajar. Like all herders, Alucius could hear from much farther away than could most people.

  'I'll fix some root-tea and put some of the aspabark in it. That will help."

  Alucius waited at the top of the loft ladder until his grandsire had walked toward the kitchen and until he heard the clank of the stove door and the clunk of the coal scuttle. Then, he slipped down the ladder. He glanced toward the kitchen, and then toward the closed door to his mother's room. He eased through the open door.

  His grandmother lay propped up with pillows in the wide bed. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing heavily. Even in the near-darkness—the only light being a glowstone on the bedside table—Alucius could see the tightness in her face and the pallor, an almost yellow-green tinge that came as much from within as from the greenish light of the stone.

  'Royalt?…"

  'It's me, Grandma'am… Alucius."

  'You would know…" A faint smile appeared, one that vanished as her entire body stiffened.

  Alucius could feel that same stabbing pain, not so severe as when it had wakened him, but the same. He didn't know what to say. Finally, he murmured, "It hurts a lot, doesn't it?"

  'Yes… child… it does."

  Alucius edged closer to the bed, standing next to the finial rising from the post on the right side of the footboard and resting his right hand on it. "It's been hurting for a long time."

  Veryl did not reply, instead silently going into another spasm of pain.

  Alucius reached out and touched her leg, and the intensity of the agony almost convulsed him, and tears began to seep from the corners of his eyes. No one should have to bear that pain. No one, and certainly not his grandma'am.

  He swallowed, and then let his senses, his small Talent, become himself, as though he were lost in the Talent. He kept one thought, fixed it within himself—that the ugliness and the pain had to end, and that his grandmother had to get well.

  Yellow-red shot through him, and he trembled, and grasped the finial ever more tightly.

  Then a wave of whiteness washed over him, and then a wave of blackness.

  Alucius woke to find himself on the long couch in the main room, his mother looking down at him, her face drawn.

  'Alucius…" She bent forward and hugged him. "You're all right. You're all right. I was so worried."

  'I'm… fine." He yawned. "Tired…" He frowned, realizing that he'd been in his grandparents' room. How had he gotten into the main room? What had happened?

  He squinted. He remembered fighting with the yellow-red pain, and wanting her to get better. His eyes widened. "How is Grandma'am?"

  'She's sleeping." Lucenda's hand went to her mouth. "Alucius…"

  'She'll be better," Alucius said, yawning again, and turning on his side. "I know she'll be better." This time, now, he could sleep.

  Hieron, Madrien

  The long and narrow workroom was lit by three crystal light-torches, their radiance far brighter than those few antiques remaining and used throughout the rest of Corus. On the racks that flanked two sides of the chamber were objects of various sizes and shapes, and of varying degrees of complexity. All exuded antiquity. The workbench was newer, with its smooth-finished lorken surfaces and the polished tools set in brackets.

  The only person in the chamber was a clean-shaven man who sat at the drafting table, dressed in brown, from his vest to his heavy boots, except for the silver torque around his neck. He studied the object in his hand, turning it, noting the way it flared in the light as the ancient purple crystal came into the direct beam of the light-torch.

  After a time, he set it aside and began to draw upon the sheet before him. "Has to be a part of the energy release… somehow… but how?"

  The door at the east end of the room opened, and a tall and broad-shouldered woman stepped inside. She did not close the door, and a line of afternoon sunlight falling through the opening space illuminated dust motes in a pyramidal pattern.

  She did not speak until she was within a few yards of the man, and her voice was quiet, yet powerful, its effect reinforced by the intense violet eyes that fixed upon him. "Have you anything new, Engineer Hyalas?"

  'Engineer? I am a mere artisan, honored Matrial," Hyalas replied in mock servility, "grubbing through the buried ruins of lost Faitel to reclaim a faint glimmer of what the ancients had created."

  'I understand that," the woman replied. "I am paying you to provide devices of use to Madrien from that grubbing. You may recall that, from time to time. I am spending good golds to reclaim what you can of the Legacy of the Duarches." With her flawless white skin and dark hair, she might almost have been Talent-creature, or a sculpted image of beauty, had she remained silent, but her voice was full and musical.

  'You may recall what the plaque said," Hyalas said, quoting,

  'That heritage, that legacy of old, Duarchial bequest to ages new—"

  A gesture by the woman cut off Hyalas's words, and the Matrial completed the stanza.

  '—unseen by fair Elcien's sages bold will grant power even the wisest rue."

  She raised her finely drawn eyebrows. "Power great enough that the wisest rue it? There is none such remaining now, but you will find it."

  'Yes, Matrial." Hyalas inclined his head, before easing his squarish body from the armed stool where he had been sitting and walking toward the second rack toward the door.

  He stopped and picked up an object. "This… it is a working model—"

  'It appears to be a cannon. We have cannon, Hyalas. They are heavy, bulky, and even with the best of trunnions and scales, they are less than accurate, and anyone with Talent can touch off the powder before they can be loaded. They are useful only against brigands, perhaps the herders in the Iron Valleys, but not against the Lanachronans or others."

  'Ah… but this is not the usual cannon, Matrial. I thought as you did at first, but…" Hyalas paused, then smiled. "It is a Talent-cannon. That is, it can only be used by someone with the Talent, and it amplifies the power of the powder, so that a heavy ball can be fired with perhaps one tenth the use of powder, and… most important, it appears that it cannot be touched off by another Talent."

  'That is an improvement… but it takes someone with Talent to operate it, and there are too few of those. Far too few, though we cultivate the illusion, as you know, that our officers all can wield Talent."

  Hyalas moved to the next rack, containing all manner of scattered parts. "This… I have just discovered it. If the plates are correct, it takes no Talent to operate, and it creates and throws crystal knives so long as there is sand nearby that can be poured into its hopper."

  'Can you rebuild it?"

  'I would think so, but one never knows until one tries."

  'I suggest you try. Or find us something else of even greater use."

  'Matrial, what do you think—"

  The Matrial fingered the silvery loop on her belt.

  Hyalas turned red, then blue, unable to speak.

  The Matrial released the loop.

  Hyalas took a long desperate breath.

  'You know what you are to do. You are to find weapons, usable by any, without a need for Talent, and effective against small arms, armor, walls, or all three. That is what we need. That is what you will provide." The Matrial smiled. "You will find us the true legacy of the Duarches. Do you understand?"

  'Yes, Matrial." Hyalas inclined his head, more deeply.

  'Good."

  The artisan'engineer did not look up until the door closed. His lips moved explosively, but the words were silent.

  Alucius woke with a start in the dim light. His stomach ached, but the pain was hunger. He felt dizzy as he turned his head, and then caught himself, barely avoiding tumbling off the couch. Slowly, he sat up and eased his feet to the floor
. He shivered, although the floor did not seem that cold. His mother was lying back in the armchair next to the couch, snoring softly.

  Alucius stood, and she jerked awake. "Alucius?"

  'My stomach hurts. I'm hungry."

  'How badly does it hurt?" Lucenda asked, immediately standing.

  'I'm hungry, Mother. That kind of hurt."

  'Is he all right?" That was his grandfather's voice, sleep-roughened, and Royalt emerged from the hall.

  'Should he eat?" asked Lucenda.

  'He feels all right. But he's white. Let him eat." Royalt's voice was firm, but not harsh, and he smiled at Alucius, as if they shared a secret. "He can tell us later."

  'Grandma'am?" Alucius asked.

  'She's still sleeping, but she'll be fine. Better than she's been in years.

  I can tell that," Royalt offered. "Now, you need to eat, as much as you can.

  'No prickle," Alucius said, shivering once more, and taking a step toward the kitchen.

  'No prickle," his grandfather agreed. "But plenty of cheese and meat. You can even have the soft currant bread. You just sit at the kitchen table and let us get you what you need."

  Alucius trudged into the kitchen, aware that his legs were unsteady, and his vision blurring.

  Almost immediately, Royalt thrust a chunk of soft bread and a tumbler of the costly berry juice he had been saving for Veryl before his grandson. "You need to eat. Start with this. Eat slowly while we get you something warmer." He pulled a blanket around Alucius's shoulders.

  Alucius looked at the food blankly.

  'You need to eat it, dear," Lucenda said.

  Royalt left and then returned wearing trousers, boots, and a jacket thrown over his nightshirt. "I'll see about eggs, daughter, if you'll get the stove going."

  Lucenda nodded, and immediately went to the coal scuttle. Alucius smelled the acrid scent of coal, both burning and unburned. He nibbled at the soft bread and took a sip of the juice, carefully. He didn't want to spill anything that cost more than a copper a tumbler. Before long, he looked down. Although he had eaten slowly, there weren't even crumbs before him. With the growing warmth of the stove, and what he had eaten, his shivering subsided.