Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  SCEPTERS

  Corean Chronicles Book 3

  By

  L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Contents

  Part I.

  THE SCEPTER OF THE PAST

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

  Part II.

  THE SCEPTER OF THE PRESENT

  104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163

  SCEPTERS

  Tor Books by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

  The Corean Chronicles

  Legacies

  Darknesses

  Scepters

  The Spellsong Cycle

  The Soprano Sorceress

  The Spellsong War

  Darksong Rising

  The Shadow Sorceress

  Shadowsinger

  The Saga of Recluce

  The Magic of Recluce

  The Towers of the Sunset

  The Magic Engineer

  The Order War

  The Death of Chaos

  Fall of Angels

  The Chaos Balance

  The White Order

  Colors of Chaos

  Magi'i of Cyador

  Scion of Cyador

  Wellspring of Chaos

  The Ghost Books

  Of Tangible Ghosts

  The Ghost of the Revelator

  Ghost of the White Nights

  The Ecolitan Matter

  Empire & Ecolitan

  (comprising The Ecolitan Operation and The Ecologic Secession)

  Ecolitan Prime

  (comprising The Ecologic Envoy and The Ecolitan Enigma)

  The Forever Hero

  (comprising Dawn for a Distant Earth,

  The Silent Warrior, and

  In Endless Twilight)

  Timegods' World

  (comprising The Timegod and

  Timediver's Dawn)

  The Green Progression

  The Parafaith War

  The Ethos Effect

  The Hammer of Darkness

  Adiamante

  Gravity Dreams

  The Octagonal Raven

  Archform: Beauty

  Flash

  L. E. MODESITT, JR.

  SCEPTERS

  The Third Book of the Corean Chronicles

  A Tom Doherty Associates Book

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  SCEPTERS: THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COREAN CHRONICLES

  Copyright © 2004 by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Edited by David G. Hartwell

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  ISBN 0-765-31042-2

  First Edition: July 2004

  Printed in the United States of America

  In memoriam:

  For my father, both hero and preceptor

  … The brave, the craven, those who do not care,

  will all look back, in awe, and fail to see,

  whether rich, or poor, or young, or old and frail,

  what was, what is, and what is yet to be.

  There is a time, and it will come, years hence,

  when one will find the scepters of the day,

  those scepters more and less than what they seem,

  with the might to bring life itself to bay.

  In those ages, then, will rise a leader,

  who would reclaim the glory of the past,

  and more, as he would see it, in the sun,

  to make sure the dual scepters will always last.

  Then too, the lamaial will rise, but once,

  Where none yet will suspect, nor think to dare,

  and his hidden strokes may kill aborning,

  Duality of promise bright and fair.

  For which will live, and which will prosper?

  Who will rule the lands, in faith or treason?

  One called lamaial or the one called hero,

  for one would seek a triumph, the other reason.

  Excerpts from:

  THE LEGACY OF THE DUARCHY

  I.

  THE SCEPTER OF THE PAST

  Chapter 1

  Hyalt, Lanachrona

  ^ »

  Light fell upon the priest. That single ray of illumination, shaped by the ancient master-carved lens in the ceiling of the long and narrow chapel hewn out of the red rock cliffs, bathed the celebrant. His green tunic and trousers, trimmed in purple, shimmered. So did the alabaster makeup that covered his face. The blue-silver threads in the black short-haired wig picked up the light, creating a halo around his face. The black boots, with inset lifts, reflected light as if they too were burnished mirrors.

  A long chord echoed through the temple, but the priest did not speak until all was silent.

  "When our forebears turned their backs on the True Duarchy, then the One Who Is turned away and let the Cataclysm fall upon Corus…" The celebrant's voice seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere.

  More than a hundred worshippers stood with bowed heads, heads covered with black scarves of mourning. Only a handful dared to look from lowered heads toward the front of the temple.

  "The Cataclysm did not have to happen. The misery and suffering did not have to come to pass. And why did it come to be? How could so many be so blind?"

  The only response to his questions was silence.

  "The Duarchy of Corus bestowed peace and prosperity upon all the world, for generation upon generation. Never was there so fair a realm, so just a world. Never were so blessed the peoples of a world. Never had so many benefited so much. And then, in an instant, it all vanished…"

  In the next-to-last line of worshippers stood a dark-haired figure in gray. He was a head taller than those around him, and his face paler. The weave of the wool of his traveling cloak was somewhat finer. His head was bent slightly less than the heads of others, and his eyes never left the celebrant. The faintest hint of an amused smile appeared from time to time at the corners of his thin lips.

  "… as the Mantra of Mourning declares… Ice flowed from the skies. The air that had been so fair, and perfumed, became as thin and as acrid as vinegar. Streams dried in their beds, rivers in their courses, never to flow again… All that had been beautiful and great perished and was lost. And for what reason?"

  After a momentary silence, the priest answered, "Because people were selfish and thought only of themselves. They turned their backs on the True Duarchy, and when they did so, they turned their backs on the One Who Is… for the Duarchy was indeed His creation…

  "… in this world of transitory glory, when warlord succeeds warlord, and battle follows battle, and evil follows evil, we must persevere. We must have faith in the One Who Is. We must follow the path of righteousness to restore the old truths. For only by the instrument of the True Duarchy shall we be redeemed. Only by restoring the true creation of the One Who Is shall we once more see peace and prosperity, faith and faithfulness…"

  The traveler in gray nodded, appreciatively, and continued to listen.

  "�
� even today, the troubles continue. The hills to the north and west have become so dry in your lifetimes that they support nothing but twisted trees and spiky thorn, and yet the unbelievers do not see. Even here in Hyalt, where it is obvious, they do not see…

  "… when the only deity is gold, when the only rule is power, when the only law is that laid down by the longest blade, by the deadliest rifle, no man can be safe, and none can find security. There are no arts, no fine buildings, no wondrous words, nothing but gold and blood…"

  The traveler continued to listen, until at last came a hymn and the concluding refrain:

  "… for the beauty of the skies and sea,

  the full return of perfect harmony,

  the blessings of the True Duarchy

  and for the One Who Will Always Be!"

  After the hymn, the priest turned to the worshippers. "Praise to the One Who Is! And for His creation of the Duarchy!"

  "And for His creation of the Duarchy!" repeated the congregation. "Praise to the One Who Is! For He will come again in glory!" "For He will come again in glory!" "Praise to Him and His True Duarchy! For all that was and will be!"

  "For all that was and will be!"

  The single ray of light vanished, plunging the cavern temple into total darkness for a long moment. Then, slowly, more indirect light filtered into the temple as the skylight portals, with their gauze-covered panes, were uncovered.

  The sanctuary at the front of the temple was empty.

  The gray-clad traveler made his way forward, toward the side entrance leading to the chambers of the celebrant. His fingers touched briefly the outer garments over the heavy leather wallet hidden beneath his cloak and filled with golds.

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  The wind moaned over the top of Westridge, hissing through the quarasote that had grown up following the Cataclysm and that had come to dominate the arid lands of the Iron Valleys in the tens of centuries that followed. Alucius half stood in the stirrups, stretching his legs. He settled back into the saddle of the gray gelding, drank in the cool and dry morning air, and smiled to himself. He looked to the northeast out across the ridge before him, and the expanse of land empty except for quarasote and sand and red soil—and the predators and prey that were unseen, except to those who knew how to understand the Iron Valleys or to those with Talent, who could sense the lifethreads that wove the world into a unified whole.

  A good summer morning, he thought, bending forward and thumping the gelding on the shoulder. "We've got a ways to go."

  The lead ram was already five hundred yards—a quarter vingt—ahead of the last ewe, and they were barely four vingts out from the stead buildings.

  The faint flash of green gossamer radiance washed over Alucius, and he half turned in the saddle. A single soarer hovered in the silver-green sky of morning, her wings shimmering against the sky and the sheer stone ramparts of the Aerial Plateau to the east. The herder's eyes took in the feminine form of the soarer, then darted back to check his flock almost immediately.

  He had not seen a soarer in almost two years—since he had left the hidden city. Nor had he and his Talent sensed the green radiance of one in all that time. And all the times he had seen one of the soaring winged figures had meant change—and usually trouble.

  He cast forth an inquiry. What now?

  The soarer vanished without a response. One instant, she was there. The next she was not. While she had not felt familiar, Alucius had not been close enough long enough to tell for sure if the soarer had been the one who had instructed him during his brief captivity in the hidden city.

  His hand touched the hilt of the sabre at his belt. He glanced down at the rifle in its leather saddle case. Even with the massive cartridges used in a herder rifle—with casings bigger than the thumb of a large man—rifles were usually not all that effective against the kind of trouble she foreshadowed. Rifles were most useful against sandwolves and, sometimes, against sanders—and necessary, since both would prey on lone nightsheep… and especially on ewes and lambs. Rifles were useless against ifrits, but Alucius had never seen one near a stead—not surprising, since he'd only seen two in person in his life, three if he counted the Matrial, and he had not really even seen her.

  A soarer above Westridge in the morning, reflected Alucius, was so infrequent that he almost wanted to turn back to the stead to tell Wendra about it. But what could he tell his wife, except that a soarer had appeared, then vanished without a word or gesture?

  Outside of the Iron Valleys, soarers—and even sanders—had already become a myth for most of Corus, one told in tales that included the Myrmidons and alectors of the long-vanished Duarchy—the millennium recalled by most of Corus as one of peace and prosperity. Both the duration of that reign and the prosperity and fairness of the Duarchy had been lies and exaggerations of the cruelest sort, as Alucius had discovered in his battles as a Northern Guard officer, but since he had no way to prove what he had discovered—except by revealing his Talent in a world that feared and mistrusted it—the lie lived on, a comforting tale of a golden past. Some folk—especially the savants from Tempre—said the soarers were never there at all, that they were but mirages created by light and the fine, mirrorlike dust worn off the quartz ridges that lined the natural parapets of the Aerial Plateau by the endless winds. Alucius knew better. So did any of the double handful of nightsheep herders around Iron Stem.

  Alucius nodded as he glanced back at his flock. Two of the nightrams edged toward each other. Their curled black horns—knife-sharp on the front edges, and strong enough to bend a sabre—glittered in the morning sun. Red eyes shone out of black faces, and the black wool that was tougher than thick leather, more valuable than gold, and covered their two-yard-long bodies and broad shoulders, gave them a massive and menacing appearance. A nightram could gut a single sandwolf, although the sandwolves were even larger, with crystal fangs more than a handspan in length, but the sandwolves hunted in packs and tried to pick off ewes and lambs, or older and weaker nightrams who strayed from the flock.

  One of the nightrams pawed the ground, and Alucius could sense the antagonism between the two males. He eased the big gray gelding forward, reaching out with his Talent to project disapproval and separation. Both of the black-wooled rams looked up. Alucius could sense their frustration, but they separated. Herding nightsheep was a chancy life, and impossible, often fatal, if the herder didn't have the Talent to make his feelings known.

  Alucius was fortunate to bear within him that Talent—more than fortunate, for the life of a herder suited him. That he also knew. With his crooked smile, he let his impatience flow out, spreading across the flock, chivvying the animals eastward. They needed to graze on the lands near the Aerial Plateau—the nearer the better—if their wool were to be prime.

  The nightrams black undercoat was softer than duck down, cooler than linen in summer, and warmer than sheep's wool in winter, but stronger than iron wire once it was shorn and processed into nightsilk. The wool of the outer coat was used for jackets stronger and more flexible—and far lighter—than plate mail. Under pressure, the fabric stiffened to a hardness beyond steel, hard enough to serve as armor of sorts, although its comparative thinness meant that bruises to the body so shielded were not uncommon—as Alucius well knew from his personal experience in the militia, then the Northern Guard.

  The wool from the yearlings or the ewes was equally soft, but not as strong under duress, and was used for the garments of the lady-gentry of such cities as Borlan, Tempre, Krost, and Southgate. Nightsheep could make a herder a comfortable living in Iron Stem, if they and their predators didn't kill him first.

  Alucius urged the gray eastward across the ground where little grew except the quarasote bushes, on whose tender new stalks the nightsheep fed. After a year's growth, the lower shoots of the bushes toughened, and after two, not even a maul-axe with a knife-sharp blade on the axe side could cut through the toughened bark, and the finger-long thorns that grew in the thir
d year could slice through any boot leather. In its fourth year, each bush flowered with tiny silver-green blossoms. The blossoms became seedpods that exploded across the sandy wastes in the chill of winter, and then the bush died, leaving behind dead stalks that contained too much silica to burn or to break or cut. Yet they too succumbed to the wasteland, and to the shellbeetles that devoured them. That was the harsh way of the lands beneath the Plateau and the reason why few liked Iron Stem, even those living there.

  Some complained about the wind, the way it blew hard and hot through the summer and cold and bitingly dry through the winter. Some said that each wind was different and none were to be trusted. Others complained about the dryness, because little but quarasote and an occasional juniper grew in the Iron Valleys.

  The same people complained that in winter there was no heat in the sun except where it struck the eternastones of the high road that ran from Eastice in the far north down through Soulend and Iron Stem and then Dekhron, and across the River Vedra, and far into the south of Lanachrona. There were other high roads, too, and while they had been traveled heavily in the days of the Duarchy, most times now only a handful of traders or travelers could be found on any of them.

  Some thirty vingts to the east stood the mighty Aerial Plateau, whose stone ramparts ran straight upward six thousand yards or more. All who had tried to climb the Plateau failed long before they reached the top. Most vanished, their bones occasionally discovered by Alucius or some other herder.