Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Alucius moved slowly though the remaining archway into a long hallway lined with columns. The roof above the columns appeared relatively solid.

  Miniature lights or stars flashed before his eyes, and for a moment, he felt weak and dizzy. He stopped and put out a hand to one of the columns to steady himself. For a time, he just stood there, sore and tired and disoriented, various thoughts spinning through his mind.

  As little as two years before, he would not have been so shocked at the happenings of the day. But after returning to the comparatively peaceful life of a herder, and then the seasons of battle and riding, it was hard to believe that he was back dealing with ifrits and Tables. Or was that because he wished he were not?

  He'd tried to escape the power of Tarolt and been thrown through a Table barrier and ended up nearly buried alive. Trying to escape that fate had led him through another barrier to somewhere else dark and cold, to yet another abandoned Table. Yet his actions, or the power of the ifrits—or both—had rejuvenated Tables that had been dead or inactive.

  The ifrits were far more powerful than he'd believed, and he still had no idea who had taken Wendra or where she might be. From what little he had observed, the ifrits he'd encountered hadn't seemed to know. They'd seemed disconcerted or uninterested in the idea of herder disappearances. Alucius also had gotten the feeling that there were far more ifrits in Corus than he'd seen. Far more.

  Another flash of dizziness confirmed that he needed to get some rest… or he'd end up sprawled out somewhere else, with perhaps even more serious injuries.

  Step by slow step, Alucius made his way along the columned corridor, which seemed more sheltered than other parts of the building. Near the far end, through a narrow doorway in the stone wall, a doorway whose door had vanished sometime in the past, he finally found a corner free of most dirt and debris, in what might have been a small room before whatever destruction had visited itself on the place. Setting his rifle close at hand, he curled into the corner.

  Everything still ached, but sleep might help. He hoped it would.

  Chapter 128

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  A flat, silvery light suffused the hallway outside the small room where Alucius was sleeping, reflecting off polished stone walls and into his eyes, bringing him slowly awake. Recalling his awakening from his last Table trip, Alucius opened his eyes and turned his head slowly.

  A dull but faint throbbing throughout his skull reminded him of his unwise exploits of the previous day, as did the soreness across his chest and arms. So did the dryness in his mouth and his cracking lips. He thought he'd seen the strength of ifrits before, but he'd had no idea that a true ifrit was so powerful. Then… with his rifle and the lifeforce-darkened cartridges, he had killed one. The only problem was that there had been three… and who knew many others that he didn't know about.

  His breath steamed in the still air, although Alucius judged that it was not quite cold enough to freeze water. Still, he was more than glad he had been wearing nightsilks and his winter riding jacket.

  He eased himself into a sitting position and looked out through the doorway at the columns on the far side of the corridor he had traversed the night before. Each was of amber gold stone, like the towers of the soarers or the ancient buildings of Dereka—or of the ifrit palaces about which he had dreamed more than a few times. The light was coming through translucent clerestory panels in the high roof of the corridor.

  One thing was very clear. He needed to take care of more than a few bodily necessities, including finding some water.

  He rose to his feet, then reclaimed the rifle, checking it over before he stepped into the ancient corridor. His boots had left the only tracks in the span-deep gray dirt that covered the pale greenstone revealed by his own scuffing steps of the night before. He turned to his right, hoping that there might be an exit somewhere ahead, although the corridor seemed to end in a gloomy recess less than fifteen yards away.

  Alucius walked forward.

  There was an exit—or there had been one—but it had been walled up, with square sections of goldenstone mortared in place. The herder tapped the stone with the butt of the rifle and was rewarded with a dull clunk. The stones were definitely solid.

  He turned and retraced his steps back along the corridor, checking each of the chambers that opened off it. Every single one was empty of all furnishings, and every outside window had been mortared closed.

  When he finally returned to the ramp that led downward to the Table, Alucius was not only thirsty and needing nourishment and relief, but also more than a little puzzled. Supposedly, the Cataclysm had been abrupt and without warning, yet someone had sealed the building carefully, and in a way that could not have been done in haste. Who had done it? How long ago? And why? To protect the Table? That thought alone was even more chilling than the air in the ancient building.

  As he eased his way down the ramp, he could see in the indirect light that it was covered with a grayish dirt that had drifted in from the broken part of the wall. He made his way to the gap in the stonework, where sunlight filtered around the massive tree trunk. On the upper side there was a gap between trunk and goldenstone—a gap perhaps half a yard in width and a yard long.

  Alucius managed to lever himself high enough to grasp a section of stone that looked as though it would break in his hands. But the jagged goldenstone was as unyielding as iron, and he had to stretch to set his rifle in one of the cracks in the stonework overhead, then use both arms to pull himself up. He was panting and sweating by the time he had recovered the rifle and gotten up far enough to squirm into the opening between trunk and broken stone. The tree looked as though it had fallen recently, with the indentations in the bark still clear and fresh. But to his Talent, the wood felt dead, lifeless. Yet it had not decayed. He touched the trunk of the tree, a fir of some sort, a good three yards in breadth, from what he could see. It was cold, like stone.

  After a moment, he began to inch his way upward at an angle and around the trunk until he was on the upper side and sitting in weak and hazy sunlight, light that offered no warmth from the biting chill that enfolded him.

  He bent and tapped the tree trunk with the rifle butt. It even sounded like stone. As he caught his breath, he took in everything around him. In front of him, the fallen tree rose at an angle above the goldenstones and green tiles that formed the roof of the structure he had just escaped. Neither snow nor ice clung to or touched the tile or the amber stonework—or the tree. Alucius's mouth opened as he realized that even the needles and the branches of the tree had ossified, as if the massive fir had been alive one instant and turned to stone the next—stone that had retained all the color and shape of the original tree.

  There were no other trees anywhere in sight. The building itself was situated on a low rise whose slopes were covered with snow. Below the rise—in all directions except north—was a snowy plain with low hummocks irregularly dotting the whiteness. There was not a single sign of any sort of vegetation, nor any rock or stone not covered with snow. To the north, from the position of the sun, the snowy plain extended about a vingt—and ended. The land just dropped away, and beyond and below that cliff edge was a mass of gray clouds or swirling snow, or both. Above was an ever-darker mass of clouds.

  Alucius turned and looked away from the clouds and the tip of the stone tree. At the bottom of the rise to the south of the building was an open rivulet of dark water running between snowy banks. A slight mist rose from the water. Alucius resisted the urge to rush toward it. He'd rushed too much lately. Instead, he used his Talent to scan the area around him, ignoring the headache the effort caused.

  He could sense a number of birds, a creature he thought might be a snow fox, and some rodents, like scrats, but different. Beyond the low rise on the far side of the small stream, the snow extended as far as he could see to the south.

  Slowly, he edged his way down the trunk until he reached the part where bare stone roots jutted upward, blocking any further progress.
From there, holding the rifle high in his left hand, he slid off into the snow. The top was crusty, but beneath that crust was white powder that flew up around him, momentarily blinding him.

  When the flurries settled, he was standing in thigh-deep snow. His boots, he felt, rested on packed snow and ice, not frozen stone or soil. Step by step he waded down the slope toward the stream, stopping on a flat area short of the water's edge and testing his footing as he edged forward. Finally, he bent down, reaching out and touching trie water. Despite the foggy vapor that rose from the surface, the water felt like liquid ice. Alucius could drink it only in very small swallows, and it chilled him all the way through by the time he felt he had had enough.

  Alucius glanced around, but the air remained chill and still, with no life except a few birds that skittered across the snow and rodents burrowed somewhere beneath the snow. He needed to get out of wherever he was—and as soon as he could. But it would help to know where he was. From what he had seen, he had to be fairly far north, perhaps near Northport or even Blackstear—although he supposed that, with the range of the Tables, he could be somewhere just as far north, but far to the east in Lustrea.

  His one look at the land around him had made one thing very clear. The only way out was through the Table.

  In time, after dealing with other needs, and drinking more, he made his way back up the stone tree and wormed his way into the Table building—grateful to be out of a wind that had begun to rise, colder with each quarter glass that passed. The sky to the north was darkening moment by moment, with heavy gray clouds scudding in from the northwest. His head and body still ached, but he didn't see that staying around in the frigid Table building in the middle of a mostly frozen wasteland, with spring yet to approach, would do much to improve his physical condition.

  He made another study of every room on the upper levels of the building but found nothing, not even any light-torches or brackets that might have opened hidden passages. Just walls and columns and floors and ceilings, all of cold stone. There wasn't even a scrap of parchment or a fragment of metal.

  Alucius stood at the top of the ramp leading down to the Table chamber and tried to think. The last Table—the buried one—had felt reddish. The one in Salaan had been a dark green, and the one immediately below him had felt black. The one that had existed in Tempre had been blue, and the one where he had faced the ifrit-possessed engineer years before had been silver. The Table in Tempre did not exist any longer, and the one where he'd fought the engineer was probably also buried in rubble. He hadn't fared well against the ifrits in Salaan when he had been stronger. So… he had to find another Table, preferably an older one not being tended by ifrits. If there was another Table anywhere.

  His breath was steaming more, and he shivered. Was that the cold caused by the storm coming in? Or was it because he was tired and hungry? He pressed his lips together, lifted the rifle that was becoming ever heavier, and retraced his steps back to the lower level.

  Once he entered the Table chamber, he noted that the ooze around the Table was firmer, almost totally frozen, except immediately next to the Table. The Table itself held the purplish Talent-glow that indicated it was functioning.

  In the dimness, he checked the walls of the chamber, but could find no sign of light-torch brackets or of hidden doorways. By the time he finished, his teeth were chattering.

  Alucius took a deep breath, then climbed onto the Table quickly, as if he feared he might lose his resolve. He concentrated on the blackness beneath, on the tubes that led… wherever…

  More quickly than before, Alucius dropped into the purple black chill. In the timelessness that followed, he tried to feel for the arrowlike markers, finding the sullen red one, the dark green, the silver, and the black, somewhere seemingly above him. There were none of the guideways, the golden green threads, that led to the hidden city, not even beyond the blackness, not where he had found them once before.

  But there had to be something else… somewhere else that he could go…

  He could sense, nearer now in some way, one dark purple conduit that led to a darkness far worse than anything on Corus—the world from where the ifrits came. Alucius had no desire to go there. Facing an entire world of the creatures was madness when he could barely hold his own against a single ifrit.

  Once more, he sought beyond the tube of chill purple blackness, but found nothing. Was there not anything, any kind of marker?

  He struggled to find something, anything at all.

  Off to the side, or off center, Alucius sensed something else, something faint, a circle of gold and crimson, barely there, yet there, but not flickering or retreating. He thought there might be another, one of hot purple and pink, but that was farther away, and he was tired… so tired.

  As before, his mind had become slow and confused, and he Talent-probed desperately for the golden red circle, more of a mist than an arrow or a Table. Still… it had to represent… something. He pressed his being toward that crimson gold, mind-levering himself at whatever it represented.

  Before he knew it, he was hurtling through a barrier, but one of silvered gold, whose breaking shards were more like the patter of rain as he flew through it.

  Chapter 129

  Salaan, Lanachrona

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  The two ifrits stood on opposite sides of the Table that dominated the lower chamber. The hidden door had been closed, and the stone facing where it was looked no different from the sections of wall on either side.

  "The Table in Soupat is on the grid. So is the one in Blackstear." Trezun looked at Tarolt. " Waleryn thinks he will have the Table in Norda fully operational in a week, no more than two. The cold has hampered some of his efforts."

  "It always does. Would that we could work on a warmer world, but the universe does not take note of desires or wishes, only what is."

  "Unhappily."

  "How did you manage to bring the one in Blackstear into the grid?" Tarolt's voice carried little more than idle curiosity.

  "I did not. The herder-colonel did, I surmise, since there was a translation from the Table in Soupat, and none of the other Tables on the grid show another translation."

  "That he went to Blackstear proves that he has ability, but not understanding."

  "The ancient ones, perhaps?"

  "No. Blackstear was at the edge of their reach even when they were more formidable." Tarolt smiled. "They are scarcely that now."

  "They could be concealing their strength."

  "I think not. Not if they are reduced to using Talent-steers as their agents." Tarolt gestured toward the Table itself. "The two reaccessed Tables—they will strengthen the grid by how much?"

  "A tenth part for now. Another tenth once the Table in Norda is fully operational and can shunt power to them through the grid."

  "So we have strengthened the grid, but opened it to an agent of the ancient ones, who, weak as he is, has survived a barrier and made another translation."

  "He cannot survive in Blackstear," pointed out Trezun.

  "No. But do we know that he will stay there? Warn Waleryn that he is able to use the Tables." Tarolt paused. "You had best begin making translations to Tempre. That is close enough that you should not need a Table there, and the Lord-Protector believes the room is sealed."

  "You want me to start rebuilding the Table there?"

  "Where else? We need to gain control over the Lord-Protector."

  Trezun nodded slowly. "It will take time."

  "Everything takes time, and that is what we have too little of. You had best send a message to the fieldmasters about the Talent-steer."

  "They will not be pleased."

  "No. But they would be less pleased if they discovered it later, and we have not told them. They should also know that we yet face difficulties. Perhaps it will motivate them to… encourage greater support for our efforts."

  "Most true," admitted Trezun. "Should we request a replacement for Sensat?"

  "That would be bes
t—if there is someone willing to take the risk and with enough lifeforce to make the long translation to a marginal grid. But word what you send most carefully. I would rather not upset Fieldmaster Lasylt more than necessary."

  Trezun nodded slowly once more.

  Chapter 130

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  Alucius staggered as he broke out from the purple darkness, and he took two steps before recovering his balance. He glanced around warily, but he saw no one. He stood in an empty chamber, in a square pit perhaps half a yard below the stone floor. Dust raised by his boots swirled up around him and he sneezed—hard—several times.

  With his free hand, he rubbed his nose, trying to stop the itching and the sneezing. Finally, he glanced around, noticing immediately as he did that the air around him was far warmer, if not quite springlike. Again… he was in a chamber below ground, but this one was lit, if dimly, by light filtering through a doorway to his left. A moment passed before he realized that there was no Table in the chamber. No Table? But how had he been able to appear?

  As he stepped out of the pit, he frowned, thinking, even as he kept looking around the empty chamber. He had not been able to find one of the arrow markers. Nor had he been able to find the golden green circles of the soarers and their hidden city. He had tried to use a misty golden red circle—and he had broken out through some sort of barrier. Did that mean that the Tables were only to make travel easier? He recalled all the Table locations he knew. Each was set on or near stone and deep in the ground. That argued that the Tables could be located only in certain places. Alucius looked back at the Table-sized depression in the stone and nodded slowly.