Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Wendra walked toward the low, wide window, looking out to the west, where the sun cast a glow over the city. "It looks old, and it feels old."

  "It is old," Alucius pointed out. "We need to get out of here. The stairway down to the lower level and the north doors to the street are this way." He turned to the right.

  Wendra slipped alongside Alucius as they followed the bare-walled golden eternastone corridors generally northward until they reached the wide stone staircase leading down. A single beggar, hearing their steps, scuttled back to the southern side of the structure so quickly that Alucius never saw the man. Before long, they walked through the square arch on the north side of the building. They turned west toward the main boulevard.

  Despite the warmth of the afternoon, Alucius left his jacket on to conceal his uniform. Even so, several of the vendors and peddlers took second looks at the two herders, but the looks faded into disinterest as they took in Alendra.

  When they reached the main boulevard, Alucius pointed southward. "You can see the main gates of the palace there… and the tower."

  "It looks just like the one in Iron Stem," Wendra said. "You'd told me that, but it's hard to believe."

  "All the green towers look like that. So do the ones in Tempre." Alucius motioned to the left, northward. "It's several blocks that way. And we have to stay out of the middle of the road. That's only for riders and wagons."

  The streets remained less crowded than he had recalled from his first trip to Dereka, but, perhaps because he was walking with Wendra, more people looked directly at them. Alendra was beginning to fuss by the time they had walked the half vingt that took them to the three-story Red House.

  "It is red," said Wendra with a laugh. "Very red. Shutters, doors, trim…" She grinned. "We could do that to the stead."

  Alucius made a face, then laughed. "The food's not bad."

  He knew they had to eat, and that they needed rest, but he still worried that they were losing ground with every moment not spent seeking the scepters.

  Chapter 150

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  Alendra woke up, whimpering with hunger, as the faintest touch of gray seeped through the shuttered second-floor windows of the room in the Red House. While Alucius struggled to find some alertness, Wendra eased their daughter to her breast.

  "I must have been tired," Alucius finally said.

  "You were. You were snoring. You don't snore unless you're tired."

  Alucius managed a smile, easing himself into a sitting position, his bare feet on the plank floor. A solid meal and sleep—even on a most lumpy mattress—left him feeling better than he had in days. He stood and walked to washstand, where he washed quickly, then refreshed the water for Wendra.

  "I've been thinking…" he began.

  "About what the ifrit said about the soarers? I wondered about that, too." Wendra shifted her weight and repositioned the nursing infant. "What do you think that he meant?"

  "I think I know. It makes sense. I just hadn't thought of it that way. You know leschec? It has the soarer queen and the sander king, and the soarer mentioned that they had skill but not strength, and that you had been brought by the strength of others…"

  "You think… the soarers are the women and the sanders the men? They're so different."

  "There's another thing. The sanders kill nightsheep. Why? They don't eat them, or not their flesh. The sandwolves do, but not the sanders."

  "They take the lifeforce, just like the ifrits do," Wendra concluded, lifting Alendra to her shoulder and burping her.

  "But there is a difference, no matter what the ifrit said," Alucius pointed out. "The sanders or the soarers don't do that to people."

  "They don't? Or they haven't in recent years? And what about the amber towers? I hadn't thought about it either, but I'd wager they've got some type of lifeforce in them."

  Alucius frowned. "You're probably right. I still feel there's a difference. "

  "There is. The soarers only used a fraction of a world's lifeforce; they even let themselves die out rather than take too much. The ifrits squander it all within a few hundred or thousand years, then move on to other worlds."

  "I wonder…"

  "We'll always wonder, but maybe… if… after… we can explore the hidden cities and find out more."

  If… Alucius understood that "if" all too well as he sat and pondered.

  After Alendra's needs had been met, and Alucius had to admit that his wife had been most inventive in dealing with such, they left for breakfast in the public room, and then, after eating, made their way down the boulevard on a morning already promising to be hot and dry, heading for the store where Alucius had purchased food and other sundries days earlier.

  The morning's purchases also included several squares of cloth for swaddling Alendra, as well as hard cheese, dried fruit, salted nuts, and another water bottle, which they filled at the public fountain a block away.

  As Alucius capped the water bottle and handed it to Wendra, he studied the boulevard to the south. Almost a full company of Deforyan lancers was formed up outside the palace gates, and the gates had been closed. "We'd better get moving."

  "The lancers?"

  "They're expecting trouble, and when that sort of thing happens, strangers aren't welcome."

  They crossed the boulevard immediately and walked swiftly southward. Despite their worries, no one even seemed to look at them, perhaps because a couple with a child—even if one of them carried a heavy rifle—did not seem threatening.

  As they neared the ancient gold eternastone building that held the portal, Alucius slipped the illusion of nothingness around them.

  "You'll have to teach me that," murmured Wendra.

  "You could do it now," replied Alucius as they moved toward the north entrance to the ancient structure.

  After climbing the wide staircase, they followed the long corridor back, then wound their way to the inside stone stairway that led down to the former Table chamber. Along the way, Alucius did not hear or sense anyone. Once in the former Table chamber, Alucius released the illusion.

  "We'll take a look at the hidden chamber first." He walked to the side of the chamber where the special light-torch bracket had been. There, he created the Talent-probe with the grasping edges, wrapping it around the hidden lever beyond the wall. The first two levers he tried did nothing, but with the third came the snap, followed by a low grinding. The hidden wall section slid sideways, revealing the passageway beyond—still lit dimly by a pair of ancient light-torches.

  "Do all the old Table chambers have these secret rooms?" Wendra absently bounced Alendra. "Just be a good girl now, while your mother and father see what they can do."

  "Most seem to, but I didn't try the ones in Blackstear and Soupat. I wasn't in very good shape there." Leaving the hidden doorway open, he led the way along the passageway to the hidden chamber. Once there, he stepped aside and let Wendra survey it.

  As Wendra moved toward the empty scepter case embedded in the stone, he stepped around her and made his way to the other ruined light-torch bracket. Again, he tried to use a Talent probe to find a way to open the door, but nothing worked.

  "Let me try," suggested Wendra.

  For all of her Talent probes, Wendra had little more luck than had Alucius.

  She looked at him. "What if we tried to transport ourselves on the ley lines and came out on the other side of the wall? That what the soarers seemed to do."

  "If we could do that…" mused Alucius.

  "Then we could take the lines close to the Table at Salaan," Wendra pointed out, "and we'd be close to Dekhron."

  "We can certainly try, but I think I'd feel better if I started at where the Table was," Alucius admitted.

  "So would I. The thought of getting stuck in solid rock bothers me."

  Alucius offered a crooked smile. "I wish you hadn't mentioned that."

  Wendra smiled sheepishly—town sheepishly. "The rock doesn't bother the soarers, but it might take practice."
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  "We'd better start." Alucius walked back along the passageway, casting out with his Talent to see if anyone happened to have made their way into the lower chamber. While it was unlikely, there had been lancers investigating once before. His Talent—and his ears—told him that the Table chamber remained deserted.

  He stepped into the oblong depression… concentrating on the misty blackness below. Immediately, he began to sink…

  The chill washed over and through him, and he tried to edge himself sideways … and suddenly he could tell that he was vingts away. He refocused himself on the crimson gold and could sense that he was back close to the Table chamber. Instead of trying to break through the silvery barrier, he tried to sense/see through it without breaking through… the image was like a mirror that undulated like a banner in the breeze, and his head began to ache. For a moment, he just hovered in the misty blackness, if hovering was the right term for seemingly being buried in stone.

  He tried to extend a thread from himself, one that would serve as an anchor so that the slightest thought would not propel him vingts—or scores of vingts—away. Then he drifted sideways, slowly letting the thread extend from the ley line. Deeper darkness surrounded him, hut that passed, and he seemed to he in another corridor. He tried to use the life-force thread to tug himself back to the Table chamber, and he found himself beyond the mirrorlike barrier, hut in the Table chamber.

  With the chill in his bones growing, he eased out the thread ever so slowly, heading down what he hoped was the passage to the first hidden chamber… then beyond… Silver shattered away from him…

  He stood in another narrow corridor, one but barely illuminated by a single light-torch five yards away, in a bracket high on the wall. The wall to his right was similar to the ancient chamber beneath the Deforyan officers' quarters, in that it contained murals—three in a row, each three yards long and two high—and all rendered in brilliant colors that had been infused into the very eternastone itself.

  The first mural showed a desolate scene of low, rocky hills, mostly covered in ice, and heavy gray clouds, and nothing at all living. Not a tree, a bush, a sprig of grass or even a lichen. Alucius moved before the next panel. It displayed the same location, save that there were patches of grass, a few bushes, and other scattered vegetation across the hillside, as well as a pair of what looked like scrats at the edge of a gray-water lake. The third panel showed a circular lake of brilliant blue below the same hills, and a structure of gold eternastone that resembled the Landarch's palace. Lush grass stretched toward the hills and a herd of antelope grazed in the distance, while nearer were several sandoxes being hitched to an enormous wagon by a pair of ifrits in maroon and green.

  Alucius had sensed no life in the corridor or the adjoining rooms, and because he did not wish to alarm Wendra, he walked quickly to the open doorway to the first room. The wooden door had been infused with some lifeforce and swung open at his touch. An ifrit lay upon the wide bed, but the slightest air currents created by the door opening touched the figure—that of a black-haired woman—and the body shivered into dust, leaving only the shimmering eternal garments.

  He watched, openmouthed, taking in the rest of the chamber—with its carved armoire, the dressing chest, the graceful table desk of a wood like cherry, a black-bordered mirror, and the nightsilklike maroon coverlet upon the bed. As in the outer chamber, the chairs had longer legs than any that would have been comfortable for Alucius.

  He stepped back out of the room and walked to the end of the corridor, the one that he thought adjoined the chamber that had held the scepter. A small metal stub protruded from the wall near the corner. The remainder of the lever lay on the floor. Alucius could not budge the stub, not with his arms, his legs, or his Talent.

  Were the walls closing in on him? He glanced around, deciding that they were not. Still… he was a herder born, and being surrounded by stone with no way out, except by Talent, gave him an uneasy feeling.

  He concentrated on extending a thread of Talent toward the darkness beneath. The return seemed much easier, and so quick that he scarcely felt the chill.

  "Oh… I was getting worried." Wendra let out a deep breath.

  "I stopped to take a quick look."

  "Quick?"

  "Fairly quick. I'm sorry. It's just that…"

  "What was there?" asked Wendra.

  Alucius shook his head. "Four rooms along a corridor … I couldn't explain in the time we can go back together."

  "Is it safe? How did you do it?"

  "It's… it's like leaving a thread, one of those binding us to the world, except that you make it thicker and anchor it to the ley line. You leave it anchored until you're certain that you're where you want to be."

  Wendra snorted. "How do you know where you want to be?"

  "Just think about it. It's almost like looking through… or at… a mirror in the dark. If you're worried… try moving just to the open passageway there, first."

  "I just might."

  Alucius watched as Wendra vanished, then reappeared in the doorway to the passage leading to the scepter chamber.

  "You were right. It's not that hard, once you try it."

  He couldn't help smiling. "You have a knack for that. It took me much longer."

  "That's because all I had to do was start with what you told me."

  Alucius had his doubts about that. From what he'd seen, Wendra picked up Talent matters faster than he had.

  "I'll meet you in the hidden rooms." Wendra and Alendra—in the front carrypack—turned into a misty image, then vanished.

  Alucius followed, ending up beside the wall with the broken lever.

  He stepped forward, standing behind Wendra as she looked into the room whose door he had opened.

  "How terrible… to be trapped here. What happened, do you think?"

  "The Cataclysm, I'd guess. The soarers disrupted everything, and the ifrits needed Tables. They were trapped. Or maybe the soarers were stronger and jammed the doors around the scepter."

  "Why didn't they do that in Lysia?"

  "I think… I don't know… but I think it's because Lysia is too far south and too hot and damp. The soarer said something about that before, when I was in the hidden city."

  "Did you look at the other rooms?"

  "No. I didn't want you to worry." Alucius stepped back.

  Wendra followed.

  "You open the door. When I opened that one, there was an ifrit in the clothes, but she turned to dust at just the touch of the breeze from the door."

  Wendra eased open the second door, but the chamber, similar to the first, held no long-dead ifrit and no clothing laid out as if an ifrit might have been there. In the third chamber, the body of a male ifrit lay sprawled across a rug with a geometric design Alucius did not recognize, woven in brilliant crimson and shades of silvered gray. Within moments of the door opening his figure vanished into dust as well, leaving but the eternal clothing.

  The last chamber was an armory, with strange riflelike weapons racked along the wall on the left side. The barrels were not hollow, but of a solid green crystal. Alucius could sense that whatever energy had once powered them had long since dissipated. On the right wall were pistols with the same crystal barrels, and on the rear wall were what looked to be whips with heavy stocks. The lash of the whips were thin tendrils so sharp that Alucius could appreciate their deadliness without touching them.

  "Do you think we could find anything we could use?" asked Wendra.

  "We can look."

  In the end, even after they had gone through every drawer and desk in the sealed rooms, there was little of immediate use. Alucius had pocketed the few strange golds, but the few devices he had seen either seemed to lack power, as had the weapons, or were incomprehensible.

  "We'll have to come back and study some of these later," he finally said.

  Wendra nodded reluctantly. "I think the air is getting bad, too."

  They held hands and slipped into the mistiness and bac
k to the Table chamber. Alucius set the rifle on the stone and sat down. "I need a few moments to rest and some water."

  "That's good. Alendra's hungry again."

  Alucius drank some of the water from his bottle, occasionally extending it to Wendra. He also kept using his Talent to make sure that no one crept down the stairs to surprise them.

  "I can't imagine living in a chamber like those." Wendra shuddered. "All that stone around, and no way out if the mechanisms failed. Even if they were ifrits…" She shook her head.

  "They didn't expect their mechanisms to fail." Alucius laughed softly. "Mechanisms always fail, sooner or later."

  Wendra eased Alendra to her shoulder, burped her, and then shifted her to the other breast. "What do you think we should do now?"

  "Head back to Dekhron, or as close as we can get. The dark green and maroon Table is at Salaan, and it's on a ley line. It has to be. That's close enough that we can walk to Northern Guard headquarters."

  "You're going to use the Guard?"

  "We have to. We can infuse all the bullets with lifeforce and have them hold the outside."

  "And we'll come in from inside?"

  "Do you have a better idea? Sending lancers inside would get most of them killed. At a distance, the ifrits can't do that much. I just hope that they haven't translated too many from their world while we've been learning what to do."

  "We couldn't have done it much faster."

  Alucius had his doubts. They should have gone to Hieron first.

  "You did what you thought was best," Wendra said. "Besides, we can't change what's done."

  Alucius knew that, but it didn't keep him from wishing that he could.

  Wendra stood, burping Alendra once more. "She's had enough. Let's go."