Cadmian's Choice

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  He unholstered the lightcutter at his belt and fired at one arm. The blue fire seared through the right arm, but the arm was unchanged. The surface of the stone on the far side of the chamber took on a glazed appearance.

  Dainyl raised full Talent-shields, and the arms stopped, halted by the barriers as Dainyl stood behind his shields.

  He had no doubt that he could have stepped up onto the Table—and perhaps even translated—but he didn’t think shields were that effective in a translation tube. He didn’t want to prove that. He also didn’t like the idea of someone using the Table against a submarshal and getting away with it.

  Still…he could feel the increasing pressure exerted by the arms—clearly drawing strength from the Table or through it—and he was beginning to sweat with the effort of maintaining shields.

  He cast his Talent-senses around the chamber, realizing that the hidden door was in fact open, that it was concealed by the same Talent-cloak as the lock, and that he had not probed deeply enough. The thinnest line of purple talent ran from the Table to the doorway.

  Dainyl turned toward that doorway, sensing someone behind the Talent-illusion.

  The illusion vanished, and in the open stone doorway stood an angular alector, clad in green and black, the colors of a Recorder of Deeds, although Dainyl had never met one.

  A line of Talent-fire, as hot as anything from a lightcutter, flared toward Dainyl, sheeting around his shields, but rocking him back a half step. He took a half step forward, then another.

  More Talent-fire surged from the Recorder of Deeds, and again Dainyl’s shields held, but his broad forehead was dripping sweat, and the corners of his eyes stung from where the sweat had run into them.

  Dainyl doubted he could match the other alector in projecting Talent-force, and trying to do so would only weaken his own shields. But one didn’t have to always use projected Talent to stop a Talent-wielder. He took two more steps. Another blast of Talent slammed at Dainyl, but another two steps brought him to where he could almost have reached out and touched the recorder. He did not.

  Instead, he concentrated on bringing his own shields forward so that, instead of forming a circle around Dainyl, they formed one around the recorder, a wall that Dainyl began to contract.

  The recorder suddenly realized what Dainyl had done, and tried to step back, but found himself encircled, his own shields being squeezed back around him by the greater power of Dainyl’s.

  The sweat streamed down Dainyl’s face, but he concentrated on contracting the shields around the other alector, ever more tightly. The recorder’s hands and arms came up, trying to push back against the encircling force, to no avail. His mouth opened, but the scream was soundless, lost behind two sets of shields. His face slowly turned dark crimson.

  CRUMPT! Dainyl felt himself being hurled back across the room, his back slamming into the stone wall.

  His vision turned black for a long moment, but he struggled through the darkness, somehow reaching out and steadying himself against the wall with his “good” left arm. When he could see clearly again, all that remained of the Recorder of Deeds was fast-vanishing dust, and his lifeforce-treated shimmersilk raiment, crumpled in the opening to the hidden chambers.

  Dainyl’s left leg ached, with shivers of pain running up and down it. He could tell he hadn’t rebroken it, but he hadn’t done it much good, either. Absently, he noted that the purple mist and arms had vanished.

  “Zorater!” The call came from the hidden chambers.

  Dainyl was tired, but he certainly didn’t want to stay in Alustre, not after what had just occurred, not when his ability to hold shields was diminished. He scooped up the saddlebags that he had dropped along the way and scrambled to the Table and onto it, wincing as he did, concentrating on dropping into the blackness below….

  The chill jolted his overheated and tired frame, so much that for a long, if timeless, moment, the black chill of the translation tube enfolded him. Where should he go? He’d intended on traveling to Norda. Should he? Returning to Elcien might raise too many questions. At the moment, no one would really know what happened, but if he appeared in Elcien the marshal might well ask too many questions. No. Better to carry on what he had planned…somehow.

  He cast his Talent-line out, seeking the green locator wedge, bordered in purple, that was Norda. The Talent-line and the locator wedge touched, and Dainyl could sense himself closer, but the chill surrounding him seemed more intense than on his last journey. Because he’d been overheated, or because he was tired?

  He concentrated on the greenness of Norda, sensing it grow ever nearer. Then, just as he felt he was about to reach the Table…a line of golden green appeared, as if beside him…and then vanished…or retreated, he thought, before vanishing. At that moment, the barrier sprayed away from him….

  He stood on yet another Table.

  Two alectors stood before the opening to the hidden chamber—did all Table chambers have them? One began to form a Talent probe, one with flame.

  Dainyl projected a shield that slammed into the alector’s hand, throwing him into the stone wall behind him.

  The recorder beside the fallen alector raised a hand in greeting. “Submarshal! We didn’t expect you. My assistant was too hasty. He was worried about a wild translation. We’ve had a number of them recently, and one only a few days ago, although it arrived dead, but it has been disconcerting. I apologize for his carelessness.”

  The stunned alector shook his head. “My apologies, sir…I am so sorry. I thought…I was worried about a wild translation.”

  He was sorry, Dainyl sensed, but not for mistaking Dainyl, but for failing to catch the submarshal off-guard.

  “Sometimes mistakes happen,” Dainyl replied. “You’re fortunate I sensed it in time.” He smiled coldly. “Most fortunate.”

  The alector swallowed.

  “I’m Kasyst, Submarshal Dainyl. How could we help you?”

  “I’m here to see Majer Noryan and the Myrmidons.”

  “Yes, sir. They’re actually billeted in the adjoining compound, sir. It’s but a hundred yards. I would offer a coach, but we don’t have one.”

  “I’ll manage.” Dainyl kept his shields in place as he moved toward the archway leading to a foyer from the chamber. Unlike the other Table chambers he had visited, there seemed to be only one actual door.

  As he passed through the archway from the Table chamber, he could hear Kasyst’s low words to his assistant.

  “…causal use of power…one of them could turn you into dust…”

  “…Myrmidon officer…not a High Alector…”

  “A submarshal, and might as well be a High Alector.”

  Dainyl didn’t exactly feel like a High Alector, although Asulet had said something along those lines. In any case, he needed to find Majer Noryan. He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. Not the way matters had been going so far. He also wondered what the golden green had been, almost the same shade and feeling as the ancient soarer he had encountered in Dramur. Were they trying to attack through the Table grid? Or did their mirror portals work in the same fashion as did a Table?

  12

  Dainyl had slung his saddlebags over his shoulder and walked up the long narrow steps to a door on the ground level of the regional administration building. The door was Talent-locked and shielded. Dainyl shielded himself as he emerged in a back hallway, but the corridor was both empty and unguarded. After rebuilding the Talent-lock, he made his way to the nearest exit, a single oak door that opened onto a redstone-paved courtyard.

  Despite the bright sunlight of early morning—the local time was two glasses earlier than in Alustre, Dainyl reminded himself—the wind was winterlike and gusting when he began to cross the courtyard, and he was glad for the flight jacket.

  He was still a good thirty yards from the first pteridon square—there were only a handful, since Norda held only a Cadmian battalion on a regular basis and seldom hosted Myrmidons for long—when a Myrmidon ranker came h
urrying toward him, then abruptly stopped.

  “Submarshal?”

  “Submarshal Dainyl from Elcien.”

  “Yes, sir. You’re here to see Majer Noryan?”

  Dainyl nodded.

  “He’s in the Cadmian headquarters, sir. It’s this way. Good thing you’re so early. He’s going to take second squad on a recon run along the north road.”

  Dainyl followed the ranker to a study at one end of the one-story redstone structure. Inside, Noryan stood with two undercaptains. He had obviously commandeered the largest study in the building, and from the smaller lander-sized furnishings, had doubtless displaced the Cadmian majer who commanded the Eighth Battalion, Mounted Rifles.

  “Greetings, Majer,” offered Dainyl.

  Noryan was huge, even for an alector, almost as large physically as Khelaryt, the Duarch of Elcien, close to three yards in height with shoulders to match, and a square head set on a thick neck. He turned and blinked as his eyes took in the stars on Dainyl’s collar. “Submarshal, sir. I can’t say that we expected you this morning.”

  “I’m making a number of unannounced visits, pursuant to the marshal’s orders.” Dainyl’s words represented only a slight extension of the marshal’s instructions.

  “We’d heard that you would be in Alustre, sir, but no one mentioned…”

  “They weren’t told.” Dainyl smiled. “I understand you’ll be taking a squad on a recon flight shortly.”

  “That was the plan, sir.”

  “Still searching for the missing Cadmian company?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re also looking for other signs.”

  “Then I’ll take only a part of a glass of your time, and you can get on with your recon.”

  Noryan glanced to the two undercaptains. “Carloya, have second squad hold for me. Veltuk…go ahead with the northwest run as we discussed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The two inclined their heads politely, and murmured, “Submarshal, sir,” as they eased past Dainyl.

  Dainyl closed the door after they left.

  “How might I help you, sir?” Noryan’s smile offered an expression somewhere between politeness and worry.

  Dainyl was impressed by the other’s shields, because he detected very little other emotion. “We’ve had a number of incidents with the ancients, Majer, and yours was the most recent. Your report was brief and to the point, a good Myrmidon report, but I thought it might be worthwhile to hear if, on reflection, you might have recalled something else.”

  “There wasn’t much else to recall, sir. The old creature took out two of my rankers. We didn’t even attack them. We were looking for those missing Cadmians. Kagayan saw something, and he turned toward it. Zuluya was flying wing on him and followed. The creature hit them both with something. None of us saw anything but a flash of green. Next thing I knew, both pteridons and riders were pyres on the ice below the cliff.”

  “Did they have their skylances at the ready?”

  “Always do here in the north. The indigens here have rifles. They’ll shoot at anything that moves—or they would if they didn’t know we’d flame them on the spot.”

  “I take it that the sudden appearance—or reappearance—of the ancients at this time was as much a surprise to you as it was to Submarshal Alcyna, although I understand she had a strategy.”

  Noryan laughed, ruefully. “The submarshal…she was the one who’d given me standing orders on how to deal with the ancients if they ever showed up. I’d told her that they were orders I’d never need.”

  Dainyl’s Talent told him that the majer was telling the truth as he’d seen it…and that Noryan was letting Dainyl see that. But Alcyna had given Noryan standing orders about the ancients? Not orders on the spot? “I imagine many of us had thought that. The submarshal was more perceptive. Do you recall when she first talked to you about them?”

  “Had to have been sometime last harvest, maybe earlier. She didn’t emphasize it that much. She just said that there had been some strange sightings, and there might be an ancient or two left. She suggested that they were powerful and that one skylance, or even two, might not do much to stop them.” Noryan shrugged.

  “What happened after your squads all fired?”

  “Just what I reported, sir. There was a flare of green light. It looked like shards of green glass flying everywhere for a moment, but we never found anything. There was a circle of melted rock on the bluff. No one’s seen any of the creatures since. I’m just guessing, but there probably aren’t too many of them left anywhere on Corus.”

  “There never were very many,” suggested Dainyl. “Was there any sort of structure near where they attacked? A shelter or a cave?”

  “We did close flybys—the snow’s too deep to land safely there. We didn’t see a sign of anything, and there wasn’t anything there last harvest before the snows began.”

  “I assume that the ‘other signs’ you’re looking for on the recon are signs of the ancients.”

  “Yes, sir. Or any tracks by locals that might link them to the ancients.”

  Dainyl had wondered that himself when the ancient appearances had begun in Dramur. “Has there been any sign of any indigens nearby where the ancients appeared?”

  “No sign of anyone…”

  At the end of another quarter glass, Dainyl knew no more than he had after the first few questions he’d asked. He smiled. “I’ve taken enough of your time.”

  “I wish I could have told you more, but that’s what happened.”

  “You can’t offer more than what you know.” Dainyl stepped back and opened the door. “By the way,” he asked from the half-open door of the study, “who is the majer in command of the Cadmian battalion?”

  “Ferank. He’s using one of the studies on the other side of the hall.”

  “Thank you. The best on your recon. I hope you have some success in finding out what happened to the Cadmians.”

  “We may not ever know. The locals say that people have been vanishing here for centuries. They won’t go into the higher hills, won’t even travel some of the lower ones except in groups.” Noryan laughed. “There’s nothing there, except maybe an old building or two. The weather’s bad enough to account for all of the disappearances. They find bodies and bones every spring, sometimes even in the summer. You can get snow and hail in the high hills in midsummer.” He moved away from where he stood beside the undersized desk. “I’d best be getting out to the squad.”

  “I won’t keep you longer.”

  Once Noryan had departed, Dainyl located Ferank two doors away on the other side of the hall. In appearance, the Cadmian majer was far different from Noryan. The lander was rail-thin, blond, with watery blue eyes, and bolted to his feet at Dainyl’s appearance in the doorway.

  “Submarshal, sir, what can I do for you?”

  “I was just passing through, Majer, and wanted to get your thoughts about a few things.” As he closed the door and moved into the chamber, Dainyl remained standing. If he tried to sit in one of the low chairs set before the table desk in the small study, he’d be uncomfortable in moments.

  “Yes, sir. About what, sir?”

  “I’d be interested in hearing what you know about the missing mounted rifle company.”

  “I’ve been reporting all I know, sir.” Ferank’s brows wrinkled in puzzlement.

  “I’m certain you did, but I’d like to hear it in your words directly from you.”

  “Well…sir, you know that we’ve kept two companies in Scien. It’s been that way since the time I entered service. They say that the winters have been getting warmer, but I was born there, and I never saw that. They seemed as cold as ever. Whatever the reason, late this past fall we got orders from the colonel in Alustre—that’s Colonel Ubarak—to consolidate the whole battalion here in Norda. I ordered Thirty-third Company here immediately, with Thirty-fourth Company to follow the next week.

  “Thirty-fourth Company left Scien on Londi. No one ever saw them again, and the e
arly winter storm didn’t hit until Septi. They should have been in Pystra by Quinti. By Sexdi at the latest. I had no word, and when one of Majer Noryan’s squads stopped here to overnight I asked about a possible recon to see what happened. They couldn’t do one then because of some trouble in Coren. I sent back scouts, but they found no traces. When the Myrmidons could fly over the road, they didn’t find anything either.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not a trace, sir. Not a scrap of equipment, not a trace of flesh or bone. The road between Scien and Pystra is pretty barren, too. There’s not much in the way of trees, except scrub. Even the hills are low, except for the one set of ridges where I heard they lost some pteridons. After that, it snowed so much that the whole highway’s buried. It usually is earlier than it was this year.”

  “Is there any record of companies or squads being lost along the north road before?”

  “No, sir. Not in any of the records we have, and they go back almost a century. I checked.”

  That fact did not reassure Dainyl in the slightest. “Have any steps been taken to replace the company?”

  “We’ve recruited about half of those we need locally, and we’re supposed to get some veterans to leaven the company within the next two weeks. It’s hard because we have to keep the hill folk in line in the summers, and the people around Norda have relatives among them.”

  “What’s the problem with the hill folk?”

  “The usual. They want to timber too much of the land, and there aren’t enough trees here anyway. They don’t want to build with stone or brick—it’s too much work. Lately, they’ve been using mesh nets in fishing the lakes, and overfishing. They complain that the Code of the Duarches has rules that are too strict and unsuited to the north. If the district patrollers go out alone, they get shot at. So we have to make sweeps and send the ones we pick up to the road camps. They’re no good at the nature camps; they kill more trees than they plant…”

  Dainyl listened patiently.

  After leaving the majer, Dainyl spent the remainder of the day walking through the Cadmian compound, talking to both rankers and squad leaders. He doubted he’d learned too much from it, except that there was more resentment about the Code of the Duarches in the east than was ever reported to the marshal, or, at least, than he had seen in any reports.