Cadmian's Choice

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

After checking the second chamber—a library of sorts, containing three bookshelves and a small circular table with two chairs drawn up—Dainyl returned to the main table chamber to study the depowered Table. As almost an afterthought, he used his Talent to close the stone slab that served as a door to the hidden chambers.

  He holstered both sidearms and sat down on the Table for several moments, resting.

  Then he sent a fine Talent-probe into the Table, seeking the main octagonal crystal and the smaller one on the underside. He pulsed a quick Talent-touch to the smaller and still brighter crystal, as Sulerya had taught him. He could feel the Table begin to power up.

  While he waited, he walked to the door and opened it. “Galya?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “This is a Table chamber. I’m going to use it. I should be back in several glasses. If I’m not, report that to the undercaptain. He’s to stand by and maintain control over Tempre and keep this area clear for up to three days. After that, everyone is to return to Hyalt, including the Cadmians. Is that clear?”

  “Sir…?”

  “I don’t have time to go out and explain to Hyksant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dainyl closed the door and placed a Talent-lock on it. He still had to wait before the Table was ready to be used.

  Should he go out and talk to Hyksant? Retrieve his flying jacket? At that moment, the Table completed its power-up.

  Dainyl first made sure he still had the two envelopes that contained the reports he had written earlier, then checked his sidearms, switching the one he had used most with the unused one in his tunic. After that he stepped onto the Table and concentrated on the darkness beneath the Table.

  He was in the chill half-light of the translation tube, aware of how it rested upon a deeper blackness, seeking the brilliant white locator wedge that was Elcien. As quickly as he sought that wedge, he was there with the white silver melting before him.

  He stood on the Table in Elcien.

  Both Chastylt and one of the assistants to the High Alector, who had been talking by the door to the antechamber, turned, their mouths open.

  Dainyl remained standing on the Table, looking at the two, even as he extracted the two envelopes.

  “Submarshal?”

  “I have something for you,” Dainyl gestured for the assistant to approach, then handed her the pair of envelopes he took out from his tunic. “One is for the marshal, the other is for High Alector Zelyert. I suggest you not open them, for your own health.” He smiled and straightened. “There are others coming from various sources. So I wouldn’t delay handing them over.”

  “Submarshal…” stuttered Chastylt. “The grid…it is somewhat unstable. The Table in Tempre was off-grid and now is back. I don’t know why, but it might be wise not to attempt a translation until it is certain to remain stable.”

  “I understand. If anything happens, it won’t be your fault.”

  Dainyl unholstered both lightcutters, holding one in each hand, then concentrated on the blackness beneath the Table, ignoring the appalled looks of the two alectors as he dropped into…

  …the chill blackness, a chill that felt momentarily refreshing. This time he had to search momentarily before locating the amber wedge that represented Hyalt. Beyond the translation tube, he could also sense more of the green flashes, but those would have to wait, as if he could do anything about them.

  He flashed through the amber mist……and took two quick steps, aiming the lightcutters as he did.

  Four alectors turned as one. The tallest, dressed in green, had to be Rhelyn, from his strong aura.

  Dainyl fired at the two least Talented alectors. The bluish beams went through their shields and chests. Then he launched a Talent blast and discharged both lightcutters at the alector—alectress—who remained beside Rhelyn. She staggered but remained standing—until Dainyl’s second tripartite assault smashed through her shields.

  Dainyl took several quick breaths. The Table chamber had no obvious exits, not even a single “formal” entrance. That didn’t surprise him.

  “You cannot possibly win,” observed Rhelyn. “There are a score of alectors within the complex with your level of Talent or better.” Rhelyn edged toward a light-torch bracket, clearly not wanting to use Talent energy to open the hidden entrance.

  “If you believed that, you wouldn’t have crawled behind stone walls and mountains.” Dainyl fired one of the lightcutters, but the bolt was only half-intensity and fizzled away as the lightcutter used the last of its stored energy.

  Rhelyn’s shields shunted the short energy bolt aside.

  Dainyl slipped the unpowered weapon into the holster and drew the one from his tunic.

  “Three lightcutters. I must say that you come as prepared as you could. It won’t be—” Rhelyn broke off his words and threw a Talent bolt at Dainyl.

  The submarshal sensed the feint, and, while blocking the recorder’s Talent-blast, directed his own Talent-probe toward the pair of crystals within the Table, the ones allowing the user to draw on the power of the translation tubes.

  Both probes locked short of the crystals, and that was more than fine with Dainyl, as he stepped off the Table and fired another lightcutter blast at Rhelyn.

  “A renegade recorder as well…truly evil…” grunted the recorder.

  Dainyl deflected another Talent-blast and kept moving toward Rhelyn The recorder drew a long dagger, one whose slender blade shimmered amber-green.

  “Talent won’t stop this….”

  Dainyl sensed that. He stepped back, beyond reach of the long dagger, and clasped his shields around the recorder.

  Just before the shields constricted, Rhelyn threw the dagger straight at Dainyl’s chest.

  Dainyl jumped to one side, but the dagger sliced into his left arm. He still slammed the shields around Rhelyn and fired both lightcutters, but the fingers of his left hand released the lightcutter.

  “Too late…you’re dead…too…” Rhelyn smiled, then collapsed. In instants, he too was dust.

  Dainyl glanced around, then bent and grabbed one of the shimmersilk tunics—it might have been the alectress’s—and wadded it inside his own tunic against the slash in his arm. He thought about using another to bind around the outside of his sleeve, but he couldn’t do that, not one-handed and in a hurry, and he could tell he didn’t have much time. If he’d worn the flying jacket? No…whatever the knife had been, it would have sliced through the jacket as well.

  He stepped back onto the Table. His timing had to be perfect—or he’d be as dead as Rhelyn. First, he used a quick Talent-probe to find the octagonal crystal. Then, as he fired a full Talent-bolt into the crystal, he concentrated on dropping beneath the Table, into the darkness below.

  The world spun, and he felt as though he had been turned on his head and driven through the surface of the Table…

  …into the darkness that was far blacker than he recalled. Could that be because the Table had failed? Or because he was weakening? The shimmering dagger had done more than slice him…

  He struggled to concentrate on a location for his translation…it had to be Elcien. Nowhere else could he get aid quickly. But the white locator wedge kept retreating, as if he could not grasp it with Talent. Why? What was he doing wrong?

  Around him the cold intensified, pressing in, possibly because he had been overheated and had used all his Talent reserves. He had to get somewhere, or he’d end up dead or a mistranslated wild Talent without sentience and short-lived. He thought of Lysia, trying to call up the orange-yellow locator, but that, too, retreated from his Talent-grasp.

  What was the problem?

  The dagger—it had been amber-green, like the ancients. Was it an ancient weapon designed to be used against alectors? Had it rendered his Talent useless?

  Dainyl tried again, this time seeking the crimson-gold of Dereka…and felt it too slip from his grasp.

  His thoughts were slowing…he had to do something.

  Green…amber-g
reen…seek that. Anything would be better than dying in the translation tube.

  Using what felt like his last measure of Talent, he reached for the amber-green, for an oval somewhere in the distance…that suddenly rushed toward him.

  He staggered, but he was out of the darkness, standing in a small chamber, so small that his hair brushed the ceiling. The walls were of a green-tinged amber stone, and the single window was framed in a silvery metal.

  Dainyl wasn’t anywhere he knew. He glanced down to find that he stood on square silver mirror—like those in the tunnel of the ancient soarers. He glanced at his poorly bound arm. Lifeforce-treated shimmersilk was a poor bandage.

  His legs were wobbly, and he looked for somewhere to sit down, to rest. There was a couch, low and small, to one side. Perhaps it was a bed. He turned and…

  The amber and green and silver vanished behind a different kind of darkness that rose up and engulfed him.

  80

  Dainyl’s eyes opened. Overhead was an amber-green ceiling. He was lying on something hard—very hard. Lines of fire ran up and down his left arm, and his vision of the ceiling blurred, and then cleared, before blurring again.

  Where was he? He’d been unable to reach any Table—that much he recalled. Had that been because of the weapon used by Rhelyn—he had the feeling it had been designed to kill alectors—or because of his own failing strength?

  His eyes flicked to his right. He was lying on the floor beside a bed far too small for him, and possibly even too tiny for the smallest of adult indigens. Without lifting his head, he glanced the other way, to note a door in the stone wall—made of a golden wood, with a single lever handle of a silvery metal. From where he lay he could only see silver-green sky through the window, bright enough that it had to be day. The window was set in casements of the same metal as that of the door lever—a metal he had not ever seen.

  After several moments, his head cleared, and his vision sharpened. With his good arm, he eased himself into a sitting position. With a start, he realized that his left arm had been bound, and that his Myrmidon tunic had been neatly trimmed away just below the shoulder, so evenly that it looked as if it had been sewn that way—until he looked at his right forearm.

  Who could cut through that lifeforce-treated fabric that easily?

  The light in the room shifted, and he looked up from where he sat on the floor to see one of the ancient soarers, hovering just inside the door he had not heard open.

  “Thank you.” Whatever else might happen, he owed them his life.

  You were dying.

  “I had that feeling. Was that because of the weapon?”

  Describe the weapon.

  “It was a long dagger, and it had an amber-green blade. It went right through my tunic. It shouldn’t have.”

  We thought as much. It was designed for that, long ago. It was a long-bladed sword. It was not an effective weapon. It was our responsibility.

  A long-bladed sword? Of course, long-bladed for an ancient. Their responsibility? “It was effective against me.”

  There was the sense of an ironic laugh.

  “Why did you save me?”

  For reasons of our own. Does not each act for reasons of her own?

  “Do you expect me to do something for you?”

  Only if you come to understand the way of all worlds. Only if you understand that it will benefit you.

  “What do you want that could benefit me?”

  If you do not change…when the time comes you will die. You can support lifeforce and live, or draw from it and die.

  She was the second soarer who had said the same thing to him, except this one had suggested more.

  Before long you must choose—the purple or the green. Now you must rest. Later, you will be strong enough to return…

  “Just how, exactly, am I supposed to change?”

  This time the sense of laughter was far stronger. That will become clear when the time arrives for your choice.

  “How am I supposed to return?”

  The same way in which you arrived. The soarer eased backward and the door closed, with a definite click.

  Dainyl blinked. Then he slowly stood. His legs were wobbly, but he took two steps and tried the silver metal lever on the door. It did not budge. The entire door felt as solid as the stones that surrounded the frame in which it was set.

  After a moment, he made his way to the window. His fingers were clumsy, but he depressed the flat bracket on one side. He barely started to slide the window open, when frigid air surged through the tiny opening, colder than anything he had experienced.

  Dainyl looked out through the closed window, determining that he was in a tower. Well beneath him were other buildings scattered over the space of a vingt or so from the base of the tower. All were enclosed by a circular wall, and everything appeared to have been constructed of the same amber-green stone. Farther beyond the wall was white sand, and beyond that rose a rampart of dark rock, along the top of which ran green-tinted crystal oblongs.

  Standing at the window, he felt weak. Was that because of the altitude? He had to be up on the Plateau somewhere. It couldn’t be anywhere else, not when he had flown all over the rest of Acorus.

  Slowly, he turned and made his way to the small bed, where he sat down. In the end he stretched out on the floor, using the single green quilt of shimmering silk as a pillow.

  He closed his eyes.

  81

  After a glass passed uneventfully, Mykel put half the Cadmians on standby and ordered them into the shade of the gardens to the immediate south of the regional alector’s building. He had the mounts of the men standing picket duty, including his own, moved into the shade on the west side of the building and established a rotation of those standing duty, with changes every glass, and orders to make sure that the men drank their water regularly. As the white sun rose in the sky, approaching noon, he summoned Undercaptain Matorak.

  The Hyaltan officer rode up from the eastern end of the plaza. “Yes, sir.”

  “Undercaptain…I may be prejudging matters, but it is looking as though we’ll be in Tempre for a time. I’d like you to take Second Company and investigate the compound to the east. Secure it, and see how we could occupy it in the event we’re posted here for a time.” He smiled. “Don’t forget to have everyone refill their water bottles.”

  “Yes, sir.” Matorak turned his mount and rode back to Second Company.

  Mykel watched for a moment, but the undercaptain had his men and mounts moving before that long, riding eastward along the boulevard that ran east to west in front of the low granite wall before the complex.

  Once Second Company was out of sight, he studied the compound again, blotting his forehead. Tempre was not nearly so hot as Hyalt, but it was summer, and he had been in the sun all morning. He thought he heard more movement beyond the gardens to the south. With nothing happening, he imagined that a few more of the braver souls in Tempre might be venturing out. More than three glasses had passed since the submarshal had entered the chamber underneath the building. The other Myrmidon had not returned, either.

  From what he had sensed down in the lower depths, Mykel could only surmise that what lay behind the door guarded by purplish power was some alector device of power—possibly one of the mysterious Tables said to be able to view any place in Corus. Another rumor about the Tables was that certain alectors could use them to travel to other Tables. Had the submarshal used the Table to go elsewhere? Where…and why? Had the expedition to Tempre been solely to gain access to whatever lay behind that door?

  He stiffened. The Myrmidon with the skylance walked quickly down the steps from the main entrance and across the gray paving stones toward the Myrmidon undercaptain. The two talked in low voices for a time. The undercaptain’s face bore a frown that remained, even after he looked up.

  “Majer! If you would join us?”

  Mykel walked quickly toward the two Myrmidons, stopping several yards short of them and the undercap
tain’s pteridon. “Yes?”

  “I don’t believe we’ve formally met. I’m Undercaptain Hyksant.” The undercaptain frowned again. “This is a very difficult situation.”

  Mykel understood. Hyksant was an undercaptain in command of a squad, but a squad that had the power to wipe out an entire battalion under certain circumstances, and Mykel was a majer. Both had been left with definite orders to wait, and neither had the slightest idea where the submarshal was, what he was doing, or when he would be back.

  “The submarshal left contingent orders,” Hyksant said. “I had hoped we would not have to implement them, but it appears that will be necessary. We’re to hold Tempre for the next three days. If he does not return by then, we are to withdraw to Hyalt and regroup there.”

  “We have done some scouting and discovered that there is a new compound to the east,” Mykel said. “It was apparently built to house the troopers we routed yesterday. One of my companies is engaged in investigating and securing it. When we reported it to the submarshal, he suggested that, since the forces that apparently used it would no longer require it, we could use the new compound. I would imagine that there would be space there for you. We should know if it is suitable within the glass.”

  “If you would inform me, Majer, I would appreciate it.”

  “I will.” Mykel nodded politely.

  As he walked back to Undercaptain Fabrytal and the Cadmians, Mykel reflected that, in a way, Hyksant’s use of the word “return” had in fact confirmed that the Table—or something behind that door—was a means of travel. He also confirmed, by what he apparently could not do, that its use was restricted to those of either rank or ability—or both.

  Almost another glass passed before one of Matorak’s squad leaders rode back into the paved plaza before the building and reined up before Mykel.

  “Sir, Undercaptain Matorak reports that the barracks and quarters are secure and will be ready for Third Battalion whenever you require them.”

  “Thank you, and convey my thanks to the undercaptain. Fifteenth Company will be joining Second Company shortly. At some point, so will the Myrmidons.”