Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Another nightram raised his head, as did several ewes. The subordinate males eased forward, shoulder to shoulder, to stand beside the leader, ready to lower their horns. The ewes edged in behind the rams, nudging the lambs to the center.

  A gust of colder wind swept in from the north, then died away, but the calm lasted for only a few long moments before the chill gusts resumed, and the sky continued to darken as the clouds massed overhead and thickened.

  Should he have turned back? Usually, Alucius could sense storms as violent as this one promised to be. Had he misjudged the incoming weather because of his concerns? Or was it just a Talent-spawned freak storm?

  A low, almost bugling call issued from the lead ram.

  Alucius could feel the presence of the sandwolves, the grayish violet rising from the south, as solid to his Talent as the wind upon his face. He turned the gray southward, toward the rear of the flock. A sudden gust of wind swirled gritty dust at the herder, but Alucius eased the gelding onward, back toward the stragglers at the rear. He slipped out the top rifle and cocked it as he continued to survey the land to the south and east.

  Behind the swirling dust and grit, more than a half vingt to the east, the shifting shadows that were the sandwolves edged through the quarasote bushes as if it were twilight or dawn rather than just midmorning. Their long, crystal fangs glittered, even though there was no direct light.

  Stop! Alucius threw the command out toward the nearing pack.

  Several of the animals seemed to shiver, and one whimpered, dropping flat beside the silvered leaves of a third-year quarasote.

  The pack leader slowed, but continued to move toward the flock. After a moment, the others followed, if more cautiously.

  Danger! Stop!

  Alucius could sense a whimper somewhere, as if his order had caused pain, but the pack, eight animals in all, continued to close on the nightsheep.

  A young ram appeared, interposing himself between one of the flanking sandwolves and a ewe, and, without even pawing the ground, charged the sandwolf. Caught off guard by the unexpected move, the sandwolf—a younger animal than the pack leader—tried to dodge, but he was too slow, and the razored black horns of the nightram slashed deeply into his chest. The sandwolf staggered, and his legs collapsed.

  In the moment of silence, Alucius lifted the rifle, sighting in on the pack leader.

  Crack! The bullet slammed into the lead wolf’s chest.

  Crack! The second shot took another sandwolf, and Alucius recocked the rifle and aimed toward the next most visible stalker. Crack!

  The third sandwolf dropped, then rolled and tried to struggle to its feet.

  A wave of hatred, bloodlust, rage, fear—all those feelings and more—surged around the herder. The gray gelding sidestepped, then whuffed, then took a step back.

  A long howl rose from somewhere, and Alucius could feel the pack stopping, if reluctantly.

  “Easy there…easy…” Alucius had already recocked the rifle.

  Abruptly, dark forms were flowing through the quarasote bushes—toward Alucius and his flock. Shapes like sanders, but not sanders. Talent-tinged shapes, shadowed in unseen purple and blue and without lifethreads.

  Alucius paused just long enough to cast darkness around the remaining cartridges in his magazine before firing twice more. Each of the dark sanderlike figures he hit burst into the all-consuming blue flame he had seen only twice before—in Deforya and when leaving it.

  He switched rifles and, infusing another set of cartridges with the darkness of life, quickly emptied the second. There remained only a single dark sander, which charged toward Alucius.

  The herder jammed the rifle into the holder right-handed and drew the sabre with his left. As he leaned forward, he extended Talent around the blade, a darkness of green and gold, and slashed.

  The shock of impact was as though he had struck stone, and his entire arm vibrated.

  The dark sander seemed to shrivel.

  Alucius urged the gray past the shrinking pillar of darkness, quickly enough that the blast of heat from the fire that followed only warmed him.

  As the fires vanished, leaving only an oily residue on the sandy red soil, Alucius checked the flock over. One ewe—the last straggler—lay dead. So did the young sandwolf that had been caught by the younger nightram.

  Alucius wondered if the younger ram had been one of Lamb’s offspring.

  He turned his eyes back to the ewe’s body, caught by the sudden stench rising and drifting toward him. The corpse began to decompose, turning putrid even as he watched. Then, the body flared into a blue-tinged flame, and soon all that was left was oily black residue.

  Alucius turned the gray, heading back toward the front of the flock, and scanned the quarasote flats with his Talent and his eyes. He could detect nothing. Even the sandwolves had slithered away—uncharacteristically leaving behind the bodies of those Alucius and the nightram had slain. He glanced down at the black crystal of the silver-framed herder’s wristguard, but the wristband was neither warmer nor colder than usual. He had to wonder if Wendra had felt anything through the ring she wore that was attuned to his wristguard.

  Thunder rolled overhead, and the sky darkened even more. Tiny needlelike droplets of rain began to fall, slashing out of the lowering clouds almost horizontally. Alucius squinted against the rain, wishing he had foreseen the violence of the storm.

  The herder glanced from side to side, squinting through the wind and rain that had already begun to die away. Above him, the once-dark clouds were thinning rapidly, revealing a clear silver-green sky.

  Alucius continued to study the ground, then the bushes stretching to the southeast, with a side glance at the low wash where the wolves had vanished, and reloaded the first rifle, then the second.

  In all his years of herding, he’d never seen anything close to what had just occurred. Not in herding—only in the battles against the pteridons of Aellyan Edyss and the Talent-creatures that had attacked his forces in leaving Deforya.

  He moistened his lips.

  The attack made no sense whatsoever. If the ifrits were beginning another assault on Corus, why would they attack him? Why would they alert one of the few herders with true Talent to their actions? Or was the assault so far along that they could not control the appearance of the Talent-creatures?

  Alucius didn’t want to leave the stead. He didn’t know where he could go to stop such an attack, and there wasn’t anyone to whom he could turn for help—except his family—and for them all to leave the stead would likely ruin them all. He and Wendra might be able to leave…if they knew where to go—and what to do. Except Wendra was pregnant, and Alucius hated the thought of asking her to go anywhere into even greater danger.

  Above him, the sky continued to clear.

  Alucius looked to the east, to the Aerlal Plateau, but he neither saw nor felt the green radiance of a soarer…or anything else out of the ordinary.

  12

  Tempre, Lanachrona

  The Lord-Protector looked down on the infant in the high-sided crib, sleeping peacefully. A smile crossed his face, and the lines in his forehead eased as he watched his son. Silently, he eased out of the nursery and back to the main sitting room, where his consort waited, seated at her writing desk.

  “He’s sleeping,” he said.

  “I told you he was sleeping.” Alerya’s voice was firm, but musical. “You’re worrying a great deal. About your brother, still? Or the Regent of the Matrial? Or about this little revolt in Hyalt? Or is it something else?”

  “About everything. Wouldn’t you? Waleryn was plotting with Enyll, and he pleaded illness to avoid speaking with me for almost two months after the overcaptain killed Enyll and destroyed the Table. Waleryn still avoids me whenever he can. With the Table destroyed, no longer can I see what is happening as it does or nearly immediately. I’ve been reduced to receiving written reports weeks and months after events have taken place. Most of the time, it’s too late to do anything. Half of wh
at I write, it seems, finds its way to the Regent. Then, there’s this revolt in Hyalt. It may be small so far, but there was no warning, and unless I do something, it will just get worse. There seem to be more of these True Duarchists everywhere. I’ve heard that there’s another group in the hills east of Syan, but no one knows exactly where. And where am I going to find the forces to put down the trouble in Hyalt? Or Syan, if it spreads? If I take any companies from around Southgate, the Regent could retake Southgate. Yet I know nothing until it’s too late.”

  “You miss the knowledge of the Table, don’t you? And you have begun to doubt what the overcaptain told you.”

  “I don’t doubt what he said. Or what he did. But why is it that the most useful tools are always the most dangerous? I know that Enyll would have killed us.”

  “Do you, Talryn? Or are you saying that to convince yourself?”

  The Lord-Protector sighed. “Both, I guess. Without the Table, and with this revolt, and against the crystal spear-throwers of Madrien—how they managed to build two, I don’t know—we’re going to have to come to terms that aren’t ideal—and quickly. Unless…” He shook his head.

  “Unless what?”

  “Wyerl suggested that I request that Overcaptain Alucius return to the Northern Guard. Make him a majer, at least. With one of his former companies and several partly trained companies of Southern Guards, he could handle the revolt.”

  “Why would he do that?” asked Alerya. “He wanted to go back to being a herder.”

  “Well…if I have to shift lancers to Hyalt, the Northern Guard is already having trouble holding its ground in the north…”

  “Talryn! That’s blackmail.”

  “It’s true, though. I can’t raise any more lancers in the Iron Valleys. Nor that many more in the rest of Lanachrona. We’ve conscripted everyone that we can. I’d be hard-pressed to pay for mercenaries, even if I could find any I could trust. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Do you honestly think that the Regent of the Matrial—”

  “Yes. We are stretched too thin, and it’s not just Madrien. It’s everything. The Dramurans attacked one of our vessels porting at Southgate. I just got that dispatch this morning. This afternoon I found out that the landowners of Deforya have overthrown the Landarch and replaced him with a Council of Five. They’ve decided to increase the road tariffs to Lustrea by half again. The Landarch was too accommodating to the needs of others, this new Council claims. What they meant was that they don’t want to pay for anything themselves and keep tariffing others and oppressing all their people as they have for generations. The battles between the nomads of Ongelya and Illegea make the southern high road unsafe. That leaves the high road through Deforya and the Northern Pass, and so we’re back to where we were two years ago. That means higher tariffs here. But…if I don’t do something, we’ll lose even more, just on the wine trade to the east. If we want safe trade that isn’t tariffed to excess, I’ll have to invade Deforya and make it part of Lanachrona. And where will I find the lancers and foot for that when I can’t even find enough to hold Southgate without losing Hyalt?”

  “Then…you must do what you must. But be generous to the overcaptain. Offer him something beyond rank.” Alerya tilted her head. “Appeal to him, and offer gratitude, honor, and a stipend to his family in his absence. Pay for the stipend yourself.”

  Talryn laughed softly. “You are as bad as I must be.”

  “We all do what we must.” Alerya stood.

  Talryn raised his eyebrows.

  “You have decided. Can you do anything more this evening?”

  “No.” Talryn smiled sheepishly.

  “Then we should enjoy the supper Feylish has prepared. Mother also sent some of the better amber wine from the cellars.”

  “A good supper would help…”

  13

  Finally, the looming was mostly finished, and, on Duadi of the second week of harvest, Wendra rode out with Alucius and the flock. After the episode with the dark sanders, Alucius had taken not only to bringing two rifles but wearing his Northern Guard ammunition belt at all times while away from the stead buildings. So far, he had not had to use even one rifle, so quiet had the stead been. But that worried him as much as more sandwolf attacks would have.

  Still, he enjoyed having Wendra out with him, especially on a warm and sunny day with just enough of a breeze that the sun wasn’t too hot. At the same time, he had a nagging worry. After his previous experience with the wild pteridons, did he have any right to ask Wendra to come out with him?

  “You’re thinking about those dark creatures, aren’t you?” called Wendra.

  “I worry about whether you should be out here,” he admitted.

  “I’ve been worried about you every time you’ve taken the flock out alone,” she countered. “When you ran into the dark sanders, my ring didn’t even show that you were in trouble.”

  “I wasn’t,” he replied. “That’s why you didn’t feel anything.”

  “It’s still safer with two herders.”

  She was right, Alucius knew, but he couldn’t help worrying about her.

  By midmorning, they were a good ten vingts east of the stead, and they had let the flock slow and browse its way eastward.

  “How do you feel?” Alucius called across the fifty yards separating him from Wendra.

  “I feel fine. It’s wonderful to be out here.” A smile followed Wendra’s words. “It’s too bad I can’t come out tomorrow.”

  “You’re going to stay at the stead and handle the last of the looming?”

  “Your mother and grandsire want to go into town. They haven’t been off the stead in weeks. How could I say no?”

  “Knowing you, you couldn’t.” Alucius laughed.

  After another glass, the nightsheep began to spread, and Alucius and Wendra chivvied them back into order and urged them farther eastward, toward another area where the quarasote was more dense, not that it was all that dense anywhere, but where the bushes were merely a yard or so apart as opposed to three or four.

  As the nightsheep settled into grazing once more, Alucius frowned. He could feel something—almost a sense of sadness, of sorrow—that wavered at the edge of his Talent-senses. Then it was gone.

  He eased the gray back toward the rear of the flock, where he urged two laggard ewes forward until they were almost up with the others, then circled back toward Wendra, letting the nightsheep graze what new quarasote shoots there were.

  After another half glass, they eased the nightsheep farther east, because Alucius didn’t want the quarasote overgrazed.

  As he rode slowly eastward in the general direction of the Plateau, Alucius could feel the sense of sorrow growing stronger. He hadn’t felt anything like that since he’d left Dereka two years earlier. He wondered. Did the feeling have anything to do with his dreams—or the earlier attack of the dark sanders?

  While he had not had any vivid dreams like the one with the ifrit, he continued to have fragments of dreams—regular dreams—with the alabaster-skinned men and women dominating them, and all of them chided him for his failures to understand their right to dominance and cataloged his own shortcomings.

  He looked across the flock to Wendra, then waved.

  She smiled, and the expression warmed him—but only for a moment, as a sudden wave of sorrow—and then one of all too familiar purpleness—swept over him.

  “Wendra!” Alucius called out. “Get your rifle, and use darkness on the cartridges. Something’s coming!”

  He urged the gray toward his wife, hurrying as fast as he could around the spikes of the quarasote, not wanting to injure his mount, but wanting to get closer to her.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Something else like the dark sanders,” Alucius said as he reined up a yard from Wendra, where he checked his own rifles. Then he began to infuse the cartridges in each rifle with the same kind of darkness that had brought down the pteridons so many years before—and the dark sanders we
eks before. He could only hope that it would work as well this time for whatever might appear. Once he felt that each bullet was so charged, he began to scan the skies and the quarasote flats for the evil purpleness that seemed ready to burst forth from somewhere.

  “I can feel something out there,” murmured Wendra.

  The chill darkness that was overlaid with purpleness grew more and more and more oppressive as they waited—an unseen wall of stone, an avalanche of disaster, waiting to fall and sweep them away. Yet…what else could they do but wait, ready to act? They didn’t know from where the attack might come—or if an attack would even come. Retreating in ignorance before a Talent-foe was worse than waiting.

  “It feels evil, like an icy purple,” murmured Wendra. “What do you think is coming?”

  “I’d guess something flying, like wild pteridons, but it could be sandoxes—or something we’ve never seen.”

  With a sudden snap, the silver-green of the very sky itself flexed—and somehow opened—and flying blue shapes appeared less than fifty yards to the northeast of the pair. The ten-odd creatures circling in the air were purplish pteridons, smaller than those once used by the nomads and without riders. The metallic blue talons that extended from their forelegs glinted, knife-sharp.

  “Start firing, now!” Alucius lifted his heavy rifle and put his first shot through the chest of the lead pteridon. The Talent-predator fluttered once, then cartwheeled out of the sky.

  Wendra’s rifle cracked, once, twice, a third time, before a pteridon spun downward into a quarasote bush. Both bush and pteridon burst into flame.

  The others began to form into a loose wedge that rose, as if preparatory to diving at the pair of herders. Alucius fired two more shots. The first missed entirely. The second caught the edge of another pteridon, which seemed to shake off the impact.

  One of the pteridons ignored the formation and dived at one of the lead nightrams. The ram lifted his head, trying to twist his glittering horns to catch the predator. Both creatures exploded in bluish flame.