Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Do you think the ifrits have anything to do with things getting so bad?” asked Wendra.

  “I can’t say. I just don’t know.”

  “What do you feel?” she pursued.

  “I can’t say why, but I feel that they are.”

  “So do I. I don’t want you to go. I know you have to, but…” Wendra’s eyes were bright.

  Alucius glanced at the Plateau, a grayish mass that melded with the gray clouds swirling around and above it. “I wish I knew more.”

  “We never do.”

  That was certainly true, he reflected. That had been true his entire life.

  “When will you leave?” asked Wendra.

  “On Londi. Marshal Frynkel will be taking care of other details.”

  “Informing the colonel?”

  “Among other things.” Alucius took the narrow envelope from within the nightsilk jacket he had never shed and handed it to Wendra. “You need to read this. It’s from the Lord-Protector.”

  He stood and waited as she opened the envelope and read the words put to pen there.

  Finally, she looked up. “Commander of the Northern Guard? Why?”

  “Because things are worse than we know.”

  She just looked at him. “Will you accept that as well?”

  “That’s a road I won’t reach for a while.” He forced a smile. “Anyway, that would mean I would be in Dekhron, and commanders don’t undertake the nasty missions.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Colonel Weslyn doesn’t. Colonel Clyon did. Who was the better commander?”

  Alucius concealed a wince. “That road can wait. Anyway, it could be that things in Hyalt won’t take that long.”

  Her laugh was a short bark. “Then what? The Lord-Protector will want something else…or you’ll be tied up in trying to rebuild the Northern Guard.”

  “You think I should have refused?” he asked softly.

  “No. It wouldn’t have been right. I don’t know if exactly what you will be doing is right, but I’ve seen the Talent-creatures, and you can’t stay here and pretend they don’t exist or that life will go on as before. And even if they aren’t involved, Colonel Weslyn is almost as bad in his own way. I just wish you didn’t have to be the one to put things right.”

  “I know, and I could be being sent to the wrong place…”

  “That could be.” Wendra offered a tight smile. “If that is so, then I’ll have to do what you would have done.”

  “There are some more things I need to show you.”

  She just nodded, then stepped forward and put her arms around him. “You can do that…tomorrow.”

  21

  Hieron, Madrien

  The Regent sat on the south side of the circular ebony conference table, as had her predecessor the Matrial, with the wide glass windows behind her. The deep violet of her tunic did not quite match her eyes, but the green emerald choker glimmered as if lit from within the gems, setting off her near-alabaster skin. She leaned forward, intently listening to the officer who sat on the far side of the table.

  “The Lord-Protector is overextended, especially in the north,” the blond marshal said. “We have pushed the Northern Guard back from Arwyn, and we may be able to retake Harmony by winter’s end.”

  “I had thought that was possible.”

  “For me, Regent, that is difficult to believe. Especially so soon after…the disaster. Even with the training plans and the other…information you have obtained.”

  The Regent smiled, an expression both cold and calculating and warm simultaneously. “Gold can bring forth much information, especially if offered to those with greater dreams than their abilities.”

  “How many…in all Lanachrona? Might I ask?”

  “Not that many. They are not ones to be noticed. Majers and the like, high enough to know what we need to know and low enough that few would suspect them.”

  “I still cannot believe—”

  “The lamaial vanished,” replied the Regent. “We suspect that he was the overcaptain who defeated the barbarians in Deforya, but that is uncertain. What is more certain is that he is no longer in the Northern Guard. Our informants suggest that he has returned to being a herder and has no interest in arms, unless the Iron Valleys are threatened. That is not a mistake we will repeat. Anyone who has ever attacked them without all other threats removed has regretted it most bitterly.” The necklace flashed, and she laughed softly, yet with a hard edge to her voice. “Even under the Duarchy, they were the last to submit and the first to rebel, and so it will be again. So…we will only push so far as to retake Harmony, and only as you can do so prudently with more limited forces. Can you send more lancers to the south?”

  “A few more companies. Some of the auxiliaries as well.”

  “And the second crystal spear-thrower?”

  “You wish me to use it against Southgate? That would pose some risk if the Northern Guard sends additional lancers to its forces.”

  “Where do you think Colonel Weslyn will find more lancers? The Lord-Protector forbid him to conscript herders, and the traders will protest if he conscripts heavily from their communities.”

  “So he will not have many reinforcements.”

  “Exactly.” The Regent added, “That will allow you to place the crystal spear-throwers so that both are used against Southgate.”

  “We can only fire one at a time.”

  “I know. But if one is on the north side and one on the east…”

  Marshal Aluyn nodded. “You wish none of the Lord-Protector’s troops to escape?”

  “As few as possible. Those he does not have cannot return to invade Madrien. The same is true, to a lesser degree, of the Northern Guard.”

  “You have risked much, Sulythya…Regent.” Aluyn’s eyes flickered to the dark hair of the Regent, hair that had once been far redder and lighter.

  “Not so much as I must risk, Aluyn. Marshal. The times are changing, and we must be prepared for those changes.”

  “Have they changed that much, Regent? Or do we see the change we wish to see?”

  “Times will change, Marshal, more than we can imagine. More than we can possibly imagine.”

  The slightest frown crossed Aluyn’s face, then vanished, but she did not respond.

  22

  In the gray light of the moments just before dawn, Alucius and Wendra walked down from the house to the smaller of the two lambing sheds.

  “He’s doing much better. It won’t be long before he can go with the flock,” Wendra said. “I’ll have to watch him more, though.”

  “Don’t take him when you have the flock by yourself,” Alucius suggested. “Not until he’s even stronger. You’ll have enough to worry about.”

  “I’ll be careful.” Wendra slid the bolt that unlocked the shed.

  “That wasn’t exactly a promise,” Alucius observed.

  “No. It wasn’t.” Wendra grinned. “If you’re going to ride off to do what you think is best, then you can’t exactly expect me to stay here and do anything but what I think is best. Can you?”

  Alucius shook his head ruefully and closed the lambing shed door.

  “Now,” Wendra said. “What was it that you wanted to show me without your grandsire around?”

  “He can’t do this.”

  “And I can?”

  “You should be able to. You can sense lifethreads. And lifeforce.”

  “I know. It’s still hard to believe that he can’t.”

  “Most herders can’t.” So far as Alucius knew, he and Wendra were the only ones who could, but that might have been because the soarers had worked with him and he’d worked with Wendra. It wasn’t something that he felt comfortable sharing, except with his wife, and that, too, was a feeling. “This is something…I can tell you, and I can show you in a way…but there’s no way to actually let you practice it.”

  “You make it sound so mysterious.”

  “I want you to look at the ramlet there…with your Talent. L
ook at his lifethread, really closely.” Alucius concentrated his own Talent so that he could feel the reddish black lifethread of the ramlet who looked up at them from the inside pen. Already, the ramlet had the nubs of horns that would grow into razor-sharp and curled weapons, and his lifethread had thickened and strengthened over the past few weeks so that it was as strong as that of a normal ramlet—except that he’d been born out of season, and that meant a hard winter for him.

  “What about it?”

  “Can you see all the little threads?”

  Wendra frowned. “Little threads?”

  “The main lifethread is made up of smaller threads, and they’re all twisted together. There’s a thicker spot, just out from the body, and it’s, well, usually right out from where an umbilical cord would be.”

  “I can feel, sort of see, really, the thicker spot.”

  “That’s a lifethread node. If you form a kind of lifeforce probe, like the darkness, except it has to be more green—”

  “Like this?”

  A wavery greenish black probe appeared, reaching out from Wendra.

  Alucius blocked it with a shield.

  “Why—”

  “Because,” Alucius said quickly, “if you had touched that node with it, you could have severed his lifethread and killed him.”

  “You can kill that way?”

  “Oh…yes.” Alucius paused. “It’s very exhausting, though. That was what I had to do against the Recorder of Deeds in Tempre, the one that the ifrit took over, and I was so tired that I could barely move. Doing too much that way could kill you. It almost did me. Bullets are better for most things, especially for Talent-creatures.”

  “Then why do you want me to learn this?”

  “Because bullets don’t always work against the ifrits. The other thing, what I was trying to tell you, is that they can also block the kind of probe that you tried if you just use it like a knife or a spear. Like I just did, except they’re stronger. What you can do is use it to unravel the lifethreads at the node, because the threads are made up of smaller threads, and those are made of even smaller ones.”

  Wendra shivered. “They could do it to us, then?”

  “I suppose so—except they never tried.” Alucius frowned, trying to recall his encounters with the ifrits. No…they had never tried to unravel his lifethread—only to squeeze it or slash it. “They might not know how…or maybe they never had to worry about that.”

  “I’d wager on the second,” Wendra replied.

  So did Alucius. He cleared his throat. “That’s it. I mean…that’s what I wanted to show you and what I wanted you to know. I’d thought about it earlier, but, well, it didn’t seem like you’d need it. I didn’t need to use it here on the stead…” His words trailed off.

  Wendra stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I understand.”

  Alucius hoped so. He really should have showed her earlier, but he sometimes felt that he was always realizing what he ought to have done later than he should.

  23

  Dekhron, Iron Valleys

  Two men sat at a corner table in the Red Ram. One was Colonel Weslyn, wearing the blue-trimmed black of the Northern Guard; the other was the round-faced trader Halanat, in his blue and gray.

  “I don’t like it,” said Weslyn, lowering his mug to the table. “I don’t.”

  “Why not?” asked Halanat. “This Alucius is being sent to Hyalt, and that is as far as one can get from the Iron Valleys. He’s likely to cause far less difficulty there than here.”

  “He wasn’t causing any trouble at all,” replied Weslyn. “He liked being a herder, and that was fine with me. He was the kind who cared more for results than what happened later. Short-term ideals, and no thought of living with the outcome.”

  “Young officers are often like that.”

  “I can’t see why the Lord-Protector would insist on sending a marshal all this way to call up an overcaptain and promote him to majer. He and his marshals never do anything without a reason, especially one that benefits them. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It might make great sense from their point of view,” suggested the trader.

  “How?”

  “The Lord-Protector has a revolt on his hands. If he brings in his own Southern Guard to put it down, how does that look?”

  “It has to be put down. Even I can see that.”

  “That’s true, but no one wants the cost to fall on them. So…he sends a marshal up here. Didn’t this Marshal Frynkel say that he was on an inspection tour? That way the Lord-Protector can claim that he sent one of his highest officers to see about reinforcements. He can also blame Frynkel.”

  “For what?”

  “Is this Alucius not rather…effective? Didn’t you say once that he destroyed an entire band of brigands, something like a hundred of them—and killed every last man? The Lord-Protector may need that kind of effectiveness. Would he want to saddle one of his promising Southern Guard officers with such butchery? If it goes wrong, he can blame this Alucius without tarnishing the Southern Guard.” Halanat lifted his mug and took the smallest of swallows.

  “That makes sense, but it’s still going to cause problems for me. He’s being promoted to majer, and that’s over more experienced overcaptains. Compared to them, he knows nothing.” Weslyn frowned, then pulled at his chin. “That will make him one of the handful of senior officers in the Guard, and he’s less than thirty years old. He’s probably closer to twenty-five.”

  “If he is that inexperienced, then dealing with a revolt in Hyalt will prove most difficult for him. If he is disgraced or does poorly, that will not reflect badly upon you.”

  “And if he is lucky enough to do well?”

  “Then you take the credit for originally recognizing his abilities and for recommending him to the Lord-Protector. You point out, most politely, that it was his choice to leave the Guard and not yours. If he chooses to remain active in the Northern Guard, you put him in charge of the companies fighting in northern Madrien. He was not so successful against the Matrial, you said, when he first fought her lancers.”

  “He was a scout. I cannot gainsay that he is an extremely good battlefield commander.” Weslyn shook his head. “You have said that his family is good at business. What if he ends up here at headquarters? If he sees the accounts…”

  “Then keep him in the battlefield and away from Dekhron. His luck cannot last there forever, and, if it does, in another ten years, he can become Imealt’s deputy, and Imealt will have to deal with the overcaptain.”

  “Majer,” Weslyn corrected. “Like it or not, he’s now a majer.”

  “That is, if he survives,” Halanat replied. “Rebellions are most chancy affairs. One never knows from what direction come the arrows and slings—or shots.”

  “Most chancy.” Weslyn nodded. “At least, after he heads south, he will not be my problem, and the Southern Guard will make the payroll for him and for Fifth Company while they are south of the River Vedra. At least, that will help.” He paused. “The real loss is Overcaptain Feran. Good solid officer…”

  24

  Late on Decdi afternoon, Royalt met Alucius when the younger herder was leaving the nightsheep shed after having brought the flock in and settled them for the night.

  Alucius nodded to his grandsire. “You look worried. Is everything all right?”

  “Things around here are fine. Been thinking. You’ll be leaving in the morning, and I wanted to talk a few things over with you before that.” Royalt paused. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “You’ve seen more than I have,” Alucius replied. “I can use any thoughts you have.” He slid the last bolt into place, then turned to walk toward the stead house. “And you usually have a few.”

  Royalt fell in beside him. “They’re sending you to put down a revolt. That’s what this marshal said, and he came all the way from Tempre to ask you? That seem strange to you?”

  Alucius laughed. “You know it’s strange. I know it�
�s strange. I just don’t think I could refuse.”

  “That’s right.” Royalt paused, then asked, “You ever think about why people get up in arms, especially when the ruler’s not that bad?”

  “Well…either the local authorities haven’t done well or there’s something that they don’t understand…or it’s not local at all, and someone’s stirring up trouble.”

  “Could be all three,” suggested Royalt. “Before you start shooting these so-called rebels, you need to find out what started the trouble first…You know, one of the things that caused all the trouble back with the Reillies…maybe even was what led to your Da’s death…that was that the Council and Colonel Dyalar never asked what had gotten the Reillies all riled up. Dyalar didn’t even ask, just sent out a bunch of companies and started shooting. That’s one way to shut down a revolt—just kill every last one. Problem is that if you miss anyone, then they’re going to come back and try to kill you and your side. Just keeps going. Sometimes, with some folk, there’s no other way. But…doesn’t hurt to see if there’s another way. Lord-Protector doesn’t much care, I’d guess, how you handle it, so long as everyone gets their property and stuff back and the troublemakers are taken care of.”

  “Probably not,” Alucius agreed.

  “Thing is…they wouldn’t be calling you in if it were all that easy. Means they think some folks are going to get killed. Could be that’s what they want.”

  “I think the Lord-Protector is looking for a way to get peace for a long time, and he doesn’t know where else to turn. That doesn’t mean the Southern Guard thinks the way he does. I’d wager that they just don’t want to have to take lancers from anywhere else, and they don’t want the blame laid on them.”

  “Glad to see you understand that.” Royalt barked a short laugh. “You solve this without a lot of bodies, and everyone’s going to say that anyone could have done what you did. You kill a lot of folk, and the Southern Guard’ll come back in and tell everyone you didn’t have to do that, and everyone will behave for a while just so they don’t bring you back. And the Lord-Protector will thank you and send you back here. You’ll be known as the Butcher of Hyalt for so long as you live, and so long as you’re alive, no one’s going to do much in Hyalt to upset the Lord-Protector. So you’ll have all sorts coming up here to do you in.”