Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Something murmured outside the closed windows of the workroom. Wendra cocked her head and listened, wondering if Lucenda had come back for something. Royalt had taken the flock, after having let her take the nightsheep on the previous two days.

  She smiled to herself. No one on the stead ever turned back for anything, especially Alucius, and she’d come to understand why after living with Lucenda and Royalt. She tilted her head. There was a greenish sense outside, almost like that of her husband, and the silence of a still day, which was welcome because the winter had been long and blustery and cold.

  “Yes, it has been, little one,” she murmured to Alendra, who was neither quite sleeping nor quite awake in the carrypack.

  Wendra replaced the crusher handle and piston, then picked up the bottle and stepped out of the maintenance barn, carefully closing the door behind her. With everyone gone for the morning, she couldn’t go around leaving doors open.

  Out on the stoop of the stone building, she thought she heard a song without words, a haunting song that enfolded the stone building. It was definitely a song and not the wind. The melody was not quite recognizable.

  The herder looked eastward, squinting from under the edge of the eaves into the early-morning light. Already, Royalt and the nightsheep flock were well out of sight, beyond the nearer ridges.

  A glittering flash of golden green washed over her—from her left. She turned, and her mouth opened as she beheld a soarer hovering at the end of the porch, closer than she ever had seen one. The green-tinted wings blurred the light, wings that appeared almost crystalline one moment and diaphanous the next. The soarer’s face was that of a beautiful girl child with short golden and translucent hair. An expression that might have been a smile crossed the small mouth. The silver green eyes remained fixed on Wendra. The soarer wore no garments, but the golden mist that surrounded her feminine figure served just as well to conceal her shoulders and torso.

  Only once had Wendra seen a soarer from closer than a vingt away, and this one was less than five yards from her. There was an enormous difference in seeing one from two thousand yards or even fifteen—and from five. So Wendra watched, listening, as the soarer hovered.

  The soarer was beautiful, not as any woman might be, but of itself, and Wendra drank in that beauty, entranced.

  For a long moment, she stood there.

  Then, out of nowhere, a hand grasped her right shoulder, a hand that felt like warm stone, a hand that belonged to a squat figure less than two-thirds her size. The sander was tan, and its skin sparkled in places, as if diamonds or crystals shone through its rough skin. Like a person, it had two arms and two legs, hands and feet, a pair of eyes, and a mouth and nose. It wore no clothes. Sanders never did.

  Wendra jerked her head around and tried to pull away from the sander. Although the top of its head came but to her shoulder, its hand held her arm so tightly that she could not break free. She lashed out with her knee, driving it into the creature’s body. Her knee felt as if she had rammed it into a stone wall, and a wave of pain seared up through her thigh and down to her toes simultaneously.

  As she tried to pull back from the sander, a second ironlike grip took her left shoulder. Another sander had appeared from nowhere, seemingly sliding out of the sandy soil and leaping onto the porch.

  Trapped and held tight by the two sanders, Wendra glanced toward the soarer, who still hovered in at the end of the porch.

  “What do you want?”

  Neither the sanders nor the soarer answered.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Again, none of the three replied.

  “Why?” Wendra demanded. “Why me?” She gathered together her Talent-force and began to reach out for the life-node, as Alucius had taught her.

  Do not… The soarer wrapped a greenish force around Wendra’s probe. We mean you no harm, but you must come.

  The two sanders said nothing, but then, Wendra had not expected that. Not even as they lifted her—each using but a single arm and hand—and carried her down the steps as if she were a lamb or a child. They walked northeast—toward the Plateau—and away from the southeast, where Royalt had ridden out a good glass earlier.

  Wendra did not scream or yell. There was no one within vingts who could have heard her.

  119

  Slightly more than a glass after morning muster on Octdi, Alucius returned from the strong room, where he and Sanasus had counted out and checked the payroll. Normally, and once things were more settled, that would be handled almost entirely by Sanasus, but Alucius still felt that he needed a better understanding of some of the mechanics of how headquarters worked.

  Not for the first time, he was beginning to see why Royalt had never even entertained the idea of making a career out of the militia—and probably would not have, even if he had not had the stead to return to. Everywhere Alucius looked, there were reports, and accounts, and he couldn’t do much of anything himself—just order and advise and wait…and hope that things were done right.

  With a deep breath, he picked up Sanasus’s report on logistical needs for the next two seasons. He was not looking forward to reading it, but he needed to know, especially if he wanted to carry out his project of moving the Guard to Iron Stem.

  A chill, bitingly cold, slashed across Alucius’s wrist. He looked down, even as his Talent enfolded the black crystal of the wristguard. Although the wristguard remained chill, not quite unbearably so, he could sense that Wendra was healthy. But why the chill?

  Had something happened to Alendra?

  For a moment, he felt that he could not breathe, but he pushed that thought away. The chill had to be related to Wendra. He swallowed. It felt almost like the times when he had used the ifrits’ Tables. But there weren’t any Tables in the northlands. Were there?

  He just looked at the wristguard. The chill continued. That it did told him that, whatever was happening, it wasn’t a Table, because the Table transport was faster. But what could it be?

  He just sat there behind the desk, looking at and sensing the crystal, but the chill continued.

  After a time, he looked down at Sanasus’s careful handwriting and the column of figures below. The letters danced before his eyes, and they made no sense whatsoever.

  Finally, he stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the hazy sky.

  Abruptly, as suddenly as it had come, the chill lifted from the wristguard, and the pulse from the crystal remained strong—and somehow warm. That was only slightly reassuring for the young colonel.

  Alucius looked at the wristguard, but it offered no answers beyond indicating that Wendra was healthy. He did feel that, had anything happened to Alendra, there would have been some continuing sign of distress from Wendra. Beyond that, he could only hope and trust that Wendra and Alendra were not in danger.

  He couldn’t just ride out—not when what he did with the Northern Guard might affect their future as well—and even if he did, it would be a long day and well into the night before he could reach the stead. And if Wendra had been transported by a Table…going home wouldn’t help at all.

  But the chill, and what it might have meant, nagged at him.

  120

  Dekhron, Iron Valleys

  At the sound of the knocker on the door, the white-haired man in black left the study and walked across the foyer. He frowned as he looked through the side window and saw the figure standing outside in a heavy winter coat. After a moment, he opened the door and stepped back.

  The younger man stepped inside the foyer, ushered in by a wintry blast of chill air, and Tarolt closed the door. He did not offer to escort the newcomer beyond the foyer. “Yes?”

  “Tarolt…I know I should have come earlier. I felt I had to come,” began Halsant, “but…I didn’t find out until late last night. I was working late on the ledgers at the warehouse…and it was only when I came by the house and saw the lamp on. You know…Father got most angry if anyone entered his study, even with Mother.”

 
; “Halsant. What happened?”

  “Father’s dead. It must have happened after the colonel came.”

  “After the colonel came? Could you please tell me what happened? In order, if you could manage that?” Tarolt’s firm words verged on cold and cutting.

  “Colonel Alucius came by yesterday morning. By the warehouse, I mean, and he was looking for Father. He said several people had suggested he talk to Father, but he didn’t say who. I told him Father was at home. He thanked me, and he left.” Halsant blotted his brow, sweating despite the chill from which he had emerged. “Mother said he—the colonel—came to the house. He didn’t stay long. Mother heard a thump, but she didn’t think much of it, because Father threw things sometimes. Especially when he was angry, and the colonel would make any trader angry these days. Anyway…Father hadn’t left the study, and she was worried, but…”

  “But what?”

  “She wouldn’t go in. So I did. He was dead. There wasn’t a mark on him. I think…whatever the colonel said must have made him so angry that his heart stopped. You know what a terrible temper he sometimes had.” Halsant blotted his face once more. “Anyway, I thought you should know, but it was well after dark last night. So I came first thing this morning.”

  Tarolt nodded slowly. “I appreciate your riding out here to tell me. It must be a terrible loss to you and to your mother.”

  “She doesn’t know what to do.”

  “I’m certain you can take care of everything, and I will certainly offer any advice and support you need.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tarolt looked toward the door. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your family right now. They’ll be needing you, and once you’re more settled we can talk. We will talk.”

  A faintly dazed expression crossed Halsant’s face at Tarolt’s last words.

  “You’ll talk to me before you do anything with his study, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Now…you need to see to your family.”

  “I need to see to my family.” Halsant nodded dazedly and turned.

  Only after Tarolt had watched the young trader ride back eastward toward Dekhron did he return to the study.

  “What was that all about?” asked the pale and stocky man in a maroon tunic.

  “We had a visitor, Sensat. He had to tell me something. Most important.” Tarolt glanced around the oak-paneled study, his eyes flicking across the hundreds of books shelved there before dropping back to the other. “Have you found anything else?”

  “No. I doubted that there would be even before you purchased all those volumes from Borlan. I told you that. Those who wrote books wouldn’t be the ones who knew where the scepters might be. Or even where the old maps would be.”

  “There must be a hint…somewhere…about the scepters.”

  “You said we did not need them. Rather firmly, I recall.”

  “That was not quite what I said, Sensat. I said we would not need them if the ancient ones and the herder colonel did not become involved. More precisely, we do not need them, but they could be dangerous in the hands of the herder.”

  Sensat’s fine black eyebrows arched as he tilted his head and placed the volume bound in burgundy leather on the long table beside which he stood. “And they have suddenly become involved?”

  “Halanat was killed earlier today. His son and widow say that he was visited by the colonel just before that.”

  “Murder’s still a crime. That would solve dealing with the colonel.”

  “It would be hard to prove. Halanat’s heart stopped. There wasn’t a mark on him. He had a heart attack. They all think he was so upset by the colonel that it happened after the colonel left.”

  “It didn’t, of course.”

  Tarolt snorted. “His lifethreads were severed, I’m sure. That was what the colonel did to Enyll. Even for an Efran, that’s hard to tell unless you’re present. The traces are faint and vanish soon. No one here would be able to tell anything except that his heart stopped. It did, of course, but not in that order.”

  “You don’t think it was an ancient one?”

  “No. It had to be the colonel. I would have felt it, even from here, if there had been a lifeforce drain, at least from them. So it was just a severing.”

  “What do you plan? Are you going to see Trezun and use the Table?”

  “I think I’ll wait until the colonel comes to see me. He will, sooner or later, and it is always better to deal with Talent from a position of strength.”

  “What if he does not come to you, the way he did to Halanat?”

  “Then one way or another, we’ll ride to Salaan and entice him into following. He might anyway.”

  “You want him to know that there is a Table in Salaan? He has no reason to suspect that, and you want to let him discover that?”

  “We cannot assume that he is that ignorant. Not now,” Tarolt pointed out. “He destroyed one Table. Besides, he will sense a Table there, and that will be a great temptation.”

  “He destroyed the Table in Tempre.”

  “That was an ancient Table, one weakened by age and misuse. We would have had to replace it shortly, in any case. Waleryn and you are supposed to be working on that, are you not?”

  “Waleryn should be in Norda, but he has not finished rebuilding the Table there. You had said he was to work on the Table in Tempre after Norda.”

  “You hope Waleryn is in Norda?”

  “There is no way to tell, Tarolt. You know that.”

  Tarolt offered a cold smile.

  Sensat frowned. “Do you think it is wise to let the colonel near a Table? That could be risky.”

  “Only to him. Besides, where could he go? To Prosp? Or to one of the inactive Tables? Translating there could kill him. In any event, one fully translated Efran should be more than enough, even to deal with an ancient one. I would rather deal with him here, but if he does not come close here, we will not take chances. We will deal with him from even greater strength in Salaan.” Tarolt glanced toward the door to the study.

  “While we wait, might I continue perusing these?” Sensat gestured toward the burgundy volumes on the table.

  After a moment, Tarolt laughed. “You will have plenty of time. The colonel has begun to learn patience, though it will avail him little.”

  121

  The Hidden City, Corus

  Wendra woke. She was lying on a bed wide enough for two, in a cramped fashion, looking up at a ceiling of amberlike stone. She scrambled upright, looking for Alendra. The carrypack on her chest was empty. She bolted for the doorway, but the silver door lever was unmoving, as solid as if it had been carved from amberstone in one piece with the door itself.

  She turned, forcing herself to take in the room around her. The walls were of the same polished amber as the ceiling. The room’s single window showed the cloudless silver green sky of Corus. For a moment, she looked dully at the window. Then she realized that she had never seen glass so clear, and that it was set not in wood, but in a shimmering silvery metal that could not have been silver.

  Wendra hurried to the window. She pressed the flat bracket to one side and slid the window open. A blast of winter-cold air whipped around her, and as quickly as she had opened the window, she closed it. So cold was that air that even her nightsilk undergarments, her winter shirt, and vest were insufficient to offer much protection against that rush of frigid air.

  Standing at the closed window, she looked out. Immediately, she could see that she was in a tower. Below were other buildings that extended a good vingt from the tower. The buildings ended at a circular wall, and both wall and buildings were of the same amber stone. Beyond the wall was white sand that shimmered and glittered in the afternoon sun. Even farther to the west was a rampart of dark rock, along the top of which ran green-tinted crystal oblongs.

  Wendra turned from the window, looking back into the room, wedge-shaped and far narrower at the end with the door. She walked to the door, golden wood wit
hout windows or peepholes, and a single lever handle of the same metal as the window casements.

  Extending her Talent to the door, she tried to move the door lever, but it did not budge. Was there a lock somewhere? Alucius had mentioned something.

  She could sense a greenish radiance behind her and looked toward the window. When she looked back, the soarer had appeared within a yard of her. The soarer’s shape was shrouded by the golden-tinged green mist that acted as a garment, but her form was feminine. Her brilliant green eyes were clear, and deep…and very old, so old that Wendra took an involuntary step backward—until Wendra saw that in the soarer’s arms rested a smiling Alendra. From the lifethread, Wendra could tell that her daughter was healthy and happy, but she rushed forward and swept Alendra into her arms.

  “Why am I here? Why?” Wendra’s words echoed through the tower room. “Why did you take my daughter?”

  The hidden city. It is not for you. Not once you are prepared to do what must be done. We only took your daughter because she awoke before you, and we did not wish her to be distressed. Although the soarer did not speak her words aloud, they were as clear as if she had.

  “But why?”

  Because it is necessary.

  “Necessary?”

  We will teach you all that we taught your mate, while he searches for you.

  “Why did you take me?”

  You are the key to whether your people survive, and we would have you survive, if only for our own foolish pride. Dry humor colored the words. Pride is what little remains to us.

  “Me? How can I be key? Alucius has the great Talent. Not me.”

  You have the same potential as does he. The ifrits must be stopped. They should not be allowed to destroy world after world. Your mate will do only what he must. He would not have acted in time, had we not taken you.

  “That is evil…” Wendra protested.

  Well that may be, but it is an evil less ill than watching our—and your—world be bled to death.