Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Alucius inspected the area on the far side of the passageway, noting the very simple lever. He shook his head. He wasn’t very good at visualizing what he’d never seen. Taking his rifle, he stepped into the passageway. He could sense no one in the passageway beyond. After a moment, he eased the lever forward. The stone wall slid back into place, more smoothly and with much less noise than it had made in opening.

  He took a deep breath and walked along the narrow stone passage, seemingly cut from the stone itself. After a good five yards, it ended in another chamber—one that looked to be precisely five yards square. Unlike the other chambers or Table chambers, this room had not been touched.

  There was a table desk in one corner and an odd settee before it, beside which was a chair with longer legs than most. Against the wall to the left was a wide chest of drawers, similar to the one in the buried Table chamber where Tarolt had hurled Alucius. The light-torches above the table desk shed an even, if faint, glow across the chamber. In a niche carved head high from the wall behind the table desk was a chest or casket of metallic silver and black, although the silver held a purplish sheen. The casket was slightly over a yard in length, and a third of a yard in height and in depth. A key with a triangular head remained in the lock of the casket, although the lid was closed.

  A set of clothes lay on the floor, just inside the chamber, a green tunic trimmed in brilliant purple, with matching trousers and black boots. The garments had no dust upon them, and the fabric had a silvery sheen. They were laid out as if someone had been lying down and vanished, leaving the clothing behind. Alucius recalled what had happened in the chamber beneath the Matrial’s palace. Had the ifrit been trapped or killed by one of the ancient soarers? Or just been trapped when the soarers had disrupted the ifrits’ lines of power?

  There was a strange gleam to the garments, and he studied them with his Talent. Then…he swallowed. Like the eternastone of the roads and the remaining ifrit buildings, like the Tables, and like the green towers, the garments bore an infusion of lifeforce. The squandering of lifeforce on preserving mere clothing…the taking of something that held a whole world together—just for clothing that would endure for eons?

  Alucius looked farther into the chamber. The light-torch bracket in the far left corner had been twisted down, and on the polished graystone floor below lay the metal fittings of a light-torch, but without the crystal. Beside the broken light-torch lay a silvery jacket, a pistol-like device, and a pair of boots on their sides.

  Alucius nodded. The pistol-like device was like the one the engineer had used, but he could sense with his Talent that its power had long since dissipated. He took a deep breath and hurried back out of the chamber to the hidden door. He pulled the lever down. After a moment, and another grinding lurch, the door opened.

  This time, when he returned to the furnished chamber, he left the stone doorway open. He thought he’d rather deal with live intruders than a mechanism that might jam and might well have already trapped two ifrits.

  He went to the metallic casket in the wall niche first. As he looked at it, he realized that the casket was not set on the ledge, but actually embedded several spans into the stone so that it could not have been moved without breaking the slab into which it was set. The key had been left in the open position. Alucius lifted the lid. The casket was empty. Inside was a pair of heavy metal brackets, as if the casket had once held something. A purple crystal was set at each end of the casket, and from the position of the brackets, it appeared as if whatever had rested inside the casket had once rested firmly against each crystal. A silvery bar ran from the base of each crystal down through the bottom of the casket and into the stone.

  For a time, Alucius studied the casket, but he could not determine what the missing object might have been. From the casket, he turned to the chest set against the wall, leaving the single drawer in the table desk for later.

  He opened the top right-hand drawer of the chest. Inside were two greenish crystals. Even as he watched, both disintegrated. What remained in the drawer was a stack of sheets of the same eternal parchment. Alucius picked up the first one. The writing was regular, each symbol precisely the same size as the next—except none of them was familiar. He glanced through the other sheets. All were covered in symbols, without any drawings. After a moment, he slipped them back into the drawer.

  The left-hand drawer contained a few odd-shaped coins, including several golds of a type Alucius had never seen, a pair of shears, and a thin coil of wire. He slipped the golds into his wallet and opened the double-width drawer below. Inside was a long shimmering garment of some sort, all golden silver, with large symbols down the front, symbols that Alucius had never seen, but which he suspected matched some of those on the sheets of eternal parchment.

  Bending down, Alucius opened the lowermost drawer. It seemed to be empty. Then, in one corner in the back, he saw what looked to be another sheet of parchment, folded over twice. He touched it gingerly, but the substance remained firm to his touch. Slowly, he eased it out of the drawer.

  The sheet was neither parchment nor cloth, but something akin to both, flexible and smooth. After a moment, he unfolded it. What he held appeared to be a map of some sort, which could have been drawn recently, with bright colors and clear dark lines. He studied it quickly, noting that it was clearly a map of Corus, although there were representations of parts of the continent that did not match what he knew. The map must have been made a long, long time ago, before the Cataclysm that had changed the world. He glanced back over his shoulder and slipped it inside his jacket and tunic.

  He turned back to the table desk and opened the single wide drawer. Inside, he found little enough—a miniature knife with a purpleness to it that prompted him to leave it without touching it, an oblong block of jade with an enameled and unfamiliar seal upon it, and some sort of stylus in the form of a leafy branch. There were also a number of sheets of the eternal parchment, all blank.

  Alucius closed the drawer and walked toward the broken light-torch bracket. Avoiding the boots and pistol on the floor and standing beside the broken light-torch bracket, he created another Talent-probe.

  This time, as much as he tried, he could do nothing to open what he knew to be another hidden door. He could find no levers, nothing beyond the stone except more stone. Yet…once there had been. Finally, with sweat streaming down his forehead, he turned and studied the chamber again.

  There were no books, nothing to provide knowledge, except the map inside his tunic and the sheets of eternal parchment with unreadable symbols—too many sheets to carry with him. And then there was the mysterious metal casket—with nothing inside it.

  He turned and made his way back along the narrow stone passageway. He stopped under one of the light-torches just a yard inside the open stone door.

  There he took out the map he had found and unfolded it. Despite having been folded for longer than he could imagine, once the map—and it was clearly a map—was flat in his hands, there were no creases or wrinkles. Before Alucius was a detailed depiction of Corus. Although he could not read the script that labeled the cities, all the eternastone highways that he knew were laid out, as well as some that he had never seen or heard of.

  There were keys to the map—that he felt. One that leapt out at him was the placement of tiny green octagons. Each octagon had to be the location of a Table—or where a Table had once been. There were octagons in Tempre and where Elcien had once stood and more than a score across Corus. Each octagon was framed by a colored border edged in purple. Alucius looked more closely. The one in Tempre was blue edged in purple. There was another octagon of purple-bordered silver at Prosp in Lustrea. Had that been where he had fought the ifrit-engineer?

  So where was he now? He studied one octagon after another until he found the one with the purple-edged, crimson gold border—and it was Dereka, by its location, although he could not read the symbols beside the city. He kept looking, finding a purple-edged, black-bordered green octagon far
to the northwest, just to the west and south of what he knew as the Black Cliffs of Despair. He nodded. The icy and preserved structure had been in Blackstear.

  From what he recalled of the sullen crimson Table where he had been sent, that buried Table chamber had to have been the one in Soupat.

  For a time, his eyes refused to focus on the map as the thoughts of an entire web of Tables connecting all Corus flashed through his mind. Yet…the Tables were not laid out for anything except the travel of a few individuals. Why?

  Not that many people—or ifrits—could have had the ability to travel the Tables…could they? From what Alucius had learned from the soarer, it was unlikely that anyone who was not an ifrit had been able to use the Tables when they had first been set up. The eternastone highways were what most people had had to use to get from place to place. That also suggested that not that many ifrits had the ability, and that all Corus had been ruled by a comparative handful of ifrits.

  Maybe…just maybe…there was some hope.

  He frowned. Was that why Wendra was missing? Because the ifrits were few in number, few enough that he and Wendra might make a difference? But if that were the case, why hadn’t Tarolt or Halanat known about Wendra?

  He looked at the map before him once more, forcing himself to go over each green octagon, checking the colors of each and trying to visualize what he knew. Originally, according to the map, there had been a Table in Elcien and Ludar, but not in Southgate, and one in Alustre. And in the time of the Duarchy, there had not been a Table in Salaan or anywhere in the Iron Valleys—nor anywhere near the Aerlal Plateau.

  After studying the map for a time, he carefully folded it and slipped it back inside his undertunic. His next trip would be somewhere that was hopefully closer to home and less dangerous, but someplace where he hoped he could find out more, either about the ifrits or how to discover where Wendra had gone. The more he thought about it, the less it seemed likely that the ifrits had Wendra—unless there happened to be more than one group of ifrits. But…he had to do something…

  At that thought, he frowned, recalling his grandfather’s advice about not acting until he knew enough to do so. But that had been in battle—not when the love of his life was threatened.

  He took a long swallow from the water bottle before slipping through the open stone doorway and back into the Table chamber. Turning back, he extended a Talent-probe to the activating lever of the door and pushed it. The door slid back into place, leaving no sign of a second exit from the chamber. Rifle in hand, Alucius stepped down into the depression that had once held a Table, hoping that he could somehow relink to the shadowy web that connected both Tables and portals.

  He stood in the circle that he could sense only with his Talent, and ever so faintly even with that, trying to reach to the darkness beyond and beneath. Nothing happened. He was still standing in the oblong space in the stone floor that had once held a Table.

  Oblong? For some reason that thought bothered him. He blotted his forehead. Then he realized that if he included the depth into the stone, the Table would have been a cube. All the Tables had to be cubes. Why?

  With a deep breath he pushed that thought away, again concentrating, this time not on the idea of purple black conduits running from Table to Table, but a vaguer, more shadowy web on which the conduits seemed to have been imposed.

  The stone beneath his boots dissolved, and he was in blackness, a chill blackness, but one that was green-tinged, not purple-tinged. Instead, he could sense that he was somehow resting beside/below the ifrit conduit, and that the conduit wound around the web, much as an ifrit lifethread wound around the lifethread of a person when the person was ifrit-possessed.

  Where did he wish to go? To an amber portal, he had already decided, the one that seemed to match with the location of Hyalt. That way, if he could not travel back, at least he’d be in Lanachrona and could make his way to Tempre, and the Lord-Protector.

  Travel through the hazy green black darkness seemed to take less effort, and within moments, or so it seemed, although he doubted time was the way he felt it, he hovered underneath an amber portal, one tinged with a faint and distant purple, much as was the portal at Dereka. Did he want to emerge?

  For a moment, he could also feel other portals, in seemingly opposite directions, one that was pink-tinged purple, and another, barely sensed, that was blue and maroon.

  Alucius decided and concentrated on reaching out of the hazy darkness, to bring himself back into the world of light through the amber.

  Silver and amber light shattered away from him.

  133

  The Hidden City, Corus

  Wendra stood in the second tower room, the one adjoining her chamber, looking down at the mirrored square set into the amber floor. In her carrypack, Alendra squirmed. Beside her hovered the soarer.

  You must learn to travel the ley lines of the world. Use your Talent. Study the portal.

  “Is this like a Table? I thought Tables had to be set into the ground. Is it safe to carry Alendra?”

  It is safe for the child now, but only for two seasons or perhaps three. Once she has a firmer sense of who she is, then such travel will not be safe for her.

  “Why does that matter?”

  Travel is by force of will and self. The Tables are a framework imposed upon the lifethreads of the world itself. We have woven those lifethreads into the buildings of our cities. We once could grow such threads. The ifrits cannot. They can only suck them dry. You could travel from Table to Table now—the few that the ifrits have constructed or rebuilt. They would soon catch you, because you have not learned enough. That is another reason why we have separated the portals of the Plateau from the ley lines of the world. That way you cannot travel to where you could be taken…not until you are ready.

  “Why do you want—”

  Study the portal. My time and yours is short. I will guide you to another portal in the other city.

  “There are two hidden cities?”

  Two are but those left. Use your Talent and study…I will return. The soarer vanished, leaving Wendra looking down at the mirror-portal set in the amberstone.

  134

  Once more, Alucius stood in a chamber that had once held a Table. Now the oblong depression was half filled with sand. Through the dimness, he could barely see the smooth stone walls of the room. He stepped out of the depression, almost falling as his left boot skidded on the loose sand that covered the still-polished stone floor.

  As with the Table chamber in Dereka, there were no brackets for light-torches, no windows, no furnishings, and no sign of the original function of the chamber except the space cut into the stone that had once held a Table. There was also no obvious way out.

  Alucius paused. How could he see if there were no sources of light? From what he could tell, the walls radiated just the faintest hint of light. Or something did. He began to examine the walls, looking for the pattern of holes that might have once held a light-torch bracket. He covered slightly more than half the chamber when he found the telltale pattern.

  As hard as he tried, though, he could find nothing to grasp with his Talent, no hidden levers, nothing.

  His face coated in sweat, he stopped trying to use his Talent-probes and took a deep breath, leaning back against the smooth stone wall.

  “Oh…” He stumbled and almost fell as the stone behind him shifted, sliding sideways for half a yard before grinding to a halt. His rifle butt clunked against the hard rock.

  Alucius turned and tried to move the stone door wider. It did not budge. He could not close it either, although his efforts in that direction were not quite so vigorous. There was more of the indirect light in the passage beyond the door, and he squeezed through the opening and into the stone passage beyond, a corridor two yards wide, perhaps two and a half high, walled in redstone. Less than ten yards from where he entered the passage, it ended—or branched into two passages, one heading to the right and one to the left.

  Alucius pau
sed, looking first to the left, then to the right. To the right…he thought he could sense something, but the left seemed empty. He turned left. Only five yards farther, the corridor ended at what looked to be a wooden door. There was no lever, just a handle. Alucius pulled on the handle and the door opened toward him, swinging out on hinges that squeaked and grated.

  His mouth opened, because the other side of the door appeared to be a stone wall, and blocking the opening was a waist-high bench. The room beyond was but three yards in width, and was in fact the prophet’s now-empty strong room outside of Hyalt. For a moment, Alucius just stood there, amazed that he had once been so close and not even sensed the tunnel behind. He finally stepped back and closed the door, although he had to lean his weight against the edge, and his feet slipped on the gritty surface of the stone.

  He retraced his steps back to the point where the corridor had branched and followed the other branch. The sound of the grit underfoot echoed in the stone-walled corridor, which began to curve after about fifteen yards. The way brightened as he walked the next few yards, and he brought up the rifle, but the source of light was not an exit but a pair of ancient light-torches mounted in antique brackets at head level on both sides of the corridor.

  With his Talent, he could sense an end to the corridor at another doorway, and within five yards, he reached another of the handled doors. Gingerly, his rifle ready, although he sensed no one beyond the door, he tugged. It opened easily onto an empty room, four yards wide and three deep, also lit by a pair of ancient light-torches. Opposite the door was an open archway, and beyond it was a wall. Alucius left the door—also stone-faced on the outside—ajar and stepped into the chamber.

  He eased toward the archway, its edges finished with maroon ceramic tiles. At the archway itself, he stopped, studying what lay beyond—a screen wall, no more than three yards high and three wide. Beyond that, his Talent revealed a soaring cavern or chamber, with a stone dais on the opposite side of the screen wall, a dais raised a good two yards above the floor of the cavern.