Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Wendra followed with one of her own, then another.

  As blackness cascaded around Tarolt, the oak door burst open, and more than a squad of Matrite special guards poured into the small chamber. Their pistols came up, some aimed at Alucius and Wendra, some at Tarolt.

  “Shoot them!”

  The ifrit raised the scepter, its aura blinding and stopping the Matrites. Then he vanished.

  “Link to the earth!” Alucius ordered. “Now!” Even before he spoke, he had begun the linking process, extending thin threads.

  Beside them, the massive crystal began to slow, no longer spinning above the stone floor, but beginning to wobble.

  Alucius forced himself to concentrate on strengthening and intensifying his links to everything around him, weaving some of those threads around Alendra as well. At the same time, as he began to feel that the links to earth were stronger, he pressed lifeforce darkness around the faltering purple crystal.

  He extended that blackness against the resistance, a resistance that suddenly shredded into purplish threads that exploded away from the crystal. Wrapped in its covering of darkness, a darkness added to by Wendra, the crystal contracted, pulsed, and contracted again.

  “Shoot them! Now!” commanded someone.

  Alucius ignored the commands, Talent-pressing darkness around the failing crystal. A high, whining sound knifed through Alucius’s ears, but he crammed more darkness around the crystal. A heavy, leaden, splintering sound echoed through the chamber.

  Instantly, huge cracks and rents appeared in the chamber’s stone walls. Feeling like an immobile and massive miniature mountain, tied in place, as well as protected by his threads that felt as though they went everywhere, Alucius forced yet more darkness around the crystal.

  With a dreamlike slowness, the crystal stopped rotating and tumbled down toward the stone below. Faint purplish light swirled as if it were smoke, providing a trail. All the glass and crystal in the world shattered—that was the sound when the pink purple crystal struck the stone.

  A single piercing shriek followed, so high in frequency that while Alucius could not hear it, his very flesh felt as though it were being flayed apart from within. Silver green blackness flared across the underground chamber…a blinding wave of color and power…drowning Alucius and Wendra—and Alendra.

  148

  Salaan, Lananchrona

  A spray of pink and purple Talent-mist appeared in the center of the Table, concealing for a moment the appearance of Tarolt. The older ifrit staggered off the Table, pitching forward and landing in a large crumpled heap on the stone floor of the Table chamber. The scepter he had carried flew through the air, striking the stone wall to Tarolt’s left, then slamming to the floor. A hairline crack appeared in the stone.

  Trezun moved forward and quickly scooped up the scepter. It was untouched, seemingly without a mark or a smudge upon it. Transferring it from hand to hand, as if the metal were too hot to hold firmly, he glanced toward the other two ifrits who had appeared in the doorway of the staircase that led back up to the conference room.

  “So that’s what it looks like,” offered the recently arrived ifrit, a woman even taller and more muscular than Trezun. “It doesn’t seem that special.”

  “It is more…special…than you know,” replied Lasylt, stepping forward and taking the scepter from Trezun. “Barylt…you and Trezun carry Fieldmaster Tarolt up to one of the beds, where he may recuperate.”

  “His force levels are low,” observed Trezun as he lifted Tarolt’s shoulders. “He must have had some difficulty. He could have encountered the young colonel.”

  “Even if he did, he was successful in retrieving the scepter, and that was what mattered.” Lasylt nodded. “Take him up and return immediately.”

  The senior fieldmaster watched the Table intently, but the Table remained inactive, without a flicker in the unseen purple glow that surrounded its surface. Nor did any other figures emerge from the Table.

  Before long, the other two returned.

  “Bring out the other scepter, but leave it in its casket,” Lasylt ordered Trezun.

  Barylt remained standing silently beside the Table, one hand resting on the butt of the light-cutter holstered at her belt.

  Wordlessly, the Recorder opened the hidden door to the strong room and disappeared down the short corridor, returning shortly with the silver and black metallic case.

  “Put the case beside the Table,” Lasylt said.

  As Trezun did so, the senior fieldmaster took the uncased scepter and set it on top of the metal case.

  “You don’t want them in the strong room?” asked Trezun.

  “No!” snapped Lasylt. “There is no shield for the one, and it acts as a portal. If you put them in the strong room, the Talent-steer will be able to translate directly in and out of the strong room. We cannot guard both places at once, not effectively, not with but four Efrans, and we must watch continuously until more of the others arrive.” Lasylt frowned.

  “Are the translations not going well?” asked Trezun.

  “Several have already perished in the long tubes from Efra. There is less lifeforce remaining in Efra than we had calculated.”

  “We may not have to worry about the lifeforce mass here, then,” suggested Trezun.

  “We may not, and you should consider yourself fortunate to be here,” replied Lasylt. “Most fortunate.”

  Barylt glanced at the Table, then at the bare stone walls and the unadorned stone floors. The slightest shudder traversed her frame.

  149

  Time passed. How much, Alucius was not certain, but he began to unlink from the chamber around him. He glanced at the cracked stone walls, walls that were beginning to sag inward and would not long last against the pressure of the soil around and the structure above. Cracking noises flowed around him, and the stones underfoot felt unsteady. He could not sense much of anything with his Talent, and only faint light filled the chamber, light coming from the doorway that led to the stairs up into the Residence of the Matrial—or the Regent, Alucius supposed.

  Only the barest trace of skeletons lay on the stones inside the entry to the underground chamber, and the oak door had disintegrated into dust, while even the iron hinges had vanished into rusty dust that lay heaped at the base of the stone doorframe.

  Had years passed? Alucius swallowed. Had they been frozen in time when he had linked to the world itself?

  “Everything’s…dead.” Wendra’s voice was small.

  That was why he sensed little. There was little enough to sense. Between the ifrit’s actions, the failure of the crystal, and their defenses, they had sucked all the lifeforce out of everything around them—for yards at least.

  “We didn’t get the scepter,” he said dully.

  Wendra said nothing.

  Should they have come to Hieron first? Had they failed because Alucius hadn’t wanted to return to Madrien, and the place where he’d almost died once before? “I’m sorry. We should have…”

  “I agreed with you,” Wendra said. “We can’t do any more here, can we?”

  “No. The scepter was the only thing. Well…except for the torques, but with the crystal gone, they can’t power the torques, and without the scepter, they can’t re-create the crystal.”

  “We need to get something to eat. I do anyway. We’re too tired to do anything more without eating,” Wendra said.

  “There’s some travel food in my jacket and belt pouch,” Alucius suggested.

  “There was. We ate it. The soarer was getting forgetful or tired about meals.”

  “We could go back to Dereka…”

  “Do we have to go there?” asked Wendra. “The soarer said that we could travel anywhere along the ley lines.”

  “I’m sure we can.” Alucius’s lips quirked into a crooked smile. “But I don’t know how to determine where I am…or whether we’d end up under several yards of soil and stones? Do you?”

  “Oh…”

  “The Red House
in Dereka isn’t too far away from the Table chamber…and we can check that case that I thought might have held the other scepter at the same time.”

  “Can we go?”

  He nodded, reaching out and taking Wendra’s hand. “There’s a portal in Dereka, where there once was a Table. It’s crimson gold.”

  They walked down to the lower level, where the stone walls seemed slightly more sturdy. Even so, it seemed to take forever before they could find the misty blackness beneath the stone and drop into the world lifeforce lines.

  Deep in the blackness, Alucius wanted to shiver, but he concentrated on the crimson gold and on projecting that image to Wendra. He could sense the growing power of the ifrits’ Tables, especially the maroon and dark green of Salaan, the blue of Prosp, and another Table, one of a bright brown, as well as the other older Tables in Soupat and Blackstear. Then, too, he could feel the purple and pink of the scepter, almost on top of the maroon and dark green. Slowly, too slowly, it seemed, they moved closer to the faded crimson gold of Dereka…until they burst out of the blackness and through the silver…

  Almost before he broke out of the misty darkness, Alucius was looking for Wendra, but, once more, she and their daughter were close beside him. Although he had the rifle up and ready, the ancient Table chamber was empty. He could sense someone in one of the chambers up the steps and farther toward the north end of the building.

  Alucius stepped out of the oblong pit, and dust swirled around him as he reached down and offered a hand to his wife.

  This time, Wendra was the one to sneeze, but far less noisily than Alucius usually did. With his free hand, he rubbed his nose, trying to stop a sneeze before it started. What light there was in the chamber filtered through the doorway framing the bottom of the staircase.

  They moved quietly up the steps and came out into the smaller chamber. As he moved to the larger chamber, with the empty windows overlooking the main north-south boulevard of Dereka, Alucius realized that it was late afternoon. How long had he been locked into timelessness? He shivered as he considered that they could have been locked there for far longer. The soarer had not mentioned that problem. Then, there were more than a few items that she had overlooked—and the ifrit had suggested even others. He wondered what else they would discover along those lines.

  Wendra walked toward the low, wide window, looking out to the west, where the sun cast a glow over the city. “It looks old, and it feels old.”

  “It is old,” Alucius pointed out. “We need to get out of here. The stairway down to the lower level and the north doors to the street are this way.” He turned to the right.

  Wendra slipped alongside Alucius as they followed the bare-walled golden eternastone corridors generally northward until they reached the wide stone staircase leading down. A single beggar, hearing their steps, scuttled back to the southern side of the structure so quickly that Alucius never saw the man. Before long, they walked through the square arch on the north side of the building. They turned west toward the main boulevard.

  Despite the warmth of the afternoon, Alucius left his jacket on to conceal his uniform. Even so, several of the vendors and peddlers took second looks at the two herders, but the looks faded into disinterest as they took in Alendra.

  When they reached the main boulevard, Alucius pointed southward. “You can see the main gates of the palace there…and the tower.”

  “It looks just like the one in Iron Stem,” Wendra said. “You’d told me that, but it’s hard to believe.”

  “All the green towers look like that. So do the ones in Tempre.” Alucius motioned to the left, northward. “It’s several blocks that way. And we have to stay out of the middle of the road. That’s only for riders and wagons.”

  The streets remained less crowded than he had recalled from his first trip to Dereka, but, perhaps because he was walking with Wendra, more people looked directly at them. Alendra was beginning to fuss by the time they had walked the half vingt that took them to the three-story Red House.

  “It is red,” said Wendra with a laugh. “Very red. Shutters, doors, trim…” She grinned. “We could do that to the stead.”

  Alucius made a face, then laughed. “The food’s not bad.”

  He knew they had to eat, and that they needed rest, but he still worried that they were losing ground with every moment not spent seeking the scepters.

  150

  Alendra woke up, whimpering with hunger, as the faintest touch of gray seeped through the shuttered second-floor windows of the room in the Red House. While Alucius struggled to find some alertness, Wendra eased their daughter to her breast.

  “I must have been tired,” Alucius finally said.

  “You were. You were snoring. You don’t snore unless you’re tired.”

  Alucius managed a smile, easing himself into a sitting position, his bare feet on the plank floor. A solid meal and sleep—even on a most lumpy mattress—left him feeling better than he had in days. He stood and walked to washstand, where he washed quickly, then refreshed the water for Wendra.

  “I’ve been thinking…” he began.

  “About what the ifrit said about the soarers? I wondered about that, too.” Wendra shifted her weight and repositioned the nursing infant. “What do you think that he meant?”

  “I think I know. It makes sense. I just hadn’t thought of it that way. You know leschec? It has the soarer queen and the sander king, and the soarer mentioned that they had skill but not strength, and that you had been brought by the strength of others…”

  “You think…the soarers are the women and the sanders the men? They’re so different.”

  “There’s another thing. The sanders kill nightsheep. Why? They don’t eat them, or not their flesh. The sandwolves do, but not the sanders.”

  “They take the lifeforce, just like the ifrits do,” Wendra concluded, lifting Alendra to her shoulder and burping her.

  “But there is a difference, no matter what the ifrit said,” Alucius pointed out. “The sanders or the soarers don’t do that to people.”

  “They don’t? Or they haven’t in recent years? And what about the amber towers? I hadn’t thought about it either, but I’d wager they’ve got some type of lifeforce in them.”

  Alucius frowned. “You’re probably right. I still feel there’s a difference.”

  “There is. The soarers only used a fraction of a world’s lifeforce; they even let themselves die out rather than take too much. The ifrits squander it all within a few hundred or thousand years, then move on to other worlds.”

  “I wonder…”

  “We’ll always wonder, but maybe…if…after…we can explore the hidden cities and find out more.”

  If…Alucius understood that “if” all too well as he sat and pondered.

  After Alendra’s needs had been met, and Alucius had to admit that his wife had been most inventive in dealing with such, they left for breakfast in the public room, and then, after eating, made their way down the boulevard on a morning already promising to be hot and dry, heading for the store where Alucius had purchased food and other sundries days earlier.

  The morning’s purchases also included several squares of cloth for swaddling Alendra, as well as hard cheese, dried fruit, salted nuts, and another water bottle, which they filled at the public fountain a block away.

  As Alucius capped the water bottle and handed it to Wendra, he studied the boulevard to the south. Almost a full company of Deforyan lancers was formed up outside the palace gates, and the gates had been closed. “We’d better get moving.”

  “The lancers?”

  “They’re expecting trouble, and when that sort of thing happens, strangers aren’t welcome.”

  They crossed the boulevard immediately and walked swiftly southward. Despite their worries, no one even seemed to look at them, perhaps because a couple with a child—even if one of them carried a heavy rifle—did not seem threatening.

  As they neared the ancient gold eternastone building that h
eld the portal, Alucius slipped the illusion of nothingness around them.

  “You’ll have to teach me that,” murmured Wendra.

  “You could do it now,” replied Alucius as they moved toward the north entrance to the ancient structure.”

  After climbing the wide staircase, they followed the long corridor back, then wound their way to the inside stone stairway that led down to the former Table chamber. Along the way, Alucius did not hear or sense anyone. Once in the former Table chamber, Alucius released the illusion.

  “We’ll take a look at the hidden chamber first.” He walked to the side of the chamber where the special light-torch bracket had been. There, he created the Talent-probe with the grasping edges, wrapping it around the hidden lever beyond the wall. The first two levers he tried did nothing, but with the third came the snap, followed by a low grinding. The hidden wall section slid sideways, revealing the passageway beyond—still lit dimly by a pair of ancient light-torches.

  “Do all the old Table chambers have these secret rooms?” Wendra absently bounced Alendra. “Just be a good girl now, while your mother and father see what they can do.”

  “Most seem to, but I didn’t try the ones in Blackstear and Soupat. I wasn’t in very good shape there.” Leaving the hidden doorway open, he led the way along the passageway to the hidden chamber. Once there, he stepped aside and let Wendra survey it.

  As Wendra moved toward the empty scepter case embedded in the stone, he stepped around her and made his way to the other ruined light-torch bracket. Again, he tried to use a Talent probe to find a way to open the door, but nothing worked.

  “Let me try,” suggested Wendra.

  For all of her Talent probes, Wendra had little more luck than had Alucius.

  She looked at him. “What if we tried to transport ourselves on the ley lines and came out on the other side of the wall? That what the soarers seemed to do.”