Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “If we could do that…” mused Alucius.

  “Then we could take the lines close to the Table at Salaan,” Wendra pointed out, “and we’d be close to Dekhron.”

  “We can certainly try, but I think I’d feel better if I started at where the Table was,” Alucius admitted.

  “So would I. The thought of getting stuck in solid rock bothers me.”

  Alucius offered a crooked smile. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned that.”

  Wendra smiled sheepishly—town sheepishly. “The rock doesn’t bother the soarers, but it might take practice.”

  “We’d better start.” Alucius walked back along the passageway, casting out with his Talent to see if anyone happened to have made their way into the lower chamber. While it was unlikely, there had been lancers investigating once before. His Talent—and his ears—told him that the Table chamber remained deserted.

  He stepped into the oblong depression…concentrating on the misty blackness below. Immediately, he began to sink…

  The chill washed over and through him, and he tried to edge himself sideways…and suddenly he could tell that he was vingts away. He refocused himself on the crimson gold and could sense that he was back close to the Table chamber. Instead of trying to break through the silvery barrier, he tried to sense/see through it without breaking through…the image was like a mirror that undulated like a banner in the breeze, and his head began to ache. For a moment, he just hovered in the misty blackness, if hovering was the right term for seemingly being buried in stone.

  He tried to extend a thread from himself, one that would serve as an anchor so that the slightest thought would not propel him vingts—or scores of vingts—away. Then he drifted sideways, slowly letting the thread extend from the ley line. Deeper darkness surrounded him, but that passed, and he seemed to be in another corridor. He tried to use the lifeforce thread to tug himself back to the Table chamber, and he found himself beyond the mirrorlike barrier, but in the Table chamber.

  With the chill in his bones growing, he eased out the thread ever so slowly, heading down what he hoped was the passage to the first hidden chamber…then beyond…Silver shattered away from him…

  He stood in another narrow corridor, one but barely illuminated by a single light-torch five yards away, in a bracket high on the wall. The wall to his right was similar to the ancient chamber beneath the Deforyan officers’ quarters, in that it contained murals—three in a row, each three yards long and two high—and all rendered in brilliant colors that had been infused into the very eternastone itself.

  The first mural showed a desolate scene of low, rocky hills, mostly covered in ice, and heavy gray clouds, and nothing at all living. Not a tree, a bush, a sprig of grass or even a lichen. Alucius moved before the next panel. It displayed the same location, save that there were patches of grass, a few bushes, and other scattered vegetation across the hillside, as well as a pair of what looked like scrats at the edge of a gray-water lake. The third panel showed a circular lake of brilliant blue below the same hills, and a structure of gold eternastone that resembled the Landarch’s palace. Lush grass stretched toward the hills and a herd of antelope grazed in the distance, while nearer were several sandoxes being hitched to an enormous wagon by a pair of ifrits in maroon and green.

  Alucius had sensed no life in the corridor or the adjoining rooms, and because he did not wish to alarm Wendra, he walked quickly to the open doorway to the first room. The wooden door had been infused with some lifeforce and swung open at his touch. An ifrit lay upon the wide bed, but the slightest air currents created by the door opening touched the figure—that of a black-haired woman—and the body shivered into dust, leaving only the shimmering eternal garments.

  He watched, openmouthed, taking in the rest of the chamber—with its carved armoire, the dressing chest, the graceful table desk of a wood like cherry, a black-bordered mirror, and the nightsilklike maroon coverlet upon the bed. As in the outer chamber, the chairs had longer legs than any that would have been comfortable for Alucius.

  He stepped back out of the room and walked to the end of the corridor, the one that he thought adjoined the chamber that had held the scepter. A small metal stub protruded from the wall near the corner. The remainder of the lever lay on the floor. Alucius could not budge the stub, not with his arms, his legs, or his Talent.

  Were the walls closing in on him? He glanced around, deciding that they were not. Still…he was a herder born, and being surrounded by stone with no way out, except by Talent, gave him an uneasy feeling.

  He concentrated on extending a thread of Talent toward the darkness beneath. The return seemed much easier, and so quick that he scarcely felt the chill.

  “Oh…I was getting worried.” Wendra let out a deep breath.

  “I stopped to take a quick look.”

  “Quick?”

  “Fairly quick. I’m sorry. It’s just that…”

  “What was there?” asked Wendra.

  Alucius shook his head. “Four rooms along a corridor…I couldn’t explain in the time we can go back together.”

  “Is it safe? How did you do it?”

  “It’s…it’s like leaving a thread, one of those binding us to the world, except that you make it thicker and anchor it to the ley line. You leave it anchored until you’re certain that you’re where you want to be.”

  Wendra snorted. “How do you know where you want to be?”

  “Just think about it. It’s almost like looking through…or at…a mirror in the dark. If you’re worried…try moving just to the open passageway there, first.”

  “I just might.”

  Alucius watched as Wendra vanished, then reappeared in the doorway to the passage leading to the scepter chamber.

  “You were right. It’s not that hard, once you try it.”

  He couldn’t help smiling. “You have a knack for that. It took me much longer.”

  “That’s because all I had to do was start with what you told me.”

  Alucius had his doubts about that. From what he’d seen, Wendra picked up Talent matters faster than he had.

  “I’ll meet you in the hidden rooms.” Wendra and Alendra—in the front carrypack—turned into a misty image, then vanished.

  Alucius followed, ending up beside the wall with the broken lever. He stepped forward, standing behind Wendra as she looked into the room whose door he had opened.

  “How terrible…to be trapped here. What happened, do you think?”

  “The Cataclysm, I’d guess. The soarers disrupted everything, and the ifrits needed Tables. They were trapped. Or maybe the soarers were stronger and jammed the doors around the scepter.”

  “Why didn’t they do that in Lysia?”

  “I think…I don’t know…but I think it’s because Lysia is too far south and too hot and damp. The soarer said something about that before, when I was in the hidden city.”

  “Did you look at the other rooms?”

  “No. I didn’t want you to worry.” Alucius stepped back.

  Wendra followed.

  “You open the door. When I opened that one, there was an ifrit in the clothes, but she turned to dust at just the touch of the breeze from the door.”

  Wendra eased open the second door, but the chamber, similar to the first, held no long-dead ifrit and no clothing laid out as if an ifrit might have been there. In the third chamber, the body of a male ifrit lay sprawled across a rug with a geometric design Alucius did not recognize, woven in brilliant crimson and shades of silvered gray. Within moments of the door opening his figure vanished into dust as well, leaving but the eternal clothing.

  The last chamber was an armory, with strange riflelike weapons racked along the wall on the left side. The barrels were not hollow, but of a solid green crystal. Alucius could sense that whatever energy had once powered them had long since dissipated. On the right wall were pistols with the same crystal barrels, and on the rear wall were what looked to be whips with heavy stocks. The lash of the whips
were thin tendrils so sharp that Alucius could appreciate their deadliness without touching them.

  “Do you think we could find anything we could use?” asked Wendra.

  “We can look.”

  In the end, even after they had gone through every drawer and desk in the sealed rooms, there was little of immediate use. Alucius had pocketed the few strange golds, but the few devices he had seen either seemed to lack power, as had the weapons, or were incomprehensible.

  “We’ll have to come back and study some of these later,” he finally said.

  Wendra nodded reluctantly. “I think the air is getting bad, too.”

  They held hands and slipped into the mistiness and back to the Table chamber. Alucius set the rifle on the stone and sat down. “I need a few moments to rest and some water.”

  “That’s good. Alendra’s hungry again.”

  Alucius drank some of the water from his bottle, occasionally extending it to Wendra. He also kept using his Talent to make sure that no one crept down the stairs to surprise them.

  “I can’t imagine living in a chamber like those.” Wendra shuddered. “All that stone around, and no way out if the mechanisms failed. Even if they were ifrits…” She shook her head.

  “They didn’t expect their mechanisms to fail.” Alucius laughed softly. “Mechanisms always fail, sooner or later.”

  Wendra eased Alendra to her shoulder, burped her, and then shifted her to the other breast. “What do you think we should do now?”

  “Head back to Dekhron, or as close as we can get. The dark green and maroon Table is at Salaan, and it’s on a ley line. It has to be. That’s close enough that we can walk to Northern Guard headquarters.”

  “You’re going to use the Guard?”

  “We have to. We can infuse all the bullets with lifeforce and have them hold the outside.”

  “And we’ll come in from inside?”

  “Do you have a better idea? Sending lancers inside would get most of them killed. At a distance, the ifrits can’t do that much. I just hope that they haven’t translated too many from their world while we’ve been learning what to do.”

  “We couldn’t have done it much faster.”

  Alucius had his doubts. They should have gone to Hieron first.

  “You did what you thought was best,” Wendra said. “Besides, we can’t change what’s done.”

  Alucius knew that, but it didn’t keep him from wishing that he could.

  Wendra stood, burping Alendra once more. “She’s had enough. Let’s go.”

  “To Salaan?”

  She nodded.

  Alucius picked up the rifle with his left hand and took Wendra’s hand with his right. Wordlessly, they concentrated.

  The chill darkness welled up around them. Alucius concentrated on the dark green and maroon beacon—and the purple pink portal-like circle created by the scepter. He felt as though they rushed toward the two, and he tried to slow that rush at the end, extending a Talent-thread as an anchor, trying to press that thought/concept to Wendra as he rose through darkness, a brownish darkness that he hoped was the hillside to the east of the Table building. When he sensed light, he focused on seeing beyond the silver barrier, and thought he could see a distorted hillside. He pressed forward, and silver shards flew past and around him.

  Alucius found himself on the hillside—or above it, and he barely kept his balance as he dropped several spans onto the uneven slope. He turned, trying to find Wendra, with both eyes and Talent. He could sense that she was nearby, but where?

  Then he began to grin.

  “That’s a nasty trick,” he said to the illusion of nothingness she had created.

  The illusion vanished.

  “Did I get it right?” asked Wendra.

  “You did indeed.” Alucius turned, and looking down and to the west, he saw the building the ifrits had built to house their Table. “We need to start walking. That’s where the Table is, and with only one rifle, I’d rather not have to fight them off.”

  “We could use the ley lines again,” Wendra pointed out. “If we had to.”

  “We could, but…then we’d end up somewhere else, and I think we need to meet with Feran and figure out how to attack them before they bring in more ifrits. That’s if they haven’t already.”

  They started walking down the hill, a slope covered with sparse grass, a grayish sandy soil, and scrub brush that Alucius did not recognize. He glanced toward Salaan, a good vingt and a half to the northwest. “It’s about four vingts to Guard headquarters.”

  “The walk will do us good.”

  “As long as the ifrits don’t send armed guards after us.”

  “They won’t,” Wendra predicted.

  Alucius hoped she was right, but he lengthened his stride. They’d had more than enough delays. Useful as those had proved in some fashion, he couldn’t help but worry that he’d delayed too much.

  151

  Salaan, Lanachrona

  The light of a spring sun shining through high hazy clouds oozed through the west-facing windows of the conference room, where four ifrits sat around a table.

  Barylt turned her head to look at the window. “Even the sunlight here offers no warmth.” She shivered. “Everything is so cold…and so crude. There’s no sculpture, no art, no music.”

  “That’s what we have to build and create,” Tarolt replied. “All worlds are crude before we mold them. They’re often cold, as well. It is much warmer in the south, but we were limited by where we could push through the Table tube after the barriers gave way.”

  “We almost didn’t make the long translation,” Trezun added.

  Lasylt straightened, lifting his hand in an imperious signal for silence. His face stiffened, and his eyes took on a faraway look.

  The silence continued. The other three looked at the senior fieldmaster. In time, he lowered his hand, and his face relaxed slightly.

  “What was it?” asked Tarolt.

  The senior fieldmaster did not reply immediately. Then his eyes refocused, and he looked at Tarolt, seated directly across the polished wooden table from him. “There were two ancient ones, on the hillside to the east. They hovered there for several moments. Then they were gone. Or their use of lifeforce vanished.” His lips tightened. “You said they were dying.”

  “They are less than a handful, Fieldmaster, that is, of those who direct the species. That does not mean that a few may not linger. It might also have been the colonel and the woman with him. She might have been one of the ancient ones. I could not tell.”

  “Either way, I suppose it does not matter, save that they must be blocked and defeated.” Lasylt continued to frown. “But with the Talent-steer still loose, and two with the powers of the ancient ones seeking out the Table…we dare not fail. Too much is at stake. We will have to move the master scepter here from Efra in less than a year, and we have far too few Efrans here on Acorus.”

  Barylt nodded, not quite emphatically.

  “Less than a year?” asked Tarolt. “You had said before…three to five years.”

  “It is taking more energy to maintain the tubes than we had calculated, and the supporting lifemass birthrate on Efra is declining more quickly than predicted. The Efran steers are spiritless, worse than those here on Acorus.”

  “Do you know how many Efrans tried to make the long translation?” asked Tarolt. “In response to your orders?”

  “More than twenty,” replied Lasylt.

  “Yet only eight survived?” Trezun’s voice carried a hint of incredulity.

  “Ten,” replied Lasylt. “Two of them mistakenly translated to the new Table at Norda. Once they recover, they will translate here to help protect the scepters.”

  “Is the young colonel that strong?” asked Barylt.

  Tarolt laughed. “He’s survived two translations through barriers, and he almost broached the very shields of the scepter. He has managed to kill three shadow-Efrans and one true translated Efran, and he can translate to both
Tables and portals. Yes, I would say that he is strong.”

  “He is nothing compared to what we offer, but he is strong enough to steal the scepters, if we are not watchful and prepared to defend them. When the others have recovered, we will hunt him down like the cowardly jackal he is. Once our numbers increase, we will have no more of this nonsense. Steers must be steers, and we must rule them to create the order and beauty we bring to a world.” Lasylt added, “Shortly, we will seek out the colonel so that he cannot act against us.”

  “If he is not already,” murmured Trezun under his breath.

  Tarolt glared at the Recorder.

  152

  Alucius and Wendra had walked through Salaan and over the ancient River Vedra bridge, then westward in Dekhron along a side street paralleling the river road, because Alucius didn’t want to be recognized and have to explain…or refuse to explain. By the time they were a hundred yards east of the open gates to the Northern Guard post, it was early afternoon. Even though the day was windy and cool, under high hazy clouds, he was sweating, and his feet ached. He was used to riding long distances, not walking, and riding boots weren’t that well designed for walking on hard-surfaced roads.

  Alendra was protesting that she was hungry, and a certain odor suggested that other matters needed attention as well.

  “It won’t be that long,” Wendra crooned. “Just a little longer, little girl, and we’ll get you cleaned up and fed. Just a little longer.”

  Alendra’s cries suggested that a little longer was far too long to wait.

  The sentries at the gate watched as the two walked closer. With the hand not carrying the rifle, Alucius unfastened the riding jacket enough to show the colonel’s insignia he had replaced on his tunic collar.

  “That you, sir? Colonel?”

  “It’s me. Things didn’t quite go as planned. We’ve had a long walk.” Alucius smiled. “One of you probably ought to go tell Majer Feran that we’re back.”