Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The stone doorway slid open. Alucius sensed no one inside.

  “I’ll cover it.” Wendra dropped off the Table and moved toward the open doorway, turning so she could cover the room, the archway, and the staircase beyond.

  Alucius hurried into the passageway, so like those on Corus, finding a chamber at the end of the corridor. He rifled through the chest against one wall, but found nothing resembling a map or anything else. Nor was there anything in the drawer of the table desk that resembled a map. The papers he did see were covered with angular and incomprehensible writing. Alucius left the rack of light-cutting pistols untouched as he hurried out.

  He had sensed nothing of power, nothing similar to a scepter. “There’s nothing here. The soarers said that they had to be close to lines of power.”

  “Then let’s try another Table,” Wendra said.

  “There are fifty.”

  “If it takes fifty, it takes fifty,” she snapped, moving back toward the Table. “We’ll try the one that’s closest and strongest.”

  Alucius had to hurry to catch up with her, bringing his rifle into the ready position as he took his position beside her on the Table.

  Again they dropped into the purple-chill blackness.

  The chill was colder than that mistiness of the Corean ley lines, but warmer than the purple chill of the long translation tube. Wendra moved toward a bright blue Table arrow, bright, yet somehow faded. Behind them the purple gold Table arrow flickered…and vanished. Alucius would have frowned if he could have.

  Ahead in the darkness was the bright blue arrow, with yet another purpled silver barrier that dissolved away from them as they burst through.

  The mist that swirled away from the two herders was much fainter at the second ifrit Table, and Alucius had to take a half step to hold his balance.

  The single ifrit guard was faster than the first, but still only had the light-cutting pistol halfway up when the heavy cartridge tore through him, exploding a quarter of his upper torso and shoulder away from his body.

  A second ifrit jerked out of the normally hidden but now open doorway. Before she could move, Wendra’s rifle barked once—with results as devastating as those from Alucius’s shot.

  Alucius could sense no one else in the chamber, although there were ifrits in the rooms up and beyond the staircase. He pointed as he scrambled off the Table. Wendra nodded, but remained standing on the ancient Table—set amid more murals and carvings of graceful and exquisite beauty, beauty that Alucius had no time to take in and even less to admire.

  Rifle ready, he scrambled into the chamber at the end of the passageway. The layout was reversed from the first chamber, but with the same furnishings and weapons racks as in the previous chamber. He’d finished a furiously quick search of the chest and was just flicking through the few papers in the table desk drawer when he heard the report of Wendra’s rifle. He forced himself to finish the search—which revealed no maps and no Talent-signs of a scepter or anything like it. Then he was hurrying back to the Table.

  Another ifrit’s body filled the stairwell, downed by Wendra.

  “Did you find anything?” asked Wendra.

  “No.”

  “Hurry. There are more of them coming down the stairs.”

  Alucius vaulted back onto the Table. He brought the rifle into a near firing position, even as he began to concentrate on entering the ifrit tubes once more.

  Chill washed around them, a chill that was welcome after the steamy heat of two Table rooms and the hot frustration of having found nothing. Wendra guided them toward a chartreuse Table arrow. Behind them, Alucius could sense the bright blue arrow fading, seemingly shriveling away. The gold and purple arrow had not reappeared, either.

  Again, they reached a purple-tinged silvery barrier, seemingly more transparent than those they had encountered previously. Beyond the silver, Alucius could see a pair of ifrits, each beside the archway that presumably led to a staircase. Then…the silver streamed away from the two herders seeking a scepter…

  The ifrit who had been looking toward the Table grabbed for her light-cutter.

  Crack! Wendra was faster than either Alucius or the ifrit, and the single bullet exploded through the guard’s torso.

  The second guard’s hand didn’t quite reach his weapon before Alucius’s single shot took him down.

  Alucius vaulted off the Table and hurried toward the light-torch bracket to his left. Behind him, he heard a faint wailing from Alendra. Either his feelings were correct, or he was lucky, because he could sense the Talent-lock even before he started to turn the bracket. The lock dissolved, and the hidden door slid smoothly open. As before, there was no one inside.

  Also as before, there was no sign of a scepter, nor were there any papers or maps that might have led them to the master scepter emphasized by the soarer just before she died. Alucius hurried back to the Table and scrambled back up beside Wendra, who remained with her rifle trained on the archway.

  “Reload while I catch my breath,” Alucius suggested. “We need a better approach.” Sensing even greater warmth from his right side, he glanced down. The heavy scepter strapped to his empty scabbard was glowing a faint pinkish purple and radiating heat. Yet he could sense nothing like a scepter. He looked toward Wendra. Her scepter was doing the same.

  “We’re safe just so long as we keep ahead of them,” Wendra pointed out as she slipped cartridges from her belt into the magazine.

  “We can’t go through all fifty Tables,” Alucius protested. “Not without resting somewhere along the way. And we don’t have enough ammunition for that. We don’t have enough Talent-strength to fight that way, either.”

  As Wendra raised her rifle, he took a moment to reload his own weapon.

  “Both scepters are glowing,” Alucius said.

  “I think they’ve begun to glow a little more with each Table we’ve visited. Do you think they’re picking up energy from them?”

  “That could be. We’ll have to watch and see.”

  “Did you notice that there are only five really bright Table arrow markers?” asked Wendra.

  “No,” Alucius admitted. “But the two Tables we visited first…they’re gone.”

  “It could be the scepters. Or it could be that the soarer was right,” Wendra said. “The links are fading. That’s why the guards. They don’t want them used.”

  “Or both,” suggested Alucius. “You think that one of the brighter markers holds the scepter.”

  “It has to,” Wendra said.

  “You keep picking where we’re headed. Can you do some more?”

  “I have to. We can’t stop now,” she pointed out. “We do, and they’ll have guards everywhere. Through the Tables, we can move faster than they can.”

  “As long as we can keep it up.”

  “We have to.” Wendra looked at him. “Are you ready?”

  Alucius nodded, lifting his rifle and ignoring the sweat beading on his forehead.

  The almost-welcome chill settled over them as they dropped through the surface of the Table and back into the purple darkness of the ifrit tube. Alucius could sense the brighter markers that Wendra had mentioned and let her guide them toward the nearest—one of pinkish silver.

  Behind them, the chartreuse Table arrow collapsed in upon itself, shriveling away into nothingness. Neither the bright blue arrow nor the gold and purple one had reappeared. Was their transit disrupting or shutting down those Tables, or was it because they carried the scepters?

  Through the next purple-tinged silvery barrier, Alucius could see/sense a single ifrit, not even looking toward the Table. As they flashed through the thin barrier, silver billowed like mist before them, vanishing almost instantly…

  The single blond ifrit looked at the pair on the Table, his mouth opening ever wider, as if he could not believe what he saw.

  Alucius fired, almost hating to do so. He was off the Table before the figure sprawled across the mosaic floor, a flowing design of interlocking geomet
ric forms so beautiful that, for an instant, Alucius just stared, before he jerked himself back into action, moving toward the light-torch bracket whose hidden energy outlined it as if by a sign posted below it on the stone wall, a wall covered with the brilliant murals showing graceful blond ifrits in peaceful settings.

  Alucius turned the bracket, his rifle ready as the doorway slid open.

  An ifrit bolted upright.

  Alucius fired, and she fell, half her upper body blown away. Relieved that his Talent showed no one else in the hidden chambers, Alucius swallowed the bile that threatened to erupt into his throat and charged into the end chamber.

  His search was as fruitless as the first three had been, and, as he hurried back to the Table, he could feel the scepter growing warmer and exuding more of the purple lifeforce-related energy.

  Without a word, he vaulted onto the Table.

  He and Wendra dropped into the darkness below……and found that more than half the Table markers had vanished. Why?

  Because the ifrits knew that they were using the Tables? Or because they had disrupted the links so badly that some twenty Tables no longer functioned?

  Wendra moved through the chill darkness, a golden green beacon blazing in the dark, moving toward a crimson arrow marker. Alucius had to force himself to keep pace…even as she shattered the silvery barrier…

  157

  Norda, Lustrea

  Waleryn scanned the image appearing in the Table’s mirror. The Table chamber in Salaan remained empty. He concentrated. The next image was that of the conference room above, where he watched for a time, but neither of the goblets on the Table moved.

  “There’s no one there,” offered the ifrit by his shoulder.

  “The Tables won’t show the lamaial or us, unless we’re actually using the Table,” Waleryn replied, “but they will show the motion of non-Talent-objects once they’re no longer touched. No one has moved anything.”

  Another image appeared—that of the Table chamber in Blackstear—followed by the audience chamber of the Lord-Protector, and by others in rapid succession. Waleryn finally let the Table blank for a time and blotted his forehead. “There’s no sign of anyone…not anywhere…except Tyren. They’ve vanished.”

  “Or they’re immobilized or dead,” suggested the third ifrit.

  “Lasylt? How could any mere Talent-steer have killed him?”

  “Whatever happened,” snapped Waleryn, “he isn’t making his presence known.” He took a deep breath, calling up the image of the full translation tube web. No sooner had the replica image appeared above the Table than a purple section of the more heavily webbed section at one end of the translation tube faded—and then vanished.

  “Three are already gone,” said one of the ifrits at his shoulder. “How can he…?”

  “What is he doing?”

  “He’s shredding the Efran Table grid,” snapped Waleryn.

  “Can’t you message the fieldmasters?”

  “I’m trying, but the lamaial has created so much interference that…I’m not getting through, or he’s blocking us.”

  “Why is he doing it?”

  “He hasn’t been able to find the master scepter, but somehow the resonances from the scepters he has to be carrying are weakening the transport links.”

  “No one can carry two scepters,” protested the closer ifrit.

  “Tell that to him.” Waleryn snorted. “I knew he was dangerous. I told Trezun. But no, no mere Talent-steer could be that threatening. No simple herder-mercenary could pose that much of a threat to Efra.”

  The three watched the image above the Table.

  Another section of the grid shriveled and vanished.

  158

  The Table onto which Alucius and Wendra emerged was twice as large as any that they had seen before, its square top a good four yards by four. Nor was there any billowing of mist or splashed silver. Alucius looked for stone walls and light-torch brackets. There were neither.

  The Table stood in the center—or the base—of a chamber that was a small amphitheater, rising up a yard above the surrounding stone floor, in the center of an oval area a good thirty yards across, enclosed by a yard-high wall of green eternastone. The arched pink marble ceiling was a hundred yards above Alucius’s head, and lights of all colors played over it. Somewhere, musicians played, a melody that was stirring, soothing, and sensual, all at the same time.

  Beyond the first wall rose dais upon dais of green eternastone, and upon each dais stood the blond ifrits, all in different garb—some bearing weapons and some empty-handed. Alucius realized, almost instantly, the “ifrits” were incredibly lifelike statues—except for the four pairs of guards stationed equidistantly around the lowest dais.

  “There!” said Wendra.

  Alucius turned, still holding his rifle ready, to see halfway up the daises in the middle of the long side of the oval an enormous scepter, shimmering purple, with light playing across it.

  He could sense no power, and no response from the scepter he carried.

  “It’s false. It’s not a real scepter.”

  Alucius caught sight of movement and whirled.

  Two of the tall blond ifrit guards aimed their light-cutters toward Alucius and Wendra. An instant before the beams of the light-cutters slashed toward them, Alucius flung up a shield of greenish black.

  When the light-knife beams splattered away from the shield, Alucius was more surprised than the openmouthed guards.

  “There’s no scepter here! We’ll try the next Table,” Wendra said.

  “Let’s go.”

  Light flashed around them as they dropped back into the darkness beneath the Table.

  The chill was greater, more oppressive, and Alucius could sense no Table arrow markers at all. None. Had all the Tables been deactivated? How could the tubes remain? Except they had to be ifrit world ley lines, and the master scepter had to lie along them…somewhere.

  In the chill darkness, Wendra blazed even more brightly, a figure of green and gold, and Alucius could also sense the purple pink brilliance of the scepters they carried.

  Ahead, or so it seemed, was a pinkish purpleness, not an arrow, not a marker, but something more like a portal, like the portal created by the scepter they had sought on Corus. Alucius would have laughed had he been able. The ifrits, believing that he and Wendra could travel only from Table to Table, had shut off the Tables, and that had revealed the location of the master scepter. Yet…would there be guards waiting there? How many? With what kinds of weapons?

  Alucius forced himself to move faster to sweep in beside Wendra.

  The darkness was deceptive, for they seemed to move so slowly.

  Was the scepter like the portals of the soarers, outside the ley lines?

  Alucius reached beyond the webs of darkness, somehow off to the side, and the portal blazed brighter. Wendra…had she tried to pulse an inquiry? Alucius reached once more, and he could sense Wendra reaching with him.

  With that effort, Alucius and Wendra surged toward the purple pink portal, so quickly that they were through whatever barrier that might have existed even before they were aware of any such membranes separating the world lifeforce lines and the world above.

  Waves of pulsing purple light flashed over them, light so bright that Alucius could see nothing.

  Alendra shrieked, a thin cry lost in the silent light that was, impossibly, louder than thunder, a light that seemed to paralyze all thought, blind all vision.

  Alucius cast out a dark Talent-probe, sending it forth almost as a shade against the source of the light. That Talent-shade dimmed the intensity enough that he could see, through eyes streaming tears, and only perceiving blurry objects at first, that they were in an empty chamber—empty except for a silver scepter three times the size of those they carried, set in a framework of silver bars that descended through the solid stone floor into the depths of the earth below. Above the scepter was a massive spinning purplish crystal, easily a dozen times the size o
f the one that had powered the Matrial’s torques.

  Alendra’s cries continued, but Wendra and Alucius exchanged a quick glance.

  “Someone’s coming,” she said. “How…what…do we do?”

  “What did the soarer say? Reunite the scepters…wasn’t that it?” As he spoke, Alucius set down his rifle, reached down with both hands, and began to undo the clips that held the scepter to the scabbard.

  When he had loosened the first clip, the silver scepter snapped the second clip and surged toward the master scepter. All of Alucius’s strength was barely sufficient to hold it. “Wendra. Drop your rifle and get rid of the scepter. Quick!”

  Wendra did not even look at Alucius as she bent and released the first clip. The second snapped.

  A roaring filled the chamber, and the intensity of the light began to multiply once more.

  Alucius glanced at his wife, his vision blurring under the searing brilliance. The metal of the scepter was bending, yet she was holding it. He glanced down. He was also holding a scepter that was bending, the metal elongating as the crystal surged and struggled toward the master crystal.

  “On three,” Alucius yelled. “Release it, and grab hands, and drop…all the way back to Corus. One! Two! Three!”

  He released his scepter, and his fingers closed around Wendra’s wrist, even as he tried simultaneously to cast up a green black shield and struggled to reach the darkness of the ley lines beneath the chamber.

  A splintering impact rocked the chamber, and Alucius and Wendra were flung backward against the wall. Splinters of stone, of crystal, flew past and around them. Alucius could feel his shield crumpling as he/she/ they forced their way into the blackness beneath the stone, a blackness beneath the stone chamber.

  The blackness was neither totally dark nor chill. Lines of purple pink flared past them and around them, with waves of heat that alternated with a deeper chill. Alucius felt blistered and frozen by those waves, buffeted one way, then another.