Darknesses

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Column forward!”

  As the force—now almost entirely Northern Guards—rode through the gates and turned northward, Alucius reflected. Half a season before, six officers and five companies had ridden out of Lanachrona, and the companies had all been close to full strength. Now…three officers were riding back at the head of three companies little more than the strength of two, he was the senior officer, and everyone was proclaiming a great victory over the nomads, Aellyan Edyss, and his pteridons.

  More worrying than that was the visit from the soarerlike spirit, and her guiding him to the hidden chamber. Still wondering whether he had dreamed the visit, he had visited the chamber one last time before he had mustered the troopers in the courtyard…but the chamber and the mural remained.

  As Alucius rode past the Landarch’s palace, the half squad of Deforyan troopers guarding the gates drew up to attention.

  Alucius returned the salute with a bow.

  “Did you see that?” asked Egyl. “That was the second time.”

  “I did. They understand what we did.”

  “You don’t think the officers do?”

  “Some of the officers do, I’d wager, but most of them are captains. The Landarch does, but he’s as much a captive as those captains are.”

  “Sir?”

  “The overcaptains and their superiors are all from landowning families. They control the lands and the Deforyan Lancers, and whoever controls those controls Deforya.” Alucius gestured toward the people on the sidewalks and in the shops. “Look. Almost none of them are even looking at us. To them, a trooper is like a lancer. There’s no difference. If anything, they’re happy to see us leave.”

  Egyl frowned. “You don’t think it’s that way in all lands?”

  “Not as much.” Alucius shifted his weight in the saddle. “In the Iron Valleys, you have the crafters, the herders, and the traders. The traders had the most coins and power, but they had to listen to the others some of the time. In Lanachrona, they have the vintners, the traders, the craft guilds, and the Southern Guard. The Southern Guard has more officers who worked their way up, and that means they owe their loyalty to senior officers and the Lord-Protector, not to those with golds.”

  “You’re worried, aren’t you, sir?”

  “We’ve got a long trip ahead,” Alucius said. “I’ll be happier when we get back to Dekhron.”

  “Dekhron, sir?”

  “Where else do we go? They’ve closed Emal, and we don’t have any orders. I’d rather go to Dekhron than Borlan or Tempre—and Dekhron’s far closer.” That was another worry, but Alucius was far more concerned about the worries he felt and couldn’t even identify.

  78

  Tempre, Lanachrona

  In the darkness, with but a single lamp lit in the ancient underground chamber, the chamber around and over which a palace had later been built, the Recorder of Deeds stepped toward the Table. He shuffled, hesitantly, almost as if his feet were carrying him against his will. His every breath was labored.

  Finally, he stood at the edge of the Table of the Recorders. Even in the cool of the night, his forehead was damp with perspiration. His hands rested on the edge of the Table, then grasped the underside of the lorken, as if trying to lift the Table. The Table did not move.

  After a time, the Recorder looked down at the mirror surface, then at the ruby mists that appeared. The ruby mists swirled upward, beyond the polished crystal surface, into the dark air, wreathing themselves around the Recorder’s face. Even as he turned his head, his body remained immobile.

  His entire frame shuddered, once, twice, then spasmed before crumpling into a heap beside the Table.

  The mists vanished, and the mirror surface of the ancient Table once more appeared polished and untouched, without even the trace of fingerprints on the edge of either the crystal or the polished lorken around that shimmering surface.

  Perhaps a quarter of a glass later, there was a single groan, cut off abruptly. The Recorder rolled over, straightened, then stood, with the grace of a much younger and stronger man.

  His eyes lit upon the Table, and a satisfied smile crossed his lips before he turned and walked briskly from the chamber.

  79

  Alucius glanced to his right, north across the channeled stream to the gray stone slopes rising beyond the artificial canyon that held the high road back to Lanachrona. Ahead, the two scouts from second company were riding up the slight incline of the road toward the point where it crested, beyond which the high road ran flat for a good ten vingts, as Alucius recalled, across a narrow valley that held little besides low brush and stones.

  The trees were as infrequent as he remembered, twisted and bent evergreens. There was almost no undergrowth, even near the steams, except for small bushes clinging to life in corners or angles in the stone where dirt and sand had drifted over the ages since the road and canyon had been cut from the heart of the Upper Spine Mountains.

  As he rode westward along the high road, the sense of sorrow felt stronger than it had been. Alucius absently patted Wildebeast, considering. Was it that the sensation was stronger, or that he was far more aware of it?

  He continued to have dreams—or fragments of dreams—with the alabaster-skinned men and women dominating them. If the ancient frieze or mural under the lancer quarters were accurate, and Alucius knew that it was, even if he could not have proved that, then ancient Corus under the Duarchy had been ruled by people like the Matrial. But none of the histories had made mention of that. Nor had he ever heard stories or legends about them.

  Then, nothing written about the Matrial of Madrien over the past hundred years had noted her different appearance. Was that something just taken for granted, so unremarkable that none of the ancients had even considered it? Then, too, he had only seen one or two of the pteridon riders, but they had been pale-faced, although not so pale as the figures in the mural. Had some sort of Talent held the riders unaging ever since the Cataclysm? Or did riding pteridons change the nomads who had ridden them?

  Alucius had felt, but again could not prove, that the last rider he had downed, and whose death had almost resulted in his own, had been Aellyan Edyss. That argued for the idea that the use of the ancient pteridons made a change in those who rode them. Had the Matrial’s torques been a use of ancient Talent-powers that had turned the Matrial pale and violet-eyed? And unaging, as the Matrite officers had claimed?

  And what did all that have to do with the spirit-woman’s showing him the mural? She had told him that he had to see the mural. But why? What could he do? Did she expect him to kill every alabaster-skinned person he met? Or to be wary of them, as if he would not be anyway?

  He tightened his lips.

  “You all right, sir?” asked Egyl.

  “Still thinking,” Alucius admitted. “I keep wondering how Aellyan Edyss got those pteridons, and whether there are any more somewhere. And why they obeyed him and his riders.”

  “I’d rather not think too hard about that, sir. Just glad that you knew what to do.”

  A glass later, Alucius was still thinking…and more worried. He shifted his weight in the saddle again, not because he was sore, but because he was uneasy. He had not sensed the bluish violet creature so far on the return through the mountains, but the absence of life bothered him more than it had on the journey to Dereka. Even the faint glow of the eternastones of the high road appeared fainter.

  Was that because his Talent-senses were sharper and more active? Or because the deadness of the mountains had actually leached out more of whatever power the stones had held? Or just because he was worried more?

  By all rights, he shouldn’t have been worried. He had survived an almost impossible situation in Deforya, and he was on his way home. He had less than four months left on his obligation to the Northern Guard, and there was no immediate sign of more battles or war. Because of a soarerlike spirit’s visit and some dreams, he was worried?

  He shivered. Then he frowned. Why was he cold? It
was almost harvest, but he was wearing nightsilk undergarments and a riding jacket, and the breeze through the canyon from the west was just pleasantly cool.

  After a moment, a red emptiness washed over him. The coldness ahead had caused those deaths—and he hadn’t expected such a feeling along the high road. But whatever had caused the deaths of the scouts lay ahead. He turned to Egyl. “Ready rifles! Pass it back.”

  “Ah…yes, sir. Ready rifles. Twenty-first Company! Ready rifles!”

  Before Egyl could question him, Alucius asked, “Who are your best marksmen?”

  “Waris and Dueryn, of course, and probably Makyr and Fiens.”

  “Order them forward.”

  Something lay ahead, and while it was hostile, it wasn’t anything like lancers or nomads. What it was, Alucius had no idea, but the coldness and the deaths he did not want to mention left no doubt that it wasn’t friendly.

  Alucius waited to say more until the four were riding abreast behind him. Then he half turned in the saddle. “There’s something ahead. I don’t think it’s friendly.”

  “But the scouts—” Egyl began.

  “They may not have seen it in time. I want you four directly in a line immediately in front of me, so that you have a clear line of fire. You’ll need to be ready as we near the crest of the road.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As the four eased around Alucius and Egyl, the overcaptain checked his own rifles and began to infuse the cartridges in each of his rifles with the same kind of darkness that had brought down the pteridons. Once he felt that each bullet was so charged, he began to slip the darkness of life—for that was the way he had come to see it—into the cartridges of the four who rode before him.

  The chill and darkness became more and more oppressive as the column neared the gentle crest in the high road. Alucius felt as though a wall of water lay ahead, ready to break down and sweep them away. Yet…what could they do but advance? Retreating before a powerful foe in a narrow canyon was worse than advancing.

  Alucius readied his first rifle as he rode. Even before the first six quite reached the crest, there were gasps from the others. Alucius glanced sideways at Egyl. The squad leader’s mouth was open, and his eyes were wide.

  The twenty-odd creatures that circled in the air ahead were like smaller purplish pteridons, without riders, roughly half the size of the pteridons ridden by the nomads. The claws on their forelegs were longer, metallic blue talons, glinting and knife-sharp. The six creatures blocking the road were worse. Each was close to four times the size of a draft horse, with massive shoulders, a long triangular horn, and scales that shimmered purple.

  The two scouts and their horses—or their bloody remains—lay less than a hundred yards ahead of Alucius.

  “Aim carefully. Prepare to fire. Fire!” Alucius put his first shot through the eye of the horned creature on the right, then switched to the second, and fired again. Both went down, and columns of blue flame rose from where each had been.

  One of the wild pteridons cartwheeled out of the sky, and the others dived toward the troopers. The horned Talent-beasts lowered their heads.

  Alucius fired two more shots at the larger beasts. One shot missed entirely. The second plowed into the massive shoulder of the fourth beast, and bluish flames erupted from the wound.

  Before him, the four marksmen fired deliberately, and a pteridon exploded in the same bluish flames.

  Alucius raised his rifle and used the last shot to aim at the nearest pteridon. While the shot missed, it was close to the beast, and it swerved slightly, and missed Waris by a fraction of a yard. He switched rifles, and fired another shot at a pteridon—and hit it. A blast of blue flame washed toward the front of the column, turning the forearm of Fiens’s riding jacket into flame.

  The three remaining horned beasts were within fifty yards.

  “Fire at the ones on the ground!” Alucius ordered, trying to infuse the cartridges of the marksmen and of Egyl with blackness. Ordering an oblique or a retreat would have been useless. That Alucius knew.

  Another horned beast flared into blue flame, but a pteridon swept out of nowhere and slashed Dueryn from his saddle, dropping his body, with long black scars that still burned, on the eternastone in front of the troopers.

  Alucius snapped off a shot at the pteridon, momentarily slowed, and was rewarded with another blue explosion. Then he concentrated on the remaining horned beasts.

  The last one skidded to a halt ten yards from the front of the column, and Alucius tried his best to throw up the greenish barrier. He had to have been partly successful, because the heat, while intense, merely crisped hair rather than burning exposed skin.

  The pteridons redoubled their attacks, striking the column from all angles, slashing and swooping.

  Despite the speed of the creatures, slowly, so slowly, their numbers diminished.

  Alucius forced himself to concentrate on two things—his own shooting and supplying darkness to the cartridges of those around him. In time—how long it was Alucius didn’t know—he shot the last one, then lowered his rifle.

  For all the chaos and the slashing attacks, there were fewer bodies strewn on the shoulder of the highway, or amid the column, than Alucius had feared. Far more than he wanted, but fewer than could have been.

  “Have the captains report,” he said tiredly to Egyl. “Tend to the wounded, but have Waris and your other marksman—Makyr—ride ahead a half vingt—but not out of sight. And have them keep an eye open.”

  “Yes, sir. Waris, Makyr, you heard the overcaptain.” Egyl pointed to a trooper in the column. “Esklyr, ride back and tell the captains that the overcaptain would like their reports.” The squad leader looked at Alucius. “Almost got you, too, sir.”

  Alucius looked down at his right arm. A long rent ran down Alucius’s sleeve, cutting through both riding jacket and tunic, leaving the nightsilk beneath shimmering and untouched. His arm was so sore that he could hardly move it. “I didn’t notice. I was lucky.” In fact, his whole body was shivering imperceptibly, as if he were totally exhausted. He reached down and took out the water bottle, swallowing deeply. The water helped.

  As he waited for the officers and the reports, he glanced at Waris and Makyr, but no more beasts appeared. More important, the coldness he had felt was gone, and all that remained was the omnipresent sense of sorrow. Then he turned Wildebeast and studied the stony valley on all sides. There were no traces of any of the Talent-beasts, except for black greasy splotches where they had burned. There were no charred bones, no scales…nothing except the residue of intense fires.

  Alucius could feel something else—or the lack of something. There was no life at all around them. Even the evergreens, although they looked green, were dead, and would be brown in weeks, if not days.

  Then he let out a silent sigh of relief as he saw Feran riding along the shoulder, followed by Koryt. Koryt still had his arm in a splint, and the dressings binding the splint were charred on one side, and Koryt’s face was reddened on the same side.

  Feran reined up. “Fifth Company, ten dead, five wounded.” The older captain was hoarse, his voice raspy.

  “Third Company,” Koryt reported, “six dead, three wounded.”

  “Twenty-first Company, sir,” Egyl said, “three dead, seven wounded.”

  Nineteen dead. Alucius paused. “Thank you. You and your troopers handled this well. Most companies would have broken.”

  “What…were…those things?” asked Feran.

  “I don’t know, but the flying ones looked like pteridons. Maybe they were wild pteridons, the kind that the ancients tamed into the ones we saw with the nomads.” Alucius considered. “The big ones on the road—they looked like sandoxes would, if they had horns and scales.”

  “Sandoxes? Like in the legends? How—”

  “I saw a picture of one once,” Alucius said. “A drawing, really.” He moistened his lips, realizing that, outside of the mural under the Derekan lancer barracks, he had never seen a
picture. Yet he had known what that creature had been, and it had been so natural to know that he had never questioned how or why he had known.

  “I still don’t understand why some shots brought them down and some didn’t,” Feran said.

  “Mostly shots from the front of the column,” Koryt said. “Saw one of the scouts—Waris, I think—bring down two of those flying horrors.”

  Alucius was glad for more reasons than one that he’d thought of infusing the bullets of others with darkness. “They had a better angle, but I didn’t want the troopers spread out where they could have been picked off one by one.”

  Feran nodded in agreement.

  “We’ll need to pack the bodies out of here, those that we can.” It was probably a useless gesture, but Alucius didn’t want to bury anyone in the sorrowing dead ground in the Upper Spine Mountains. He couldn’t have explained why, but as overcaptain, he didn’t have to. He would have to explain the losses to the colonel, and possibly write a report that might end up getting sent to the Lord-Protector. He didn’t look forward to that, either, but explaining it couldn’t be anywhere as bad as what they’d just been through.

  80

  Northeast of Iron Stem, Iron Valleys

  In the late afternoon, the herder rode slowly at the rear of the flock, chivvying the lagging ewes forward, toward the northwest and Westridge, and the stead itself. Wendra had been forced to take the flock farther to the southeast than she would have liked, but the quarasote nearer the stead had far less in the way of new growth.

  The lead rams had slowed, and she could sense their apprehension. As she urged her mount forward, she lifted the rifle from its holder, scanning the red sandy ground and reaching out with the Talent-sense still new to her. As she neared the rams and slowed her mount, less than fifty yards ahead of her Wendra saw the faintest puff of sand. In the warm and still late afternoon, there was no wind.