Darknesses

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Where does that go?” Alucius asked.

  “Ah…” The majer paused. “Those are the working chambers of the Recorder.”

  “And the chamber of the Table?”

  “It is before his chambers. But…” The majer radiated worry.

  Alucius smiled. “I know. The Lord-Protector said that I was to see everything except it. I certainly wouldn’t ask you to go against his wishes, nor to intrude upon the Recorder.” Not at the moment. “Is there anything farther down this corridor?”

  “Only the root cellars…”

  Alucius laughed. “Would the Lord-Protector mind if we skipped the root cellars?”

  Suntyl smiled. “I think not.”

  From the lower level, Suntyl led Alucius up two flights to the second level, and through the music room, and the attached concert hall—Alucius had never seen one, nor the clavichord with its polished bone keys. The chambers stretched on and on, and Alucius nodded and listened, trying to keep in mind the location of the chamber of the Table.

  Close to two glasses later, the two officers had returned to the main entry hall just off the entry to the palace.

  “Thank you very much. The palace is beautiful, and I greatly appreciate your taking the time.” As he spoke, Alucius used his Talent to touch the lifeweb thread of the majer, ever so gently.

  “Oh…feel dizzy…” The older man’s legs buckled.

  One of the guards hurried toward Alucius.

  “He said he felt dizzy. Is there someone…?” Alucius looked around. “Could we take him to the receiving room. Would you help me?”

  Between the two of them, they carried Suntyl to the receiving room and laid him on one of the settees.

  As Alucius straightened, the captain-colonel scurried forward through the smaller door. The guard stepped back, dismissed by a gesture from the senior officer, and quietly left.

  “He had given me a tour of the palace, and we were standing in the outer hall,” Alucius explained. “He said he felt dizzy, then he collapsed. I didn’t know where…”

  “Oh…” Suntyl half moaned.

  “It looks like he’ll be all right.” Alucius looked relieved, as he was, because touching lifeweb threads was a delicate business. “I can find my way back to the entry.”

  “Are you—”

  “I’m most certain, and I thank you both greatly.” Alucius bowed, then slipped away, out through the double doors, walking rapidly down the corridor toward the main entry hall.

  100

  Once away from the Lord-Protector’s receiving room, Alucius employed his Talent to create the impression that he was a captain-colonel. It was far easier to twist the impression of something already existing than to create an illusion in the eyes of others of something that did not exist, even if that were an illusion of an empty corridor—and there were more than a few Southern Guard officers in the palace. He paused for a moment, considering. Did he really want to seek out the Recorder?

  Did he have any choice? The Lord-Protector would not have set matters up so were there any other option, and if the Lord-Protector happened to be that cautious, the Recorder was indeed dangerous. Alucius disliked the intermittent evil feel that flowed from the man, and he worried how the Recorder would affect the herders and the Iron Valleys if he were not stopped. Yet…if Alucius did stop him…how might that affect Alucius? Then too, there was the possibility that the Recorder was far stronger than he appeared.

  For a time, Alucius just stood in the corridor. Then he turned and made his way down the steps, past the kitchens, using the walk of an officer in a hurry and not wishing to be bothered. So far as he could sense, not a single person gave him even a second glance. Before long, he was walking along the back corridor toward the archway leading into the chambers of the Recorder. As he walked, he realized something else. The Recorder’s chambers were well to the north side of the palace, perhaps even under the rear courtyard of the palace.

  No one was near him as he stopped before the archway. Somewhere beyond the archway was the distant sense of purpleness. While the stones and structure of the archway resembled the square arches on the upper level, Alucius could feel that they were older, far older, than the remainder of the palace, as if the palace had been built around them. And for a palace to have been built around ancient chambers argued that those chambers contained something of value—or power—like a Table that could see events anywhere?

  He took a step toward the doorway, then another. Finally, he eased open the door and slipped inside, into a narrower stone-walled corridor, one that not only felt older, but far more damp, and darker, with but a single light-torch on the wall. Alucius moved forward. He came to a closed door on the left, but he could sense that no one was in the chamber, nor was there any hint of the purpleness.

  He walked forward toward the door at the end of the short hallway, a door that was just slightly ajar, then stopped short of it. The sense of evil beyond was strong—and almost palpable. Alucius eased forward and let his senses examine the chamber. The chamber was empty except for one person and the Table. The Table itself appeared rooted into the ground, with a trunk of purple darkness reaching downward and to the north. The Recorder was facing the Table, sideways, so that he would not see the door unless he turned.

  Alucius took a slow deep breath and created his illusion of nothingness before he eased the door slightly wider and stepped into the chamber.

  The light within the chamber was both golden and pinkish purple. The golden light came from the four light-torches mounted on the wall, set in sconces that had been old generations before, while the pinkish purple light was that seen only through Talent, and radiating from both the Table and the Recorder.

  The lifethread of the Recorder was monstrous. Alucius froze for a moment, in spite of himself. The thread was not the normal brown or tan or yellow, black or black shot with green, or even black shot with purple or pink, or the dual pink and black threads he had seen with the torques of the Matrial. Instead, there was the thinnest of amber threads, and braided around that thin amber thread was a pulsing purple rope, and the purpled rope rose from the Table in the middle of the chamber. The Table itself was a dark lorken wood cube with a shimmering upper surface that resembled a mirror.

  The Recorder turned, looking straight at Alucius. His smile was chill “Your illusions mean nothing here, lamaial. You were warned.”

  “Warned?” Alucius dropped the illusion, and studied the figure beside the Table, who appeared to present two separate images—an older white-haired man and a taller alabaster-skinned and black-haired figure so much like those in the mural—or his dreams.

  “Warned,” the Recorder reiterated. “You were told that to act against me would set you as the lamaial, and that all lamaials fail.”

  “I have done nothing, except explore.”

  “You came here to confront me. Do not deny it. You may not know it, but you were sent. Those who sent you failed before, and they will fail now.” The Recorder laughed, a deep and melodic sound that was more chilling than if he had cackled. “In many ways, that will make my task easier, for you are one of the three.”

  One of the three? That made little sense to Alucius, but then, in dealing with Talent-matters, very little had until after the fact. He couldn’t deny that the spirit-woman had warned him, as well, but she certainly hadn’t sent him. “No one sent me.”

  “Then you are doubly a fool, here without allies.”

  Rather than wait, Alucius reached out with his Talent-sense to strike the lifeweb thread of the Recorder—only to find that the purple-black thread felt armored.

  The Recorder laughed. “I am not one of your weakling Coreans, a town sheep to be slaughtered.”

  Corean? Alucius had never even heard the word.

  He could sense a purple mist rising from both the Table and the Recorder himself, shedding a darkness over the chamber, even though golden light flooded from the light-torches.

  “I think it best you become someone el
se…and the poor Lord-Protector can say little. You will walk out of the palace…and will return to your stead, and no one will be the wiser.” The Recorder remained with both his hands on the surface of the Table.

  While the Recorder’s words continued to make little sense, the danger behind them was more than clear. A wave of purpleness swept toward Alucius, and instinctively, his sabre was in his hand, coated with the darkness of life. He cut through the clinging purpleness and stepped toward the Recorder, although each step was like climbing a yard-high step—slow and deliberate.

  “You do have a little Talent, and we can put that to good use, in the right time and place,” observed the Recorder.

  Ruby mists—unseen except through Alucius’s Talent—began to rise out of the Table, swirling around the Recorder and beginning to extend like sinuous arms toward Alucius.

  Alucius focused more darkness into the sabre, darkness that flowed outward. The purpleness fell back before the darkness, but the ruby mist-arms did not, boring through the darkness with a sinister glow, twisting toward Alucius.

  Alucius stepped sideways, sabre still before him, moving to the side of the Table opposite the Recorder, whose hands remained fixed upon the Table. The man who was older and yet who was not kept his eyes on Alucius, and the ruby mist-arms turned yet again, but undulated through the air around the Table, rather than over it.

  Alucius felt coated in sweat, yet he had only been in the Table chamber for the smallest fraction of a glass. Breathing heavily, he willed darkness—pure darkness—toward those dangerous ruby appendages.

  For a moment, the arms fell back, and Alucius tried to move around the Table, to reach the Recorder with his sabre. But the red mist-arms swept wider, as if to encircle Alucius. While the darkness-coated sabre stopped the purpleness, the undulating and approaching arms simply twisted away from the blade.

  From somewhere came an idea, faint, but clear. The Table…enter the Table.

  Enter the Table? How? It was solid. And why?

  Enter the Table.

  Alucius struggled to raise more darkness, but both the purpleness and the ruby mists circled around the Table, moving ever closer to Alucius.

  How could the Recorder—or the creature that he was—be so strong?

  And what could Alucius do? Enter the Table? Just how was he supposed to do that?

  Perhaps he could get on it. The mists and the purpleness were avoiding it. And then…with the sabre, he could strike directly at the Recorder.

  Alucius leapt onto the Table, hoping it would hold him. Landing on the Table with his boots was like landing on stone from several yards, but Alucius still managed to strike at the Recorder with his sabre.

  The Recorder jumped back, and a wide smile crossed the mancreature’s face. “Even better!”

  The solid surface of the Table disappeared, and Alucius felt himself dropping into purplish blackness.

  Purplish blackness swirled around Alucius, as if in a stream, an underground and lightless stream, and one in which he was trapped—but there was no current, and the chill was worse than winter at Soulend in a blizzard. He could not see, not with his eyes, and he could not move his body, much as he tried.

  His Talent senses revealed the blackness, and through it, he could feel threads, or arrows. One was darkish purple, overlaid with blue, and it was the brightest. Another was the same darkish purple and nearby, but overlaid with silver. A third was golden green, thin, and almost not there, as if hidden, or walled away behind a purplish barrier, or even outside the blackness. Then, there was a long and deep purple-black arrow, so deep, so evil that even considering nearing it with his Talent-senses raised nausea within Alucius.

  What could he do?

  He concentrated on the blue overlaid arrow, but as he did, he could almost sense the Recorder and the ruby arms searching.

  His attention went to the silver arrow, still purple, but without the greedy sense of searching and seeking. Alucius tried to use his Talent to carry him toward the silver arrow—bring the arrow toward him, before the darkness of the Table chilled him so much that he could not even think or use his Talent.

  Nothing happened—not that he could sense.

  What could he do? Somewhere in the darkness “behind” him, he could sense the ruby mist-arms reaching toward him, and he knew, if they touched him, that he would become…either something horrible like the Recorder…or cease to exist at all.

  He tried to visualize a long thin line of purple, a lifeline of energy, linking him to the silver arrow, pulsing, guiding him toward that silveriness.

  Abruptly, silver and light flashed around him.

  101

  Tempre, Lanachrona

  The Recorder of Deeds stood at the doorway to the chamber of the Table, holding it wide for the younger man, similar in appearance to the Lord-Protector, with dark hair, but shorter and with a broader frame.

  “Lord Waleryn…have you ever seen the Table?” asked the Recorder.

  “Only one or twice, with my sire, as you may well recall,” replied Waleryn, his voice smooth and polished. “Since then, my invitations have been few. Nonexistent in point of fact.”

  “I thought perhaps you should see it,” suggested Enyll. “I found some references…and have improved it.”

  “I’m not the Lord-Protector, Recorder. There is little I can do.”

  “That may be for now, but the Lord-Protector has no heirs but you, and you should know what the Table can do. The Lord-Protector has not so informed you, has he?”

  “He has been somewhat…occupied of late with his consort. Alerya has been less than well…”

  “I do understand. He is most deeply concerned about her.” The sympathy in the Recorder’s voice was less than deep.

  “What exactly do you have in mind, Enyll? You did not invite me here to discuss either the Table or my elder brother’s domestic difficulties.”

  “Domestic? If there is no heir, the difficulties go far beyond domestic. But…that is not our matter at present. I did in fact invite you here to show you the Table. And there is the matter of heirs, in a differing fashion.”

  “A differing fashion? That is a decidedly odd phrase.”

  “Not at all. I am not so young as I once was,” the Recorder said flatly. “I have seen none with Talent who can use the Table. What is not known is that someone with an agile mind can use some of the Table’s functions. Not all, but enough, and I would propose that you, having the interest of your family at heart, would be someone to whom I could entrust such knowledge.”

  The faintest smile crossed Waleryn’s lips, then vanished.

  “There must be someone,” the Recorder added. “You would not wish that such knowledge be lost to your family, would you?”

  “No, indeed. That I would not.”

  Both men smiled.

  102

  Alucius found himself standing on the Table—alone in the chamber—still holding his sabre. His entire body was shaking, shivering, and his legs felt weak, but his uniform was dry, although frost appeared upon it, then melted away almost instantly without wetting the fabric.

  He looked around, bewildered as he realized that he was in another chamber, windowless, and similar to the Recorder’s chamber, and standing on another Table, similar, but not identical. He quickly sheathed the sabre and eased his way off the Table, studying both the chamber and the Table. Unlike the Recorder’s Table, the one before him was far newer, as if it had been recently created. And the chamber in which it was contained was clearly newly built. In fact, Alucius realized, it had not even been completed. There were no wall hangings, and only a pair of light-torches on the wall, of a design he had never seen, and those torches were hung on simple wooden pegs inserted between the stones of the wall. While the stones were far older, they had doubtless come from another structure.

  On one side of the chamber was a table desk, with a stool before it.

  His eyes flicking to the closed door, Alucius moved quickly toward the desk and th
e single short stack of paper upon it.

  He glanced at the top sheet, a diagram of some sort, but squinted at the writing. Some words looked familiar, but others were not, much in the way written Madrien had first appeared to him immediately after he had been captured by the Matrial’s forces.

  Where was he? And how had the Table brought him? Or how exactly had his Talent allowed him to use the Table to escape the Recorder? And how could the Recorder have been so strong? Alucius had never felt that kind of Talent-strength before.

  Then, Alucius realized, he had never confronted the Matrial directly. He had destroyed the crystal, and that had destroyed the Matrial. He glanced at the Table, looking at it with both eyes and Talent, seeing it deeply rooted into the earth—and far, far more deeply—linked through the dark conduit to something…somewhere far, far distant.

  Leaving the Table and the incomprehensible diagram, he eased to the door, letting his senses range beyond it.

  A sentry was posted outside, and with his ear against the oak of the door, Alucius could hear the sounds of chisels and hammers, as if the structure without were still being built.

  Where was he? And what was he going to do about it? What could he do? He glanced around the chamber again, taking in the lack of windows and a certain earthy smell. Did the Tables have to be built so that they were in contact with the earth or rock? There were other thoughts, impressions, but he could not remember them, that he knew fitted with that idea.

  Someone was coming—another person exuding the pinkish purpleness that felt so evil.