Darknesses

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “How many of there are you? Now?”

  Once more, the soarer did not reply, and Alucius sat on the bed, numb. His people, his ancestors, sent from elsewhere, almost as…town sheep or cattle, less than footwarriors in a leschec game between the soarers and the ifrits. And not a hint of it in anything he had learned. Truly, the Legacy of the Duarches was to be feared and shunned, and yet no one he knew had ever known why, except as a feeling.

  Why would you question? The soarer was gentle. They were gone, and we never made known what we had done.

  Alucius continued to sit on the bed. How could he believe what the soarer had told him? Yet, after having seen what he had, and after having experienced the power of the Recorder and the engineer, how could he not believe the soarer?

  The soarer waited, silently.

  Finally, Alucius looked up. “What about you?”

  What you do cannot change what will be for us. We hope it will change matters for you and for the world.

  “But we’re not even from this world, you said.”

  You and yours, especially those who are herders and the like, are of this world, and must sustain it.

  “Why?” asked Alucius flatly.

  You have seen the lifethreads and how they bind and strengthen the world, have you not?

  “Yes.”

  Whatever may have happened…that is past. You are what will sustain the world, and all that we have done will be for naught if you cannot stop the ifrits.

  “You didn’t answer my question—about you.”

  The soarer remained silent, and the silence dragged out.

  Finally, Alucius asked, tiredly, “What do I do? Where do we start?”

  Look at yourself, at your own lifethread. Do not touch it. Just look.

  Alucius tried to focus his Talent upon his own thread.

  He swallowed. His thread was not the black shot with green that he recalled, or that he had sensed with other herders. Instead, it was a brilliant green, with but a few thin lines of black within that green.

  Study one of the black threads. See if you can discern the smaller threads within.

  His eyes felt like they were blurring, even though his Talent was “looking,” not his eyes. But all he could sense was a fuzziness around the black thread.

  Think of it as spun and then woven together.

  Alucius concentrated harder, creating a mental picture, then trying to make the picture fit the sense of the thread, but the thread remained solid.

  The soarer said nothing.

  Would it work the other way? He tried to see the thread, as if it were being spun from tinier threads and being woven into a unitary piece. For a moment, he thought he had something, but the sense he received was—again—of a solid thread.

  The soarer remained still, neither suggesting nor criticizing.

  Could he visualize the thread in another way?

  Do not make it what it is not. It is a thread composed of smaller threads. It is. That is what it is. You must learn to see it as it is.

  “How?” snapped Alucius. “It’s easy enough for you.”

  Try again. Just think of the thread.

  Alucius tried to clear his thoughts, just thinking about that one thin black strand. Not conceiving of it as anything but a thread. Sweat poured from his forehead, and his whole body shivered.

  For an instant—just an instant—he caught the most fleeting sense of threads twined into each other, threads twined from smaller and smaller threads. Then the feeling was gone, and he was shivering almost uncontrollably.

  You can do no more now. You should rest.

  No praise. No acknowledgment. The soarer lifted the empty platter and ale beaker and turned toward the door.

  As the soarer left, Alucius cast his Talent-senses at her. Her lifethread was the same brilliant green as his—except without any traces of black.

  He swallowed once more. According to his Talent, in the ways of Talent, he was closer to the soarers than to the herders. He knew the old song about the soarer’s child. The lines came to mind easily, although it had been years since he had heard them.

  …But the soarer’s child praise the most,

  for he will rout the sanders’ host,

  and raise the lost banners high

  under the green-and-silver sky.

  But…the sanders’ host? The soarer had said that the sanders were kin to the soarers, and even as tired as he was, Alucius had sensed the truth of her words. Also, the soarer and the sander were paired in the leschec game—the soarer queen and the sander king. But then, the game also had pteridons and alectors.

  His head was splitting, and he still lacked so many answers. He didn’t even know if he had been asking the right questions, either, and that made it even harder.

  With a sigh, he turned and stretched out on the bed. His eyes felt so heavy.

  109

  Alucius stood in front of the window, a place where he had often found himself standing over the past days, looking out into the late afternoon, squinting to see against the white disc of the sun. At least a week had gone by, perhaps longer, with sessions two and three times a day with the soarer. He had gone back to wearing his uniform, except for the outer tunic. Although it was an illusion, he knew, he felt less helpless in the uniform than he had in the gown—which the soarers had left for him to sleep in.

  It had taken three days before he had really been able to see the next lower level of threads, and five before he could do so with any degree of ease—and that was just for his own lifethread. Then he had been forced to try to discern the threads woven into the lifethread of the soarer. That alone would have convinced him of the earnestness of the soarers, because it implied a certain degree of trust. Even so, he had to wonder.

  No matter how he had questioned the soarer, he had gotten no answers about her. He had no idea how many soarers remained or what the relationship between sanders and soarers might be, whether the sanders were another people or more like nightsheep to the soarers. He had not seen or sensed another soarer—even from a distance, but he had no idea if that might be because of the amber walls of the tower. When he had opened the window and used his Talent-senses, he had felt nothing but emptiness.

  The soarer kept telling him that he had greater strength than did either the soarers or the ifrits. Yet both had been more than able to handle him. Still…what choice did he have?

  You always have choices. The soarer appeared in the late-afternoon sunlight that angled through the window.

  “Not good ones,” Alucius turned as he spoke. “And poor choices are only good for creating the illusion of choice.”

  Not all choices are as poor as they first appear. Some choices look good, but in time prove far less wise.

  “That’s if you are a soarer and have lived many years and seen far more than a poor herder and officer of the Northern Guard.”

  You are not poor as either. The soarer lifted her hands slightly. She held a scrat, loosely. The reddish brown rodent looked up at Alucius, its black eyes wide, but other than twitching its whiskers, and looking quickly from side to side, it did not move.

  Alucius had never been able to get within yards of one of the skittish little creatures, yet it sat in the palm of the soarer’s hand, quiet, unafraid, and looking curiously at Alucius.

  Do not move closer. Use your Talent to study its lifethread. Do not touch the thread with your Talent. It is frail compared to you.

  Alucius accepted the unnecessary warning and set to study the small animal. The scrat’s threads were thinner—and finer—than the threads composing Alucius’s lifethread, or those of the soarer.

  Observe the nodes, those points where the threads twist together.

  Nodes? Even as he questioned, Alucius tried to find the nodes in the threads of the scrat, which remained calmly observing him.

  Wherever there are threads, of any sort, there are nodes. Where there are nodes, there is weakness.

  “Weakness. But they are stronger ther
e.”

  That is only a seeming.

  Alucius concentrated on the nodes, seeking one of the largest. Still, it looked stronger than any of the woven threads.

  Before he could speak, the soarer did. Watch closely.

  Alucius observed as a thin line of golden green extended from the soarer to the scrat, as that golden green probe slipped around one of the largest nodes, just where the lifethread left the body of the rodent itself. Then the probe branched into multiple fingers, and each finger twisted. The threads separated into a spray of loosely connected lines, fading even as Alucius watched.

  The scrat collapsed.

  Alucius gaped. The soarer had just killed the scrat.

  No! Watch!

  He continued to watch. This time, the golden green probe gathered the individual threads that Alucius could barely perceive and twisted them back together, in what Alucius could only have called a tighter weave.

  After a moment, the scrat shivered and looked up, its eyes bright.

  “You…killed it, and then brought it back to life.”

  No. It only seemed so. A body does not die in the instant a lifethread is severed or changed. Shortly, and swiftly, but not instantaneously. If the damage is repaired quickly, no lasting harm is done. You will learn to do this.

  Alucius almost protested, then thought, “You cannot kill, but you wish me to learn how to do both?”

  It is the beginning of what you need to know to defeat the ifrits.

  The beginning? Just the beginning?

  Yes.

  The room dropped into dusk as the sun slipped beneath the dark stone ramparts to the west of the tower.

  You have much to learn, yet, and little time. Do not worry about the scrat. I will guide you, and it will not be harmed so long as you are deft and gentle.

  “But it would be dangerous to practice this on people or larger animals?”

  It is dangerous for the scrat, but there is no other way, not in time.

  Alucius looked at the bright-eyed rodent, looking at him, almost trustingly. He looked away, not wanting to meet the rodent’s eyes, even knowing that his reluctance was irrational. He’d killed hundreds, and he was worried about a scrat?

  It is good that you are, but you must try.

  After a moment, Alucius asked, “How do I start?”

  You saw. Try to do the same.

  Slowly, Alucius attempted to fashion the same sort of green golden probe, then have it enfold the major node before trying to split it into separate fingers.

  He killed the scrat four times, and each time the soarer revived it.

  Enough. You are too tired to continue. Still, you think in terms of force.

  “This wouldn’t do anything to one of those ifrits,” Alucius protested, trying to keep anger and frustration out of his voice and being.

  It would. Consider what would happen if all your Talent were focused on one small point in a node. Or, if you used your Talent to deflect another’s thrust. With the hint of a nod, the soarer turned and departed with the scrat.

  Alucius stood at the window of the darkened tower room for a long time. Then he turned and studied the door. The door was bolted from the outside. Within a few days of regaining his strength, he had discovered that, but he had not found a way to unbolt it.

  Perhaps what the soarer had showed him might work.

  He visualized a long thin golden probe, sliding under the thinnest of openings between the bottom of the door and the green floor tiles.

  Alucius smiled as he could sense the thin probe slipping up to the silver metal bolt, where he wrapped it around the protrusion at one end. Then, he tried to tug on the bolt, to slide it back out. Nothing happened. It felt as though the metal were greased and his Talent-probe kept slipping off the bolt.

  He tried to make his probe with rougher edges, and greater strength. That didn’t work either. Then he tried to make it sticky, like drying honey, as he pulled.

  That worked.

  He pushed the door open and stepped out into a circular room—a landing of sorts, except he saw no stairs. Directly before him on the far side of the landing was a square opening in the green floor tiles. Alucius stepped forward, carefully, looking down the long shaft. In the darkness he could see little, but with his Talent he felt that the shaft descended at least fifty yards, and rose another ten or fifteen yards. He turned, carefully, and surveyed the landing.

  Besides the door to his room—or cell—there were two other doors, both closed. Only his door had a bolt on it, and that bolt felt much newer. Had it been added just for him? He pressed the lever on the door to the left and opened it. The room was empty. Although there was no furniture and no dust, it felt as though it had not been used in years, perhaps longer.

  Alucius closed the door and opened the other door, wondering if it might be the top of a staircase, but it was also an empty room. Unlike the other two rooms, it had the square mirror built into the floor—but no furniture. Leaving the door open, Alucius walked to the mirror, studying it.

  He could definitely feel the golden thread beneath it—that and the darkness beyond. He could certainly leave.

  And then what? The only places he knew he could reach were where the two ifrits waited.

  Alucius took a deep breath, recalling once more his grandsire’s advice about not acting until he knew what to do. After a long moment, he walked around the mirror to the window, identical to the one in his room. The view was the same.

  He turned and walked out of the room, stopping on the landing outside and looking at the space that was at the top of the access shaft, smiling ruefully. There was no way to climb down the shaft. The tower had certainly been built for soarers, because there weren’t any stairs. Except for the mirror, he was still trapped, and given where the mirror led, it was better to wait than strike out blindly. The last times he’d done that, he’d paid dearly.

  With a deep breath, he went back into his room.

  He did leave the door ajar.

  110

  Another week passed, and the soarer never said a word about the open or unlocked door. During that time, in his efforts to learn to handle threads, Alucius managed to kill several scrats, a grayjay, and a sandsnake. The soarer patiently revived them. In the end, Alucius finally grasped the techniques and actually managed to unlock the thread nodes and revive the sandsnake and the last scrat on his own. And without a word of comment, the soarer departed.

  The following morning, she appeared with his breakfast.

  As Alucius ate, she offered nothing until he was almost finished.

  The ifrits are working on building another portal. You are fortunate that such work takes much time.

  “I’m fortunate. What about you?”

  There are not many of us. A burst of dry humor infused the thought. You have already discovered that the tower is mostly empty, have you not?

  Alucius took a last swallow of the ale. “You know that.”

  Most of the city is as well. That is why you see little from the window.

  “But you keep me here.”

  It will not be that long, if you will learn. Follow me.

  Alucius followed the soarer out of his room, onto the landing, and into the empty room with the silver mirror set into the floor.

  Now…you must learn to use your knowledge.

  Alucius thought he had been. He paused. “Wait a moment. The Tables are set into the ground. But this mirror—it’s in a tower, and it’s not connected to the ground.”

  It is linked to the nodes of the world. Use your Talent.

  Alucius concentrated. As he did, he became aware that the entire tower, indeed, the entire city, was linked deep into the world, in a fashion that was similar to that of the Tables, yet without the pinkish purpleness.

  Now…you must face what defeated you.

  A line of purplish Talent flared toward him, and Alucius raised a line of darkness. While the darkness held, the force pushed him backward.

  Deflect when you
can.

  A second line of force struck, but Alucius countered, using his own Talent, more like a sabre, and parried the attack.

  For a short while, less than a quarter of a glass, he practiced against the lines and darts of purpleness thrown by the soarer.

  Enough. The greatest danger comes not from a single ifrit.

  Alucius tightened his lips as the all-too-familiar crimson mist rose from the mirror and formed into a pair of sinuous crimson arms that reached toward him. Instinctively, he raised the darkness of lifeforce, around which the arms undulated.

  The nodes! Where were the nodes? As he dodged the probing arms, one of them brushed his elbow.

  “Oh!” The pain was a line of excruciating fire. He jumped back, aware that he was trapped almost against the wall.

  You will not die, but you may wish you had if you cannot halt them.

  “Thank you,” mumbled Alucius, throwing up darkness as a momentary barrier, his Talent-senses trying to find where the crimson mist-arms had the nodes—or if they did.

  There were thick places that might be nodes. Alucius probed with his Talent, circling and ducking, but the thickened nodes felt like armor. He had to jump sideways, but, again one of the arms brushed his knee. The slash of fire numbed his lower right leg, and he stumbled and fell. To avoid the probing tentacles, he had to roll across the corner of the mirror, and another wave of pain—this one cold chill—stabbed through his shoulder.

  Focus your probe! Tightly!

  That was easy enough for the soarer to say.

  Still, Alucius tried to concentrate his Talent-force into a narrow tip that lanced at a node.

  Abruptly, the arm below the node disintegrated into a spray of threads that vanished.

  So did Alucius’s smile as the other arm slashed into his left hand, leaving it numb.

  Alucius tried to stand, but he was moving slowly, with his right leg, left shoulder, and hand all numb. Desperately, he focused another line of golden green Talent at the larger node on the longer remaining arm.

  It, too, vanished in a spray of threads. Then both arms, and the ruby mists began to dissipate.