Under the sensory assault, he took a single stumbling step sideways before catching himself. What was he seeing? Was she trying to control him, use her Talent to destroy him? Or worse, enslave him?
We do kill, but only as we must. We do not bind. That weakens the lifewebs more than death. You see the webs of life, all life.
She might have been lying. Dainyl doubted that he could tell if she were, not with the power she projected, but he did not think so. Somehow, he did not doubt that the ancients could see the ties that bound the lifemass of Acorus. Why couldn’t Talented alectors? Why hadn’t he?
Look at yourself, alector. Look at yourself.
Almost unwillingly, he looked down at himself. Purplish pink threads sprang from him, merging into an ugly purple thread that arched away from him toward the northeast. Compared to the soft and warm colors of the web stretching out below the peak, the purplish pink that surrounded him was wrong, not subtly wrong, but oppressively so, a color and shade that did not belong on Acorus, that conflicted and fought with the tapestry formed by the softer lifewebs.
Yet he was an alector, and that purplish pink was him. Could he do anything about that purpleness? Should he? Why him? If he had seen the web and the clash of life-forces, surely, others had also perceived it. He couldn’t have been the first one, the first alector to sense that. Or could he?
You see? You are not of the world.
He repressed a shiver.
You must become one with the world—-and of the world— or you will perish.
“That sounds like a threat.”
As suddenly as it had come, the greenish mist had vanished—and so had the soarer. Dainyl stood alone outside the cave, looking down on the land. The warp and weft of the lifewebs had also vanished. Once more, he blinked. Had it all been illusion? He shook his head No, the soarer had been real, and so had what she had shown him.
He tried to call up what he had seen, but the only aspect he could sense was the purpled skein that was his own lifethread. He had always been able to sense a slight purplish aura around other alectors, and the faint silver-black-green around the few landers who had Talent, but he’d never seen himself that way.
What had he seen? Had it really been a web that linked all the lifeforces of Acorus? Or that of the higher life-forms? He knew that he had seen those interweaving and converging threads, yet he could not call up what he had seen, not by himself, anyway. That he could sense his own aura, and that it was similar to those of other alectors, was enough itself to suggest that what she had shown him was real, but why couldn’t he sense beyond himself? Was his Talent that weak, compared to that of the soarer?
He took a long and slow deep breath, then turned and walked back to the amber-green-gold archway that framed the tunnel. His eyes lighted on the mirrorlike device in the floor of the tunnel. It had to be a transport device, something like a Table.
Slowly, he walked into the tunnel, his head low, until he stood on the mirror. He’d never used a Table, but according to Lystrana, the key was to visualize where you wanted to go. He concentrated, thinking of the one Table he had seen, in the Hall of Justice in Elcien.
Nothing happened.
He tried reaching out with his Talent, into the depths that had to be within or behind the mirror, but he could find nothing there.
After a good half glass of trying everything he could think of, Dainyl finally walked out of the tunnel to wait for Falyna to return. The mirror was a transport device, but how it worked… he couldn’t determine, and he doubted that either he—or any alector—would ever understand or be able to use it.
The other phrase that the soarer had used… that those among them…fed. That suggested strongly that the other creatures, the ugly ones, had fed on the missing miners. Dainyl had no proof, but it all fit. It would explain why some of the miners vanished—and why the miners would do anything to escape.
Dainyl walked to the eastern end of the blufflike ledge, thinking. That might explain the disappearances—and the reason why those miners who had escaped were trying to create a revolt, but they were merely a handful. The soarer’s revelations might explain the missing miners, but they didn’t make anything any clearer as far as the Highest and the marshal were concerned.
What had become all too clear was that far more was happening than any of those involved knew or understood. Yet, if he reported what he had seen, he would reveal his own Talent and possibly threaten the marshal and the Highest—and, considering the fate of Submarshal Tyanylt, risk his own destruction. If he did not report on the ancient soarer, he might well betray his duty as a Myrmidon.
As the white sun rose out of the dark green ocean to the east, he stood and waited for Falyna to return.
51
On Septi, Mykel was back patrolling the mining road with fifth squad. The morning sweep had gone without incident, and the local Cadmians had escorted the prisoners to the mine and taken up their guard positions in the towers and along the perimeter. Mykel and fifth squad had continued to patrol the access road, but had seen nothing. The cool winds around and below the mountains felt refreshing after the days spent in the Cadmian compound in Dramuria. There, Mykel had felt as though the walls were closing in around him. He’d never experienced that feeling of constriction in any other Cadmian compound. It had to be the situation facing him, where he. could see no way out, no matter how hard he tried to avoid the traps set for him by Majer Vaclyn. Mykel knew all too well that people, even senior officers, often disliked others for no good reason, but much as he told himself that, he still kept trying to puzzle out why the majer had suddenly targeted him.
Now, in the late afternoon, he and fifth squad rode back to the mine, sweeping the road once more before the local Cadmians escorted the prisoners back to their camp. As the chestnut carried Mykel toward the mine, less than half a vingt away, the captain surveyed the road to the north. In the late afternoon the slope was shadowed, making hiding easier. While he could not see anyone, he had a feeling that somewhere in the rocky slopes to the west of the road were more of the escaped miners, waiting to take more shots at them. His lips curled. Based on what he had experienced so far, he would have been a naive optimist to feel otherwise.
“Eyes sharp, now!” Mykel rode another hundred yards or so, more and more on edge, but still not seeing or sensing any figures in the shadows above the road.
Crack! Crack!
The sounds of the shots were so faint that, for a moment, Mykel did not recognize them, thinking that he was hearing a hammer on stone or some other mining operation. He straightened in the saddle. “Rifles ready!”
“Fifth squad! Rifles ready!”
Continuing to ride, he eased his mount to the left, alongside the stone wall. From there he studied the rocky slope, but he saw no one and had no sense that they were being fired upon.
Another report echoed from the north. Was it from the mine itself? Were the prisoners trying to escape?
“Fifth squad, loose formation, quick trot! Forward!”
As they neared the mine, Mykel could hear more shots, definitely coming from the rocky slope above the mine to the north.
As he watched, one of the Cadmians in the guard tower staggered, then dropped his rifle and collapsed over the wooden railing. Mykel still couldn’t see who was shooting, and exactly from where, but there were at least several snipers. When fifth squad reached the heavy wooden gates to the mine area, as suddenly as the shots had begun, they ended. Mykel had not seen a single rifleman, but at least one Cadmian guard was dead.
The gates creaked open.
Captain Benjyr was mounted on a roan, just inside. He looked at Mykel. ‘Too bad you didn’t get here earlier.“
“Did you send anyone up the slopes?”
“To get picked off? No.”
Mykel turned in the saddle. “Vhanyr, I need your two best shots to cover me. I’m going up after the snipers. Put them in the north tower.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Going to be
a hero?” murmured Benjyr.
Mykel looked back at the other captain. “No. I’m going because I’m the best shot and the least likely to get hit—and because you don’t keep asking your men to take shots without taking them yourself.” He eased his mount over toward Vhanyr. “I’ll have to climb from this side. I’d be a plucked fowl if I went over the stockade on the north side.”
After reining up back outside the gates, Mykel handed the chestnut’s reins to Lasent, an older ranker.
“Take care, sir.”
“Thank you. I’ll try.”
Rifle in hand, Mykel moved upslope steadily, using the shadows and the rocks for cover, keeping low. Riding boots were not made for climbing, and he slipped several times on the sloping sandy spaces between boulders.
A quarter glass passed before he was above the top of the mineworks and could begin to move northward. He felt—but didn’t know—that there were rebels somewhere farther . north.
Crack!
Mykel dropped behind an irregular chunk of old black lava. That single shot had been too close, but it also gave him an idea where the shooter hid, only slightly higher than he was. Mykel resumed his climb, more deliberately, and jnore directly uphill, rather than slanting to the north.
He had only climbed another ten yards or so when another shot ricocheted off the lava to his left. Flattening himself against the slope, beside an outcropping, he considered. He’d been right. There were at least two shooters, and one was to his left and one to his right. He decided to go after the one to the left first. If he went after the one to the right, the one to the left would be free to rake the mine road.
He peered around the sandstone, then crawled to the next outcropping… and the next.
After another thirty yards, he felt he was closer, much closer.
He heard a slipping, scraping sound, feet sliding on sandy soil. Turning slightly, he fired, hardly aiming at the patch of gray that looked different, but willing the bullet to strike.
“Oooh!”
The clatter of a dropped weapon followed the exclamation.
Mykel moved quickly, but not carelessly, keeping low and threading his way uphill and through the lava and sandstone. Before that long he was looking down at a man in gray, bearded and dying, sprawled and wedged amid the black lava.
“Who sent you after us?” Mykel demanded.
“. •. couldn’t say no…” The rebel half coughed, and his face contorted in agony. “… cold here… so… cold…”
He was dead.
Mykel noted the location and began to move northward through the rocks and infrequent scrub bushes. He thought he was higher than the other shooter, but the man easily could have moved to another position.
Crack! Crack! Both shots were high and wide of Mykel and suggested that the rebel had moved farther north but no higher on the slope.
Mykel peered from the side of another lava boulder, one smoother than most, looking northward. He had a good idea where the rebel was, but the man was keeping his head down as well. The captain darted to another boulder, then another, dropping down just before another pair of shots passed overhead.
Despite the cool air and the chill breeze, Mykel was swearing heavily. He definitely wasn’t used to scrambling around on mountainsides. He took several long and deep breaths before resuming his crawling-and-crouching progress across the slope.
He traveled another hundred yards when he heard the clatter of rocks. He glanced around a taller irregular rock in time to see a patch dark gray against the darker lava downhill.
Mykel snapped off two shots, and the off-color gray vanished.
He keep moving, carefully and cautiously, toward where he thought the rebel had been. There were no more shots.
After another twenty yards, he paused. There was heavy breathing, and a low groan, not too far ahead. Could it be a ruse?
Anything was possible. He looked around, and finally found a fist-sized chunk of rock, then lofted it over the sandstone outcropping behind which he crouched.
The breathing subsided, then continued.
Mykel held his rifle ready, easing around the top of the sandstone ledge.
He needn’t have bothered.
Below him, in a depression, lay a rebel. The man’s rifle was less than a yard from Mykel, twice that from the wounded sniper, who looked blankly at the captain.
A golden green radiance washed over Mykel. He whirled.
In midair hung a winged woman, certainly no more than two-thirds his own height. A gauzy iridescence cloaked her figure, leaving only her head, shoulders, lower arms, and legs open to view.
For a moment, Mykel just gaped, holding his rifle.
Had the soaring woman—certainly an ancient, if the old tales were correct—anything to do with the rebels?
“What do you want? Are you with the rebels?”
They serve a purpose.
The wounded rebel looked up at the soarer, and whimpered… whimpered. “No… no!”
A blocky figure—smaller than Mykel, but larger than the soarer—seemed to ooze upward out of the rocks beside the gray-clad man. Mykel turned the rifle on the creature.
Do not use the weapon. He will die soon anyway.
“Who?”
The injured one.
Mykel’s eyes darted from the rock-creature to the winged woman, then back to the rough-skinned creature that bent over the dying man. The creature barely touched the rebel, and the man shuddered. He was dead.
“How did you know?” demanded Mykel.
Fading lifeforce is obvious. Fading or not, it should not be wasted.
Not wasted? The creature had fed somehow on the dying man. Mykel repressed a shudder. “What do you want with me? Are you Death?”
Mykel received a wordless impression of mirth.
No more so than you are.
“What do you want with me?”
Nothing… now. You must find your talent to see the world beyond your eyes. You must understand what you feel… or you will perish. With those words, the green radiance vanished, and so did the soarer, leaving Mykel alone with a dead rebel and another stolen Cadmian rifle.
Mykel had no doubts there were no more rebels. Still, he was careful as he dragged the second rebel and carried the two rifles—both with numbers—downhill, his thoughts on what he had seen. The soarer had to have been an ancient, beautiful, but with a deadliness that made the Myrmidon colonel look clumsy and brutish. He had no idea what the other sand-skinned creature had been, save that it had somehow fed on the lifeforce of the dying rebel.
But how could he tell anyone what he had seen?
He also had no idea what the soarer had meant by finding his talent to see beyond his eyes. He doubted that he had any particular talent, except for shooting well enough to kill people. Or was that how he could shoot so well?
Abruptly, he realized that the soarer had not spoken to him, that her words had been in his mind. At the time, it had seemed normal, and unremarkable. Why had he felt that way? Could all the ancients do that? The miniature dagger set in the slots in his belt seemed to pulse green. He knew it hadn’t. Daggers, even daggers of the ancients, didn’t pulse. He had to have been imagining that. But why had he felt that way?
He pushed aside the questions until he had the rime to think about them later.
Once he was within hailing distance of the gates, he called down. “I took out both of them. Vhanyr! Escort the prisoners back. Leave Lasent and Doytal to help me.”
“You sure, sir?”
“I’m sure.”
By the time Lasent, Doytal, and Mykel had finished recovering the other body, the road back down to the mine compound was empty, and the sun had set. As Mykel had expected, both dead men had tattoos on their ankles.
Mykel heaved himself into the saddle, then reloaded his rifle, glancing up as Captain Benjyr reined up beside him.
“You a mountain type?” asked Benjyr.
“I’ve learned.” Mykel felt that admitting he was a
city boy would only make things worse.
“They say you’ve killed nearly a score of rebels like that.”
“Not that many,” Mykel protested. “I would have liked to have gotten these two earlier, but you can’t see them until they start shooting.”
Benjyr nodded.
Mykel realized that the other captain was offering a silent apology, and that made him uneasy. “You’ve never had the men to go after them.”
“We never had any real problems until a year ago. Then it just got worse and worse.”
“There can’t be too many left. I mean, escaped miners with rifles,” added Mykel quickly. He had no idea where he’d gotten that idea, but he felt he was right about that. There could be hundreds of rebels in the lowlands, people forced off their lands, and unhappy growers, but they couldn’t be all that many rebel miners left.
“You think the shootings will slow down?” Benjyr’s tone was skeptical.
“Up along the mine road, but not elsewhere.”
“I’m afraid you’re right. Good evening, Captain.” With a faint smile, Benjyr nodded and urged his mount down the road.
Before starting back down the graystone road himself, Mykel took a last look over his shoulder at the mineworks. He felt sorry for the local Cadmian ranker killed by the rebels, but he also felt sorry for the dead rebels—and for the families of all three men.
He also worried about what Majer Vaclyn would say the following afternoon about Fifteenth Company’s failure to protect the guards at the mine. It didn’t matter that such protection wasn’t the company’s primary task, or that there was no way to keep an entire mountain clear with less than a hundred men. The majer would still blame him for all the problems.
Not for the first time, Mykel had to wonder exactly what he and his company had gotten into. They were dealing with alectors and ancients, escaped prisoners seemingly bent on revenge, and rebellious seltyrs, and no one seemed to know why.
52
Under high and hazy clouds, roughly one glass after noon on Octdi, Mykel entered the west gate of the Cadmian compound at Dramuria. He carried little in his saddlebags except the copies of his letters and reports, including a brief summary of Septi’s attack by the two escaped miners, but without any mention of the soarer. Those he was not about to leave in the mine quarters, not when he was reporting to the majer. Beside him rode Alendyr, the second squad leader, with the rest of the squad following.
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