Alector's Choice

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  At the request of the High Alector of Engineering, Seventh Company had sent a squad of Myrmidons to Coren for aerial reconnaissance of the town and forest fires. A battalion of Cadmians was en route from Alustre to deal with the revolt and unrest.

  Another revolt? In yet another isolated locale? All Dainyl knew about Coren was that it was one of the few areas authorized for logging and lumbering and that the raw timber was sent down the river to Alustre. Why Seventh Company? The Myrmidons in Lyterna were far closer. Dainyl shook his head. It was winter. Between the storms, the cold, and the height of the mountains in the Spine of Corus, a direct flight was difficult, if not impossible, until late spring, and there were neither Myrmidon nor Cadmian outposts or compounds anywhere close to Coren.

  Dainyl kept reading, trying to catch up on everything that he had missed.

  Even though he had started right after morning muster, by two glasses past noon, he still had not read half of the reports he had dug up from the files and stacked on his new desk.

  The door opened, and the marshal stood there.

  Dainyl jumped to his feet. “Sir.”

  “Sit down, Dainyl.” Shastylt closed the study door and settled into the chair across the desk from the Submarshal. “I can see you’ve been busy.”

  “I was trying to catch up on what had happened.” Dainyl reseated himself.

  “You never will.” The marshal laughed, once, harshly. “I never have, not on everything. I apologize for being late. Matters with the Highest took longer than I had thought. We have to make a quintal presentation to both Duarches next week.” Shastylt offered a rueful smile. “Matters are not what we would like, and there are certain to be questions.” He gestured toward the stack of reports. “You’ve found some of them, I’m sure.”

  “Has anyone discovered anything more about the problems in Hyalt and Dereka?”

  “We’ve isolated the wild Talent in Hyalt, and our Myrmidon squads are closing in. That’s likely to be finished in a matter of weeks, if not days. As for Dereka… nothing else has vanished, and no one can explain how the skylances vanished.”

  “What about the missing alectors?”

  “They’re still missing, with no signs of where they went. They left everything behind.” Shastylt shrugged. “They were all on the Table contingent there, but they were off duty.”

  “First the skylances, and now alectors,” mused Dainyl.

  “We’re leaving that problem to the senior alectors at Lyterna.”

  Dainyl got the unspoken message. “I was reading the reports. What can you tell me about what happened in Coren?”

  The older alector offered a disgusted snort. “It’s another instance where the regional alectors haven’t paid any attention. So long as the timber came downriver, they thought everything was fine. The locals didn’t like the rules on how and when and where to log, and some of them started forest fires…”

  “So that they’d have even fewer trees to log? And more restrictions?”

  “Sometimes, steers don’t think. The local indigens killed the patrollers, or most of them, three weeks ago. We finally heard about it last week. The first time there was any sign of trouble, either the Myrmidons or the Cadmians should have been called in. In the end, we’ll lose forests and lifeforce mass, a bunch of indigens, and some Cadmian troopers.

  Much better to see things in advance, the way you’re handling Dramur.“

  Dainyl wasn’t so sure he was seeing anything that much in advance in Dramur, or that the marshal and Highest wanted him to do so. “It doesn’t always work out that way.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I wish I didn’t have to send you to Lyterna right now, but some rules we just can’t break, even for convenience. You know, that’s one thing that gets people into trouble. They bend the rules because they’re pressed or because it’s inconvenient, and then the next time it’s easier, and before long there aren’t any rules, and matters are worse than they would have been if they’d just put up with a little inconvenience.” Shastylt smiled.

  Dainyl easily sensed the lie. The marshal wanted him in Lyterna. Dainyl doubted that Shastylt was that enthusiastic about Dainyl learning more. Was that because Dainyl had gotten a grasp on what was happening in Dramur? Or because he had been about to, and neither the marshal nor the Highest wanted that to happen? “The rules become easier and easier to ignore.”

  “Exactly. Principles do matter, and which principles you act on and which you don’t are equally important.” The marshal stood.

  Dainyl rose to his feet as well, waiting.

  “Now… tomorrow, you’ll take your two Myrmidon escorts with you. Fly the southern route, and stop in the way station at Syan. Be sure to enjoy some of the good wine while you’re there. Asulet is expecting you in Lyterna, and he’ll be the one training you on the use of the Table for travel and providing you with the Submarshal’s briefing and background. After they’ve had a day’s rest, two if it’s been a hard flight, you can dispatch the pteridons back here. You’ll be able to return by Table, of course, right to the Hall of Justice. You’ll find that to be a great convenience at times.” Shastylt smiled wryly. “Only at times. We still have to deal with problems in places like Dramur and Iron Stem. Now… if you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare some calculations.“

  “Yes, sir.”

  After the study door closed, Dainyl stood behind his desk, motionless, thinking.

  66

  “Warm afternoon, sir,” said Chyndylt, from where he rode beside Mykel.

  “Like summer in Faitel,” replied Mykel. “Hate to think what summer here will be like.”

  The captain and third squad rode downhill, a half vingt ahead of the prisoners returning to the mine compound. The troopers had their rifles ready, if casually.

  “Maybe they’ll be sending us back by then.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Haven’t seen anything here today.”

  “No.” Mykel doubted they would see many more of the escaped miners who had been sniping. They couldn’t have been that numerous to begin with, and Fifteenth Company had killed close to a score. He was far more worried by armed horse companies from the west. While Fifteenth Company was more than a match for any single company raised in Dramur, Third Battalion was down to four companies, all understrength. He’d taken third squad back out earlier than usual for the afternoon road sweep, and had them ride down toward Dramuria for half a vingt before heading back past the camp to the mine. He hadn’t seen any signs of riders, but that only meant that no one was riding at that moment—or not riding swiftly.

  Mykel cocked his head. He’d heard something ahead, from near the mining camp. It might have been horses, or the report of a rifle. Yet it was early for the other squads to be returning from their various patrols. j

  “Eyes sharp!” he called out.

  They rode another two hundred yards southward along the graystone road. Mykel could sense something was not as it should have been. He studied the walls of the prisoners’ camp. The outer gates, which should have been open for the returning captives, were closed.

  Then, as he watched, a line of riders in blue uniforms rode toward the walls, firing at the guard towers. The Cad-mian guards fired back. Several of the blue-clad riders twisted in their saddles, and one slowly pitched back over the rear of his mount.

  Mykel turned in the saddle. “Third squad! Close up on me!” As he spoke, he could see the attackers re-forming. It wouldn’t be long before they started up the road toward third squad.

  “We’ll keep riding,” he told Chyndylt. If third squad attempted to retreat, they’d end up pinned against the stockade at the mine. He doubted they could get through the prisoners, in any case. “Send back a scout to get as many of the local Cadmians up here as you can. We’ll take the west side. Let them have the east.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Third squad! Quick trot to the level flat ahead!”

  Mykel kept watching the riders below, swirling under the camp wall
s, with an occasional rider being picked off by the tower Cadmians.

  A horn sounded a triplet, then a second.

  The swirling mass of blue coalesced into a rough formation.

  “Third squad! Halt!” Mykel reined up on the flatter section of the mine road, below which was a slight incline down to the mining camp. The attackers would have to climb the rise, such as it was, but it was the best that he could manage.

  The attackers began a charge, at close to a full gallop.

  “Firing line! On the oblique!” Mykel barked out. “Bring down the lead mounts!”

  His own rifle was up even before he had finished shouting out the commands. He forced himself to sight on the mount of one of the first riders in blue, squeezing the trigger with an even pressure, and willing the shot home.

  Crack!

  The lead mount lurched, then went down, at enough of an angle that the mount to the left also fell.

  Mykel targeted another mount, more to one side, and fired, twice, before that horse stumbled and collapsed.

  The continuing fire of the Cadmian rifles began to take a toll, and the blue-clad riders slowed behind a mass of fallen mounts and men caught in the space between the road walls.

  To his left, Mykel saw Meryst and his rankers also laying down a curtain of fire. The attackers tried to bring their ri-j fles to bear, but seemed hampered by their numbers and a lack of a clear formation and leadership.

  As he reloaded, Mykel glanced back over his shoulder. A good ten prisoners, five pairs, each pair linked by chains, were running down the center of the road, between third squad and the local Cadmians, taking advantage of the local Cadmian troopers’ concentration on repelling the attack of blue-clad riders.

  “Save us! Save us!” The prisoners raced toward where the attacking horsemen had broken into groups behind all the fallen men and mounts.

  A squad leader wheeled his mount toward the prisoners, then reined up and aimed his rifle over the fallen men and mounts. The first shot took the leading prisoner through the chest, and he sprawled onto the road dragging down the man chained to him.

  More shots filled the space between the road walls. Several more prisoners went down.

  A horn sounded twin doublets, twice.

  The blue mass of riders seemed to swirl, then turn and retreat downhill.

  Mykel fired the last shots in his rifle, watching as another trooper in blue sagged in the saddle, and as the rider beside the wounded man grabbed the reins and guided the disabled man’s mount down the road toward Dramuria.

  A scattering of shots continued, chasing the attackers downhill toward and past the walls of the mining prison camp. Two of the trailing riders were hit, one slumping over his mount’s neck, the other flying backward and sideways off his horse, his body being jerked along for a good ten yards by the single boot caught in the stirrups before he struck the stones, unmoving.

  The attackers had close to two companies, although it had been hard to tell exactly because they had not kept in much of a formation or in any real order.

  “Cease fire!” he ordered, although most of the firing had died away. “Reload and hold!”

  From the other side of the road, Meryst echoed the command.

  Mykel glanced downhill at the wounded and dead prisoners sprawled across the graystones of the road. He looked sideways across a space of four yards at the other captain, catching Meryst’s eyes. “The prisoners? Why did they shoot them?”

  “The western seltyrs don’t believe that a man can change,” replied Meryst. “Once he has become tainted with evil, he can only be a slave or dead.”

  “So they shot the prisoners?”

  “Slaves and prisoners cannot be allowed to escape.”

  Mykel winced. He looked at the dead mounts, and dead and wounded attackers strewn on the road. Then he glanced back around him. There were at least three empty saddles from those among third squad. Only three? That was in itself amazing, or a testament to the poor shooting of the attackers.

  Where had the blue riders come from? Had they merely evaded Seventeenth Company? Or had they overwhelmed it?

  67

  After a late supper, and well after Sentya and Zistele had gone to bed—and to sleep—Lystrana and Dainyl sat in the darkened sitting room, each in an upholstered chair with a square table set in the corner between them. Lystrana had turned off the light-torches earlier. With their Talent, they needed little light to see. Each held a goblet of golden brandy.

  “Neither the marshal nor the Highest want me back in Dramur anytime soon. That’s clear.” Dainyl fingered his chin, too square compared to that of most alectors.

  ‘They’re afraid that you’ll put a stop to whatever they have in mind.“

  “They don’t want me crossing them, the way Tyanylt did? Have you ever found out any more about that?”

  “No. It’s as though he never existed.” She raised her eyebrow. “That’s the way they have always dealt with those who will not follow their plans. Would you expect otherwise?”

  “No. One could hope… but no.”

  “Some matters do not change.” Lystrana lifted her goblet and sniffed the brandy. “This is good.”

  “Better than what Kylana remembers of Ifryn,” replied Dainyl sardonically. “I wish that I could figure out what they have in mind. They want an armed revolt. What I don’t understand is why. It’s not merely preempting trouble. Things wouldn’t have gotten this far for decades. Do you believe they’re thinking that much ahead?”

  Lystrana laughed. “They might be, but that doesn’t explain why they don’t tell you. There’s something else.” Her husky voice died away before she spoke again. “All of these i revolts, these problems, are all in out-of-the-way places— Dramur, Hyalt, Iron Stem… Coren…”

  “Coren? I asked the marshal. He said that the locals were protesting the logging rules and setting fires, and that it was weeks before word got to Elcien. What happened?”

  “Someone started setting fires in the forests there last fall. Local patrollers began tracing the arsonists. Last month, there was another fire. They tracked the arsonists through the snow. The patrollers never came back. Another set of patrollers found blood on the snow, but no bodies. Three of them were shot and killed. One escaped. When he got back to Coren, he found that patroller headquarters had been blown up. The whole town revolted. It took weeks to get word back because the patroller had to hide until he could flag down a sandoxen coach.”

  “Why did the locals revolt?”

  “What the marshal said was essentially right. The life-force alectors in Lyterna calculate how much should be logged on what schedule. There’s some room for local needs and such, but some loggers always want more coins. Late last harvest they started logging more trees and sending them downriver in rafts. Somewhere west of Vysta, in the south part of the Mitt Hills, on the north side of the river, a trader opened a mill and began selling timber and planks to locals there. He wasn’t paying his tariffs, and he was dumping all the wastes into the stream that drained into the river. He was caught and executed in Novem. That was when the fires started.”

  Dainyl shook his head. “Always the golds.” He sipped his brandy.

  “We all have our weaknesses, dearest.”

  “Maybe whatever this Asulet tells me when I get to

  Lyterna will make things clear.“ Dainyl had his doubts that any alector suggested by Shastylt would be of much help in figuring out what was behind the mess in Dramur.

  “I checked the records. Asulet has been a senior alector in lifeforce management for more than a hundred years. It could be longer, but I’d have to get a seal-warrant to open the archives.”

  “Lifeforce management? What does that have to do with the Myrmidons?” Dainyl thought for a moment. “The Highest seemed to think it was important. He was dissembling about the ancient ones—the soarers—but not about that.”

  “They’re keeping something about the ancient ones hidden. I checked again. There aren’t any re
cords anywhere about them. There’s not a single real fact or a single specific location where one was sighted, or where any ruins or artifacts have been found.”

  “That’s because they’re more powerful than anyone wants to admit.”

  “I’d say it’s because they’re intelligent, and what we’re doing is causing them to die out.”

  “There’s no question they’re intelligent,” replied Dainyl. “You think that our management of lifeforce mass is causing them to die out?”

  “They were already dying out. There were ruins when the first alectors arrived. If we’d had any conflicts with them, there would have been records of fights, legends, that sort of thing.”

  “But we’re making Acorus warmer. If they need the cold…”

  “Then we’re causing them to die out,” Lystrana said. “But if we don’t, then what do we do when the lifeforce on Ifryn is gone?”

  They sat in silence for several moments.

  “Do you think the marshal and your Highest know you have more Talent than you’ve shown?” Lystrana finally broke the silence.

  “I don’t think so. What do you think?”

  “I think that, if they knew, you’d still be a colonel—or requested to resign.”

  “Or dead?”

  She nodded, her face somber.

  “I’ll have to be most careful.” He paused, then added, “Tell me about the Dual Scepters.”

  Lystrana looked up, both concerned and surprised. “Who—”

  “The Highest. He said that pteridons were created here, but more couldn’t be once the Dual Scepters were placed.”

  “I didn’t know that. I know that the Dual Scepters are somewhere in Corus in different places, that they have something to do with why the Tables work, and that without them we couldn’t live here, because they’re key to the link to Ifryn. Every time I’ve asked or hinted to know more… no one will say anything.”

  Dainyl nodded, slowly. “What about Table travel? How does it work?”

  Lystrana raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s one reason why they’re sending me to Lyterna. I’m supposed to be briefed on things that only the submar-shal and the marshal—and I suppose the Highest—know, and I’m to be taught how to use the Table to travel.”