'You'll learn, probably by the end of the day. We're on the lower level. This is for all the officers who handle logistics, training, and oversee the field commands. Off the north corridor are those who handle the domestic functions, roads, engineers, tariff officers…"
'I thought this was the residence of the Matrial…" Alucius ventured.
'Her quarters and offices are in the southern half. If you were delivering a message there, we'd go up the stairs here, and then turn right, and you'd hand it over to the duty assistant at the end of the corridor."
Alucius glanced at the circular stone stairs as they passed. "Thank you. I suppose I'll learn my way around."
'Oh… you will. You'll spend more time waiting here than you ever thought."
Alucius nodded and kept pace with her. The main corridor ended at another corridor that ran both left and right. The guard turned right.
The guard stopped at a closed door, on the left side of the corridor. Alucius stepped forward and knocked on the golden wood of the five-panel door.
'Yes?"
'Messenger from Eltema Post."
'Just a moment."
Alucius waited.
The door opened. A square-faced captain stood there, the first person Alucius had seen who was not in the green and purple.
Alucius opened the case and handed over the rolled message. The woman scanned it, albeit briefly, frowning slightly, and then nodded. "There won't be an immediate answer, squad leader. You may go."
'Yes, sir."
Even before he finished responding, she had closed the door. Alucius turned, looking at the guard.
'This way."
Following the guard, Alucius waited for a few steps, then reached out with his Talent, ever so gently, touching the guard's life web, and simultaneous suggesting that the messenger had been requested to wait for a response.
Then he held his breath. The guard shook her head, and squinted.
Alucius raised the screen that conveyed the impression that no one was there.
The guard paused, stopped, and turned, looking down the corridor that Alucius hoped was empty to her. She squinted again, then frowned before murmuring, "Better check later, just to make sure." Then she walked away, back toward the west portico.
Alucius was alone in a building whose structure he knew but roughly and with perhaps a glass, two at the most, before someone—or many people—became exceedingly suspicious.
He turned, letting his Talent seek the source—or the destination—of the torque threads.
From where he stood, he judged that convergence point to be a good sixty yards to the south, and two levels down. The problem was that he'd seen no sign of stairs or shafts that led down, and there was a solid wall twenty yards to the south.
He shrugged to himself. That meant he had to go up a level, somehow cross to the southern half of the residence—the Matrial's half—and descend four levels, all in less than a glass and without being discovered.
He might as well start.
Still holding his screen, he moved deliberately back along the corridor. He kept about a yard from the wall and walked as quietly as possible. A young woman in the green and purple that almost everyone in the residence seemed to wear stepped out of a doorway to his left, crossing so closely in front of him that he lurched to a stop. The room from which she had come adjoined a larger one, but neither had another exit.
Letting her precede him, he moved toward the staircase, but she passed the staircase and headed down the side corridor to the left. Alucius started up the smooth and polished stone steps. At the top of the circular stairs, he paused, looking to the right. There was a wide hallway that ran southward, brightly lit from the high windows in the raised roof. At the end of the hallway was a silver gate. Before the gate were two guards in purple and green. There were two more guards standing on the other side of the closed gate.
Alucius thought. A gate with that many guards indicated that it was used. He eased along the left side of the hallway, avoiding the morning sunlight angling onto the shimmering oblong green stones of the floor. He doubted that his Talent-screen would help if he cast a shadow.
He stopped a good five yards short of the gate, easing to the side of a tall ebony cabinet with a glass front. He did not look to see what was in the cabinet. From where he stood, the guards could not have seen him even without his Talent-screen.
As he waited, he used his Talent to study the gate. The faintest hint of Talent played around it, and especially around the iron lock inset above the silver lever handles. Even if he could have used his Talent to work the lock, the disruption of the Talent flow would tell someone that the gate had been opened.
He took a slow and deep breath and continued to wait.
Behind him, after a good half glass, he heard the rapid click of boots on the stone tiles of the hallway. He turned and watched. Two women in Matrite uniforms, but with collar insignia he did not recognize, walked toward the gate. One looked to be ten years older than Alucius, the other more like his mother's age. The older woman showed definite signs of Talent, though it was well contained within her. As they neared him Alucius stiffened, but both passed without so much as looking in his direction.
He slipped away from the wall and the cabinet and followed them, perhaps a yard back, listening.
'She's summoned us… don't know why this time… unless it's the Dramurans…"
They stopped opposite the silver gate.
After several moments, a woman clad almost entirely in purple, ex cept for the forest green cuffs on her tunic sleeves and uniform collar, appeared on the far side of the gate. She inserted a key and opened the gate.
Alucius edged forward, slowly, hoping he remained unnoticed, his heart still beating fast, because he felt someone should have noticed him, even as he scarcely wanted that to happen.
The aide swung open the silver gate, which, surprisingly to Alucius, squeaked slightly.
The two officers stepped through, Alucius practically on their heels.
'Marshal, the Matrial is expecting you in the situation room." The aide turned, and the other two women followed. Returning quickly to the left-hand side of the corridor, Alucius let some distance grow between him and the women, since he had absolutely no intention of ending up in the same room as the Matrial. Every feeling he had screamed against that.
The walls were smoothly plastered, the finish slightly off-white with a green tint. The floor remained the same polished oblong green stone tiles, with light pouring in from the high clerestory windows above the corridor.
The three women headed for a set of double doors directly ahead, where another pair of armed women guards waited. Rather than follow, Alucius slipped into the first side corridor, hoping that the rooms there might give him a clue. There were three doors on the short corridor. The first was without a lock and was little more than a storage room containing brushes and what he thought was cleaning gear. The second was empty, he could tell, but held a table desk and cabinets. The third was locked, but empty inside. He took another long and slow deep breath before reinforcing his screen and stepping into the main hallway.
Although the guards at the double doors looked in his direction, and he was certain they could not have missed seeing him, neither moved. Ten yards short of the dead-end main corridor that stopped at the double doors was another wide corridor to his left. With nowhere else to go, Alucius took it.
He passed another short corridor to his right, leading to another set of double doors, unguarded. He could not have said why, but that set of doors did not lead anywhere he wanted or needed to go. The next side corridor was to the right, and he slipped into it. There was only one door, a double door to his right. Since he could sense no one inside, he eased it open, glancing inside to view the vacant sitting room of what was clearly an opulent guest suite, and one that felt as though it had not been occupied in years, immaculate though it appeared, with the upholstered green leather settee, the golden oak writing table, and thic
k green-and-tan carpet over the polished parquet floor.
He eased the door closed without entering the chambers, and moved back to the main east-west corridor he had just left, following it until it ended where it joined another north-south corridor. Alucius turned south.
Ahead was a brightly lit rotunda.
Alucius stopped just short of the columned arch—half buried in the sides of the corridor—that marked the entrance to the rotunda—roughly fifteen yards across.
A quarter of the way around the rotunda on the east side was another set of double doors, these set in what appeared to be false columns, but were not. There were two guards outside the double doors doors Alucius felt led to the Matrial's private chambers.
He paused, thinking.
There was no help for it. He eased into the rotunda and movec along the curved wall until he was within less than two yards of the guard on the north side. From there, with his Talent, Alucius reachec out and touched their life webs, as he had with the guard on the flooi below. One hand rested on his sabre. Nothing happened.
Then he implanted the suggestion that someone had rapped on the other side of the door.
The two guards exchanged glances, before the one on the left opened the door.
He slipped between the guards, just before the one on the right closed the door, and into the chamber beyond, a small and spare foyer with neither furnishings nor wall hangings. He was getting a strong impression that the Matrial liked matters simple and spare—at least for a ruler.
By now, his head was beginning to ache, and he hadn't even beguni to discover how to get down four levels, although he knew he was close to the point where the purplish pink torque threads converged. Leaning against the wall on the north side of the foyer, he massaged his forehead and temples.
On the east side of the foyer was a square arch. Alucius moved toward it, sensing that there was someone somewhere before him. Beyond the arch was a sitting room of sorts, less than five yards deep, but more than twice that in width. The north end of the room ended in an archway into what looked to be a library. The south end also provided an archway, fitted with doors currently open, into a courtyard garden. On the east wall was a single door.
As Alucius surveyed the room before him, he almost jumped at the sight of a young woman sitting on a chair, but she had been so quiet and drawn into herself that he had not even observed her. She wore a torque and did not even look in his direction.
He waited for several moments, wondering whether she would move, or whether he would need to stun her or try to persuade her to move. As he watched, she gave a deep sigh, then stood and picked up a small basket, which she carried with her as she moved toward the courtyard garden.
Alucius eased his way across the sitting room, around two settees and a low table, and past a simple bronze holder that contained another of the ancient light-torches. The handle to the door was a simple silver lever. He could sense neither Talent nor other energies in the door, although there was a sense of great power—and purple-pinkness—beyond the door.
After a brief hesitation, he pushed the lever down and opened the door, slipping past in and closing it, even as he scanned the chamber. He staggered as he stood inside the closed door of what had to be the Matrial's bedchamber. Staggered because, less than three yards before him was a cascade of that horribly wrong and shocking purple-pink, looking to his Talent-senses both like a silent waterfall and the twisted pink trunk of an ancient and somehow evil tree.
The rush of power was centered and seemingly contained within a circle of golden stone floor tiles, ringed with black. Ignoring his distaste, he studied the wrongness and power that flowed from above down through the circle. The focus was so narrow that he had not even sensed the vastness of that power until he had stepped inside the bed chamber and within a few yards of the circle. Whatever focused those threads lay directly below.
He stepped around the circle, his trousers brushing the edge of the dais on which the high and curtained bed was set, moving toward the dressing chambers on the south side of the room.
In the back of the small closet off the dressing room, a closet empty of anything, Alucius could sense a staircase. He studied the wall—totally devoid of anything except an ancient light-torch in a bracket. He tried to concentrate on the torch, and then the bracket. There was something about the bracket.
He tugged on it. Nothing. Then he twisted. When he twisted to the left, there was a solid click, and a crack appeared in the corner where the walls met at a right angle. The left side swung back, revealing a narrow circular staircase, also lit with ancient light-torches.
Alucius examined the back side of the concealed door. After making sure that there was a lever on the inside, he stepped inside, and then eased the panel shut. The light-torches were dim but adequate as he descended the narrow stone steps, moving downward, all too conscious of the power so few yards away.
He could feel the silver torque around his own neck getting warmer and warmer with each step that he took down the staircase. Perspiration began to well up on his forehead, although there was a breeze of sorts flowing up from the depths below. His fingers brushed the metal of the collar. The heat radiating from it told him that it was getting hot enough to brand him.
He could feel he had no choice. He reached up and, using his Talent to contain the force in the lock, broke the torque apart. Immediately, he felt as though a weight had been lifted from him, as though his vision were clearer, sharper. He thrust the broken torque inside his tunic. He paused, then drew out the nightsilk skull mask and wiggled it over his head and into place. He also dropped his concealment shield. If he were caught now, anyone who could reach him could certainly sense his Talent use, and being seen would be the least of his problems.
With a grim smile behind the nightsilk, he resumed his descent.
The staircase, if narrow and ancient, was clean and without dust, although the centers of the stone steps were slightly hollowed out. When he reached the bottom, there was a landing less than a yard deep and not much wider, and a silver door, with a crystalline door lever, which shone with an inner purple glow. Talent-links surrounded the latch on the door, as well as the handle itself.
For a time, Alucius puzzled about them, but no matter how he traced them with his Talent, he could see no way to unravel them, and they were so pervasive that he could not use his senses to look beyond the door.
Finally, he unsheathed his sabre, and shrouding it in his own Talent, pressed the silver door lever down, letting the door swing inward. Then, using the sabre he cut through the Talent barrier and stepped through the doorway.
A line of purplish light flared around him, then subsided. He stood in a small antechamber, empty, unfurnished, with smooth white alabaster walls, dimly lit by two light-torches set in brackets on each side of a solid oak door, a door without locks or iron binding, and only a simple latch. Alucius did not hesitate, but took three steps and lifted the latch, then pulled the door toward himself.
He was enfolded by blinding purplish pink light, light that was visible not just to his Talent-senses, but to his eyes as well. Slowly, he stepped into the room, finding that the very air itself seemed to thicken, to resist his advance. He took two more steps until he could make out the source of the light.
For a moment, he just looked.
Hanging in midair, suspended in the circular underground room by no visible means of support, was a massive, multifaceted crystal. Tal-entlike roots, of a purple energy so dark it was almost black, vanished into the rock below the crystal, but the roots were invisible to the eye. Above the crystal, the compressed trunk of purplish pink torque threads seemed to writhe, with energy of some sort flowing to and from the crystal, although Alucius had the sense that most flowed into the crystal, rather than out and back upward.
His eyes registered another oak door, a quarter of the way around the circular wall to his left. He looked back over his shoulder. The door through which he had entered had vanished! Then,
he realized that it lay behind some sort of Talent-illusion.
His eyes went back to the floating crystal.
What had he expected? He wasn't certain, only that it was wrong, and that he had to do something. He looked at the massive crystal, seemingly hanging in midair.
How was he supposed to destroy that?
Alucius could feel the heat building inside his nightsilk undergarments, and somewhere outside the crystal chamber in the room behind him or on the staircase—or behind the door to his left, he could hear voices, and steps.
He looked at the crystal, then at the sabre in his hand, then back at the crystal.
He willed dark-Talent to enfold the blade of the sabre. After a moment, with all his effort, mental and physical, he swung the shimmering edge of the blade toward the massive crystal.
Hieron, Madrien
As always, the Matrial sat on the south side of the conference table, her presence somehow standing out even against the light of the wide windows behind her. "What does Overcaptain Haeragn have to say about it?"
'We received a message this morning," replied the marshal. "She has grave concerns about our ability to significantly expand the number of troopers under arms. She had already pointed out that even a total conquest and impression of all possible men in the Iron Valleys would not be likely to raise adequate numbers and now…" The marshal let her words fade.
'With the Lord-Protector's attack and the failures in the Iron Valleys, you think the situation in the south will soon become impossible? Is that what you are suggesting?" The Matrial's beautiful smile was as cold as the winter ice on the Black Cliffs of Despair. "Marshal Aluyn sent a dispatch last night. She should be returning—" The Matrial broke off in midsentence, her violet eyes glazing over.
Without speaking, she stood and walked to the bell pull on the wall. "You must excuse me. If you would wait…"
Legacies Page 50