Soarer's Choice

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Dainyl was well aware of that—and the fact that his operations against the rebels in Hyalt and Tempre had resulted in the loss of more than that in the last few weeks alone.

  “Be nice. Tell her we understand. Also tell her that I said times are changing and that we’ll likely be needing more this year.”

  Zernylta smiled. “Yes, sir.”

  After she had left, Dainyl turned back and looked out the window to watch one of the dispatch pteridons land on the flight stage in the courtyard. The clouds were moderately high and not too dark. Over the end-days, nothing had happened. Dainyl corrected himself—no news of anything happening had reached him. He and Lystrana had enjoyed the time together, although it had rained most of Decdi, fore-shadowing the cold rains of fall, and the snows that would follow the icy rain all too soon.

  He turned at the knock.

  “Marshal?” Wyalt, acting as duty messenger within headquarters, stood at Dainyl’s study door, holding an envelope. “This came in for you on the dispatch run.”

  Dainyl took the envelope. “Thank you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Wyalt bowed, turned, and departed.

  The envelope bore Dainyl’s name and title. He opened it and began to read.

  Congratulations, Marshal. We wish you the best.

  The creature about which you wrote is best discussed here in Lyterna, at your convenience. We look forward to seeing you whenever you appear.

  The signature was Asulet’s.

  Dainyl smiled. As time went by, Asulet’s mannerism of insisting that any information Dainyl needed required a trip to Lyterna was tending toward becoming wearing—except that Asulet dared not leave Lyterna, not while his rival Paeylt waited for him to make an error. And some of the information Dainyl had learned from Asulet was not to be entrusted to ink.

  He had best get to Lyterna—and return—quickly, before some other trouble appeared, and before Alcyna arrived on Septi. In fact, there was no reason not to go within the glass—right after he signed the concurrence Zernylta was drafting.

  Because everything took longer than he’d anticipated, Dainyl did not leave headquarters for close to a glass and a half. By then the clouds had darkened, and a light rain was falling, turning the stone-paved streets liquid silver as the duty coach carried him to the Hall of Justice.

  When he got out of the coach he ordered Wyalt back to headquarters, since he had no idea how long he would be in Lyterna and since the driver would be needed to carry Zernylta’s messages to the Palace and the Hall of Justice.

  “You sure, sir?”

  “I’m sure. I’ll see you later.”

  Dainyl had to be more circumspect in entering the lower chambers, using his Talent earlier to conceal himself as he crossed the main hall where Zelyert himself was on the dais receiving petitions from unhappy landers and indigens. Few decisions of local justicers would be changed, Dainyl knew, but there was always the chance that an injustice had in fact occurred.

  When he reached the Table chamber, the guards nodded. Dainyl nodded back to Tregaryt.

  “Do you expect to return today, Marshal?” asked Chastyl.

  “I do, but…” Dainyl shrugged.

  The recorder nodded knowingly.

  Dainyl stepped up onto the Table, squared his shoulders, and concentrated on the purpled darkness beneath, sliding through the mirrored surface easily and…

  …into the chill beneath. Unlike his last translation, the tube was still. Dainyl thought he could sense hints of greenish ripples around the hazy perimeter of the tube, but he concentrated on the pink wedge locator that was Lyterna…and found himself hurling through the silvered-pink barrier…

  …and standing on the Table in Lyterna.

  Myenfel—the Recorder of Deeds for Lyterna—stood watching him. Beside Myenfel were two white-haired alectors in gray—both with lightcutters and concentrating on the Table.

  “Is every Table in Acorus guarded, Myenfel?” asked Dainyl as he stepped off the Table and onto the marble-tiled floor.

  “So far as I know, Marshal. Several recorders have had to request alectors be added to their staffs.”

  “Places like Prosp and Blackstear?”

  The recorder nodded. “Now that your Seventh Company is in Tempre, once a new regional alector is appointed and the Table is repaired, you may be requested to supply Table guards there.” His voice turned dry. “Particularly since there are so few alectors remaining in Tempre.”

  “I doubt that the new RA would wish to employ any such as those who died in Tempre,” Dainyl said.

  “That might depend on whom the Duarch Samist appoints.”

  Myenfel had a point. Dainyl was more convinced than ever that Samist and Brekylt were working together against Khelaryt. “I’m here to see Asulet.”

  “He said to expect you. Can you find your way?”

  “By now I had best be able to.” Dainyl smiled, then turned toward the door.

  The stone-walled corridor outside was empty, but well lit by the light-torches on the wall. At times, Dainyl found himself amazed that all of Lyterna had been carved out of solid rock literally hundreds of generations earlier—yet it did not look ancient. He began to walk more quickly, along the corridor to the first cross-corridor toward the stone staircase to the next level.

  At that moment, a hidden doorway on the left opened, and an alector garbed in gray and black stepped out and waited as Dainyl approached. His uncharacteristic gray eyes radiated friendliness, as did his Talent. Beneath the outward friendliness was the cold precision of a lightcannon. “Marshal Dainyl. I had heard you came to Lyterna often. I do not believe we have met. I’m Paeylt.”

  “The engineering master? I’ve heard much of you and your skill.” Dainyl stopped and nodded politely. He also maintained his Talent shields while assessing those of the engineer—strong, but apparently not quite so strong as his own. Still…

  “Really? Those are among the more flattering words I’ve heard in years.” Paeylt’s voice was a warm, soothing baritone.

  “I doubt anyone would slight your skills as a master engineer or as a planner of cities.”

  Paeylt laughed, also warmly. “Already, I see why you are Marshal of Myrmidons.”

  “I was fortunate.” And he had been, if not in the manner the words connoted.

  “Indeed you were, but you are more than that, and you will have to be even more, especially bearing the shade of the ancients.” He paused. “I assume you are here to see Asulet, and I will not keep you, but I did wish to see you for myself.” After a polite nod, he stepped back into the doorway.

  The stone door slid shut, silently, but not before Dainyl got a quick glimpse of a large space filled with equipment he could not recognize or identify in the time before the opening closed. He continued along the narrow corridor until he reached the staircase up to the main gallery east of the so-called Council Hall. From there he walked past the grand pteridon mural of a battle scene that never had been—not until a few weeks ago, hundreds, if not thousands of years after the mural had been painted. Two more turns, and another narrow hallway carried Dainyl out into the gallery holding the niches with the ancient specimens of life on Acorus—and the spare pteridons—all preserved in time against a future need.

  Dainyl turned right and made his way to the first door.

  Asulet was waiting in his oak-paneled, windowless study, with its entire wall of bookshelves and the painting—or plan—of Dereka as it had been planned to have been built, with twin green towers.

  “I thought you might be here today.” The elder alector stood beside a wide table desk of ancient oak. He gestured to one of the two oak armchairs, while taking the other.

  “I only received your message this morning.” As Dainyl sat, he could feel the airflow from the wall air ducts.

  “Would that others took my communications with such care and haste,” Asulet began. “While I would be among the first to offer my congratulations, Marshal, your success indicates the perilous situation in whic
h we alectors of Acorus find ourselves, as well as the perilous situation that faces you personally.”

  Dainyl suspected he knew what Asulet meant, but decided to let the elder alector explain. But when Asulet did not speak, Dainyl asked, “That a Myrmidon perceived to have so little Talent is marshal?”

  “You have disabused those with any intelligence of the idea that you are weak in Talent. No, I was referring to the fact that you now carry the tinge of the ancients.”

  “The green? That was Rhelyn’s doing. He attacked me with one of the weapons of the ancients.” Dainyl went on to explain, finishing up with, “…and it seems to be fading.”

  “That never fades. At best you can keep it in check.” The older alector shook his head. “You may be strong enough to do so, but you must watch yourself all the time, in how you use your Talent and for what.”

  “Why is the green such a danger?”

  “When one becomes totally green, one ceases to be an alector, and…” Asulet shrugged.

  While Dainyl thought he understood what Asulet meant, he could see other possibilities. “An ancient? Could an alector truly become one?”

  “That, to my knowledge, has never occurred.” Asulet frowned, then fingered his chin, as if debating how much more to say. “All intelligent life that lives on the same world must, by nature, share physical similarities, and more than that. The ancients appear to be more like pteridons in that they are Talent creatures, if of a differing kind of Talent. It might be possible to transform an alector into an ancient. Certainly, Table travel can twist the less Talented into all manner of Talent creatures.” He shrugged. “But who would wish such? I was referring more to the danger of becoming less of an alector.”

  That was what Danyl had surmised, but the other question had intrigued him because of what he had already experienced among the ancients.

  “Another and greater peril faces us all. For now, in order to preserve what we have created, we must guard the Tables day and night to keep from being swamped.”

  “What else can be done? It is clear to all who can see that the Master Scepter will shortly be transferred to Efra, and yet Khelaryt cannot see that.”

  “No…he cannot,” said Asulet sadly, “for many reasons.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone tell him?”

  “Did you?”

  “No…I didn’t realize he didn’t know—or couldn’t accept that knowledge until I was in a situation where I could not say anything. Why doesn’t anyone tell him?”

  “Because once he is forced to admit that Acorus will not receive the Master Scepter, he loses much of his power, and divided as the High Alectors are, they do not wish to see even greater conflicts break out.”

  Greater conflicts?

  “That is why he favors you,” Asulet went on. “You kept the revolt small and crushed it.” His eyes glinted, but Dainyl wasn’t certain whether the expression was humor or something else, and he could not Talent-read what the old alector felt. “How you did so is a mystery and should remain so. Those who seek to overthrow the existing way are always more awed by what they cannot understand.”

  “At times. At other times, they merely ignore it.”

  “Like Paeylt. I understand he deigned to greet you.”

  Dainyl should have felt surprise, he supposed, but he did not. “You watch him closely.”

  “I have him watched. For the moment, that is best.” Asulet cleared his throat. “First…the creature you wrote about. It is another animal out of the past, and its presence in the Iron Valleys bespeaks change. It grazes on plants that are rather rare—quarasote, we called them. They actually take up quartz into their shoots. When grown, these bushes are sharp enough to rip through leather. The nightsheep usually graze in the area of the ice sands. That’s why few alectors even know about them. They can only be controlled by Talent, and their horns are sharp enough to cut through even thin sheets of metal. They’re inedible, of course, because of the quartz and mineral intake. They tend not to be aggressive unless strongly provoked. Something must have pushed them south. That is far more troublesome than the creatures themselves, although I would not advise indigens or landers to approach them closely.”

  “Because only Talent can control them?”

  “Exactly. I’d judge that the ancients are behind this, but why I could not say.”

  “You’re telling me because Zelyert would ignore the signs and Khelaryt can do little.”

  Asulet laughed gently. “Sulerya thinks highly of you, and each time I speak with you I see why.”

  “I think highly of your daughter.”

  “There is another matter, as well,” Asulet said after a moment of silence. “That is the growing cooperation between Paeylt and Ruvryn. As relatives, they once exhibited some rivalry, but that has now passed.”

  Just as Dainyl thought he had some inkling of who was plotting with whom, someone else came up, not that it was surprising, he reflected, that two disgruntled engineers might conspire for mutual benefit.

  “Paeylt has decided he cannot oust you from here or gain control of Lyterna directly,” volunteered Dainyl. “So he is passing information to Ruvryn, or to engineers that work for him. Is that it?”

  “You knew of this?”

  “No. But it fits. Shastylt mentioned special weapons being fabricated at Faitel. With what you have said, I have to question whether he was part of that alliance.”

  “That is possible. I had not heard of that complication. Shastylt did say weapons?”

  “He did.”

  “Too much deviousness always leads to ruin. You might remember that, Dainyl.”

  “I will.” Dainyl had already discovered that. “What else is Paeylt plotting?”

  “He thinks he should be the Duarch of Ludar, but he would be willing to let Samist remain as Duarch of Elcien.”

  “Why can’t anyone think about holding Acorus together until after the succession of the Master Scepter takes place, and then worry about who has power?”

  “Because,” Asulet replied dryly, “whoever is ready to take power immediately after the transfer is likely to keep it.”

  “Is that because of what will happen when the transfer takes place?”

  Asulet nodded.

  “What will happen?”

  “Both Duarches will have their powers limited, if it does not happen sooner for other reasons.”

  “How…?”

  “That I cannot say, but it will happen.” Asulet rose. “I should not have said even that, but you are trustworthy and should know such. You probably need to get back to Elcien, Marshal.”

  Dainyl stood. Once more, the older alector had said what he would say, and nothing Dainyl could do would be likely to elicit more information. “Thank you, Senior Alector.”

  “My thanks to you.”

  Dainyl felt watched as he retraced his route back to the Table chamber, and he wondered if there happened to be any High Alector who was not involved in plots and schemes of some sort. Probably not, because those who were not initially involved would have had to build their own alliances and allies to protect themselves, as he had with Asulet and Sulerya—and Lystrana, of course. Zelyert might not be an enemy, but Dainyl certainly couldn’t count the High Alector of Justice as an ally, either.

  He stepped through the door of the Table chamber, closing it behind himself, and checking the chamber, which still held the recorder and the two older guards in gray, then approached the Table.

  “Have a good translation, Marshal,” offered Myenfel.

  “Thank you.” Dainyl started to step onto the Table, when someone appeared on the mirrored surface.

  Chill billowed away from the figure, a tall alectress clad in the green and gray of a Myrmidon captain of Ifryn. Her form held a strange greenness, somewhat like that of the ancients, but not exactly. Her lightcutter flashed at the guards, cutting one down immediately.

  Dainyl clamped his own shields around her as she triggered the lightcutter.

  The blui
sh light flared, reflected from Dainyl’s shields back across her abdomen, and she toppled, slowly, hitting the Table with a dull thud.

  He dropped his shields and lifted his own lightcutter, sensing another welling of Talent, this one twisting and uncontrolled.

  The next appearance was that of a wild translation—half wild sandox from the neck up, a wide triangular head with a glittering horn, and crystalline blue eyes, and Myrmidon-clad below. Like the captain who lay on the Table, beginning to turn to dust, the second translation held a lightcutter sidearm.

  Dainyl shot the beast through the chest, right below the neck. The wild translation collapsed. Unlike that of the dead captain, the translation’s body remained solid.

  “Thank you, Marshal,” Myenfel said, from beside the collapsed gray uniform of the dead Table guard. “I’d suggest you hasten your translation.”

  Dainyl stepped onto the Table, but bent and dragged the dead form of the wild translation off the Table, and then the collapsed uniform and equipment of the dead Myrmidon captain—if indeed she had even been such. He straightened and concentrated on the darkness beneath the Table…

  …and the purpled darkness rose up around him with its chill. He began to search for the brilliant white locator of Elcien, but as he did, lines of green coruscated along the purple translation tube. So bright were the lines of green that he had difficulty discerning any of the locator wedges.

  One green beam struck his shoulder, and a combination of pain and…something else—something that felt welcoming and familiar before it faded—knifed through him. Another seemingly knocked his feet from under him, and that was nonsense, because no one really stood in translation. There wasn’t the same physical reality.

  Dainyl struggled, but the locators were gone—or blocked out for the moment.

  There was one green diamond in the distance, and he reached for it. Better to be somewhere than end up dying nowhere or becoming a wild translation himself.

  He flashed through a green-silver barrier and……stood bent over in a narrow tunnel, one so low that his hair still brushed the roof. Warm air flowed toward him.

  Where was he?

  He glanced toward the light…and swallowed. Outside he could see a small flat area, surrounded by rugged boulders. He recognized the place. He was in the mountain cave of the ancients in Dramur.