“Sir?”
“If the Duarchy has fallen, ammunition won’t be easy to come by.”
“Yes, sir.” While Loryalt’s face held the question of what the Cadmians were to do next, he did not ask.
“We’ll gather the officers later.”
“Yes, sir.” Loryalt turned his mount, then looked back at Mykel, his expression one of worry, awe, and fear.
Mykel forced a wry smile.
Chyndylt rode toward Mykel, reining up. “Sir?”
Even if he had not seen what had happened, Mykel would have known what the senior squad leader’s presence meant. “Undercaptain Fabrytal?”
“Yes, sir. They got him on that first big charge. He took out a bunch of them.”
“I’m sorry.” Mykel was sorry, knowing that, in a way, he had contributed to Fabrytal’s death, merely by the example of his own actions. Few Cadmians had Talent, and Mykel had survived too many ill-advised excesses in battle only through his Talent—and that had set a poor example, even if he had cut more than a few battles short with his efforts. “You’re undercaptain now, Chyndylt.”
“Yes, sir.”
“As I told Loryalt, have your men collect every scrap of ammunition they can and every weapon…”
Mykel gave the same orders to Zendyr, the senior squad leader of Thirteenth Company who would have to take Dyarth’s place, and to Culeyt, who was the last of the officers at the battle to report. Then he sent off a messenger to find Rhystan and request that the senior captain rejoin the main body. He could only hope that Sixteenth Company had not suffered casualties from the steaming water of the river.
As he watched his men pick up the fallen weapons and ammunition, take care of the wounded, and seek spoils from the fallen Reillies—trying to ignore the looks from the rankers whose eyes seemed to linger on him—Mykel sat tiredly in the saddle, looking out across the carnage, knowing that there were close to a thousand bodies lying on the winter-tan grass, staining it with dark splotches that would vanish under the winter snow that would fall in the days or weeks to come.
In one year, or in ten, would anyone know that hundreds had died on the hillside because of…what? Because the alectors of Corus had wanted order, no matter what the cost, and the hill people wanted the absolute freedom to kill and pillage?
The soarer had said that the Ifrits were no more. What had the ancients done? How had they destroyed Elcien and Ludar? And Faitel, his own home? What had happened to his family? Sesalia and her children—and Viencet? Could the soarer have lied to him?
He shook his head. For whatever reason, the soarers did not lie.
But why had the soarer appeared to him? In front of everyone? And directed him to Tempre? Then, where else could they go? Nothing in the Iron Valleys would support even the reduced Third and Fourth Battalions. Nor would Borlan.
He continued to watch over the quick and the dead, and those who were living and would not survive that much longer.
94
Link to the world. Change or you will die…Link to the world…Change or you will die…As Dainyl grappled with the web of the ancients, trying to orient himself, those words rang through his mind. Never…never had he really believed that the ancients had that much power…even though he had felt the certainty behind them…and the sadness…that incredible sadness.
In the dark amber-green of the web, he forced his sluggish thoughts back to what he had to do. He had to get to Dereka. He had to…
He struggled and fumbled, his thoughts freezing once more when he realized that some Table locators were gone—the white of Elcien, the brilliant yellow of Ludar, the brown of Faitel. He finally extended a Talent probe, one of pure green, green without his even trying, toward the web node that seemed to be closest to the crimson-gold locator that was Dereka.
For a timeless moment, nothing happened, and then he began to move. As he neared the node, he could feel that the Tables were…dead.
Not exactly dead…because they still held energy, but it was as though each locator existed independently. Instinctively, Dainyl understood that the Tables were now little more than portals for the deeper web, and each held a residual purple sliminess that he had never sensed until the Archon had begun to transfer the Master Scepter. The translation tube that had linked them, once lying on top of the web like a parasite, was gone. So was the long tube to Ifryn—except it should have been the tube to Efra now.
He extended a Talent probe upward, away from the inert Table, trying to leave the web. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he could feel himself moving upward until…
…he found himself on the library level of the recorder’s building. Papers were stacked neatly on the tables—except for one pile half strewn across the green and gold marble floor. Beside the papers was a set of shimmersilk garments—recorders’ greens—and a pair of boots.
Jonyst? Or Whelyne? Dainyl swallowed. Lystrana! Could that have happened to her? He had to get to the regional alector’s!
He glanced around the library. It was empty. He hurried down the staircase to the Table chamber, almost stumbling, as something caught at his boots. He steadied himself on the oak door frame and surveyed the chamber. The only signs of alectors were four sets of shimmersilk garments and matching boots.
He turned and started to take a step back up the stairs. He stumbled again, because his trousers had slipped enough that his boot heels had caught them. His shimmersilk greens, which had been snug before, were loose, and too long, although his boots seemed to fit. He tightened his belt, rolled up the jacket cuffs and the trouser cuffs to keep from tripping on them, and then climbed the steps again.
He hurried down through the building, seeing no one, only scattered sets of shimmersilks and boots, lying in rooms, in the corridors, but the building was empty of anyone, including landers and indigens.
How many more? Had any alectors besides himself been able to survive? Where were they? Could Lystrana have survived? She knew about the possibility of linking. He’d talked to Lystrana about the ancients’ warning, about linking directly to the world. He could only hope that she had remembered. She had to have remembered.
When he went down the last ramp and out through the main entrance, he found that the rotunda was empty of the coach or any drivers. Certainly, he could walk south to the RA’s complex. He took a deep breath and followed the stone-paved side lane toward the boulevard, but before he was more than a few paces away from the rotunda, as he turned the corner, the late, late afternoon sun struck him full in the eyes. It was so close to setting behind the mountains that its normally white orb had shifted toward the orange.
After a moment, when his eyes readjusted, he realized that the space west of the main boulevard was filled with landers and indigens. Some were shouting. He thought he heard some cheers. Quickly, tired as he was, he shielded himself with Talent as he moved toward the east side of the boulevard. He still needed to get to Lystrana—and Kytrana.
As he neared the boulevard, he could see that most of the indigens still remained on the west side, away from the section reserved for riders and coaches, although Dainyl saw neither. His Talent concealment shield seemed to be working, because no one noticed him. If they did, no one said anything.
He turned south and picked up his pace. He’d walked less than a hundred yards when he realized that his boots were loose. Not badly, but they were slipping on his feet somewhat. He concentrated on walking—and listening.
“…closed the counting house…”
“…be back…all too soon, if you ask me…”
“…tell you. They’re all gone.”
“Syphia said that when the ground rumbled and the air turned green, then the one she worked for, she vanished, turned into dust, and her clothes fell to the floor. Ha! Good cloth. Leastwise, she brought it home…”
“…see that big fellow there…he’s gone now…”
“…don’t look for what isn’t there, Fharyd. You might find it.”
“…still say…”
<
br /> Dainyl kept walking, as fast as he could. He thought about running, but the RA’s complex was too far, and he’d end up walking before long anyway.
He glanced to the west side of the boulevard once more. Some few shops were closed, but they might have been anyway, since it was Decdi and some crafters and merchants weren’t open on the end-day. But if all the alectors—or most of them—had vanished, why wasn’t there more unrest, more disturbance?
He shook his head. Why would there be? Even in Dereka, there weren’t more than a hundred alectors, if that, and outside of tariff collection overseers and a few handfuls of supervisors, how much direct contact did indigens and landers have with alectors?
In Elcien and Ludar, things would be different…
He almost stopped walking, because he doubted that there was anything left of Ludar. The city had been disintegrating before him when he’d escaped, and there was no Table left. That suggested the Tables in both Ludar and Elcien had exploded, and they were used enough that the explosion might well have leveled everything for hundreds of yards. The landers and the indigens there wouldn’t have escaped.
Ahead, on his left, he could see the open gates to the RA’s complex, the ironwork showing a hint of orange from the setting sun. He hurried toward them, then turned and walked across the paved courtyard toward the main entrance. The sound of his steps echoed in the courtyard.
The columned entryway was empty as well. Beyond, halfway across the high arched entry hall, he saw a long-haired figure sprawled on the green and gold marble. As he neared her, he could sense she was dead. From the waist up, she was—or had been—a young alectress. Below the waist, she was foreshortened, smaller, more like an indigen.
Had she tried to link to the world—and failed?
Dainyl shook his head again and hurried toward the rear corridor that would lead to the RA’s quarters. Then he stopped. Lystrana wouldn’t have been in the quarters when whatever the ancients had done had occurred. She would have been in the RA’s study.
He’d never been there, but all of the regional alectors had studies on the upper level. He headed up the center staircase at the back of the vaulted entry hall. Just beyond the landing at the top of the marble staircase was another set of shimmersilk garments, but they had belonged to an alector.
Dainyl had no idea where her study might have been. So, with dread, he quickly surveyed each and every chamber on the upper level. He found another score of shimmersilks, but none that were hers. Even in the RA’s main chambers in the southwest corner, he found no sign of her, except for a slightly disarrayed stack of papers on the table desk that was clearly hers.
In the growing gloom of twilight, he took a deep breath. She still might be all right. He turned and headed back down to the lower level and the rear corridor that led to the RA’s quarters. His boots clicked on the marble, the only sound he heard beside that of his own breathing.
The door from the complex to the quarters was ajar, and unlocked. Dainyl moistened his lips and stepped into the small foyer. He glanced around. No lights were lit. He saw no one and heard nothing.
“Lystrana!”
The only reply was silence.
Slowly, he walked down the main hallway. There were no shimmersilks in the hall or in the larger front foyer. The outside door to the entrance Dainyl had always used was locked. He unlocked and opened it. The ironwork door beyond was also locked. He closed the inner door and locked it.
“Lystrana!”
Then he went from room to room, searching each, even the closets, and the pantry off the kitchen. The quarters were untouched, as if she had walked out, and left the door ajar.
He stood in the hallway outside the bedchamber, then stepped inside. Using a flick of Talent, he lit the old-fashioned oil lamp, thinking that he might see more in the light, that his night sight might have missed something.
He studied the sitting area of the bedchamber, looking closely at everything, trying to catch a glimpse of anything that might give him an idea of where she might be or what had happened. He found nothing—not a piece of clothing out of place, not a bloodstain, a spilled glass…nothing at all.
Finally, he moved to the dressing room, where he also lit the lamp.
As he looked up, he saw a motion out of the corner of his eye. He turned quickly, throwing up shields, even before he confronted the image in the wall mirror. The figure was somewhat shorter than Dainyl, with a lightly tanned face, brilliant green eyes, a strong nose, and hair that was several shades darker than iron-gray—not the color of an aging lander, but a vigorous healthy gray. The image wore shimmersilk greens with rolled-up jacket sleeves and trousers that were too large.
Dainyl raised a hand. So did the image.
The image was his. He was the image, and he looked like a lander with dark gray hair, if somewhat larger than the tallest of landers he had seen. No longer a black-haired and white-faced alector, he was a lander with Talent.
A lander with Talent? He shuddered. He’d been warned, but he still couldn’t believe it had happened.
Finally, he turned away from the image that was him—and wasn’t. He still had to find Lystrana. At the worst, he had to know.
Slowly, painstakingly, he began to study the dressing chamber, fearing he would find crumpled shimmersilk, and hoping that he would not. He checked the garments hung there, but all that she had brought still looked to be there, save perhaps one, possibly two, and her toiletries were laid out on the dressing table.
Finally, he left the dressing room and the bedchamber, and lit the lamps in each room in the quarters, studying each one, and then snuffing the lamps when he finished in each. He found nothing.
He took a deep breath.
He needed to go back to Lystrana’s study in the main building. Perhaps he had overlooked something. He forced himself to walk deliberately back through the rear corridor and back to the upper level.
Once there, in her study, he lit the wall lamps and went back over every span of the space. Again, he found nothing, but it was at least two glasses before he returned to the quarters, having found nothing that indicated what had happened to Lystrana—or even where she might be. He had found none of her shimmersilk garments left and crumpled. He would have recognized them. He would have Talent-sensed that they were hers. He still had his Talent. But what had happened to her?
He locked the doors behind himself, and then went to the kitchen, where he forced himself to eat some bread and cheese, the only thing that was there that he could eat without preparation.
Where was she? What had happened to her? How could he find out?
As the darkness dropped across Dereka, he lay there alone on the triple-width bed in the bedchamber, too worried to sleep, and too exhausted to move.
95
Late in the day, after Fourth Battalion and Sixteenth Company had rejoined Mykel and Third Battalion, and after the Cadmians had done what they could to reclaim weapons and ammunition, and after Mykel had had a chance to gather his thoughts together, he assembled the officers and Bhoral on the north causeway to the bridge over the Vedra.
For all the flood, the bridge itself—and its eternastone supports—remained untouched and secure. South of where they stood on the approach to the bridge, below the bluffs, steam and fog still rose from the river, and the warmth from the river air mixed with the chill of the growing wind out of the northwest.
As he waited for Zendyr to join them, Mykel was all too conscious of the covert looks from the officers, particularly from Loryalt. Most of them, with the exception of Hamylt, seemed to be studying him when he was not looking directly at them.
“Sorry, sir,” offered Zendyr, hurrying up.
“Someone has to be last,” Mykel said lightly. He waited a moment. “Any more reports on the Squawts and Reillies? Are they regrouping?”
“No, sir,” replied Chyndylt. “Jasakyt checked that out. They’ve all headed north. They’re pretty much making their separate ways. It looks like they just fell ap
art after you stood up to their warleaders.”
“Priests,” murmured Loryalt.
“How do we stand on supplies, Bhoral?”
“We picked up some from the locals and from what the Reillies discarded. Maybe five days, eight on short rations.”
Mykel nodded. “There’s not that much left in Iron Stem, and no more ammunition, and winter’s coming on. We’ve also accomplished what we can as far as our orders go.” And we have the pay chests and what’s left in them.
Zendyr and Bhoral nodded. A faint smile crossed Rhystan’s lips. Hamylt glanced from Mykel to Rhystan. Sendryrk looked at the ground.
“We’re going to Tempre,” Mykel said. “We’ll have to ride, because after that flood of steaming water, there won’t be anything left that can take us by river. Tempre’s halfway to Elcien, and they’ve got a good barracks in Tempre, enough for all of us there, and there might even be ammunition in the armories there.”
“Leastwise, in the one that’s locked underneath,” suggested Bhoral. “The Myrmidons didn’t even know it was there, but they don’t use ammunition anyway, not for those lances of theirs.”
“Sir?” offered Loryalt. “The ancient…I mean…does…well…”
Mykel had hoped to avoid dealing with what the soarer had said. “For better or worse, she indicated that the alectors were gone and that we should go to Tempre. Going to Tempre makes sense even if she hadn’t said it, and even if there are alectors somewhere.”
“Sir?” asked Sendryrk. “Begging your pardon…but what if the colonel sends orders to Iron Stem?”
“The orders will find us, and if they do before we can get word to him, we’ll certainly obey them. But we have a responsibility to the men as well, and I don’t see how we could take care of them in Iron Stem through the winter, not without additional provisions, and there’s no way to get them to us, not for a long time, with all the damage on the river.”
“You’re thinking that there’s more trouble than just here, sir?” asked Zendyr, the new Thirteenth Company undercaptain.
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