Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  "He wants to make sure his granddaughter is taking care of herself," Lucenda said. "He's still surprised that she turned out to be a true herder."

  "And now he's watching me like a prize ewe," Wendra added. "All of you were the ones who saw I was a herder. Not him."

  "It was Alucius," Royalt said. "Told me to take you out on the stead."

  "I'm glad I did," Alucius said.

  "Don't take too much credit," Lucenda suggested.

  Rather than answer that, Alucius took another bite of pie.

  "You see the soarer again?" asked Royalt after a moment.

  "I only saw her that one time, a week back," Alucius said.

  "Used to look forward to seeing them. Now… don't know as I do," replied the older man. "Wouldn't want to see them gone, though. Don't see as many sanders, either."

  "There's a connection there," Alucius observed.

  "You keep saying that," Lucenda said, "but you've never said what it is."

  "That's because—as I also keep saying—I don't know. There are a few things I don't know."

  "That's good to hear," Royalt quipped dryly. "Beginning to think you're taking yourself too serious-like."

  Alucius flushed.

  Chapter 5

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  The Duarchy lasted twice five hundred years, and for all those ages its eternastone high roads crossed Corns from north to south and east to west, saving only the Aerial Plateau and the Anvils of Hel. Great carriages slipped along the roads, drawn by the tireless sandoxes. The traders' wagons followed, also pulled by sandoxes, filled with goods of every imaginable type—black nightsilk from the north of Eastice, smoothed lorken planks from Harm and Fola, the sparkling and still wines of Vyan, and the tapestries of far and fair Alustre.

  The Myrmidons of Duality swept through the skies on their pteridons, carrying messages and dispatches from one end of Corus to the other, searching out rogue soarers and dispatching them to keep the skies and the ground beneath those skies safe for all. The Alectors of Justice reigned over each city, town, and hamlet, and kept the peace so that each man, each woman, and all children could walk every lane and road, every grove and grotto, and never fear for their safety. The Cadmians used their lightning-jagged blades against the barbarians of the isles and against lesser wrongdoers. The dolphin ships of the Duadmiralty kept the oceans and the coasts free from strife, piracy, and depredations.

  The sun shined out of a silver-green sky and blessed the Duarchy and all its peoples under the dual scepters.

  Then… in less than an instant, the Cataclysm struck Corus, and, in a season or less, the sandoxes sickened and vanished. The pteridons shriveled into less than dust and vanished. The rivers ran red with blood. Ice flowed from the skies. The air that had been so fair, and perfumed, became as thin and as acrid as vinegar. Streams dried in their beds, rivers in their courses, never to flow again.

  Winds swept from the Aerial Plateau with such force that all the trees to the south of the Black Cliffs were felled in a single afternoon and buried, leaving but the Moors of Yesterday. The vales of prosperity became the Sloughs of Despondency.

  Fair Elcien, the western capital, sank a hundred yards into the Bright Bay, leaving but the tips of the towers above the mud that covered all.

  Warm and lively Ludar, the southern capital, vanished beneath the waters in an instant, and none living there were ever seen again, nor were any of the walls and towers and parks…

  Excerpt from:

  Mantra of Mourning

  Chapter 6

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  On Duadi, Wendra drove the team to Iron Stem while Alucius sat in the wagon seat beside her, watching the high road and the quarasote flats beside it. The heavy rifle was in the holder beside him. Whenever he saw the gray eternastones of the road, he had to marvel, and wonder, at the magic technology of the ancients—or the ifrits—that had created those stones, which were harder than almost any substance and which, if scarred, repaired themselves over time.

  "You're thinking about the road, aren't you?" asked Wendra with a smile.

  "Because I always do? There's something about it."

  "It's alive, in a way, I think," she replied.

  "You've never said that before."

  "I hadn't thought about it."

  What would make a road alive? He thought about the great high roads, especially the one through the Upper Spine Mountains into Deforya, where the ancients had cut through the very rocks of the mountains and formed a perfectly straight and unnatural canyon to carry the high road. Abruptly, he wanted to kick himself, or pound his head. It was just that he'd never considered the thought that the high road might have a form of life. But once he realized that, and what the soarer had taught him, the rest fit.

  "You're upset—or worried," Wendra said. "I can feel it."

  "You remember how I told you about how dead some of the lands were, especially in Deforya? That's where they have the great long high road, and that canyon—"

  "Oh!" Wendra's hand went to her mouth. "You think that they—"

  "I couldn't prove it, but I'd wager that the ifrits sucked the very life out of the land and poured it into the road. They couldn't do it everywhere, or even very many places, but I'd wager that, if we looked, we'd find patches and places along the sides of the high roads that are still dead, or once were dead and still have only a little life."

  "They'd do that?"

  "What do you think?" Alucius gestured to the ancient spire of the tower ahead, its brilliant green stone facing visible over the low hills from several vingts to the north. "How else could they create structures that held together for so long? If you look at the high roads at night with Talent, you can see the glow. I just didn't think of them in that way." He should have, but who would have thought that anyone would squander lifeforces that way—or had that ability?

  "Why would you?" asked Wendra. "We don't think that way."

  Alucius just shook his head, wondering what else that obvious he had missed. He also still worried about the appearance of the soarer.

  Before long, past several low rises, the warrens of the long wooden sheds of the dustcat works appeared on the east side of the road, sheds all sealed to the outside so that the dustcat dander, worth more than its weight in gems for the sensations it provided, could not escape.

  "Have you ever seen Alyna?" asked Alucius.

  "No. I still can't believe she agreed to be a scutter. She seemed brighter than that. Even the pleasure palace would be better than working the dustcats for Gortal. But she knew better." Wendra sighed. "How anyone…" Her words died away.

  After passing the dustcat works, Wendra guided the wagon along the road toward the empty green stone tower and the lower building just south of it. The tower walls had remained intact, seemingly pristine and untouched, not by choice, since building materials were rare in Iron Stem, but because the ancients—rather the ifrits, Alucius knew—had used a lost technique to bond all the exterior stones together, a technique resistant to chisels, mauls, hammers, and even those with the Talent. Whether the interior had not been so protected or whether it had always been empty, Alucius did not know, only that similar towers rose all across Corus, all with vacant interiors, even without steps or interior levels. What remained of the tower was a hollow shell that rose, uselessly, nearly a hundred yards into the silver-green sky.

  The pleasure palace, dubbed such generations before, was a low stone structure. The long-dead builders, some centuries back, had attempted to create a pattern in the walls by alternating those stones with the bonded blue finish with those of green. Unfortunately, after five courses of stone, they had run out of the green-faced building stones and had then used interior stones faced with yellow to alternate with the blue stones. Where the stones had come from, no one alive knew. Over the years that had followed, the yellow had faded into a sickly and uneven beige, but the blue and green had not.

  As early as it was in the morning, the hitching rail outside the pleasure pala
ce had no mounts tethered there, and the palace itself was still. Wendra drove the wagon past the empty vingt or more separating the pleasure palace from the nearest dwellings straight into Iron Stem, and then past the metal shop and its thundering hammermill, with the smell of hot iron drifting across the road and thin white smoke rising from the forge chimney.

  The buildings surrounding the central square were all of two and three stories, and although mainly boardinghouses, were moderately well kept, if one ignored the peeling paint on shutters and doors. On the west side of the square were the coopers, the chandlery, the silversmith's. On the adjoining corner was the inn, its blue-painted sign an outline of the long-vanished mining mill.

  Wendra eased the team up to her father's cooperage, and Alucius jumped down and tied the horses to the post just short of the loading dock. Then the two of them entered the building, stepping into the mixed odors of oils, varnishes, and wood.

  "Wendra! Alucius!" exclaimed Kyrial, beaming at his daughter. "Its good to see you both. I'd thought Lucenda might be the one picking up the barrels."

  "Grandsire and Mother were kind enough to let us drive in together and handle the buying," Alucius explained.

  Clerynda burst from the back room, bustling toward her daughter. "Wendra! Let me see you!"

  Wendra flushed. "I'm fine."

  "I know you are. You have that glow. I do hope he's a boy."

  "She's a girl," Alucius said, "and she'll be a herder like her mother."

  For a moment, Clerynda was silent. Then she smiled and shook her head. "Herders. You take all the surprise out of it."

  Kyrial just grinned. "I wouldn't say that. The two of them just come up with different surprises."

  "You look pleased, Father," observed Wendra, clearly trying to change the subject.

  Kyrial smiled at his daughter. "And well I should be, Wendra, after the order I received yesterday. Fifty of trie best oak barrels. Fifty!"

  "Who could order that many?"

  "A fellow acting as a broker for a group of traders in Dekhron. Came up with half the cost in hard golds."

  "Your reputation is finally spreading, Father," offered Wendra.

  "Does that mean you'll be delayed in getting us the solvent barrels?" Alucius's tone was humorous.

  "Sanders, no. Yours are almost done, and your family has been my steadiest customer for years. The traders aren't asking for the first group for another two weeks, and Korcler's become a great help." Kyrial glanced at the youth who was half inside an oaken barrel, deftly using a curved plane to touch up the inside of the staves.

  Korcler extricated himself and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Wendra. I just was afraid I'd lose track of where I was if I didn't finish."

  "That's all right."

  "The five full barrels are ready. They're the ones by the loading door," Kyrial said. "We'll have the half barrels and quarter barrels ready by a week from Quattri."

  "Might as well get them into the wagon." Alucius turned.

  "I'll help," offered Korcler. "Wendra shouldn't—"

  "I'm not made of porcelain," Wendra replied. "Not for another season or two, anyway."

  In the end, Korcler, Alucius, and Wendra loaded the wagon.

  After the barrels were roped in place, Alucius and Wendra walked back toward the square to see what produce might be available. After they bought what they could find, they would need to drive out to the miller's.

  As they walked away from the cooperage, Wendra said, "Father was pleased."

  "I can see why," Alucius said. "Has he ever had such an order?"

  "Not that I know, not in at least five years, and possibly ten."

  "You were keeping the books before we were married, and you saw all the records?"

  "Most of them. Sometimes, I'd check back to see how Mother had written in sales, especially if it happened to be something I hadn't seen." Wendra looked to Alucius. "You're worried, aren't you?"

  "I shouldn't be, but I am. I can't help but wonder why he got such an order now. It could be a coincidence, I suppose."

  "You don't think so."

  "No. But I have no reason to think otherwise," Alucius admitted. After a moment, he smiled. "Let's see if they have any of the late peaches. Grandsire would like those."

  "And you wouldn't at all?"

  Alucius flushed, then shrugged helplessly.

  Wendra leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek.

  Chapter 7

  Hieron, Madrien

  « ^ »

  The unclad redheaded woman looked at the circle of goldenstone floor tiles, ringed with black. Within the circle was a misty column—its pinkish purple barely visible. The gold-and-black circle stood out starkly against the muted green tiles of the rest of the bedchamber floor.

  She took a deep breath. Then, convulsively, she took one step, and another, to place herself in the center of the black-tiled circle, forcing herself through an unseen barrier. Immediately, her entire body twisted, as if being pummeled by unseen blows. Welts appeared on her pale, freckled skin, then bruises. Her breath came in gasps, but she remained within the circle for a time, her limbs lifted and turned like a marionette's.

  A good quarter glass passed before she forced her way from the circle, where she stood, slumped, breathing rapidly, outside the black tile line.

  Even before she slowly walked to the dressing room, the bruises that had covered her skin began to fade—as did the freckles. By the time she stopped before the full-length mirror and took in her reflection, her skin was close to alabaster white and unmarked. Her formerly blue eyes were a bluish violet, and her red hair had darkened to a deep mahogany that was more like red-tinged black.

  cold and triumphant smile crossed her lips. "It worked," she murmured. "The old tablets were right. Regent in name only from now on."

  Stepping away from the mirror, she began to don the clothing she had laid out earlier, ending with the violet tunic and trousers, the black boots, and, last, the emerald necklace.

  Chapter 8

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  Alucius stood in the shadows beside a long purple hanging draped from a stone pillar that was golden throughout—not merely gilded. Overhead, at least fifty yards above, arched a ceiling of pink marble, so precisely fitted that even his Talent could detect no sign of a join or of mortar. The same pink marble comprised the walls. Stretching a hundred yards to his right, the floor of the hall was of octagonal sections of polished gold and green marble, each section of green marble inset with an eight-pointed star of golden marble, the narrow arms of the star outlined in a thin line of brilliant metal that was neither gold nor brass.

  A man stood on the dais, a tall figure with flawless alabaster skin, shimmering black hair, and deep violet eyes. He wore a tunic of brilliant green, trimmed in a deep purple, with matching trousers. His black boots were so highly polished that they appeared metallic.

  Two smaller figures—a man and a woman—stood before him as he spoke. They looked like children in comparison to him, though neither was short.

  Alucius listened.

  "You understand nothing. More than two thousand years have passed since we departed, and you have built nothing that rivals what we left. Even with the dual scepters we left, and the libraries and the Tables, you have learned nothing. You squabble among yourselves like spoiled children. All around you were wonders, and from them you have only found ways to squander your lives."

  The man lifted his head and spoke, but Alucius could not hear his words.

  The ifrit in green laughed, long, melodiously, then shook his head. "There is no such thing as inherent 'right' or justice among all the worlds of the universe. The universe does not care. Its rules reward survival—and power. If you would have what you call justice, you must have the strength and the will to create it and to enforce it."

  The woman spoke, and again Alucius could not hear the words.

  The ifrit smiled, condescendingly, before replying. "We create grandeur and beauty, and grace. We create pee
rless art where there was none before. Out of mud and squalor we build such as you see. There is a price for everything. A world can live forever and be nothing—or it can become a paragon of splendor and art—and shine in brilliance for a shorter time."

  The man said a few words.

  "You had the chances, and you did not take them. You, like all your kind, squandered what you were given. It takes more than luck and pedestrian skill to bring your will to bear, to change what is degradation and squalor into valor and splendor. That is especially true in a world of petty and jealous men. You had the choice between being the child of the Duarchy, the one who would restore it, or the lamaial. You chose neither path, and that is a choice to do nothing… and nothing accomplishes nothing…"

  Then, the great hall began to spin, and the walls began to move, closing in… tighter… and tighter…

  Alucius sat up in the double-width bed, shivering, sweating profusely. After a moment, he blotted his steaming face.

  Wendra put her hand on his shoulder. "It was only a dream. Only a dream."

  "It was one of those dreams," Alucius said hoarsely. "One where an ifrit was explaining how we—I—had failed. I haven't had one of those… not since… the hidden city, and before."

  "It was only a dream…" But Wendra's voice did not hold certainty.

  Chapter 9

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  Alucius and Wendra rode downhill, eastward into the gray or a late summer morning before dawn, a grayness that would soon be flooded with the golden green sun of dawn against a silver-green sky.

  To the west, the half-disc of Selena was paling as the sky lightened.

  Asterta had long since set. The flock had not spread that much so far, and that meant that, for the moment, they could ride close to each other. Before long there would be nightrams investigating away from the flock, and ewes and younger nightsheep browsing and straggling, while the farther they traveled from the stead, the greater was the likelihood of sand-wolves and sanders.