He turned his eyes back to the ewe's body, caught by the sudden stench rising and drifting toward him. The corpse began to decompose, turning putrid even as he watched. Then, the body flared into a blue-tinged flame, and soon all that was left was oily black residue.
Alucius turned the gray, heading back toward the front of the flock, and scanned the quarasote flats with his Talent and his eyes. He could detect nothing. Even the sandwolves had slithered away—uncharacteristically leaving behind the bodies of those Alucius and the nightram had slain. He glanced down at the black crystal of the silver-framed herder's wristguard, but the wristband was neither warmer nor colder than usual. He had to wonder if Wendra had felt anything through the ring she wore that was attuned to his wristguard.
Thunder rolled overhead, and the sky darkened even more. Tiny needlelike droplets of rain began to fall, slashing out of the lowering clouds almost horizontally. Alucius squinted against the rain, wishing he had foreseen the violence of the storm.
The herder glanced from side to side, squinting through the wind and rain that had already begun to die away. Above him, the once-dark clouds were thinning rapidly, revealing a clear silver-green sky.
Alucius continued to study the ground, then the bushes stretching to the southeast, with a side glance at the low wash where the wolves had vanished, and reloaded the first rifle, then the second.
In all his years of herding, he'd never seen anything close to what had just occurred. Not in herding—only in the battles against the pteridons of Aellyan Edyss and the Talent-creatures that had attacked his forces in leaving Deforya.
He moistened his lips.
The attack made no sense whatsoever. If the ifrits were beginning another assault on Corus, why would they attack him? Why would they alert one of the few herders with true Talent to their actions? Or was the assault so far along that they could not control the appearance of the Talent-creatures ?
Alucius didn't want to leave the stead. He didn't know where he could go to stop such an attack, and there wasn't anyone to whom he could turn for help—except his family—and for them all to leave the stead would likely ruin them all. He and Wendra might be able to leave… if they knew where to go—and what to do. Except Wendra was pregnant, and Alucius hated the thought of asking her to go anywhere into even greater danger.
Above him, the sky continued to clear.
Alucius looked to the east, to the Aerial Plateau, but he neither saw nor felt the green radiance of a soarer… or anything else out of the ordinary.
Chapter 12
Tempre, Lanachrona
« ^ »
The Lord-Protector looked down on the infant in the high-sided crib, sleeping peacefully. A smile crossed his face, and the lines in his forehead eased as he watched his son. Silently, he eased out of the nursery and back to the main sitting room, where his consort waited, seated at her writing desk. "He's sleeping," he said.
"I told you he was sleeping." Alerya's voice was firm, but musical. "You're worrying a great deal. About your brother, still? Or the Regent of the Matrial? Or about this little revolt in Hyalt? Or is it something else?"
"About everything. Wouldn't you? Waleryn was plotting with Enyll, and he pleaded illness to avoid speaking with me for almost two months after the overcaptain killed Enyll and destroyed the Table. Waleryn still avoids me whenever he can. With the Table destroyed, no longer can I see what is happening as it does or nearly immediately. I've been reduced to receiving written reports weeks and months after events have taken place. Most of the time, it's too late to do anything. Half of what I write, it seems, finds its way to the Regent. Then, there's this revolt in Hyalt. It may be small so far, but there was no warning, and unless I do something, it will just get worse. There seem to be more of these True Duarchists everywhere, I've heard that there's another group in the hills east of Syan, but no one knows exactly where. And where am I going to find the forces to put down the trouble in Hyalt? Or Syan, if it spreads? If I take any companies from around Southgate, the Regent could retake Southgate. Yet I know nothing until it's too late."
"You miss the knowledge of the Table, don't you? And you have begun to doubt what the overcaptain told you."
"I don't doubt what he said. Or what he did. But why is it that the most useful tools are always the most dangerous? I know that Enyll would have killed us."
"Do you, Talryn? Or are you saying that to convince yourself?"
The Lord-Protector sighed. "Both, I guess. Without the Table, and with this revolt, and against the crystal spear-throwers of Madrien—how they managed to build two, I don't know—we're going to have to come to terms that aren't ideal—and quickly. Unless…" He shook his head.
"Unless what?"
"Wyerl suggested that I request that Overcaptain Alucius return to the Northern Guard. Make him a majer, at least. With one of his former companies and several partly trained companies of Southern Guards, he could handle the revolt."
"Why would he do that?" asked Alerya. "He wanted to go back to being a herder."
"Well… if I have to shift lancers to Hyalt, the Northern Guard is already having trouble holding its ground in the north…"
"Talryn! That's blackmail."
"It's true, though. I can't raise any more lancers in the Iron Valleys. Nor that many more in the rest of Lanachrona. We've conscripted everyone that we can. I'd be hard-pressed to pay for mercenaries, even if I could find any I could trust. What am I supposed to do?"
"Do you honestly think that the Regent of the Matrial—"
"Yes. We are stretched too thin, and it's not just Madrien. It's everything. The Dramurans attacked one of our vessels porting at Southgate. I just got that dispatch this morning. This afternoon I found out that the landowners of Deforya have overthrown the Landarch and replaced him with a Council of Five. They've decided to increase the road tariffs to Lustrea by half again. The Landarch was too accommodating to the needs of others, this new Council claims. What they meant was that they don't want to pay for anything themselves and keep tariffing others and oppressing all their people as they have for generations. The battles between the nomads of Ongelya and Illegea make the southern high road unsafe. That leaves the high road through Deforya and the Northern Pass, and so we're back to where we were two years ago. That means higher tariffs here. But… if I don't do something, we'll lose even more, just on the wine trade to the east. If we want safe trade that isn't tariffed to excess, I'll have to invade Deforya and make it part of Lanachrona. And where will I find the lancers and foot for that when I can't even find enough to hold Southgate without losing Hyalt?"
"Then… you must do what you must. But be generous to the overcaptain. Offer him something beyond rank." Alerya tilted her head. "Appeal to him, and offer gratitude, honor, and a stipend to his family in his absence. Pay for the stipend yourself."
Talryn laughed softly. "You are as bad as I must be."
"We all do what we must." Alerya stood.
Talryn raised his eyebrows.
"You have decided. Can you do anything more this evening?"
"No." Talryn smiled sheepishly.
"Then we should enjoy the supper Feylish has prepared. Mother also sent some of the better amber wine from the cellars."
"A good supper would help…"
Chapter 13
« ^ »
Finally, the looming was mostly finished, and, on Duadi of the second week of harvest, Wendra rode out with Alucius and the flock. After the episode with the dark sanders, Alucius had taken not only to bringing two rifles but wearing his Northern Guard ammunition belt at all times while away from the stead buildings. So far, he had not had to use even one rifle, so quiet had the stead been. But that worried him as much as more sandwolf attacks would have.
Still, he enjoyed having Wendra out with him, especially on a warm and sunny day with just enough of a breeze that the sun wasn't too hot. At the same time, he had a nagging worry. After his previous experience with the wild pteridons, did he have
any right to ask Wendra to come out with him?
"You're thinking about those dark creatures, aren't you?" called Wendra.
"I worry about whether you should be out here," he admitted.
"I've been worried about you every time you've taken the flock out alone," she countered. "When you ran into the dark sanders, my ring didn't even show that you were in trouble."
"I wasn't," he replied. "That's why you didn't feel anything."
"It's still safer with two herders."
She was right, Alucius knew, but he couldn't help worrying about her.
By midmorning, they were a good ten vingts east of the stead, and they had let the flock slow and browse its way eastward.
"How do you feel?" Alucius called across the fifty yards separating him from Wendra.
"I feel fine. It's wonderful to be out here." A smile followed Wendra's words. "It's too bad I can't come out tomorrow."
"You're going to stay at the stead and handle the last of the looming? "
"Your mother and grandsire want to go into town. They haven't been off the stead in weeks. How could I say no?"
"Knowing you, you couldn't." Alucius laughed.
After another glass, the nightsheep began to spread, and Alucius and Wendra chivvied them back into order and urged them farther eastward, toward another area where the quarasote was more dense, not that it was all that dense anywhere, but where the bushes were merely a yard or so apart as opposed to three or four.
As the nightsheep settled into grazing once more, Alucius frowned. He could feel something—almost a sense of sadness, of sorrow—that wavered at the edge of his Talent-senses. Then it was gone.
He eased the gray back toward the rear of the flock, where he urged two laggard ewes forward until they were almost up with the others, then circled back toward Wendra, letting the nightsheep graze what new quarasote shoots there were.
After another half glass, they eased the nightsheep farther east, because Alucius didn't want the quarasote overgrazed.
As he rode slowly eastward in the general direction of the Plateau, Alucius could feel the sense of sorrow growing stronger. He hadn't felt anything like that since he'd left Dereka two years earlier. He wondered. Did the feeling have anything to do with his dreams—or the earlier attack of the dark sanders?
While he had not had any vivid dreams like the one with the ifrit, he continued to have fragments of dreams—regular dreams—with the alabaster-skinned men and women dominating them, and all of them chided him for his failures to understand their right to dominance and cataloged his own shortcomings.
He looked across the flock to Wendra, then waved.
She smiled, and the expression warmed him—but only for a moment, as a sudden wave of sorrow—and then one of all too familiar purpleness—swept over him.
"Wendra!" Alucius called out. "Get your rifle, and use darkness on the cartridges. Something's coming!"
He urged the gray toward his wife, hurrying as fast as he could around the spikes of the quarasote, not wanting to injure his mount, but wanting to get closer to her.
"Do you know what it is?"
"Something else like the dark sanders," Alucius said as he reined up a yard from Wendra, where he checked his own rifles. Then he began to infuse the cartridges in each rifle with the same kind of darkness that had brought down the pteridons so many years before—and the dark sanders weeks before. He could only hope that it would work as well this time for whatever might appear. Once he felt that each bullet was so charged, he began to scan the skies and the quarasote flats for the evil purpleness that seemed ready to burst forth from somewhere.
"I can feel something out there," murmured Wendra.
The chill darkness that was overlaid with purpleness grew more and more and more oppressive as they waited—an unseen wall of stone, an avalanche of disaster, waiting to fall and sweep them away. Yet… what else could they do but wait, ready to act? They didn't know from where the attack might come—or if an attack would even come. Retreating in ignorance before a Talent-foe was worse than waiting.
"It feels evil, like an icy purple," murmured Wendra. "What do you think is coming?"
"I'd guess something flying, like wild pteridons, but it could be sandoxes—or something we've never seen."
With a sudden snap, the silver-green of the very sky itself flexed—and somehow opened—and flying blue shapes appeared less than fifty yards to the northeast of the pair. The ten-odd creatures circling in the air were purplish pteridons, smaller than those once used by the nomads and without riders. The metallic blue talons that extended from their forelegs glinted, knife-sharp.
"Start firing, now!" Alucius lifted his heavy rifle and put his first shot through the chest of the lead pteridon. The Talent-predator fluttered once, then cartwheeled out of the sky.
Wendra's rifle cracked, once, twice, a third time, before a pteridon spun downward into a quarasote bush. Both bush and pteridon burst into flame.
The others began to form into a loose wedge that rose, as if preparatory to diving at the pair of herders. Alucius fired two more shots. The first missed entirely. The second caught the edge of another pteridon, which seemed to shake off the impact.
One of the pteridons ignored the formation and dived at one of the lead nightrams. The ram lifted his head, trying to twist his glittering horns to catch the predator. Both creatures exploded in bluish flame.
Alucius got off two more shots, one of which struck a pteridon, then switched rifles. "As soon as you can," he called to Wendra, "reload!"
The pteridons circled higher, and as he fired twice more, bringing down yet another pteridon, Alucius realized something else. The Talent-creatures had not been specifically hunting them. They'd been startled and surprised, and that might have been what was giving Wendra and him an edge. Still, they were dangerous creatures.
Another of the pteridons swept toward Wendra, Alucius snapped off two quick shots, and the second caught the beast on the edge of the wing. It spiraled toward one of the ewes, impaling itself on the much shorter horns of the ewe, then exploded into a column of blue flame that enveloped both.
Alucius had one cartridge left in his rifle when he realized that the sky was clear. His forehead was covered in sweat, and he looked toward Wendra. "Some good shooting there, dear."
"Not as good as yours, but I did help, I think."
"More than a little." Alucius reached out with his Talent. The sense of purpleness was gone, but a residual of the sorrow remained. He frowned. "We'd better check the rest of the flock."
Wendra nodded.
From what Alucius and Wendra could tell as they circled the flock, they had lost only the one young ram and a ewe. While the death of both nightsheep would hurt, the damage could have been much worse. Except, Alucius reflected, losing even one nightsheep a week would destroy them just as surely as a sudden disaster involving all the flock.
There were no traces of any of the wild blue pteridons, none at all, except for the black greasy splotches on the soil where each fallen Talent-creature had burned. No charred scales or bones… nothing except the residue of intense fires.
Alucius could sense another problem—the lack of something. In the rough circle below where the wild pteridons had appeared, there was no life left. Even the quarasote bushes, although they looked green, were dead and would be brown in weeks, if not days. And that was the area from where the feeling of sorrow came.
"It's dead, isn't it?" asked Wendra. "The land around us."
Alucius nodded.
"Why… why did it happen here?" she asked. "Is it us?"
"I'd like to say it isn't," he replied, "but it has to be. I can't see why, unless somehow my fights with the pteridons earlier made it easier for them to find me. But why now? That was two years ago. And you? They never were near you."
"It has to be you," Wendra said. "This is the second time in a month."
"But why now?" Alucius asked again.
They looked at each othe
r. Neither had an answer.
Chapter 14
Salaan, Lanachrona
« ^ »
The angular man in the dark purple tunic leaned over the Recorder's Table and looked down into the transparent surface, finger-spans thick, yet so deep that the ruby mist through which he peered seemed tens of yards. The Table exuded age, as though it might have been one that remained from the score or more that had once linked the far-flung domains of the Duarchy of Corus. Only the smooth and shimmering finish on the dark lorken sides of the Table suggested that the Table was of more recent creation.
"What do you see?" demanded the round-faced trader in gray and blue.
"Somewhere, on Corus, within the former reaches of the Duarchy, years past, a lamaial was born. It might have been your herder overcaptain."
"You can't tell that? Why not? You said he had Talent."
"You know that well, Halanat. All herders have Talent. That is why they can be herders," replied the white-faced man with the purple-tinged eyes. "That has been known for years. The Table, being constructed with Talent, cannot depict those with such Talent once they have begun to exercise it. You would not want others using it on us, would you? Thus, a Table can record all steers born with the potential for Talent—or for even greater use of Talent, as with a lamaial or a hero—but Enyll never recorded those births except within the Table in Tempre…"
"Hero and lamaial—they sound like nonsense," the trader replied. "They're just Talent-steers."
"Ah, yes… myths and nonsense, created to maintain a mystery by Recorders like me, who are translated from Efra merely for that express purpose of being obscure. The Vault was a myth, and so were the pteridons that destroyed the legions of the last Praetor, and so are the Dual Scepters."
The mockery in the Recorder's words was so edged that Halanat's eyes dropped.
The Recorder of Deeds looked up from the crystal mist of the table, purple-tinged eyes unblinkingly fixed on the trader. The mist swirling around the scene held in the Table vanished, and all that remained within the smooth black frame was an ordinary mirror, save that it was far smoother and more reflective than any such mirror produced in recent centuries in Dekhron or Tempre or any other city or town in the whole of Corus.
Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters Page 5