Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Thank you.” Alucius nodded and moved toward the one corner table remaining.

  He had barely seated himself when another server, a squarish woman—also wearing a red apron—appeared beside his table.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “What’s on the board?” Alucius asked.

  “Spirnaci pig, plumapple fowl, and stew. Four coppers for each. Ale’s two, and wine is three.”

  “Ale and the fowl.”

  “Coming up.”

  Alucius surveyed the room but saw nothing out of the ordinary, either with his eyes or Talent. There was absolutely no trace of purpleness in any of those dining or serving them. For that he was most grateful. He wished he had an idea of where Wendra might be and how to reach her. But he doubted he could even search more until he was refreshed and rested, and that bothered him as well. He had always disliked knowing nothing, and when Wendra was involved, that was even worse.

  Just as bad was the realization that there were far more ifrits than he had known about in Corus, and that some of them were real ifrits—not just people possessed through the Tables. He had to wonder how many more were placed in other cities, such as Tempre or Hieron, or even Alustre.

  He sat back listening, trying not to think of Wendra, or the ifrits, waiting for his ale and food.

  “Council’s going to raise the road tariffs on the north highway…”

  “About time…”

  “…Praetor of Lustrea won’t like it…”

  “…he’s young…army got near wiped out by Aellyan Edyss two years back…can’t have that many lancers now…”

  “…if he does…Council can just drop the tariffs…worth a try…”

  “Right about that…anything’s better ’n more tariffs on us…”

  Alucius wasn’t sure, but the speaker who was concerned about tariffs looked to be a merchant, rather than an landowner.

  “Here’s your ale. Be two.”

  Alucius handed over the coppers, and then took a slow swallow. The brew was heavy, a darkish amber, but not bitter, and cool. He kept listening as he took small swallows.

  “…need to be careful…say the Council wants to expand the lancers…”

  “…no reason…not these days…”

  “…why we need to be careful…”

  “…oh…”

  “Lord-Protector all tied up with the Madriens…say they got a regent now…”

  “Madrien always been trouble…”

  “…wager it’ll be more now. Say…heard that daughter of yours…”

  Alucius lost the train of the conversation as the server returned again.

  “Here’s the fowl.”

  “Maybe you could help me.” Alucius handed over five coppers. “I just got here from the west…Heard the Landarch was killed, and a Council’s running things. You know who’s on the Council?”

  The server shrugged. “They say they’re all landowners. Don’t think anyone rightly knows.”

  Alucius nodded. “Figured something like that. Thank you.”

  She offered a polite smile. “Let me know if you want another ale.”

  “I will.”

  The fowl was good, as were the plain noodles and bread that came with it, although Alucius’s opinion of the fare might have been colored by his own hunger. Even before he finished the last morsels, he found his eyes were so heavy that he was almost nodding off at the table.

  The food and the warmth of the public room—and the exhaustion of days—left clearly left Alucius feeling more than a little sleepy. He rose from the table and made his way up to his room.

  The rifle remained where he had left it, and in addition to locking the door, he slipped the bar standing behind it through the painted iron brackets to make sure his sleep was not interrupted.

  Then he sat on the edge of the bed. He pulled off his boots and disrobed slowly. He barely had pulled the covers up when sleep claimed him.

  131

  Northeast of Iron Stem, Iron Valleys

  In the early evening, the young man rode up the last part of the lane to the stead house, a second unsaddled mount following his. Long before he reached the rail at the base of the stairs, the older herder was standing there, bareheaded, with the intermittent flakes of spring snow swirling around him.

  “Sir…I came as quick as I could.”

  “You talked to Alucius? You told him about Wendra?” asked Royalt.

  “Yes, sir.” Korcler swallowed. “He’s gone now, too.”

  For a long moment, Royalt just looked at the youth.

  “I didn’t do it, sir. I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

  “We’ll stall the mounts, and then you can tell us. Did you tell your folks?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t stop there. They…they didn’t want me to go to Dekhron. I figured…I’d better tell you, first. Might not be going anywhere for a long time, not after this. But I thought…someone…and now…it’s worse ’n ever.”

  Royalt took the tether for the second mount and began to walk toward the stable. Korcler rode slowly after the older man. Neither spoke until they were in the stable and out of the wind.

  “You didn’t tell me your father had forbidden you to go to Dekhron,” Royalt said after stalling the spare mount.

  “He didn’t say I couldn’t, sir,” Korcler replied. “I didn’t ask. He would have said no. I knew that. And Alucius had to know about Wendra. He just had to.”

  Royalt took the saddle and racked it, then closed the stall. “We’ll finish here after we go up to the house and you tell Lucenda and me everything that you know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Royalt closed the stable door and began to walk swiftly toward the house.

  Korcler had to stretch his legs to catch up. “You’re not mad at me, sir?”

  “No, Korcler. I’m not mad. Things could be a lot better, but I’m not mad.”

  Once they were inside the dwelling, Royalt ushered the youth into the kitchen.

  There, Lucenda set a mug of hot cider before him. “Have you eaten anything?”

  “No…ma’am. Not except for some biscuits and cheese Majer Feran sent with me.”

  “I’ll fix you something while you tell us what happened.”

  “Alucius is gone now, too,” Royalt said.

  “How…?” Lucenda’s mouth opened.

  “I told him about Wendra. I gave him what you wrote, sir, and he read it. He turned real coldlike. I almost didn’t want to talk to him. Then he helped me stable and groom the mounts and took me up to his quarters and gave me stuff to eat. He wrote something to Majer Feran. I knew he was writing something. Then he rode off. He wouldn’t let me come with him. He said he’d be back that night.” The young man paused. “Except then…he said if he wasn’t, I was still to come back and tell you, sir.” The youth’s look was almost defiant, but his eyes skittered away from Royalt.

  “He’s gone after Wendra,” Lucenda said. “It has to be. She’s the only thing that would make him do that. But…how does he know where she is?”

  “I…I don’t think he does, ma’am,” Korcler said. “He told me he couldn’t tell me where he was going because he didn’t know.”

  “It has to be something to do with Tarolt.” Royalt frowned.

  “That’s it,” Korcler said.

  “What do you mean, young fellow?” asked Royalt.

  “Well…he didn’t come back. Even the next morning. So I went and found Majer Feran and told him. Alucius left him a note. I don’t know what it said. The majer said it was Guard business, but then he sort of smiled, and asked me if the colonel had mentioned the name Tarolt. I told him he hadn’t and asked who that was. He said he was a trader, and the only one of the old traders left after Halanat’s death. Maybe I should have asked more, but that was all he said.”

  “He said Halanat was dead?”

  “Yes, sir. Clear as could be.”

  “So Alucius thinks Tarolt had something to do with this,” mused Royalt. “Bu
t he’s vanished, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s alive.”

  “He said Wendra was alive and healthy. He said whatever it was happened in the morning, but he didn’t know what it was.”

  “He didn’t tell you where he was going?”

  “No, sir.”

  “This won’t do Alucius much good as colonel,” said Lucenda.

  “The majer said that everyone knew sometimes the colonel went off and did things for the Lord-Protector, and he’d suggest that was what happened.” Korcler took another swallow of the cider.

  “Can’t purchase friends like that,” offered Royalt. “Feran’s putting his head on the block and hoping no one’s nearby with an axe.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Korcler said. “Didn’t know as I’d be…causing trouble. I just know…he’d want to know about Wendra. He would.”

  Both Lucenda and Royalt nodded.

  132

  Alucius woke with the first light slanting through the small third-floor window of the Red House. He yawned and rolled over carefully, then swung himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Sleep and food had definitely helped. His eyes no longer burned, and while he was still sore in places, he was better than he had been.

  He still had no idea where Wendra was, or how to proceed, and he certainly had no idea exactly how to deal with the ifrits…or how he could even get back to Dekhron safely. Whatever he did, or could do, he would need to eat before he set out, and he would also need some small items, if they weren’t too expensive—a water bottle that he could hook to his belt and some travel food. He knew he could not get ammunition for the heavy Guard rifle—not in Dereka. That had been a problem when he and the Northern Guard had been in Deforya before.

  After dumping the water in the basin out the window and refilling it with what remained in the pitcher, he washed up. Then, as he was dressing, he checked his wallet. While he had added coins after getting paid the day before, he hadn’t planned on traveling all across Corus. Still…he had two golds, six silvers, and five coppers left—more than enough for what he needed in the way of food and lodging and some modest supplies…for a short time.

  Like it or not, he was going to have to try to become more proficient in using the Tables or portals, but if he started in Dereka, at least he’d have somewhere he could come back to without having to confront an ifrit. At least, that was what he hoped, but he certainly wasn’t certain, not after discovering the power of a full ifrit in confronting Tarolt.

  The sky outside his small window was a grayish silver green when he unbarred and unlocked the door. He left the rifle concealed and locked the room behind him.

  Breakfast in the public room consisted of egg toast, so brown it was almost burned, with a berry syrup, two thick slices of tough ham, and a mug of ale. It cost him another four coppers, but he wasn’t about to attempt any explorations on an empty stomach.

  More than a glass later, he left the inn and began to walk southward along the main boulevard. The morning was cool, not quite chill, with but a light wind blowing out of the north. While the west side of the street was not empty, there were far fewer vendors than there would be later in the day. Most of those seeking to do business with the vendors were older women. Several glanced at him and the heavy rifle he carried, but most paid him little attention.

  A block southward, he found a small store, not quite a chandlery, but one with provisions and even a belt water bottle. He spent more than a silver for hard cheese, travel bread, dried fruit and nuts, and the water bottle. He slipped the food into various pockets in his jacket. Then, after leaving the store, he had to retrace his steps to fill the bottle at the public fountain.

  He had just left the fountain when a company of lancers trotted by, heading southward toward the Lancer Prime Base beyond the complex that had served as the palace of the Landarch. Alucius did not recognize the captain and overcaptain leading the column. The uniforms of the rankers at the end of the column were considerably newer than those of the riders leading the column, and several of the trailing riders glanced around them, as if they had not seen Dereka before.

  Alucius did not cross the boulevard until he was opposite the ancient gold eternastone building that held the portal. As he walked swiftly across the wide street, he glanced around. His Talent showed no sign of any purpleness or any ifrits. He had not noticed anything of that nature since he had arrived in Dereka. Nor had he felt them when he had been an overcaptain fighting the nomads—except, of course, in his dreams.

  Still, several of the vendors had been watching him, and he did not want to have anyone note his return to the structure. So he walked past and then into an alleyway that looked deserted. There, he concentrated on the illusion that he was but a vagrant breeze, occasionally stirring up dust.

  “…see that?”

  At the words, Alucius stiffened, but held the Talent-illusion.

  “See what?”

  “Herder type…dark jacket…just went away…”

  “Just seeing things.”

  “Tell you, he was there. Big gray-haired fellow. Big as life…”

  Alucius smiled to himself as he eased out of the alleyway and made his way back into the abandoned building, a structure that had to date back to the first ifrit occupation of Corus. He moved quietly, trying to keep his steps from echoing in the abandoned and cavernous interior.

  He paused as he heard steps on the stone floor. He flattened himself against the wall of the corridor that led toward the chamber above the portal area, waiting and listening. Two lancer officers walked down the corridor toward Alucius, followed by two rankers. Alucius remained motionless, hoping that his illusion would prove enough.

  “…you make of it?” asked the captain.

  “…strange…boot prints there…don’t see how they got there,” replied the undercaptain, speaking as he walked past Alucius without even looking in the colonel’s direction.

  “…you think it was a demon?”

  “…more likely a drunken ranker. Came down there, fell asleep, dust settled, and when he woke, he left tracks going out.”

  Alucius nodded to himself. It was a perfectly good explanation, and one he hoped the two officers reported. He did not move until the four men reached the end of the corridor and took the short flight of steps that led to the north exit from the building.

  Then he made his made back to the inside stone stairway that led down to the former Table chamber, moving quietly and stopping to listen along the way. He neither heard nor sensed anyone. The chamber was empty, but the dust on the stone floor bore many boot tracks.

  Alucius released his own illusion and looked around the dimly lit chamber, studying it more carefully than he had when he had first arrived there the afternoon before. The walls were all of stone. There once might have been wooden paneling or more ornate stone facings; but if so, no trace remained. Nor was there any sign of ceiling decoration.

  His eyes dropped to the oblong space in the middle of the chamber floor. Concentrating, and using his Talent, he could sense a vague purpleness, as well as a crimson gold circle, in the center of the oblong carved into the stone itself. The stone that comprised the base of the oblong was darker, and Alucius could sense that it was part of something larger, but not something created by the ifrits, rather more like a lifeweb, except it was far more vague to his Talent, almost like the hint of a mist.

  Did the world itself have lifethreads—lines that ran through rock and stone beneath the surface of the earth? It could be possible…He shook his head. The more he learned, the more he found out that he didn’t know.

  Still…the ifrits seemed to follow patterns, and he might be able to discover more if he could use what he knew.

  Did the chamber have a secret door, like the one built in Salaan? He walked to the part of the stone wall closest to him. He let his hand range over it, then tapped it, first with his fingers, then with the rifle butt. It sounded solid, and from what he could tell from hi
s Talent, it felt solid as well. He examined the entire wall, but all of it felt the same.

  Then, recalling the use of light-torch brackets in the palace of the Matrial, he began to look for places where there might have been brackets. Once he looked, the narrow holes drilled into the stone were obvious. There had been four such brackets, two on each of the side walls, each head high. Alucius looked at each closely. When he reached the third set of bracket holes, he smiled, but he checked the fourth set as well before returning to the third.

  Three of the brackets had been anchored by two holes drilled into the stone. The third set had four holes—the two standard anchors, and then two more in the middle, one above the other. Whatever cables had been used had long since vanished, but Alucius had a good idea that there was a door or something like it on one side or the other of the vanished four-hole bracket.

  He studied the two center holes, then began to create a Talent-probe—the kind he hadn’t tried or used since he’d been confined in the hidden city of the soarers. He began by visualizing a thin golden probe, slipping it into the uppermost of the center holes in the wall. He had to concentrate more, using the probe to feel blindly what lay beyond the stone. There were silvery metal levers, and weights. He wrapped his probe around what felt like a lever and tried to pull it down. The probe slipped off the lever—if that was what it happened to be—as though the metal was heavily oiled. Alucius focused his probe with rougher edges, and greater strength, and sticky as well, almost as if with glue covered with sand. That allowed him to pull down on the lever, but nothing happened. He tried to push, but that didn’t work either.

  Sweat began to form on Alucius’s forehead as he tried combination after combination of pulling on one lever, then another. A quarter glass passed, and then half a glass, and his entire body was shaking when, abruptly, there was a snap, a low grinding, and a section of the wall slid sideways, revealing a passageway beyond—one lit dimly by a pair of ancient light-torches.