Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Effortlessly, the two picked up the larger ifrit and carried him up the stairs from the Table chamber, through the conference room, out into the foyer, and up yet another flight of stairs to a corner chamber, where a stove suffused the room with strong but gentle warmth. There, they laid him on the extra-long and extra-wide bed.

  Tarolt took the folded sheet of eternal paper from the fieldmaster’s belt, opening it. He smiled as he beheld the map.

  “What is it?”

  “An ancient map of where all the Tables were.” Tarolt fixed his eyes on Trezun. “I will wait. You must guard the Table. Should the Talent-steer appear, use a light-knife before he can use any of his weapons.”

  “Yes, Fieldmaster.”

  “Tarolt…still.”

  “Yes, Tarolt.” Trezun nodded and hurried back down the steps.

  Tarolt seated himself in the overlarge straight-backed wooden chair and waited.

  Half a glass passed before Lasylt’s eyes blinked, and another quarter before the ifrit coughed and looked around. He finally caught sight of Tarolt. “You…have…the scepter?”

  “It’s locked in the storeroom. Trezun is guarding it and watching the Table with a light-knife.”

  “Good.” The senior ifrit slowly eased himself into a position where he sat on the edge of the bed and looked directly at Tarolt. He began to speak, his voice low and gravelly. “We must insist that Waleryn bring his Table up to full power and immediately bring the locator here to Salaan. We can lose no time in seeking out and recovering the other scepter. Then one of you must translate to that scepter. It will act as a portal.”

  Tarolt nodded slowly. “I will have to make that effort. Trezun is limited to Tables.”

  “That is not all,” Lasylt continued. “As soon as you can, Tarolt, you must use my authority to order the translation of another ten Efrans here. Now.”

  “Ten?”

  “As I was leaving with the scepter, I could sense your Talent-steer moving toward Lysia. We retrieved the scepter just in time. He is far stronger than the ancient ones, and he is searching for the scepters. He must know their purpose. If we have both here, and there are always two…or more guarding the Table…”

  “We cannot do that without more Efrans,” Tarolt said.

  “We cannot. That is why we will order ten more here.”

  “The translation is still dangerous with such a frail grid.”

  “Order fifteen then, or twenty. Some may perish, but the Talent-steer must not be allowed to take either scepter.”

  “I told Trezun to use a light-knife on him should he appear in the Table, even before he is fully translated.”

  “Good. We will still need more Efrans. Go and issue the orders.”

  “Yes, Lasylt.” Tarolt inclined his head, then rose from the chair.

  “I will be down shortly.” Lasylt paused. “The strong room is Talent-shielded, is it not?”

  “It is indeed, and the door is closed.”

  Lasylt nodded again as Tarolt left the bedchamber and started down the steps.

  145

  Alucius and Wendra stood at the edge of the silver mirror in the amber-walled tower. Alendra was strapped firmly into the carrypack, and Alucius held his rifle in his left hand. All the cartridges in the magazine had been infused with the darkness of lifeforce, as had the ten remaining in the loops of his belt. He glanced at Wendra, and their eyes met.

  “Are you ready?” he finally asked.

  “No. But I won’t be any more ready tomorrow or the next day.” Wendra forced a grin. “And we’ll be a lot more hungry.”

  Alucius extended his right hand and took her left, and the two stepped onto the mirrorlike surface.

  “Yellow and orange—those are the colors, and they’ll seem misty, almost not there. They might seem hidden behind the blackness,” Alucius said.

  Wendra nodded.

  He began to concentrate on reaching the misty darkness of the ley lines, trying to match what he did with what he felt Wendra was doing.

  He began to sink into the silverness of the mirror and along a misty-dark conduit toward the deeper and more greenish black misty darkness beneath the hidden city. He could barely sense Wendra, but she was beside him, in that fashion of closeness that he could not touch or reach. The chill did not seem quite so intense as he recalled, and he tried to concentrate on the portal that was yellow and orange. Yellow and orange, he tried to project to Wendra as he focused his mind on traversing the misty blackness to the far southeast, almost as far from the Aerlal Plateau as one could go and still remain within Corus.

  So slowly, the yellow and orange drew nearer, or they drew nearer to it, veiled by a purplish shadow of an ifrit tube, one that was but partly there. Alucius continued to send the image of yellow and orange toward Wendra, but he had no idea if she could sense what he tried to project. Finally, he concentrated on lifting himself out of the misty blackness, out of the chill, and back into the world of light through the yellow and orange.

  The barrier before him was one of silvered orange, and he formed himself into a spearhead of being…

  Orange, yellow, and silver mixed in slashing swirls of icy chill a swirl of chill that exploded away from him….

  Alucius stood in the Table depression—alone. He glanced around. There was no one in the Table chamber besides himself, not even Wendra. He swallowed. Should he try to go back into the darkness and chill to find her? Or should he wait a moment?

  Then, a swirl of dark mist appeared and Wendra and Alendra stood beside him.

  He reached out and squeezed Wendra’s hand. “I was getting worried.”

  “I had…a little trouble…breaking through.”

  “I’m sorry. You have to imagine yourself as a spear or something sharp.”

  A rueful smile crossed her lips. “I tried being a hammer. A spear would have been better.”

  “Or an axe.” Alucius studied the chamber more intently. Unlike the walls of the other Table chambers, those of the chamber in Lysia were cracked. In more than a few places, the walls appeared to have been splintered and broken by gunfire or shrapnel. The thinnest rays of light penetrated the chamber through cracks in the stone ceiling, providing a twilightlike illumination.

  “I’ll get better,” Wendra promised, patting Alendra on the back.

  Even as Alucius stepped out of the depression that had held a Table many years before, he could sense an aura of purpleness as well. It was the first time he had sensed an ifrit in a place where there was not a functioning Table. He cast out his Talent even farther, bringing up his rifle as he did…but there was no one else in the Table chamber, or in the open passageway that led up the stone steps to an upper level. “An ifrit’s been here. He’s gone, I think.”

  “Is that the purple feeling?”

  Alucius nodded.

  “It feels cold…worse than a sandsnake or one of those Talent-creatures on the stead.”

  “They’re very strong, and their clothes are like nightsilk. Don’t think they are, but they’ve pressed lifeforce into them, and they act the same way when they’re hit with a sabre or a bullet. They might be even stronger than nightsilk.” Alucius inspected the first set of holes drilled into the stone walls, where once a light-torch bracket had been.

  “I think it’s this one,” Wendra said from the other side of the chamber. “There are four holes here, and there are scuff marks in the dust on the floor.”

  Alucius walked around the oblong Table depression and joined her. His eyes took in the holes. Again, his Talent revealed nothing. “Do you want to try to open it?”

  “Why don’t you show me? That will take less time.”

  He extended a thin Talent-probe, turning the leading end as sticky as drying honey, and sand-rough. He fumbled with what he could barely sense on the other side of the stone wall. His forehead was damp with sweat when there was a click and the wall slid aside to reveal the passageway. A mist of purpleness drifted out of the passage and around the two herders, but
Alucius could tell that the passageway and the chamber beyond were empty.

  Wendra wrinkled her nose. “I know it’s something I sense with Talent, but it smells bad. Alendra doesn’t like it, either.”

  The two eased into the passageway, almost ten yards long and lit by the faint glow of an ancient light-torch. As Alucius had expected, at the end was another chamber—exactly five yards square. Large footprints stood out in the dust that had settled onto the polished stone floor. As with the chamber in Dereka, a table desk stood beside the wall in one corner, with a long-legged chair beside it. Against the wall to the right was a single-wide chest of drawers.

  Stretched on the floor in the corner beside the desk was a set of clothes, the green tunic trimmed in brilliant purple, with matching trousers and black boots. All the garb had a silvery sheen and held embedded lifeforce. On the wall adjoining the one closest to the table desk was an empty niche. Alucius stepped toward it.

  Unlike every other bit of stone in the chamber, the stone surface of the niche was rough and uneven, with deeper gouges at each end. Alucius could also feel heat emanating from the stone. He looked down at the rock droplets on the ancient stone floor, then up at Wendra. “The scepter was here. Not very long ago, either. The ifrits used one of their light-knives to cut it out of the stone.”

  “Now what do we do?”

  Alucius stopped. “I think I know where the other scepter is…where it has to be…” He couldn’t help frowning as the words left his lips.

  “Where?”

  “It has to be in Madrien, under the Residence of the Matrial. It can’t be anywhere else. The soarer said that it was locked in pink and purple, and the entire residence—everything associated with the Matrial—has an energy that is pink and purple.”

  “But…you said you destroyed the crystal.” Absently, Wendra patted Alendra, as if to calm the infant.

  “I did…but what if the crystal was just something created by the use of the scepter? That’s the only thing that explains it, and it would explain why the Regent of the Matrial was able to repower those torques.”

  “Can we travel there…by the ley lines?”

  “We should be able to. I kept feeling a pink and purple portal, but I’d wager it isn’t a portal at all, but that other scepter, and probably the case that held it in Dereka was designed as much to hide it as for anything else.”

  “Then…hadn’t we better go and see if we can get it, before the ifrits do?” asked Wendra.

  A rueful smile crossed Alucius’s face as he realized that he had been trying to avoid returning to Hieron and the Residence of the Matrial. “We should.”

  “You really don’t want to go there, do you?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he replied. “You’re right. We need to get there before the ifrits do.” He turned and started back toward the Table chamber. “We can come back here later, if we have to.”

  Wendra followed, humming under her breath to Alendra.

  Once she was out of the passageway, Alucius used his Talent to close the hidden doorway. Then he stepped down into the depression where the Table used to be, all too many years before. Wendra stepped down beside him. He took her hand and squeezed it.

  “Are you ready?”

  She nodded.

  Alucius concentrated.

  The three began to sink into the very rock itself, merging into the misty blackness of the worldthread that they would travel westward, toward the pink and purple that marked Hieron—and the second scepter, Alucius hoped.

  146

  Norda, Lustrea

  Two oil lamps set in light-torch brackets illuminated the room whose walls were primarily of ancient stone. On the northern wall, newer stones showed where recent and hasty repairs had been made. The stone ceiling displayed years of soot from torches and lamps.

  A single figure stood before the oblong Table that dominated the middle of the underground room. The odor of wood oil and that of the energy that powered the light-torches mixed in the air that hung heavy in the dimly lit chamber.

  Waleryn stepped closer to the Table, his eyes fixing on the purplish glow in the center of the Table, a glow that expanded until the entire top surface of the Table glowed purple. Almost immediately, a grid appeared above the surface of the Table. Close to a third of the sections of the grid were purple; the remainder were red.

  The shadow-engineer concentrated on the grid, and another grid section changed from red to purple. A moment later, the entire grid vanished.

  The engineer turned and walked to the side of the room, lifting a wooden box two yards long but less than a third of that in height and width. Carrying the box, he stepped onto the Table, then began to sink into it, vanishing into the Table, leaving the barred Table chamber empty, the oil lamps flickering but slightly.

  After a time, the Table glowed more brightly, and the engineer reappeared, carrying a small pack. He was breathing heavily as he eased himself off the Table and walked to the crude and flat table set against the recently repaired wall. There he set the pack down.

  He settled onto the stool beside the flat table. Almost a quarter glass passed before his breathing returned to normal, and he stood and began to remove items from the pack.

  147

  The purple pink portal became less and less like a portal and more and more like a brilliant point of crystalline light, burning evilly through the misty blackness of the ley line that Alucius, Wendra, and Alendra traveled westward. There was no clearly defined portal, only two rings of pinkish fire. Alucius tried to signal to Wendra that they should try to emerge on the lower level. He could only hope she understood. Silvered purpleness shattered away from him.

  Almost before he broke out of the misty darkness, Alucius was looking for Wendra, but, this time, she and Alendra were beside him. The unseen but strongly felt purpleness infused the very air, filling the entire hexagonal stone chamber.

  Alucius had his rifle up and ready even before he saw the ifrit holding the scepter. In general shape, the scepter was close to the replica he had seen in the Table chamber in Dulka, a length of silver and black—two metals exuding light and intertwined—topped with a massive blue crystal. The crystal glimmered with energy, a deep and brilliant purple that was almost too bright to look at or sense directly.

  A broad smile crossed the ifrit’s face as Alucius started to squeeze the trigger. Alucius released the trigger pressure. The pinkish shield had flowed around the ifrit, and Alucius remembered what had happened when he had tried to strike the first pink crystal of the Matrial.

  The ifrit looked familiar.

  “You’re Tarolt.”

  “That is not really my name, but yes, I am. It would have been much easier if you had just pulled that trigger.”

  Alucius concentrated on creating a web of blackness to cast around both ifrit and scepter.

  “I don’t think so.” Purplish energy shredded Alucius’s web.

  A black javelin of force flew from Wendra toward Tarolt, slamming into his leg. He limped backward, lowering the scepter so that it formed a complete shield. Wendra’s second javelin struck that shield, and Alucius could sense the shield weakening.

  “How can you believe that turning a world into dead land is good?” Alucius knew there was little point in asking, but wanted to occupy Tarolt as he formed another black lifeforce missile, a hard task indeed, because there was so little lifeforce in the small stone chamber.

  “Good is what enables a people to survive in glory and power and dignity,” replied the ifrit. “Not surviving, or surviving in squalor and poverty, is bad.”

  “I can’t believe you think that destroying all life on a world—”

  “You can believe whatever you wish to believe. What you believe has no effect on the universe, only on yourself.” The ifrit smiled coldly. “Beliefs change nothing. Actions do. They change the arrangement of items in the universe. The universe remains as it was and will be. Beliefs have value only to the believer. There is no absolute good in the
universe; there is only survival. Those who survive determine which beliefs rule.”

  “So might makes right?” Alucius hurled another black javelin of darkness, a javelin that shredded off some of the purple shield.

  “Has it ever been otherwise? The universe does not need to have meaning. It is. You need the comfort of meaning.”

  Alucius knew that the ifrit was wrong, but now was not the time to unravel that puzzle. He flung another missile, one that weakened but again did not penetrate the shield created by the scepter.

  “Besides, all life that is superior is the same. Have you asked the ancient ones what sustains them?”

  “The ancient ones? The soarers?”

  “The ones you call soarers are but half the species.” The ifrit’s smile grew broader—and colder. “They were no different from us, save that they are dying, and we will live. They have but told you what they wish you to know. That, too, is the way of all life.” He stepped back into a doorway concealed by a Talent-illusion until the ifrit shredded it. The tall figure quickly backed up the steps.

  Alucius hurried after Tarolt, with Wendra almost at his side, throwing up a green golden shield before them and aiming another black missile at the ifrit. Somewhere he could sense Talent-alarms going off, and bodies moving toward them.

  No sooner had Alucius reached the top of the narrow staircase and stepped through the upper archway than he and Wendra were enfolded by blinding purplish pink, light that was visible not just to Talent-senses, but to eyes as well. Alendra whimpered and began to cry.

  As if it had never been destroyed, there, floating in the center of the stone-walled chamber, rotated a massive, multifaceted crystal. The Talentlike roots of purple energy no longer flowed into the rock, but directly to the scepter held by Tarolt. Even the once-cracked stone walls of the chamber had been regenerated or repaired, so that the stone was smooth and flawless.

  Alucius could sense that the ifrit was having trouble trying to translate out of the chamber while still maintaining control of the scepter. As before, Alucius could feel the heat building inside his nightsilk undergarments, as well as Alendra’s and Wendra’s discomfort. He forced himself to cast another Talent-missile at Tarolt.