Scepters
Page 74
“You herders…” Feran shook his head.
“Do you really think anyone wants me back?” Alucius asked. “Besides you, maybe?”
“You’re a hero. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but whatever it was, I’d wager it worked.”
“Oh, it worked,” Alucius admitted. “You won’t have any trouble with any of the traders or the Talent-twisted. The Lord-Protector has agreed to let you move the Guard to Iron Stem. The torques of Madrien don’t work, and they won’t ever work again. The Lord-Protector has promised not to change the customs in Lanachrona. Lustrea and Deforya are still a mess…but they’re far enough away that they won’t be a problem for a while. Oh…and none of the Tables work, and they won’t.”
“How did all this come to pass?” Feran’s tone was dry and detached.
“It just happened,” Alucius said blandly.
“I don’t think so. You’re the hero. The one in the old poem.”
“I doubt that,” Alucius replied. “But even if I were, heroes don’t make good commanders. Neither do herders. We’re loners by nature, and everyone can tell that. I’ve created enough unrest. After we finish, I’ll write out my resignation as colonel, and my recommendation that you succeed me. It will be accepted. If you have trouble…send me a message.”
Alucius saw no point in saying that the Lord-Protector had already agreed.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Alucius replied.
Feran laughed, a sound filled with humor, irony, and sadness. “You’ve done great and terrible things, Colonel. You’ve done them in ways that no one who wasn’t there will ever believe.”
“That’s probably for the best,” Alucius replied.
“What will you do?”
“Run the stead, and whatever else needs to be done.” Including exploring and learning from the Hidden City. And spending time with Wendra and Alendra.
“I suppose it really is for the best,” mused Feran. “For you, too. You’re changed. I can see it. Whatever you’ve done, even just what I’ve seen, being a mere colonel would be a letdown.” Feran smiled sadly. “In a way, I suppose it’s almost a tragedy.”
“A tragedy?” questioned Alucius.
“It is when you’ve been covered in glory, saved three lands, and defeated every foe in battle, and probably done more that I don’t know, all before you’ve turned thirty years.”
“You mean before I had a chance to truly grow up?” Alucius’s words held gentle irony. “It may be better that way. I don’t have to spend the rest of my life seeking glory…or whatever.” He smiled at Feran. “You don’t either, you know? Just be solid in the way you are.”
Feran smiled in return. “I can always threaten to call you back.” He paused. “For Fifth Company, maybe for all the Guard, I’ll be Colonel Feran. You’ll be ‘The Colonel.’”
Alucius shrugged helplessly. “After I write the resignation, we’ll get Wendra and go over to Elyset’s for supper.”
“So long as you pay. You’re still colonel until the Lord-Protector accepts that resignation.” Feran grinned at Alucius.
163
Twilight had just fallen across the Iron Valleys when Alucius, Wendra, and Alendra reached the point on the high road where they turned off onto the lane leading to the stead. When Alucius and Wendra had stopped at the cooperage in Iron Stem, Kyrial and Clerynda had been glad to see Wendra and Alendra, and even Alucius. But there had been a reserve, far more than with Feran…or with the Lord-Protector.
Alucius had considered that reserve as they had ridden northward on the ancient high road, and finally he spoke. “Your parents were relieved to see us, but almost as relieved to see us off.”
“Of course…they never thought their daughter would marry the hero or the lamaial. They just thought you’d be a good herder who would give back the heritage of the land to their daughter, and that we’d just be a good little herder couple. They don’t know what happened, and they don’t want to know, and they’re afraid they might learn. They can tell that I’ve killed people, and worse, and it frightens them. Daughters aren’t supposed to do that.” Wendra patted a complaining Alendra. “It isn’t that much farther, little one, not that much farther.”
“Feran said the same thing, when we met while you were tending Alendra. Before dinner. He said I was the hero. I never did understand that poem. Not really,” Alucius said. “I certainly wasn’t a hero. I did what I could, and I was fortunate.”
“There were more than a few who wanted to be the hero, dear one,” she replied. “The barbarian in Illegya, the Matrial and the Regent, the Praetor, even that ifrit…”
“Tarolt,” Alucius supplied.
“That wasn’t what the poem was about,” Wendra continued.
“What was it about?” asked Alucius. “Besides a dream about restoring the faded glory of the past, a glory that wasn’t really ever there?”
“What is a hero?” she countered.
“Heroes are the people that everyone recognizes.”
“That doesn’t define a hero.”
“You tell me.”
“Someone willing to sacrifice himself for other people. In a way, the soarers were heroes. They sacrificed themselves for us, for all of us. We didn’t make any sacrifices like that,” Wendra pointed out.
“What’s the point of sacrificing…” Alucius suddenly broke off as he understood. “That’s it.”
“What is?” This time Wendra looked puzzled.
“The ifrits believed that survival justified any action, and they would sacrifice any world and any people for their way of life. The soarers believed that no sacrifice was too great to maintain life as it had been. They were both wrong.”
“You’re saying that the poem was wrong, too.”
“Maybe…it was meant to be wrong.” Alucius shifted his weight in the saddle, looking ahead toward a stead still out of eyesight. “It doesn’t ever say whether the hero or the lamaial was in the right, now that I think about it.”
Wendra laughed. “We won’t ever know that.”
“In a way, in one way, the ifrits were right,” mused Alucius. “So were the soarers, and neither really saw it.”
“Oh?” Wendra’s tone was light.
“There’s no one living who is not but a lodger upon the land. We are born, we strive, and we pass. You can only tend and pass on the land.”
“So philosophical.”
“So much a herder,” he countered.
“That’s why we’re riding home, instead of using the ley lines. But, for all that, your mother was right. You are the soarer’s child.”
Alucius looked at Wendra. “The old song—it’s Alendra’s as well.” Before Wendra could reply, he recited the last part of the words, slowly,
“But the soarer’s child praise the most,
for she will rout the sanders’ host,
and raise the lost banners high
under the green and silver sky.”
“You say that well.”
“You said I was a soarer. So are you. What does that make her?”
Wendra turned in the saddle, her smile and eyes bright. “Ours. The land’s.”
In the darkening sky to the east, just above the Aerlal Plateau, both Asterta and Selena shone full across the Iron Valleys, and across the stead just ahead of the three riders. Three riders coming home.
Tor Books by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SCEPTERS: THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COREAN CHRONICLES
Copyright © 2004 by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Modesitt, L. E.
Scepters: The third book of the Corean Chronicles / L. E. Modesitt, Jr.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN: 978-0-7653-1042-2
I. Title.
PS3563.O264S377 2004
813’.54—dc22
2003026585