Darknesses

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Alucius surveyed the chamber yet again. Except behind the Table, there was no place to hide. With nowhere to conceal himself, he unsheathed the sabre and stood against the wall, behind where the door would open.

  The door swung open, creaking as if it had not been well fitted, and a thin man not that much older than Alucius stepped through. He closed the door firmly, with a solid click. Then he slammed a bolt in place and whirled, reaching for what looked to be a holstered pistol.

  Alucius slashed across the other’s right shoulder, and the sabre felt as though it had struck mail—or nightsilk. Alucius could barely hang on to the blade, so severe was the impact, but he managed to bring the blade back up, aiming for the other’s uncovered wrist.

  Instead of striking the wrist, Alucius hit his forearm, with another impact like hitting nightsilk.

  For a moment, the two staggered. Alucius switched the sabre to his right hand, because his left was so numb that he doubted he could hold on to the blade for another slash or thrust.

  The other man sprang sideways and wrestled out the pistol, moving away from Alucius.

  A beam of blue light flashed by Alucius’s shoulder. A pattering of solid stone droplets hit the stone floor, and the stones on the wall steamed around a triangular gap where the light beam had eaten them away as if they were snow dropped onto a hot stove.

  Blue light that destroyed stone? With but a sabre, Alucius felt very much at a disadvantage. Very much. He lunged forward, grabbing the stool by one leg and throwing it at the man—or Recorder.

  As the other dodged, moving to block the door, Alucius dashed to the Table, putting it between him and the other.

  “Who are you?” asked the thin man, who, like the Recorder, seemed to be two individuals, one of them alabaster-skinned and violet-eyed, although that image appeared only to Alucius’s Talent-senses.

  “Alucius.” He kept his body low. “Who are you? Another Recorder?”

  “Vestor is the current name. You could call me an engineer.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Here. In Prosp. Where else would we be?” Vestor raised the black handgun.

  Alucius dropped below the top of the Table, knowing that Vestor would not destroy it. Still the line of blue light flashed just above his head. Behind him, more stone vaporized, then condensed into solid droplets, falling like hail. Alucius did not look back or up, but rather used his Talent-senses to watch the other.

  The other man kept the weapon leveled, waiting. But he did not call for the sentry outside, and that was in itself chilling to Alucius.

  Alucius reached out toward the other’s purple-twined lifethread, serpentlike, and struck. It was like using the sabre all over again, with his Talent rebounding against him. But, unlike the Recorder, Vestor staggered as well as Alucius.

  Then, as before with the Recorder, Vestor, still holding the light-knife, looked toward the Table, and ruby mists began to rise from the silvered surface. For a few moments, they were but gossamer fog, but they quickly began to thicken into the same kind of arms that the Recorder had created and with which he had attacked Alucius.

  Alucius could find no way out of the room, except by the barred door. Or the Table. And trying to attack a man whose weapon sliced through solid stone, and who appeared invulnerable to both a sabre and a Talent-attack—that was doomed to failure.

  Alucius swallowed, trying to compose himself, then bounded up and threw himself flat onto the Table, willing himself to be anywhere else. Anywhere else. For a long moment, he just lay there, exposed, wondering if he’d made another huge mistake.

  Vestor lowered the black weapon, as if trying to line it up to strike Alucius and not the Table itself.

  The blue beam slashed toward Alucius, and, despite the nightsilk, he could feel the heat and the incredible pain—before he again fell through the once-solid surface of the Table.

  Even as Alucius hurtled downward into the chill purple-blackness, he had to wonder how he could do something, anything. He hadn’t planned on running into the actual figures in the Derekan mural—or their descendants—who had Tables that saw everything and functioned as doors to other places. Who wore the equivalent of nightsilk and whose Talent-powers were far greater than his. And who regarded him as little more than an annoyance.

  For a moment, the chill was welcome, damping out the agony of fire in his shoulder, but within instants, he felt both the fire and the chill, and he would have convulsed into feverish shivers—except his body was immobile in the stream of blackened purple.

  What could he do? The blue arrow led back to the Recorder, the silver to the Recorder, and the dark purple conduits to something far worse, he feared.

  With his Talent, and a mind becoming increasingly sluggish, he groped toward the golden yellow arrow thread, frail, hidden, and walled away. The nearer he seemed to come, the more distant it seemed to be.

  Instead of trying to approach the golden green, he tried something else—just to be with and like it, to find peace in the cool green, to escape the fire in his shoulder, and the ice that chilled the rest of him.

  Once more, he burst through a barrier, two barriers, in fact, one of purple-blackness, and the second one of gold and silver that sprayed away from him as light flared around him.

  Then, red agony and blackness smashed into him.

  103

  Northeast of Iron Stem, Iron Valleys

  The afternoon harvest sun flooded the quarasote flats under the Aerlal Plateau with both light and heat, and sandy dust rose with each step of the two mounts—and the lighter steps of the nightsheep.

  From where she had been riding, to the east of the nightsheep, Wendra reined up abruptly, wincing.

  “What is it?” Royalt called out even as he eased his gray toward her.

  Wendra pulled off her heavy herders’ gloves and looked down at the black crystal of her ring, then at the reddened skin that bordered it. She waited until Royalt neared and reined up almost beside her.

  “There’s something wrong,” she said. “Alucius is hurt. It’s not the same as last time.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Royalt.

  “The ring. It turned cold, like ice. That was perhaps a glass back, but then it warmed up. I wondered, but I could feel that he was all right. This time, there was fire, enough to redden my skin, and then…then there was more of the chill.”

  “Is he…?”

  “He’s alive, but he’s badly hurt.” Wendra swallowed. “This feels different from the last time. I don’t know how, but it does.”

  “He should be in Tempre. Sanders…I hope that the Lord-Protector…” Royalt shook his head. “But it doesn’t make sense. Why would the Lord-Protector make such an announcement, inviting him there, and then…?”

  “Do you suppose he was on his way home? Or back to Dekhron?” asked Wendra, still looking down at the black crystal.

  “That could be. That could be. Some of those on the Council—or that sandsnake Weslyn…They’ve tried before.”

  “He stopped them, then, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” the older man admitted, “but even sandsnakes learn from their mistakes, and when you’re successful, you don’t learn much.”

  “You worry that he’s been too successful, don’t you?” asked the woman.

  “Alucius has seen evil, Wendra, but what he hasn’t seen, not yet, is how easily it can spread, and how effective it can be. He has not seen or felt truly powerful evil. That is something an old herder can sense—even if I know not the cause.” He paused. “Should we head back to the stead?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t do anything, and I’d just fret.” A bitter laugh followed her words. “I’ll worry anyway, but here I’ll have something to do.”

  Royalt nodded.

  104

  Once more, Alucius found himself standing in a strange room, an empty chamber with a single wide window before him. The walls were of an amberlike stone, holding depths of light. He glanced down. Beneath his feet was a simple silver squar
e, looking like a mirror, except that it showed absolutely no reflection. His shoulder felt as though it were on fire, and when he glanced down, he could see that the engineer’s weapon had sliced away a section of his tunic and shirt, but not the nightsilk beneath.

  Even as he looked up and took in the room, he could feel the room begin to spin around him. He staggered several steps toward the wall, putting out his left hand to steady himself as his legs began to tremble and give way.

  He sagged to the floor, wondering where—once more—he might be, even as the pain from his right shoulder continued to mount. Redness blurred over his eyes, and the room began to spin around him, faster…and even faster.

  Was there some sort of greenness?

  Or was it wistful thinking?

  He tried to raise his head, to focus on a shimmering golden greenness…and failed.

  Darkness—deep darkness—swept across him.

  The darkness lightened, and he could sense figures who appeared around him, blocky figures, followed by green and shimmering figures. But another wave of darkness, hot and feverish darkness washed over him, dragging him into depths that were cooler.

  How long he lingered in the darkness, Alucius had no idea, save that once more the deep green darkness lifted, so that he felt himself in more of a fog, silent, with no sounds, no echoes, and, once more red agony seared through his shoulder. Yet after that ravaging blast of red pain, the heat and the pain in his shoulder began to subside.

  Before he could appreciate that, he drifted—or was pushed—back into the dark depths.

  He struggled through more darkness, darkness interspersed with dreams of alabaster-skinned men and women with snakelike unseen appendages, and with pistols that fired blue light-knives that always seemed to find his shoulder, no matter how he ducked or tried to raise the lifeweb darkness against them.

  Once more, Alucius woke slowly, lying on the narrow bed, feeling the heat pour off his forehead, and from his shoulder. He could barely turn his head, just enough to see that a shimmering dressing was fastened across his right shoulder, a dressing that provided both heat and chill simultaneously. His eyes lifted, but he could only see the amber walls, those and a solid doorway, smaller than he would have thought.

  A small feminine figure appeared beside his bed.

  You must eat. Then you must rest. You were badly injured. You will be better. But you must eat.

  “How…?” Alucius couldn’t even lift his arms, they felt so heavy.

  You will recover…eat to strengthen your body…

  She spooned something from a platter into his mouth, a mushy substance tasting vaguely of prickle, but far better, or so it seemed. Alucius swallowed slowly, then accepted some more. The third spoonful was something else, fruitlike, cooler.

  As he ate, he could feel himself getting more and more tired, and his eyelids heavier and heavier…and he slid slowly into the comforting green darkness, and slept, this time without dreams.

  105

  Alucius yawned and started to stretch. A twinge of pain ran down his right arm, and he stopped. It was only a twinge, not the searing agony it had been. Suddenly, he realized that he was awake, truly awake. He had no idea how long he had drifted between sleeping and waking, with shadowy figures amid the green-washed darkness. He remembered talking to someone, but not whom, nor what he had said.

  He glanced around the room. Whether it was the same room in which he had found himself after struggling to escape from the strange engineer he had no idea, only that it had the same amber walls, walls containing a depth beneath their surface—and a shade similar to the yellow golden thread he had followed through the darkness between the Tables. He did not recall seeing a bed in the first room, but he had not seen much before he collapsed.

  Slowly, he turned his head to the right. There was a single window in the room, and through it he could see the silver-green sky of Corus. He studied the window and its casement more closely, realizing that the glass was so clear, so transparent. He had never seen glass so fine. Likewise, the glass was set not in wood, but in a shimmering silvery metal that was not silver. On the wall there was a row of amber pegs, pegs that were seamlessly attached to the walls. From the pegs hung his uniform, his nightsilk undergarments, and his sabre. There was no sign of the burns and damage to his tunic. His boots were neatly set against the wall under his uniform.

  Only then did he fully realize that he was wearing a dark green, loose-fitting gown of some sort, of a fabric even smoother than nightsilk. He fingered the fabric with his left hand, trying to determine what it might be.

  Finally, he eased his legs over the side of the narrow bed and stood. His legs and knees felt unsteady, but he took three steps until he stood before the door, a solid sheet of golden wood without windows, or peepholes, and a single lever handle of the same metal as the window casements. He touched the door, which felt far smoother than wood but showed no grain. The door lever did not turn, no matter how hard he pressed down or lifted. He pushed at the door itself, but it did not even vibrate. He tried to probe the door with his Talent, but something in both door and walls stopped him.

  He stepped back. He was definitely confined. He looked toward the window, its casements of the same polished and shining amberlike stone as the walls. As he did, he realized something else. The room was wedge-shaped, far narrower at the end with the door, and wider at the window. The wall in which the window was set also curved.

  He walked slowly to the window, and the glass that was so clear. For a moment, he stood there studying it, until he saw the flat bracket on one side. He pressed it and tugged. The window slid to the left so easily that he almost lost his balance, and a chill wind rushed into the room, a wind that was winterlike.

  He shut the window, quickly. The gown was scarcely proof against winter cold. Then he frowned, realizing that the silvery frame had slipped right into the stone of the casement. He opened the window again, just slightly. The frame did not move, but the glass slipped through the silvery metal without even the faintest of cracks showing between glass and metal.

  He tried to use his Talent, but while he could sense beyond the window, something about the amber stone prevented him from perceiving anything inside the structure.

  After closing the window once more, he studied the view. He was in a round tower of some sort. Below were other structures of circular and arcing designs that extended a vingt or so from the tower to a circular wall of the same amber stone that comprised the tower and the buildings below. Out beyond the walls, the ground was white, white sand that shimmered and glittered in the morning sun. Farther out, the whiteness ended in a rampart of dark rock, rising at least half a vingt straight up. All along the top of that rampart ran green-tinted crystal oblongs, but those crystals did not so much reflect as draw in and catch the sun’s rays.

  The crystals looked familiar…

  Alucius sensed a greenish radiance behind him. He turned back as the door opened, and a soarer appeared.

  You are much better. The soarer looked young, and very feminine, her shape shrouded by the golden-tinged green mist that acted as a garment. Her lips did not move, although Alucius understood the words clearly.

  He looked into her eyes, brilliant green eyes that were clear, and deep—and very old, Alucius felt, so old that he felt like a ten-year-old on the stead again. “Where am I?”

  The hidden city. It is not for you. Not once you are well and prepared to do what must be done.

  “The hidden city? How…?”

  You know how you reached us. You could not have come here without knowing how.

  “But I don’t know where.”

  That does not matter. What matters is that you must finish healing and learn more about how to master yourself and your Talent.

  “Were you the one who showed me the mural?”

  That matters little. You saw the mural and were warned, but you did not understand fully its meaning. Or the power of those shown.

  Alucius considered
her words for a moment, stifling a yawn. Perhaps he was not so strong as he had thought. He moved toward the bed and sat down, his eyes still on the soarer. “I saw that the Duarchy was actually ruled by a different people, the alabaster-skinned people, who were like the Matrial.”

  The Matrial and even the engineer and the Recorder of Deeds are but pale weaklings compared to those who once ruled Corus and who will return if you do not undertake to learn and master yourself.

  “Why can’t you?” Alucius didn’t like being rushed into things he didn’t understand, recalling all too clearly his grandsire’s advice about that, and about how superiors used people. And he was feeling that he had been used—or had let himself be used, again and again. He thought about the mural and the Cataclysm. “You did it before, didn’t you?”

  The soarer remained standing before him. Standing, not soaring—and silent.

  “Why me? You’ve been protecting and watching me for years, haven’t you? What do you want from me?”

  If you do not learn, and return and kill the engineer and his sibling, Corus will once again become as it once was, before it dies.

  “As it was? In the time before the Cataclysm? How could that happen?”

  The soarer shrugged. One of the dark…ifrits…has taken possession of the engineer.

  “Ifrits?”

  Creatures…beings with great and evil powers. With but one fully working portal, possession is all that is possible for higher intelligence. These ifrits can transport Talent-creatures, but those creatures cannot last long in your world. If the ifrit in Prosp remains there and can construct another portal while his sibling repairs the one in Tempre, then they can transport other dark ifrits into your world where they will possess anyone they wish. They prefer those with Talent, like you or your Wendra.

  “But why?”

  Their world is slowly dying. It is dying because they seize and drink in the lifeforces of all around them, because they use the lifeforces of a world for everything. Once they have sucked a world dry, they look for others. Through dreams, visions, they entice beings throughout the endless worlds circling endless stars to build the Tables, promising great knowledge and power.