Alector's Choice (11 page)

After a glass and a
half and talks with almost twenty of the Cadmians, Dainyl thanked the squad
leader and walked slowly back toward his quarters. He had a better feel of how
the rankers felt and acted, and that just made matters more puzzling.

Dainyl was certain
that everyone he had talked to was telling the truth as they saw it. It would
have been much simpler if he had discovered an ill-managed mine with brutal
guards—except for four things. First, the kind of men sent to the mines weren’t
the type to throw themselves off of bridges or cliffs or try to scramble over
stockade fences with armed guards watching them. Second, the Cadmians he had
seen and the ones he’d talked to weren’t brutal. Third, Devoryn had known far
too much about alectors. Fourth, the marshal and the Highest had sent a
battalion of Cadmians—and Dainyl—and neither the marshal nor the Highest had
been in Dramur. Nor was there any record of any other alector having been there
recently.

And then there was
the matter of the Submarshal’s death. That was hardly a coincidence, Dainyl
felt, although he could not have offered a shred of proof as to why he felt
that way.

The Duarchs’ Valor
docked in Dramuria a good two glasses before dawn on Duadi, at the one pier
large enough for deep-sea vessels, but it was well past dawn before Mykel and
Bhoral led the troopers and mounts of Fifteenth Company down the ramp to the
stone pier. Even so, the half-disc of Selena was still bright overhead,
although Asterta had long since set.

There on the pier,
Fifteenth Company formed up behind Seventeenth and Sixteenth Companies, closer
together than Mykel would have preferred. As the last mounts of Thirteenth
Company formed up on the pier, Mykel looked back toward the ramp. Above and
behind the ramp, cranes were swinging into place, preparing to off-load supplies,
including ammunition, spare rifles, and fodder for the battalion’s mounts.

Mykel was ready
enough to head out. The vessel itself bothered him. The ship had no sails, and,
unlike the lander river craft or the river tugs on the Vedra, it didn’t use
coal or steam. There weren’t any stacks, and the vessel hummed its way through
the ocean. Yet almost all the equipment abovedecks was powered by the crew,
from the winches and the capstan to the water pumps. The engine compartments
were sealed, according to what several crew members had told Mykel, and only
the chief engineer or the captain and the exec ever entered them. One of the
deckhands said it was the same on all of the Duarchs’ ships.

“Another mystery,” he
murmured. He’d never liked mysteries, especially ones that suggested great
power being hoarded. While the ship itself had disturbed him, that unease was
as much a symptom of the situation in which he was finding himself as the ship
itself. The alectors had built a ship that could travel faster than a mount
over all but the shortest of distances. They had pteridons and skylances, and
weapons that could turn a man to ashes—and yet they needed a battalion of
mounted rifles to deal with a few handfuls of rebel miners?

Finally, Majer Vaclyn
gave the order to the battalion. “Mount up!”

Mykel waited before
he relayed the order. He and his company still had to wait almost a quarter
glass before the rear ranks of Sixteenth Company began to move out.

From the saddle,
riding off the pier at the head of Fif-teenth Company, Mykel took in what he
could of Dramuria. He hadn’t been all that impressed with the view he’d gotten
from the deck of the ship. There were but two piers in the harbor, and the
Duarchs’ Valor had barely fit at the larger one, while the vessels at the smaller
inshore pier had all been fishing vessels, most of which had cast off before
dawn. His eyes took in the handful of warehouses, all of graystone, and looking
ancient, just beyond the piers.

A light wind blew out
of the south, barely enough to keep the morning from being unpleasantly warm.
Even so, he occasionally had to blot his forehead. There was also an acrid and
unpleasant smell carried on the wind, something between manure, offal, and
rotten meat.

Mykel surveyed all
that he could, taking in the stone gutters that separated the sidewalks from
the street, deep enough to suggest that at least some of the time rain was
heavy, and lingering on the signboards over the shops— with neat images and
lettering, yet with faded paint.

Early as it was,
there were already a few people on the stone sidewalks bordering the wider
street up which the battalion rode. Some looked at the riders, and some didn’t,
but most of those who looked were children or younger adults, usually men. The
young women might have looked, Mykel felt, but did so more discreetly.

Very few of the
buildings along the main street were of more than one story, but whatever their
height, all had roofs of dull red tile, and most of the dwellings and
structures lacked shutters. Even the main road itself was of the same
graystone, with hollows worn by years of iron-tired wagons.

“Place seems
worn-out,” said Bhoral quietly.

“It’s hot here. It’s
late in harvest, and nearly as hot as midsummer in Faitel or Elcien. I’d be
worn-out working here, too.” Mykel offered a low and rueful laugh. He wasn’t
looking forward to serving even two seasons in Dramur, al-though the winter
might prove pleasant. He hoped it would, if it came to that.

The sound of hoofs on
stone echoed through the morning, loud enough that Mykel couldn’t hear if the
people along their way were saying much of anything. The main street was
straight as a quarrel, aimed northwest at the mountains, and Mykel wondered if
the Cadmian compound happened to be in the hills below the jagged peaks. As his
eyes traversed the higher peaks, a mix of red and black rocks, with
intermittent greenery, he sensed something. What he couldn’t say, but he looked
northward more intently.

Two huge birds were
circling a peak to the northwest. He looked again. “Those are pteridons.”

“Does look like
pteridons, sir.”

There was no doubt in
Mykel’s mind, none at all.

Seventeenth Company
turned onto a narrower but still stone-paved road that crossed over a stream,
certainly not the main river, then headed uphill, presumably toward the Cadmian
compound. Sixteenth Company followed, and so did Mykel and Fifteenth Company.

He glanced back over
his shoulder. He could only see one pteridon in the sky over the peaks, but
there had been two. Why was Third Battalion being deployed to Dramur if the
Myrmidons had already sent in pteridons?

“You’re not liking
the pteridons, sir?” asked Bhoral.

“I have to wonder
what we’re getting into,” Mykel replied cautiously. “No one mentioned
pteridons.”

“It’s always that
way. They never tell us everything.” Bhoral laughed. “Me, I’m happier that
they’re here.”

Mykel wasn’t, but he
smiled anyway, because he couldn’t have explained his feelings except in a
general way. Any place that had problems requiring both Cadmians and pteridons
was not someplace where the duty at hand was going to be easy.

A glass before dawn
on Duadi found Dainyl standing with Quelyt and Falyna, between their pteridons
in the courtyard of the Cadmian compound.

“You want down on
that little bluff below the peak, sir?” asked Quelyt. “I’ll land with you, and
Falyna will circle. That way, I can cover you, and she can make sure nothing
else comes up or down the peak.” He smiled ruefully. “She’s a better shot,
too.”

Dainyl had been about
to suggest that, but, instead, he just nodded. “Good plan.” Although he was
wearing his uniform tunic and padded flying jacket, another shot to his injured
shoulder, and he’d be facing a good three weeks before he could move it without
pain, if not longer. It was still sore and bruised from the single shot he’d
taken.

There was also the
unspoken credo of the alectors, which applied especially to the Myrmidons:
Alectors were invulnerable. There were so few that the steers could never be
allowed to consider them vulnerable like other mortals. Too many shots, and
Dainyl would find that image hard to maintain. If he showed vulnerability, he
might well find himself removed from the Myrmidons and relegated to necessary
menial work within the Duarch’s Palace, or at the Vault of the Ages in
Lyterna—if not worse.

He looked to Quelyt.
“We’d better get flying.”

“Yes, sir. It’s still
cool and calm. No sign of clouds around those peaks.”

Dainyl waited until
Quelyt had mounted, then climbed into the second silver saddle. The pteridon’s
wings extended, and, with the sharp burst of Talent, they were air-bome, moving
eastward into the wind off the ocean.

Dainyl looked to the
south, where he could see a large vessel moored at the ocean pier. That had to
be the Duarchs’ Valor, with the Cadmian battalion. What the Cad-mian mounted
rifles could do, Dainyl had no idea, but his orders were very clear. He was to
observe, not to interfere… unless something went terribly wrong. If it did, he
would have to act quickly; and then, if the situation got worse, all blame
would fall on him.

He forced his
concentration back to flying and their destination. As the pteridon’s wings
moved, and they gained speed and altitude, Quelyt guided them back around to
the northwest, setting a course toward the higher peaks opposite the smugglers’
cove. Unlike the afternoon before, the air was far calmer, and much colder.
Despite his jacket and gloves, and the insulating properties of his boots and
uniform, Dainyl could feel the chill seeping into his feet and fingers. Acorus
was a beautiful world, but it was a cold one.

Quelyt had clearly
decided to gain altitude before they neared the peaks, climbing through the
more stable air away from the mountains.

“That one?” called
Quelyt.

“No! Farther north.
The summit’s angled.”

Quelyt had to circle
several of the peaks with various outcroppings just below their summits before
Dainyl located the one for which they were searching.

“That one there! With
the angle, and the flat space below.”

“Be tight to land
there, sir. Hang on.”

The pteridon managed
to make it onto the space, although its left wing tip seemed to graze the
rugged stone escarpment above the cave.

Quelyt sighed, then
smiled. “Don’t want to do that often, sir.”

“Let’s hope not.”

After dismounting,
Dainyl drew on lifeforce to hold deflection shields, then unholstered the
light-cutter before stepping toward the irregular opening of the cave, which
looked to be about three and a half yards tall at the highest point. Behind
him, Quelyt had the skylance ready.

Dainyl stopped well
short of the entrance. Even from where he stood, as he had glimpsed the day
before, a good five yards back into the darkness, there was indeed an
archway—like no archway he had ever seen or heard described. The material
looked to be stone, like the eternal goldenstone of the Hall of Justice, but
the shade of gold was different, wrong, amberlike, but somehow holding green
within it. The stone extended seamlessly from the blackish lava of the sides of
the cave. There were no joints, no marks of tools. The base was narrower than
the midsection, and the top rose into a graceful point level with Dainyl’s
eyes.

After a moment, he
could sense there was no living creature nearby, except for some rodents and
small birds. He glanced upward toward the summit, another fifty yards above.
There was no sign of any other opening, and no sense of anything living nearby
other than the Myrmidons and small creatures.

“It’s all right,” he
called back. “There’s no one here. I think this was one of the places of the
ancients.”

“Didn’t know they
lived this far south.”

“It’s old. Very old.”
That he could also sense. He took another step forward and studied the entrance
to the cave. The stone was lava, the hard black kind. Although the cave looked
irregular, it wasn’t natural. He took another step, this time into the dimness
of the cave, still holding the light-cutter at the ready. His boots left the
only prints on the reddish sand.

Abruptly, he paused
and studied the floor of the cave. It was uneven where he stood, but just a
yard ahead, it was smooth, far too smooth to have been created by any steer,
even a lander. His eyes followed the floor to the archway.

Beyond it, there was
no sand, just the finest layer of reddish dust covering green tiles. Tiles, not
smoothed rock, not the amber green stone, yet those tiles contained the same
energy as the archway. Beyond the archway, a corridor extended farther into the
mountain, with walls also of the featureless amber green. The small corridor,
less than a yard and a half wide, and only two yards in height, ended abruptly only
another four yards or so beyond the archway, not in the black lava that framed
the archway, but in a smooth wall of the amber green stone.

Dainyl stopped just
before the archway and extended his Talent-senses. He could feel residual
lifeforces, so faint as to be close to nonexistent, red-violet and golden
green.

He let his gloved
fingers slide over the stonework of the archway, so smooth that the gloves
could find no rough edges. Knowing he was being foolhardy, he still stepped
through the archway, carefully lowering his head. Nothing happened.

He bent down and
studied the green floor tiles. They were not actually tiles, but a pattern
impressed on greenstone, with indentations that formed simple squares. His eyes
traveled to the end of the short corridor. Near the end, the floor changed so
that there was a large square, almost, but not quite, the width of the
corridor, a yard by a yard, roughly. The square was just a shade lower than the
surrounding tiles.

He took several
careful steps forward until he was standing just short of the dust-covered
square. His mouth opened. There on the floor was a perfect silver mirror, inset
and made of some sort of stone. In the dimness and through the dust, Dainyl
could see his own image looking down at the mirror. He closed his mouth, and so
did the image.

He probed it with his
Talent, but, for all that he could tell, it was a mirror, nothing more. Except
it was on the floor. An empty tunnel, exquisitely if simply constructed, near
the top of a peak in the middle of nowhere, with a mirror set into the floor,
one fashioned out of stone.

He stepped back and
studied the short corridor and the wall. He extracted his belt knife and tapped
the walls with the butt, gently, listening. He even leaned down and tapped the
mirror.

Yet, for all his
scrutiny, the walls seemed and felt solid. So did the mirror. The corridor
tunnel appeared to be what he saw and sensed, and he had the feeling that he
could have stood there for years and learned nothing more.

Finally, he turned
and walked out of the tunnel and the natural-looking, but artificial, cave.
Once outside, he turned > and studied it again. After several moments, he
turned once more and made his way back to Quelyt and the waiting pteridon. He
sheathed the knife, but not the light-cutter, and kept his eyes trained on the
cave entrance.

“What is it, sir?”

“I don’t know. I wish
I did. It’s a perfect tunnel that goes back four or five yards, and ends. The
workmanship and artistry are superb, and yet it’s all hidden away up here on a mountain
peak where no one’s been in years, maybe in centuries. It just ends, as if it
were meant to be that way. There’s even a mirror in there, but it’s on the
floor. But why…” Dainyl shook his head. “They must have been able to fly, or
had creatures like pteridons, because I can’t see or sense any other way in of
out.”

“You think, maybe it
was some sort of observation post?”

“It must have been
something like that, and they weren’t too concerned about anyone else flying.
It’s not that well hidden from a flier, but you couldn’t see it at all from
above or below, and it’s located where climbing to get here would be almost
impossible.”

“Well… the ancients
did leave things here. That’s what I always heard.”

“I don’t think we’ll
ever know why it’s here. It’s not as though there are any ancients around to
ask.” Dainyl smiled ruefully. “We’d better get back. I imagine the Cadmians
will be arriving at the compound before long, and I’ll need to meet with their
majer.” He climbed into the second saddle, asking himself how he was going to
report what he had found—and if he should until he knew more.