Scepters (82 page)

At
that thought, he frowned, recalling his grandfather’s advice about not acting
until he knew enough to do so. But that had been in battle—not when the love of
his life was threatened.

He
took a long swallow from the water bottle before slipping through the open
stone doorway and back into the Table chamber. Turning back, he extended a
Talent-probe to the activating lever of the door and pushed it. The door slid
back into place, leaving no sign of a second exit from the chamber. Rifle in
hand, Alucius stepped down into the depression that had once held a Table,
hoping that he could somehow relink to the shadowy web that connected both
Tables and portals.

He
stood in the circle that he could sense only with his Talent, and ever so
faintly even with that, trying to reach to the darkness beyond and beneath.
Nothing happened. He was still standing in the oblong space in the stone floor
that had once held a Table.

Oblong?
For some reason that thought bothered him. He blotted his forehead. Then he
realized that if he included the depth into the stone, the Table would have
been a cube. All the Tables had to be cubes. Why?

With
a deep breath he pushed that thought away, again concentrating, this time not
on the idea of purple black conduits running from Table to Table, but a vaguer,
more shadowy web on which the conduits seemed to have been imposed.

The stone beneath his boots dissolved, and he was in blackness, a
chill blackness, but one that was green-tinged, not purple-tinged. Instead, he
could sense that he was somehow resting beside/below the ifrit conduit, and
that the conduit wound around the web, much as an ifrit lifethread wound around
the lifethread of a person when the person was ifrit possessed.

Where did he wish to go? To an amber portal, he had already
decided, the one that seemed to match with the location of Hyalt. That way, if
he could not travel back, at least he’d be in Lanachrona and could make his way
to Tempre, and the Lord-Protector, Travel through the hazy green black darkness
seemed to take less effort, and within moments, or so it seemed, although he
doubted time was the way he felt it, he hovered underneath an amber portal, one
tinged with a faint and distant purple, much as was the portal at Dereka. Did
he want to emerge?

For a moment, he could also feel other portals, in seemingly
opposite directions, one that was pink-tinged purple, and another, barely
sensed, that was blue and maroon.

Alucius decided and concentrated on reaching out of the hazy
darkness, to bring himself back into the world of light through the amber.

Silver and amber light shattered away from him.

The Hidden City, Corus

Wendra
stood in the second tower room, the one adjoining her chamber, looking down at
the mirrored square set into the amber floor. In her carrypack, Alendra
squirmed. Beside her hovered the soarer.

You must learn to travel the ley lines of the world. Use your
Talent. Study the portal.

“Is
this like a Table? I thought Tables had to be set into the ground. Is it safe
to carry Alendra?”

It is safe for the child now, but only for two seasons or perhaps
three. Once she has a firmer sense of who she is, then such travel will not be
safe for her.

“Why
does that matter?”

Travel is by force of will and self The Tables are a framework
imposed upon the lifethreads of the world itself. We have woven those
lifethreads into the buildings of our cities. We once could grow such threads.
The ifrits cannot. They can only suck them dry. You could travel from Table to
Table now
—
the few that the ifrits have constructed
or rebuilt. They would soon catch you, because you have not learned enough.
That is another reason why we have separated the portals of the Plateau from
the ley lines of the world. That way you cannot travel to where you could be
taken… not until you are ready
.

“Why
do you want—”

Study the portal My time and yours is short. I will guide you to
another portal in the other city.

“There
are two hidden cities?”

Two are but those left. Use your Talent and study
… I
will return
. The soarer vanished, leaving Wendra looking
down at the mirror-portal set in the amberstone.

Once
more, Alucius stood in a chamber that had once held a Table. Now the oblong
depression was half filled with sand. Through the dimness, he could barely see
the smooth stone walls of the room. He stepped out of the depression, almost
falling as his left boot skidded on the loose sand that covered the
still-polished stone floor.

As
with the Table chamber in Dereka, there were no brackets for light-torches, no
windows, no furnishings, and no sign of the original function of the chamber
except the space cut into the stone that had once held a Table. There was also
no obvious way out.

Alucius
paused. How could he see if there were no sources of light? From what he could
tell, the walls radiated just the faintest hint of light. Or something did. He
began to examine the walls, looking for the pattern of holes that might have
once held a light-torch bracket. He covered slightly more than half the chamber
when he found the telltale pattern.

As
hard as he tried, though, he could find nothing to grasp with his Talent, no
hidden levers, nothing.

His
face coated in sweat, he stopped trying to use his Talent-probes and took a
deep breath, leaning back against the smooth stone wall.

“Oh…”
He stumbled and almost fell as the stone behind him shifted, sliding sideways
for half a yard before grinding to a halt. His rifle butt
clunked
against the hard rock.

Alucius
turned and tried to move the stone door wider. It did not budge. He could not
close it either, although his efforts in that direction were not quite so
vigorous. There was more of the indirect light in the passage beyond the door,
and he squeezed through the opening and into the stone passage beyond, a
corridor two yards wide, perhaps two and a half high, walled in redstone. Less
than ten yards from where he entered the passage, it ended—or branched into two
passages, one heading to the right and one to the left.

Alucius
paused, looking first to the left, then to the right. To the right… he thought
he could sense something, but the left seemed empty. He turned left. Only five
yards farther, the corridor ended at what looked to be a wooden door. There was
no lever, just a handle. Alucius pulled on the handle and the door opened toward
him, swinging out on hinges that squeaked and grated.

His
mouth opened, because the other side of the door appeared to be a stone wall,
and blocking the opening was a waist-high bench. The room beyond was but three
yards in width, and was in fact the prophet’s now-empty strong room outside of
Hyalt. For a moment, Alucius just stood there, amazed that he had once been so
close and not even sensed the tunnel behind. He finally stepped back and closed
the door, although he had to lean his weight against the edge, and his feet
slipped on the gritty surface of the stone.

He
retraced his steps back to the point where the corridor had branched and
followed the other branch. The sound of the grit underfoot echoed in the
stone-walled corridor, which began to curve after about fifteen yards. The way
brightened as he walked the next few yards, and he brought up the rifle, but
the source of light was not an exit but a pair of ancient light-torches mounted
in antique brackets at head level on both sides of the corridor.

With
his Talent, he could sense an end to the corridor at another doorway, and
within five yards, he reached another of the handled doors. Gingerly, his rifle
ready, although he sensed no one beyond the door, he tugged. It opened easily
onto an empty room, four yards wide and three deep, also lit by a pair of
ancient light-torches. Opposite the door was an open archway, and beyond it was
a wall. Alucius left the door—also stone-faced on the outside—ajar and stepped
into the chamber.

He
eased toward the archway, its edges finished with maroon ceramic tiles. At the
archway itself, he stopped, studying what lay beyond—a screen wall, no more
than three yards high and three wide. Beyond that, his Talent revealed a
soaring cavern or chamber, with a stone dais on the opposite side of the screen
wall, a dais raised a good two yards above the floor of the cavern.

There
was no one on the dais, and no one near it in the cavern, but he thought there
might be someone at the far end of the chamber. He could not tell for sure,
because there was something about the chamber, almost as if it reflected his
Talent back at him.

Rifle
in hand, he stepped around the screen wall onto the dais, a stone platform
really, five yards on a side. The dimness vanished as a line of light-torches
on the screen wall flared into full illumination.

He
blinked at the sudden comparative brightness that threw the cavernous area
before him into darkness.

“Oh…”
The moaning sound echoed from more than a score of yards before him, in the
darkness well away from the platform.

“One
of the great ones…”

“Do
you bring word of the True Duarchy?”

“We
have waited, and we have been faithful…”

Alucius
immediately called up the illusion of nothingness, of little more than a
breeze, and immediately, the cavern amphitheater was filled with the sound of
roaring wind. He staggered at the intensity of the sound, before realizing that
the roaring was all within his head and that something in the design of the
place amplified Talent.

What
could he say? What could he do?

He
concentrated on creating an image… not of an ifrit… but of a man, but an image
far larger than life, and one that shimmered in green and gold.

“Ohh…”
The moaning from the worshippers in the back, for that was what they must have
been, Alucius concluded, rose, then died away.

He
spoke, as carefully as he could, in such unexpected circumstances. “ Man must
live in the world as it is… and tend it with care. The Duarches plundered and
pillaged. Do not ask for a return to the Duarchy and those who ravaged Corus!
Do not ask for slavery and death.”

“The
lamaial! It is the lamaial!”

“Lost…
we are lost! All is lost!”

Alucius
sensed the hostility and the lifting of rifles.

He
dropped the image of the green and gold figure, and replaced it with… nothing…
an image of nothingness, even as he dashed back through the archway.

A
single rifle shot echoed through the chamber behind him.

Back
in the chamber behind the screen wall, he stepped through the door he had left
ajar, closing it behind him. He retreated back down the stone corridor, around
the curves, and back to the chamber that had once held a Table.

He
had no idea whether the remaining worshippers knew about the hidden doorway or
the passage beyond or whether they would even try to follow, but he could sense
that Wendra was nowhere near the portal, and there was little sense in
remaining in Hyalt in the ruins of what had been the temple of the prophet—or
prophets. He had to wonder why he had not discovered the concealed cavern
amphitheater and decided that the Talent-reflective construction might have
shielded it. He paused, realizing that also might explain why he had been
unable to sense the hidden doors in the Table chambers. Perhaps they had been
Talent-shielded.

He
stepped down into the depression where once the Table had been. He did not
concentrate on the Table, but upon the green-tinged blackness below the faded
amber.

He dropped into that chill greenish darkness, but that darkness,
chill as it was, did not seem quite so paralyzing as when he had used the Tables.
But it was still cold, and he searched for a direction, for the faded crimson
gold. As he felt himself moving away from the amber of Hyalt, once more he
sensed the blue and maroon portal, still distant, and the closer pinkish
purple, noting its familiarity even as he dismissed it.

The crimson-gold-silver shattered away from him
… … and he
stood back in the Table chamber in Dereka.

Alucius
surveyed the chamber, his rifle ready, his Talent probing up the stairwell; but
there was no one nearby, and he sat down. He took several deep breaths, letting
his feet rest on the bottom of the depression that had once held a Table,
millennia before. He set the rifle down carefully on a clear patch of stone.
Only then did he take a long drink from the water bottle before recorking it
and replacing it in its belt holder.

Had
he been foolish to try to influence the true believers? He laughed softly,
almost hoarsely. He’d known better. He just hadn’t thought when he’d been
confronted so suddenly with the unexpected.

Also,
he’d been almost stunned by the Talent-amplification of the cavern
amphitheater. But had it really been amplification? Alucius frowned. As he
considered what he had experienced, it had not so much been the amplification
of Talent as the total elimination of all other lifeforces, and the comparative
feeling of Talent-amplification. Was that so that the ifrits could command
greater control—or so that those who were not true ifrits could create the
impression of such control?

He
wondered if he would ever know.

Every
time he ventured into using his Talent, he discovered something else he didn’t
know. He supposed that was true of life, as well, but with Talent, the dangers
could be so much greater.

Just
before he had broken through the barrier, and again as he was leaving Hyalt,
Alucius had noted the portal of pink-tinged purple, and he had not recalled
such a Table octagon on the ifrit map. It was a portal, not a Table. Of that,
he had been certain.