Scepters (86 page)

Wendra
propped herself into a sitting position on the bed that was narrow indeed for
two and an infant. Her head tilted quizzically. Her face stiffened. Then,
abruptly, tears began to stream from her eyes.

Alendra
began to wail even more loudly, almost despairingly, and Alucius looked from
his daughter to his wife. “What is it?”

“She’s
gone. They’re gone. All the soarers. Can’t you feel it?”

Alucius
stopped, letting his Talent extend into the tower. The mistiness of the ley
lines to the mirror-portals remained, but the greenish gold was gone. And for
the first time, his Talent was not blocked by the tower. Beyond the walls,
there was not a trace of the lifeforce energy that might have been a soarer.
Not the smallest trace remained.

Not
a trace, as if all of the greenish gold lifeforce that had always been part of
the soarers had been removed from the world, as if an entire part of Corus had
vanished. And it had.

The
soarers had always been there, always a part of Corus, especially of the lands
of the Iron Valleys. How could they be gone?

Yet,
even as he asked himself the question, he knew that Wendra was right. The
emptiness of the hidden city was like a gaping hole in what his Talent sensed.
The soarers were gone. Or had there been only the single soarer at the end? Was
the wood spirit of Madrien gone as well? “They were here last night. She was.”
His words sounded empty.

He
swallowed. The soarer had been dying the night before, and she had known it.
Alucius should have known, should have guessed. But… soarers were soarers, not
herders. They had always been secretive and private, and there was no way that
a soarer would have allowed anyone near. That he understood, even as it
saddened him.

“She
didn’t want us to know.” Wendra tried to blot the tears from her face, but they
kept flowing. “I think… she was the last. She had to be.” Several sobs
convulsed her. “She didn’t want us to know… so sad… to be so alone…”

So
alone. Alucius found it hard to imagine what it must have been like, soaring
through an empty city, trying to hold on, trying to impart knowledge to others
not even of the same race, so that part of the legacy would live on, trying to
remember, to tell what was important.

As
Wendra’s sobs subsided, Alucius kept patting Alendra’s back, and her wails
subsided into something more like sobbing cries. After a time, looking at
Wendra, he spoke again. “She said it was up to us. I knew there weren’t very
many. I just didn’t know that she was the only one. Or that it would happen…
overnight.”

“She
was so tired,” Wendra said. “So tired. And lonely… I didn’t see it. I should
have.”

Alendra
whimpered.

“You
can hand her to me. She’s hungry,” Wendra extended her arms.

Alucius
eased Alendra into them. “I’m going to wash up and dress while you feed her.
Then I’ll take care of her while you dress.”

Wendra
nodded, wincing slightly as Alendra began to nurse, greedily. “Don’t be quite
such a little piglet… that’s hard on your mother.” She shook her head. “About
some things, she’s like you. When she gets something on her mind, she’s not
good at listening.”

“You
expect her to listen at less than three months old?” Alucius asked.

Wendra
forced a grin, despite her tear-streaked face. “In some matters… of appetite…
age doesn’t matter.”

Alucius
could feel himself flushing. “I think I’d better get washed up.” He turned to
the washstand, realizing abruptly that he needed to be frugal with the
remaining water—unless he wanted to try soaring down the narrow shaft that was
the only way up and down the tower, and he had his doubts about his success there
after his earlier experiments with soaring.

When
he had washed and dressed, he turned to Wendra.

“It
will be a bit,” she said, looking down at Alendra.

Alucius
smiled. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“I
should hope not. You get into trouble.”

“You
got into trouble not going anywhere,” he countered.

“Where
do we start the search for the scepters?” she asked.

“I
have some ideas where they aren’t. I think I would have sensed them—I hope I
would have—if they’d been in Blackstear or Soupat or Hyalt or Dereka… or
Tempre.”

“The
soarer gave us an idea,” Wendra pointed out. “If the ifrits can only travel
where there are Tables, don’t the scepters have to be where there is a Table—or
where there was one?”

“The
map would show the old locations of the Tables where I haven’t been.” Alucius
nodded. Where had he put the map? He glanced around, then realized it was on
the narrow lower shelf of the washstand.

He
retrieved the map and opened it, studying it more closely, looking for a hint
of something, anything. He smiled faintly, realizing that the tower room was
about the only place where he’d actually been able to look at the map in
anything close to full light.

After
a time, he finally saw what he had missed on his previous observations. There
were two purple dots at the upper vertices of two of the octagons—the ones at
Dereka and Lysia. He eased over beside Wendra and lowered the map. “See? Here
and here. Those don’t appear on any of the other Table octagons.”

“There
are two scepters, aren’t there?” asked Wendra.

“That’s
what the soarer said.” Alucius frowned as he studied the map.

“What
is it?”

“I
might already have found one of them—except it wasn’t there.”

Wendra
raised her eyebrows.

“There
was a hidden room off the old Table chamber in Dereka…” Alucius went on to
explain what he had seen in the chamber, concluding, “… and I’d wager that the
casket once held one of the scepters. But the scepter was gone.”

“There
weren’t any signs of anything else missing, were there?”

“No
one had been in the chamber in years. There was dust everywhere. Someone might
have taken it a long time ago, but not recently.”

“So
it was taken years ago. Could we travel there by the ley lines and see if we
could sense where it might lead?”

There
was something, something, but Alucius couldn’t quite recall what it was… and he
felt that he should remember. “It’s not there. Not now. We should try Lysia.”

“Have
you been there?” Wendra eased Alendra from her breast and to her shoulder,
patting her back.

“No,
but the map says that the colors are yellow and orange. We can concentrate on
that.”

“Will
it help if we hold hands?” Wendra lowered her daughter to the other breast. “She’s
still hungry.”

“I
don’t know. I don’t see how it could hurt.” Alucius frowned. “What about
Alendra? Do you think… ?”

“She
comes with us,” Wendra replied. “I’m not leaving her. Besides, we have to
finish this soon. Alendra won’t be able to travel with us for much longer. We
don’t know how long this will take. Besides, there are too many ifrits around.”

Alucius
could have argued about that, but then, his wife’s mind was clearly made up…
and there had been far more ifrits in Corus than he’d thought about, and with
the translation tubes open to the ifrits’ world, there was always the chance
that another might appear. Or a whole host of them.

“I
won’t be that long. Or Alendra won’t.”

Alucius
straightened and walked to the window, looking down and out at the hidden city,
a city that had once held much of a race… and now held but three herders… and
the hopes of both soarers and herders.

Salaan, Lanachrona

Purplish
mist boiled away from the Table, and a tall figure emerged from the mist
holding a case in both arms. In the holster attached to the wide maroon belt
was a light-cutter whose discharge formulator had been half-melted,
half-shattered.

The
ifrit slowly and carefully descended from the Table, easing the silver and
black case into Tarolt’s arms. “Careful… barely… made…”

“Fieldmaster…”

Lasylt
sat down on the stone floor. Then his eyes rolled up in their sockets, before
closing. He slowly pitched sideways. Trezun grasped his garments quickly enough
so that he was able to keep the senior fieldmaster from slamming down onto the
stone.

Tarolt
opened the hidden doorway and carried the metallic case into the strong room at
the end of the short corridor, returning quickly—empty-handed. He closed the
hidden door.

“What
happened?” stammered Trezun.

“Table
strain. It’s hard to carry something like that through the tubes,” explained
Tarolt. “He’ll recover quickly. We’ll just carry him up to his room.”

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.

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
well 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 Aerial Plateau as one could go and still
remain within Corns.

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…