Scepters (89 page)

“They
take the lifeforce, just like the ifrits do,” Wendra concluded, lifting Alendra
to her shoulder and burping her.

“But
there is a difference, no matter what the ifrit said,” Alucius pointed out. “The
sanders or the soarers don’t do that to people.”

“They
don’t? Or they haven’t in recent years? And what about the amber towers? I hadn’t
thought about it either, but I’d wager they’ve got some type of lifeforce in
them.”

Alucius
frowned. “You’re probably right. I still feel there’s a difference. “

“There
is. The soarers only used a fraction of a world’s lifeforce; they even let
themselves die out rather than take too much. The ifrits squander it all within
a few hundred or thousand years, then move on to other worlds.”

“I
wonder…”

“We’ll
always wonder, but maybe… if… after… we can explore the hidden cities and find
out more.”

If…
Alucius understood that “if” all too well as he sat and pondered.

After
Alendra’s needs had been met, and Alucius had to admit that his wife had been
most inventive in dealing with such, they left for breakfast in the public
room, and then, after eating, made their way down the boulevard on a morning
already promising to be hot and dry, heading for the store where Alucius had
purchased food and other sundries days earlier.

The
morning’s purchases also included several squares of cloth for swaddling
Alendra, as well as hard cheese, dried fruit, salted nuts, and another water
bottle, which they filled at the public fountain a block away.

As
Alucius capped the water bottle and handed it to Wendra, he studied the
boulevard to the south. Almost a full company of Deforyan lancers was formed up
outside the palace gates, and the gates had been closed. “We’d better get
moving.”

“The
lancers?”

“They’re
expecting trouble, and when that sort of thing happens, strangers aren’t
welcome.”

They
crossed the boulevard immediately and walked swiftly southward. Despite their
worries, no one even seemed to look at them, perhaps because a couple with a
child—even if one of them carried a heavy rifle—did not seem threatening.

As
they neared the ancient gold eternastone building that held the portal, Alucius
slipped the illusion of nothingness around them.

“You’ll
have to teach me that,” murmured Wendra.

“You
could do it now,” replied Alucius as they moved toward the north entrance to
the ancient structure.

After
climbing the wide staircase, they followed the long corridor back, then wound
their way to the inside stone stairway that led down to the former Table
chamber. Along the way, Alucius did not hear or sense anyone. Once in the
former Table chamber, Alucius released the illusion.

“We’ll
take a look at the hidden chamber first.” He walked to the side of the chamber
where the special light-torch bracket had been. There, he created the
Talent-probe with the grasping edges, wrapping it around the hidden lever
beyond the wall. The first two levers he tried did nothing, but with the third
came the
snap
, followed by a low grinding. The
hidden wall section slid sideways, revealing the passageway beyond—still lit
dimly by a pair of ancient light-torches.

“Do
all the old Table chambers have these secret rooms?” Wendra absently bounced
Alendra. “Just be a good girl now, while your mother and father see what they
can do.”

“Most
seem to, but I didn’t try the ones in Blackstear and Soupat. I wasn’t in very
good shape there.” Leaving the hidden doorway open, he led the way along the
passageway to the hidden chamber. Once there, he stepped aside and let Wendra
survey it.

As
Wendra moved toward the empty scepter case embedded in the stone, he stepped
around her and made his way to the other ruined light-torch bracket. Again, he
tried to use a Talent probe to find a way to open the door, but nothing worked.

“Let
me try,” suggested Wendra.

For
all of her Talent probes, Wendra had little more luck than had Alucius.

She
looked at him. “What if we tried to transport ourselves on the ley lines and
came out on the other side of the wall? That what the soarers seemed to do.”

“If
we could do that…” mused Alucius.

“Then
we could take the lines close to the Table at Salaan,” Wendra pointed out, “and
we’d be close to Dekhron.”

“We
can certainly try, but I think I’d feel better if I started at where the Table
was,” Alucius admitted.

“So
would I. The thought of getting stuck in solid rock bothers me.”

Alucius
offered a crooked smile. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned that.”

Wendra
smiled sheepishly—town sheepishly. “The rock doesn’t bother the soarers, but it
might take practice.”

“We’d
better start.” Alucius walked back along the passageway, casting out with his
Talent to see if anyone happened to have made their way into the lower chamber.
While it was unlikely, there had been lancers investigating once before. His
Talent—and his ears—told him that the Table chamber remained deserted.

He
stepped into the oblong depression… concentrating on the misty blackness below.
Immediately, he began to sink…

The chill washed over and through him, and he tried to edge
himself sideways
…
and suddenly he could tell that
he was vingts away. He refocused himself on the crimson gold and could sense
that he was back close to the Table chamber. Instead of trying to break through
the silvery barrier, he tried to sense/see through it without breaking through…
the image was like a mirror that undulated like a banner in the breeze, and his
head began to ache. For a moment, he just hovered in the misty blackness, if
hovering was the right term for seemingly being buried in stone
.

He tried to extend a thread from himself, one that would serve as
an anchor so that the slightest thought would not propel him vingts
—
or scores of vingts
—
away. Then he
drifted sideways, slowly letting the thread extend from the ley line. Deeper
darkness surrounded him, hut that passed, and he seemed to he in another
corridor. He tried to use the life-force thread to tug himself back to the
Table chamber, and he found himself beyond the mirrorlike barrier, hut in the
Table chamber
.

With the chill in his bones growing, he eased out the thread ever
so slowly, heading down what he hoped was the passage to the first hidden
chamber… then beyond… Silver shattered away from him…

He
stood in another narrow corridor, one but barely illuminated by a single
light-torch five yards away, in a bracket high on the wall. The wall to his
right was similar to the ancient chamber beneath the Deforyan officers’
quarters, in that it contained murals—three in a row, each three yards long and
two high—and all rendered in brilliant colors that had been infused into the
very eternastone itself.

The
first mural showed a desolate scene of low, rocky hills, mostly covered in ice,
and heavy gray clouds, and nothing at all living. Not a tree, a bush, a sprig
of grass or even a lichen. Alucius moved before the next panel. It displayed
the same location, save that there were patches of grass, a few bushes, and
other scattered vegetation across the hillside, as well as a pair of what
looked like scrats at the edge of a gray-water lake. The third panel showed a
circular lake of brilliant blue below the same hills, and a structure of gold
eternastone that resembled the Landarch’s palace. Lush grass stretched toward the
hills and a herd of antelope grazed in the distance, while nearer were several
sandoxes being hitched to an enormous wagon by a pair of ifrits in maroon and
green.

Alucius
had sensed no life in the corridor or the adjoining rooms, and because he did
not wish to alarm Wendra, he walked quickly to the open doorway to the first
room. The wooden door had been infused with some lifeforce and swung open at
his touch. An ifrit lay upon the wide bed, but the slightest air currents
created by the door opening touched the figure—that of a black-haired woman—and
the body shivered into dust, leaving only the shimmering eternal garments.

He
watched, openmouthed, taking in the rest of the chamber—with its carved
armoire, the dressing chest, the graceful table desk of a wood like cherry, a
black-bordered mirror, and the nightsilklike maroon coverlet upon the bed. As
in the outer chamber, the chairs had longer legs than any that would have been
comfortable for Alucius.

He
stepped back out of the room and walked to the end of the corridor, the one
that he thought adjoined the chamber that had held the scepter. A small metal
stub protruded from the wall near the corner. The remainder of the lever lay on
the floor. Alucius could not budge the stub, not with his arms, his legs, or
his Talent.

Were
the walls closing in on him? He glanced around, deciding that they were not.
Still… he was a herder born, and being surrounded by stone with no way out,
except by Talent, gave him an uneasy feeling.

He
concentrated on extending a thread of Talent toward the darkness beneath. The
return seemed much easier, and so quick that he scarcely felt the chill.

“Oh…
I was getting worried.” Wendra let out a deep breath.

“I
stopped to take a quick look.”

“Quick?”

“Fairly
quick. I’m sorry. It’s just that…”

“What
was there?” asked Wendra.

Alucius
shook his head. “Four rooms along a corridor … I couldn’t explain in the time
we can go back together.”

“Is
it safe? How did you do it?”

“It’s…
it’s like leaving a thread, one of those binding us to the world, except that
you make it thicker and anchor it to the ley line. You leave it anchored until
you’re certain that you’re where you want to be.”

Wendra
snorted. “How do you know where you want to be?”

“Just
think about it. It’s almost like looking through… or at… a mirror in the dark.
If you’re worried… try moving just to the open passageway there, first.”

“I
just might.”

Alucius
watched as Wendra vanished, then reappeared in the doorway to the passage
leading to the scepter chamber.

“You
were right. It’s not that hard, once you try it.”

He
couldn’t help smiling. “You have a knack for that. It took me much longer.”

“That’s
because all I had to do was start with what you told me.”

Alucius
had his doubts about that. From what he’d seen, Wendra picked up Talent matters
faster than he had.

“I’ll
meet you in the hidden rooms.” Wendra and Alendra—in the front carrypack—turned
into a misty image, then vanished.

Alucius
followed, ending up beside the wall with the broken lever.

He
stepped forward, standing behind Wendra as she looked into the room whose door
he had opened.

“How
terrible… to be trapped here. What happened, do you think?”

“The
Cataclysm, I’d guess. The soarers disrupted everything, and the ifrits needed
Tables. They were trapped. Or maybe the soarers were stronger and jammed the
doors around the scepter.”

“Why
didn’t they do that in Lysia?”

“I
think… I don’t know… but I think it’s because Lysia is too far south and too
hot and damp. The soarer said something about that before, when I was in the
hidden city.”

“Did
you look at the other rooms?”

“No.
I didn’t want you to worry.” Alucius stepped back.

Wendra
followed.

“You
open the door. When I opened that one, there was an ifrit in the clothes, but
she turned to dust at just the touch of the breeze from the door.”

Wendra
eased open the second door, but the chamber, similar to the first, held no
long-dead ifrit and no clothing laid out as if an ifrit might have been there.
In the third chamber, the body of a male ifrit lay sprawled across a rug with a
geometric design Alucius did not recognize, woven in brilliant crimson and
shades of silvered gray. Within moments of the door opening his figure vanished
into dust as well, leaving but the eternal clothing.

The
last chamber was an armory, with strange riflelike weapons racked along the
wall on the left side. The barrels were not hollow, but of a solid green
crystal. Alucius could sense that whatever energy had once powered them had
long since dissipated. On the right wall were pistols with the same crystal barrels,
and on the rear wall were what looked to be whips with heavy stocks. The lash
of the whips were thin tendrils so sharp that Alucius could appreciate their
deadliness without touching them.

“Do
you think we could find anything we could use?” asked Wendra.

“We
can look.”

In
the end, even after they had gone through every drawer and desk in the sealed
rooms, there was little of immediate use. Alucius had pocketed the few strange
golds, but the few devices he had seen either seemed to lack power, as had the
weapons, or were incomprehensible.

“We’ll
have to come back and study some of these later,” he finally said.

Wendra
nodded reluctantly. “I think the air is getting bad, too.”

They
held hands and slipped into the mistiness and back to the Table chamber. Alucius
set the rifle on the stone and sat down. “I need a few moments to rest and some
water.”

“That’s
good. Alendra’s hungry again.”

Alucius
drank some of the water from his bottle, occasionally extending it to Wendra.
He also kept using his Talent to make sure that no one crept down the stairs to
surprise them.

“I
can’t imagine living in a chamber like those.” Wendra shuddered. “All that
stone around, and no way out if the mechanisms failed. Even if they were
ifrits…” She shook her head.

“They
didn’t expect their mechanisms to fail.” Alucius laughed softly. “Mechanisms
always fail, sooner or later.”