Scepters

Hyalt, Lanachrona

Light
fell upon the priest. That single ray of illumination, shaped by the ancient
master-carved lens in the ceiling of the long and narrow chapel hewn out of the
red rock cliffs, bathed the celebrant. His green tunic and trousers, trimmed in
purple, shimmered. So did the alabaster makeup that covered his face. The
blue-silver threads in the black short-haired wig picked up the light, creating
a halo around his face. The black boots, with inset lifts, reflected light as
if they too were burnished mirrors.

A
long chord echoed through the temple, but the priest did not speak until all
was silent.

“When
our forebears turned their backs on the True Duarchy, then the One Who Is
turned away and let the Cataclysm fall upon Corus…” The celebrant’s voice
seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere.

More
than a hundred worshippers stood with bowed heads, heads covered with black
scarves of mourning. Only a handful dared to look from lowered heads toward the
front of the temple.

“The
Cataclysm did not have to happen. The misery and suffering did not have to come
to pass. And why did it come to be? How could so many be so blind?”

The
only response to his questions was silence.

“The
Duarchy of Corus bestowed peace and prosperity upon all the world, for
generation upon generation. Never was there so fair a realm, so just a world.
Never were so blessed the peoples of a world. Never had so many benefited so
much. And then, in an instant, it all vanished…”

In
the next-to-last line of worshippers stood a dark-haired figure in gray. He was
a head taller than those around him, and his face paler. The weave of the wool
of his traveling cloak was somewhat finer. His head was bent slightly less than
the heads of others, and his eyes never left the celebrant. The faintest hint
of an amused smile appeared from time to time at the corners of his thin lips.

“…
as the Mantra of Mourning declares… Ice flowed from the skies. The air that had
been so fair, and perfumed, became as thin and as acrid as vinegar. Streams
dried in their beds, rivers in their courses, never to flow again… All that had
been beautiful and great perished and was lost. And for what reason?”

After
a momentary silence, the priest answered, “Because people were selfish and
thought only of themselves. They turned their backs on the True Duarchy, and
when they did so, they turned their backs on the One Who Is… for the Duarchy
was indeed His creation…

“…
in this world of transitory glory, when warlord succeeds warlord, and battle
follows battle, and evil follows evil, we must persevere. We must have faith in
the One Who Is. We must follow the path of righteousness to restore the old
truths. For only by the instrument of the True Duarchy shall we be redeemed.
Only by restoring the true creation of the One Who Is shall we once more see
peace and prosperity, faith and faithfulness…”

The
traveler in gray nodded, appreciatively, and continued to listen.

“…
even today, the troubles continue. The hills to the north and west have become
so dry in your lifetimes that they support nothing but twisted trees and spiky
thorn, and yet the unbelievers do not see. Even here in Hyalt, where it is
obvious, they do not see…

“…
when the only deity is gold, when the only rule is power, when the only law is
that laid down by the longest blade, by the deadliest rifle, no man can be
safe, and none can find security. There are no arts, no fine buildings, no
wondrous words, nothing but gold and blood…”

The
traveler continued to listen, until at last came a hymn and the concluding
refrain:

“…
for the beauty of the skies and sea,

the
full return of perfect harmony,

the
blessings of the True Duarchy

and
for the One Who Will Always Be!”

After
the hymn, the priest turned to the worshippers. “Praise to the One Who Is! And
for His creation of the Duarchy!”

“And
for His creation of the Duarchy!” repeated the congregation. “Praise to the One
Who Is! For He will come again in glory!” “For He will come again in glory!” “Praise
to Him and His True Duarchy! For all that was and will be!”

“For
all that was and will be!”

The
single ray of light vanished, plunging the cavern temple into total darkness
for a long moment. Then, slowly, more indirect light filtered into the temple as
the skylight portals, with their gauze-covered panes, were uncovered.

The
sanctuary at the front of the temple was empty.

The
gray-clad traveler made his way forward, toward the side entrance leading to
the chambers of the celebrant. His fingers touched briefly the outer garments
over the heavy leather wallet hidden beneath his cloak and filled with golds.

The
wind moaned over the top of Westridge, hissing through the quarasote that had
grown up following the Cataclysm and that had come to dominate the arid lands
of the Iron Valleys in the tens of centuries that followed. Alucius half stood
in the stirrups, stretching his legs. He settled back into the saddle of the
gray gelding, drank in the cool and dry morning air, and smiled to himself. He
looked to the northeast out across the ridge before him, and the expanse of
land empty except for quarasote and sand and red soil—and the predators and
prey that were unseen, except to those who knew how to understand the Iron
Valleys or to those with Talent, who could sense the lifethreads that wove the
world into a unified whole.

A good summer morning
, he thought, bending forward and
thumping the gelding on the shoulder. “We’ve got a ways to go.”

The
lead ram was already five hundred yards—a quarter vingt—ahead of the last ewe,
and they were barely four vingts out from the stead buildings.

The
faint flash of green gossamer radiance washed over Alucius, and he half turned
in the saddle. A single soarer hovered in the silver-green sky of morning, her
wings shimmering against the sky and the sheer stone ramparts of the Aerial
Plateau to the east. The herder’s eyes took in the feminine form of the soarer,
then darted back to check his flock almost immediately.

He
had not seen a soarer in almost two years—since he had left the hidden city.
Nor had he and his Talent sensed the green radiance of one in all that time.
And all the times he had seen one of the soaring winged figures had meant
change—and usually trouble.

He
cast forth an inquiry.
What now
?

The
soarer vanished without a response. One instant, she was there. The next she
was not. While she had not felt familiar, Alucius had not been close enough
long enough to tell for sure if the soarer had been the one who had instructed
him during his brief captivity in the hidden city.

His
hand touched the hilt of the sabre at his belt. He glanced down at the rifle in
its leather saddle case. Even with the massive cartridges used in a herder
rifle—with casings bigger than the thumb of a large man—rifles were usually not
all that effective against the kind of trouble she foreshadowed. Rifles were
most useful against sandwolves and, sometimes, against sanders—and necessary,
since both would prey on lone nightsheep… and especially on ewes and lambs.
Rifles were useless against ifrits, but Alucius had never seen one near a
stead—not surprising, since he’d only seen two in person in his life, three if
he counted the Matrial, and he had not really even seen her.

A
soarer above Westridge in the morning, reflected Alucius, was so infrequent
that he almost wanted to turn back to the stead to tell Wendra about it. But
what could he tell his wife, except that a soarer had appeared, then vanished
without a word or gesture?

Outside
of the Iron Valleys, soarers—and even sanders—had already become a myth for
most of Corus, one told in tales that included the Myrmidons and alectors of
the long-vanished Duarchy—the millennium recalled by most of Corus as one of
peace and prosperity. Both the duration of that reign and the prosperity and fairness
of the Duarchy had been lies and exaggerations of the cruelest sort, as Alucius
had discovered in his battles as a Northern Guard officer, but since he had no
way to prove what he had discovered—except by revealing his Talent in a world
that feared and mistrusted it—the lie lived on, a comforting tale of a golden
past. Some folk—especially the savants from Tempre—said the soarers were never
there at all, that they were but mirages created by light and the fine,
mirrorlike dust worn off the quartz ridges that lined the natural parapets of
the Aerial Plateau by the endless winds. Alucius knew better. So did any of the
double handful of nightsheep herders around Iron Stem.

Alucius
nodded as he glanced back at his flock. Two of the nightrams edged toward each
other. Their curled black horns—knife-sharp on the front edges, and strong
enough to bend a sabre—glittered in the morning sun. Red eyes shone out of
black faces, and the black wool that was tougher than thick leather, more
valuable than gold, and covered their two-yard-long bodies and broad shoulders,
gave them a massive and menacing appearance. A nightram could gut a single
sandwolf, although the sandwolves were even larger, with crystal fangs more
than a handspan in length, but the sandwolves hunted in packs and tried to pick
off ewes and lambs, or older and weaker nightrams who strayed from the flock.

One
of the nightrams pawed the ground, and Alucius could sense the antagonism
between the two males. He eased the big gray gelding forward, reaching out with
his Talent to project disapproval and separation. Both of the black-wooled rams
looked up. Alucius could sense their frustration, but they separated. Herding
nightsheep was a chancy life, and impossible, often fatal, if the herder didn’t
have the Talent to make his feelings known.

Alucius
was fortunate to bear within him that Talent—more than fortunate, for the life
of a herder suited him. That he also knew. With his crooked smile, he let his
impatience flow out, spreading across the flock, chivvying the animals
eastward. They needed to graze on the lands near the Aerial Plateau—the nearer
the better—if their wool were to be prime.

The
nightrams black undercoat was softer than duck down, cooler than linen in
summer, and warmer than sheep’s wool in winter, but stronger than iron wire
once it was shorn and processed into nightsilk. The wool of the outer coat was
used for jackets stronger and more flexible—and far lighter—than plate mail.
Under pressure, the fabric stiffened to a hardness beyond steel, hard enough to
serve as armor of sorts, although its comparative thinness meant that bruises
to the body so shielded were not uncommon—as Alucius
well
knew from his personal experience in the militia, then the Northern Guard.

The
wool from the yearlings or the ewes was equally soft, but not as strong under
duress, and was used for the garments of the lady-gentry of such cities as
Borlan, Tempre, Krost, and Southgate. Nightsheep could make a herder a
comfortable living in Iron Stem, if they and their predators didn’t kill him
first.

Alucius
urged the gray eastward across the ground where little grew except the
quarasote bushes, on whose tender new stalks the nightsheep fed. After a year’s
growth, the lower shoots of the bushes toughened, and after two, not even a
maul-axe with a knife-sharp blade on the axe side could cut through the
toughened bark, and the finger-long thorns that grew in the third year could
slice through any boot leather. In its fourth year, each bush flowered with
tiny silver-green blossoms. The blossoms became seedpods that exploded across
the sandy wastes in the chill of winter, and then the bush died, leaving behind
dead stalks that contained too much silica to burn or to break or cut. Yet they
too succumbed to the wasteland, and to the shellbeetles that devoured them.
That was the harsh way of the lands beneath the Plateau and the reason why few
liked Iron Stem, even those living there.