Scepters (6 page)

A
long howl rose from somewhere, and Alucius could feel the pack stopping, if
reluctantly.

“Easy
there… easy…” Alucius had already recocked the rifle.

Abruptly,
dark forms were flowing through the quarasote bushes—toward Alucius and his
flock. Shapes like sanders, but not sanders. lalent-tinged shapes, shadowed in
unseen purple and blue and without lifethreads.

Alucius
paused just long enough to cast darkness around the remaining cartridges in his
magazine before firing twice more. Each of the dark sanderlike figures he hit
burst into the all-consuming blue flame he had seen only twice before—in
Deforya and when leaving it.

He
switched rifles and, infusing another set of cartridges with the darkness of
life, quickly emptied the second. There remained only a single dark sander,
which charged toward Alucius.

The
herder jammed the rifle into the holder right-handed and drew the sabre with
his left. As he leaned forward, he extended Talent around the blade, a darkness
of green and gold, and slashed.

The
shock of impact was as though he had struck stone, and his entire arm vibrated.

The
dark sander seemed to shrivel.

Alucius
urged the gray past the shrinking pillar of darkness, quickly enough that the
blast of heat from the fire that followed only warmed him.

As
the fires vanished, leaving only an oily residue on the sandy red soil, Alucius
checked the flock over. One ewe—the last straggler—lay dead. So did the young
sandwolf that had been caught by the younger nightram, Alucius wondered if the
younger ram had been one of Lamb’s offspring.

He
turned his eyes back to the ewe’s body, caught by the sudden stench rising and
drifting toward him. The corpse began to decompose, turning putrid even as he
watched. Then, the body flared into a blue-tinged flame, and soon all that was
left was oily black residue.

Alucius
turned the gray, heading back toward the front of the flock, and scanned the
quarasote flats with his Talent and his eyes. He could detect nothing. Even the
sandwolves had slithered away—uncharacteristically leaving behind the bodies of
those Alucius and the nightram had slain. He glanced down at the black crystal
of the silver-framed herder’s wristguard, but the wristband was neither warmer
nor colder than usual. He had to wonder if Wendra had felt anything through the
ring she wore that was attuned to his wristguard.

Thunder
rolled overhead, and the sky darkened even more. Tiny needlelike droplets of
rain began to fall, slashing out of the lowering clouds almost horizontally.
Alucius squinted against the rain, wishing he had foreseen the violence of the
storm.

The
herder glanced from side to side, squinting through the wind and rain that had
already begun to die away. Above him, the once-dark clouds were thinning
rapidly, revealing a clear silver-green sky.

Alucius
continued to study the ground, then the bushes stretching to the southeast, with
a side glance at the low wash where the wolves had vanished, and reloaded the
first rifle, then the second.

In
all his years of herding, he’d never seen anything close to what had just
occurred. Not in herding—only in the battles against the pteridons of Aellyan
Edyss and the Talent-creatures that had attacked his forces in leaving Deforya.

He
moistened his lips.

The
attack made no sense whatsoever. If the ifrits were beginning another assault
on Corus, why would they attack him? Why would they alert one of the few
herders with true Talent to their actions? Or was the assault so far along that
they could not control the appearance of the Talent-creatures ?

Alucius
didn’t want to leave the stead. He didn’t know where he could go to stop such
an attack, and there wasn’t anyone to whom he could turn for help—except his
family—and for them all to leave the stead would likely ruin them all. He and
Wendra might be able to leave… if they knew where to go—and what to do. Except
Wendra was pregnant, and Alucius hated the thought of asking her to go anywhere
into even greater danger.

Above
him, the sky continued to clear.

Alucius
looked to the east, to the Aerial Plateau, but he neither saw nor felt the
green radiance of a soarer… or anything else out of the ordinary.

Tempre, Lanachrona

The
Lord-Protector looked down on the infant in the high-sided crib, sleeping
peacefully. A smile crossed his face, and the lines in his forehead eased as he
watched his son. Silently, he eased out of the nursery and back to the main
sitting room, where his consort waited, seated at her writing desk. “He’s
sleeping,” he said.

“I
told you he was sleeping.” Alerya’s voice was firm, but musical. “You’re
worrying a great deal. About your brother, still? Or the Regent of the Matrial?
Or about this little revolt in Hyalt? Or is it something else?”

“About
everything. Wouldn’t you? Waleryn was plotting with Enyll, and he pleaded
illness to avoid speaking with me for almost two months after the overcaptain
killed Enyll and destroyed the Table. Waleryn still avoids me whenever he can.
With the Table destroyed, no longer can I see what is happening as it does or
nearly immediately. I’ve been reduced to receiving written reports weeks and
months after events have taken place. Most of the time, it’s too late to do
anything. Half of what I write, it seems, finds its way to the Regent. Then,
there’s this revolt in Hyalt. It may be small so far, but there was no warning,
and unless I do something, it will just get worse. There seem to be more of
these True Duarchists everywhere, I’ve heard that there’s another group in the
hills east of Syan, but no one knows exactly where. And where am I going to
find the forces to put down the trouble in Hyalt? Or Syan, if it spreads? If I
take any companies from around Southgate, the Regent could retake Southgate.
Yet I know nothing until it’s too late.”

“You
miss the knowledge of the Table, don’t you? And you have begun to doubt what
the overcaptain told you.”

“I
don’t doubt what he said. Or what he did. But why is it that the most useful
tools are always the most dangerous? I know that Enyll would have killed us.”

“Do
you, Talryn? Or are you saying that to convince yourself?”

The
Lord-Protector sighed. “Both, I guess. Without the Table, and with this revolt,
and against the crystal spear-throwers of Madrien—how they managed to build
two, I don’t know—we’re going to have to come to terms that aren’t ideal—and
quickly. Unless…” He shook his head.

“Unless
what?”

“Wyerl
suggested that I
request
that Overcaptain Alucius
return to the Northern Guard. Make him a majer, at least. With one of his
former companies and several partly trained companies of Southern Guards, he
could handle the revolt.”

“Why
would he do that?” asked Alerya. “He wanted to go back to being a herder.”

“Well…
if I have to shift lancers to Hyalt, the Northern Guard is already having
trouble holding its ground in the north…”

“Talryn!
That’s blackmail.”

“It’s
true, though. I can’t raise any more lancers in the Iron Valleys. Nor that many
more in the rest of Lanachrona. We’ve conscripted everyone that we can. I’d be
hard-pressed to pay for mercenaries, even if I could find any I could trust.
What am I supposed to do?”

“Do
you honestly think that the Regent of the Matrial—”

“Yes.
We are stretched too thin, and it’s not just Madrien. It’s everything. The
Dramurans attacked one of our vessels porting at Southgate. I just got that
dispatch this morning. This afternoon I found out that the landowners of
Deforya have overthrown the Landarch and replaced him with a Council of Five.
They’ve decided to increase the road tariffs to Lustrea by half again. The
Landarch was too accommodating to the needs of others, this new Council claims.
What they meant was that they don’t want to pay for anything themselves and keep
tariffing others and oppressing all their people as they have for generations.
The battles between the nomads of Ongelya and Illegea make the southern high
road unsafe. That leaves the high road through Deforya and the Northern Pass,
and so we’re back to where we were two years ago. That means higher tariffs
here. But… if I don’t do something, we’ll lose even more, just on the wine
trade to the east. If we want safe trade that isn’t tariffed to excess, I’ll
have to invade Deforya and make it part of Lanachrona. And where will I find
the lancers and foot for that when I can’t even find enough to hold Southgate
without losing Hyalt?”

“Then…
you must do what you must. But be generous to the overcaptain. Offer him
something beyond rank.” Alerya tilted her head. “Appeal to him, and offer
gratitude, honor, and a stipend to his family in his absence. Pay for the
stipend yourself.”

Talryn
laughed softly. “You are as bad as I must be.”

“We
all do what we must.” Alerya stood.

Talryn
raised his eyebrows.

“You
have decided. Can you do anything more this evening?”

“No.”
Talryn smiled sheepishly.

“Then
we should enjoy the supper Feylish has prepared. Mother also sent some of the
better amber wine from the cellars.”

“A
good supper would help…”

Finally,
the looming was mostly finished, and, on Duadi of the second week of harvest,
Wendra rode out with Alucius and the flock. After the episode with the dark
sanders, Alucius had taken not only to bringing two rifles but wearing his
Northern Guard ammunition belt at all times while away from the stead
buildings. So far, he had not had to use even one rifle, so quiet had the stead
been. But that worried him as much as more sandwolf attacks would have.

Still,
he enjoyed having Wendra out with him, especially on a warm and sunny day with
just enough of a breeze that the sun wasn’t too hot. At the same time, he had a
nagging worry. After his previous experience with the wild pteridons, did he
have any right to ask Wendra to come out with him?

“You’re
thinking about those dark creatures, aren’t you?” called Wendra.

“I
worry about whether you should be out here,” he admitted.

“I’ve
been worried about you every time you’ve taken the flock out alone,” she
countered. “When you ran into the dark sanders, my ring didn’t even show that
you were in trouble.”

“I
wasn’t,” he replied. “That’s why you didn’t feel anything.”

“It’s
still safer with two herders.”

She
was right, Alucius knew, but he couldn’t help worrying about her.

By
midmorning, they were a good ten vingts east of the stead, and they had let the
flock slow and browse its way eastward.

“How
do you feel?” Alucius called across the fifty yards separating him from Wendra.

“I
feel fine. It’s wonderful to be out here.” A smile followed Wendra’s words. “It’s
too bad I can’t come out tomorrow.”

“You’re
going to stay at the stead and handle the last of the looming? “

“Your
mother and grandsire want to go into town. They haven’t been off the stead in
weeks. How could I say no?”

“Knowing
you, you couldn’t.” Alucius laughed.

After
another glass, the nightsheep began to spread, and Alucius and Wendra chivvied
them back into order and urged them farther eastward, toward another area where
the quarasote was more dense, not that it was all that dense anywhere, but
where the bushes were merely a yard or so apart as opposed to three or four.

As
the nightsheep settled into grazing once more, Alucius frowned. He could feel
something—almost a sense of sadness, of sorrow—that wavered at the edge of his
Talent-senses. Then it was gone.

He
eased the gray back toward the rear of the flock, where he urged two laggard
ewes forward until they were almost up with the others, then circled back
toward Wendra, letting the nightsheep graze what new quarasote shoots there
were.

After
another half glass, they eased the nightsheep farther east, because Alucius
didn’t want the quarasote overgrazed.

As
he rode slowly eastward in the general direction of the Plateau, Alucius could
feel the sense of sorrow growing stronger. He hadn’t felt anything like that
since he’d left Dereka two years earlier. He wondered. Did the feeling have
anything to do with his dreams—or the earlier attack of the dark sanders?

While
he had not had any vivid dreams like the one with the ifrit, he continued to
have fragments of dreams—regular dreams—with the alabaster-skinned men and
women dominating them, and all of them chided him for his failures to
understand their right to dominance and cataloged his own shortcomings.

He
looked across the flock to Wendra, then waved.

She
smiled, and the expression warmed him—but only for a moment, as a sudden wave
of sorrow—and then one of all too familiar purpleness—swept over him.

“Wendra!”
Alucius called out. “Get your rifle, and use darkness on the cartridges.
Something’s coming!”

He
urged the gray toward his wife, hurrying as fast as he could around the spikes
of the quarasote, not wanting to injure his mount, but wanting to get closer to
her.

“Do
you know what it is?”

“Something
else like the dark sanders,” Alucius said as he reined up a yard from Wendra,
where he checked his own rifles. Then he began to infuse the cartridges in each
rifle with the same kind of darkness that had brought down the pteridons so
many years before—and the dark sanders weeks before. He could only hope that it
would work as well this time for whatever might appear. Once he felt that each
bullet was so charged, he began to scan the skies and the quarasote flats for
the evil purpleness that seemed ready to burst forth from somewhere.