Scepters (71 page)

“That
makes sense,” Alucius said.

Halsant
looked toward the loading dock. “If you’ll excuse me…”

Alucius
smiled. “I’m not that familiar with Dekhron. I’ve spent most of my time in the
Guard and militia out fighting. Could you point me in the direction of your
father’s house?”

“Oh…
take the avenue north one block, then follow the street west almost to the end.
There’s a wagon carved in a plaque by the door.” Halsant nodded and turned.

Alucius
watched for a moment before walking back along the row of bales and leaving the
warehouse.

Fewal
and Dhaget looked at their colonel as Alucius left the warehouse and remounted
the chestnut.

“We’re
off to see his father, another trader called Halanat. I hope he’s where he
should be.” Alucius eased his mount back up the avenue, then westward on the
next street.

That
street extended a good half vingt to the west before it ended, but even from
several hundred yards away, Alucius could Talent-sense the purplish feel that
seemed to envelop the two-story dwelling set slightly farther back from the
street than the houses on either side. The ornamental shrubs that flanked the
wide front porch seemed to droop lackadaisically, as if winter had been hard on
them. The grass was sparse and dying, and not from winterkill.

With
no hitching posts in front, Alucius dismounted and handed the chestnut’s reins
to Dhaget. “I shouldn’t be all that long, but I’d guess this Halanat might have
more to say than his son did.”

The
two lancers acknowledged the words with a nod.

Alucius
took the two steps up to the covered porch, glanced up at the ancient carved
wagon plaque beside the door, then lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it
fall. The
thud
echoed harshly in Alucius’s ears.
After several moments, a thin-faced and graying woman, without a dual
lifethread but with a heavy purple aura, opened the door. She frowned
quizzically.

“Alucius,
madam. Halsant said that I could find Halanat here.” He smiled as warmly as he
could manage.

“He
doesn’t handle the factoring anymore. That’s Halsant, and he’s down on the
river.”

“I’m
not here about trade,” Alucius replied politely. “I’ve just talked to Halsant,
and he suggested I needed to talk to his father…”

“If
you must…” With a resigned sigh, she stepped back into the foyer and held the
door, inclining her head toward the closed door to her right. “He’s there. As
always.”

“Thank
you.” Alucius bowed his head briefly, then stepped to the door, behind which he
could sense a well of purple. For just a moment, he paused before depressing
the door lever and entering the room. He closed the door as he stepped inside.

Halanat
sat behind a wide table desk, with stacks of parchment and paper set across the
side facing Alucius. The herder saw not one image, but two. His eyes took in a
round-faced trader with nondescript brown hair wearing a dark gray tunic
trimmed in brilliant blue. His Talent-senses showed him another sight
entirely—that of a man whose lifethread had been possessed by an ifrit. That
lifethread was not the normal brown or tan or yellow, or even that of a
herder—black or black shot with green, or even black shot with purple or pink,
or the dual pink and black threads he had seen with the torques of the Matrial.
Instead, there was the thinnest of brown threads, a lifethread of Corus.
Entwined and twisted around that thin brown thread was a pulsing purpled rope
of an ifrit lifethread, and that purpled ropelike thread dwindled southward
into the distance, but not all that far, Alucius felt.

Although
Alucius had suspected as much from what he had sensed already, he still had to
restrain his total shock at seeing the trader so possessed.

“You
are bold, Colonel—or should I call you herder?”

“Titles
don’t matter. You should know why I’m here.”

A
momentary expression of puzzlement crossed Halanat’s face. “I must say that I
cannot imagine why—especially alone and without a company of loyal Northern
Guards with you.”

“There
are several outside.” Alucius nodded slowly. “Even more might have been more
prudent after your last effort of some years ago.” He had no proof that the
trader had been involved in the attempted assassination effort with more than
twenty bravos just after Alucius had been released from the Northern Guard some
two years before, but it was worth suggesting.

“What
effort?”

“The
one that cost you more than two hundred golds,” Alucius replied. “Or have you
forgotten? Did all those golds mean so little?”

A
cool smile crossed the trader’s lips, but did not reach his eyes. “And you let
it pass for so long before suddenly appearing to accuse me of whatever this
might have been? “

“I’m
not suggesting anything. You know what you did, and I’m saying it.”

“You
can say whatever you want,” Halanat stated. “That doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“It’s
true enough, and now there are wild pteridons roaming the steads. That is also
your doing—or that of those working with you. As were the supplies you sent to
the prophet, and the excessive number of golds you received In return.”

“That
is to be expected. Supplying a rebel can be dangerous… and costly. You expect a
factor to risk that for normal rates? Surely, you are not that naive, Colonel.”

“And
the wild pteridons?”

“Times
are changing.” Halanat rose, still smiling coldly. “Do you wish to leave? You
might prevail here, but you cannot stand against what will be.”

Alucius
could feel the chill inside himself. How many more of the ifrits had invaded
Corus? And how? “Seldom is anything inevitable.”

“Ah…
the arrogance of youth.” Halanat continued to smile.

Why
didn’t the ifrit attack? Because he knew Alucius could win? Because he was
waiting for assistance? What had Alucius done before? After the slightest of
hesitations, he sent out a slim Talent-probe, the strongest he could muster.

In
return, the Halanat-ifrit hurled a blast of purplish lifeforce at Alucius.

Alucius
slipped the purple force aside, in a fashion similar to the way in which he
might have handled a sabre slash.

The
trader slammed back with another blast of intense purple Talent-force.

Again,
Alucius slip-parried it. Then, recalling his training with the soarer, he
concentrated on seeking the nodes beneath and within the ifrit lifethread, the
thread that was linked to something to the south.

The
trader threw up a purpled shield, blocking Alucius’s probe, and reached for a
drawer in the table desk.

Alucius
formed a golden green wedge of life-Talent and let the force flare around him,
then struck once more, aiming at the most prominent node linking the ifrit
lifethread to the trader.

Halanat
froze for a moment, perspiration bursting out all across his forehead in
droplets that flew from his face in all directions.

Alucius
slid his probe under the purple shield, twisting and unraveling the smaller
lifethreads within the node. As he did, he could sense heat rising in and
around him, and sweat popping out on his own forehead. His efforts felt like
clumsy fumbling and as though time all around him had slowed to a crawl as his
Talent-probe knifed into the node of the ifrit’s lifethread.

Suddenly,
the trader’s ifrit thread vanished in a spray of tiny purple threads, and
Halanat stood there, wavering on his feet, his eyes widening. His hand
twitched, and he pulled a double-barreled pistol from the now-open drawer.

Unable
to reach the trader in time, Alucius slashed a second Talent-probe at the
trader’s now-unprotected and remaining lifethread node, keeping his lance of
golden green tight and focused. With a spray of brown and green, Talent-threads
and Talent-shards vanished as they flared into the air.

The
pistol clunked dully as it struck the rich Hyaltan carpet. After a moment,
Halanat pitched forward and crumpled against the table desk. His lifeless body
slid sideways and sprawled across the carpet, covering the pistol.

Alucius
stood stock-still, breathing hard. He’d forgotten just how much effort
Talent-battles took. He took several more deep breaths before slowly turning.
He opened the door to the entry hall carefully, but the foyer was empty.
Closing the study door behind him, he crossed the foyer and stepped out onto the
porch, then made his way down the stone walk to where the lancers waited with
the chestnut.

“Sir?”

“Dealing
with factors can be… trying. Everything is in coins. He admitted that they
supplied the prophet and was proud of it.”

“Sir?”

“He
said that profit was necessary for a trader. I had to tell him that he could no
longer expect excessive profit from the Guard. There wasn’t much more that I
could say.” Alucius wiped his still-sweating forehead, then took the reins from
Dhaget and mounted. “He was rather agitated when I left. Most agitated.”
Alucius forced a crooked smile. “That was the least I could do under the
circumstances.”

He
guided the chestnut back eastward on the long street, back toward Northern
Guard headquarters. Much as he disliked the idea, he needed to find Tarolt
before long, but he had no idea exactly where to begin.

He’d
have to claim, if anyone accused him, that he and Halanat had argued, and that
Halanat had pulled the pistol and gotten so agitated that his heart had just
stopped. But, somehow, he doubted that anyone would say anything.

Alucius
took another long breath and blotted his forehead once more. He’d hoped
otherwise, but he had known that there was always the possibility that the
ifrits would return. And it was clear that their return was linked to the
prophet—and possibly to the Regent of the Matrial. He just didn’t know how—or
how many ifrits there were, or where.

Northeast of Iron Stem, Iron Valleys

Wearing
her vest over a long-sleeved shirt, although with nightsilk undergarments,
Wendra stood in the equipment room of the maintenance barn, careful not to
inadvertently swing the carrypack that held Alendra into any of the heavy
machinery. She lifted the handle of the antique crusher out of the housing,
setting it and the attached iron piston carefully on the oak workbench that
seemed equally ancient. Tilting the crusher’s housing slowly, she poured out
the fine granular powder that she had just ground. She measured out a half cup
of the powdered crushed quartz and used a funnel to ease the powder into the
bottle she had brought from the main house.

She’d
have to go back to the kitchen and the cooler to add the goat’s milk and heat
the makeshift formula before she
fed
the orphaned
night-lamb that was bleating mournfully in the crib pen beside the main barn.
Even with the goats supplied by Kustyl, feeding and caring for the lamb had
been hard, but none of them wanted to see the lamb die—early unseasonal birth
or not—and especially not after losing four nightsheep over the fall and
winter. That the lamb was the second that needed hand-raising in less than two
seasons didn’t help, either. After she fed the lamb, she needed to check the
spindles in the processing tank to see if they were ready for spinning.

Something
murmured outside the closed windows of the workroom. Wendra cocked her head and
listened, wondering if Lucenda had come back for something. Royalt had taken
the flock, after having let her take the nightsheep on the previous two days.

She
smiled to herself. No one on the stead ever turned back for anything,
especially Alucius, and she’d come to understand why after living with Lucenda
and Royalt. She tilted her head. There was a greenish sense outside, almost
like that of her husband, and the silence of a still day, which was welcome
because the winter had been long and blustery and cold.

“Yes,
it has been, little one,” she murmured to Alendra, who was neither quite
sleeping nor quite awake in the carrypack.

Wendra
replaced the crusher handle and piston, then picked up the bottle and stepped
out of the maintenance barn, carefully closing the door behind her. With
everyone gone for the morning, she couldn’t go around leaving doors open.

Out
on the stoop of the stone building, she thought she heard a song without words,
a haunting song that enfolded the stone building. It was definitely a song and
not the wind. The melody was not quite recognizable.

The
herder looked eastward, squinting from under the edge of the eaves into the
early-morning light. Already, Royalt and the nightsheep flock were well out of
sight, beyond the nearer ridges.

A
glittering flash of golden green washed over her—from her left. She turned, and
her mouth opened as she beheld a soarer hovering at the end of the porch,
closer than she ever had seen one. The green-tinted wings blurred the light,
wings that appeared almost crystalline one moment and diaphanous the next. The
soarer’s face was that of a beautiful girl child with short golden and
translucent hair. An expression that might have been a smile crossed the small
mouth. The silver green eyes remained fixed on Wendra. The soarer wore no
garments, but the golden mist that surrounded her feminine figure served just
as well to conceal her shoulders and torso.

Only
once had Wendra seen a soarer from closer than a vingt away, and this one was
less than five yards from her. There was an enormous difference in seeing one
from two thousand yards or even fifteen—and from five. So Wendra watched,
listening, as the soarer hovered.

The
soarer was beautiful, not as any woman might be, but of itself, and Wendra
drank in that beauty, entranced.

For
a long moment, she stood there.

Then,
out of nowhere, a hand grasped her right shoulder, a hand that felt like warm
stone, a hand that belonged to a squat figure less than two-thirds her size.
The sander was tan, and its skin sparkled in places, as if diamonds or crystals
shone through its rough skin. Like a person, it had two arms and two legs,
hands and feet, a pair of eyes, and a mouth and nose. It wore no clothes. Sanders
never did.