Darknesses (43 page)

A
lucius
found himself standing
on the Table—alone in the chamber—still holding
his sabre. His entire body was shaking, shivering, and his legs felt weak, but
his uniform was dry, although frost appeared upon it, then melted away almost
instantly without wetting the fabric.

He
looked around, bewildered as he realized that he was in another chamber,
windowless, and similar to the Recorder’s chamber, and standing on another
Table, similar, but not identical. He quickly sheathed the sabre and eased his
way off the Table, studying both the chamber and the Table. Unlike the
Recorder’s Table, the one before him was far newer, as if it had been recently
created. And the chamber in which it was contained was clearly newly built. In
fact, Alucius realized, it had not even been completed. There were no wall
hangings, and only a pair of light-torches on the wall, of a design he had
never seen, and those torches were hung on simple wooden pegs inserted between
the stones of the wall. While the stones were far older, they had doubtless
come from another structure.

On
one side of the chamber was a table desk, with a stool before it.

His
eyes flicking to the closed door, Alucius moved quickly toward the desk and the
single short stack of paper upon it.

He
glanced at the top sheet, a diagram of some sort, but squinted at the writing.
Some words looked familiar, but others were not, much in the way written
Madrien had first appeared to him immediately after he had been captured by the
Matrial’s forces.

Where
was he? And how had the Table brought him? Or how exactly had his Talent
allowed him to use the Table to escape the Recorder? And how could the Recorder
have been so strong? Alucius had never felt that kind of Talent-strength
before.

Then,
Alucius realized, he had never confronted the Matrial directly. He had
destroyed the crystal, and that had destroyed the Matrial. He glanced at the
Table, looking at it with both eyes and Talent, seeing it deeply rooted into
the earth—and far, far more deeply—linked through the dark conduit to
something…somewhere far, far distant.

Leaving
the Table and the incomprehensible diagram, he eased to the door, letting his
senses range beyond it.

A
sentry was posted outside, and with his ear against the oak of the door,
Alucius could hear the sounds of chisels and hammers, as if the structure
without were still being built.

Where
was he? And what was he going to do about it? What could he do? He glanced
around the chamber again, taking in the lack of windows and a certain earthy
smell. Did the Tables have to be built so that they were in contact with the
earth or rock? There were other thoughts, impressions, but he could not
remember them, that he knew fitted with that idea.

Someone
was coming—another person exuding the pinkish purpleness that felt so evil.

Alucius
surveyed the chamber yet again. Except behind the Table, there was no place to
hide. With nowhere to conceal himself, he unsheathed the sabre and stood
against the wall, behind where the door would open.

The
door swung open, creaking as if it had not been well fitted, and a thin man not
that much older than Alucius stepped through. He closed the door firmly, with a
solid click. Then he slammed a bolt in place and whirled, reaching for what
looked to be a holstered pistol.

Alucius
slashed across the other’s right shoulder, and the sabre felt as though it had
struck mail—or nightsilk. Alucius could barely hang on to the blade, so severe
was the impact, but he managed to bring the blade back up, aiming for the
other’s uncovered wrist.

Instead
of striking the wrist, Alucius hit his forearm, with another impact like
hitting nightsilk.

For
a moment, the two staggered. Alucius switched the sabre to his right hand,
because his left was so numb that he doubted he could hold on to the blade for
another slash or thrust.

The
other man sprang sideways and wrestled out the pistol, moving away from
Alucius.

A
beam of blue light flashed by Alucius’s shoulder. A pattering of solid stone
droplets hit the stone floor, and the stones on the wall steamed around a
triangular gap where the light beam had eaten them away as if they were snow
dropped onto a hot stove.

Blue
light that destroyed stone? With but a sabre, Alucius felt very much at a
disadvantage. Very much. He lunged forward, grabbing the stool by one leg and
throwing it at the man—or Recorder.

As
the other dodged, moving to block the door, Alucius dashed to the Table,
putting it between him and the other.

“Who
are you?” asked the thin man, who, like the Recorder, seemed to be two
individuals, one of them alabaster-skinned and violet-eyed, although that image
appeared only to Alucius’s Talent-senses.

“Alucius.”
He kept his body low. “Who are you? Another Recorder?”

“Vestor
is the current name. You could call me an engineer.”

“Where
are we?”

“Here.
In Prosp. Where else would we be?” Vestor raised the black handgun.

Alucius
dropped below the top of the Table, knowing that Vestor would not destroy it.
Still the line of blue light flashed just above his head. Behind him, more
stone vaporized, then condensed into solid droplets, falling like hail. Alucius
did not look back or up, but rather used his Talent-senses to watch the other.

The
other man kept the weapon leveled, waiting. But he did not call for the sentry
outside, and that was in itself chilling to Alucius.

Alucius
reached out toward the other’s purple-twined lifethread, serpentlike, and
struck. It was like using the sabre all over again, with his Talent rebounding
against him. But, unlike the Recorder, Vestor staggered as well as Alucius.

Then,
as before with the Recorder, Vestor, still holding the light-knife, looked
toward the Table, and ruby mists began to rise from the silvered surface. For a
few moments, they were but gossamer fog, but they quickly began to thicken into
the same kind of arms that the Recorder had created and with which he had
attacked Alucius.

Alucius
could find no way out of the room, except by the barred door. Or the Table. And
trying to attack a man whose weapon sliced through solid stone, and who
appeared invulnerable to both a sabre and a Talent-attack—that was doomed to
failure.

Alucius
swallowed, trying to compose himself, then bounded up and threw himself flat
onto the Table, willing himself to be anywhere else. Anywhere else. For a long
moment, he just lay there, exposed, wondering if he’d made another huge mistake.

Vestor
lowered the black weapon, as if trying to line it up to strike Alucius and not
the Table itself.

The
blue beam slashed toward Alucius, and, despite the nightsilk, he could feel the
heat and the incredible pain—before he again fell through the once-solid
surface of the Table.

Even as Alucius hurtled downward into the chill purple-blackness,
he had to wonder how he could do something, anything. He hadn’t planned on
running into the actual figures in the Derekan mural—or their descendants—who
had Tables that saw everything and functioned as doors to other places. Who
wore the equivalent of nightsilk and whose Talent-powers were far greater than
his. And who regarded him as little more than an annoyance.

For a moment, the chill was welcome, damping out the agony of
fire in his shoulder, but within instants, he felt both the fire and the chill,
and he would have convulsed into feverish shivers—except his body was immobile
in the stream of blackened purple.

What could he do? The blue arrow led back to the Recorder, the
silver to the Recorder, and the dark purple conduits to something far worse, he
feared.

With his Talent, and a mind becoming increasingly sluggish, he
groped toward the golden yellow arrow thread, frail, hidden, and walled away.
The nearer he seemed to come, the more distant it seemed to be.

Instead of trying to approach the golden green, he tried
something else—just to be with and like it, to find peace in the cool green, to
escape the fire in his shoulder, and the ice that chilled the rest of him.

Once more, he burst through a barrier, two barriers, in fact, one
of purple-blackness, and the second one of gold and silver that sprayed away
from him as light flared around him.

Then, red agony and blackness smashed into him.

Northeast
of Iron Stem, Iron Valleys

T
he
afternoon harvest sun
flooded the quarasote flats under the Aerlal
Plateau with both light and heat, and sandy dust rose with each step of the two
mounts—and the lighter steps of the nightsheep.

From
where she had been riding, to the east of the nightsheep, Wendra reined up
abruptly, wincing.

“What
is it?” Royalt called out even as he eased his gray toward her.

Wendra
pulled off her heavy herders’ gloves and looked down at the black crystal of
her ring, then at the reddened skin that bordered it. She waited until Royalt
neared and reined up almost beside her.

“There’s
something wrong,” she said. “Alucius is hurt. It’s not the same as last time.”

“What
do you mean?” asked Royalt.

“The
ring. It turned cold, like ice. That was perhaps a glass back, but then it
warmed up. I wondered, but I could feel that he was all right. This time, there
was fire, enough to redden my skin, and then…then there was more of the chill.”

“Is
he…?”

“He’s
alive, but he’s badly hurt.” Wendra swallowed. “This feels different from the
last time. I don’t know how, but it does.”

“He
should be in Tempre. Sanders…I hope that the Lord-Protector…” Royalt shook his
head. “But it doesn’t make sense. Why would the Lord-Protector make such an
announcement, inviting him there, and then…?”

“Do
you suppose he was on his way home? Or back to Dekhron?” asked Wendra, still
looking down at the black crystal.

“That
could be. That could be. Some of those on the Council—or that sandsnake
Weslyn…They’ve tried before.”

“He
stopped them, then, didn’t he?”

“He
did,” the older man admitted, “but even sandsnakes learn from their mistakes,
and when you’re successful, you don’t learn much.”

“You
worry that he’s been too successful, don’t you?” asked the woman.

“Alucius
has seen evil, Wendra, but what he hasn’t seen, not yet, is how easily it can
spread, and how effective it can be. He has not seen or felt truly powerful
evil. That is something an old herder can sense—even if I know not the cause.”
He paused. “Should we head back to the stead?”

She
shook her head. “I can’t do anything, and I’d just fret.” A bitter laugh
followed her words. “I’ll worry anyway, but here I’ll have something to do.”

Royalt
nodded.

O
nce
more,
Alucius found himself standing in a strange room, an empty chamber
with a single wide window before him. The walls were of an amberlike stone,
holding depths of light. He glanced down. Beneath his feet was a simple silver
square, looking like a mirror, except that it showed absolutely no reflection.
His shoulder felt as though it were on fire, and when he glanced down, he could
see that the engineer’s weapon had sliced away a section of his tunic and
shirt, but not the nightsilk beneath.

Even
as he looked up and took in the room, he could feel the room begin to spin around
him. He staggered several steps toward the wall, putting out his left hand to
steady himself as his legs began to tremble and give way.

He
sagged to the floor, wondering where—once more—he might be, even as the pain
from his right shoulder continued to mount. Redness blurred over his eyes, and
the room began to spin around him, faster…and even faster.

Was
there some sort of greenness?

Or
was it wistful thinking?

He
tried to raise his head, to focus on a shimmering golden greenness…and failed.

Darkness—deep
darkness—swept across him.

The
darkness lightened, and he could sense figures who appeared around him, blocky
figures, followed by green and shimmering figures. But another wave of
darkness, hot and feverish darkness washed over him, dragging him into depths
that were cooler.

How
long he lingered in the darkness, Alucius had no idea, save that once more the
deep green darkness lifted, so that he felt himself in more of a fog, silent,
with no sounds, no echoes, and, once more red agony seared through his
shoulder. Yet after that ravaging blast of red pain, the heat and the pain in
his shoulder began to subside.

Before
he could appreciate that, he drifted—or was pushed—back into the dark depths.

He
struggled through more darkness, darkness interspersed with dreams of
alabaster-skinned men and women with snakelike unseen appendages, and with
pistols that fired blue light-knives that always seemed to find his shoulder,
no matter how he ducked or tried to raise the lifeweb darkness against them.

Once
more, Alucius woke slowly, lying on the narrow bed, feeling the heat pour off
his forehead, and from his shoulder. He could barely turn his head, just enough
to see that a shimmering dressing was fastened across his right shoulder, a
dressing that provided both heat and chill simultaneously. His eyes lifted, but
he could only see the amber walls, those and a solid doorway, smaller than he
would have thought.

A
small feminine figure appeared beside his bed.

You must eat. Then you must rest. You were badly injured. You
will be better. But you must eat.

“How…?”
Alucius couldn’t even lift his arms, they felt so heavy.

You will recover…eat to strengthen your body…

She
spooned something from a platter into his mouth, a mushy substance tasting
vaguely of prickle, but far better, or so it seemed. Alucius swallowed slowly,
then accepted some more. The third spoonful was something else, fruitlike,
cooler.

As
he ate, he could feel himself getting more and more tired, and his eyelids
heavier and heavier…and he slid slowly into the comforting green darkness, and
slept, this time without dreams.