Scepters (40 page)

“You
have some ability, Talent-steer,” Adarat said. “But not enough.”

“Why
have you turned them all into slaves?” Alucius asked, even as he prepared his
own Talent-thrust.

“Slaves?
They are to serve the coming Duarchy. That is a mission of glory!”

An
even stronger blast of purpleness flashed from Adarat.

Alucious
let it sheet past him. “You’re as much a slave as they are.”

“Never!
I am the prophet.” Adarat reached for a long black tube.

Alucius
had no idea what the device was, but he’d seen some of the ifrits’ weapons and
scarcely wanted to find out. He struck with his Talent-probe, aiming for the
node that linked body and lifethread.

Adarat
flung another purple blast, even as purple and brown shreds exploded outward
from the prophet’s body. The black tube spun out of Adarat!s hands and began to
fall end over end toward the floor of the temple below.

Alucius
rocked back on his heels, then managed to recover his balance.

“You
will not succeed…” Adarat’s words were strained, little above a whisper. “Neither
you nor your ancient ones will prevail against the glory of Efra…”

Efra?

In
the moment that Alucius took in the strange word, he could see Adarat slump.

Crummmpppttt
! Below Alucius was an explosion that shook
the entire hillside. Cracks appeared in the red rock on which he stood, and the
stone edges of the skylight began to crack, then fragment. Pieces began to
break away and fall into the temple.

He
scrambled sideways, pulling himself along the rope and away from the center of
the temple roof, trying to bound over the stones crumbling beneath him as more
and more of the roof stones of the temple cracked and began to crumble even
under his boots.

He
could feel Waris and Rakalt trying to reel in the rope.

Then
something smashed into his shoulder, and blackness rolled over him.

North of Iron Stem, Iron Valleys

In
early afternoon, the three sat around the kitchen table, ignoring the chill
wind that whipped around the stone walls of the stead dwelling, trying to
rattle the snug-shuttered windows and tight-fitted doors. The gale-force winds
of the first full storm of fall battered the walls, as they had since the
middle of the night before. Warmth radiated from the iron stove.

Wendra
stiffened, her face paling. “Oh…”

“You’re
too early,” Lucenda said. “I told you about riding—”

“Its
not that. I’m fine. Alucius… he’s hurt.”

Both
Royalt and Lucenda looked hard at Wendra.

“It
was like a fall… it wasn’t Talent… he’s alive…”

“He’s
too good a rider to fall,” Royalt said, “not unless he was shot, and you’d feel
that.”

“They
could have shot his mount from under him,” Lucenda pointed out.

For
a time, no one spoke.

“He’s
alive… he feels stronger… but he’s still hurt. He’s badly hurt.” Wendra’s lips
tightened. “He can’t do this alone. He can’t. How can I help when I’m five
hundred vingts away?”

“You’re
helping him by being the herder,” Royalt said slowly. “He won’t have anything
to come back to without you.”

“He
has you,” Wendra said slowly, the pallor in her face lifting.

Royalt
shook his head. “There’s only the two of you—you and Alucius—who can handle
those new Talent-beasts. They’d turn me into blue flame before I’d have two
shots off, and not one of my shots’d do a thing. Without you, Alucius wouldn’t
have anything.”

For
the first time, Wendra’s eyes misted. She blotted them. “It’s not what you
think. It’s not. I’m trapped. If I go to him, he could lose the stead, and that’s
almost everything for him. In a way, then, I’d lose him. If I don’t, I could
also lose him.”

Royalt
nodded slowly.

Wendra
looked at her husbands grandsire for a time. Finally, she smiled wearily, a
crooked expression, and lifted the mug before her to her lips.

Alucius
opened his eyes. He could see stars. Had he been hit that hard? With what? His
entire back felt numb, but without the sharpness of a specific wound. He
thought he was lying on some sort of pallet, but he wasn’t sure. He squinted.
There were stars against darkness… and the half disc of Selena. He was lying on
the ground, hard ground, and it was night.

“Don’t
move,” said a voice.

“I’m…
not. What happened?”

“The
whole cave… exploded, and it just fell away from under you, sir. We thought you’d
gone with the cave.”

Alucius
could make out the lancer’s face, but not well enough in the dim light to put a
name to it. Or had he been hurt worse, somehow, and he couldn’t remember names
and faces?

“How
is he?” came another voice—Feran’s.

“I’m
not so bad as you think,” Alucius replied.

“That’s
still bad,” retorted Feran, moving into Alucius’s sight.

“Why
am I out here?”

“We
didn’t want to move you. Besides, the barracks are like a hog pen. Never saw
such filth.”

That
didn’t surprise Alucius. Under the prophet’s Talent-spell, many of the enslaved
lancers had shown little initiative.

Feran
bent down to study Alucius. “Good thing you and Waris worked out the rope,
except that you were dangling there in the middle of nothing and a bunch of
rock bounced down and hit you. A couple were a lot bigger than you are. Waris
and Rakalt did their best, but they had a hard time getting you down. We lost a
bunch of lancers to stone shrapnel when that temple blew. The whole front
exploded, sent stone everywhere.”

“How
many
did
we Jose?”

“All
told… thirty or so. About half came from Fifth Company and half from
Thirty-fifth. There aren’t enough rebels left to fill a squad. We figured there
must have been at least fifty inside there.”

“Closer
to a hundred and fifty—and their prophet. He’s dead. I killed him.” Alucius
wasn’t about to say how. “That’s when the place blew. Somehow, he’d
Talent-linked himself to a bunch of powder, and when he died, it set off the
powder. Could have been something else, but I don’t know what.” That was what
Alucius had thought, but there wasn’t any way to prove that—or disprove it—not
that he knew, and it didn’t matter. The effect had been the same. Despite the
explosion of the temple, Alucius had to wonder about Adarat. The prophet had
been either too strong or too weak, but with the pain that ebbed and flowed
through and around him, Alucius lost track of why he’d thought that.

“Nasty
bastard to the end,” said Feran.

Alucius
wiggled his fingers. They were slightly numb, but they moved. He tried the same
with his toes. He lifted his left arm. It
was
sore,
but it also moved. He tried his right arm. A wall of fire and pain slammed into
him, and he barely managed to lower it, rather than let it fall onto the
ground, which he knew would have hurt even worse. “I’m pretty sore… don’t think
anything’s broken…”

“How
would you know?”

Rather
than answer immediately, Alucius used his Talent to look at himself, bit by
bit. Finally, his eyes met Feran’s. “Nothing’s broken. Everything’s bruised on
my back side and on my right. Need to roll over. Need some help.”

“Are
you sure?”

“All
the weight on the bruises doesn’t help.”

“The
pressure might keep it from hurting more.”

“Help
me roll over. To the left…”

Feran
knelt beside Alucius.

As
Feran helped him turn, another wall of pain slammed into Alucius, worse than
the first. When he woke again, lying on his stomach, Feran was sitting on the
ground, watching.

“I
told you, Majer.”

Alucius
wanted to laugh. “You… did…”

“You’re
not going anywhere real fast, even if nothing’s broken.”

“I
can feel that, but I heal fast. In a week, I’ll be able to ride.”

“Do
you think we should wait a week?”

“No…”
Alucius paused. “Without the prophet around, you could handle the other camp.”

“You’re
sure that there’s not another Talent-wielder?”

“I
haven’t seen any signs of one, but if there is… we can wait.”

“Just
the same to you, sir, I’d like to finish off these rebels before something else
happens. I’ll take Twenty-eighth Company with Fifth tomorrow, and half of
Thirty-fifth, and we’ll finish off the other camp. Without their prophet, it’ll
be a slaughter job. Unless you’ve got any objections.”

Alucius
thought. He knew that Feran wanted his approval, possibly because the older
officer didn’t believe that Alucius was not more severely injured. “Scout it
first. Then, if you still think so… go ahead. Without the prophet, they might
surrender, but you’ll have to be careful. Shoot first, if you’ve got any
questions.” He wasn’t feeling all that charitable, not lying on whatever he
was, and he had a great deal less sympathy for the people of Hyalt than when he
had first arrived in the area. He still hadn’t figured out exactly who or what
the prophet had been, except that he hadn’t been an ifrit—exactly—but he’d been
more than merely influenced.

Alucius
was finding it hard to keep his eyes open, and that sort of speculation and
deduction would have to wait.

Feran
said something, but the words slipped away as a grayish darkness crept over
Alucius.

When
Alucius struggled into awareness once again, it was morning, or he thought it
was. He lay on a pallet in a small room, his head propped up slightly with
folded blankets. A lancer sat on a stool, his face not quite bored, but
impassive from long glasses of inactivity. The lower part of the lancer’s right
tunic sleeve had been cut away, and he wore a heavy dressing on his forearm.

“How…
long?” Alucius managed, his voice raspy. His head throbbed. In fact, almost his
entire body throbbed.

“Yes,
sir… Ah… it’s Quattri… around midafternoon.” The man stood and hurried toward
the pallet, extending a water bottle, left-handed, with a slight awkwardness. “It’s
your water bottle, sir. The overcaptain said you needed to drink as much as you
could.”

Alucius
managed to reach across his body with his left hand and take the water bottle.
He only spilled a small amount on his face as he drank.

The
lancer watched.

Alucius
eased his hand holding the water bottle down until it rested on the pallet
beside his leg. “I’ll keep it for a bit.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Did
Overcaptain Feran head out this morning?”

“Yes,
sir. He left two squads and those of us wounded. And the wagons.”

“Were
there any rebels left alive?”

“Seven
of ‘em, sir. That’s all. Were more, but a some of ‘em did crazy things, like
slitting their wrists or cutting their own throats. The rest… well, the
overcaptain had ‘em tied up so as they wouldn’t hurt themselves. Said once you
were better, you’d be wanting to talk to them.”

Alucius
glanced around the room. Moving his head intensified the throbbing that had
started to fade after he drank the water.

The
lancer followed his eyes. “This was the cleanest place around. Only had to move
junk out and swept it down good. The rest of ‘em… well, everyone’d rather sleep
outside.”

“Has
anything else strange happened?”

The
wounded man cocked his head. “No, sir. I mean, no more rebels, and the weather
hasn’t changed much, maybe a bit windier.” He paused. “Castav… he did say that
all the new growth of the thornbushes was turnin’ black, suddenlike… maybe
tried to grow back too soon. Said he’d never seen bushes turn so quick.”

Alucius
had a good idea why that was happening. That growth had been forced, and with
Adarat’s death, there was nothing to bind the life force into the thornbushes.
He lifted the water bottle slowly and drank some more.

He
hated being hurt, not being able to be in complete charge of his body.

Then why do you keep doing things where it’s likely to happen
?
asked a voice inside his skull.

Because
the alternatives seemed worse, he answered himself. The problem was that he was
using that response too much. All too much.

By
midday on Quinti, Feran had still not returned. From what Alucius could see
through the open shutters of the single window, the sky was only slightly hazy,
and there was little wind. That he could feel even from his pallet. He had been
able to use the makeshift chamber pot, thankfully, and eat some bread and
cheese, and move, if slowly. But he worried about the missing forces. Had there
been another Talent-wielder? Or a better-trained force in Hyalt?

Alucius
kept fretting and stewing.

When
his latest lancer aide and guard left for a moment, after Alucius had assured
him that he would be fine alone for just a few moments, Alucius struggled into
a sitting position on the side of the pallet, then levered himself along it
until he was close enough to reach his clothes and boots. Donning the trousers
wasn’t that hard, but even the first boot was an effort. He’d just managed to
get the second one on when the lancer stepped through the doorless arch.

“Sir!”

“I’ll
go mad if I lie here any longer,” Alucius said. “Can you help me with the
tunic?”

“But…
sir…”

“Just
help me with the tunic.”

The
right arm had to go first, because he didn’t have much of a range of motion
without feeling close to excruciating pain, and his forehead was damp with
sweat by the time he walked slowly from the room and outside. He spotted a
bench against the side of the barracks, less than fifty feet away. Walking the
fifty feet felt as though it took as much effort as running ten times that
would have if he had been healthy.