Scepters (78 page)

Step
by slow step, Alucius made his way along the columned corridor, which seemed
more sheltered than other parts of the building. Near the far end, through a
narrow doorway in the stone wall, a doorway whose door had vanished sometime in
the past, he finally found a corner free of most dirt and debris, in what might
have been a small room before whatever destruction had visited itself on the
place. Setting his rifle close at hand, he curled into the corner.

Everything
still ached, but sleep might help. He hoped it would.

A
flat, silvery light suffused the hallway outside the small room where Alucius
was sleeping, reflecting off polished stone walls and into his eyes, bringing
him slowly awake. Recalling his awakening from his last Table trip, Alucius
opened his eyes and turned his head slowly.

A
dull but faint throbbing throughout his skull reminded him of his unwise
exploits of the previous day, as did the soreness across his chest and arms. So
did the dryness in his mouth and his cracking lips. He thought he’d seen the
strength of ifrits before, but he’d had no idea that a true ifrit was so
powerful. Then… with his rifle and the lifeforce-darkened cartridges, he had
killed one. The only problem was that there had been three… and who knew many
others that he didn’t know about.

His
breath steamed in the still air, although Alucius judged that it was not quite
cold enough to freeze water. Still, he was more than glad he had been wearing
nightsilks and his winter riding jacket.

He
eased himself into a sitting position and looked out through the doorway at the
columns on the far side of the corridor he had traversed the night before. Each
was of amber gold stone, like the towers of the soarers or the ancient
buildings of Dereka—or of the ifrit palaces about which he had dreamed more
than a few times. The light was coming through translucent clerestory panels in
the high roof of the corridor.

One
thing was very clear. He needed to take care of more than a few bodily
necessities, including finding some water.

He
rose to his feet, then reclaimed the rifle, checking it over before he stepped
into the ancient corridor. His boots had left the only tracks in the span-deep
gray dirt that covered the pale greenstone revealed by his own scuffing steps
of the night before. He turned to his right, hoping that there might be an exit
somewhere ahead, although the corridor seemed to end in a gloomy recess less
than fifteen yards away.

Alucius
walked forward.

There
was an exit—or there had been one—but it had been walled up, with square
sections of goldenstone mortared in place. The herder tapped the stone with the
butt of the rifle and was rewarded with a dull
clunk
.
The stones were definitely solid.

He
turned and retraced his steps back along the corridor, checking each of the
chambers that opened off it. Every single one was empty of all furnishings, and
every outside window had been mortared closed.

When
he finally returned to the ramp that led downward to the Table, Alucius was not
only thirsty and needing nourishment and relief, but also more than a little
puzzled. Supposedly, the Cataclysm had been abrupt and without warning, yet
someone had sealed the building carefully, and in a way that could not have
been done in haste. Who had done it? How long ago? And why? To protect the
Table? That thought alone was even more chilling than the air in the ancient
building.

As
he eased his way down the ramp, he could see in the indirect light that it was
covered with a grayish dirt that had drifted in from the broken part of the
wall. He made his way to the gap in the stonework, where sunlight filtered
around the massive tree trunk. On the upper side there was a gap between trunk
and goldenstone—a gap perhaps half a yard in width and a yard long.

Alucius
managed to lever himself high enough to grasp a section of stone that looked as
though it would break in his hands. But the jagged goldenstone was as
unyielding as iron, and he had to stretch to set his rifle in one of the cracks
in the stonework overhead, then use both arms to pull himself up. He was
panting and sweating by the time he had recovered the rifle and gotten up far
enough to squirm into the opening between trunk and broken stone. The tree
looked as though it had fallen recently, with the indentations in the bark
still clear and fresh. But to his Talent, the wood felt dead, lifeless. Yet it
had not decayed. He touched the trunk of the tree, a fir of some sort, a good
three yards in breadth, from what he could see. It was cold, like stone.

After
a moment, he began to inch his way upward at an angle and around the trunk
until he was on the upper side and sitting in weak and hazy sunlight, light
that offered no warmth from the biting chill that enfolded him.

He
bent and tapped the tree trunk with the rifle butt. It even sounded like stone.
As he caught his breath, he took in everything around him. In front of him, the
fallen tree rose at an angle above the goldenstones and green tiles that formed
the roof of the structure he had just escaped. Neither snow nor ice clung to or
touched the tile or the amber stonework—or the tree. Alucius’s mouth opened as
he realized that even the needles and the branches of the tree had ossified, as
if the massive fir had been alive one instant and turned to stone the
next—stone that had retained all the color and shape of the original tree.

There
were no other trees anywhere in sight. The building itself was situated on a
low rise whose slopes were covered with snow. Below the rise—in all directions
except north—was a snowy plain with low hummocks irregularly dotting the
whiteness. There was not a single sign of any sort of vegetation, nor any rock
or stone not covered with snow. To the north, from the position of the sun, the
snowy plain extended about a vingt—and ended. The land just dropped away, and
beyond and below that cliff edge was a mass of gray clouds or swirling snow, or
both. Above was an ever-darker mass of clouds.

Alucius
turned and looked away from the clouds and the tip of the stone tree. At the
bottom of the rise to the south of the building was an open rivulet of dark
water running between snowy banks. A slight mist rose from the water. Alucius
resisted the urge to rush toward it. He’d rushed too much lately. Instead, he
used his Talent to scan the area around him, ignoring the headache the effort
caused.

He
could sense a number of birds, a creature he thought might be a snow fox, and
some rodents, like scrats, but different. Beyond the low rise on the far side
of the small stream, the snow extended as far as he could see to the south.

Slowly,
he edged his way down the trunk until he reached the part where bare stone
roots jutted upward, blocking any further progress. From there, holding the
rifle high in his left hand, he slid off into the snow. The top was crusty, but
beneath that crust was white powder that flew up around him, momentarily
blinding him.

When
the flurries settled, he was standing in thigh-deep snow. His boots, he felt,
rested on packed snow and ice, not frozen stone or soil. Step by step he waded
down the slope toward the stream, stopping on a flat area short of the water’s
edge and testing his footing as he edged forward. Finally, he bent down,
reaching out and touching trie water. Despite the foggy vapor that rose from
the surface, the water felt like liquid ice. Alucius could drink it only in
very small swallows, and it chilled him all the way through by the time he felt
he had had enough.

Alucius
glanced around, but the air remained chill and still, with no life except a few
birds that skittered across the snow and rodents burrowed somewhere beneath the
snow. He needed to get out of wherever he was—and as soon as he could. But it
would help to know where he was. From what he had seen, he had to be fairly far
north, perhaps near Northport or even Blackstear—although he supposed that,
with the range of the Tables, he could be somewhere just as far north, but far
to the east in Lustrea.

His
one look at the land around him had made one thing very clear. The only way out
was through the Table.

In
time, after dealing with other needs, and drinking more, he made his way back
up the stone tree and wormed his way into the Table building—grateful to be out
of a wind that had begun to rise, colder with each quarter glass that passed.
The sky to the north was darkening moment by moment, with heavy gray clouds
scudding in from the northwest. His head and body still ached, but he didn’t
see that staying around in the frigid Table building in the middle of a mostly
frozen wasteland, with spring yet to approach, would do much to improve his
physical condition.

He
made another study of every room on the upper levels of the building but found
nothing, not even any light-torches or brackets that might have opened hidden
passages. Just walls and columns and floors and ceilings, all of cold stone.
There wasn’t even a scrap of parchment or a fragment of metal.

Alucius
stood at the top of the ramp leading down to the Table chamber and tried to
think. The last Table—the buried one—had felt reddish. The one in Salaan had
been a dark green, and the one immediately below him had felt black. The one
that had existed in Tempre had been blue, and the one where he had faced the
ifrit-possessed engineer years before had been silver. The Table in Tempre did
not exist any longer, and the one where he’d fought the engineer was probably
also buried in rubble. He hadn’t fared well against the ifrits in Salaan when
he had been stronger. So… he had to find another Table, preferably an older one
not being tended by ifrits. If there was another Table anywhere.

His
breath was steaming more, and he shivered. Was that the cold caused by the
storm coming in? Or was it because he was tired and hungry? He pressed his lips
together, lifted the rifle that was becoming ever heavier, and retraced his
steps back to the lower level.

Once
he entered the Table chamber, he noted that the ooze around the Table was
firmer, almost totally frozen, except immediately next to the Table. The Table
itself held the purplish Talent-glow that indicated it was functioning.

In
the dimness, he checked the walls of the chamber, but could find no sign of
light-torch brackets or of hidden doorways. By the time he finished, his teeth
were chattering.

Alucius
took a deep breath, then climbed onto the Table quickly, as if he feared he
might lose his resolve. He concentrated on the blackness beneath, on the tubes
that led… wherever…

More quickly than before, Alucius dropped into the purple black
chill. In the timelessness that followed, he tried to feel for the arrowlike
markers, finding the sullen red one, the dark green, the silver, and the black,
somewhere seemingly above him. There were none of the guideways, the golden
green threads, that led to the hidden city, not even beyond the blackness, not
where he had found them once before.

But there had to be something else… somewhere else that he could
go…

He could sense, nearer now in some way, one dark purple conduit
that led to a darkness far worse than anything on Corus
—
the world from where the ifrits came. Alucius had no desire to go
there. Facing an entire world of the creatures was madness when he could barely
hold his own against a single ifrit.

Once more, he sought beyond the tube of chill purple blackness,
but found nothing. Was there not anything, any kind of marker?

He struggled to find something, anything at all.

Off to the side, or off center, Alucius sensed something else,
something faint, a circle of gold and crimson, barely there, yet there, but not
flickering or retreating. He thought there might be another, one of hot purple
and pink, but that was farther away, and he was tired… so tired.

As before, his mind had become slow and confused, and he
Talent-probed desperately for the golden red circle, more of a mist than an
arrow or a Table. Still… it had to represent… something. He pressed his being
toward that crimson gold, mind-levering himself at whatever it represented.

Before he knew it, he was hurtling through a barrier, but one of
silvered gold, whose breaking shards were more like the patter of rain as he
flew through it.

Salaan, Lanachrona

The
two ifrits stood on opposite sides of the Table that dominated the lower
chamber. The hidden door had been closed, and the stone facing where it was
looked no different from the sections of wall on either side.

“The
Table in Soupat is on the grid. So is the one in Blackstear.” Trezun looked at
Tarolt. “ Waleryn thinks he will have the Table in Norda fully operational in a
week, no more than two. The cold has hampered some of his efforts.”

“It
always does. Would that we could work on a warmer world, but the universe does
not take note of desires or wishes, only what is.”

“Unhappily.”

“How
did you manage to bring the one in Blackstear into the grid?” Tarolt’s voice
carried little more than idle curiosity.

“I
did not. The herder-colonel did, I surmise, since there was a translation from
the Table in Soupat, and none of the other Tables on the grid show another
translation.”

“That
he went to Blackstear proves that he has ability, but not understanding.”

“The
ancient ones, perhaps?”

“No.
Blackstear was at the edge of their reach even when they were more formidable.”
Tarolt smiled. “They are scarcely that now.”

“They
could be concealing their strength.”

“I
think not. Not if they are reduced to using Talent-steers as their agents.”
Tarolt gestured toward the Table itself. “The two reaccessed Tables—they will
strengthen the grid by how much?”