Legacies (52 page)

The walls were smoothly plastered, the finish slightly off-white with a green tint. The floor remained the same polished oblong green stone tiles, with light pouring in from the high clerestory windows above the corridor.

The three women headed for a set of double doors directly ahead, where another pair of armed women guards waited. Rather than follow, Alucius slipped into the first side corridor, hoping that the rooms there might give him a clue. There were three doors on the short corridor. The first was without a lock and was little more than a storage room containing brushes and what he thought was cleaning gear. The second was empty, he could tell, but held a table desk and cabinets. The third was locked, but empty inside. He took another long and slow deep breath before reinforcing his screen and stepping into the main hallway.

Although the guards at the double doors looked in his direction, and he was certain they could not have missed seeing him, neither moved. Ten yards short of the dead-end main corridor that stopped at the double doors was another wide corridor to his left. With nowhere else to go, Alucius took it.

He passed another short corridor to his right, leading to another set of double doors, unguarded. He could not have said why, but that set of doors did not lead anywhere he wanted or needed to go. The next side corridor was to the right, and he slipped into it. There was only one door, a double door to his right. Since he could sense no one inside, he eased it open, glancing inside to view the vacant sitting room of what was clearly an opulent guest suite, and one that felt as though it had not been occupied in years, immaculate though it appeared, with the upholstered green leather settee, the golden oak writing table, and thick green-and-tan carpet over the polished parquet floor.

He eased the door closed without entering the chambers, and moved back to the main east-west corridor he had just left, following it until it ended where it joined another north-south corridor. Alucius turned south.

Ahead was a brightly lit rotunda.

Alucius stopped just short of the columned arch—half buried in the sides of the corridor—that marked the entrance to the rotunda—roughly fifteen yards across.

A quarter of the way around the rotunda on the east side was another set of double doors, these set in what appeared to be false columns, but were not. There were two guards outside the double doors, doors Alucius felt led to the Matrial's private chambers.

He paused, thinking.

There was no help for it. He eased into the rotunda and moved along the curved wall until he was within less than two yards of the guard on the north side. From there, with his Talent, Alucius reached out and touched their life webs, as he had with the guard on the floor below. One hand rested on his sabre. Nothing happened.

Then he implanted the suggestion that someone had rapped on the other side of the door.

The two guards exchanged glances, before the one on the left opened the door.

He slipped between the guards, just before the one on the right closed the door, and into the chamber beyond, a small and spare foyer with neither furnishings nor wall hangings. He was getting a strong impression that the Matrial liked matters simple and spare—at least for a ruler.

By now, his head was beginning to ache, and he hadn't even begun to discover how to get down four levels, although he knew he was close to the point where the purplish pink torque threads converged. Leaning against the wall on the north side of the foyer, he massaged his forehead and temples.

On the east side of the foyer was a square arch. Alucius moved toward it, sensing that there was someone somewhere before him. Beyond the arch was a sitting room of sorts, less than five yards deep, but more than twice that in width. The north end of the room ended in an archway into what looked to be a library. The south end also provided an archway, fitted with doors currently open, into a courtyard garden. On the east wall was a single door.

As Alucius surveyed the room before him, he almost jumped at the sight of a young woman sitting on a chair, but she had been so quiet and drawn into herself that he had not even observed her. She wore a torque and did not even look in his direction.

He waited for several moments, wondering whether she would move, or whether he would need to stun her or try to persuade her to move. As he watched, she gave a deep sigh, then stood and picked up a small basket, which she carried with her as she moved toward the courtyard garden.

Alucius eased his way across the sitting room, around two settees and a low table, and past a simple bronze holder that contained another of the ancient light-torches. The handle to the door was a simple silver lever. He could sense neither Talent nor other energies in the door, although there was a sense of great power—and purple-pinkness—beyond the door.

After a brief hesitation, he pushed the lever down and opened the door, slipping past in and closing it, even as he scanned the chamber. He staggered as he stood inside the closed door of what had to be the Matrial's bedchamber. Staggered because, less than three yards before him was a cascade of that horribly wrong and shocking purple-pink, looking to his Talent-senses both like a silent waterfall and the twisted pink trunk of an ancient and somehow evil tree.

The rush of power was centered and seemingly contained within a circle of golden stone floor tiles, ringed with black. Ignoring his distaste, he studied the wrongness and power that flowed from above down through the circle. The focus was so narrow that he had not even sensed the vastness of that power until he had stepped inside the bed chamber and within a few yards of the circle. Whatever focused those threads lay directly below.

He stepped around the circle, his trousers brushing the edge of the dais on which the high and curtained bed was set, moving toward the dressing chambers on the south side of the room.

In the back of the small closet off the dressing room, a closet empty of anything, Alucius could sense a staircase. He studied the wall—totally devoid of anything except an ancient light-torch in a bracket. He tried to concentrate on the torch, and then the bracket. There was something about the bracket.

He tugged on it. Nothing. Then he twisted. When he twisted to the left, there was a solid
click
, and a crack appeared in the corner where the walls met at a right angle. The left side swung back, revealing a narrow circular staircase, also lit with ancient light-torches.

Alucius examined the back side of the concealed door. After making sure that there was a lever on the inside, he stepped inside, and then eased the panel shut. The light-torches were dim but adequate as he descended the narrow stone steps, moving downward, all too conscious of the power so few yards away.

He could feel the silver torque around his own neck getting warmer and warmer with each step that he took down the staircase. Perspiration began to well up on his forehead, although there was a breeze of sorts flowing up from the depths below. His fingers brushed the metal of the collar. The heat radiating from it told him that it was getting hot enough to brand him.

He could feel he had no choice. He reached up and, using his Talent to contain the force in the lock, broke the torque apart. Immediately, he felt as though a weight had been lifted from him, as though his vision were clearer, sharper. He thrust the broken torque inside his tunic. He paused, then drew out the nightsilk skull mask and wiggled it over his head and into place. He also dropped his concealment shield. If he were caught now, anyone who could reach him could certainly sense his Talent use, and being seen would be the least of his problems.

With a grim smile behind the nightsilk, he resumed his descent.

The staircase, if narrow and ancient, was clean and without dust, although the centers of the stone steps were slightly hollowed out. When he reached the bottom, there was a landing less than a yard deep and not much wider, and a silver door, with a crystalline door lever, which shone with an inner purple glow. Talent-links surrounded the latch on the door, as well as the handle itself.

For a time, Alucius puzzled about them, but no matter how he traced them with his Talent, he could see no way to unravel them, and they were so pervasive that he could not use his senses to look beyond the door.

Finally, he unsheathed his sabre, and shrouding it in his own Talent, pressed the silver door lever down, letting the door swing inward. Then, using the sabre he
cut
through the Talent barrier and stepped through the doorway.

A line of purplish light flared around him, then subsided. He stood in a small antechamber, empty, unfurnished, with smooth white alabaster walls, dimly lit by two light-torches set in brackets on each side of a solid oak door, a door without locks or iron binding, and only a simple latch. Alucius did not hesitate, but took three steps and lifted the latch, then pulled the door toward himself.

He was enfolded by blinding purplish pink light, light that was visible not just to his Talent-senses, but to his eyes as well. Slowly, he stepped into the room, finding that the very air itself seemed to thicken, to resist his advance. He took two more steps until he could make out the source of the light.

For a moment, he just looked.

Hanging in midair, suspended in the circular underground room by no visible means of support, was a massive, multifaceted crystal. Talentlike roots, of a purple energy so dark it was almost black, vanished into the rock below the crystal, but the roots were invisible to the eye. Above the crystal, the compressed trunk of purplish pink torque threads seemed to writhe, with energy of some sort flowing to and from the crystal, although Alucius had the sense that most flowed into the crystal, rather than out and back upward.

His eyes registered another oak door, a quarter of the way around the circular wall to his left. He looked back over his shoulder. The door through which he had entered had vanished! Then, he realized that it lay behind some sort of Talent-illusion.

His eyes went back to the floating crystal.

What had he expected? He wasn't certain, only that it was wrong, and that he had to do
something
. He looked at the massive crystal, seemingly hanging in midair.

How was he supposed to destroy
that?

Alucius could feel the heat building inside his nightsilk undergarments, and somewhere outside the crystal chamber in the room behind him or on the staircase—or behind the door to his left, he could hear voices, and steps.

He looked at the crystal, then at the sabre in his hand, then back at the crystal.

He willed dark-Talent to enfold the blade of the sabre. After a moment, with all his effort, mental and physical, he swung the shimmering edge of the blade toward the massive crystal.

As always, the Matrial sat on the south side of the conference table, her presence somehow standing out even against the light of the wide windows behind her. “What does Overcaptain Haeragn have to say about it?”

“We received a message this morning,” replied the marshal. “She has grave concerns about our ability to significantly expand the number of troopers under arms. She had already pointed out that even a total conquest and impression of all possible men in the Iron Valleys would not be likely to raise adequate numbers and now…” The marshal let her words fade.

“With the Lord-Protector's attack and the failures in the Iron Valleys, you think the situation in the south will soon become impossible? Is that what you are suggesting?” The Matrial's beautiful smile was as cold as the winter ice on the Black Cliffs of Despair. “Marshal Aluyn sent a dispatch last night. She should be returning—” The Matrial broke off in midsentence, her violet eyes glazing over.

Without speaking, she stood and walked to the bell pull on the wall. “You must excuse me. If you would wait…”

The marshal and her assistant stood and bowed, but the Matrial did not acknowledge the obeisance as she strode from the conference room. Outside the double doors were the two guards, armed with sabres, and with large-bore heavy holstered pistols. Two others immediately appeared, followed by a tall woman wearing a guard's uniform, but the collar insignia of a submarshal.

“Yes, Matrial. Is there difficulty in there?” asked the submarshal.

“No!” snapped the dark-haired woman with the flawless skin and violet-purple eyes. “There is a lamaial in the residence.”

“A lamaial?” stammered the submarshal. “How?”

“They can cast an illusion that there is no one where they stand. They can convince a careless guard that no one is there, even as they pass. It has been many years, but I knew there would be another. I can sense the focus of the life webs. He is nearing the crystal chamber.”

The submarshal's eyes flickered but once. “We should go, then.”

The five walked but ten yards to a seemingly blank wall, where the submarshal touched and then twisted the bracket holding a light-torch. The wall opened to reveal a staircase broad enough for two abreast, a staircase that led straight down to a landing, where it turned back upon itself.

A set of guards started down immediately, followed by the submarshal, the Matrial, and then the last two guards. Behind them, the wall panel slid shut, and a series of light-torches flicked on, illuminating the stone stairwell. At the base of the stairwell, three flights down, was a silver door with a crystal handle. The submarshal stepped in front of the guards, concentrated, and then touched the crystal with a short rod of deep purple, before she turned the lever.

A straight corridor three yards wide and thirty long stretched beyond the silver door, ending in a solid oak door, held closed by a simple iron latch.

“He's in the crystal room,” the Matrial announced.

“Has anyone…?”

“No. The defenses have destroyed all those before.”

“Sidearms ready!” snapped the submarshal. “Fire as you enter. Avoid shooting at the crystal. If you hit it, the bullet will rebound and strike you.” She reached down and lifted the latch, then pulled the door toward her.

The four guards surged through the doorway into the crystal chamber, followed by the submarshal and then the Matrial.