Soarers Choice (31 page)

Hsssttt!
The odor of burning wood and hot metal filled the chill air.

“Do
you need another blast, sir?”

Dainyl
extended a Talent probe, checking the door, and feeling it move. “No ... that’s
fine. Move to the side, so that they can’t fire at you when I open the door.”

“Yes,
sir.”

The
pteridon’s wide blue wings spread, and with a brief burst of Talent, it lifted
itself a good ten yards to the east.

He
looked back in the direction of the three Myrmidons behind columns at the
e.g.
of the portico, then called, “Join me, but stay clear
of the center here.” He moved back to a position beside the doors.

One
of the Myrmidons — Saedryk — made his way from pillar to pillar along the west
side, coming to a halt against the marble wall to Dainyl’s right.

The
other two Myrmidons eased into position on the east side of the archway.

“Now
what, sir?” asked Saedryk.

“We
open the doors and go in, yard by yard, until we finish them off, or they
surrender.” They wouldn’t surrender, Dainyl knew, but he had to allow for the
possibility. “I move forward, and you provide covering fire, and then I cover
you while you catch up.”

The
Myrmidon nodded.

Dainyl
reached out and took one of the door handles, pulling the right-hand door as
far open as it would go, roughly to a forty-five-degree angle from the wall.
Then he stepped around it, but kept himself shielded from direct fire from
inside the building. From there, he extended another Talent probe, past the
archway and into the square foyer. It was empty, but two Ifrits were using
doorways farther down the corridor as cover.

Dainyl
fired two quick blasts down the corridor, then rushed through the archway,
taking cover against the south wall of the inner foyer, to the right of the
square arch that separated the foyer from the corridor beyond. Belatedly, a
single blast of a lightcutter — not the light-rifle — flared past the foyer
archway.

Once
more he eased the muzzle of the lightcutter barely around the
e.g.
of the wall, and fired a quick blast down the
corridor, using his Talent to direct it at the nearer Ifrit.

There
was a dull thud and a clatter as the alector toppled half out of the doorway
and onto the polished green marble floor of the corridor. Dainyl replaced the
exhausted lightcutter with the replacement from inside his cold-weather flying
jacket.

Then
he repeated the process with the second Ifrit.

Before
he could call for the other Myrmidons to join him, the light-rifle fired from
the far end of the corridor, scoring the stone of the archway, and leaving the
odor of melted stone.

Dainyl
snapped off a quick shot, then bolstered his shields and sprinted for the first
doorway. Again, the light-rifle fired, but late enough that Dainyl’s shields
only had to deflect a glancing blast at the last moment, just before he jumped
over the boots and tunic of the dead and vanished Ifryn Myrmidon and into the
small side chamber.

He
couldn’t help but note the body on the floor — that of a gray-haired lander
woman, sprawled beside a small desk. He hadn’t really thought about the fact
that Delari must have gotten some help from landers — and probably restricted
to the upper level.

Dainyl
forced that thought from his mind and returned his attention to the corridor
that led to the staircase down to the Table chamber. There couldn’t be that
many of the Ifryn Myrmidons left. If there had been twenty and Delari had
killed three, and the initial assault by First Company had taken out another
three, and he had killed another two, in addition to those he’d killed earlier,
that meant only seven or so remaining, probably no more than ten or fifteen.
That assumed, he told himself, that they did not have an engineer who had
gotten the Table back in service.

But...
if they had, there would either be more resistance — or far less.

Dainyl
took a deep breath, sending out another Talent probe, and lifting the
lightcutter.

Yet
another Ifryn waited in the next doorway along the corridor.

Dainyl
used his Talent to direct the lightcutter beam, and the alector collapsed.

Abruptly,
another alector sprinted from the last doorway. Dainyl fired once more. He did
not miss.

Dainyl
paused, taking a deep breath. Using so much Talent was tiring.

The
upper level was empty.

He
called to the three. “You can join me.” Then he moved to the next doorway,
glancing in. This time, the body was that of a young lander woman — unclad. He
did not look back as he hurried to the next chamber, the last one on the upper
level... and thankfully empty except for a circular conference table and
chairs.

As
he waited for the three Myrmidons to rejoin him, he kept Talent-checking, but
the staircase to the lower level remained clear. He also checked the two
lightcutters remaining with power. One was fully charged, the other less than
half.

“Sir
... you’re doing all the work,” offered Saedryk as he dashed into the
conference room.

“That
might change when we head down to the lower level,” Dainyl pointed out,
breaking off as the other two Myrmidons joined them.

“It’s
clear to the end of the corridor,” he said, after another Talent check. “Let’s
go.”

The
landing at the top of the steps was empty, and as he stepped through the
archway into the foyerlike space that was the landing, Dainyl glanced to his
right where an archway led into a small library — empty, although two chairs
lay sideways on the green marble.

He
moved forward, stopping short of the steps and the staircase on the east side
of the landing. The steps led back to the north, paralleling the landing foyer.
Even so, the Table chamber lay under the main upper level, dug into the
hillside — as were all Tables.

As
he stood back from the side and the top of the steps, a blue-green line of
light flashed up the staircase and struck the east
e.g.
of the stone frieze on the south wall — a simplistic but elegant rendering of
the Black Cliffs as seen from the sea to the north, looking southward. The
steps down to the Table chamber were narrower than Dainyl remembered. While
that would make it easier for the remaining Ifrits to fire at him, it also
meant he could concentrate his Talent shield into a smaller area.

Dainyl
extended another Talent probe. From what he could tell, there were two Ifrits
in the doorway at the bottom of the staircase, and the door to the Table
chamber was open. He looked to the three Myrmidons. “Get as flat as you can
around the top of the stairs. When I signal, I want the three of you to fire
down the staircase. Then I’ll give a second signal. I’ll want two separate
shots. Don’t worry about aiming, except in the general direction of the bottom.
Then I’ll head down.”

“Ah
... then what, sir?” asked Saedryk.

Dainyl
smiled. “Then you listen for my next orders.”

He
waited for the three to creep into position, standing back somewhat. When they
were ready and looking at him, he first focused a Talent shield, one that would
direct their lightcutter discharges to a point. Then he raised his hand. “Now!”

The
three blue beams fused, and with the impetus of Dainyl’s Talent, sliced through
one of the Ifrits. “Now!”

The
second beam was equally effective.

Before
Dainyl could move more than two steps, blue-green beams flared up the stairs,
and boots thudded on the steps. Dainyl fired three times, and the Myrmidons
kept firing.

A
single Ifrit reached the top of the steps, holding a light-rifle aimed at
Dainyl.

Before
he could speak, Dainyl enfolded him with Talent shields.

The
light-rifle exploded under that pressure, and for a moment Dainyl could only
see flashing stars. When he finally released the shields, there was no sign of
the last Ifrit except a circular pile of black ash and dust, half of which
began to vanish.

“What...
what was that?”

“Talent
shield,” Dainyl replied, absently, still trying to determine if anyone remained
below. He didn’t think so, but he wanted to check again.

Then
he started down the steps, cautiously, well aware that his shields were far
weaker than he would have liked.

He
did not have to worry. There was no one left in the Table chamber, only empty
uniforms and boots. He walked back to the door. “There’s no one left. Saedryk
... would you go out and have Captain Ghasylt join me here.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Meya
and Tueral, you can come down and join me.”

Meya
was the first down, and she stepped over and around the gray and green tunics
and the sets of scuffed boots. Once she reached the doorway, her eyes traversed
the chamber, stopping to fix on the Table. “That’s a Table?”

Dainyl
nodded. “It’s not operating now.”

Tueral
looked from one pair of boots to the next as he descended, then finally to the
marshal. “There were nine of them here.” Unlike Meya, he avoided looking at the
Table.

While
the three waited, Dainyl holstered his lightcutters and reflected. Once they
had gotten into the Table building, while progress had been slow, it had been
steady, and without additional Myrmidon casualties — except for the effort
exacted on Dainyl himself. He was close to being unsteady on his feet.

He
looked across the Table chamber and up the steps, seeing the green and gray
tunics and boots lying everywhere. His lips tightened, but he said nothing. He
felt lightheaded, and forced himself to sit on the
e.g.
of the Table.

A
tenth of a glass later, Ghasylt stepped into the chamber.

“Meya,
Tueral... if you’d wait at the top of the steps,” Dainyl said quietly. He did
not stand.

Ghasylt
surveyed the chamber, but said nothing until the Myrmidons had left and climbed
the stairs. “Congratulations, Marshal.”

Dainyl
shook his head. “It’s not something I liked doing, but there’s no way we could
risk them learning now to activate the Table again and create an open
translation tube here from Ifryn.”

“Would
it have been that bad?”

Dainyl
understood what Ghasylt meant. “Acorus can take another thousand alectors — or
could before we started accepting them months back. At the last count, we’d
accepted more than four hundred survivors’. There are over five thousand
alectors left on Ifryn for whom there is no room on either Efra or Acorus — not
without dooming everyone on both worlds.”

“Is
that a really hard number?”

Dainyl
shrugged. “Probably not to the last alector, but the Duarch is convinced that
it’s close. So is the senior alector in Lyterna, and he’s studied it for
decades.”

“How
did we ...” Ghasylt shook his head. “Sorry, sir. It’s just...”

“They
weren’t that different from us, and we had to kill them.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“I
don’t know how it got this bad, Captain. I only know that it is.”

Ghasylt
remained silent.

Dainyl
looked at the captain. “Once I get my strength back, I’ll reactivate the Table
and translate to Elcien. You’re going to have to keep guard on the Table all
the time, no less than four Myrmidons. If another force slips through ...”

“Someone
else will have to do what we just went through,” the captain finished. “None of
us want that.”

“No.
We’ll probably have to ferry a bunch of guards up here, and I’d guess that
Seventh Company will have to bring them.”

Dainyl
had the feeling that no one had ever anticipated needing large numbers of
Myrmidon or other alector guards in Blackstear. If it weren’t for the need to
keep the Table active while the Master Scepter was being transferred, he would
have recommended shutting it down. He might anyway.

Dainyl
stepped up onto the Table in Blackstear, concentrated, and dropped through the
mirrored surface into...

...
the chill purple dusk of the translation tube. As he focused on finding the
Elcien locator wedge, he realized that he did not sense the greenish Talent
forging — if that were what it had been — by the ancients. He did sense an
amber-green “presence” somewhere beyond, so great that it felt as though it
loomed over all of Acorus.

He
pushed that thought aside and Talent-linked to the brilliant white locator of
Elcien. Even as it neared him, he could sense even more purplish flashes — and
what he could only have described as purplish explosions. Those had to be
failed translations.

How
soon would the Archon transfer the Master Scepter? Could it really be a season
away, with all the unrest and the desperation on Ifryn? Or was that what the
Archon wanted in order to reduce the number of alectors drawing higher amounts
of lifeforce from Efra and Acorus? Or was he trying to stretch out the time
Ifryn could last through such manipulations?

With
all too many questions swirling through his mind, Dainyl slipped through the
white-silver barrier and...

...
onto the Table at Elcien, holding what Talent shields he had remaining, barely
enough to stop the weakest of lightcutter bolts.

Chastyl
looked up, and a smile crossed a face worn with worry, and showing dark circles
under his eyes. “You put it back on the grid! I’ll have to let Delari know.
She’ll be pleased.”

Dainyl
offered a wry smile as he stepped off the Table, ignoring the guards. “You’d
best wait a moment until I tell the Highest. I think he’d like to know.”

Chastyl’s
smile faded, but he nodded. “You’re right. He was in his private study. There’s
more trouble. He’d better tell you.”

“Thank
you. I’ll try to be quick so that you can tell Delari. Just give me a few
moments.”