Darknesses by L. E. Modesitt Read Free Book Online Page A

shallows, with foglike
vapor rising from the water. Roughly three vingts westward, the riverbed
deepened, and the ice cover began. By another four vingts farther south, the
ice was solid enough to hold a wagon team, and it stayed that solid all the way
westward until slightly north of Tempre.
    Alucius
reined up short of the scouts.
    “Looks
like they watered their mounts here, sir!” Elbard, the older and stockier
scout, shouted to make his voice heard over the roar of the cataract. “Probably
early this morning, maybe before dawn.”
    There
were also boot tracks in the already ice-crusted snow at the edge of the river,
more than just a few.
    “It
looks like they filled their own water bottles, too,” Alucius suggested.
    “Yes,
sir.”
    “No
tracks east of here?”
    “No,
sir. They watered and turned back west.”
    “Thank
you.” Alucius nodded to the two. “We’ll be heading back to Emal now.”
    “Yes,
sir.”
    Alucius
rode back up the slope to the road, where he reined in Wildebeast beside
Zerdial. “We’ll head back now.”
    “Yes,
sir.” Zerdial cleared his throat. “First squad! To the rear, ride! Scouts to
the van position!”
    The
captain and the squad leader rode along the shoulder until they were at the
head of the double-filed column that was first squad.
    Once
first squad was settled back into an easy pace westward, Alucius turned in the
saddle and looked at Zerdial. “What do you think?”
    “They
came up here for water. That’s at least an extra glass of riding each way.”
Zerdial frowned. “It would spare them the time it would take to chop through
the ice, but why couldn’t they just stop for water at one of the hamlets on the
other side?”
    “Why
indeed?” asked Alucius.
    “They
didn’t wish to be seen, sir?”
    “That
would be my guess, Zerdial.”
    Alucius
had figured that aspect out almost immediately, but what bothered him was that
he couldn’t figure out why the riders hadn’t wanted to be seen. The tracks made
it clear that they had come from Lanachrona, and none of people in the hamlets
on the Lanachronan side would have cared or said anything if the riders were
Southern Guards. That meant that they weren’t—or that they weren’t in uniform.
But brigands would have had far easier pickings to the south, and, despite the
warnings from Dekhron, Alucius had trouble believing that Deforyan raiders
would have traveled almost three hundred vingts—through the coldest section of
the Upper Spine Mountains in winter—to raid some of the poorest hamlets in the
Iron Valleys—or the one town with a militia garrison. He also didn’t like the
idea of Southern Guards not being in uniform.
    Neither
possibility was one that he liked, and that meant that, if the tracks
continued, winter or not, he’d have to shift the patrol schedules to before
dawn to see what he could find out.

7
    Tempre,
Lanachrona
    T he
Lord-Protector, his face appearing a good ten years older than when he
had taken office three years before, walked briskly into the plain
marble-walled room, hidden deep beneath the palace, a structure erected
generations earlier with great care not to disturb the ancient room and what it
contained. He glanced at the Table of the Recorders, a device appearing more
like a dark lorken-framed table than the artifact from the Cataclysm that it
was. The Table’s shimmered surface appeared but to be a mirror. It was not.
    The
silver-robed Recorder stood on the far side of the Table, waiting.
    “You
said you have finally discovered something about the mysterious officer whom
you thought had brought down the Matrial,” offered the Lord-Protector.
    “I
will call forth what I have discovered, Lord-Protector. You may be both
surprised and amused.”
    “Amused?
Is anything amusing in these times?” The Lord-Protector frowned, but stepped to
the Table and looked down.
    The
Recorder cleared his throat softly, then concentrated on the ancient glass. The
mirrored surface that appeared