The older alector cleared his throat, then spoke. "Each of these recesses holds something of value, of one sort or another, frozen, in more ways than one, through time. You should study each, and take your time in doing so.

The first you will recognize."

Dainyl turned his attention to the right wall, unadorned blue-tinged marble, within which were set at regular intervals a series of recesses, each roughly ten yards wide. Each recess was a yard deep and ended in a flat sheet of what appeared to be blue crystal. The crystal rose ten yards, but the space between the top of the crystal and the ceiling was empty.

Sensing the other's expectation, Dainyl moved forward until he stood before the flat crystal. The crystal had looked far darker when he had been standing back, but closer, it was almost clear, and but lightly shaded with the merest hint of blue. Farther back in the solid blue crystalline mist, embedded within it, was a shape-that of a pteridon, its blue leathery wings folded back, its long cruel blue crystal beak slightly parted, as if it had just landed. The blue crystal eyes also glittered and held that dark sentience common to all pteridons. Set just below the thick neck and above the shoulders that anchored the wings was the saddle of a Myrmidon.

"One of the first pteridons? How have you been able to preserve it? It looks so lifelike."

"It is one of the first. It is as alive as any of those on Acorus."

"It's alive?"

"Very much so. The crystals beneath each recess interact with the lifefields to suspend them. Very simple, but it took much work. They'll be the last things to fail if it comes to that."

Dainyl bowed his head in respect. "My deepest apologies, Most Highest.""I'm not a Highest. Never was. Just a biologist trying to get things to work out... and they have." The older alector smiled. "Mostly, anyway."

"If you turned them off... ?"

"They would be ready to fly. It would take a few days to charge the lance."

Dainyl shook his head. He had certainly not expected this in Lyterna.

"Are these set aside for an emergency? Because no more can be created?"

"Exactly. Outside of Lyterna, the only alectors who know of them are the high alectors and the Marshal and Submar-shal of Myrmidons."

"Are there any more?"

"Just these twenty. That should be more than enough."

Asulet moved farther back, passing the other recesses with pteridons.

"Farther along, past the pteridons, each recess holds something from the past, each from farther back in time."

When Asulet finally stopped and gestured, Dainyl stepped forward until he once more stood just short of the flat crystal. There, Dainyl studied the shambling apelike figure, caught in midstride. "Was that what the indigens looked like after the seedings?"

"That is one of the first indigens. I preserved him myself."

"Like the pteridons, if you turned the crystals off... ?"

"The poor thing would be frightened and try to run." Asulet sniffed.

"Timid sorts, really. Took years to breed in more aggressiveness. We needed that to get the expansion and the ability to herd. Cattle, very important sources of methane. They came from the aurochs, the cattle did."

"If... you turned the crystals off, could you turn them back on?"

"Oh, yes. Several times. Once or twice we have had to replace things.

The switches are Talent-hidden, on the right."

Dainyl extended his Talent and let it sweep over the hidden controls,verifying what Asulet had said.

"Now here, this is what the grasslands looked like just before we released the indigens."

Before looking at the next recess, Dainyl turned to the older alector.

"How... how did you... could you... ?"

"In essence, we mixed together the smallest components-parts of cells, if you will-taken from ourselves, from samples of steers on Ifryn, and from one of the life-forms existing here. We kept at it until it worked. It was hard on us, and harder on the brood mothers."

"Brood mothers?"

"Ulasya was one of them. Those condemned on Ifyrn were allowed a second chance here. For her services, she has every comfort Lyterna has to offer. She is a server by choice. She says that she can meet people that way."

Dainyl turned his eyes on the next recess. The greenish grass was sparse, with open patches of dirt and sand, and he could see a grass snake, clearly stalking some rodent.

Slowly, he made his way down the line of preserved exhibits.

"This was what it looked like after the first three hundred years,"

explained Asulet, gesturing to a scene that showed a snowy tundra with grayish flowers protruding from an icy expanse. "That is a summer scene, by the way."

The last recess showed a pool surrounded by snow and ice, a faint hint of steam rising from it. The only vegetation seemed to be lichens on the rocks closest to the water.

"That was what it was like in full summer when we began."

Even with the crystal field, the chill seemed to reach out and sink into Dainyl's very bones. He shivered.

"That was also close to the equator," added Asulet. "This world would never have developed life, not our kind of life, without our efforts.""I thought it did have life. What about the so-called ancients?"

"They were dying out back then. It was getting too cold for them, and there wasn't enough lifeforce. They're no different from us, really. They need lifeforces to exist, and they weren't getting enough. Their only city was Dereka..."

"That was theirs?"

"We had to rebuild it, but it was abandoned before we ever made full-body translations to Acorus."

"How... If there wasn't intelligent life to build a Table?"

Asulet laughed, harshly. "Blind translations are possible. I know. The success rate is less than five percent. It took five hundred to get the first forty of us here, carrying what little we could, and there were only twenty alive when we cobbled together the first receptor Table."

Dainyl turned and looked into Asulet's violet eyes, a violet so deep that it was almost black. He couldn't imagine attempting that kind of blind translation.

"I was brilliant-and arrogant, Submarshal. Much like you. I paid, and so will you."

"I'm scarcely brilliant," Dainyl protested. "It has taken me more years than most to become a submarshal."

Asulet laughed. "You may deceive Marshal Shastylt, because he is far more arrogant than either of us, and the arrogant too often see what they wish to see in their subordinates. You may even deceive Zelyert. You cannot deceive me. I would venture to say that your progress has been slow because you do not see things in quite the same fashion as most other alectors. It has also been slow because you have recognized that quality within yourself, and it has made you most cautious. Your shields are among the strongest I have seen, and you show no sign of Talent. That is not possible. That can only mean great Talent, and the ability to listen with both Talent and ears."

Dainyl managed to keep a pleasant smile upon his face. "You're most complimentary, but I'm afraid you do me too much honor."Asulet laughed easily once more. "I have little interest in who becomes the Marshal of Myrmidons, or the High Alector of Justice. My interest is in seeing Acorus blossom. It will not blossom if too much intellect and Talent, and too much lifeforce, are spent in determining who rules.

Already, we run close to the ragged edge. Each time we move to a new world, a little more is lost. More knowledge, more understanding, is lost because some of the brightest are lost, one way or another. Once we could fashion the very cells of our being. Here, we managed to mix together cells to create the life we needed, and that took long years. I have tried to impart my knowledge to a score of those who have come here to learn, and not one has learned all that I have to share. Always, the question is how can that knowledge be used for power. And so, with each transfer of the master scepter, there is more arrogance, more squandering of lifeforce, and fewer alectors. It cannot continue, or we will not continue. That is why I look for strong and cautious alectors. They can be far bolder when necessary and seldom waste energies." Asulet paused. "Do you know why you have seen this?" He gestured back toward the crystal recesses.

"I doubt I understand all of it, but you are suggesting that life has a much more fragile hold on Acorus than most alectors imagine, and that the effort taken to allow life is far greater than anyone can acknowledge, and has taken far longer than we are told."

"Exactly."

"How long?" m "Almost five thousand years." fl "You... ?" J Asulet laughed. "I did not live all those years. Many wersHj spent in those recesses, once we set them up. We alternated for centuries, tens of centuries."

Dainyl looked to the frozen recess, then back to the older alector. He could sense the absolute truth of the other's words, and that chilled him more than the cold of the preserved past.

75.

, By the second glass of the afternoon onLondi, Fifteenth Company was set up behind a stone fence, and in the trees of a woodlot a half vingt north of the main entrance to Khalmyn Estate-the home of the eastern seltyr Sheludjyr. For the first day of spring, the day was warm. The white sun cast shadows from the casaran trees to the west onto the shoulder of the road, but was high enough that Mykel did not have to squint when he looked westward.

Blocking the road was an overturned wagon with a Cad-mian uniform tunic lying in the dirt beside a rifle. There were gouges and hoofprints in the road, and the wagon was missing a wheel. The site was some two hundred yards to the north of a gentle curve in the road just sharp enough that a rider could not see the wagon until he had ridden to the end of the curved section.

From the trees, Mykel surveyed the scene. Then he looked at the stone fence five yards in front of him, set several yards back from the shoulder of the road. Second squad was deployed on foot, each man crouching close behind the stones, concealed from those on the road.

Mykel glanced to the south. He could barely hear the sound of hoofs on the dry road, the occasional murmur of voices of the oncoming companies of rebels. While he was certain he and his men were well concealed, for the ambush to be most effective, the column of riders-one company of greencoats and one of bluecoats-needed to get within , forty yards of the wagon. He'd debated about the diversion, but had decided to use it, because, with the center of the road blocked, the men riding into the ambush would be more likely to turn back or bunch up around the wagon.

He'd also placed more of fourth and fifth squads in the trees in the middle of the curve, so that they would be in a position to fire at any troopers turning and trying to flee.

Mykel continued to wait. Sweat oozed down his back. The sound of hoofs slowly grew louder, as did the voices. Then the first outriders appeared, coming around the last , section of the curve. Neither seemed to notice the wagon until they were only about a hundred yards from it.

"There's a wagon overturned!" called one.

Words were shouted back, but Mykel could not make them out.

Both riders continued toward the wagon, until they were less than thirty yards from it. Then one reined in, and the other continuednorthward. He reined in just short of the wagon.

"It's empty. Lost a wheel, looks like. Wait! There's a tunic here-and a rifle." The outrider straightened in the saddle. "Someone left a rifle. Good rifle, too."

By then, the first squad of the oncoming troopers was through the turn and on the straight section of the road toward the wagon.

"Empty wagon and rifle!" the second outrider called back. "Wagon's missing a wheel!"

Mykel waited, hoping that the column would keep moving forward.

The leading riders of the first squad had just passed Mykel when the captain riding in the front ordered, "Column! Halt!" He rode forward toward the wagon.

As Mykel had planned, the front of the column slowed, then stopped, while the later riders failed to hear the orders-or did not react as quickly.

The spacing between the squads of greencoats narrowed, then vanished.

Mykel couldn't tell what was happening farther back to the south, but the seltyr's troopers were about as close as they were likely to get.

"Fire!" ordered Mykel, aiming at the captain in green near the front of the column.

Crack! Crack! Crack!... The initial shots came from out of the trees, where the other squads were arrayed, because they did not have to reveal themselves to fire.

The green captain pitched forward in the saddle.

The next volley came from the stone fence and second squad.

"Return fire!" came a command from somewhere, but few of the riders on the road heard it or heeded it immediately.

One squad leader repeated the order, and had his own rifle out. Mykel aimed and fired, willing his shot home. The squad leader dropped. Mykel kept firing, deliberately, dropping a man with almost every shot. Then he leaned back behind the short-needled pine to reload.Some of the greencoats bolted northward, but they had to slow to get around the wagon. More were hit, some wounded in arms or legs, others slumping in their saddles or toppling onto the road, Mykel winced as one second squad trooper slumped over the wall. He turned and fired on a group of greencoats that had formed into a rough line and were firing at second squad. Three went down before the other three wheeled their mounts and withdrew.

Within moments, the road was empty of mounted blue-coats and greencoats, with only the wounded and dead and at least a half score of mounts milling around.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" Mykel ordered.

He mounted the chestnut and moved out through one of the openings in the stone wall. "Second squad, mount up!

First squad, round up the loose mounts!" Then he rode back southward toward the curve in the road. He had to pick his way around the bodies. At a rough count, there were probably close to sixty, all told.

"Fourth and fifth squads! Mount up and re-form! Gather the rifles and ammunition. Leave their wounded."

He turned the chestnut back northward.

When he neared the wagon, he could see that Gendsyr's men had managed to get control of more than a half score of the rebel mounts.

Several of the second squad rankers were strapping and tying the rifles they had covered to the captured horses. Others had dragged the wagon clear of the road. Mykel looked back, and saw that Bhoral and fourth and fifth squads were formed up and riding northward toward Mykel.

"Squads one, two, and three, mount up! We need to get riding." While Mykel doubted that the routed rebels would immediately return, he wanted to get moving before they had a chance to regroup and return. If he had had a full battalion at his command, he might well have pursued and captured or eliminated the two rebel companies entirely.

Once Fifteenth Company was riding in good order northward, with both scouts and outriders ahead, and after Mykel had gotten the casualtyreports from the squad leaders, he turned the chestnut and rode back to find Bhoral.

"Sir," acknowledged the senior squad leader, as Mykel . eased his mount beside him.

"We didn't do too badly," Mykel said. "Two dead, and two wounded."

Bhoral looked at Mykel. "Captain... they didn't even know what happened."

"No." Mykel felt disturbed about that, but he didn't see that he had that much choice.

"It won't be too long before they catch on."

"Probably not, but if we can take on two or three more companies this way, we won't have to worry about being outnumbered." Equally important, from Mykel's point of view, was his hope that the rebel squad leaders and rankers would come to fear the Cadmians.