"There are certain dangers... to commanding from the front, Captain."

Dainyl forced the words out. He could sense someone else coming, but not who it might be.

The captain laboriously moved the rifle up, but Dainyl couldn't see how the captain would be able to aim it one-handed and one-armed-and wounded. Yet there was little Dainyl could do. He was anything but mobile.

"Well... look what we got here..." Another rebel stepped out from behind the boulder directly across from Dainyl.

Dainyl could sense that the man had a natural Talent-shield, but seemed unaware of it, another indication of how much the captain relied unconsciously on his Talent.

"I'd like to take you for a ride, but looks like neither of you is going anywhere." The rebel smirked, then fired directly at Dainyl.

The bullet blasted into Dainyl's tunic. For a moment, he could sense nothing, except pinkish blackness, and, as he came back to quick consciousness, the pain radiating through his already bruised chest.

A second rifle went off-the captain's-and Dainyl felt the focused Talent that twisted a horribly misaimed bullet right through the forehead of the rebel. The man toppled forward, dropping his rifle and landing facedown in the sand just short of Dainyl's less injured leg.

Talent-potentially strong Talent. Dainyl had known many alectors who did not have a fraction of the Talent the captain might have-if he were allowed to live to develop it.For the moment, Dainyl could do nothing about that. Even if he could persuade the captain to reach his sidearm, the weapon was best saved for any more rebels who might appear before the Cadmians did.

"If you want us to get through this, Captain," Dainyl said slowly, with more effort than before, because every breath hurt, "you need to get my sidearm into my good hand. I can't use it otherwise."

The captain eased sideways, then stopped, then moved some more.

Dainyl could sense the pain, pain that the captain could have controlled better if he knew how to use his Talent. Finally, Mykel was almost beside the Myrmidon. His good hand fumbled at the catches, but he finally loosened them enough to ease the sidearm clear and ease it onto Dainyl's chest.

Dainyl had to force his left hand up to take the weapon, but he had it.

"We might have a chance now."

The captain slumped back, unconscious.

Dainyl looked at him. The captain was still bleeding, enough that all Dainyl had to do was nothing, and a Talented lander would die, and no one would know.

Dainyl looked at the captain who had risked his life to save him. He was so young, and he would die young in any case. He might never develop his Talent more, either, Dainyl told himself. With the tiniest point of Talent, he reached out and fused the point where the bleeding was the worst, then in a second place.

His eyes closed, and he tried to listen, since he could not see. For a time, he did neither.

When he could open his eyes again, he heard voices.

"Captain! Captain Mykel!"

"He's over here!" Dainyl rasped out. He smiled, raggedly, waiting.

99.

Alectors who govern should avoid explaining their actions, if at allpossible. Life is complex and filled with conflicts, and few of even the most intelligent know the background information. Fewer still can calculate the implications and ramifications of a decision. For these reasons, the facts and conditions that underlie a ruler's deci-sions, or the decisions of an alector who administers for the Archon, can seldom be presented fully in a manner that will accurately describe the rationale for such action.

Even if all such information could be presented, doing so would be useless, if not dangerous. Both steers and less discerning alectors demand certainty in their life, yet the only certainty is uncertainty.

Equally important is the fact that they do not want to study the world around them and all that lies behind it. Nor do they wish to spend the time necessary to master understanding. They wish simple explanations to support their baser desires and a sense of certainty in their lives. To this end, they delude themselves that they understand their world. In point of fact, they will perform all manner of contortions in thought to retain that illusion of understanding. That illusion is the fundamental basis for their acceptance of their society and their world.

In the vast majority of instances, the simple and appealing answer or explanation is inaccurate or misleading, if not both. Therefore, the wisest course for an alector is never to explain. If an explanation is necessary, however, the one given should be simple and straightforward, couched in a manner that appeals to the simplistic beliefs of those for whom it is intended. There should be no lies and no inaccuracies, for those can often be easily determined, merely the use of what is factually correct in a manner supporting the decision at hand.

Views of the Highest Illustra W.T. 1513.

100.

Mykel did not remember much after shooting the last bluecoat. There were images of the submarshal looking at him strangely, and warm pressure across his chest, and being carried somewhere on a stretcher, then rolling in agony in a wagon.After that, there had been blackness, and heat and chill. He remembered liquids down his throat, and voices, but not whose voices or what he had tasted. He could recall talking to someone, more than one person, but his words had made no sense, not even to himself. Through it all, his left side and his head had been splitting, or throbbing dully.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. He lay in a large bed that looked out through two open doors to a balcony. Beyond the balcony railing were trees, deep green, not because of summer, but because of the late-afternoon sunlight. The chamber walls were all of white plaster, wide golden wooden shutters folded back from the windows, and fabric hangings, showing trees and flowers. He was propped up in a half-sitting position with pillows. His left shoulder was heavily bound, and dull aches throbbed everywhere.

A Cadmian ranker stood inside the closed oak door.

Mykel coughed.

The ranker turned, and Mykel recognized Wejasyr. "Sir? Are you awake?"

On the surface, it was a stupid question, but Mykel understood what he meant. "If you're asking whether I'm in my right mind, Wejasyr, I think so."

"Yes, sir!" The ranker rapped on the door. "Captain's awake."

Within moments, an older woman came through the guarded doorway first, carrying a tray, on which were a beaker and a pitcher. She filled the breaker and tendered it to Mykel. "The more you drink, Captain, the faster you'll heal."

"Thank you." He accepted the beaker and took a swallow. The ale tasted good, very good, Mykel had to admit, and took another long swallow.

By then Rhystan stood by the foot of the large bed. "I'm glad to see you're back with us."

"How is Fifteenth Company?"

"Bhoral has them in line. You only lost five men, and seven wounded.Amazing, really, given all that mess."

"What about Sixteenth Company?"

"We had three wounded. That was all. A few rebels tried to leave the forest, but when we shot at them they didn't want to try. Later, we let them surrender, those that were left."

Mykel moistened his lips, glad that things had held together after he'd been stupid enough to get shot-and after the battle had been largely won, at that. "When is it? What day?"

"Londi afternoon." Rhystan smiled.

"That long?" Mykel knew he hadn't been himself, but... he hated to think of what he might have said, because he recalled saying things, but not what they had been. He hoped he hadn't said anything about his shooting or about Rachyla. It would be best if he hadn't said what he had seen when the pteridons had been destroyed. "I must have been raving for days."

"You weren't raving. You mumbled a lot, and some of it didn't make sense. The only thing that did was that you couldn't let them shoot the submarshal. You kept saying something about soaring, several times-must have felt like you were flying."

"I didn't feel that way. Maybe I wished that I had been." Mykel offered a soft laugh.

"You lost a lot of blood, almost too much, but they said you should be all right. They were more worried about your head. You whacked it against the stone pretty hard after you were shot, the submarshal said."

"The submarshal? How is he?"

"He's tougher than... he's tough."

"You were right," Mykel replied slowly. "It was problematical-and foolhardy."

"I'm glad it was you, but it worked. There aren't any rebels left, and the handful of seltyrs who survived pledged full allegiance to the Duarches.""No rebels?"

"A few. We rounded up maybe thirty, and there were others who ran and don't want anyone to know that they were part of the bluecoat force."

Mykel nodded slowly.

The door opened again, and another figure entered the chamber. More properly, the submarshal was rolled through * the doorway in a chair with wheels that creaked as it moved.

The ranker who pushed it must have been from Sixteenth Company, because Mykel didn't recognize him.

The submarshal's left leg and right arm were both splinted, and the leg was supported by a plank fastened at an angle to the rolling chair. A large bruise covered the left side of his forehead and his cheek. Mykel could sense a purplish pink aura around the alector. Was it his eyes? He glanced at Rhystan and the older woman, who had stepped back, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary with them.

"Captain, I'm glad to see you're recovering," offered the submarshal.

"Without your courage and abilities I would not be here."

Mykel smiled crookedly. "I'm afraid I didn't handle things as well as I could have."

"You did far better than any had a right to expect. Far better."

Rhystan nodded emphatically.

Mykel took another swallow of ale. It eased the dryness in his throat, as well as the headache he hadn't been totally aware that he had.

"There's one thing I'd like to know..." Rhystan said slowly, looking from Mykel to the submarshal and back to the Mykel.

"What's that?"

"How did the rebels manage to shoot down the pteridons?"Mykel would have shrugged, but that would have hurt far too much. "I don't know. I saw them go down. The first one was flying too low, I think, but the submarshal would know."

Both captains turned to look at the submarshal.

Dainyl smiled ruefully. "You may recall that one of the reasons why the Cadmians were sent here was because of the nature of the Murian Mountains. Some mountains are more dangerous than others. There are downdrafts and other problems. We had known about those just north of the mine, but not about those above the plateau behind the forest. We should have guessed from the nature of the ground, but when you are pursuing a foe, you don't always see things so clearly. Because of the problems that caused the first pteridon to crash into the cliff, my flier was distracted, then was hit-I would guess-by a lucky shot from below. The lack of guidance and the terrain combined to cause the second impact. I was fortunate-mostly fortunate-to have been thrown clear."

Mykel could sense a combination of truth and misleading statements^ although not quite lies, in the submarshal's words. He also understood that the submarshal would say nothing else except along the same lines.

"I saw you flung clear," Mykel said. "I wasn't sure you would survive, but we thought you might."

"For that, Captain, I am most thankful."

There were no conditions or evasions in those words, for which Mykel was most grateful.

"We will be here for several more days, at least," the sub-marshal said, "until we have healed further. Overcaptain Dohark reports that all is calm and quiet in Dramuria, and that there is no need for haste in our return."

Mykel stifled a yawn.

"I think we have tired Captain Mykel enough," said the submarshal.

After they had left, Mykel took another swallow of the ale. Rachyla had hinted that the alectors were different, and from what Mykel had seen, they definitely were. How the submarshal had survived a fall of over a hundred yards onto rock and sand-and was in better shape with a brokenarm and leg and bruises across his entire body than Mykel was with a single gunshot wound to his shoulder-that was amazing.

Mykel looked down at the binding across his left shoulder. Then he swallowed. He could tell that the bullet had been far lower than he had thought. Men didn't survive long where he'd been shot... but he had. Had the submarshal done something? Or had he just been extraordinarily fortunate?

101.

Dainyl examined his leg, then his arm, with his Talent, and nodded.

They were healing well. Within another two weeks he would be able to walk, if with a brace of some sort. By then, his next set of troubles would begin.

While he had been healing at the estate of the former Sel-tyr Veluasyr-who had been one of those shot by the in-trepid Captain Mykel-Dainyl had had time to think, too much time, in some ways.

He felt guilty about the deaths of both Quelyt and Falyna. They had followed his orders, and died. Both had been faithful Myrmidons, and a pleasure to command and work with-and he had failed them by not recognizing how great a danger the soarers had represented. He had been warned, but, deep inside, he had not believed those warnings. Even though it had been his failure, he had been the one to survive, and he did not understand how-or why.

The drop from such a height should have killed him outright. While Talent could cushion or slow falls from lesser heights, he was not aware of any alector's surviving such a fall. He had a vague recollection of a brief flow of Talent-energy, but it had been green. Had he been imagining that?

He had to have been. The soarers would not have spent all that force bringing down two pteridons-then helped him save himself. However it had all happened, a great deal of luck had to have been involved.

Then, too, he knew that both the Highest and Marshal Shastylt would have been horrified that he had used Talent to heal Captain Mykel enough so that he would recover, rather than die. They would have been horrified more if they knew that the captain had Talent. Yet the captain had done more than anyone could have asked, and he had saved Dainyl when no one else could have. Without the captain, Dainyl would not be eventually goingback to Elcien and Lystrana-perhaps even to a child. He had not been certain when he left, but... they had been hopeful.

To let the captain die, after he had failed Quelyt and Falyna, that would have been intolerable, a decision he could not have made. He had chosen to save the captain, and that was a choice he would have to live with. He could but hope it would not come back to torment him.

For all the fighting, and all of what he had learned in Lyterna, he still had no understanding of why the Highest and the marshal had set up the revolt in Dramur. It could not have been just a test of his abilities, nor could it have been to weaken the Cadmians. Part of the reason might have been to teach the seltyrs a lesson of sorts, but that could have been far more easily accomplished with greater forces over a shorter period of time.

He also considered Asulet's words, especially those about how much the alectors of Ifryn had lost in transfers from world to world. Those words were part of the answer, but what part?

When he and the Cadmians returned to Elcien depended in large degree on whether the recorders of deeds at one of the Tables had been able to determine-indirectly, since the Tables displayed nothing of Talent or created by Talent- that the two pteridons had been lost. But return he must, and fairly quickly, to report on how the two ancients had destroyed the pteridons. He knew of nothing that could stand up to a skylance, but the soarers had, and he was perhaps the only one still alive who had witnessed that. But... how much should he say? And to whom?

102.

The Submarshal of Myrmidons looked from the too-small desk, behind which he was seated sideways and awkwardly, toward the open window.

Dainyl would have preferred to have flown back to Dramuria, but without pteridons and with a leg that had not healed enough for him to ride, he had been forced to take a carriage, and it had been a long trip. A welcome breeze blew into the study, wanning him after a cool and restless Decdi night, during which he had slept badly, and a long Londi, dealing with more administrative details than he would have wished.

During all that time, his thoughts had swirled between the loss of Quelyt and Falyna, the two irreplaceable pteri-dons, half of the ThirdCadmian Battalion, and more than a thousand rebels. For what?

As soon as he had been able, Dainyl had written up a detailed dispatch outlining the events in Dramur. He had not sent it, because there had been no ships of the Duarches porting in Dramuria, nor any pteridons arriving. Writing the dispatch had not been difficult. He had reported what had occurred and that Dramur and Dramuria were now calm, partly in a state of shock and partly through a numb acceptance by the remaining seltyrs and growers that the Duarchy would do whatever was necessary to maintain control.