Cyador’s Heirs

XXXIII

Eightday morning, Lerial wakes up early, despite a gloom more like that created by a heavy overcast late in the afternoon. Yet when he opens the shutters of his chamber, there is no overcast, but there are low dark clouds moving swiftly to the south, with no sign of rain. The air is cold and gusts around him, although it is not chill enough for snow, or even for sleet or icy rain. As he stands at the open window, he finds that he is both unsettled and irritable, perhaps because, once more, this time on sevenday afternoon, after returning from the Hall of Healing, he had tried in yet another fashion to create a concealment … and had only succeeded in exhausting himself.

He shakes his head and turns away from the window, his eyes lighting on the black silk pouch on his table-desk.

Rojana had said an old book claimed that a lodestone could help with ordering order. What about ordering the flows of order and chaos?

With a smile, half amused and half rueful, Lerial walks to the table-desk and eases the lodestone from the silk pouch, leaving the pouch on the wooden surface. Holding the lodestone in his left hand, he concentrates on sensing the tiny flows of order and chaos, except that the flows are not either, but a combination of each.

He looks around for something made of iron, then sees his sabre, in his sword belt scabbard and hung on the rack beside his armoire. He moves the lodestone toward the blade, still concentrating on sensing the flow of order-chaos. The flow seems to strengthen as the lodestone nears the blade. Lerial moves it back and senses the lessening of the strength, except that is not quite right. The strength does not so much change as that the pattern shifts.

Surely, you can do the same … can’t you?

He moves the lodestone nearer and farther from the sabre, watching, sensing, before he tries to add what he feels is a duplication of the pattern, and he feels the lodestone pull more strongly toward the sabre.

So you can make a small lodestone stronger? So what? Except … somehow … he feels that there must be a connection between the flow of order-chaos from the lodestone and the flow of order and chaos necessary for a concealment. But what? The fact that doubling the pattern strengthens the pull of the lodestone?

He tries to manipulate the circular waves around each end of the lodestone, but the waves or patterns immediately reform. After a time, his head throbs slightly, and he lowers the lodestone. Then he notices that it appears brighter outside, and he walks to the window and looks out. The clouds still cover the northern sky, but there is a break to the south, and a shaft of light arrows an angle though that aperture in the clouds.

There is … something … about that.

Then he smiles. So obvious that you almost didn’t see it. The light shaft doesn’t spread … or not that much. That means that the light patterns travel in a straight line. The fact that an image is reflected in a mirror is another indication of that, but Lerial has not connected the two until he saw the shaft of sunlight. The lodestone bends order and chaos into a set of circles …

He takes the lodestone once more and tries to duplicate the patterns of order-chaos, but with light as well. For a moment, only a moment, there is a pinpoint of light, at the end of the lodestone-at each end. When he sees that, he is surprised enough that he loses his concentration, and the additional brightness vanishes.

But why brightness? His aunt said that, if he did manage a concealment, he would not be able to see. That had to be because … why? He thinks for a time. He knows he cannot see in darkness. No one can. That means light is necessary to see. Obviously! But he is missing something. Black cloth, black anything-if it’s left in the sun-gets hot. White doesn’t get as hot. The sunlight heats things. Does that mean that sunlight, or some of it, is caught by dark objects? That would mean less is caught by light ones.

He continues to ponder. But … if his order-chaos pattern around the lodestone keeps light away, and that caused the brightness, why wasn’t there brightness when Emerya created a concealment? She had been standing in the shadows, and more light would have made an aura around her, and there hadn’t been one.

Lerial rubs his forehead, still trying to puzzle it out.

But your pattern was inside the lodestone pattern …

Is that it? The shaft of sunlight went on and on until it hit something and lit it up, like sunlight lights everything. Unless it doesn’t touch it!

He nods to himself. The trick, or skill, is to figure out how to use order flows to bend light around himself, not to contain it in the way that the lodestone bends its attractive force around its end. Somehow … he has the feeling accomplishing that is going to be far harder than figuring out what he has to do.

Still … he has a much better idea of what is involved. And it took you a long time and much effort to become better with a blade.

He squares his shoulders and takes a position in front of the mirror.