Cyador’s Heirs

XLV

Just after sunrise on sevenday the Lancers ride out from the travelers’ hostel of Apfhel, on a journey that will last past sunset, according to Yulyn.

As he rides beside the wayguide, Lerial cannot help wonder about the discrepancy between Casseon’s prohibition of chaos use among his people but his likely deployment of it against his enemies or those against whom he has a grudge.

All that raises another, and far more personal question. What can he do-if anything-should he encounter a magus or a white wizard using chaos-fire? He understands that some of those in the past of Cyador who were not full Magi’i, like Lorn, have faced chaos-fire and triumphed. Strong ordermasters are supposed to have been able to create order shields against chaos. Lerial is well aware that he is nowhere close to being either a magus or a full ordermage. Yet … is there anything he can do? There must be something.

Even as he surveys the forest through which they ride, a forest that seems to change little, with its mixture of evergreens and broad-leafed trees, most of whose leaves are winter-grayed, his thoughts keep coming back to the question of what sort of defenses he can develop. After riding a glass and a half, from what he can tell, since it is hard to chart the progress of the sun between the intermittent clouds and the tall trees that leave the road in shadow most of the time, they ride through a hamlet. In the entire ride from Apfhel to the unnamed hamlet, they have passed but a handful of small wagons, two other riders, both in brown, and several young men walking the road, carrying either scythes or mattocks.

Once they enter the hamlet, from what Lerial can tell, there are close to a hundred dwellings, similar, if not nearly identical, to those he has seen in Apfhel. He does not see a Kaordist temple, but perhaps it is farther from the main road than is the one in Apfhel. With the thinning of the trees come rays of sunlight, for which Lerial finds he is grateful, yet before long they are back in the shadows of the main road.

“Are all the roads in Verdheln this shadowed?” he finally asks Yulyn.

“I know of none that are not … except where they pass through the great meadows.”

“Where are the great meadows?”

“Where they always have been,” replies Yulyn with a broad grin. “We will pass through one close to sunset. There are not many in Verdheln, and most are to the west and more to the south.”

“You don’t clear meadows?”

“If the Verd wants a meadow, there is one. Who are we to change that?”

“But you thin the trees for your towns.”

“As little as possible.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, where there is forest, there should remain forest.”

“Why do you think that is the way it should be?”

“The forest was here before us. It will be here long after we are gone. Who are we to change that?”

Once more, Lerial’s questions have brought him to a place where the answers to further questions will reveal nothing new. He leans back in the saddle and glances at Altyrn. The majer looks back with a knowingly amused expression, almost as if he might have once asked similar questions.

Over the course of the day, they pass with a certain regularity through hamlet after hamlet. Not only are the dwellings similar, but the hamlets resemble each other in the way in which the trees are thinned and the distances between houses, as well as the presence of stone-lined waste canals. Although the shapes of the hamlets differ, that is perhaps because of the terrain where each is located.

“We will be entering the great meadow shortly,” Yulyn announces late in the afternoon.

Only a fifth of a glass passes before the trees end abruptly, and Lerial rides into an open space, where knee-high grass seems to extend for more than a kay in every direction before him, except for where the road cuts through it. The sun hangs half covered by the trees to the west, and an orange light suffuses the air. In the distance to the southwest, which appears to be the direction in which the great meadow stretches the farthest, Lerial sees a red deer, or what he thinks is a red deer.

Fifty yards or so ahead of Lerial, a coney bounds out of the grass and then disappears into the grass on the east side of the road. Farther to the west, there is a small herd of cattle, less than twenty. Despite the lush grass, not until they are close to the southern edge of the meadow does Lerial see any other animals grazing, and then he nearly misses the flock of sheep almost lost in the grass, their fleeces tinted by the setting sun. Again, there are not that many sheep, not for a flock, perhaps fifty.

The road appears to have cut through the great meadow so that roughly one quarter is to the east of the road, and the remainder to the west and south. By the time they reach the south side, a distance of about two kays, the sun has dropped completely behind the tall trees to the west, and the orange glow is even more pronounced-and the gloom of the road under the towering trees is even deeper.

Lerial is glad that the road is comparatively smooth because it would be hard to see potholes in it, and that becomes more of a concern as the light dims over the next glass that passes before he sees the trees thin once more … on the outskirts of Verdell.

“The hostel is on the south side of Verdell, a bit to the west,” announces Yulyn, but he does not turn off the main road. Before long, after they have passed more than a score of the lanes between lines of trees, the road turns to the southwest once more. Even in the dusk that is verging on dark, it is clear that Verdell is far larger than Apfhel, possibly even larger than Cigoerne, although that is something Lerial cannot tell for certain.

A slender man with white hair-not silver-stands waiting under a lantern in the entry to the travelers’ hostel. “Welcome to Verdell, Majer Altyrn, Undercaptain Lerial.” He does not wear brown but a light tan tunic and trousers, although his boots look brown.

“Thank you.”

Interestingly enough, the travelers’ hostel-or way station-in Verdell is barely big enough to handle the two squads and Lerial and Altyrn without crowding, suggesting to Lerial that the statements of the elders in Apfhel were honest, and that he has indeed read them correctly. That he has troubles him in another way, because it is clear there are more hidden aspects about the people of the Verd than he has realized. He puts those thoughts to the side as he and Altyrn arrange for meals and watch schedules-necessary in case the hostel is not so secure as it appears and also to maintain an orderly and consistent routine.

The late-evening meal, served well after dark, consists of warm nut bread of some sort, bland and not so bitter as the acorn bread of Apfhel, and a meat-and-tuber casserole in a thick sauce that is neither creamy nor cheese but has a slightly nutty flavor, enough that Lerial questions whether everything has nuts in it.

Later that evening, tired as he is, Lerial makes his way to the kitchens, where he finds some embers in one of the large porcelain-fired clay stoves. Why not iron? That is another question begging for an answer, but an answer that will have to wait. While he cannot even conceive of how he might create shields, the idea has occurred to him that since order and chaos do flow through and around people-and even objects-perhaps he can find a way to slide chaos bolts away from him so that he does not have to bear the brunt of their power.

He finds a few sticks of dry wood in the bin and feeds them to the coals, watching with both his eyes and his order-senses as the wood catches fire. As more wood bursts into flame, Lerial can sense the interplay of order and chaos, although it is not exactly an interplay, because there is little pattern to the way the forces move around the base of the flame, and the only thing that resembles a pattern is that what seem to be tiny bits of order are carried up the chimney by larger bits of chaos.

Still … can he move either the order or the chaos? He has been able to move order, and he can focus chaos to light candles. Here the chaos already exists, and he should be able to move it, shouldn’t he?

First, he extends his order-chaos senses and tries to direct the flashes of chaos, but while he can move a few, the others just skitter away. Next, he attempts to gather the chaos flashes into larger flashes. He can do that, but as was the case when he tried to light multiple candles, he can feel the effort and strain of doing so … and that approach doesn’t seem as though it would be terribly productive. He lets go … and a flare of light flashes upward.

Releasing it creates a flare? He’s not sure what to make of that.

What would attract chaos? Does order attract it? At that thought, he thinks about the patterns of order around the lodestone, and the fingers of his left hand reach into his inside jacket pocket and touch the silk pouch, feeling the oblong shape there. Can you copy that pattern … or something like it? So that chaos attracts order?

Lerial frowns. He doesn’t want to attract order, just channel it, the way that order circles the end of the lodestone … but without coming back and striking it.

He tries replicating the pattern at the end of one of the sticks of wood. There is a circular flare, but it does not last. Next, he tries two lines of the pattern … and coils one back into the other. For several moments, there is a matching line of fire, paralleling his tiny lines of order. After a moment, he adds a third line … and the circular flame is even stronger. He can even feel the heat radiating.

It works … but why?

The problem is that he cannot find and manipulate that much order-more than he can chaos, but still not that much. He tries with four fine lines of order, and the chaos flame is even stronger.

“Cold, are you?” asks Altyrn from the doorway to the kitchen.

“No.” Lerial pauses, then decides not to evade the point, at least not by too much. “I’m studying the chaos of fire.”

“I thought handling chaos was difficult for you.”

“It is. That’s why I’m looking at how order and chaos interact in fire.”

Altyrn nods, then says. “Just make sure you’ve banked the embers well when you’re finished.”

“I will. I won’t be that long.”

Once the majer has left, Lerial takes a long deep breath.

Should you try five lines?

He does … and the heat, for a moment, drives him back, and then it subsides, and only ashes and embers remain in the stove.

Will that work against a chaos bolt? He has no idea, except a feeling that, if he can create that pattern around himself-but far enough away-it might.

He knows he has done enough, though, because he feels exhausted. He does remember to finish banking the fire and closes the stove door before he heads for the small chamber where he will sleep.