Natural Ordermage

CI

In the late afternoon of twoday, under clouds that promised, but had not delivered rain, Rahl stood on the avenue in Swartheld, looking at the burned-out walls of the Nylan Merchant Association and the heaps of masonry, ashes, and rubble within them that had been warehouses, stables, and the main building.

Behind him, Eneld’s cantina was open, if with broken and battered shutters, and stacks of rubble in the side alleyway waiting to be carted away. The odor of Seorya’s heavy cooking mixed with that of ashes and death.

He stood there silently, in his mage-guard uniform. In less than a day, he would be boarding a warship on a mission back to Nylan. His eyes went to the still-smoking rubble that had been the first warehouse-with the rooms above that had housed Daelyt and Yasnela. Both were dead, although Rahl had no way of knowing exactly how they had died, only that they had. For what it was worth, he wished that Yasnela had not been alone; but he knew that she had been, trapped by her crippled leg when the Jeranyi pirates had emerged from their concealment.

In his own way, Daelyt had been trapped as surely as Rahl himself had been constrained, all because Daelyt had loved Yasnela. With what Rahl had been paid, he certainly could not have maintained a consort, and especially not one who was crippled. Even had Daelyt made three or four times what Rahl had-and that was doubtful-Daelyt could not have supported and quartered a consort in Swartheld. So, because he had loved his consort, Daelyt had helped Shyret in his scheme to divert golds from the Association, not knowing or understanding where that would lead. What would Rahl have done if he had been faced with a similar situation-and his consort had been Deybri? Would he have been able to walk away? Especially if he were not a mage?

Chenaryl, too, was dead. He had been more guilty, in a way, because he’d pocketed golds from the “spoiled” goods. Tyboran the warehouse guard and Guylmor-the first driver-had been killed just because they had been inconvenient to either Shyret or the Jeranyi. Shyret had wanted more golds than his ability could honestly provide. So had Chenaryl. Daelyt had wanted to have the love of a beautiful-if crippled-woman. The innocent had died as well-Captain Gheryk, Yasnela, and the merchant clerk before Rahl.

Yet, reflected Rahl, regardless of their relative guilt, they’d all been slaughtered by the Jeranyi or their agents. For what? So that the pirates could amass more golds after they had burned the merchant quarter of Swartheld to the ground? And so that an undeserving undercaptain could become a captain?

But the causes went deeper than that. The Jeranyi had acted because the revolt in Merowey offered them an opportunity. Craelyt had acted because he believed himself better than he was, and because the mage-guards had not seen his corruption of spirit-or not wanted to. Even the Nylan Merchant Association was far from free from blame. They had taken Rahl, either because he was inexpensive help or because they were beholden to the magisters, and the directors of the Association had never truly looked at what was happening in Swartheld. With what he had known after two eightdays, Rahl had discovered something was wrong-and he had had no experience at all. Surely, an experienced trader could have discovered the problems. So why hadn’t anyone? Or had they not wanted to look too deeply?

None of them had wanted to see what they had found unpleasant. Was he any different? He hadn’t wanted to deal with Jienela…or with the strain he had surely placed on his parents. Or with…he could name more than that.

His eyes went back to the tumbled rubble that had been the Merchant Association building.

As he stood there, another question came to mind, an old question, one that he had asked himself more than once. Why exactly had he been exiled? It had not been just because he had avoided real responsibility. Or that he had been self-centered. Or even because he was a natural ordermage.

After all he had been through, he could see that, at least in the case of the magisters of Nylan, his exile had not been a personal thing for the magisters-except maybe for Kadara. They’d honestly worried about what he might do. But why? Hamor allowed both kinds of mages, and the land didn’t seem any poorer. If anything, more folk were better off. And Fairhaven…

He moistened his lips.

Perhaps that was part of the answer to both questions.

In Recluce, and especially in Nylan, commerce and trade had to serve order. So did the view that the magisters of Nylan had of order and what sort of magery was accepted. The Nylan Merchant Association had to follow those unspoken yet ironclad rules. Nothing could be allowed that conflicted. In Nylan, the rules were frozen in the words of The Basis of Order; in Land’s End, nothing that suggested any change was allowed. Beyond that, did that many really care? Deybri did…and some others, like Khalyt the engineer, or Thorl, but most wanted life to go on peacefully and without unpleasantness, and if a director of the Merchant Association pocketed a few hundred more golds, so long as it wasn’t obvious, no one cared, or cared that much.

They only cared if their view of order happened to be challenged, as Rahl had done, if totally inadvertently.

Yet, was Hamor any different? It, too, had its rules. In Hamor, magery was governed by rules, as it was in Recluce, but almost all forms of magery were allowed. In reality, the rules and practices of magery served commerce and trade, something Rahl had not understood because everyone insisted vigorously that the mage-guards did not protect commerce.

Yet, in practice, as Rahl realized, looking at the ruins before him, the greatest protection of commerce was the maintenance of order and the separation of magery and commerce. If mage-guards were required actually to serve commerce, in time they would come to control it. That was why mages could not be engaged in commerce in Hamor. In that way, at least, Hamor was more honest.

When Rahl thought of it in that fashion, the difference between Hamor and Recluce was both profound and so obvious, yet nowhere had he actually read or heard those differences spelled out that clearly. And those differences told him that there never would be a place for him in Recluce, a realization doubly ironic as he prepared to return there on a mission he had not asked for or sought.

He smiled, sadly and wryly, as he turned from the ruins, the ruins of his own past, in a way, and began to walk back toward the harbor. He glanced up at the sky, but the clouds had thickened, and he didn’t expect sunlight, not for a time; but the sun would shine, in time, not on a scrivener or a clerk, but on a mage-guard of Hamor.

And he would see Deybri…but would it be in an entirely new light?