Natural Ordermage

XVI

Rahl had been tired enough, but sleep eluded him for a long time as he lay in the solid bed in his new quarters, looking up into the darkness. It wasn’t the bed; it was more comfortable than his own had been. The easy charm of Khalyt had disturbed him more than the hidden sadness of Meryssa, but both had bothered him. The chilling matter-of-fact statements by Magistra Kadara hadn’t helped much either, nor had her skeptical and almost dismissive manner. Nor had the number of people bustling through the eating hall. How many exiles were there, and where had they come from?

Eventually, he did sleep…and woke with the dawn bell.

He only washed up, rather than showering, since he had showered the night before, and he wasn’t ready for another cold shower. He did shave, not that his beard was that long, with the small razor that had been wrapped in cloth and under the towel on his bed, along with the square of soap.

He was more than a little surprised to find several women swathed only in towels making their way back from the washstones. While one was more than a little shapely, another looked to be more the age of his mother. None of them gave him even a single glance, and from that he decided that manners meant not looking.

Back in his room, he finished dressing, then made his way to the eating hall. As he stepped forward to serve himself, he realized that most of those in the hall were dressed in gray, and that his brown and tan garments made him stand out.

He filled his platter and found an empty corner of a table. Someone sat down. He looked up to see a girl seated across from him. Then he realized she was older than that. She just looked girlish because she was thin and had a narrow face and long brown hair braided and coiled into a bun at the back of her head.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” Rahl replied cautiously.

“I’m Anitra. I just got here last eightday. I’m from Huldryn. You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s a hamlet west of Enstronn.”

“I haven’t heard of Enstronn,” Rahl admitted. “I’m Rahl.”

“You must be from the north.”

“Land’s End.” He took a sip of ale.

“Is the Black Holding really on a hill that overlooks the harbor? Have you ever been there? Is there anything about it that makes you think of Megaera?”

“I’ve been there. Once. That was when the Council decided to send me here. I never saw anything that might have been made by the founders…except the stonework. It was good.”

“I’m sorry. I just wondered. I didn’t mean to bother you.” She put her hands on the edges of her platter, as if to slide it away or move down the bench away from him.

“Don’t go. I’m sorry. You just surprised me.” Rahl tried to study her, to feel what she was like. He could sense nothing.

She laughed, ruefully. “You look like all the mages when they meet me. They can’t sense anything about me. That’s why I’m here. It makes them uncomfortable. Are you a beginning mage?”

“I was a scrivener. I don’t know what I’ll be. They said I might learn languages.”

“Oh…that would be so good. I’d love to learn how people in Hamor and Nordla and Austra speak.”

“The Nordlans and the Austrans speak pretty much the same as we do. At least, the letters in their books look the same.” Rahl took a large mouthful of the heavy bread, slathered with thin mixed fruit conserve, and then a bite of the breakfast sausage. He followed it with a swallow of ale, thinking, as he did, that it was far inferior to what Shahyla had given him. He almost wished that he’d just courted her and left Jienela alone-except he still recalled the gelding knife and how that had bothered him…both the knife and the casual way in which Shahyla had handled it.

“I’m studying to be a machinist.”

“A machinist?” Rahl had no idea what that even was.

“Machinists work with the engineers to cut and grind metal for machines, especially for the black ships. I’ve got good hands for that, Ludwyn says.”

“How do you cut metal? With a chisel?”

“I suppose you could, but we use wheels with sharp edges…and grindstones to smooth the edges. Special grindstones. The engines power ’em all.” Anitra stood up.

Rahl realized that she’d been eating as fast as she’d talked.

“I’ll see you later, Rahl.”

“Oh…yes.”

“Better finish that up quick. Won’t be long afore you got to be somewhere.” With a wave she was gone.

Rahl didn’t exactly gulp down the remainder of his food, but he did hurry.

Even so, there was a magistra approaching him as he rinsed his dishes.

“You must be Rahl. I’m Leyla.” She had an open cheerful face and attitude.

“Yes, magistra.” Rahl inclined his head. Behind her facade, he could feel even more of the blackness that he associated with magisters than he had with Kadara, and far more than with Magister Puvort.

“You’ve eaten. So we’ll get you some proper garments and some boots that fit, and then we’ll come back to the academy building, and I’ll give you the basics on the Balance and handling order. After that, you’ll be in the lower-level order tutoring and the introductory Hamorian language and customs class. Later on, we’ll get you into weapons training.”

Weapons training? Rahl didn’t verbalize the question.

“Sooner or later, everyone with order-skills of your potential will have to fight or defend themselves. We teach you how to do it properly.”

Even in Nylan?

Leyla did not answer that unspoken question. “This way. The wardrobing shop is west of here, past the bell tower.”

The wardrobing shop was partly set into the hillside. It looked more like one of the livestock sheds on Bradeon’s holding than a shop, except that the stonework was far better, and it had several small windows, and the roofing slates were lighter and of far better quality. The oak door was slightly ajar.

Leyla stepped inside. “Elina! I’ve brought you another one to outfit.”

Rahl entered the dimness of the shop.

There stood an angular woman of indeterminate age, raking him with her eyes. “Hmmm…northerner…broad shoulders. No hips to speak of…We’ll see what we can do.” She turned and walked down an aisle between open cabinets in which were stacked all manner of folded garments.

Before long she returned with several, all of them of a pale gray color, the same color most of those in the eating hall had worn. “Trousers, drawers, undertunic, summer tunic, belt.” She gestured toward the front corner of the shop, where a curtain hung on a bar. “Try ’em on.”

Rahl took the garments and walked to the corner. He pulled the curtain closed…or mostly closed, since it did not quite stretch from one end of the bar to the other. Even with the curtain shielding him, he felt uneasy disrobing. He shook his head and climbed out of garments that were far too soiled, and began to don the new ones.

For all their drab coloration, the quality of the grays was far better than what he’d been wearing, and they seemed to fit better.

“Let’s see, young fellow,” growled Elina.

Rahl bristled inside at her tone, but pulled back the curtain and stepped forward.

Both women studied him.

Leyla nodded. So did Elina.

“They’ll do,” added the magistra.

“Now…for some boots. This way,” ordered the wardrobe mistress.

Rahl followed her to another series of bins, from which she extracted three pairs of brownish boots. He tried on five pairs before he and Elina were satisfied.

Then she handed him another set of grays and extra drawers. “That’ll do you.”

Leyla looked at him. “Just leave the old ones. They’ll wash them and use them for rags in the engineering halls.”

“Washrags?” he blurted.

“There’s no sense in wasting them, and they’re pretty worn. You’re expected to wear relatively clean clothes every day, and you’re responsible for washing them. You get two complete sets of garments, and four sets of underdrawers. You can put the second set in your room on the way back.”

Washing his own garments? Rahl didn’t mind chores, but washing was for women. Again, he bottled away the irritation.

Rahl was definitely feeling unsettled by the time he had unloaded his new garments and was walking into the building Leyla called the academy. The wardrobe mistress had measured him without touching him, and he’d seen more clothes, casually stored, than he’d ever seen anywhere in his life. He had the kind of boots merchants or Council Guards only wore, and his old perfectly serviceable clothes would be washed and then turned into rags. He’d met another exile whom he couldn’t sense, discovered he’d have to do wash and who knew what else, and found out about skills he’d never heard of. And it was still early in the day.

“We’ll go to the duty study. This is where you’ll meet the duty mage-or whoever’s working with you-every morning after breakfast. If someone’s not here, wait.” Leyla stepped through the entry arch, narrower than the others Rahl had seen, and opened the door.

“Yes, magistra.” To Rahl, the black stones of the building felt older than either the quarters building or the eating hall.

She led him into a small study with a square table and four chairs. At one side was a writing table, set under the window. “Sit down.” She closed the door and seated herself at the table.

Rahl took the indicated chair, across from the magistra.

“Before we start, do you have any questions? About anything.”

“The Council Guards said that there weren’t that many exiles sent to Nylan,” Rahl began, “but I saw a lot of people in the eating hall. The mess.”

Leyla nodded. “There aren’t that many from any one town in Recluce north of the wall, but there are scores of towns, and it takes anywhere from two seasons to a year, sometimes two, to train them to fit into Nylan or prepare them for exile. Unlike the Council, we just don’t throw people on ships or indenture them to merchants or slavers in other lands.”

Rahl still had his doubts about that, but merely nodded.

“Anything else?”

He had more than a few questions, but he really didn’t know how to ask them or whether he should. “I might later, when I’ve seen more.” He paused. “There is one. Can I write letters to my family to let them know where I am?”

“You can write all you want. The post fee is two coppers a page, roughly, for it to be carried to Land’s End.”

“I don’t have two coppers.”

“Right now, you get three coppers an eightday if your studies and your work are satisfactory. After four eightdays, if you’re still in good standing, it goes to five. You don’t get paid the first eightday, but after that you’ll get paid at the counter in the corner of the mess on sevenday after the midday meal.”

Three coppers wasn’t that much, but he didn’t have any real alternatives, and he was coming to like that less and less.

Leyla looked at Rahl. “What do you know about order? Tell me.”

“All the world is a mixture of order and chaos. Order is the structure of the world, and chaos is the destructive energy of the world….” Rahl went on to repeat what he’d learned from the magisters in Land’s End.

When he finished, Leyla nodded. “That’s what most magisters in the north teach. It’s mostly correct, but you need to know more. I’m going to tell you the basics, then I’m going to give you a book to read while you’re learning. You are to read at least five pages every day.” From somewhere she produced a black-covered book and handed it to Rahl. There was no title on the spine or the outside cover.

He opened it to the title page-The Basis of Order. He managed not to swallow as he realized it was the book that Magister Puvort had said was banned.

“For right now, you are not to discuss this book with anyone except a magister. Later, things will change.”

“Ah…could you tell me why?” Rahl still couldn’t believe what he held, and he wasn’t sure whether to be glad or worried.

“Because you don’t know what you think you know, and what you think you know is not what is, and both will conflict with what you will be reading. Talking with anyone who has not read and studied the book will just confuse you more at first. Later, we’ll encourage you to discuss it with others who have studied it.” She cleared her throat. “Why do you think we’re having you read this?”

“Because I might have some small ability with order?”

“Rahl…we wouldn’t bother with someone who had small abilities. Nor would that magister have sent you here. He’d either have ignored you or exiled you directly from all of Recluce. You can sense something about how most people feel, can’t you?”

“Sometimes,” he said cautiously.

“That’s how you got into trouble with the girl, wasn’t it?”

Rahl could feel himself flushing. He could feel some anger. What right did she have to accuse him?

“Wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” He tried not to sound sullen.

“Rahl!”

The power and the force in his name snapped him upright.

“You have abilities with order. Everything you do will affect someone. Either you learn what those abilities are and how to control them, or you will end up in someplace like Cigoerne-or the ironworks at Luba. You have great potential. Great power demands great responsibility. That is what you must learn if you expect to remain in Nylan.”

Magistra Leyla might well have been correct, Rahl thought, but he hated being lectured. That was one reason why he’d left lessons in Land’s End as soon as he could. Not only were lectures boring, but the people who lectured assumed that they knew better than he did what was good for him. Just like Puvort, who’d thought exiling Rahl was better than helping him. Or that Fahla should have been enslaved for not betraying her father.

Rahl forced a smile.

Leyla sighed. “You don’t really believe a word I’ve said. I just hope you read the book carefully. If I can’t get through to you, maybe it will.” She stood. “Right now, there’s little point in saying more. Let’s get you over to the Hamorian class.”

She opened the door and waited for Rahl to join her in the corridor. He glanced down at the wear-polished stone floor tiles. For all the cleanliness of the building, there was also a sense of great age, from the depressions worn in the stones to the slight rounding of the corner stones.

“We use immersion language studies. You’ll step into a setting where people are doing simple tasks, and all of them will be speaking Hamorian. You are not to say anything, except in Hamorian.”

“But…I don’t know any Hamorian.”

“You’ll learn,” the magistra said. “I’ll meet you in the eating hall after the midday meal to take you to meet Sebenet. Now…this way.”

She opened the third door on the left, motioning for Rahl to enter before her. She followed, then bowed to a magister dressed in crimson. What the magistra hadn’t said was that a number of the other students were children, some as young as eight or nine.

Rahl had no idea what she said, but when she gestured to Rahl, he bowed slightly.

The magister replied in the Hamorian Rahl didn’t know, then motioned for him to join several children seated on cushions in the corner of the chamber. One held up a book and opened it.

As he seated himself, Rahl thought she said something like, “Sciensa livra y miendas.”

Between the activities and trying just to hear the words, Rahl had a headache by the time the midday bell rang, and the class was over. He might have learned a few words.

He was among the later ones to arrive in the mess and found a seat at one of the unoccupied tables. He didn’t see Meryssa, or Anitra, or Khalyt, but a thin man, a good five years older than Rahl, perhaps more than that, eased over toward Rahl.

“You’re new. I’m Darrant. Would you be from Reflin?”

“No…Land’s End.”

“Oh…I was just hoping…”

Rahl shook his head. “I don’t even know anyone in Reflin.”

“Thank you.”

Wondering what Darrant had wanted, Rahl finished his meal and took care of the dishes. Almost as if she had been watching, Leyla appeared and escorted him out of the hall and even farther downhill and to the west, to yet another building set into the hillside. A muffled thumping issued from the structure.

“That’s the new printing press. We finally worked out a circular press rather than a powered letterpress.”

Once more, Rahl hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant, but from the sounds and the thin line of smoke issuing from the chimney, he had the idea that whatever was making the rhythmic thumping was powered by a steam engine. Such engines were forbidden in the rest of Recluce, except on ships porting at Land’s End.

Before long, Leyla was introducing Rahl to Magister Sebenet, a swarthy and stocky black-haired man perhaps the age of Rahl’s father. He wore an ink-stained canvas apron over a short-sleeved black shirt and trousers. He smiled broadly at Leyla. “You found me a typesetter?”

“No, Sebenet, I found you a scrivener who can read High and Low Temple. You’ll have to train him. This is Rahl.”

Rahl bowed slightly.

After Leyla had left, Sebenet turned to Rahl. “A former scrivener, is it?”

“Yes, ser.”

“You’re about to become a typesetter, young fellow, as well as handle all the dirty jobs that go with it.”

Sebenet was patient enough, taking Rahl through the shop and explaining each piece of equipment.

“…the engine’s what powers the press. Coal level should be about where it is now, but you have to sense the heat, too…Stay clear of the belts, break your arm or neck before you knew what happened…water feed’s here…

“…paper trays are here…use a web to feed into the press…

“Each box has the same letters in it. You pick the letters and put them in place. Here are the spacing bars. You lay out the text like so…”

Rahl had to concentrate. Even so, he knew there were things he would not remember.

By the time he finished his time as an apprentice typesetter and then ate supper, alone, he was exhausted. He straggled back to his room and collapsed onto his bed.

His last thought before his eyes closed was that being a scrivener looked to be less work and far easier than everything he’d tried that afternoon-and he hadn’t even gotten anywhere close to the harder work of setting type and making up the pasteboards for the press cylinders.