Natural Ordermage

XXXVII

After more than two eightdays, Rahl was more than a little tired of life at sea. The Hamorian lady Valdra had quietly avoided Rahl, as if she had measured him and found him wanting, and that nagged at him. He wasn’t that interested in her, but he didn’t like being enticed and dismissed. Especially by a brothel mistress, or whatever the proper term might be.

The days had gotten so long that Rahl even looked forward to copying and filling out forms for Galsyn. When he was not doing that, sleeping, or practicing with Mienfryd, if he couldn’t find someone to talk to, he forced himself to read through The Basis of Order page by page. Mostly, it was slow going, and boring, because he could either do what was mentioned, or, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. Mostly, he couldn’t. At least of the skills he understood.

He’d also tried to find the passages that Aleasya had said Zastryl had wanted him to read. He only found three, and one had some nonsense about not truly mastering the staff order until casting it aside. Another said that a staff could be infused with order, and the third said that a staff was only a pale reflection of its wielder. Rahl had to wonder what Zastryl had had in mind, but at least the wording of those passages had been clear.

There were more than a few passages whose ideas he didn’t understand at all. One remained in his mind.

When snow falls, the flakes do not fall in a precise pattern, each flake only so far from another. Nor are the flakes of one snowfall like unto another, yet once it is fallen, one snowflake clings to another in a pattern that coats all, and one can mold snow into forms. If one melts that snow, it becomes water and only has the structure of what confines it. In the winter, one can freeze that water and sculpt it into any shape. One can also boil water and turn it into a chaotic mist. Thus, water can be ordered or not. So is water of order or of chaos?

The obvious point was that in some circumstances water was chaotic and in others ordered. But what determined those circumstances? Just how hot or cold it was? Somehow, Rahl couldn’t believe that just heating something made it chaotic. Black iron was the most ordered of all metals, and it was created by great heat.

As he stood in the shaded area just aft of the starboard paddle-wheel assembly in the early afternoon, he tried to dismiss the paragraph, but he knew it was always somewhere in the back of his mind. Finally, he turned and made his way up the ladder to the bridge. Sometimes, the captain would talk to him.

At the top of the ladder in a space of sunlight falling between the full sails, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a square of cloth. Within the last four days, the air had gotten far warmer, the sun more intense, and even the spray from the bow had lost its chill. The heavy long-sleeved gray tunic had become uncomfortably warm, and Rahl usually wore the lighter clerk’s summer tunic.

The captain stood on the covered but open bridge, to the left of the helm. Rahl stopped at the edge of the bridge, waiting for either an invitation or a dismissal.

“You picked a good time to come up, Rahl.” Liedra pointed ahead, just off the port bow. “If you look hard there, you can see Hamor.”

Rahl followed her gesture, staring out over the gentle swells that barely seemed to move the light blue waters. A thin line of white was visible just above the blue. Farther east, but north of the white, was a line of smoke.

“The white line’s the cliffs to the west of Swartheld,” the captain explained. “Before long, we’ll be swinging to a more easterly heading to avoid Heartbreak Reef. Don’t ever want to come into Swartheld in a storm or the dark. There’s a lighthouse there, but ship breakers will use fires to copy it, get unwary captains to drive onto the reef.”

“There’s smoke over there, ser.”

“I’d guess it’s a Hamorian warship. Might be one of their new iron-hulled cruisers. Nasty beasts with iron cannon. All that iron means a mage has to get really close to touch off the powder, and they don’t let anyone they don’t know get close. Cannon make more sense on a ship. It’s harder to use order-or chaos-forces at sea.”

Rahl nodded, although he hadn’t noticed much difference with what he could do with order.

He stood by Liedra for a time as the smoke drew nearer, and a dark-hulled vessel without rigging appeared, moving north of the Diev. He squinted. “There’s an iron box just aft of the bow, and two in the rear.”

“Gun turret. They can point in any direction and fire. The Hamorians like guns, and lots of warships.”

“Are they all iron-hulled?”

“Just the warships.”

“Where do they get all the iron?” Rahl knew that there was an ironworks in the mountains north of Feyn in Recluce, but no one had ever told him about the Hamorian iron warships.

“Don’t know where they mine the iron, but the Hamorians have a whole city that smelts and forges iron. Some claim that they produce more iron and steel there in Luba than in the rest of the world combined. Don’t know as I believe it, but all that iron has to come from somewhere, and it’s not from Candar or Recluce. They’ve got small mines and works in Lydiar, but that’s barely enough for the east of Candar, not that Fairhaven likes to see much iron produced.”

Cold iron was hard on chaos-mages. That, Rahl did know.

After a time, the captain spoke again. “Look hard just off the starboard bow, on the peninsula, inshore of the reef.”

Rahl looked. In the distance was a stone tower with a shimmering dome.

“The northwest light tower. At night, a beam of light that swings from east to west.” After a moment, the captain added, “You’d better find Galsyn before long. See what he needs from you. You won’t be leaving until we’re off-loaded. You can take the last wagon to the Association. Oh…” Liedra coughed gently. “I’d suggest you be very polite to folks in Swartheld. Ever since the days of the Founders, the Hamorians haven’t taken that kindly to those of us from Recluce.”

“That…that was hundreds of years ago.”

“A little more than five hundred,” Liedra said. “They didn’t like the fact that Creslin destroyed one of their fleets and forced them to trade with Recluce.”

“Five hundred years ago, and they’re still mad?”

“I wouldn’t call it mad, but the Hamorians hang on to grudges like no one else. They can cheat you and think nothing of it, but you cheat them, and you’re likely never to be welcome in Swartheld again. They don’t forget anything,” the captain replied. “Now…on your way.”

“Yes, ser.” At the top of the ladder down to the main deck, Rahl looked toward the stone lighthouse and the white cliffs beneath it. Five hundred years. He still had a hard time believing that. How could they hold a grudge that long? That was truly holding to the past, and not in the best way.