Natural Ordermage

LIV

Rahl woke abruptly. He’d been dreaming of flame and fire, and sweat was pouring off his forehead. What night was it? Twoday? Was it only twoday? He sat up and swung his legs off the pallet and let his feet drop onto the floor tiles, reassuringly cool.

Chaos! Somewhere nearby…

He grabbed his truncheon and slipped out of his cubby, moving surely through the darkness of the night that seemed little more than early twilight to him. Barefoot, and in drawers and an undertunic, he didn’t feel exactly ready for an intruder, but taking the time to dress seemed unwise.

He quickly checked the rear storeroom door, but it was still firmly closed, with all its multiple locks fastened tight.

As he moved toward the front of the building, the feeling of chaos grew stronger. It was clear something was happening there. Rahl eased closer to the door, sensing some form of chaos. He blinked and looked again, but his order-senses, rather than his eyes, discerned a tendril of chaos threading its way through the thinnest of gaps between the door and frame. It wasn’t chaos alone, but chaos intermixed with something else, something darker. Was it order?

How could it be?

The tendril tugged, then pushed at one end of the bar, slowly shoving it out of its metal brackets. Abruptly one end of the bar clunked to the floor, then the other, and the door swung open, as if it had already been unlocked, pushing the bar aside. Rahl flattened himself against the wall beside the door, his truncheon ready.

A figure in dark garb stepped inside, falchiona extended.

The man started to turn as he caught sight of Rahl, but Rahl was faster, and his truncheon cracked the man’s wrist, hard enough that Rahl could feel bones snap.

“Oooo…!” The bravo reeled back, out of sight, the falchiona clattering on the floor tiles.

Whhstt! A bolt of whiteness flew toward Rahl, but only the edge of it splattered on his shields.

Another bravo charged into the building, and Rahl barely managed to parry the hurried cut from the sabre-not a falchiona, he noted almost absently.

The bravo was nowhere near as good as Aleasya, let alone Zastryl, and within moments, Rahl had slammed the truncheon across the man’s wrist, and the sabre was on the floor. The bravo backed away hurriedly, then turned and ran. Rahl wasn’t about to chase him, not with chaos-fire coming from outside.

“We will have to handle you differently, dear boy,” came the languid words from the chaos-wizard who stepped inside the front door.

The words chilled Rahl, but he forced himself toward the white-shadowed figure.

More chaos flared around his shields, but he kept moving.

At the last moment, the wizard lifted a falchiona, but one not of iron. It seemed to be made of something else, a whitish bronze, perhaps even true cupridium. Belatedly, Rahl realized that the wizard wore the khakis of a mage-guard, although his visored cap was nowhere to be seen.

Despite the greater length of the blade, Rahl managed a parry, and then to evade the blade enough so that the truncheon touched the wizard’s forearm. He could sense the agony as the wizard tried to swing the blade back toward him.

Rahl stepped inside the blade, ramming the truncheon into the wizard’s throat, knowing the lorken and iron had to touch bare skin to have any great effect. The wizard shuddered and brought the falchiona up, but not quickly enough. That hesitation allowed Rahl to slam the weapons aside, then smash the truncheon back across the wizard’s temple with a solid crunch.

Light flared from where the black iron touched skin, and the wizard gave a last shudder, and then began to collapse in upon himself.

Rahl stood there breathing heavily, still almost aghast at the disintegration of the wizard. He glanced around, trying to determine if anyone else happened to be nearby. He could not see, hear, or sense anyone else. After a moment, he looked down. All that remained was a rough pile of ashes and dust and small objects coated with both. The air seemed filled with glittering reddish white motes of chaos that seemed to disperse as soon as he had become aware of them.

He eased toward the door, truncheon ready, but the sidewalk and boulevard outside were almost silent, except for the distant bells from the harbor, the faint patter of a light rain, and a muted unharmonic discord from the evening insects.

Quickly, he rebarred the door.

How exactly would he explain what had happened?

Rahl snorted. He was more than a little tired of explaining anything. This time, he wasn’t about to explain. He returned to his cubby and pulled on his trousers and boots.

Then he belted his truncheon and picked up a broom and dustpan and walked back to the building entry.

He thought there should have been three blades around, but there were only two, both the bronzelike falchiona and the regular falchiona. He set them against the wall and began to sort and sweep.

Among the ashes, dust, and scraps of cloth that were all that remained of the chaos-wizard were coins-a gold, four silvers, and seven coppers. Rahl carefully wiped each off with a rag before placing it in his wallet. He had over four golds-more than he’d ever been able to call his own-and nowhere truly safe to put them, let alone any way to explain how he had gotten them. Still, he could now send a letter to Recluce, but he’d have to do it without Shyret or Daelyt learning about it, or there would be questions he didn’t want to answer.

Something nagged at him, and he looked among the debris for something, what he didn’t even know at first. Then, he swallowed. The mage who had appeared had been wearing a mage-guard uniform. Did that mean he was a renegade of some sort, trying to gain extra coins doing something he shouldn’t be doing? Or were the mage-guards trying to cause trouble for Shyret?

Once more, Rahl had more questions than answers. But questions or not, he needed to remove all evidence of what had happened.

After unlocking the door and checking outside, he took the contents of the dustpan and walked through the light rain several hundred cubits, scattering the contents in the gutter, which had a modest flow. Then he returned to the Association and took the two falchionas and carried them back westward to the gates to the warehouse courtyard, where he set them just inside the grillwork, where they would be easily visible from inside the courtyard, but not immediately obvious from outside. He certainly could have sold the blades to Chalyn for even more coins, but everyone would know that he had, and that was the last sort of notice he needed, especially since the bronzelike falchiona would have raised far too many questions.

After that he locked up, and replaced the bar, and then went back to his pallet bed. But he left his trousers on and his boots beside his bed. Had the renegade mage-guard and his accomplices come because they had known about the golds Waolsyn had sent to Shyret? That didn’t seem exactly right, but what else could it have been? Or was it an attempted burglary-another part of someone trying to get to Shyret, one way or another?

Were Shyret’s methods making enemies in Swartheld as well?

Again, there were far more questions than Rahl had any way to answer or even speculate accurately on the possible answers. One thing he did know. It was unlikely that he would sleep well for the remainder of the night.