Natural Ordermage

LXX

On sixday morning, Rahl was seated at a long table in the rearmost room of the mage-guards’ station in Luba, a small building tucked against the base of the eastern cliff of the mesa. The filing room had one skylight and no windows. The wooden surface was grained like oak, but different, and had an orangish shade to it, brought out more by an ancient oil finish.

Thelsyn, a gray-haired ordermage with a weathered if unwrinkled face, stood at his shoulder. “Young Rahl, it’s simple enough. Each mage turns in daily reports of any incidents or occurrences. The task of clerks is to take the rough reports and turn them into final form. You make two copies, one for our files and one to be sent to headquarters in Cigoerne. Each season, the reports are bound before being dispatched. If you have any questions about a specific report, set that report aside and wait for the mage who wrote it to check in with you. They’re supposed to do that twice an eightday. Most do.” The last words were delivered sardonically.

“Yes, ser.”

Thelsyn extended two sheets. “These are samples. Follow the example with regard to margins and letter size. You do know what margins are, I assume, since you are listed as once having been a scrivener?”

“Yes, sir. Is a standard hand acceptable?”

“Standard hand?”

Rahl took out the pen and wrote out the words “standard hand.” “That’s standard hand.” He wrote another version of the words. “This is merchant hand.”

Thelsyn looked at both examples, then laughed. “Whichever is faster and easier. They’re both better than anything anyone else can do.”

Rahl decided to use standard hand. He picked up the pen and took the top report off the pile to his right, then took a sheet of the smooth beige paper and set it before him.

“You must write well,” said Talanyr from the far end of the table. Rhiobyn was serving as the duty messenger. “Thelsyn never says that.”

“One advantage of my humble past,” Rahl replied.

“More writing and less talking.” Thelsyn stood in the doorway once more.

“Yes, ser.” Rahl wondered how he’d managed to return from where he’d gone so quickly. He had seen the mage-guard leave.

“Remember that.” Thelsyn turned.

Rahl returned his attention to the first report, from a mage-guard named Wenyna. Her writing was hurried but clear, once he realized that the hooked curlicue was an “e,” and he was able to finish two copies of her daily report quickly.

The next one was a different matter. Rahl had to cross-check the scribbling against the roster of all the mage-guards even to make out the scrawled name-Shaelynt. He looked at the scrawled symbols on the sheet before him, struggling to make out the words, feeling as though he were working out some kind of puzzle. The first half page took him longer than two complete copies of Wenyna’s report.

The report after that was better, if disturbing, because it dealt with a loader who had attacked one of the servers in the loaders’ cookshack and thrown the old man into a kettle of boiling water. Why had the loader attacked the server? The servers were as much prisoners as the loaders and breakers.

After making that set of fair copies, he cleaned the pen. Then he got up and stretched and wiggled his fingers. He was little more than a glorified scrivener-except one without order skills.

Rahl could recall all too well that he had once thought he would be more than happy to have been a scrivener living in Land’s End for the rest of his days. Now…if he didn’t recover his order-skills, he’d be a clerk or a checker in Luba to the end of his life, and that was not what he wanted-even if he had no clear idea of what he did want.

Just after he’d reseated himself and started on the next set of reports, Thelsyn reappeared.

“Rahl, let’s see what you’ve done.”

“These here, ser.”

Thelsyn picked up the completed copies and leafed through them. Then he nodded, turned, and departed.

After Thelsyn left the copying room, Rahl glanced to the other end.

“You must be good,” observed Talanyr. “He always complains about mine and Rhiobyn’s.”

“He’ll find something else I do to complain about.”

“Such as talking too much,” suggested Thelsyn.

This time, Rahl realized that the mage-guard had not really left the chamber, but used magery to create that impression. “Yes, ser.”

When Thelsyn did leave, it did appear as though the mage-guard had actually walked out, but, to be safe, Rahl wrote out another set of reports and started on the next one before he said anything more.

“Does everyone just stay here in Luba all the time? The mage-guards and — clerks, I mean?”

“Oh, no,” replied Talanyr. “This is lousy duty, but we’re not confined the way the prisoners are. We get either sevenday or eightday off, usually eightday, and we can take the regular transport wagon to Guasyra. It makes a run after breakfast and leaves from the square there just about the time of evening bells. Or, if you’re really adventurous, you can come back on the early-morning run.”

“What’s in Guasyra?”

“Good food…well, better food…women, if you’re not too particular; young men, if your tastes run that way…”

Rahl winced.

“I thought not. You leave a girl behind?”

Deybri was anything but a girl, and Rahl hadn’t so much left her behind as been forced to leave Nylan-and her. He’d kept having dreams about when he’d seen her the last time, and her words about the past having no hold on him. If it had no hold on him, why did he keep thinking about her?

“I wonder how much it would cost to send a letter to Nylan,” he mused aloud.

“It’s three coppers a sheet anywhere west of the Heldyn Mountains and four to the east,” replied Talanyr, “and two silvers over that to any port in the world on a Hamorian vessel. I don’t know about what it costs on other lands’ vessels.”

“More,” said Rahl dryly. Still, he was now getting paid at the rate of five Hamorian coppers an eightday. If he were careful…