Ordermaster

XI

As Hagen had predicted, there were no more attacks on the Great House-or nearby-on oneday, or on the days following. Fortunately, the damage at Lord Lahoryn’s city house had been minimal, and not even his guards had been wounded.

Kharl spent the time practicing his order-skills, particularly his shields, and in studying The Basis of Order in the manner in which he had found most effective-by questioning. Sometimes he read in his quarters, but when he could, he preferred the sheltered area on the top of the north tower.

On fiveday, after midday dinner, he was in the bright and cool sunlight of the tower, his back against sun-warmed stone, perusing a particularly obvious section, wondering why the writer had felt it necessary to emphasize the point so thoroughly.

Every strength is a weakness, every weakness a strength, for under the Balance there cannot be more order than chaos. Thus, if order is concentrated in one place, there must be another place where there is less and where it will take less effort for chaos to prevail. Likewise, the same is true of chaos …

That had certainly been the case in his own experience. If he concentrated order into a shield, for him to resist the firebolts of the white wizards, that order had to be restricted to a very small area. On the other hand, he asked himself, was there a time or place where the use of additional order spread over a large area, almost like seasoning over a large piece of meat, would prove useful? Kharl considered it, but could not think of a situation where it might be useful. Perhaps he might in time.

He continued reading, until he came to a passage which seemed both direct and obscure, simultaneously.

Because chaos reflects the absence of order, it can manifest itself in two fashions, or both at once. The first is as what appears as white fire, and that is chaos free of all order and all constraints, but chaos drawn from elsewhere by one who is able to do so and imposed upon what order may exist in a given place. The second is that chaos caused by the withdrawal of order from the place itself. Both methods produce that force known as chaos, and the unrestrained chaos created by either means cannot be differentiated, one from the other. The first method is the easiest, and the one most widely practiced, but the amount of chaos that can be mustered is limited by the strength of the wizard, because by nature such free chaos is widely dispersed. The second method does not require strength alone, but great mastery of both order and chaos, and has seldom been employed because failure to attain mastery is almost inevitably fatal.

Kharl understood the concepts well enough, but there was no explanation of why attempting the second method was so dangerous. He read on, but nowhere could he find any explanation of the dangers-or even of the reasons behind the caution.

He frowned. The book seemed to suggest that technique was the key to the second method. As a cooper, he certainly understood that the key to any craft was skill and not brute force, but exactly what sort of skill wasrequired to remove order from an area or an object? What would happen if he did?

He marked his place in the book and closed it slowly, thinking.

What sort of danger was involved? Why hadn’t the book explained? Or was it like so much else-something that the writer had not wanted to spell out? Or could not?

“Ahhh …”

Kharl turned his head, then rose from where he had been seated.

Hagen was walking across the stones of the tower.

“You look worried-again,” offered Kharl.

Hagen nodded. “These days … I’m worried all the time. The rebel lords look to be trying something else. Hensolas has gathered his forces, and they include half of the regular Austran lancers from the eastern district, the ones who were under Vatoran. Norgen’s scouts are reporting that the rebels are moving around Valmurl to the southeast.”

Kharl didn’t know enough about the local geography to understand what that meant. “Where are they heading?”

“I’d judge that they’re planning to use the southern high road into the harbor. If they take the harbor, they can claim they hold Valmurl. It also makes it much easier for the Hamorians to send them supplies.”

“What about Lord Fergyn?”

“No one seems to know. I’d wager that he’s moving through the area just south of the Nierran Hills toward the north road. That’s closer than we’d like”

“It’s closer to the dockyards.”

“And most of the factors’ warehouses.”

“Are they short of supplies?”

“I’d imagine so, and their armsmen haven’t been paid in several eightdays.”

“Have you heard from Commander Casolan?”

“We’re still looking at almost an eightday before his forces arrive.” Hagen offered a laugh, a sound somewhere between sardonic and humorous. “I was wondering if you have any other magely stratagems that might work against an attack on the road into the harbor.”

“Are there any places where the road is narrow? Any bridges that they have to cross?”

“Only the causeway, and that’s not really that narrow. It was built by Lord Estloch’s great-grandfather through the marshes. For ten years he justhad anyone convicted of crimes sent there to cart rocks. It’s two kays long, and between three and five rods wide. If we blocked it, though, they could just ride through the city. In any case, the causeway is so open that they could see anyone waiting there for them. You couldn’t hide us, could you?”

“I could hide you from sight, but it would be hard on the armsmen, because they wouldn’t be able to see, and any wizard could still tell that I was doing it.”

“I had hoped …”

“Let me think about it. How long do I have?”

“Norgen thinks they’ll begin before dawn tomorrow.”

Kharl nodded.

“If you need supplies of any sort, let me know.”

After Hagen left, the mage and former cooper tucked The Basis of Order inside his tunic and walked to the eastern side of the tower. The sun warmed his back as he studied Valmurl and the harbor. In the distance, he could barely make out the causeway, just a darker line through the dark waters of the harbor.

What could he do? How?

He glanced at the stones of the parapets, catching sight of a fragment of dried leaf that had been blown into a corner in the stone, doubtless by a winter storm. He’d had luck in working with leaves before. Could he try removing the order from a fragment of a leaf, leaving only chaos? Would it be like hardening the leaf, then infusing the order elsewhere?

With his order-senses, Kharl reached out for the piece of dried leaf, no larger than perhaps a quarter of his palm. Carefully, he tried to sense the order links within the bleached and ragged tan fragment. The dark links felt faded, but so did the whitish points of chaos.

Rather than strengthening the links between the minute segments of order, as he did when creating shields, Kharl concentrated on the ties between two points. He tried to break the linkage, but all that happened was that he felt warmer, as if he had been walking uphill. He paused. Mere force wasn’t the answer.

Technique-that was what worked. But what kind of technique? He considered for a moment. When he strengthened air into a barrier, he reinforced the hooks and links. Was there a way to unlink one small segment from another? He tried visualizing two segments of darkness as linked by interlocking open hooks, then concentrating on turning them so that they separated.

Once more, he could feel himself getting hotter, but nothing happened with the leaf.

Were the ordered sections of the leaf, faded as they were, tied together more like a hook and eye? He tried that, but the results were the same. Nothing happened, except he was sweating more than before.

What about some sort of latch structure? He realized that he was trying to visualize the unknown, but order had to have some pattern or structure. Didn’t it? The latch idea didn’t work either.

For a time, he just leaned on the stones of the parapet, letting himself cool back down, thinking about how many ways order could be structured. When he felt somewhat refreshed, he tried not forcing his concepts of linkage on the leaf, but instead concentrated on trying to receive, to sense, the order-structure of the leaf. For a time, he could sense nothing except the darkness of order and the reddish white of chaos. Instead of turning away, he took a deep breath and let himself and his senses drift toward the leaf.

In time, he began to get an impression of linkages, of hundreds of rows of tiny twisted hooks. Instead of immediately trying to use that image, he willed himself to gather in an even more detailed understanding of the order linkages of the leaf, trying to gather an image of just how the links twisted and how much each needed to be turned to be unlinked from the next. The leaf seemed to have frayed barbs on the tips of the hooks. That was the way Kharl perceived them, at least.

Ever so gently, he began to press, then push and twist. One of the minute linkages released, and then another. The third and fourth were easier, and, almost immediately, Kharl could feel heat rising from the leaf. Despite the cool breeze coming from the ocean and across Valmurl, he had begun to sweat even more heavily.

The heat was far greater than if the leaf had caught fire and burned on the spot. Involuntarily, Kharl stepped back.

He could feel a surge of chaos-stronger than even that thrown by the chaos-wizard who had tried to attack the Great House-and he threw himself to the side. A jolt of pain flashed through his ribs at the sudden movement, and he staggered farther to his right.

A vortex of white chaos flared upward from where the leaf fragment had been, and the force of the chaos-explosion flung Kharl onto the stones that paved the top of the tower. He lay there for a moment, letting the pain subside. The explosive force had not been that powerful, and he might not even have sprawled on the stones had he not already been off-balance.

From what he could tell, his ribs had not suffered any worse damage, thanks to the heavy binding around them.

He lifted his head, then slowly and carefully rose. He could sense no more free chaos-or none that was concentrated, for there was a white miasma of scattered chaos slowly drifting westward above the tower.

After a short time, the mage and cooper eased back toward the lower part of the embrasure in the parapet where the leaf fragment had been. There was no trace of the leaf. Five black lines, each a fingernail’s width in depth, had been scored in the granite above where the leaf had been, radiating out from a small pit in the stone, also blackened.

Kharl shook his head slowly. All that chaos from such a small fragment of a leaf? No wonder so few mages survived trying to release chaos from objects. What if he had been experimenting with wood-or metal?

Kharl’s legs were trembling, and his vision was blurring. Slowly, he sat down and rested his back against the parapet. He could also feel that his face was reddened, as if he had spent the day under a hot summer sun.

Was what he had done possible to replicate from a greater distance?

His lips curled into a wry smile. What he had done wasn’t something he wanted to try if he couldn’t do it from a distance-and from behind a stone wall or the like.

All that chaos, he marveled, just from a winter-dried fragment of a leaf.

Had the mage from Recluce who had destroyed Fairven released chaos in such a fashion? Or had he used something even more terrible?

After a time, Kharl rose, moving slowly toward the stairs down to the kitchen. He needed to practice what he had tried, but not without some more to eat-and certainly not without even greater care-and more distance between him and what he was working on.