Ordermaster

XXVI

For all of his words to Lyras, Kharl was worried. Just how would he be able to stand up to a mighty white wizard? He was wagering on his ability to make something out of a few words in The Basis of Order and out of the few abilities he had perfected.

Unlike most black mages, he had learned little about healing, no matter how he had tried, and he could barely sense what the weather might do, let alone change it or influence it. He had no idea how to help things grow, the way Lyras and the druids did. He could not feel what was deep beneath the earth, nor in the water. All he had learned was how to sense order and chaos, to harden substances, especially air, to create shields against chaos, and to release chaos by unbinding order.

After he and Lyras parted outside of Hagen’s chamber, Kharl had gone to the top of the north tower, but he had been unable to discover a way to put into action the words in The Basis of Order.

Still thinking about Hagen’s revelations and his own too-proud words to Lyras, Kharl had left the tower and walked slowly through the corridors of the Great House. He crossed the rear courtyard and made his way out to the smithy, an armorer’s smithy, although the forge was shared at times by the estate smith and the farrier. If the forge happened to be hot, perhaps studying the chaos within the coals might give him some hints. Besides, he had spent enough time in his quarters, and sitting down for any length of time would just leave his leg stiff again.

The armorer was not using the forge, but the farrier was, shaping a horseshoe. The horse to be reshod was a dun mare, one that Kharl thought might be the mount that Lady Hyrietta often rode. Since he had returned to Valmurl, he had seldom seen the dark-haired lady with the heart-shaped face, or Lord Ghrant’s two sons, even at a distance.

The farrier glanced at Kharl, nodded, and went about his business, thrusting the tongs holding the shoe into the forge.

Kharl stood in the doorway to the smithy, letting his senses range over the forge fire. The energy of the forge was what he would have called honestchaos, without the reddish overshades of the chaos-fire spewed forth by the white wizards. Or by what he had done in unbinding order to release chaos.

The farrier’s hammer struck the horseshoe on the forge, and Kharl sensed the change in both order and chaos within the iron. There was a flow, an ordering, in the metal … but why? Kharl continued to follow the farrier’s actions for a time. He could sense the slight ordering in the shoes, and he could tell that the mount’s feet would be protected by more than the shoe, if only slightly. But why?

He frowned and let his senses take in the farrier himself. There was the faintest sense of blackness about the man. In a way, Kharl decided, the farrier had a touch of the order-mage within him. Only the slightest touch, but a little. Did all the best crafters have a trace of order-talent? Kharl wouldn’t have been surprised at that, but that observation and its application would have to wait.

As he took in the smithy, and especially what was happening with the horseshoes, he began to pick up the pattern, a faint pattern, but it was there. There were ties between the farrier and the horseshoe, and even though the farrier had added but the slightest trace of order from himself to the shoe, there was a link. Kharl tried to follow that link, but it was so delicate that even reaching out to touch it shattered the connection, and it was so faint that the farrier didn’t even seem to feel it.

After a while longer, Kharl nodded and stepped back, thinking as he began to walk back through the warm noon sunlight toward the small dining room. The Basis of Order had been right. There was a connection or a tie. That suggested that the linkage might be used. Could it be a way back through the white wizard’s shields? How could he find out?

He laughed, briefly. There wasn’t any way to find out, not short of trying, and failure could be costly, and probably deadly.

He turned toward the small dining room. Whatever might happen, he needed to eat, and he needed to make sure he had plenty of provisions on the ride-or campaign-against the rebels and the Hamorians.