The White Order

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AFTER STEPPING OUT onto the porch, the bean soup that had been dinner filling his stomach comfortably, Cerryl looked out from under the eaves. A line of rain splattered on the stones of the causeway that linked the lumber barns and the mill.

“Won’t be stopping any time soon,” offered Viental, standing by the railing. “Either sit and wait, or run. Me. . I stopped running a long time ago.” The stocky laborer turned, walked to the empty bench against the house wall, and sat down heavily.

“You get wet about the same if you run or you walk.” Rinfur shook his head. “You walk to your room and hang up your clothes, and they got time to dry.”

“While you shiver in your blankets,” answered Viental. “Not for me, thank you.”

Cerryl sat cross-legged on the planks of the porch floor, his eyes on the darker clouds to the southwest, over the mines, over the old house where he had lived as long as he could remember until he’d come to the mill. Was Syodor out in the rain, using it to uncover new gleanings? Or were his aunt and uncle sitting before a warm hearth? He rubbed his forehead, aware of a dull throbbing growing above and behind his eyes.

“Be raining for a long time,” Rinfur said with a shrug, stepping out from the porch and striding toward his room in the first lumber barn. “Might as well get wet so as I can get dry soonest.”

“I can always get wet,” answered Viental with a deep laugh. “Better to stay dry, I say.”

The rain dripped off the edge of the eaves steadily, in a pattern that seemed to pound into Cerryl’s skull. Abruptly, he stood.

“Going to get wet, are you?” asked Viental.

“It will happen sooner or later,” the youth answered, starting down the stone steps.

“Not for me,” called Viental.

Cerryl walked through the rain and the growing twilight back to the barn. Once inside his room, he pulled off the damp canvas jacket and hung it on the peg by the door.

At least inside his room, the pounding of the rain wasn’t quite so pronounced. Still, for a time Cerryl sat on the edge of his pallet, trying to ignore the splatting of the rain and the throbbing in his skull that almost kept rhythm to the patter of the rain on the side of the barn.

Tap! Tap!

Cerryl frowned, then went to the narrow door, opening it.

A broad-shouldered figure stood there, patch over one eye.

“Unc-”

“Hush!” Syodor’s hand covered Cerryl’s mouth. “Not a word. Follow me.”

“In the rain?” asked Cerryl, inadvertently massaging his forehead again, trying to relieve the dull pressure behind his eyes.

“Only safe way,” said Syodor, the water dripping off his oiled leathers, turning and slogging across the meadow grass away from the lumber barn.

Cerryl threw on his too-small canvas jacket and followed his uncle toward the line of oaks across the hill.

Crack!

A line of lightning flashed, followed by the drumroll of thunder.

Cerryl winced. The lightning-or the thunder-kept thrumming through his skull, but Syodor plunged onward, toward the ancient oaks.

“Couldn’t do this, lad, except when I knew the rain’d last. Had to do this afore long.”

Do what? Cerryl wondered but did not ask, just stepped up beside his uncle and kept walking, his boots squishing on the wet grass and soggy ground. His hair was soaked again, and rain began to ooze down his neck. He shivered, more from his headache than from the chill of the cold water seeping down his spine.

“Wish you were older, but there be a time for aught and all, and that be now. .” The gnarled miner’s voice died away as he came to a stop under the dark oak, the last one in the line leading from Dylert’s house across the hill and overlooking the lower meadow. Syodor reached inside his oiled leathers and handed Cerryl a small oblong package-something wrapped in old mine canvas. “Brought these for you, young fellow. Don’t you be opening ’em here. Rain be spoiling them.”

“What. . are they?” Cerryl could sense the faintest of white glows, even beneath the canvas.

“Books, your da’s books. Wish I could have taught you letters.” Syodor shrugged. “Best no one knew you lived, and we feared anyone knew letters’d tell the mages. They might have come for you.”

Even as he wiped water away from his eyes, Cerryl kept his face calm, ignoring the headache as well. Finally, he asked, “Uncle, you never told me. What happened to my da? And mother?”

“The white mages killed your da. . with their magic. They sent the lancers after your ma. She finally went to ’em. That was after you were safe with us.” Syodor peered out from under the oiled leather hood. “Figured they knew about her, she did, but not about you. You were but a mite then, fit in my hand.”

“But why?” Cerryl swallowed. “What did he do?”

“Your da. . I don’t know. .’cept your ma, she told Nall that he took some books ’cause no one would teach him. That he wanted to learn how to be a real mage, not a rock mage nor a hedge mage. He learned his letters somewhere. Never did say where.” The miner looked away from Cerryl and downhill toward the damp clay of the road from the mines.

After a moment, Syodor pointed to the canvas-wrapped books that Cerryl held. “Them. . might be them. I thought about destroyin’ ’em. .” He shook his head. “Your da died for ’em. Mighta been crazy, thinking he could have been a great mage, if he’d been born to coins, but we don’t choose our folk. Even so, don’t seem right that way. Seen you with your scraps of glass.” He laughed. “Didn’t think as we knew, did you, lad? Someday. . anyway, seeing as you be what you be. . time you have ’em.” His jaw squared. “Don’t tell a one aught about ’em. No one. Mages might think they be lost forever. .’less they hear, and they listen on the wind. ’Cept in the rain.” A rough smile crossed his lips. “You be like them. Your head, it aches in the rain, does it not?”

Cerryl nodded.

“Their glasses. . their magery, the falling water makes it hard for them to see. Hard, too, for ’em to see into caves or small rooms. . that’s what your ma said, anyhow. Like your da, she saw more than most folks. .”

Cerryl wanted to shake his head, or yell, or something. There was so much more he wanted to ask, and his head ached, and he didn’t even know where to start. “But. . why. . why. . did the white mages kill her?”

“Couldn’t say for sure. . She never told either Nall nor me. Said the less we knew. . safer you’d be.”

“She had to leave? Why?”

“They had lancers a-looking for her most places. . Shandreth asked me once if I’d seen her. Had to tell him no, even when she was eating and sleeping not a hundred cubits from the hearth.”

“Looking for her?”

“Don’t know as who else. White lancers. . they be mean men, Cerryl. You stay clear of them, no matter what it be taking.”

Cerryl shivered, thinking about the day he’d seen the white lancers in Howlett. They’d looked mean then.

“The mages. . they be mages, but the lancers are killers, without souls, no better than the old black demons of the Westhorns.” Syodor fingered his chin. “Could be a mite worse, from what I hear.” He shrugged. “Well, boy. . got to be going, be well away from here afore the rain lifts. Wouldn’t want my image showing in the glass, not with the power of them books showing, too.” Syodor extended a big hand and clapped Cerryl on the shoulder. “We’ll be seeing you as we can. You know that, lad, do you not?”

“I know.” Cerryl swallowed. “I know.”

“Be off now.”

Cerryl stood under the dark oak, watching until Syodor vanished into the rain and mist. Then he walked slowly back to the lumber barn.

In the dimness of the room, Cerryl eased open the canvas, glad that he could see better than most in the dark. There were two slender books, bound in age-darkened leather. His eyes watered as he glanced at them.

Then he frowned. Between them was a white-bronze circlet. He turned it over. Two rough patches in the metal on the back indicated brackets or something had once been attached.

Except for a thicker rim, the circlet, a half-span across, was of uniform thickness and smooth to the touch. Yet. . Cerryl studied it for a long time in the darkness.

Finally, he nodded. Somehow, the pin or ornament was made of two separate metals that met in an undulating edge, put together so smoothly that he could not feel the joins, only sense them with the sight that was not sight.

The books went behind the board with the book fragment he already had cached there, but the circlet-that he kept, his fingers around it even when he lay back on his pallet and drifted into an uneasy sleep.