The White Order

XVII

IN THE CONTINUING diffuse light of the summer evening, Cerryl glanced around his room, scarcely bigger than a closet. He glanced at the door, then took the small silver-rimmed mirror from its hiding place behind the wall board under his cubby. His own reflection glimmered back at him-dark brown hair, a face almost triangular with a broad forehead, wide-spaced gray eyes, and a narrow not-quite-pointed chin.

He felt his chin-still no signs of a beard, and near-on fourteen years. Finally, he set the mirror on the seat of the stool. After that came the miniature knife and sheath.

He slipped the knife from the sheath and studied it, with eyes and senses. Too small even for an eating knife, the blade was not iron or anything like it, but a whitish gold or white bronze that shimmered like polished silver or almost like a mirror. The metal held an inner light, a white radiance with the faintest touch of red, but a radiance Cerryl knew that only he-or the mages of Candar-could sense.

He wasn’t a mage, not yet, perhaps not ever. Yet he could sense some things that he thought only mages could sense. Was that the way his father had felt?

With a last look at the shimmering blade, he slipped the knife into the sheath and replaced both knife and sheath behind the board. Straightening, he sat on the edge of his pallet-little more than a sack filled with straw lying on a plank platform, and covered with a tattered gray blanket.

So much there was that he needed to know, and dared not ask, not with what had happened to his father. Yet. . a mill hand for life? He was beginning to understand what had driven his father-even as he understood how unlikely it was for his father, or himself-or any poor child-to have the chance to become a mage.

He shook his head, almost violently. Why does it have to be this way? A mill hand? Why?

Later, after calming himself with deep breaths and the thoughts of a quiet hillside spring, he squared himself on the edge of the pallet and looked down, concentrating, staring at the silver-rimmed screeing glass until the familiar white mist covered the silver. He continued to push his thoughts at the mists, seeking, asking, searching. “Somewhere. .”

A face filled the center of the glass, sweeping back the silver mists, the face of a girl with blond curls, curls bearing a hint of red, and green eyes that seemed to look out of the mirror at Cerryl, eyes that looked within him and found him wanting.

“No. .” The word was half-gasped, half-grunted as his head felt almost jerked back by the force of her gaze, an expression that swept aside the distance and the mists of the screeing mirror as if neither existed.

When he looked down at the glass again, it was but a mirror, blank, reflecting but his own sweat-wreathed face back at him.

Who was she? How could a girl so young have such power? Was she the daughter of a white mage? Or had what he’d seen been just an illusion? Cerryl shivered, then slipped the glass back into its hiding place.

Who was she? The question remained unanswered, even in his mind. He stood and walked to the door, his hand on the door latch. Then he shook his head and opened the window door to let the cooler evening air ease into the room, hoping the breeze wouldn’t bring too many mosquitoes with it.

Turning back toward the pallet, his eyes were drawn to three books lying there-Olma’s Copybook, The Naturale Historie of Candar, and the battered one on the end, Colors of White. If he understood the few pages of Colors of White he had puzzled and labored through, the book had two parts, but the second part had been ripped off. The first part told how the white mages had come to build Fairhaven, and the second part was supposed to be about how chaos and order worked, and that was the part he needed to have and to learn about.

What good was history? Some parts of history might be interesting-like the fall of Lornth and the rise of Sarronnyn or the stories about ancient Cyador-but most of it seemed useless for what Cerryl needed-an understanding of what a white mage was, what skills and talents were needed, and how to train and develop those talents.

Besides, the history book was hard to read, even slowly, with so many words he could not recognize. He took a deep breath, and his eyes turned back to the middle book, the one Erhana had lent him-Olma’s Copybook. It was a little child’s book of letters, but Cerryl had forced himself to work his way through the pages, struggling with and learning everything on each page before going to the next.

With a sigh of resignation, he opened the copybook.

At least in the summer, there was some light after he finished at the mill and supper, although even without lighting his stub of a candle, he could see perfectly well. As he’d gotten older his night vision, or sense of things, had continued to sharpen. In pitch darkness, he had trouble reading, but it would be a while before that occurred, and long before that he would be too tired to continue his self-taught lessons in letters.