The White Order

XXXII

AFTER SETTLING INTO his jacket and wrapping his blanket around him, Cerryl opened the book-Great Historie of Candar-to the strip of leather that served as his place mark. The worn binding testified to its age, but Tellis had insisted it was the most accurate of the histories. The scrivener had also insisted that Cerryl read the book.

The apprentice scrivener yawned, but forced himself to look at the pages, clear enough to his night vision in the dimness that he didn’t bother with the candle.

. . yet Relyn was skilled with words and his blade, for the black demon Nylan had given him a mystic blade and an iron hand in return for his own good right hand, which Ryba the evil had sliced off to place Relyn in bondage to Nylan. .

After the battles for the Westhorns, Relyn made his way eastward, beguiling all who would listen with song-gifted words and honeyed phrases.

. . Relyn, traitor as he was to the great heritage of Cyador, not only built the first black Temple east of the Westhorns, but spent his years preaching against the truth of the old Empire.

Where the first Temple rose is uncertain, for it was rightly burned by Fenardre the Great as an abomination. .

Later, Relyn fled from Gallos through ancient Axalt and came to Montgren and spent many hours with the shepherds who lived there. . with him came the teachings of the black demon Nylan and the forbidden songs of Ayrlyn. .

. . and Relyn brought them the way of forging the iron that burns chaos and cannot be broken, and the shepherds turned their forests into charcoal and their hills into gaping pits and charnel heaps and wrought the blades that severed souls. . and bloody Montgren came into being. .

Cerryl half shook his head and yawned. Montgren bloody? The peaceful land of shepherds and rolling meadows, of fine wool and stillness?

He rubbed his forehead. He still didn’t understand all the words, but more and more were familiar, and many he could puzzle out from how they were used.

. . in the time after the rebuilding of Jellico, many of those writings were put to the torch, accursed as they were. .

Cerryl rubbed his forehead again. How could writings about what had happened or what someone believed be accursed? He could see how a history could be wrong. Or how what someone believed might upset others, but were people really such fools as to think that words on a page carried a power beyond their meaning?

Or were they fools? He closed the book gently. If Fenardre the Great had killed all those whose beliefs he opposed and burned their writings, who would know? Especially if he had scriveners write down what he wanted.

Cerryl shivered. How could he know whether what he read was truth. . or what the writer wanted the reader to believe was truth? He was just an apprentice scrivener who had seen very little of the world. He knew about the mines, the sawmill, the trees, something about plants and gardens, and he was learning about books and letters, and a little bit about Fairhaven.

Had Relyn been an evil man or just someone Fenardre and the whites didn’t like? How could Cerryl ever tell?

He set the book aside and lay back on his pallet, eyes wide open for a long time before they finally slipped shut.