The White Order

LIII

THE HAZY FALL afternoon light gave the workroom an almost misty appearance. Cerryl blotted his forehead with the back of his forearm, just below the rolled-up sleeves, and took a deep breath. He looked at the map on the table and then at his hand. It was shaking.

Carefully, he set the quill in the holder and shook his hand, then rubbed it with his left, studying his work.

The outlines of the land were there, and the boundaries of each land, and the Easthorns and the Westhorns and the rivers and the coastlines. A few tiny dots marked some of the towns and cities, but most remained to be placed, and he had less than an eight-day remaining.

“Still working on that map?” Faltar stood in the doorway of the small room adjoining the library, a room Cerryl hadn’t even known existed until he had to search for a worktable on which to create his map. “Derka made me do one of Lydiar and Hydlen.”

Cerryl looked up. “Is it somewhere that I could study it?”

“It’s on the racks.”

“The new one, with the purple ink?”

Faltar nodded.

“It’s a good map.”

“Derka said so.”

Cerryl grinned. “I’ve already copied that part. Mostly, anyway. Except for naming the towns.” He corked the ink bottle and straightened and stretched, trying to loosen muscles in his back that he hadn’t even realized were stiff.

“You’re using black ink?” Faltar peered at Cerryl’s vellum.

“It’s what I know how to make.”

“I wish I’d known that. I used an old formula in the alchemical scrolls. Black would have looked better.” Faltar’s eyes went to the doorway, then to Cerryl.

“If you have to make more for something, I’ll show you.” Cerryl kept massaging his hand.

“Have you managed to locate those towns?” Faltar looked back down at the map.

“I’m fairly sure about Tellura. I don’t know where Quessa is. No one I could ask knows, and I wouldn’t ask Kesrik.”

“I cannot imagine why.” Faltar offered a grim smile. “Nor could you trust his reply.”

The younger student mage gave a short nod, then looked at the map. “There is so much left undone on this, and I’m supposed to do some anatomie drawings for Broka, too, and tomorrow I have to meet Esaak, and I know I haven’t read enough of that book he left for me.”

“He’s a crusty sort,” said Faltar. “Just listen as much as you can. He’ll eventually get around to telling you what he wants-after he’s told you how worthless all of us are, and how we appreciate little or nothing about mathematicks.”

Cerryl sighed.

“I came to ask if you wanted to take a walk up to the market square.” Faltar offered a smile. “It sounds like you need a walk or something.”

“With this hanging on me?”

“A trip to the market will do you good,” insisted the older student. “Besides, you can scarcely hold that quill. You need some air. You can struggle over your map this evening, with a fresh head, after the peddlers have gone.”

Cerryl flexed his hand. “I’ll walk with you. You can do the buying.”

“Don’t you have any coppers?”

“A few. Now and then, Sterol sends a small purse,” Cerryl grudged, not wanting to admit that Sterol had been more than moderately generous, at least not where Kesrik or his friends might overhear.

“Ah. .” Faltar nodded, eyes traveling back to the door. “Well, he should, High Wizard or not. You’re his responsibility.”

Was he? Cerryl felt more like an orphan than ever. He got the coins but never saw Sterol. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It doesn’t help. “Just for a short walk, that’s all.”

“We have to be back for the evening meal,” Faltar pointed out. “Even if I find something more tasty in the square.”

“All right.” Cerryl replaced the ink in the cubby that Derka had granted him, along with the quills and the holder and the inkwell. He could clean the inkwell later. The vellum went onto one of the library’s drying racks.

“You’ll feel better.”

“I’m sure.” Cerryl washed his hands quickly, glad he wasn’t the one who had to clean the basins anymore, and joined Faltar in the corridor.

They nodded to Lyasa as she passed, and the black-haired student nodded back, but her olive brown eyes were focused elsewhere.

The courtyard was empty, and the light wind threw spray from the fountain across the two. The dampness felt good on Cerryl’s forehead. He touched his brow, but it didn’t feel warm, or any warmer than usual.

The main corridor of the front building was empty, until they reached the foyer, where Cerryl’s eyes were drawn to a slender redheaded figure in white, who hurried up the steps from the foyer proper toward the tower entrance. Behind her remained a faint fragrance, one similar to sandalwood but more floral.

“You know Anya?” asked Faltar.

“Not exactly. She stopped me once on the street and then came to Tellis’s shop once.”

“She probably sensed you had the power. That’s one of the things Sterol uses her for. I’d prefer some of the others.” Faltar grinned. “One especially.”

Cerryl repressed a shiver. “Isn’t that dangerous? For her, I mean? A child of two whites?”

“I’m certain Anya’s powers are enough to ensure she has no child. Of course, I wouldn’t mind trying.”

“You have a one-rut mind.”

“I wouldn’t mind having her in that rut.”

“Enough. .” Cerryl shook his head as he stepped through the front archway and down the steps to the avenue.

“I really wouldn’t. You should see-”

“Enough!” Cerryl’s exclamation was half-gruff, half-laughing.

“What about Lyasa?”

Cerryl rolled his eyes.

“I told you I’d get your thoughts off that darkness-filled map.”

“You have. You have. I promise you that you have.”

Cerryl glanced back at the tower and the Halls of the Mages that adjoined it. Just a set of white stone buildings, with no ornamentation, with more buildings stretching out behind them-kitchens, stables, an armory, barracks for some of the white guards and lancers, and, nearly a half kay north, the creche where the children of white mages were raised.

Almost two seasons, and he still couldn’t believe that he was in the Halls of the Mages.

On the far side of the avenue, a team of four black horses drew a high-sided maroon wagon away from the square.

“Sarronnese carpet merchants. They don’t like Fairhaven much, just our coins.” Faltar laughed.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen their wagons before. Derka told me. I think most of his family were traders.”

“Do you know about yours?”

Faltar shrugged. “No. My father was a mage. I wonder if Derka. . but I don’t know. That’s something they never say.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You were a scrivener’s apprentice. .” Faltar said gently.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Cerryl wasn’t sure what he’d told to whom anymore, but he thought he’d told Faltar.

“Yes. When you first came to the halls.” The blond student mage glanced up the avenue, toward the line of clouds to the east. “We’d better hurry. That looks like rain.”

“It won’t get here for a while, and the wind feels good.” Cerryl walked faster, enjoying stretching his legs.

“Sometimes. . I wonder what it would have been like. To have a trade, I mean.”

“It’s different. I don’t miss the sawmill.”

“Sawmill?”

“Oh, I was a mill boy before I was apprenticed to Tellis. The winters were cold, and I never seemed to get warm. Dylert was fair, but the work only got harder as I got bigger.”

Faltar’s steps slowed as he looked sideways. “No one would ever guess. You’re not that big. You look more like a scrivener.”

“Thin and scrawny?”

Faltar flushed.

Cerryl laughed softly. “I do. I know it.”

Two girls, probably not much older than Pattera, saw the white tunics and slipped down the side way in the middle of the row of the grand houses with their now-gray trees and gardens.

“They weren’t that pretty,” said Faltar.

“Who?”

“The girls. Don’t you like girls?”

“I like girls. I wasn’t looking.”

“Ever had a girl? You could, any time, if you wanted.”

“No. I could have, but. .” Cerryl wondered how Benthann might be doing. Somehow, he’d felt it would have been wrong to go back to Tellis’s, even if he couldn’t quite say why.

“And you didn’t?” Faltar’s voice rose slightly.

“It could have caused a lot of trouble.”

“Well. . it’s different here. If you find a girl who’s willing, and most will give you a tumble.”

“Why? Because they’ll get a dowry settlement from the Guild?” Cerryl struggled to keep the edge from his voice.

“Well. . it’s better that way.”

“I suppose.”

“Oh.” After a moment, Faltar asked, “You’ve been through a lot of hard times, haven’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Except you don’t see things the same way. And you’re so quiet. Sometimes, when you’re in a place, it’s as though you’re almost invisible.”

“Sometimes, I wish I could be. Especially now.”

“Derka says that some of them can do that. They bend light around themselves. There’s another way to do it, but he won’t tell me what it is. He says it’s not a good thing to do.”

Light again-always light. Cerryl nodded.

“Why do you want to be invisible?”

“I am already. Kesrik, Bealtur, they wish I didn’t exist. I’m not a mage’s son, and I don’t come from coins.”

“Kinowin didn’t, either.”

“And he looks like he had to beat them into accepting him. He’s a head taller than even Jeslek.”

“They say that Creslin was small.”

“But he was a black mage.”

“Power is power,” said Faltar.

Was it? Cerryl glanced past the last house on the left-Muneat’s, the only one he knew, with the bird fountain-and to the square, where only a handful of shoppers still remained around the colored carts. “They say coins are power, too.”

“It’s not the same. Coins aren’t. Kesrik comes from coins, and Sterol doesn’t give a copper.”

“Maybe that’s why Sterol is High Wizard.”

“It’s not just chaos power. Jeslek can hold more chaos than anyone.” Faltar glanced around nervously.

“It’s what you can do with it. I know that. And Sterol and Jeslek aren’t the best of friends. They wouldn’t have quarters as far apart as they do if they were.”

“That’s true. None of the mages talk about it, though.”

“What good would it do?” Cerryl stepped off the curb and started across the empty avenue to the square. “They’d risk making either Sterol or Jeslek angry.”

A wisp of thin smoke, bearing the smell of roast fowl, drifted by the two students.

“Smells better than anything in the halls.”

Cerryl had to admit that it did.

“Split a half fowl?”

“How much, do you think?” asked Cerryl.

“Two coppers, maybe, for a half. One for you and one for me.”

“Since it’s not often. .” The younger student grinned, trying not to think how many days’ pay that would have been once.

Faltar walked over to the blue wagon and the hefty woman in gray at the spit over the charcoal in the metal firepit. “How much for a half?”

“Three coppers, ser.”

“Two,” insisted Faltar. “I’m hungry enough that I don’t want to haggle.”

The woman shrugged. “Two, I can live with. It’s late.” She pulled the spit off its holder and deftly lifted a thick black knife-more like a cleaver.

Cerryl found his mouth watering as Faltar handed him the browned and dripping quarter fowl, and he bent forward so that none of the drippings would touch his tunic.

“Better than in the halls,” confirmed Faltar, his mouth nearly full.

“Yes,” mumbled Cerryl, finding himself nearly ravenous.

They ate silently and quickly.

Cerryl had to lick his fingers clean, and they still felt sticky.

“I’m going to look around.” Faltar inclined his head and then slipped toward a green-and-blue cart-or the slender girl holding up a woven basket.

The younger mage smiled to himself and turned the other way, passing a cart filled with long yellow gourds and thin green ones. He paused after several vegetable carts at another kind of cart painted gold and silver. Three blades lay on a display board covered with blue velvet. One was short and dark-and he could feel the chill of ordered iron. The second was of fired white bronze, like a white lancer’s sabre, although it wasn’t. The third was a huge iron broadsword, one that Cerryl doubted he could have lifted, with a wound-copper hilt.

“You like the sabre? For you, a mere gold,” insisted the pallid man by the cart, limping forward from where he had been talking to a darker swarthy fellow.

“No. . no thank, you.” Cerryl smiled and stepped back.

“As you wish, ser.”

He could sense the anger and disapproval and turned. “I’m not a weapons mage.” He wasn’t sure there were any weapons mages, but the blades felt wrong for him.

The man bowed, almost as if puzzled.

Cerryl nodded and passed to the next cart, where colored scarves were wound loosely around polished wooden pegs on a display board and fluttered in a breeze that barely ruffled his hair.

“Scarves of silksheen, real silksheen from Naclos.”

Cerryl had never heard of anything from Naclos, and he reached to touch a silver scarf. As his fingers touched the fabric, smoother than anything he had ever felt, the color darkened almost into gray. He let go of the edge of the scarf and watched as it flashed silver.

“Only two silvers for you, young ser. Just two silvers.”

Two silvers for a scarf barely a cubit and a half long and half that in width? Two silvers? Cerryl smiled politely and stepped away.

The sound of the first bells of late afternoon echoed up the avenue and across the square. The vendor at the next cart began to unroll the canvas to cover the cart bed and the three baskets of potatoes that remained.

“Best we head back.” Faltar appeared at Cerryl’s elbow.

“Did you find anything?”

“No. One pretty girl, but not that pretty.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” Cerryl turned toward the Halls of the Mages.

“Oh. . things? What would I do with anything except books? Derka would only ask me what value it had.”

“We can’t hold property, can we?”

“No. Didn’t Jeslek tell you that?”

“Not in so many words. He never says anything directly.”

“Derka doesn’t much, either.”

“I wonder why.”

“We’re supposed to figure it out, and if we can’t, well, then. .” Faltar left the sentence unfinished.

Cerryl knew well enough what the other meant-all too well.