Wellspring of Chaos

LVI

The next trading leg-from Diehl to Southport-was the longest yet between Candarian ports, taking seven days, partly because of the tacking required, and because Hagen used the Seastag’s engine sparingly to avoid burning any more coal than he had to. It was also busier for Kharl and Tarkyn, with all the rigging repairs necessitated by the Gallosian cannon, repairs that they had put off because of the rough seas between Ruzor and Diehl and had not finished in Diehl.

The Seastag neared the outer edge of Southport harbor in midmorning, under harbor rigging and with the paddle wheels providing a good portion of the ship’s headway in the light quartering breeze. Kharl stood on the foredeck, enjoying the luxury of not having to be a part of the winch or deck crew and looking out across the blue waters of the harbor toward the dwellings scattered on the hillside above the harbor, white structures set amid the greenery. While the buildings of Southport looked far more recently constructed than any of the Candarian ports where the Seastag had so far docked, the port had a very different feeling-at least to Kharl. Was that because he was finally feeling healed?

Kharl couldn’t help but frown as Hagen brought the Seastag past the outer breakwater, a long rampart of white stone stacked together, but not mortared or joined. Cut stones, he realized, but stones later broken, then piled to form the breakwater. Or had the breakwater once been a white stone wall against the Eastern Ocean, a wall broken by time-or cannon? Or the remnants of something else piled into the offshore waters?

Tarkyn stepped up beside Kharl. “Good to be in a warmer port. Not so gray and chill here. Not too hot, either, not like Swartheld.”

“Is all of Hamor hot all the time?”

“Some of it’s just warm. Mostly, it’s hot.” Tarkyn snorted. “Atla’s the worst. Like standing between a pair of coal stoves. Happy we’re not going there this voyage.”

Kharl saw four long piers, two without ships tied at them. He didn’t see a pilot boat, but the Seastag continued toward an empty pier. “How does he know which pier? Or does it matter?”

“In Southport? It matters. The Marshal’s Arms’ll make you move your vessel if you’re three rods off center in your berth.” Tarkyn pointed. “See the white banner with the green square? And the flag with the number one? Tells the captain he’s got the first berth on that pier.”

The paddle wheels slowed as the Seastag neared the designated pier, where two line-handlers waited.

“Forward line!” ordered Bemyr. “Aft line.”

Once the lines were secured to the white bollards, the paddle wheels thwupped to a halt, and the deck crew walked the Seastag in toward the pier.

“Double up! Make it lively!” ordered Bemyr.

The Seastag was soon snug against the fenders that cushioned her planks from the pier, a long solid structure entirely of white stone, all of the same shade, but with stones of differing lengths and thicknesses. Kharl could also sense something odd about the way the pier felt, as though it were ancient. He looked to Tarkyn, standing beside him. “What do you know about Southport?”

“It’s just another port.”

Kharl looked at the sections of white stone that comprised the pier. He could sense that deep within the stone there was chaos overlaid and linked with order. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Your second’s right, Tarkyn,” said Ghart from behind the two carpenters. “Some say it’s the oldest port in Candar. That pier there, the Marshal of Southwind had it built some two centuries back, all out of stone dredged from the harbor bottom. Came up without moss, just like it’d been fresh-quarried. See how sharp the lines are. No one knew how long it had been there, either.”

“Another of your stories.” Tarkyn snorted.

“Ask the captain, if you don’t believe me. Or one of the Marshal’s Arms, if you dare.”

Tarkyn just grunted, not looking at the second mate. Kharl repressed a smile.

“I’ll be giving the in-port deck watch schedule, carpenters,” Ghart added. “Tarkyn, you’ll be having the afternoon watches, and Kharl, you’ll be having the evening watches for the first two days. Then you two will switch. We don’t have that much to off-load here, but we’ll be staying a few days to give the crew a break. That’s what the captain promised.”

“Can I go ashore for a bit after we’re secured?” Kharl asked.

“Don’t see why not, so long as you’re back by the fifth glass past noon.”

“Thank you.” Kharl nodded and slipped down to the carpenter shop, where he reclaimed his staff. Then he made his way back to the main deck, carrying the black staff. He had decided to take it, whether or not it falsely marked him as a blackstaffer. He’d seen enough to realize that Candar was a dangerous place, at least as deadly to the unprepared as…He struggled for a comparison…as Brysta had been for him?

Ghart looked at Kharl-and the staff. “Remember. Back by the fifth glass.”

“I’ll be here,” Kharl promised.

Ghart just nodded.

Kharl walked down the gangway and along the white stone surface of the pier toward the harbor buildings and the city beyond. The stone blocks of the pier had clearly come from different structures, but from what he could see, there were no markings, no letters, and no inscriptions on the stone. Who would have gone to the trouble of cutting so much stone without so much as a single letter or carving? And why, if Ghart had been telling the truth, would the stone have been dumped into the bottom of the harbor?

At the foot of the pier stood two women, each wearing an armless blue tunic over a long-sleeved white undertunic. In one hand, each held a long truncheon. Each also wore two scabbards suspended from their leather belts, holding paired shortswords, one on each side, the kind reputed to have been used by the women of Westwind and the Legend.

The taller woman looked at the staff. “You intending to stay here?”

Kharl had to concentrate. The way the woman spoke was different. After a moment, he shook his head. “I’m the carpenter second on the Seastag.”

“Why the staff?”

“I was given it in Nylan and told to discover who I was. So I signed on as crew. After a while, the captain decided my experience as a cooper fitted me to help the carpenter.”

The patroller-or Marshal’s Arm, if that was what she happened to be-nodded. “Most won’t trouble you.” She paused. “You looking for anything?”

“Just some time on land, maybe something to eat. Have to be back before long.”

“Enjoy yourself. Best taverns are beyond Third Circle.”

“Thank you.” Kharl nodded politely and continued past the two and toward a squarish structure set on the other side of the stone-paved avenue fronting all the piers. Behind him, he could sense the two patrollers talking, but not what they said.

He walked past the square white stone building with the lettered sign on one side. The first line, he could read. It said: Port-Mistress. The lines below were in different languages. One, from the swirls of the letters, he thought was the old tongue, and he suspected the third line was in Hamorian. The fourth-that one he couldn’t even have guessed.

There was actually a signpost on the avenue, proclaiming it as First Circle. That probably meant that all the roads around the harbor were circles. Kharl decided to follow First Circle for at least a few blocks, heading more toward what looked to be the center of Southport.

After he walked past the warehouses west of the port-mistress’s building, Kharl passed a large chandlery, then a cooperage. Both were wooden-framed buildings, painted shades of blue. He continued on, walking past a cotton factor’s. Looking down the avenue, he just saw more shops and warehouses, some of white stone, others of plank and timber, but all in some combination of white and blue.

A number of wagons, most drawn by two horses, passed him, some heading in his direction, others passed him in the direction of the pier holding the Seastag. Some of the teamsters were men, but an equal number were women. The next cross street headed to his right, up a gradual slope, and bore the name Hill Road. Kharl turned onto it, immediately passing a small spice shop and another shop that displayed vials of oils; aromatic oils, he surmised from the scents that wafted into the street.

At the next corner, opposite a café of some sort, he stopped and studied the area, taking in a cabinetmaker’s establishment across from the café, and a potter’s beyond that. Most of the shops and dwellings had front porches with long, overhanging eaves, and rain barrels set at the corners to catch runoff from the tiled roofs.

Looking beyond the intersection, Kharl could see, farther uphill, where Hill Road continued and turned to the northeast, rising evenly toward a gap in the forested hillside above the regularly spaced dwellings on the lower hillside. He looked at the hillside higher still, noting that despite the covering of trees there was a pattern, almost as if the entire hillside had once been smoothed, then regular sets of rounded mounds, all of differing sizes, had been placed there, with the trees being added later. There was something…He nodded to himself. Buildings, or dwellings, had once been spaced there, on each side of long and regular streets, and they had covered the entire hillside, and they had fallen into ruins and been covered by time and vegetation. That also suggested that few, if any, people had lived in the area, because the ruined dwellings had not been extensively quarried for building stones.

The cooper walked on uphill for more than a kay before the houses began to thin out, each having more ground, including small orchards with trees in orderly rows and stone-walled meadows. The wall stones were neatly cut and mortared, but even from the side of the road where he walked, Kharl sensed that they were old.

A young woman walked downhill toward the center of Southport, pushing a handcart and accompanied by a girl who barely came to her waist. As the two neared him, Kharl saw, in the railed space on the top of the handcart, several baskets covered with cloths.

Her eyes strayed from Kharl to the staff, and a faint smile crossed her lips as she spoke.

Kharl didn’t understand a syllable of the clipped words, although he thought she was asking him to buy something. At that point, he noted the single shortsword at her belt.

She spoke again, haltingly, in what was not her native tongue. “The buns…the best.”

Kharl was hungry. That he had to admit. “How much?”

She looked puzzled.

Kharl fished two coppers out of his wallet and held up one.

She shook her head.

He held up two.

She nodded and lifted the cloth off the top of a basket set in a rack on the cart. Then she pointed to the raisin buns and held up one finger. Kharl handed over the two coppers and waited to see her reaction. She studied the coins, then nodded.

Kharl took the largest bun, easily the size of a small loaf. “Thank you.”

She smiled a last time before continuing onward.

Kharl found that it took him little time to eat the entire bun. As he finished, he licked his fingers and wished he had an ale, but all he had seen on the road nearby were dwellings.

Several thoughts crossed his mind. First, he wondered about the woman with her daughter. The patrollers in Southport had spoken a version of Brystan, or perhaps Brystan was a version of what the patrollers spoke…but the woman had not. Was another language spoken in Southport? Or did the patrollers at the port know two tongues? He hadn’t thought about it, but he certainly should have.

The second thought was more troubling. Why was he climbing up the road? He’d started out just to look around, but he had found himself almost compelled to continue uphill. Why? He studied the road and the dwellings, their neatly tended gardens and orchards that had already fruited and been picked, with the trees’ leaves graying for winter.

There was a pull of some sort. Not exactly like the white mist or the blackness of Nylan, but similar, and it seemed to be coming from somewhere slightly uphill and to the east. After a moment, Kharl shook his head and resumed walking. After another hundred cubits, he found his feet turning right onto a lane that wound away from the main road. The lane turned more to the east and, after several hundred rods, passed through two stone posts, half-buried in berry bushes and set nearly fifty cubits apart.

Ahead was a much larger mound-one that was a least three hundred cubits in length and fifty high. It had no trees upon it, just low bushes and tall grasses. Kharl stopped well short of where the foot-trod path came to a gradual end in browning grass and blotted his forehead. All the walking had left him warmer than he had anticipated.

There was a sense of sadness, of ancient sorrow, emanating from the mound, and the feeling of attraction had subsided. Kharl kept looking, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He could only sense a diffuse and ancient chaos emanating from the mound, and that chaos was subtly but clearly different from that which he had experienced with the white wizard.

“Well…have you figured it out yet?”

Kharl turned to see a thin white-haired woman, wearing a faded gray tunic trimmed with scarlet, a garment that appeared almost military, yet one that was tailored to her. A miasma of blackness surrounded her, as it had the mage in Nylan.

“I beg your pardon?” he said politely.

“What drew you here, of course.” She pointed to his staff. “That’s the black staff of a beginning mage. Most never make it beyond that. With your age, you’re probably one of them.”

“I’m not a mage. I’m just a ship’s carpenter taking a walk,” he replied. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting late berries from back there, and, when I feel like it, waiting for folk like you. They all come here, sooner or later.” Her laugh was knowing, but full and almost soft, not the sort of cackle Kharl would have expected from a gaunt white-haired woman with eyes that had seen too much. “It’s the power in the mound. What would you do with it, if you could?”

Kharl thought about denying what he’d sensed, then shrugged. “Nothing. I wouldn’t know where to start. Anyway, it’s the wrong kind of power for me. Could be that any kind is.”

“Power will come to you,” she replied. “Best you think about how you will use it, or it will end up using you.” She turned.

“Is that all you have to say?” Kharl asked.

The woman stopped and half turned. “What else would you have me say?”

“I don’t know…You have a certain power yourself…”

She laughed once more. “Nothing at all, a trifle. When you see true black power, you will understand that. At least, I would hope so. Good day, carpenter.” She turned and walked through the grass and northward into the bushes…and then disappeared.

Kharl just looked for a time, then shook his head. He studied the mound once more, but could find nothing beyond the ancient sadness and strange buried combination of order and chaos. He finally walked back to Hill Road and downhill toward the harbor. When he reached Third Circle, remembering what the harbor patroller had said, he turned southwest, searching for a café or tavern that looked both inviting and not terribly costly.

In the first block he walked along after turning off Hill Road, he passed a goldsmith’s, then a coppersmith’s and a jeweler’s, while on the south side of the street, he could make out a shop window filled with fine cabinetry of all types, and another displaying a gray cloak trimmed in a gold brocade. A tall gray-haired woman in shimmering black trousers, a white shirt, a gray jacket-and the paired shortswords at her belt-nodded as she passed him. An older man, also well dressed, but in a rich dark gray tunic and jacket and without weapons, smiled politely.

Kharl had the definite feeling that, while there might be taverns on Third Circle, his wallet would be far lighter if he stopped in any of them. He decided to walk another block or so before heading down closer to the harbor.

“Carpenter! Ser!”

Kharl turned at the call, because he couldn’t imagine anyone calling him that unless it was someone from the Seastag. He saw a sailor standing beside a patroller outside a shop across the street. In the doorway was a tradesman in a leather vest, gesturing animatedly to the patroller.

Kharl crossed the street and stopped several cubits short of the trio, now standing in front of a narrow window displaying various items crafted from silver. It took a moment for him to recall the sailor’s name. “Yes, Flasyn?”

“Ser…they think I took something…but I didn’t.”

“Wexalt says that your sailor made off with an object from his counter.” The patroller was an older but muscular woman in the same armless blue tunic as those worn by the harbor patrollers. She held a similar truncheon, with the shortswords at her belt, and inclined her head to the tradesman.

Kharl disliked the tradesman on sight, although his face was open and guileless, and he offered an apologetic smile.

“Can’t afford to lose things these days.”

The words were false, genuine as they sounded, and Kharl tried not to show his dislike and skepticism.

“Ser…I didn’t take nothing…I didn’t.”

Kharl looked at the patroller, then at the merchant, who carried the faintest hint of the unseen white chaos. “What is he supposed to have taken?”

“He lifted a silver rose. He must have dropped it when he knew he’d been seen.”

Kharl looked at Flasyn. “Why were you in the silversmith’s shop?”

“Ser…my Berye…she…well…I was lookin’ for something special for her, but he told me to leave, and seein’ as I wasn’t welcome, I left straightaway…”

The man’s words felt true, and Kharl turned to the merchant. “Do you do the silverwork?”

“What sort of…”

“I just wondered. You don’t seem like a silversmith.”

“My brother handles that. I take care of the accounts.”

Kharl nodded, looking more directly at the man. “Did you see Flasyn take this rose?”

“It was missing. No one else was in the shop recently.”

Kharl forced a smile. “That could well be, but that does not mean Flasyn took it, or that anyone did. That’s why I asked if you had seen him take it.” The carpenter fingered his beard. “Can you honestly say you saw this rose in the shop just before Flasyn came in?”

“He’s the thief! You should be questioning him.”

Kharl turned to Flasyn. “Did you touch anything in his shop?”

“No, ser. Couldn’t have. Only things that are out are big stuff, trays.”

The patroller looked at Kharl and the dark staff, then at the merchant, then back at Kharl. “Is that staff yours?”

“It is, ser.”

“Where did you get it, if I might ask?”

“It was given to me in Nylan by the Brethren who-”

“Thought so.” The patroller looked to the merchant. “Do you really want to make that complaint, Wexalt?”

The merchant licked his lips nervously. “I could have been mistaken, I suppose. It is missing, but I didn’t see him take it…”

“I thought it might be something like that…” The patroller smiled at Kharl. “Better take your man back to your ship, ser.”

“We’ll be heading back.” Kharl fixed his eyes on Flasyn. “Now.”

“Ah…yes, ser.”

As he turned toward the harbor and the outer pier that held the Seastag, Kharl did hear the patroller’s words.

“…better be more careful, Wexalt…real staff…no one can even hold one of those unless it’s theirs…anyone who holds one doesn’t lie…you’d look like a fool…and if anything happens to one of those blackstaffers…doesn’t often…usually anyone who tries ends up dead…not too patient with games that hurt folk…”

Kharl had hoped to have a bite to eat, but he was going to have to forgo that. He also had more to think about, especially about the comments of the woman on the hillside.