Wellspring of Chaos

LXII

Of all the ports the Seastag had visited while Kharl was aboard, Swartheld was the busiest. In the late afternoon, the harbor was filled with ships, some anchored in deeper waters offshore, others tied at the long and wide piers. Another set of piers ran along the far side of the bay, but all the vessels at those piers were the black-hulled warships of various sizes, all steam-powered, with iron hulls and a white superstructure and white gun turrets. Kharl had counted over thirty such vessels, and mooring space for at least triple that number, and he understood better Hagen’s wariness of a land with so many warships.

He had to wonder about all that iron and all that powder. Supposedly, a white mage could fire gunpowder or cammabark. Did all the iron-and the ocean itself-protect the ships? Or were there mages on board as well?

Kharl glanced out from the quarterdeck at the pier where the Seastag was tied. It was not only long, but a good hundred cubits wide, with wagons lined up for loading and off-loading, and vendors with handcarts pushing them from ship to ship. The voices of the vendors filled the air.

“Silks, silks…the finest silks from Atla…”

“…the finest wools from Recluce and Brysta…”

“Spices…brinn from Candar, brinn and astra…”

“Tools…iron tools, Hamor’s finest from the works at Luba…”

There were so many street and cart vendors that at times the teamsters driving the wagons being loaded and unloaded had to wait, or actually drive their teams into the crowds to force them away from the ships. While Brysta had peddlers and vendors, the numbers and variety were nothing compared to those on just the one pier where the Seastag was tied.

For once, Kharl did not have an evening watch, but the late-morning watch the next day. So he had decided to investigate Swartheld, despite limited coins. He had not drawn any of his pay recently, preferring to leave it on account with Hagen, suspecting he’d need all of it when the Seastag reached Austra.

“If you’re going ashore,” offered Ghart, “best be real careful. Any place said to be the wellspring of chaos, Hamor is. If you were one of the younger men, I’d caution you about the girls…never seen such lovelies, and you go with ’em, never will again. Probably end up working in the great ironworks at Luba, or lugging stone on that Great Highway the emperor’s building and rebuilding…”

Kharl hadn’t heard of the Great Highway, but he didn’t need an explanation, except perhaps why the Hamorians wanted to call everything “great.” “Drugged wine or ale?”

“Or just a cosh on the back of the head.” Ghart snorted. “No matter what we say, we’ll lose someone. Usually one of the younger crew. Always someone who knows better.”

“Anything else I should watch?”

“Watch everything,” Ghart suggested, his voice wry. “The captain does.”

Kharl nodded. “I’ll be back before dark.”

“That’s what they all say.” Ghart laughed good-naturedly.

Even before Kharl was halfway down the gangway, he felt a strangeness wash over him, a feeling that was both familiar and totally unfamiliar. What was the feeling? Why was it familiar? When he reached the end of the gangway and his boots rested on the wide stone wharf, he moved back, less than a body length from the hull of the Seastag. There, he took a deep breath and tried to recall where he had sensed that same feeling.

After a moment, he recalled. That feeling had been in Southport, when he had been at the site of the ancient ruins, with its deep-seated mixture of order and chaos. The port area of Swartheld felt similar, except there was more chaos swirling around, diffuse chaos, and that was what had felt both familiar and unfamiliar.

Carefully, Kharl began to walk down the pier, toward the buildings beyond the shoreward end of the pier. He kept his eyes moving, and his order-chaos senses alert. He passed a cart with an open grill, and the aroma of spiced roasted fowl made his mouth water.

“The best fowl in Swartheld…” Those words were followed by another set with the same intonation, but in a tongue unknown to Kharl. A third language followed before the vendor returned to the Candarian version of Brystan-although Kharl couldn’t honestly have said he knew whether Brystan was a version of Candarian or the other way around.

“Cottons…cottons…shirts for the summer heat…” That vendor also pitched his wares in several languages.

“Indentured slaves…young men, young women…in the best of health…”

Kharl glanced across the pier, where a young man and a girlish woman were displayed, standing on a wagon bed, chained to the frame, wearing little but cloths around their loins.

“…in the best of health and form…”

Turning away, Kharl stepped to his right, then stopped as a four-horse team slowly moved out toward the Seastag. After the wagon passed, he continued walking, keeping some distance between himself and the peddlers and others on the wharf. Ahead of him, somewhere near the end of the pier, Kharl could sense the unseen swirling whiteness that marked a chaos-wizard, although the whiteness was not as strong as that of the wizard he had confronted in Brysta.

He eased to the edge of the pier away from the chaos-wizard, closer to a three-masted clipper, an ancient vessel without steam power and with an ornate carved figure of a woman with extravagant physical charms under the bowsprit. He stopped beside a bollard and bent, as if to check his boot, his back shielded by the bulk of the bollard, as he let his own senses study the whiteness on the far side of the pier and inshore.

He could feel nothing except the whiteness. He straightened, then continued in along the pier on the side away from the white miasma of chaos.

Four darker-skinned men wearing short-sleeved shirts and trousers of a light khaki fabric marched onto the pier from the stone-paved causeway perpendicular to it. Each wore a khaki cap with a bronze starburst set in a blue oval. They also carried polished oak truncheons and wore shortswords at their belts-and pistols. Kharl had heard that the Hamorians used firearms, but he had never seen any closely. He almost could have reached out with his senses and touched the shells and the powder within, not that he could have touched off the powder, not with order, but a brush of chaos might have done so, even within the ordered metal shell casings.

Directly behind the four armsmen, clearly being escorted by them, was an older and gray-haired man who also wore a uniform, but of black and orange. The older man carried no weapons, and the only insignia he bore was a heavy silver chain from which hung a white bronze starburst medallion.

Along with the others on the pier, Kharl stopped and watched as the five halted opposite a dark red cart. Belatedly, Kharl recognized two things. First, the miasma of chaos was surrounding a thin man dressed in flowing green, and second, the man in orange and black was also a wizard, but his chaos power was contained, so that until he was within ten cubits or so, even Kharl’s order-chaos senses had not sensed the power held within some sort of shields.

The four men in khaki set themselves so that two flanked the uniformed wizard on each side. Light gathered around the figure in orange and black, and the crowd moved back once more, creating a circle around the thin man in flowing green.

“You,” began the uniformed wizard, addressing the man in green. “You have attempted the practice of wizardry without the permission of the emperor. You have not presented yourself for examination, and you have hidden from others that you employed the forces of chaos to deceive and to profit personally. You have preyed upon outlanders…”

A resigned expression fell across the face of the man in green. “I did present myself, honored mage. I presented myself, but none would see me, save that I presented golds I do not have. One cannot-”

“Silence!”

The man in green’s voice continued. “I have not used wizardry. I have deceived no one. All I have done is to be too poor to provide golds-”

A whitish red fireball appeared at the fingertips of the uniformed wizard, then flared toward the man in green. Whhhsttt!!!

A white dome appeared around the man in green, and for a moment that dome was surrounded by the white fires of chaos, but the man in green remained behind his shield.

Kharl tried to sense what it was that the green wizard had done, but before he could truly and fully sense the chaos-shield, the gray-haired wizard flung a second firebolt, and the shield collapsed into a pillar of white fire.

Kharl had to blink, and when he could see, where the man in green had stood there was but a small pile of whitish ash in the midst of a black greasy smear on the grayish stones of the pier.

“The will of His Mightiness! Striking down evil where it occurs,” intoned the gray-haired wizard. Then he turned and walked back off the end of the pier.

Even from the far side of the wharf, Kharl had noted the fine sheen of sweat on the surviving wizard’s face-and the much-lowered level of chaos that remained locked around him. Clearly, using that kind of power took much energy.

At the faintest sense of someone too close to him, Kharl’s hand lashed out, slamming down on the wrist of a young cutpurse. As the carpenter whirled, a thin knife clattered on the stones, and two other youths began to run.

Another man in tan appeared, his truncheon smacked the cutpurse across the temple, and the youth went to his knees. Whiteness flashed from somewhere else.

Kharl looked at the Hamorian patroller, or Watch, or whatever keepers of the peace were called in Swartheld.

“You were very quick, sailor.”

“Just lucky, ser,” Kharl replied, noting that the crowd had moved away from him and the patroller. He could also see the Hamorian wizard returning, something he did not like at all. With the wizard were the other four patrollers-and two dazed-looking youths with blank faces. Kharl could sense some sort of chaos laid over them.

“You are from Recluce?” The wizard looked directly at Kharl.

“No, ser. I am from Brysta, and I am the second carpenter on the Seastag.”

The wizard looked at Kharl for a long moment, and Kharl could sense some other sort of power, grayish, brushing him lightly, like the touch of an unseen spider, but he remained still and waited.

“So it would seem. Did you see what happened here a few moments ago?”

“Yes, ser. You destroyed a wizard who had not followed the laws of Hamor.”

“Those laws apply to all who walk the soil of Hamor. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Good.” The wizard gestured to the patrollers. “Take the cutpurses to the transfer gaol.” He looked at Kharl. “They will spend five years-or more-cutting and moving stone for the Great Highway. That is a light punishment. They could have gone to the furnaces at Luba.”

Kharl wanted to lick his dry lips. He did not. “I understand.”

“I believe you do, carpenter. Good day.” Again, the wizard turned, and this time five patrollers followed him, herding the three captives before them.

As they walked away, and those in the crowd gave Kharl passing looks before moving on, he just stood by the stone column marking the end of the pier. The wizard had delivered a clear message without spelling it out. The carpenter pulled himself together, then left the pier and turned left, toward the part of the waterfront that had looked to hold shops and taverns.

Once Kharl was off the pier and onto the street that fronted the harbor, he could move more freely, without feeling so crowded. By the time he had walked past the end of the next pier, one that held but a single small sloop, there were almost no peddlers or carts, just people heading in various directions, or standing before shop windows, or coming in or out of the shops. Compared to Brysta or any other port he had visited, it was crowded.

Most of the shops seemed to carry fabrics. He counted four shops in a row-one dealing just in silks, another in woolens, a third in linens, and a fourth in cottons. In those four shops were as many bolts of cloth as in all of Brysta, from what Kharl knew.

He walked on, but then couldn’t help but stop at the display window of a cooperage in the next block. The barrels were good, but not nearly so good as what he’d crafted, especially the hogshead he saw on display. Yet the cooperage was clearly profitable.

The next shop was one that handled blades. Kharl found himself wincing as he looked at the gleaming array in the display window-sabres, cutlasses, a menacing hand-and-a-half sword, an even longer and wider broadsword, and all manner of knives and dirks. He’d never cared much for blades, but he’d also never felt the revulsion that he did as he beheld the assemblage before him. Was there a difference between working blades and weapons? If so, why did he feel that way? Or had he always, and simply not recognized it? With a shake of his head, he turned and continued to the corner. Across the narrower cross street was a tavern, and one thronged from the sounds issuing forth-despite the fact that it was still afternoon.

Kharl turned left, away from the harbor, and walked along the side of the street, passing first a closed doorway without any sign or indication of what lay behind it, then a wider doorway, with a sign showing a bed, and the words beneath beginning with “Rooms for the night” in Brystan and repeating in other languages.

“Girls…you want one?” A veiled woman beckoned from across the street. “Come and see. Take your pleasure…”

Kharl kept his smile to himself and continued to walk, this time past a rope shop.

A rope shop? In any other port, rope would be in a chandlery. Was Swartheld so large that a merchant could sell just ropes of various types? He glanced through the open doorway, taking in all the coils of ropes and lines.

A sickish-sweet odor drifted down and across Kharl, a scent compounded of something burning, perhaps incense, with something stronger. He faintly recalled the smell, then nodded. Kernash-the substance smoked by those with little hope and less future.

Kharl continued toward the next major street. The grayish wooden buildings in the first block gave way to painted structures in the second, and then two- and three-story stone-walled buildings in the third, and then even taller structures, with carved cornices and wide windows above the first floors. Kharl emerged from the side street and turned right once more, glad to find himself on more of a boulevard, where several shops actually had flowers in planters beside their windows.

The second shop on the side of the street away from the harbor held hats-broad-brimmed hats for women. The third shop was a tailor’s, and it displayed jackets and colorful vests, all of silk or light fine cotton, but for men.

Beyond the immaculate shops with their wide glass windows and open archways was a café under a white-and-black-striped awning. Both men and women sat at tables in the shade. Most wore shimmering white, the men in white trousers and boots, and embroidered white shirts with lace and designs in silver, and the women in loose white robes of some light fabric. The women also had filmy white scarfs across their bare shoulders, as if the scarfs would be used as cover or veils when they left the café.

Kharl strained to hear what they said, but realized that they must all have been speaking in Hamorian, because he understood not a word.

In his plain and worn carpenter’s grays, Kharl felt very out of place. He kept walking.