Wellspring of Chaos

LXXIV

By midmorning of fiveday, Kharl knew he needed to talk to Hagen. After three days of thinking, of evenings spent reading The Basis of Order and learning little new from it, the words of both Taleas and Lyras had continued to hammer at him. So…during a break from working with the lathe to turn shafts for a bench back in the mess, Kharl eased away from the shed and toward the other side of the dry dock, where Hagen and Furwyl were standing and surveying the Seastag.

Kharl stood well back, under a welcome and even slightly warm sun, with the first clear skies in almost an eightday, waiting for the captain and first mate to finish their conversation, hoping for a break before too long.

“…tomorrow…the caulk’s set…after that?”

“…timbers not as seasoned as we’d like, ser,” Furwyl replied. “We’ll have to watch that for near-on half a year…couldn’t get the best seasoned timbers, not ones that’d take copper…”

“…try for the first of the eightday.”

“Yes, ser.” Furwyl headed toward the building that held the shipwright’s foreman.

After studying his vessel for a time, Hagen turned. “You wanted to speak to me, carpenter?”

“Yes, ser.” Kharl stepped toward the captain. “The other night I had a visitor.”

“Lyras. I heard.”

“He said I should visit him, and that all I had to do was tell you.” Kharl waited.

Hagen laughed. “That old devil! Maybe he does know something. By all means, go and see him. Work in the morning and see him in the afternoon. See what you can find out.”

“About what?”

“About anything. He won’t tell you unless you ask.”

“He already told me that Lord Ilteron has some white wizards,” Kharl ventured. “He didn’t say how he knew or where they came from.”

“He never does,” Hagen replied. “With matters as they are, it’s more important than ever that you go and see him. All I ask is that you tell me anything you learn about what may be happening here in Austra.”

“Are you sure…”

Hagen looked hard at Kharl. “You might turn out to be a mage. You might not. If you are, we’ll all be better off for it. If you’re not, Lyras will tell you that as well, and you’ll be a better carpenter for it. Either way, I’m better off, and so are you.”

“Yes, ser.” Kharl wasn’t certain that magery, especially any magery he might learn, would be that helpful to others. So far, his actions hadn’t exactly benefited those close to him, but he wasn’t about to say that.

“Tell Tarkyn I’m having you visit Lyras. He’ll understand. I’ll be here mornings. If something can’t wait, Furwyl knows where to find me.”

“Yes, ser.”

Hagen took a last look at the dry-docked Seastag, then walked back toward the stern, squinting as his eyes peered at the lower hull.

Kharl headed back to the shed that held the lathe and Tarkyn. He’d little more than entered it and closed the door before Tarkyn stopped the lathe.

“What did you and the captain talk about? Saw you with him,” Tarkyn observed.

“I told him about Lyras, and what he told me. Captain said he wanted me to go see Lyras in the afternoon, more than once, if necessary.”

Tarkyn fingered his chin. “That’d figure, the captain being thought so close to Lord Estloch and now Lord Ghrant. He can’t visit Lyras, and no one’d think twice about your going.” He chuckled. “Even if it’s as much for your good as his.”

Kharl shrugged helplessly. “What…the captain said. Those were his words…”

“I’m sure they are.” Tarkyn looked at the lathe. “Best you get back to the lathe so that this old man doesn’t have to do too much by himself.” The gruff words were belied by the twinkle in the eyes of the white-haired carpenter.

Kharl chuckled and took over at the lathe.

Still, he felt guilty about leaving the carpentry shed at the dry dock not much after noon, but Tarkyn had almost shooed him out the door. “Captain has a reason for everything. Go!”

Kharl went. He decided against taking the staff, but he did persuade Ghart to let him take a cudgel from the weapons locker. He covered the first few kays, through the streets and out the north road from Valmurl, easily enough. Then the stones of the north road gave way to damp and sometimes slippery clay, and he wished he had a staff for balance as his steps slowed.

All in all, it was well into midafternoon by the time Kharl found Lyras, who was outside a modest cottage of red sandstone, stone smoothed and polished into an even finish, with a dark slate roof, glass windows, and green-painted shutters and front door. The dwelling was long and narrow, no more than fifteen cubits wide, but it ran back a good forty, Kharl judged.

The mage was on the south side, pruning dormant berry bushes with a pair of long-handled shears. “Wasn’t certain I’d see you, Master Kharl.” Lyras took a last snip with the shears.

“Kharl…I’m no master.”

“Word is that you’re a master cooper, and you might be a master of more than that someday. Let’s go inside. I can have Zera heat up a kettle of something to warm us.” Lyras walked to the low front stoop, two steps above the front walk. There he set down the shears, then opened the door, holding it for Kharl to enter.

“Thank you.” Kharl wasn’t that cold, not after a walk that had left him all too warm, but he appreciated the hospitality.

A roundish brown-haired woman appeared at the back of the front room that extended the width of the cottage.

“My consort, Zera,” Lyras said, before turning to her. “This is Kharl. He’s the one I told you about. If you wouldn’t mind warming up the tonic…dear?”

“I’ve already put it on.” Zera looked to Kharl. “I’ve some shortbread. Would you like some?”

“That would be most welcome…if it’s not…I wouldn’t want…”

Zera laughed heartily. “No…you won’t be eating us out of hearth and home. We’ve plenty.” With a smile, she slipped through the doorway leading out of the front room.

Lyras gestured to the pair of chairs set several cubits back from the iron stove located in the northwest corner of the room. “We can talk here.”

Kharl sat, and, after a long silence, looked at the older mage. “I’m here.”

“And you want immediate enlightenment.”

“No. I’d settle for a useful hint or two. Or an exercise that would teach me something.”

“You can already detect chaos at a distance, and you can tell when people do not tell the truth. That is more than many who claim to be mages. Why do you wish to know more?”

Kharl thought for a moment before replying. “I don’t know. I only feel that I should.”

“So you can become wealthy and powerful, perhaps?” A slightly ironic tone colored Lyras’s words.

“It would be good not to be coinless,” Kharl countered, “but I have enough coins.”

Lyras nodded. “So you came to see me without being able to explain why, and you want my advice and help, but you can’t tell me where you’d like this advice?”

Kharl nodded, and was saved from having to make an immediate response by the arrival of Zera, carrying two black mugs. She handed one first to Kharl, then one to Lyras, and slipped out of the front room, only to return with a small platter that she set on the low table between the town chairs. Without speaking, she left as quickly and as silently as she had entered.

“It’s a sweetened redberry cider,” Lyras explained. “Takes the chill off the bones.” He took a sip. “Ahhh…” Then he reached for one of the oblong shortbreads.

Kharl followed the older man’s example and found the hot drink neither too hot nor too sweet. He also had a shortbread. “It’s good. So is the shortbread.” After a moment, and another bite of shortbread, he looked at Lyras. “Why are you here? Outside of Valmurl?”

“Why not? It’s a pleasant place, and far more comfortable than a few rooms in the Great House. I’m not that good a black mage. You’re already stronger than I am, and you’ve had no training at all. There’s no use for a weak mage in Recluce, and none of the lords in Austra or Nordla really want any powerful black mages in their lands. The Emperor of Hamor just uses mages up.” He gestured toward the window to his left, the one overlooking the berry bushes he had been pruning. “I know enough to help them produce and make jams and jellies, and no one pays much attention. Sometimes, I’d go to see Lord Estloch, but I never knew whether I’d done more good or harm. He let me stay because a weak black mage is much less trouble than a weak white wizard, who can still be obviously dangerous.”

Kharl wondered about the words-obviously dangerous. “I saw a white wizard once. He gathered young people, mostly girls, and when he was done, they died. Not a mark on them.”

“Did he look younger afterward?”

“I don’t know.”

“He probably was younger. His body had more concentrated good chaos, the strength of youth. What happened to him?”

“He died.” Kharl had said too much. “But…you must be from Recluce…you know so much…”

“Ah, yes. I must confess that I was born in Reflin. My father was a baker, and a poor bakery it was. I didn’t learn a thing. Zera does all the baking, and a good thing it is.” The mage took another sip of the redberry cider, then looked at Kharl. “My talking isn’t going to help you much. Of course, not knowing what you want doesn’t help much either.”

“I know what I want,” Kharl said. “I want to put things to right. I’d liked to have done that in Brysta. I just didn’t know how.”

“What was wrong in Brysta?”

“My consort was hung for a killing she had nothing to do with. I was flogged for trying to defend her and for stopping the lord’s son from taking his pleasure by force with a neighbor girl. Another man was hung because he told the truth about the lord’s son…”

“Ah, yes…telling the truth. That’s often the recipe for disaster. Even a poor mage recognizes that. What else?”

“A weaver girl had to hide in a rendering yard because the tariff farmer seized her mother’s house and shop and tried to force her into indenture at a pleasure house. That white wizard-the one I mentioned-was working with the lord’s son and killed young girls for his use, and no one even seemed to notice.”

“It’s that way in most lands. It has been more often than not,” Lyras pointed out. “Why should it be different in yours?”

“It should be better everywhere, but a man wants to see things better where he was raised.”

“Not all men. Not even most men.”

“I’m not most men.”

“No. You’re not.” Lyras laughed. “Become a justicer. That way you can change some of those things.”

“A cooper? As a justicer?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the Justicer’s Challenge? All the world knows about it. It’s a practice that’s only accepted here and in Nordla.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Kharl admitted. “Didn’t seem like something for a cooper.”

“It’s seldom used.” The older man laughed again. “That’s because no one dares. Failure means that the challenger suffers the fate of the accused-the punishment of each of the five accused comprising the challenge.” Lyras took another sip from his mug. “Forget about that now. What you really need is some exercises that will help you understand what power you may have and the limits of that power.”

Kharl managed to refrain from saying that he’d already said that.

“I have several suggestions,” Lyras went on. “Some order-mages are weather mages. There is a way to tell if you have that talent. Take a kettle and put it on a hot stove. Watch the steam. Try to move the cloud of steam around. It works better in a cold room-”

“Steam…and weather?”

“Oh…clouds are made up of water, like steam. Where do you think the rain comes from? Then, others are healers. Serious wounds create an angry reddish feel within them. If you can sense and remove that kind of chaos…that’s what a healer is.”

“An exercise?” asked Kharl.

“There aren’t any that I know of. Oh…if you can study small animals with your senses, and feel how order works in them, that might help. I’ve heard that there are earth mages, who can sense the flow of order and chaos in the ground beneath, and some of them are smiths. As a cooper…maybe you come by that naturally. In hot metal…right from the forge fire, the order bonds are weaker, and chaos is, well, more fluid-that’s how the black engineers on Recluce make all that black iron…another trick, really only a trick…is to use your senses to let light flow around you. Light flows like water in a way, you know. Unless you’re very good with order-sensing what’s around you, you’ll be blind, but sometimes it’s useful not to be seen…never could do that one myself, but I’ve seen it done…”

Kharl continued to listen, feeling that, perhaps for the first time, he was getting an idea of what order-magery was all about-or rather the feeling, beyond words on the pages of The Basis of Order, that what the words had hinted at could actually be accomplished.

“…Now there’s one last thing. About that staff. There was a reason why they wouldn’t take that back, one that they didn’t tell you. You need to look up a phrase in The Basis of Order. You have a copy, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Kharl admitted grudgingly.

“There’s a phrase in there about staffs, blackstaffs. It’s important…and that’s probably more than I should have said, and don’t ask me more.”

“Why not?” Kharl asked bluntly.

“Because it’s something you have to find, or it won’t mean anything. Tell it to someone directly…it never works. Already, I may have told you too much.”

How could anyone be told too much? But then…he’d tried to tell his boys things, and they’d had to learn for themselves. “Thank you.” Kharl paused, trying to make sure he remembered everything that Lyras had said. “Why did the Emperor of Hamor send chaos-mages, and not order mages?”

“I’m scarcely the emperor,” Lyras pointed out. “But I’d guess that’s because comparatively weak chaos-wizards can create much destruction, and there weren’t any strong order-mages here.”

Kharl didn’t quite understand the connection, and it must have shown on his face.

“Oh…you don’t see. But then, how would you know?” Lyras shook his head. “Because black mages serve order, they preserve and strengthen ties and forces. So…a strong order-mage couldn’t throw free chaos at a white wizard, but he could walk through all that chaos with his order shields and strike one blow with a staff or something-not a blade-and destroy the white wizard. But…the emperor didn’t think there were any order-mages in Austra.”

“So the mages he sent to support Lord Ilteron-”

“Ilteron is only a hill baron. His sire couldn’t strip him of his hill lands in the Shiltons, much as he would have liked to. Ilteron’s been building his own personal guards for years. Lord Estloch chose to ignore that, although I warned him.”

“Why does everyone think Ilteron was behind the lord’s death?”

Lyras snorted. “The timing, for one thing. Lord Ghrant reached his majority last year. If Estloch had been killed before that, there would have been a regency, and doubtless wiser heads, such as Hagen and Lady Renyra, would have been on the regency council. Lord Ghrant’s inexperienced, but he wants things his way. But he doesn’t like people arguing with him; he hates personal confrontation. He’s the sort that’s happy to order someone else to shed the blood, but doesn’t want to strike the blow himself…”

Kharl had his doubts about relaying that to Hagen.

“And then there’s Malcor. He’s been bowing and scraping all over the Great House for the last two years. Lord Estloch dies, and Malcor vanishes without taking his leave and reappears back in the hills, making a visit to Ilteron. Also, Malcor is known to be excellent with a crossbow.”

“Doesn’t anyone else know this?”

“Several score, I’d imagine, but none with the nerve to say such out loud. There’s no gain in it. It won’t bring back Lord Estloch. It raises the question of why anyone who would state that didn’t tell someone before, and, should Ilteron succeed in overthrowing Ghrant, which is most likely, it subjects the speaker to the loss of lands and life. So…everyone is silent.”

Kharl understood that. He just hadn’t thought that powerful lords and landholders would behave in the same fashion as crafters, although, upon reflection, he could see there wasn’t any reason why they wouldn’t.

“You had thought lords might speak up?” asked Lyras.

“I had considered it, but not for long.”

“They speak out for the truth less than crafters, for they have more to lose, and little to gain from the truth. That’s why no one trusts them, and they trust each other even less.”

“It’s a wonder that anyone speaks the truth,” Kharl said.

“And when they do, examine their words closely.” Lyras stood. “It’s getting close to sunset, and you’d best be heading back. The parts of Valmurl north of the refit yards aren’t the best in full night, even with your sight.”

How did Lyras know about his night sight? Or was that something that even minor mages had? Kharl stood and set the empty mug on a side table. “Thank you. Might I come back when I’ve had a chance to consider what you’ve said?”

“I’d not be stopping you.” Lyras opened the cottage door for Kharl.

“Until then.” Kharl nodded as he left the stoop.

He walked quickly down the path to the road, then turned southward, trying to sort out everything he had heard over the afternoon. He certainly wanted to try out some of the exercises and tests Lyras had suggested, if only to see what he might be able to do.

And he had promised Hagen to pass on what he had learned, little as it seemed.