Magic Engineer

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Soup and cheese, with the good beer, not the swill that Zera says is all she has,” states the man.

  “Same here,” adds the woman.

  The last guard only nods, preoccupied with cleaning his fingernails with the point of his white-copper belt knife.

  The gray-haired server retreats through the smoke to the kitchen, and the rest of those eating pointedly ignore the White guards.

  Dorrin licks his lips as the woman guard looks in his direction.

  “I won’t eat you, sweetie. Not yet…” She leers at him, and the scar on her left cheek imparts a twist to the leer.

  “Knock it off, Estil,” snaps the leader. “He’s a decade younger, and one of those pilgrim healers.”

  “Where was he when I needed healing?”

  “Knock it off.”

  “All right.”

  Dorrin glances toward the doorway, trying to ignore the conversation about guard rotations, someone called Jeslek, and the unfriendliness of the people in Vergren.

  “… centuries later, and you’d think we’d personally fired the old keep…”

  A bearded man swings open the battered door and staggers out into the afternoon, where a fine and cold spring rain has begun to fall. A gust of chill damp air flows into the hostelry, cutting through the stale warmth.

  Thhuummpp…

  The serving woman is setting mugs and bowls before the White guards, efficiently and quickly.

  “About time…”

  The senior guard hands the server a coin of some sort, and she nods.

  “Why do we have to eat here?”

  “You know why.”

  “I know… because we have to show up everywhere, and besides it’s easier on the Council’s treasury if we eat cheap…”

  The three from Recluce exchange glances. Brede pops the last of his bread into his mouth, while Kadara tilts her mug all the way back. Mechanically, Dorrin slurps the last of the soup and chews the remaining bread crust, although his stomach is more than full.

  “Let’s go.”

  Dorrin reaches for his pack.

  “So long, sweetie!”

  Dorrin flushes. Kadara grins, and a faint smile creases Brede’s face.

  “Estil…”

  “He’s sweet-not like you.”

  Dorrin looks away from the last exaggerated leer and stumbles into the afternoon drizzle.

  “You certainly made an impression there.”

  Dorrin ignores Kadara’s comments, and instead looks toward the rail where the horses remain tethered. “Now what should we do?”

  “Check out the stable. Then we can walk over to the farm market we passed, see about supplies for going on.”

  Dorrin pulls his waterproof over his shoulders and wipes the rain off his forehead. “It’s too quiet here. Nobody says anything. Or not much.”

  “We’re outsiders. What do you expect?”

  XXI

  THE HIGH PLAINS shake.

  A ball of light flares around the single figure in white who stands in the midst of that eye-searing radiance.

  Whhhheeeeee… rrrmmmmm…

  Smoke circles from the hills that shudder upwards around the white wizard with the glistening white hair and the eyes like points of sun.

  … rrrrmmmmm… thrummmbblle…

  Still, the ground shakes.

  In the distance a river shakes from its bed, and silvered waters pour southward, inundating what had been meadows. At a greater distance, buildings rock, and stone walls shiver. Some roofs collapse upon their hapless inhabitants.

  The hills shudder yet higher, dwarfing even more completely the magician who has raised them, yet they do not threaten him nor the glistening strip of white stone that stretches westward.

  … wehhhhheeeeeeee… cracccckkkkk… crackkkkk…

  Across the Eastern Ocean, five men and women, garbed in black, look upon a mirror. Those who do not shake their heads frown. One man does both. He is tall and thin.

  “He builds mountains to protect their road.”

  “Yet they do not rise to crush him.”

  “Is he the result of too much order in Recluce?”

  “How could we have less? Already we pay a high price.” The dark-haired woman looks to the thin wizard.

  “He will be the next High Wizard,” says the thin man.

  “Getting to be High Wizard is easier than keeping the amulet,” observes the woman.

  In the mirror, the smoke swirls around the blinding point of whiteness.

  XXII

  WHAT DID HE expect from the people of Vergren? The words had worried Dorrin all through the afternoon and evening, through the eerie walk along nearly spotless streets that were tinged with unseen whiteness, through an evening supper of stew not much thicker than the soup of the midday, and through a near-sleepless night on the dusty planks of the Three Chimneys. Sleeping on hard planks in a garret with Kadara and Brede is bad enough, but listening to the two nuzzle and coo is bad enough-even though they are polite enough, or circumspect enough, not to make total love until he is asleep or after he has staggered up and out in the morning.

  He scratches a flea bite under his armpit. While he can persuade the creatures to leave him while he is awake, his healing talents do not work quite so well asleep-although more accomplished magisters can erect wards that work even while they sleep.

  As they ride eastward out of Vergren, the fog swirls around them, and water drips from slate roofs onto the stone. Townspeople appear-like the spirits of ancient angels-in and out of the fog, their steps silent on the stone pavement. A clinking harness echoes down the street.

  “Quiet,” observes Brede, and his words sound almost hollow.

  “You said that yesterday,” snaps Kadara.

  “It was quiet yesterday.”

  With his senses ranging through the fog and mist, Dorrin gathers nothing beyond the unseen whiteness that oozes beneath the entire town, almost like an unvoiced grief. Are all towns ruled by the White Wizards so quiet?

  Or is it the spirit of Vergren that still languishes? Because Montgren helped the Founders? Or because the people instinctively embraced order?

  Dorrin shakes his head. The White Wizards must have some order. They cannot be totally chaotic, not if Fairhaven has successfully ruled most of Candar for the centuries since Creslin fled Candar. Yet Vergren oozes despair amidst its order.

  Meriwhen whinnies and steps sideways to avoid a pile of manure.

  “Dorrin?”

  “… uhh… what?” The healer turns toward Kadara.

  “You need to watch where you’re riding. Stop thinking about machines and whatever.”

  “I was watching.” But he straightens himself in the saddle, and pats Meriwhen on the neck.

  After the walls of Vergren fade into the morning mist and disappear behind the hills, the loudest sounds along the stone road are those of hoofs and the voices of the three from Recluce. Even the sheep graze silently, like so many miniature clouds drifting across the damp hillside meadows. Brede and Kadara converse in low voices. “… Spidlarian blade is too thin, not enough metal to stand up to a hand and a half…”

  “You wouldn’t fight it that way… use the edges to slide…”

  “… still think that the shortsword is best all around…”

  “… not enough length to protect you…”

  Dorrin yawns. He is supposed to stay awake listening to technical talk about blades? He shifts his weight in the saddle and casts his senses out toward the endless sheep. Nothing roams the hillsides but the sheep, the shaggy dogs, and an occasional big cat.

  “… shields…”

  “Too cumbersome for mounted work…”

  The healer yawns, wondering how long the ride will be.

  Midmorning passes, and the low clouds have still not lifted. One hillside looks like another, and the sheep in each meadow could have been the same sheep that the three had passed leaving Vergren.

  “How do you tell one sheep from another?”
Dorrin mumbles as he reaches yet another hill crest. The narrow road drops out of the rolling hills that they have ridden up and down, up and down, ever since they left Vergren. The clay-packed thoroughfare descends before the three exiles-mostly straight-to the town ahead, where it then winds through the houses like a smooth brown river. Perhaps a handful of stores rise on the far side of the town, just short of the line of trees that may mark a true watercourse.

  Dorrin peers at the stone bearing the name Weevett on the right-hand side of the road. “Wonder if they make wool here.”

  “Probably.” Brede inclines his head toward the stone wall to his left, and to the sheep beyond. “They probably card and spin it everywhere around here.”

  “Why are we doing this?” Dorrin asks.

  “Because we need to get to Fairhaven. You know that.” Kadara flips the sword into the air and catches the hilt, then replaces it in the scabbard.

  “Show-off. I meant why are we going to Fairhaven at all?”

  “Because we have to if we ever want to get back to Recluce.”

  Dorrin fingers the staff in the lanceholder. “They’ll never let us return, no matter what Lortren said. Did you ever run into anyone who has?”

  “Lortren,” offers Brede.

  “Besides her?” Dorrin should have guessed. Of course, Brede and Kadara believe they will be allowed to return. They are blades, like the white-haired magistra. And perhaps they will be allowed to return-after demonstrating their repentance or whatever total acceptance of the Brotherhood’s goals that may be required.

  For him, it is already clear, the price is at the very least his rejection of his dreams of order machines and his acceptance of an irrational concept of true order.

  “Felthar,” adds Kadara.

  “Another blade.”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  Dorrin shifts his weight in the saddle trying to stretch his legs. Meriwhen whinnies.

  “What Dorrin is saying, Kadara, is that very few healers return.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know,” Dorrin says heavily. “But it’s true.”

  Since there is little to say beyond that, the three ride silently eastward and downhill into Weevett, past yet more sheep grazing on the rolling hillside.

  XXIII

  IN THE SPRING light, the road throws white glare up into the faces of the three riders. Dorrin rides with his eyes squeezed almost shut, relying more upon senses thrown to the faint breeze that smells of new-turned earth than the blurry images that dance before his eyes. His senses twist when he directs them toward the city down in the valley, and he begins to alternate between sense and vision, squirming in the saddle. “What’s the matter?”

  “The glare.”

  “What glare? It’s a bit bright, but not that bad.” Kadara looks toward the midmorning sun, then back toward Dorrin.

  Dorrin still squints.

  In the gentle valley ahead, white structures not quite randomly placed are interspersed with white roads, green grass, and evergreens barely taller than the roofs they shade.

  “Not any tall buildings.” Brede glances from the whiteness of the road and from the low city ahead to his right, to the west. “You’d think the wizards would have a tall building or two.”

  “There might be one near the center of Fairhaven,” offers Dorrin, “but there won’t be many. Tall structures and chaos don’t really go together.”

  “Why not?” Kadara also looks to the side of the road.

  “Because,” explains Dorrin, “chaos has the tendency to weaken any material, and the higher you build something the more support it needs. That’s why we ought to build machines.”

  “Huhhh… you still worried about machines?” Brede shakes his head.

  “He’s always thinking about machines,” Kadara adds softly.

  “I mean it,” Dorrin insists. “Order can hold machines together, even against chaos, if they’re built of good black iron. But chaos couldn’t possibly use such machines.”

  “That’s all right in theory, but if the machines are so good, why does the Brotherhood oppose them and why are you here?” Brede squints toward the city and the horse and wagon that appear to be moving out from Fairhaven and toward them. “Someone’s headed this way.”

  “Because they’re afraid of them, and they don’t understand them. Machines can only do what they’re built to do-”

  “Dorrin… we’ve heard it before,” interrupts Kadara, “and we’re not the ones you have to convince.”

  Dorrin closes his eyes. Rather than form a reply, he gropes with his senses to find the wagon. “The wagon’s empty, and there’s just a driver. He feels like an old man.”

  Creeeeaaakkk… As if to punctuate Dorrin’s observation, the sound of ill-lubricated wheels squeaks toward them.

  First, against the morning brightness appears a wavering black silhouette.‘ The silhouette creaks into the brown-boarded shape of a farm wagon pulled by a single large, if swaybacked, gray horse.

  “Geee… ahhhh…” The driver’s flat, emotionless voice carries from the bench seat. The wagon trundles down the left side of the stone-paved road, squealing past Dorrin so closely that he could reach out and touch the driver’s whip. He does not. Instead, his lips purse, and he swallows.

  The driver looks no older than he or Brede, but feels ancient to those senses which can-sometimes-show reality more clearly than mere eyesight.

  Dorrin chucks the reins to catch up to Brede and Kadara, for he has fallen behind as the wagon has passed. Before he reaches them, a messenger, dressed in white, with a red slash across his tunic, gallops past. Two more wagons pass in the other direction.

  In time, the three near a pair of low and empty towers, built of whitened stone, resembling gates.

  Dorrin studies the gates, then glances at the pale green leaves of the spreading trees and the trimmed bushes beyond them, then back at the whitened granite of the gatehouse and the pavement and curbs. His forehead throbs, warning him that he must try to figure out why he feels so assaulted by what is the White City, the center of all that is Candar and will be Candar for generations, if not millennia, to come.

  Creaaakkk. Another wagon passes, heading westward out of the wide divided boulevard that the east-west highway has become as it enters the White City. White indeed is the city, a white more blinding than the noonday sands on the eastern beaches of Recluce. White and clean, with off-gray granite paving stones that sparkle white in the sun, and merely shine in the shade.

  After following Brede and Kadara past the old and empty towers, Dorrin looks across the valley, amazed at the confluence of white and green. Green leaves cloak trees that should be taller, in some fashion. The leaves flutter in the light breeze, interposing themselves between the lines of white stone walls and boulevards that intertwine. Yet for all the grace and curved lines, the great avenues-the east-west highway and the north- south road-seem to quarter the city like two white stone swords.

  They pass an invisible line inside which almost all the buildings appear white. A central strip of grass and bushes, curbed in limestone, separates two roads of the boulevard. Although it is spring, even warmer than in Tyrhavven and Vergren, he sees no flowers, no colors except the greens of shrubs and grass and the whites of the curbstones and pavement. All of the horses and carts headed into the city are using the right-hand road, while those leaving use the left road. All those on foot use the outside edge of the roads. Toward the center of the shallow valley the whiteness becomes more pronounced and the greenery less. A single stone tower rises from the center of the city.

  Dorrin takes a deep breath, then casts his senses to the winds-and reels in his tracks, barely withdrawing into himself at the swirling patterns of whitish-red that seem to fill the entire valley, that seem to twist and tear at his whole being. He wipes his suddenly dripping forehead with his sleeve. White wizardry seems to permeate everything, for all the artful stonework laid by skillful masons, and the greenery o
f the trees and grasses.

  Dorrin barely catches Kadara’s words to Brede.

  “Just what are we going to do here? And how can we afford to keep traveling? Everywhere we stay it costs more coins. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have all that much left-not if we’ve got to spend a year in this forsaken country.” Kadara eases her mare up beside Brede.

  Dorrin wipes his forehead again, then reaches for his water bottle. He takes a deep pull, almost draining it.

  “It’s simple enough,” offers Brede. “We take jobs with a trader, or something.”

  “With what they pay? And the way they look at women blades?”

  “Do you have a better idea? You’re the one who just pointed out that we need coins.”

  “There must be something better.”

  “I can’t sleep here tonight.” Dorrin cuts the discussion short.

  “Why not? You can’t do this, and you can’t do that, and all you want to do is go off someplace and build stupid machines.” Kadara’s voice sharpens.

  “There’s too much chaos.” Dorrin shivers, feeling again the tentacles of whiteness that seem to creep from the road, from the buildings, like the stinging spines of jellyfish hidden just beneath an ocean’s surface.

  “It’s a perfectly pleasant and clean-looking city, Dorrin.” Kadara gestures at the well-kept grass in the median strip between the two roads. “There’s no reason not to enjoy it for a while.”

  “Fine. You stay here. I can’t. I’ll meet you somewhere.”

  “Dorrin, that’s the stupidest…”

  “Kadara.” Brede rides closer to the healer. “Can you tell us why you can’t sleep here? Besides the chaos?”

  “It’s everywhere, like invisible jellyfish with pointed spines. It just hurts for me to ride, and it’s hard to look at anything without my eyes watering and stinging. Already, sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.”

  Dorrin looks down at the pavement, then up at the low oaks that barely clear the house tops, their trunks somehow paler than those of the trees in the hills of Montgren. “Even the trees aren’t quite right.”