Natural Ordermage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Washing his own garments? Rahl didn’t mind chores, but washing was for women. Again, he bottled away the irritation.

  Rahl was definitely feeling unsettled by the time he had unloaded his new garments and was walking into the building Leyla called the academy. The wardrobe mistress had measured him without touching him, and he’d seen more clothes, casually stored, than he’d ever seen anywhere in his life. He had the kind of boots merchants or Council Guards only wore, and his old perfectly serviceable clothes would be washed and then turned into rags. He’d met another exile whom he couldn’t sense, discovered he’d have to do wash and who knew what else, and found out about skills he’d never heard of. And it was still-early in the day.

  “We’ll go to the duty study. This is where you’ll meet the duty mage—or whoever’s working with you—every morning after breakfast. If someone’s not here, wait.” Leyla stepped through the entry arch, narrower than the others Rahl had seen, and opened the door.

  “Yes, magistra.” To Rahl, the black stones of the building felt older than either the quarters building or the eating hall.

  She led him into a small study with a square table and four chairs. At one side was a writing table, set under the window. “Sit down.” She closed the door and seated herself at the table.

  Rahl took the indicated chair, across from the magistra.

  “Before we start, do you have any questions? About anything.”

  “The Council Guards said that there weren’t that many exiles sent to Nylan,” Rahl began, “but I saw a lot of people in the eating hall. The mess.”

  Leyla nodded. “There aren’t that many from any one town in Recluce north of the wall, but there are scores of towns, and it takes anywhere from two seasons to a year, sometimes two, to train them to fit into Nylan or prepare them for exile. Unlike the Council, we just don’t throw people on ships or indenture them to merchants or slavers in other lands.”

  Rahl still had his doubts about that, but merely nodded.

  “Anything else?”

  He had more than a few questions, but he really didn’t know how to ask them or whether he should. “I might later, when I’ve seen more.” He paused. “There is one. Can I write letters to my family to let them know where I am?”

  “You can write all you want. The post fee is two coppers a page, roughly, for it to be carried to Land’s End.”

  “I don’t have two coppers.”

  “Right now, you get three coppers an eightday if your studies and your work are satisfactory. After four eightdays, if you’re still in good standing, it goes to five. You don’t get paid the first eightday, but after that you’ll get paid at the counter in the corner of the mess on sevenday after the midday meal.”

  Three coppers wasn’t that much, but he didn’t have any real alternatives, and he was coming to like that less and less.

  Leyla looked at Rahl. “What do you know about order? Tell me.”

  “All the world is a mixture of order and chaos. Order is the structure of the world, and chaos is the destructive energy of the world…” Rahl went on to repeat what he’d learned from the magisters in Land’s End.

  When he finished, Leyla nodded. “That’s what most magisters in the north teach. It’s mostly correct, but you need to know more. I’m going to tell you the basics, then I’m going to give you a book to read while you’re learning. You are to read at least five pages every day.” From somewhere she produced a black-covered book and handed it to Rahl. There was no title on the spine or the outside cover.

  He opened it to the title page—The Basis of Order. He managed not to swallow as he realized it was the book that Magister Puvort had said was banned.

  “For right now, you are not to discuss this book with anyone except a magister. Later, things will change.”

  “Ah… could you tell me why?” Rahl still couldn’t believe what he held, and he wasn’t sure whether to be glad or worried.

  “Because you don’t know what you think you know, and what you think you know is not what is, and both will conflict with what you will be reading. Talking with anyone who has not read and studied the book will just confuse you more at first. Later, we’ll encourage you to discuss it with others who have studied it.” She cleared her throat. “Why do you think we’re having you read this?”

  “Because I might have some small ability with order?”

  “Rahl… we wouldn’t bother with someone who had small abilities. Nor would that magister have sent you here. He’d either have ignored you or exiled you directly from all of Reduce. You can sense something about how most people feel, can’t you?”

  “Sometimes,” he said cautiously.

  “That’s how you got into trouble with the girl, wasn’t it?”

  Rahl could feel himself flushing. He could feel some anger. What right did she have to accuse him? “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He tried not to sound sullen. “Rahl!”

  The power and the force in his name snapped him upright.

  “You have abilities with order. Everything you do will affect someone. Either you learn what those abilities are and how to control them, or you will end up in someplace like Cigoerne—or the ironworks at Luba. You have great potential. Great power demands great responsibility. That is what you must learn if you expect to remain in Nylan.”

  Magistra Leyla might well have been correct, Rahl thought, but he hated being lectured. That was one reason why he’d left lessons in Land’s End as soon as he could. Not only were lectures boring, but the people who lectured assumed that they knew better than he did what was good for him. Just like Puvort, who’d thought exiling Rahl was better than helping him. Or that Fahla should have been enslaved for not betraying her father.

  Rahl forced a smile.

  Leyla sighed. “You don’t really believe a word I’ve said. I just hope you read the book carefully. If I can’t get through to you, maybe it will.” She stood. “Right now, there’s little point in saying more. Let’s get you over to the Hamorian class.”

  She opened the door and waited for Rahl to join her in the corridor. He glanced down at the wear-polished stone floor tiles. For all the cleanliness of the building, there was also a sense of great age, from the depressions worn in the stones to the slight rounding of the corner stones.

  “We use immersion language studies. You’ll step into a setting where people are doing simple tasks, and all of them will be speaking Hamorian. You are not to say anything, except in Hamorian.”

  “But… I don’t know any Hamorian.”

  “You’ll learn,” the magistra said. “I’ll meet you in the eating hall after the midday meal to take you to meet Sebenet. Now… this way.”

  She opened the third door on the left, motioning for Rahl to enter before her. She followed, then bowed to a magister dressed in crimson. What the magistra hadn’t said was that, a number of the other students were children, some as young as eight or nine.

  Rahl had no idea what she said, but when she gestured to Rahl, he bowed slightly.

  The magister replied in the Hamorian Rahl didn’t know, then motioned for him to join several children seated on cushions in the corner of the chamber. One held up a book and opened it.

  As he seated himself, Rahl thought she said something like, “Sciensa livra y miendas.”

  Between the activities and trying just to hear the words, Rahl had a headache by the time the midday bell rang, and the class was over. He might have learned a few words.

  He was among the later ones to arrive in the mess and found a seat at one of the unoccupied tables. He didn’t see Meryssa, or Anitra, or Khalyt, but a thin man, a good five years older than Rahl, perhaps more than that, eased over toward Rahl.

  “You’re new. I’m Darrant. Would you be from Reflin?”

  “No… Land’s End.”

  “Oh… I was just hoping…”

  Rahl shook his head. “I don’t even know anyone in Reflin.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wo
ndering what Darrant had wanted, Rahl finished his meal and took care of the dishes. Almost as if she had been watching, Leyla appeared and escorted him out of the hall and even farther downhill and to the west, to yet another building set into the hillside. A muffled thumping issued from the structure.

  “That’s the new printing press. We finally worked out a circular press rather than a powered letterpress.”

  Once more, Rahl hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant, but from the sounds and the thin line of smoke issuing from the chimney, he had the idea that whatever was making the rhythmic thumping was powered by a steam engine. Such engines were forbidden in the rest of Reduce, except on ships porting at Land’s End.

  Before long, Leyla was introducing Rahl to Magister Sebenet, a swarthy and stocky black-haired man perhaps the age of Rahl’s father. He wore an ink-stained canvas apron over a short-sleeved black shirt and trousers. He smiled broadly at Leyla. “You found me a typesetter?”

  “No, Sebenet, I found you a scrivener who can read High and Low Temple. You’ll have to train him. This is Rahl.”

  Rahl bowed slightly.

  After Leyla had left, Sebenet turned to Rahl. “A former scrivener, is it?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “You’re about to become a typesetter, young fellow, as well as handle all the dirty jobs that go with it.”

  Sebenet was patient enough, taking Rahl through the shop and explaining each piece of equipment.

  “… the engine’s what powers the press. Coal level should be about where it is now, but you have to sense the heat, too… Stay clear of the belts, break your arm or neck before you knew what happened… water feed’s here…”

  “… paper trays are here… use a web to feed into the press…”

  “Each box has the same letters in it. You pick the letters and put them in place. Here are the spacing bars. You lay out the text like so…”

  Rahl had to concentrate. Even so, he knew there were things he would not remember.

  By the time he finished his time as an apprentice typesetter and then ate supper, alone, he was exhausted. He straggled back to his room and collapsed onto his bed.

  His last thought before his eyes closed was that being a scrivener looked to be less work and far easier than everything he’d tried that afternoon—and he hadn’t even gotten anywhere close to the harder work of setting type and making up the pasteboards for the press cylinders.

  XVII

  As he rolled out of bed, Rahl froze. He’d been so tired the night before that he’d forgotten to read the pages of The Basis of Order. He scrambled to the writing table and picked up the book, opening it to the first page, eyes scanning the words.

  Order is life; chaos is death. This is fact, not belief. Each living creature consists of ordered parts that must function together. When chaos intrudes beyond its limits, its energies disrupt all, and too great a disruption can only lead to death.

  Order extends down to the smallest fragments of the world…

  Rahl read to the bottom of the page, then set the book on the table and put on his new gray garments. Then he sat on the stool and pulled on his boots.

  He picked up the book once more. The words on the second page seemed to leap out at him, although there was no sense of power embodied in the book itself.

  Learning without understanding can but increase the frustration of the impatient, for knowledge is like the hammer of a smith, useless in the hands of the unskilled and able to do nothing but injure the user who has not both knowledge and understanding. Learning is like unto chaos, a power useful only for destruction without the order imposed by understanding…

  Rahl frowned. The book seemed to be suggesting that there were uses of chaos that were not all evil, and that some use of order might be evil. Was that why the magisters did not wish the book anywhere outside of Nylan?

  A wry smile crossed his lips. He could certainly tell of some uses of order by the magisters of the Council that were anything but good. Perhaps he would, when the time was right. He read another page, then slipped the book inside his tunic and hurried to the mess.

  All of the tables were occupied, but he found a corner of one where he could sit a bit away from two women, both older than he was, he judged, but not by more than a few years.

  As he ate, he tried to read another page, but he couldn’t help but overhear some of the conversation between the two, low as their voices were.

  “… say that I’ll never understand… going to send me to Suthya… position with a trader there in Armat…”

  “… not bad… least you got somewhere to go and coins coming in…”

  “… didn’t want to go…”

  “… magisters decide, dearie. They sent Durolyt to Southport.”

  “… he hates the Legend…”

  “… why they sent him, if you ask me…”

  Rahl felt cold all over. Was that what he had to face? Promises that could only lead to exile in a place he hated?

  He still hadn’t finished eating, and his appetite had almost vanished, but he forced himself to swallow the last mouthfuls. He knew he’d be hungry before midday. Then he read the last half page of the five pages he’d been told he should read every day before tucking away The Basis of Order and heading for the rinse buckets.

  Yet another magister met him outside the study where Leyla had instructed him the previous day. He was slender and wiry, more than a head shorter than Rahl, and his hair was whitish silver, yet not the color of an old man’s, and his face was unlined. Rahl had recalled the stories saying that Creslin had possessed such hair, but he’d never seen anyone with it.

  The magister laughed. “Yes, it’s the silver hair like Creslin’s, and no, I’m not a direct descendant of his, not that I know of, anyway. I’m Tamryn.” He gestured toward the study. “We might as well get started.”

  Rahl walked in, then waited to seat himself until Tamryn did.

  “Have you read any of The Basis of Order?” asked the magister. “Yes, ser.”

  “Do you have any questions before I start asking you about what you read?”

  “Ah…” Rahl wondered whether he should ask, but suspected it would come out one way or another. “There’s a part that seems to suggest that chaos is not all evil, that if it’s used somehow within order…” He didn’t know quite, what else to ask.

  Tamryn nodded. “Not many exiles pick that up quickly. Have you done any studies with the magisters in the north?”

  “No, ser. I was going to see them when… everything happened.”

  “Ah, yes, Leyla and Kadara both wrote up their reports on you.” Tamryn nodded. “Well, in answer to your question, our… brethren… north of the wall wish to think of the world in simpler terms than is realistic.” Tamryn frowned, then paused for a moment. “While few speak of it, all living creatures, and that includes me and you, contain both order and chaos. It’s more complicated than what I’m about to say, but you can think of it this way. Chaos is like the coal or the wood in a stove. It provides the energy or the warmth that keeps us alive! Order is like the stove itself. Without the structure of the stove, the fire would consume all around it or burn out uselessly. Without chaos, there would be no life, just a dead body.”

  Rahl nodded. “Are there good uses of chaos and bad uses of order, then?”

  Tamryn pursed his lips. “Yes… but with a condition. Those who use chaos frequently may indeed use it for purposes that are worthy. I understand that the junior mages of Fairhaven often are employed to clean their sewers with chaos-fire. Chaos-mages at times accompany patrollers in both Fairhaven and Hamor and help keep order. However”—Tamryn paused—“the continued use of chaos predisposes a mage toward destruction, rather than building, and very, very few powerful chaos-mages have ever been known whose good works outweighed their evil ones.”

  “Do you know of any, magister?”

  “It is said that Cerryl the Great of Fairhaven was one of those: Certainly, in his rule, all was peaceful,
and few fled to Reduce, and few indeed had harsh words for him, but we do not know what evil he did because he was so powerful that few to whom he might have done evil would have survived.”

  “About the evil use of order, magister?”

  Tamryn looked at Rahl. “I trust you are not playing at some game, or that you will not long continue it, Rahl.”

  “It is not a game, ser. I have feelings about this, but I would say nothing until I understand more.” Rahl wanted to make sure all the mages in Nylan understood how things really were in Land’s End, and questions were always a better way to get older people interested.

  “Very well. The evil that can be accomplished with the misuse of order is most different. It is more akin to building a very tight and well-constructed prison. Everything must be so ordered, and follow such rigid rules that nothing is allowed to change.”

  That sounded like Land’s End. Puvort certainly hadn’t wanted anything to change, even the way books were produced, not that the prohibition had been bad for Rahl’s father. “I was a scrivener, ser, and I did not know that a machine existed to print books until yesterday. That was when Magister Sebenet showed me the printing press.”

  “We’re aware of that, Rahl. Let’s leave it at that for now.”

  Rahl could sense Tamryn’s irritation, and he nodded. “Thank you, ser.” He tried to remain calm himself, but he didn’t like being treated like a child or having his questions brushed away when the mage had asked if he had those questions. The engineers and the mages of Nylan had the power to change the north. Why didn’t they?

  “Now… for today, Rahl, I’d like you to consider why Creslin was forced to found Reduce.”

  How could he talk about that? Rahl paused, then began slowly. “I know some of the legends, and I have read Tales of the Founders. I had to copy it, but I read it as well.”

  “You don’t think he was forced to found Reduce, then?”

  Rahl hated being put into corners the way Tamryn was doing to him, and he detested the fact that the mage could sense what Rahl was feeling, and yet didn’t understand what was behind those feelings. Nor did he or the others seem to care. “There’s a lot missing from the book. I don’t understand why he fled from Westwind, then ended up consorting the woman he didn’t want to consort.”