Natural Ordermage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Why? Because Hasyn or someone had heard about how he’d acted in the reading room the night before? Or because word had spread that a mage-guard would be seeking him out? Or because he appeared different—even if he hadn’t seemed so to himself when he had looked in the mirror earlier that morning?

  Rahl found a corner at one of the tables and ignored the way the checkers closest to him edged away. The egg and quinoa breakfast casserole seemed far less edible than on previous mornings, but that might have been because he’d had no basis for comparison from before he’d come to the ironworks. Still, he ate it all, and drank every last drop of the beer, bitter as it also tasted.

  When he left the dining area, the guard by the door avoided looking at him, and he stood by himself while he waited for the morning wagon to the loading dock. He sat next to Hasyn in the last row of seats. Two of the hoist sling-men sat in front of them.

  “You all right?” murmured Hasyn.

  “I had a hard night,” Rahl admitted. “I’m better this morning.”

  “Guards say the mage-guards want to talk to you.” Rahl nodded.

  “Best of fortune.”

  “Thank you.”

  Neither spoke for the rest of the ride to the plate-loading dock, where, as usual, Rahl helped the steam mech with the coal and firebox before washing the coal dust off his hands and arms and taking his place in the checker’s kiosk. Also, as usual, neither Moryn nor Chylor said anything to Rahl, except to call out the hoist loads being set into the hauling wagons.

  “Two half plates, ship cut, full span…”

  “Three of the quarter plates, ship cut, full span…”

  Rahl hadn’t thought about it before, but the thicker ship-cut plates had to be for warship hulls. The amount of iron being produced and shipped dwarfed anything he’d seen or heard of on Recluce. Why were the Hamorians using so much iron? Because it could withstand chaos, and they used more chaos?

  Whatever the reason, he was careful to keep his tallies neat and his sums correct, but, while the work was far easier than being a loader or a slogger, he soon found it boring, and he had to concentrate on not letting his mind wander.

  In between wagons, when Chylor was not looking, he tried to order-sense things, but he could not exercise any of the skills he had once possessed. Even after trying to recall what he could from The Basis of Order, he had no success. That raised another question. Had Shyret discovered the book among his possessions as well? Or had Daelyt just taken his coins and disposed of his personal gear without really going through it?

  The day dragged on, and Rahl dutifully entered plate types and quantities on the forms. By midafternoon, despite the shade provided by the roof of the kiosk, Rahl’s shirt was splotched with sweat.

  Although the sling-men were rigging another load, Rahl saw a two-horse team and a wagon approaching the loading, dock. He watched as the wagon stopped: Taryl stepped down and walked toward the supervisor.

  The mage-guard looked at Chylor. “I’ll need some time with Blacktop.”

  “Ah…yes, ser. If we could finish this wagon… ?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Taryl’s patience impressed Rahl. The mage-guard seemed far less imperious than the magisters of Reduce—or even the Council Guards.

  “Hoist on the way!”

  Rahl checked the form and his pen.

  “Three of the quarter plates, half span…”

  Rahl made the entries for the remaining two loads, then waited.

  “Wagon away!” called Chylor.

  Rahl stepped out of the kiosk and moved toward the mage-guard.

  Chylor took the seat in the kiosk. His look at Rahl was not particularly friendly.

  Taryl motioned for Rahl to follow him, then turned and walked to a spot shaded by a stack of plate, where he stopped.

  “You left Word with the guards,” said Taryl. “What do you remember?”

  “Most everything… I think.” Rahl smiled apologetically. “If there’s something small I don’t recall, how would I know I didn’t remember it?”

  Taryl just waited.

  “My real name is Rahl. I was sent from Nylan to be a clerk at the Nylan Merchanting Association, and I’d been working there for most of the summer season until close to the beginning of fall. I was noticing some irregularities in the accounts, things being declared as damaged or spoiled in shipment, and some I was sure weren’t. Someone tried to break into the Association one night, but I stopped them, and the bravo ran off. I never found out who it was. I was even thinking about leaving the Association and seeing if I could become a mage-guard, but then someone drugged me—it must have been Daelyt—and I can remember getting really sleepy and being unable to move, and someone rolling a carpet around me.” Rahl stopped.

  “Why did you think you could become a mage-guard?” Taryl didn’t sound particularly surprised.

  “I didn’t know if I could,” Rahl admitted, “but the mage-guards where I registered said that anyone who had order or chaos talents could apply.”

  “Is there any way you can support what you told me?”

  “I was a clerk at the Merchanting Association. Shyret and the others there might say that I was there. They might not. I always ate at Eneld’s across the street. Seorya might remember me. I did register with the mage-guards in Swartheld, at the place off the main piers, but I don’t know what happened to the registry bracelet.” Rahl laughed bitterly. “It doesn’t matter now, though. I don’t have any order-abilities. At least, I can’t find them or use them.”

  Taryl smiled. “You’re lucky. When they use nemysa on someone without order, or chaos-abilities, that person almost never recovers his memory. With mages, a handful die, but any who live will eventually recover everything. It will be days, or eightdays, or longer. Generally, the more powerful the mage, the longer it takes.”

  “But… I wasn’t that powerful.”

  “You’re still young… it’s Rahl, isn’t it?”

  “Rahl, that’s right.”

  “Rahl… powerful mages start showing traces of ability young, but they keep getting stronger long after those with less ability—if they work at it properly.”

  Rahl was silent. Did he actually have a chance of regaining his abilities?

  “We will have to send to see if they have any records remaining in Swartheld.”

  “With my luck, ser, those will have vanished as I did.”

  “That may be, but we will see.”

  “Ah, ser. What do I do now? Keep on as a checker at the loading dock?”

  “That would not be wise for anyone, but particularly for you. The mage-guards can always use clerks, especially here in Luba, and being around mages might help you regain your abilities. Besides, that’s where all mage-guards start in any case.” Taryl paused. “You didn’t say exactly, except about order-skills, but you were considered a black mage?”

  “Of sorts. The magisters in Nylan said that I was a natural ordermage, and that I’d amount to little because, while I had skills, I was unable to learn others. I could either do things or not, but I never seemed able to learn what I couldn’t do.”

  “There is a place for every level and type of mage in Hamor.” Taryl’s voice turned wry. “It may not be what one expected, but mages are not wasted or turned away here.”

  Rahl could hear the irony in the older man’s voice, and couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Taryl had certainly not planned to be a mage in Luba.

  The mage-guard turned and walked down the dock to the checker’s kiosk and Chylor.

  Rahl followed, hoping he hadn’t upset Taryl.

  “I’ll be taking… him… with me,” announced the mage-guard.

  “Yes, ser. Ah… did he do something wrong?”

  “No. Something wrong was done to him, we think.”

  To Rahl’s eyes, the supervisor looked almost disappointed, but Rahl was more than glad to follow the mage-guard to the wagon.

  LXIX

  On fiveday evening, Rahl sat a
t the junior’s table in the mage-guard’s mess, with two others—Rhiobyn and Talanyr. He’d been issued two sets of khaki garments, similar to those worn by the mage-guards, except without any insignia, and a pair of heavy black boots that matched his new belt. His hair had been cut short, and the mages’ barber had shaved him. He’d been given a kit with a razor as well, and was sharing an actual room with Talanyr, not a bunk room. He’d even been given a truncheon, although it was of oak, rather than lorken. It had been provided with the caution that weapons were not worn inside the station, but always outside.

  While Rahl still could not order-sense whether mage-guards were ordermages or chaos-mages, he realized that all he had to do was look at their belts. Those who wore clips for a falchiona scabbard were chaos-mages, and those who wore the short retaining harness for a truncheon were ordermages.

  Before him was a meal on a crockery platter—biastras, with pan-fried flat bread on the side. The beverage was not leshak, but a heavier ale. In the mage-guards’ mess, in addition to the juniors’ table, were two long tables for the mage-guards. One held seven women, and the other eleven men, although Rahl could hear comments back and forth between the tables.

  He wrapped the bread around the biastra and took a modest bite. Spicy as the marinated meat was, it was not as hot as what he had tasted in Nylan. Either that, or he had gotten better used to the more highly seasoned Hamorian fare.

  “How did you get here?” asked Rhiobyn, a youth who looked younger than Rahl and was more than a head shorter. “You sound like you come from Atla, except you speak better.” His black eyes darted from Rahl to Talanyr.

  “Good recovery, Rhiobyn,” said Talanyr dryly.

  The younger mage-clerk flushed under his olive skin.

  “Someone drugged me with nemysa,” Rahl said. “Mage-Guard Taryl discovered! could write when I started to get back some of my memories…” He continued with a brief explanation of what had happened after that.

  “Taryl’s a good sort,” offered Talanyr quietly. “He’s a lifer here, though.”

  “Why is that?” asked Rahl.

  Even Rhiobyn leaned forward.

  “I don’t know exactly, but he did something to upset the Emperor’s brother’s mistress. That was when Halmyt was Emperor.”

  “Is Mythalt the Emperor now?”

  “Where have you been?” asked Rhiobyn.

  “I lost my memory, remember? He was the Emperor before that happened. I haven’t heard any news in something like two seasons.”

  “He still is,” Talanyr said. “He’ll be Emperor for a long time. He’s less than half a score older than I am.”

  “What’s he like?”

  Talanyr shrugged. “He’s the Emperor. Who knows what an Emperor’s like? I’d imagine he likes women and good food and being in charge. Who wouldn’t?”

  “Have there ever been mages who were Emperors?” Rahl ate another biastra, enjoying the taste of what he was thinking of as real food.

  “The histories say that Sanacur the Great was, but that was a long time ago. Not recently, unless they’ve kept it hidden.”

  “How do you know all that?” Rhiobyn slurped his beer slightly. “I’m sorry.”

  “My father was the local scholar. He ran the school,” replied Talanyr. “He insisted I know more than any of the other students.”

  “Where are you from?” Rahl asked.

  “Jabuti—it’s a little town in Afrit that’s almost on the border with Merowey, in the western highlands.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “How does anyone end up as a mage-trainee?” Talanyr laughed, softly. “I was ten, I think, when I decided to strengthen with order a basket I’d broken because I didn’t want anyone to find out. I got away with it and a few other things for nearly five years, until a friend of my father visited us. He was an ordermage. Well, he wasn’t that good a mage, and he’d been the historian of the mage-guards, but he could sense order and chaos. Since the

  Codex forbids isolated mages, except healers, before I knew it, I was in the juniors’ school in Cigoerne, and, after four years, on my way here.“

  The Hamorian Codex forbid isolated mages? Magister Thorl had never mentioned that, Rahl realized. “Who did you piss off?” asked Rhiobyn. ‘Everyone, I think. The school head said that I concealed enormous arrogance behind a facade of politeness and humility.“ Talanyr finished his ale and picked up the pitcher in the center of the table, half-refilling the mug.

  Rahl wondered if the school head had confused self-confidence and poise with arrogance, or if Talanyr had just been punished for being too able for someone from an out-of-the-way place. “How did you do in your studies?”

  “Well enough. What about you?”

  Rahl accepted that Talanyr didn’t wish to talk about himself more. “I left school early. My father tutored me, and I read a lot. I was a clerk in Swartheld when a mage-guard…” Rahl shook his head. He’d only get in trouble by misleading them. “I’m from Recluce, and I upset a magister in the north. So they sent me to Nylan, and I didn’t fit in there, either, because I couldn’t learn order-skills the way the others could. That was why they sent me to Swartheld as a clerk.”

  Rhiobyn’s mouth hung open.

  “You can stop gaping, Rhiobyn,” suggested Talanyr. “Hamor gets more than a few mage-guards from Recluce. Sometimes, Recluce even gets an ordermage or two from Hamor, no matter what they say.”

  Rhiobyn shut his mouth, if only for a moment. “But…”

  “It takes time to recover from nemysa poisoning,” Rahl replied, “and I need to learn more about the mage-guards.” After a pause, he added, “The mage-guards could always use another clerk, Taryl said.”

  “That’d be the truth,” said Talanyr. “We’re more than an eightday behind on reports as it is.”

  “Do you-write quickly?” asked Rhiobyn.

  “Fairly quickly. I was a scrivener for a while.”

  “People still copy books by hand?”

  “In most places except Nylan and Hamor, I expect,” ventured Talanyr.

  “But why? Printing is so much easier and less costly.”

  Rahl and Talanyr exchanged a quick glance before Rahl nodded to Talanyr.

  “Printing presses don’t work very well without order-magery, not the high-speed ones, because chaos breaks them down too quickly,” Talanyr began, “and Nordla and Austra don’t care that much for mages. Fairhaven has made it difficult for ordermages to remain in Candar anywhere east of the Westhorns.”

  “Austra and Nordla don’t speak Hamorian,” Rahl pointed out. “That means that the books would have to be translated first if they were printed here, and books are heavy. It would cost a-lot, to ship them.”

  “Who would want to do that when so few people would buy them?” continued Talanyr. “After all, Rhiobyn, how many books have you read lately?”

  The slighter mage-clerk looked to Rahl. “How many have you read?”

  “I was reading the World Geography and History…”

  “That’s good, but it’s dated,” said Talanyr.

  “There weren’t that many choices in the reading room for the checkers. I wasn’t interested in reading about steam engines and hoists.” Just how much had Talanyr read? Rahl wondered.

  “Better than the reports you’ll be copying tomorrow,” predicted Rhiobyn.

  LXX

  On sixday morning, Rahl was seated at a long table in the rearmost room of the mage-guards’ station in Luba, a small building tucked against the base of the eastern cliff of the mesa. The filing room had one skylight and no windows. The wooden surface was grained like oak, but different, and had an orangish shade to it, brought out more by an ancient oil finish.

  Thelsyn, a gray-haired ordermage with a weathered if unwrinkled face, stood at his shoulder! “Young Rahl, it’s simple enough. Each mage turns in daily reports of any incidents or occurrences. The task of clerks is to take the rough reports and turn them into final form. You make two copies, one fo
r our files and one to be sent to headquarters in Cigoerne. Each season, the reports are bound before being dispatched. If you have any questions about a specific report, set that report aside and wait for the mage who wrote it to check in with you. They’re supposed to do that twice an eightday. Most do.” The last words were delivered sardonically.

  “Yes, ser.”

  Thelsyn extended two sheets. “These are samples. Follow the example with regard to margins and letter size. You do know what margins are, I assume, since you are listed as once having been a scrivener?”

  “Yes, sir. Is a standard hand acceptable?”

  “Standard hand?”

  Rahl took out the pen and wrote out the words “standard hand.”

  “That’s standard hand.” He wrote another version of the words. “This is merchant hand.”

  Thelsyn looked at both examples, then laughed. “Whichever is faster and easier. They’re both better than anything anyone else can do.”

  Rahl decided to use standard hand. He picked up the pen and took the top report off the pile to his right, then took a sheet of the smooth beige paper and set it before him.

  “You must write well,” said Talanyr from the far end of the table. Rhiobyn was serving as the duty messenger. “Thelsyn never says that.”

  “One advantage of my humble past,” Rahl replied.

  “More writing and less talking.” Thelsyn stood in the doorway once more.

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl wondered how he’d managed to return from where he’d gone so quickly. He had seen the mage-guard leave.

  “Remember that.” Thelsyn turned. !

  Rahl returned his attention to the first report, from a mage-guard named Wenyna. Her writing was hurried but clear, once he realized that the hooked curlicue was an “e,” and he was able to finish two copies of her daily report quickly.

  The next one was a different matter. Rahl had to crosscheck the scribbling against the roster of all the mage-guards even to make out the scrawled name—Shaelynt. He looked at the scrawled symbols on the sheet before him, struggling to make out the words, feeling as though he were working out some kind of puzzle. The first half page took him longer than two complete copies of Wenyna’s report.