Natural Ordermage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The chaos-bolt attack ended as suddenly as it had begun, but by the time Rahl gathered himself together, he could detect no sign of free chaos… or of a chaos-mage. Either that, or the mage had such tight shields that he or she was effectively invisible to Rahl’s order-senses.

  Caersyn held on to the chair in which he had been seated. He leaned to one side, looking dazed. Rahl glanced past the stone post that anchored one of the iron gates to the piers, not that Rahl had ever seen it closed, and along the wall beyond it. He thought he sensed something, but he was looking for the duty pier guards, and they were nowhere around, either, and that was unusual.

  The faintest scraping sound alerted Rahl, and he turned to see six men in worn blue moving toward him from behind a donkey cart. Two had sabres, rather than falchionas, and one carried something like a billhook, while the other three had cudgels. Rahl glanced toward Caersyn, .but the mage-guard lay sprawled in his seat, moving slightly. Rahl couldn’t very well leave, although that would have been the sensible thing to do had he been there alone.

  Rahl had the truncheon out and immediately charged the man with the billhook before the man could lift the heavy weapon. Rahl got well inside both blade and hook. The truncheon went into the man’s throat, and Rahl’s knee into his groin. The billhook clattered on the stone.

  Then Rahl dodged the wild swing of a cudgel and struck across the fellow’s forearm, reinforcing the blow with order.

  He danced back, away from a wiry bravo with a sabre. Unlike the others, the man was at least a passable blade, and Rahl had to deal with him while trying to avoid the others as they closed on him.

  The other blade darted toward Rahl.

  Whssst! Whsst! Two chaos-bolts slammed into the second blade, and he went down.

  A weaker chaos-bolt burned the shoulder of a cudgel-wielder.‘

  The remaining blade danced to one side, as if to keep Rahl between him and whatever chaos-mage was coming to Rahl’s assistance. He moved again, and Rahl struck. The sabre went flying, but before Rahl could move to disable him, another chaos-bolt, one of the weaker ones, caught him full in the face, and he pitched forward onto the stone pavement.

  Rahl turned.

  Myala stood less than fifteen cubits away.

  The man who had carried the billhook was dead. So were the two blades. The others had run off.

  Myala looked at Rahl. “For an ordermage, you’re not bad.”

  “I’m very thankful you arrived.” Rahl looked up the mage-guard chair, where Caersyn sat, still looking slightly dazed. “Are you all right?”

  “I will be…” Caersyn shook his head. “That first chaos attack… it took a lot out of me. I could barely get those last two off.”

  “Chaos attack?” asked Myala.

  “I thought I’d wait for you here,” Rahl said. “We’ve always done that before. Just after I got here, someone .fired chaos-bolts at us. Then, right after that, those six came in.”

  “Against two mage-guards?”

  “Caersyn was knocked out for a bit,” Rahl explained. “They must have sent most of the chaos against him. I don’t know where the pier guards went.”

  “One had gone to relieve himself, and the other started running when the chaos started to fly,” Caersyn said. “I saw that.”

  “We’ll take the pier,” Myala said, looking at Caersyn. “You’re in no shape to finish your duty. You go find the undercaptain or the captain and tell him what happened. Have the guards send out another pier guard.”

  “Probably best that way,” Caersyn admitted. “You’re sure?”

  “What else can we do?” asked Myala. “It’s getting toward sunset, and the piers are clearing anyway.”

  Only after Caersyn was well away, and Rahl had dragged the three bodies and their weapons over to the. gate pillar and laid them out, did Myala speak. “Weak-assed excuse for a chaos-mage. And letting a guard go off… that’s inexcusable.‘ Why was he on duty? Do you know?”

  “He said he was filling in. Hegyr was too sick to stand duty. That’s what he said.”

  “I don’t like it. The weakest chaos-mage in the station with an ordermage.”

  Rahl had his own doubts, but he said, “They might not have known I was going to be here. They started the attack with chaos-bolts.”

  “Hmmm… that’s true.” Myala -gestured to the teamster moving southward and away from the piers. “Hurry it up. Time to clear the piers!”

  The driver flicked the long leads, and the wagon, laden with bales of wool, began to move a trace more quickly. Behind him were two vendors, pushing carts.

  “What about the Jeranyi crews?” asked Rahl.

  “Some have been going ashore, but they’ve been going like most crews… that’s in groups of two or three, or sometimes all alone.” She. gestured toward the three bodies. “They don’t look like Jeranyi. The others didn’t, either.”

  “So what were they after?” asked Rahl.

  “I don’t have any idea. That’s Why I sent Caersyn to get the undercaptain.”

  Just before the sun finished dropping behind the distant hills, three pier guards appeared with a cart. Two began to load the bodies onto the cart. The other took station by the gate.

  Suvynt had accompanied them. “I’m here to relieve you. The undercaptain asked if you would meet him at the duty desk to brief him on what happened.”

  “We can do that.” Myala’s words were clipped.

  Rahl could sense her displeasure.

  Neither spoke until they were a good fifty cubits from Suvynt.

  “Would have been easier if he’d just come out and seen it,” was all that Myala said.

  Rahl couldn’t help but feel that somehow the attack had been aimed at him, but how could he say that? He had not one shred of proof, only his feelings that it was all linked to the pickle barrels, the Jeranyi, and Shyret and the Nylan Merchant Association warehouses. The problem was that he couldn’t figure out any possible reason why the Jeranyi would want him dead. How did any of them even know who he was? And why would the Jeranyi even care?

  Almost as soon as they stepped into the mage-guard building and neared the duty desk, Craelyt appeared, as if he had been waiting for them.

  “I’m sorry that I couldn’t come out to see what happened, but the captain left word that I was to meet him here for something urgent.” Craelyt’s shields were even tighter than usual, and not a trace of any emotion escaped, but his voice was warm. “I heard that you both had a difficult time at the pier-guard station.”

  “You could say that, ser,” replied Myala.

  “Caersyn said that there was an attack on the pier-guard mage post,” Craelyt said. “I’d like to hear your account of what happened?” His eyes were fixed on Rahl.

  “After I finished sparring here, ser, I returned to the pier-guard mage post to meet up with Mage-Guard Myala…” Rahl related what had happened from the chaos-bolt attacks onward. He did not mention the Nylan Merchant Association wagons or the pickle barrels. “… and then Myala sent Caersyn to find you. He didn’t seem in any condition to finish his duty.”

  “He’ll have to have several days off,” Craelyt agreed. “Were you able to discover anything about the chaos-mage who attacked? Did you see who it might have been?”

  “No,” ser. There was almost no warning at all,“ replied Rahl. ”Then, as soon as Caersyn was staggered, the bravos and ruffians appeared.“

  “Did they say anything?”

  “No, ser. Not a word.”

  “Did you notice anyone entering or leaving the piers while you were engaged?” Craelyt turned to Myala. “Did you?”

  “I was close enough to see that no one did. The vendors and teamsters ran and stayed away until it was over.”

  “Do either of you have any idea what this was all about… or what they might have had in mind?”

  Rahl had an inkling of what might be involved, but nothing solid enough to be considered an idea, and he wasn’t about to tell Craelyt. Telling the undercapt
ain didn’t feel right, and Rahl in fact didn’t actually know. “I don’t know, ser. I thought it might have something to do with the Jeranyi ships, but Mage-Guard Myala has been watching them, and there’s nothing strange going on there.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I wouldn’t say quite that, Undercaptain,” replied Myala, “but we haven’t seen anything so far.”

  “Why do you think they might be a problem?”

  “Because, ser, we’ve never seen three of their pirate vessels in port for this long at any time since I’ve been a mage-guard,” replied Myala. “That suggests trouble.”

  Craelyt kept questioning them until he had asked the same questions in different forms at least three or four times. Then he smiled and looked at Myala. “I’m sure your report, and that of Mage-Guard Caersyn, will cover everything. You both have had a long duty. Go and get some rest.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Rahl followed Myala out of the station, but she did not even look back as she kept walking away, presumably to her home and quarters. Rahl could detect a mixture of both anger and apprehension.

  He watched her for a moment, then looked toward the quarters building and the mess. Finally, he turned toward it. He was hungry.

  XCVIII

  All through dinner, as he ate mechanically, Rahl kept thinking about the attack and all the pickle barrels on the Nylan Merchant Association wagons. It would have been better if the last bravo hadn’t been flamed, because they might have been able to find out who had been behind the attack. He frowned. That blast had come from Caersyn, but Caersyn wasn’t at the table, and neither was Hegyr.

  “You’re looking worried,” offered Vosyn.

  “More than that,” added Hewart.

  “How often do attacks on mage-guards happen?” asked Rahl.

  “Not that often, but they do happen,” replied Vosyn.

  “Usually at night,” said Niasl. “I’ve had two-in maybe ten years. Always with a renegade mage, like what happened to you. They know they have to distract or disable the duty mage-guard. It’s usually so that they can raid one of the ships while most of the crew is ashore.”

  Rahl nodded. What had happened to him just didn’t feel like that. “How is Hegyr? Caersyn said he was pretty sick.”

  “He’s better,” interjected Dalya from the women’s table. “He was hotter than burning cammabark this morning.”

  Cammabark! Vinegar! Rahl almost froze in his seat. Why hadn’t he remembered sooner? Was that what was in the pickle barrels? Another thought struck him—he shouldn’t have been able to smell the vinegar in pickle barrels because they should have been sealed more tightly. So the pickle barrels had been opened recently. But why would Shyret be in league with the Jeranyi?

  Rahl forced himself to finish his meal before excusing himself and heading in the direction of his room, but he didn’t enter it, but slipped out the side door and made his way through the dampish evening toward the main mage-guard station building.

  Nyhart looked up from the duty desk. “Evening, Rahl. You’re not doing some evening duty, are you?”

  “No. I was just thinking about something. Have you seen the captain?” ‘

  “No. He was supposed to meet with the undercaptain, but he never did. That’s what the undercaptain said. No one’s seen Captain Gheryk since midafternoon. He might be meeting the regional commander about die rebellion in the south. Do you want to leave a report for him? Or see the undercaptain? He’s around somewhere. He might be out on the piers.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Thank you.” Rahl smiled and made his way from the building. He didn’t want to talk to Craelyt, and he didn’t like the fact that the captain was nowhere to be found. Yet what could he do?

  He couldn’t just, report his suspicions, not after the captain had pointedly told him not to investigate anything to do with his past, and yet he didn’t feel that he could just let things happen, not the way he felt.

  Finally, he turned toward Swartheld itself and walked southward through the darkness beside the road from the piers. When he neared the pier-guard station, he raised the light shield, keeping well away from Suyynt. The night mage-guard turned and studied the area along the wall from the pier gate, but when Suvynt turned away, Rahl climbed up the low wall, still holding his light shield. That wasn’t hard, since the wall had been designed far more to keep wagons out of the pier area than to stop single individuals from leaving.

  Once on the other side, Rahl moved a good hundred cubits away from the piers before dropping the shield. Once he reached the section of the avenue where it divided into two sections, he crossed the pavement and took the walkway that ran down the middle, moving at a fast clip, truncheon in hand. Overhead, the leaves of the giant false acacias rustled in the slight evening breeze that brought a faint scent of cooking from somewhere.

  He passed a couple on one bench, and neither more than looked at him. Two young men nodded politely as they passed him, and Rahl only sensed mild apprehension. Then, as he neared another bench closer to the boulevard, someone sprinted away across the far side of the avenue. Rahl did not follow him.

  When he neared the Nylan Merchant Association, he could tell that Eneld’s cantina was still open, as much as from the boisterous voices as from the mixed odors of melted cheeses and fried meats.

  … sailors are a fearsome lot but never fear,

  A sailor’s gone so much he’s never here…

  Laughter greeted the last line of the song.

  Rahl shook his head. Even from across the boulevard, he could feel the diffuse white chaos, far stronger than the last time he had passed by, but he walked farther to the west before crossing the street, using a passing carriage as partial cover, and then headed back eastward.

  From a good fifty cubits away, Rahl could see that the warehouse gates to the Merchant Association were shut. He could also sense two guards, and possibly three, stationed in the courtyard near the gates. While the warehouse doors were also closed, Rahl felt that there were more than a few people inside.

  Before reaching the ironwork gates, Rahl raised his light shield, and then began to climb the brick wall, carefully, sand as quietly as possible. Just before the top, his left trouser leg caught on a projection or a rough brick, and he almost lost his balance and nearly tumbled backward. Breathing heavily, he hung on and lowered his leg, eventually working it free and creeping upward. At the top, he peered over, but did not see or sense anyone nearby.

  Climbing down was almost as difficult, because he did not wish to land hard enough to alert the guards. He finally stood in the shadowed corner between the warehouse and the outer wall, dropping the light shield and using his order-senses to survey the courtyard. .

  Two guards watched the gates, and three men were, a team before the stables under a single lantern. Across the courtyard, the door to the Association building was open. As Rahl watched, two other men each carried two large buckets inside, then returned almost immediately with their buckets clearly lighter, only to fill them from the barrel set just outside the door. From what Rahl could discern, both men were Jeranyi.

  He had to hurry, and he had no time to return to the mage-guard station. Girding his light shield around him, he moved quickly along the front of the first warehouse until he came to the door. He paused for a moment. There had been no light from the quarters above, and he didn’t sense any life there, and there should have been. Yasnela never left the quarters in the evening in the middle of an eightday, and Daelyt never left her. Rahl’s lips tightened.

  The warehouse door was latched from the inside, but he could smell vinegar, an odor so powerful that it forced its way out through the “narrow crack between the sliding doors. Rahl took another step, and his boot skidded off a rope that ran between the doors on the stone. He staggered but caught his balance.

  His truncheon was. too wide, but his small belt knife might be thin enough to reach the latch through the crack and lever it up. He eased the knife from his belt and slipped
it between the timbered edges of the two doors. The tip just barely reached the metal latch bar, but skittered off the metal.

  Could he somehow lengthen the end of the blade with order?

  Rahl concentrated on that, but either the order-extension wasn’t long enough or strong enough because the blade tip still skittered off the iron. Then he placed the blade tip against the latch lever or plate, concentrating on linking the two with order, and slowly sliding the blade upward.

  The latch unlocked with a muffled clunk.

  Rahl froze for a moment, certain that someone must have heard, so loud had the sound appeared to him. But the men harnessing the wagon teams didn’t even look up. After a moment, Rahl slowly eased the doors apart, just wide enough for him to slip into the dark warehouse. He managed to avoid the rope as well. Quiet as he tried to be, his soft footsteps echoed slightly.

  Even with his night vision, it was difficult to make out much in the dark space before him, but he used both vision and order-senses to survey the warehouse quickly. He did so a second time because all the racks were empty, and except for a row of barrels near the door, there were no signs of any goods anywhere. Not any goods… not a single barrel, bale, or crate. Not even a single amphora. Why was it totally empty?

  When he turned his attention away from the storage ea, he realized there was a figure lying on the stone floor beside the barrels. Rahl stepped closer. The dead man was Chenaryl, and his body lay sprawled on his back. His throat had been cut. Rahl glanced upward. How many had the Jeranyi killed beside Chenaryl, Daelyt, and Yasnela? He paused only for a moment. He didn’t have time to dwell on that, nor did he want to. Not now.

  Nine barrels beyond the body stood on their ends, the heads removed. The tenth smelled of vinegar and a long rope led away from it, the one that ran to the doors. Rahl inspected the nine quickly. All were marked as containing Feyn River pickles, but the staves inside were dry. One held a scrap of cloth caught between the edges of two staves.

  He nodded. The barrels had held Jeranyi, but why had they wanted such concealment? The tenth held cammabark—the rope was a long fuse. He didn’t have the answers as to why the warehouse was empty or why Jeranyi wanted to fire the Merchant Association compound, and he wouldn’t find them in an empty warehouse.