Colors of Chaos (Saga of Recluce)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Ser?”

  Cerryl glanced down.

  Diborl looked up at the young mage. “We’ve got two here need medallions—a cart and a hauler’s wagon.”

  “I’m coming down.” Cerryl walked to the back of the porch area, where he descended the tiny and narrow circular stone staircase. He came out at the back of the guardroom. From there he entered the medallion room, where a wiry farmer with thinning brown hair stood. Behind him was a hauler in faded gray trousers and shirt.

  The farmer had just handed his five coppers across the battered wooden counter to the medallion guard. Behind him, the hauler held a leather pouch, a pouch that could have held anywhere from several silvers to several golds, depending on the trade and the size of the wagon. That didn’t include actual tariffs, either.

  “Ser,” said the guard to the farmer, “Vykay, there”—he pointed to another guard who held a drill, a hammer, and a pouch that Cerryl knew contained soft copper rivets—“he and the mage will attach the medallion.”

  “Just so as I can get going.”

  “It won’t take but a moment,” Cerryl assured the man, who looked to be close to the age of Tellis, the scrivener with whom Cerryl had apprenticed before the Guild had found him and made him a student mage.

  The cart stood at the back of the guardhouse, a brown mule between the traces. The mule looked at Cerryl, and Cerryl looked back, then at the baskets of potatoes in the rear.

  “Medallion should go on the sideboard around here.” Vykay positioned the brass plate a handspan below the bottom of the driver’s seat. “That be all right?”

  “Might catch on stuff in the stable. A mite bit higher’d be better.” The farmer nodded. “New wagon. Old one not much better than a stone boat no more.”

  The guard raised the medallion and glanced at Cerryl.

  “That’s fine.”

  With quick motions, the guard used a grease stick to mark the wood, then took out the hand drill and began to drill the holes for the rivets.

  “Can remember when it was only three coppers,” the farmer said to Cerryl. “Before your time, young mage.” He offered a wintry smile. “Not be complaining, though. Do no good, and ’sides, I’d rather be using the White highways than those muddy cow paths they call roads.”

  Cerryl nodded, his eyes straying to the medallion Vykay had laid on the wagon seat—simple enough, just a rectangular plate with the outline of the White Tower stamped on it and the numeral 1, for winter, and the year.

  “Just about ready, ser,” Vykay announced, straightening, placing the medallion on the sideboard, and slipping the rivets/pins through the holes in the medallion and in the cart sideboard. Then came the offset clamps and two quick blows with the hammer. The guard glanced at Cerryl.

  The White mage nodded and concentrated, raising a touch of chaos and infusing the medallion and rivets. He could feel the heat in his forehead, not enough to raise a sweat, but noticeable to him. “There.” Cerryl turned to the farmer. “Your cart is allowed on all White highways for another year, ser. I must warn you that if anyone tampers with the medallion, you will need another. And…they could get hurt.”

  “I’d be knowing that, but I thank you.” The farmer offered a brusque nod and took the leads to the mule, flicking them and leading the cart away, walking beside the mule, rather than riding.

  Cerryl glanced at the second vehicle—a long and high gray wagon with bronze trim. The painted emblem on the side read: “Kyrest and Fyult, Grain Factors.”

  The hauler stood by the wagon. “If you could just replace…”

  Vykay nodded and looked at Cerryl.

  Cerryl extended his senses and bled away the remaining chaos, although there was so little left that no one would have been hurt, even if Vykay had removed the old medallion.

  Vykay produced a chisel and, with two quick snaps, removed the old medallion and then replaced it with the new.

  Cerryl added the chaos lock, then looked at the guard. “Is that all for now?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  With a smile, Cerryl slipped away and back up to his perch on the second level of the guardhouse. He glanced back northward over the highway, momentarily empty near the gates, though he thought he saw another wagon in the distance making its way through the gray-leaved hills toward Fairhaven. Because of the alignment of the city, he found it strange that the north gate actually controlled the travelers from Hrisbarg and Lydiar and the far east of Candar. It was also strange, as he reflected upon it, how much straighter the Great White Highway was in Gallos and western Certis than near Fairhaven itself—yet Fairhaven was the home of the Guild and the mages who had labored centuries to build the great highways of eastern Candar.

  Stamping his feet again, he walked back and forth on the walkway behind the rampart several more times, but his feet remained cold, almost numb.

  The bell rang, its clear sound echoing on the rampart, but Cerryl had already stepped forward with the sound of wheels on stone once more.

  A farm wagon stood before the guards. Three men in rough browns stood by the wagon. Three and a driver?

  “What have you in the wagon?”

  “Just our packs. We’re headed to Junuy’s to pick up some grain for the mill in Lavah.”

  Cerryl frowned. Lavah was on the north side of the Great North Bay, a long ways to go for grain. His senses went down and out to the wagon, and he nodded to himself, marshaling chaos for what would come, knowing it would happen, and wishing vainly that it would not. “There’s something in the space beneath the seat. Oils, I’d guess.”

  The driver grabbed an iron blade from beneath the wagon seat, and the gate guards brought up their shortswords automatically but stepped back.

  Cerryl focused chaos on the driver, holding back for a moment, hoping the driver would drop the blade, but the man started to swing it forward.

  Whhhsttt! The firebolt spewed over the figure so quickly he did not even scream. The blade clunked dully on the white granite paving stones beside the wagon. White ashes drifted across the charred wagon seat. The other three men did not move as the guards shackled them and led them into the barred holding room to wait for the Patrol wagon. The patrol would hold them until they were sent out on road duty.

  Cerryl was glad they hadn’t raised weapons. Killing the driver had been bad enough, and he wished the man had not raised the blade, but raising weapons against gate guards or mages was strictly forbidden, and rules were rules—even for mages.

  Two other guards began to inspect the wagon, then pulled open a door.

  “Good screeing, ser. Almost a score of scented oils—Hamorian, I’d say!” Diborl called up to the young mage.

  Cerryl managed a nod. His head ached, throbbed. Myral had warned him about the backlash of using chaos against cold iron, but he’d not had that much choice if he wanted to ensure none of the guards were hurt. Absently, he had to wonder about his ability to sense the oils. No smuggler expected to get caught, and the hidden wagon compartment had been prepared well in advance, perhaps even used before. Did that mean other gate guards were less able, or lazy? Or looked the other way?

  He pursed his lips, disliking all of the possibilities and understanding that he knew too little to determine which, if any, might be the most likely answer.

  Below, the guards carried the jars of oil, probably glazed with a lead pigment, into the storage room. The confiscated goods were auctioned every eight-day, with the high bidder required to pay the taxes and tariffs—on top of the final bid. The golds raised went into road building and maintenance, or so Kinowin had told Cerryl.

  Even if some smuggling succeeded, Cerryl still didn’t understand why people tried to smuggle things past the gates—at least things made of metal. Cerryl knew his senses couldn’t always distinguish spices from a wagon’s wood or cloth. Leyladin, the blonde gray/Black mage who was the Hall’s healer, might have been able to do that, but most White mages couldn’t. But even the least talented White mage could sense metal through
a cubit of solid wood.

  He shook his head, fearing he knew the answer. The Guild kept its secrets, kept them well. Cerryl still recalled the fugitive who’d been turned to ashes by a Guild mage when Cerryl had been a mill boy for Dylert, watching through a slit in a closed lumber barn door.

  As Diborl supervised, another guard brought out the two prisoners on cleanup detail to sweep away the ashes that remained of the wagon. Every morning one of the duty patrols brought out prisoners for cleanup detail, usually men who’d broken the peace somehow, but not enough to warrant road duty.

  Cerryl rubbed his forehead, then turned and glanced at the western horizon. The sun was well above the low hills, well above, and the gates didn’t close until full dark. Luckily, it was winter, and sunset came earlier. He couldn’t imagine how long the duty day must be in the summer, and he wasn’t looking forward to it.

  The overmage Kinowin had told him that he would do gate duty, on and off, for a season or two every year for the first several years he was a full mage, perhaps longer—unless the Guild had another need for him. But what other need might the Guild have? Or what other skills could he develop? He definitely had no skills with arms or with the depths of the earth, as did Kinowin and Eliasar and Jeslek. And he wasn’t a chaos healer, like Broka. The Guild didn’t need mage scriveners, his only real skill.

  So he could look forward to two or three years of watching wagons, to see who was trying to avoid paying road duties? Or trying to smuggle iron weapons or fine cloth or spices into the city?

  He turned and paced back across the walkway, then returned, hoping the sun would set sooner than was likely. His eyes flickered toward the empty and cold highway, a highway that would have seemed warmer, much warmer, had Leyladin been anywhere nearer.

  Yet even thinking of Leyladin didn’t always help. She was a healer, and he was a White mage, and Black and White didn’t always work out. Some Whites couldn’t even touch Blacks without physical pain for both. He’d held her hands, but that was all. Would that be all?

  He paced back across the porch again, almost angrily.

  II

  …IN TIME, AS the winds shifted, and as the rains fell less upon Candar, and as the fair grasslands of Kyphros turned into high desert, and as the Stone Hills came to resemble the furnaces wherein metal is forged, others in the rest of the world came also to understand the dangers posed by the Black Isle.

  Even the Emperor of far Hamor dispatched his fleets unto the Gulf of Candar, seeking the talismans of dark order borne by Creslin the Black so that they might be destroyed, lest the world suffer once more the same cataclysms as befell ancient Cyador.

  Though warned by those of the Guild of the great storms raised by the evil Creslin, the Emperor of Hamor thought that he alone would seize the talismans of order and thus raise Hamor to become first among all lands.

  In his greed and arrogance, the emperor sent more than a score of vessels, all filled with armsmen and weapons of every type and size, and those ships sailed into the port known as Land’s End and attacked the small keep therein, for Creslin was seeking the high and great winds far away.

  Yet, even in Creslin’s absence, Megaera the black-hearted raised mighty fires and turned many of the emperor’s ships into funeral pyres for sailors and armsmen alike.

  Creslin returned, with both his killing blade and the great winds, and all but a single ship perished, and all but a score of all those thousands of men who had sought the talismans of order perished as well.

  The single ship that remained Creslin rebuilt and refitted, as the beginning to the Black fleets….

  Colors of White

  (Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven)

  Preface

  III

  CERRYL NODDED TO the Tower guards on duty, although he didn’t know either by name, as he passed on his way to report to the overmage Kinowin.

  “Good day, ser,” the older guard returned.

  Cerryl smiled politely, glad that this day was drawing to a close, although it hadn’t been that eventful, unlike the time with the oil smugglers several eight-days before. Most days were quiet—and long.

  Kinowin’s quarters were on the lowest level of the Tower—and the door was around the corner to the left from the guard station—Derka’s door was the other way, not that Cerryl had been there, but Faltar had told him.

  Outside of the time when Jeslek had tried to insist that Cerryl had not succeeded in accomplishing his magely task—or rather when Jeslek had insisted that he had not set such a task—and the High Wizard Sterol had brought in Kinowin, Myral, and Derka to judge the situation, Cerryl had never really had much conversation or contact with the stooped, silver-haired Derka. Then…Cerryl had seen how much power the kindly voice and stooped posture concealed.

  Jeslek, thank the light, had been forced to admit he had set a magely task for Cerryl, whether he had so intended or not, and Sterol and the others had agreed that Cerryl was fit to be a full mage.

  Cerryl snorted as he thought about it. If sneaking into a strange city and killing the ruler with chaos fire and escaping unseen didn’t make for a magely task, he wasn’t certain what did. Then, because he was an orphan from a suspect background, he’d been held to a more difficult standard in many ways—except for one thing. Sterol had known that Cerryl had used chaos fire before the Guild had found Cerryl, and the High Wizard had let that pass. Cerryl’s father hadn’t been so fortunate—which was why Cerryl had ended up an orphan almost right after he was born.

  “Cerryl, ser,” he announced as he rapped on the white oak door. He didn’t mind reporting to Kinowin, the other Guild overmage that he knew of besides Jeslek, but that was because the big overmage had also surmounted poverty—and far more disciplinary actions than Cerryl—in becoming a mage.

  “Come in,” Kinowin’s voice rumbled.

  Cerryl eased into the room—so different from that of Myral or Jeslek. Myral’s quarters were filled with books and Jeslek’s almost bare of all but essentials. Kinowin’s walls were filled with colored hangings of different types and styles, but all of them featuring shades of purple, accented with other colors. His books were limited to a single four-shelf case on the wall beside the sole window. Even the table that held his screeing glass was covered with a purple cloth—trimmed with green.

  “I take it that nothing untoward happened today.” Kinowin’s lips curled into a friendly but sardonic smile, lifting slightly the purple blotch on his left cheek.

  “No, ser. Not a thing. There weren’t many wagons, and only the coach from Lydiar. Just two passengers, a grain merchant from Worrak and one from Ruzor.”

  “Wasn’t there an olive merchant from Kyphros the other day?”

  “Ah…two days ago, I think.”

  “Not much trade coming to Fairhaven at all, is there?” Kinowin nodded to the chair across from him. “We need to talk.”

  Cerryl’s stomach tightened.

  “No…you haven’t done anything wrong, and the great Jeslek has been quiet so far as you are concerned. He’s still out in Gallos raising more mountains. To protect the Great White Highway, he says…”

  Cerryl wondered. Jeslek claimed that such a use of chaos was to show the force of the Guild to the prefect of Gallos, but Cerryl doubted such was the sole reason.

  “…also,” continued Kinowin, “Jeslek’s been reporting cattle theft in the northern part of Kyphros. His scrolls indicate that the locals are complaining that the thieves are being allowed to steal Analerian cattle and take them to Fenard for slaughter. He’s sent a scroll to the new prefect—your ‘friend’ Syrma—suggesting that Gallos could use more evenhanded justice.”

  “Syrma won’t like that, not from the little I saw.”

  “No, he won’t, but Jeslek is convinced that Fairhaven must apply a stronger hand. Both Sterol and I agree…about the need for a greater presence.” Kinowin offered a short laugh. “That brings up what we need to talk about…. Sterol and I were talking the other day, and we decided that some
of the junior mages need to know more about what is happening. But…we’re telling you each individually. I’d like you to keep this to yourself. You may discuss it with me, with Myral, with Sterol—and with Jeslek, of course. You may also talk with other junior mages, but only about things which have in fact already happened.” Kinowin cocked his big head slightly to one side. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ser.” Cerryl frowned. “I think so. People are talking, but it’s not always right what they’re saying, and you need to make sure we understand what’s really happening. But you don’t want it spread all over the place, and there are some people who won’t be told everything because they—” Cerryl stopped as he saw the glimmer in Kinowin’s eyes. “I’m sorry, ser. Maybe I don’t understand.”

  Kinowin laughed and shook his head. “You understand. You even understand the intrigue. No wonder Jeslek worries about you. Just don’t share something like you just said with anyone but me or Myral.”

  Cerryl nodded slowly. He noted that the overmage had not mentioned the High Wizard Sterol or the overmage Jeslek.

  Kinowin squared himself in his chair, put both elbows on the table, and leaned forward. “You know that Syrma is now the prefect of Gallos. Lyam’s family—they are largely wool factors and timber merchants—is not pleased with the situation. Nor are the overcaptains of the Gallosian forces, especially a fellow by the name of Taynet. He’s the most senior of the overcaptains. What this means for the Guild is that we really can’t press Syrma for payment of all the golds that Lyam owed Fairhaven from when he was prefect.”

  Cerryl wasn’t sure how the intrigue of Gallos had anything at all to do with him or the Guild, but Kinowin wasn’t one for idle gossip.

  “The traders in Gallos have been bringing in goods from Recluce through Spidlar—wool, spices, even copper. The Black traders have also been bringing in Austran cotton and linen—and it’s cheaper than what comes from Hydlen. They’re shipping that copper from Southport to Spidlaria cheaper than our traders can cart it across the Westhorns.” Kinowin paused, cocking his head again, as if uncertain as to what else to say. “And they’re using the profit to buy our grains and tubers. They can raise grain on Recluce, but not enough.”