Colors of Chaos (Saga of Recluce)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  With a deep breath, and ignoring the incipient headache his order and chaos manipulations were bringing on, he cloaked himself in the blur shield and slipped down the steps until he was in the shadows of the main corridor outside the study.

  “Natrey?”

  “Ser? How did you get there?”

  “I walked.” Cerryl smiled. “Have you seen Kalesin?”

  “No, ser. He left your study a bit ago…”

  Cerryl frowned. “He was supposed to bring me something, but I haven’t seen him.”

  “You want me to send some of the boys to find him?” Natrey grinned.

  Cerryl forced an amused smile. “Perhaps you should. Perhaps you should.” He let himself back into the study and forced himself to wait, rereading the three scrolls until he had them committed to memory.

  Kinowin was clearly telling him that the overmage had been able to shield Leyladin, but that wouldn’t last forever, and Leyladin was practically ordering him to return as quickly as he could get there.

  Cerryl continued to wait.

  Finally, there was a knock on the door.

  “Yes?”

  Foyst peered in: “Ser? We can’t find the mage nowhere. His mount be in the stable, his dagger be on his table, but he be nowhere.”

  “Are you sure?” Cerryl put a shade of annoyance into his voice. “He was supposed to bring me a report on the golds taken by the older traders before they fled or were executed. He had those records.”

  “Ser, beggin’ your pardon…”

  “It’s not your doing, Foyst. I’m not angry at you.” Cerryl pursed his lips. “Have you seen the mage Lyasa?”

  “Yes, ser. She was riding in.”

  “Good. If you would tell her I’d like to see her…”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Cerryl offered a quick smile and a nod. The door closed.

  He waited, but not nearly so long, before Lyasa, still in her white cold-weather jacket, stepped into the study.

  “You were asking for me?”

  Cerryl looked at her, then shook his head. “Kalesin has vanished. None of the lancers saw him go. I’d like you to come up to his room with me.”

  “You’re worried?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should be. I warned you, you know.”

  As he stood, Cerryl shrugged. “I know. I did what I could.” That is true enough.

  The two walked hurriedly up the two flights of steps, with Foyst following. Both mages kept scanning the staircase and landings.

  Once on the third floor, Cerryl looked around the room, as if he had not seen it earlier. “He left in a hurry, and he left everything behind.” He stepped toward the desk. “There’s something here.” Cerryl pulled out the half-written scroll from beneath the blotter and began to read it. He shook his head and handed it to Lyasa.

  “Read this.” Cerryl wandered to the wardrobe, looking through it cursorily. “Everything seems to be here.”

  “This looks like his writing.” Lyasa’s eyes widened as she read. After a moment, she looked at Cerryl. “I told you…What are you going to do?” She paused. “You suspected he would leave, didn’t you?”

  “He was nervous when he gave me the scrolls.” Cerryl laughed ruefully. “I forgot to tell you. I got a message from Anya demanding more golds and one from Kinowin suggesting I get back to Fairhaven, however I could. Both scrolls had been opened—most recently—and resealed with chaos. I sent the lancers after Kalesin…”

  “He must have known you’d find out.”

  “You’ll have to be most careful,” Cerryl told her.

  “I’ll have to be…You’re leaving?”

  “If I can, I’m returning to Fairhaven, before it’s too late. If it’s not already.”

  “Sterol will try to kill you.”

  Cerryl nodded. “But if I stay here, I’ll be even deader, because he’ll take Leyladin and Kinowin, too.”

  “I could go.”

  He shook his head. “If matters don’t go well, I may need a friend outside Fairhaven.” Cerryl didn’t like deceiving Lyasa, but she’d be safer not knowing how Kalesin had disappeared. The scroll Kalesin had written was enough to warn her, and she could say, truthfully, if anything happened to Cerryl, that she had known nothing about Kalesin’s disappearance.

  “How?”

  “I’m going to ask Layel for a trip on one of his ships. He might just agree.”

  “When it’s his daughter you’re trying to save?” Lyasa laughed. “You shouldn’t have any worries on that course.”

  “Not until I get to Fairhaven.” Then my real troubles begin.

  CLXIII

  CERRYL GLANCED PAST Layel, past the polished wooden railing of the Western Sun, toward the dark gray waters of the harbor and beyond, toward the Northern Ocean.

  Layel clapped Cerryl on the back. “Best I stay here, but Wandrel will get you there.” The balding trader grinned. “Better quarters here, and the crew is safer, too. The Western Sun’s a good ship.”

  “I’m sure she is.”

  “Besides, this way Wertel can send back more of that dried fruit and those tools and blades I agreed to get for the sawmill fellow. Still think he can make the kind of planks that the Sligan yards need, and that will mean more golds in tariffs.”

  Cerryl gave a half-smile. “I’m glad you came here.”

  “Except for the cold…I am, too. Don’t have to worry about what Muneat’s doing or whether I can get haulers or wagons…” Layel laughed. “Could talk your ear off, and you best be going.” The balding trader frowned and looked directly at Cerryl. “You sure you don’t want some guards once you get to Lydiar?”

  “No. Just a pair of mounts. No one will remember I was there.”

  “Mage stuff?”

  “Magery,” Cerryl confirmed.

  “You coming back soon?”

  “Probably not.” If you’re successful you’ll stay, and if you’re not…you’ll be dead—or mind-blind and working on the road crew.

  “Feared of that. Well…you know how I feel. Try to keep that daughter of mine in line.”

  “More likely, she’ll keep me in line.”

  Layel nodded a last time, then climbed slowly over the railing and scrambled down the gangway to the wharf. “She’s yours, Master Wandrel.”

  “Single up the lines!”

  Cerryl stepped back and watched as the crew began the effort to take the Western Sun out of the harbor and back to Lydiar.

  Toward what? Cerryl had kept checking the glass, watching Kinowin and Leyladin, but both seemed to continue their daily routines, from what Cerryl could tell, and he dared not use the glass on those he distrusted the most, fearing that alone would tell them too much.

  His eyes went to the north and the colder waters of the Northern Ocean beyond the breakwater.

  CLXIV

  CERRYL SAT IN the chair in Leyladin’s bedchamber, half-nodding off. He really needed to sleep, but he didn’t dare, not until he knew she was back in the house. Both horses were groomed and stabled, more quickly than he’d anticipated, because he’d been too tired to refuse Soaris’s help. Cerryl had washed and changed, since he hadn’t liked the way he’d smelled and he could do that while he waited.

  Outside the bedchamber window, the fall wind whispered through the late afternoon, not nearly so cold as in Spidlaria, though the trees had shed the leaves they would shed and the winter leaves had all grayed, giving the forests along the White highway between Lydiar and Fairhaven a depressing gray look, since no snow had yet fallen.

  He jerked awake and glanced toward the door. The mansion remained silent, except for the muted clanking from the kitchen where Meridis labored over something. He dozed off slightly, until he heard a door through his stupor and immediately awakened, glancing around.

  The bedchamber door opened, and Leyladin, still wearing a dark green woolen cloak over her healer greens, burst into the room. “You’re here! How did you do it? No one knows where you are.” The dark green ey
es contained both love and wonder.

  Cerryl smiled, feeling not nearly so tired. “A little magery. You remember I showed you?” He didn’t feel like explaining in detail how the blur shield didn’t alert chaos wielders and made those who used screeing slide over his image.

  “That was a long time ago…and you still amaze me.”

  “I’m here, and glad no one knows. Very glad.” For more than a few reasons.

  Her arms went around him. “It’s good to hold you.”

  “It’s good to be held—and to hold you.”

  After some moments, she stepped back. “Father?”

  “He’s fine. He’s already set up and bringing in golds, mumbling the whole time about how he’s too old to do it and how Spidlaria is too cold. Then he figures out some other business to set up and someone else to run it for him. He thinks he can sell timber to Spidlar.”

  Leyladin laughed. “Father.”

  “He’s safer there, I think. He’s a trader, and they’d rather have a trader, even one from Fairhaven, than armsmen and lancers and mages.”

  “Fairhaven…you don’t think it will be safe here?”

  “For your sisters…it’s safe. For your father or you or me?” Cerryl shook his head slowly, then drew her close again, holding on tightly.

  After a time, she disengaged herself. “How are you going to take on Sterol? Even Kinowin says you have to.”

  “Meet with Anya tomorrow and go straight to his quarters.”

  “That’s dangerous, trusting her.”

  “I won’t tell her I’m here. You send a messenger asking her to meet you in the fountain courtyard, but I’ll be there.” Cerryl shrugged. “I can defeat Sterol. That’s not the problem. I don’t want anyone to know I can do it. If anyone realizes I have that kind of power, they’ll turn on me because I’m so young—and so inexperienced.”

  “You’re scarcely inexperienced.”

  “That’s what they think, and I don’t want to take on all the older members of the Guild. Anya needs someone to run the Guild for her. It might as well be me.”

  “You’re playing a dangerous role, dear one. Trusting Anya for anything is like playing with a serpent.”

  “Tell me.” He rubbed his eyes. “Except Sterol is getting worse.”

  “Both Kinowin and Anya warned me about Sterol. Kinowin even suggested I stay away from the White Tower these days. I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Did he…Sterol…?”

  “No…nothing like that.”

  Yet. Cerryl swallowed.

  “Sterol is controlled by Anya.” Leyladin smiled sadly. “He doesn’t even know it. She says things so that he’ll do the opposite of what she says and not realize that’s what she wants.”

  “That’s the problem with her. Do you oppose her or support her? How do you ever know quite what she intends?” Cerryl glanced toward the growing darkness outside the bedchamber windows, stifling a yawn.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Not enough.”

  “Not nearly enough.” Her eyes danced. “Not for tonight.”

  Cerryl couldn’t help grinning.

  CLXV

  CERRYL WAITED IN the shadows of the pillars beside the entrance to the Council Chamber, on the way to the fountain courtyard, where he could see the courtyard, but not where Leyladin had told Anya she would be. Because heavy dark clouds swirled over the city and no lamps had been lit in the Halls that morning, the entry foyer was dark, gloomy.

  Most fitting in some ways. Cerryl glanced down the rear corridor of the foyer but could see no one nearing or in the front part of the fountain courtyard. He maintained a slight version of his blurring shield, not wanting to be seen nor to draw attention.

  Two messengers in red scurried past.

  “Redark…couldn’t decide if he wants…water or wine…then changes his mind.”

  “Better than the High Wizard…claims wine spoils before he can drink it…blames us for bringing it.” The second crèche-raised messenger glanced over her shoulder, her eyes skipping past Cerryl as if she had not even seen the mage.

  “Quiet…”

  Coming the other way was a student mage, one of those Cerryl didn’t know, a dark-haired young man with a wispy goatee, of the type that poor dead Bealtur had tried to cultivate. The apprentice also passed without noticing Cerryl.

  A red-haired figure descended the steps from the Tower, then moved silently down the center of the foyer toward the rear archway into the fountain courtyard.

  Cerryl let Anya pass before stepping out of the shadows and dropping the shield. “Leyladin’s not coming. I prevailed upon her to request your presence.”

  Anya turned and flashed her bright smile. “Why…Cerryl…you have grown even more cautious.”

  “Coming to Fairhaven was not cautious, Anya. Best I be cautious when I can.”

  “You also have skills some know little about. I sensed no one nearby.”

  “That was because you sought Leyladin and not me.”

  “There’s always more to you than meets the eye.”

  “Thank you. I would hope so, since not that much meets the eye. When one is not physically imposing and does not swirl vast amounts of chaos around…” Cerryl shrugged, then drew her back next to the pillars, not into the shadows, for that would have alerted the suspicious, but along the side of the thoroughfare, as though their meeting were merely a conversation begun in passing.

  “You wish something of me?”

  “I received a message.” Cerryl raised his eyebrows.

  “Ah…yes. Perhaps I was precipitous. Or just wished to see if you would keep your word.” Anya’s smile faded.

  “I would suggest you gather those you can trust to stand ready when we go to see Sterol.”

  “He will not wish to see you.”

  “You will not request that. You will bring me.”

  “And if I do not?” Anya’s smile was almost coy.

  Cerryl forced a shrug. “Then you will suffer through many more years of Sterol as High Wizard…until he grows tired of your taking pleasure elsewhere—if he has not already.”

  “Do not be so coarse, Cerryl. It does not become you.” Anya arched her eyebrows. “How would you be any different? I assume that is what you want?”

  “I have Leyladin, and that leaves you free to pursue…what you wish, besides power, of course.”

  “There is a certain attraction to that—but that assumes you can defeat Sterol.”

  “If I cannot, well, then you and Sterol are well rid of me, and you can claim I forced you to bring me to the White Tower. Sterol will believe that of a female mage.”

  “You are getting more devious as you age, Cerryl.”

  “I have watched you, Anya, to learn what I can. Why did you really summon me?”

  “Because this time the amulet has poisoned him.” Anya lowered her voice to a murmur, and her bright and false smile dimmed into something sadder—and truer.

  “His scrolls seem the same to me,” Cerryl said mildly. “Impatient and self-centered.”

  “Do you believe that? Truly?” asked the redhead. “Once he talked, as you have, of making Fairhaven great again. Now he demands golds and berates the rulers of other lands, and we must send lancers to protect the mage advisers—or recall them. He does nothing about the Black demon smith who fled to Recluce.”

  “Where is Gorsuch? Still in Renklaar?”

  “Where else? He can control the port there, and there’s less danger than in Hydolar. Duke Afabar is even more unpredictable than his predecessors, but he’s Asulan, and they’re known for that.”

  “Disarj is in Jellico?” Lining his purse as Shyren did, no doubt.

  “You know that already, Cerryl.”

  “So…what else has Sterol done that shows this…poisoning?”

  “He’s turned a messenger to ashes because the lad brought him sour wine. He’s done the same to two apprentices.” She paused. “One might have merited it, but even Broka was aghast at the
second. Esaak remonstrated with Sterol, and the High Wizard threatened to send Esaak, at his age, to Naclos. Then he asked him to report on the sewer tunnels from the Halls.” Anya paused.

  “And what of the problem of the smith and Recluce?”

  “The Guild asks for action, and he will not act. I have asked, and he will not act.”

  So Anya does want to act against the smith. She really does. “He does not listen to anyone?”

  “Has he ever? Need I say more?”

  Cerryl nodded slowly. From what he could tell, every word Anya spoke, she had believed. Some he even believed. “No. Who can you call upon…today?”

  “Today we could summon but Fydel, dear faithful Fydel, and two of the younger mages—Isepell and Rospor. You did not choose the best of days.”

  Cerryl inclined his head. “Shall we go? Fydel must be somewhere near.”

  “We might as well.”

  They passed no one Cerryl knew on the way to the rear Hall that held Fydel’s quarters, but that was because there were few indeed left in the Halls that Cerryl knew—Kinowin, Esaak, Broka, Redark, and Kiella, now that the apprentice had been made a full mage. All the others Cerryl had known were either in the peacekeeping Patrol—and not in the Halls—scattered across Candar or dead. Which is why you need Anya.

  Fydel’s mouth opened, then closed as Anya and Cerryl stepped into his quarters.

  “Cerryl has returned to put things to rights with Sterol,” Anya said briskly, without her usual smile. “We need to move quickly.”

  “Now,” added Cerryl.

  “I like this not.” Fydel paced back and forth across his narrow room. “If Cerryl cannot defeat Sterol, we are dead.”

  “If Sterol remains High Wizard, you are dead,” Cerryl said bluntly. “He already knows Anya would rather spend her time with you than with him. He only waits for a way to assign you some impossible task, such as becoming the new mage adviser to Duke Afabar.”

  Fydel fingered his beard. “I will stand ready, but I don’t wish to be in the meeting.”

  “You would not be there for this,” Anya said quietly. “I must ask him to act on the Guild’s wishes, and he must refuse. There must be a reason.”