Recluce Tales

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Good technique … but you have to finish!” The majer is breathing hard. “Keep at it!”

  By the end of half a glass, Alyiakal can slip, parry, or avoid almost every attack his father brings to bear, but he is sweating heavily, and his eyes are blurring when Kyal abruptly says, “That’s enough for this evening.”

  Alyiakal lowers the wand.

  “You worked hard, and your defense is much better. Just apply yourself that hard to your studies, and you shouldn’t have that much trouble.”

  “I’m still bruised in places, ser.”

  “At your age, that’s to be expected.” His father nods. “You’re free to do what you will until dark. Don’t go too far. If you’re going to walk the wall road, don’t forget your sabre.”

  “Yes, ser. I won’t.” Alyiakal is sore enough that he isn’t certain he wants to go anywhere. At the same time, being free for a glass or so is a privilege not to be wasted. Still …

  He decides to at least take a walk, if only to show that he appreciates and will use the privilege. He follows his father inside and carefully racks the wand, then goes to wash up and cool down.

  Less than a quarter glass later, he walks out the front door, the ancient Mirror Lancer cupridium blade in the scabbard at his waist. He does not breathe easily until the officers’ quarters at Jakaafra are more than a hundred yards behind him. Before long he is walking southeast along the white stone road paralleling the white stone wall that contains the northeast side of the Accursed Forest. That wall is five cubits high and extends ninety-nine kays southeast to that corner tower where it joins the southeast wall.

  He glances to his right. Between the wall and road, there is neither vegetation nor grass, just bare salted ground. To the left are fields and orchards, and a few cots and barns, fewer with each kay from Jakaafra … until the next town, kays away.

  He keeps walking along the road flanking the white wall, glancing back, but he sees no one, and no Lancer patrols, not that he expects any. While his eyes remain alert for any movement, especially near the wall, his thoughts consider what had happened during his blade practice … and how he had not previously thought of using order to help in using a sabre.

  How else might I use order? He doesn’t have an answer to that question, but he does not have time to pursue it because, some fifty yards ahead, at the base of the sunstone wall is a black beast, a chaos panther, lowering itself, as if to spring and charge him. He draws the antique Lancer sabre, knowing that its usefulness against such a massive beast is limited at best.

  Then … the black predator is gone, and a girl—a young woman, he realizes—stands beside the wall. He starts to walk toward her … and as suddenly as she was there, she is gone. He looks around, bewildered, but the salted ground between the patrol road and the wall is empty—for as far as he can see.

  Carefully, if unwisely, he knows, he moves toward where both the black catlike creature and the young woman had been.

  Once there, he studies the ground. There are boot prints, but no paw prints, and the boot prints lead to the wall, not away from it, as if someone had walked from the road to the wall. He can find no boot prints leading away from the wall.

  A concealing illusion? It had to be, but he can sense neither the heavy blackness of order nor the whitish red of chaos.

  Finally, he turns and begins to walk back home, thinking.

  II

  Alyiakal blots the dampness from his forehead as he steps into the coolness of the quarters. The walk from the dwelling of Magus Triamon in Jakaafra proper was not short, and the summer day had been warmer than usual … and summer around the Accursed Forest was sweltering on the best of days. After standing for a moment in the small entry, he walks into the library, takes down two night candles in their holders, and sets them side by side on the writing desk. Then he uses a striker to light one, an effort that takes more than a few attempts.

  Following Triamon’s instructions, he concentrates on the lit candle, as much with his senses and thoughts as with his eyes. In time, he begins to get what is almost an image of golden reddish white around the tip of the candle wick … as well as a faint blackish mist above the point of the flame. Yet he sees neither the white nor the black with his eyes. Of that, he is certain … but they are there.

  Next, he concentrates on replicating the pattern of golden whiteness around the tip of the wick of the unlit candle. Sweat beads on his forehead. Nothing happens.

  “You must not be doing it right,” he murmurs to himself.

  He shakes his head, then closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. Finally, he concentrates once more. The wick of the unlit candle remains dark.

  Do you need to look at the candle?

  This time, he closes his eyes and tries to visualize the dark wick, and the pattern of golden whiteness around it. He opens his eyes quickly, only to see a tiny point of redness, visible to his eyes, wink out.

  “You can do it,” he says quietly, redoubling his efforts.

  Sweat is running into his eyes a quarter glass later when the candle flickers alight … and stays lit. Alyiakal only allows himself a brief smile and a moment of rest before he blows out the candle and repeats the effort. After a deep breath, he once more blows out the candle … and relights it—just by focusing order on chaos.

  He hears the door open, and the heavy footsteps of his father, steps seemingly far too ponderous for a man as small as the majer.

  “What are you doing with the candles?” asks Kyal, not quite brusquely.

  “Practicing an exercise that Magus Triamon showed me. He told me to work on it until I could do it instantly.”

  “Lighting a candle?”

  “Lighting it without a striker, ser. He says it’s the first step in mastering chaos.”

  Slowly, Kyal nods, as if he is not certain about the matter.

  At that moment, there is a series of knocks on the front door, followed by a loud voice. “Majer! Ser!”

  The majer turns and walks swiftly from the archway to the front door, which he opens.

  Alyiakal does not follow, but listens intently.

  “Majer Kyal … ser … it’s happened again.”

  “What?” snaps the majer, whose voice is far larger than his stature.

  “Another dispatch rider is gone. The morning patrol found his mount and the dispatches. There’s no sign of him. The men claim they saw a black chaos cat, one of the big ones. It was prowling outside the wall, just to the southwest of the northern point.”

  “Send a squad with fully charged firelances. I’d like a report of what they find. Or what they don’t.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Kyal closes the door and walks back to the archway into the small library. “We’d best eat early. There’s no telling when we’ll get another chance.” He pauses. “Are you finished with the exercises?”

  Alyiakal nods. “I did what the magus wanted.”

  “You can tell me about it at supper. We need to wash up. I’ll tell Areya to get the plates ready.”

  When the two are finally seated at the table, Areya sets a platter of mutton slices covered with cheese and a yellow-green glaze of ground rosemary. One smaller platter holds lace potatoes, and another thinly sliced pearapples.

  Kyal serves himself, then passes each platter to Alyiakal. “What about the exercises?”

  “Every flame holds both chaos and order, but there’s much more chaos. Magus Triamon taught me how to sense both order and chaos in the flame. He says that’s the easiest way to sense them at first. Once I could sense them, and he made sure of that by swirling the patterns, he made me try to move the chaos myself. Then he sent me home with the exercise. That was to light a candle, and then learn to light another one by duplicating the pattern of chaos around the wick. It took a while, but I did it three times in a row. Next, I have to light a candle without using another candle as a pattern.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever be able to match a full magus?” asks the majer.

&n
bsp; “Magus Triamon thinks I can … if I keep working.”

  Kyal nods slowly. “I’d advise you to work very hard, Son.”

  “I will, ser.” After a silence, Alyiakal looks at his father. “Is that because I will not match you in might, ser?”

  Kyal laughs. “Oh … you’ll be able to do that in another year or so. It looks like you’ll be taller and broader than me. No … it’s because too many Mirror Lancers are being killed fighting the barbarians who swarm across the grass hills. We need better weapons. Perhaps you’ll be able to become a great enough magus to create them. Even if you don’t, the Magi’i are the ones who keep our weapons charged.”

  “You don’t want me to be a Lancer officer like you?”

  “I’d like it very much. But the son of a Lancer majer from Jakaafra is likely to do no better than his sire, if his talents are limited to the blade and skill at arms alone. Why do you think I insist on your reading about tactics and logistics?”

  “But … Magus Triamon…”

  “You may become a great magus. You may not, but a Lancer has three weapons—his sabre, his firelance, and his mind. Firelances are powered by chaos. If you do follow in my steps, the more you know and the more you can do with chaos, the better you will be with your weapons. The more you study with the magus, the more you will know what I cannot teach you, and that will sharpen your mind even more.” Kyal clears his throat. “There is one more thing. All the senior Mirror Lancer officers come from the great families of Cyad. If you wish to rise farther than I have, you must become more capable than all of them. You must be so clearly so superior that none can contest you.” Kyal smiles wryly. “That, you will find, is true in all areas where a man must make his way.” His words turn sardonic. “At times, even that is not sufficient.”

  Alyiakal sits, silent. Never has his father talked so bluntly.

  “It’s time you began to learn more of how the world works … really works. Now … eat your supper. I’ll have to leave soon to see what that squad has found. You can walk a bit tonight, but go the southeast way.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “And be careful.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Once they finish eating and the majer leaves the quarters, Alyiakal fastens on the old swordbelt and scabbard, checks the sabre, and then slips out into the early evening air, still steaming, but not quite so unbearable as it had been several glasses earlier. Once he is away from the quarters buildings of the Mirror Lancer outpost, he studies the wall even more closely, but he sees no sign of anyone or anything on the road or near it.

  Then, in the early twilight, when his eyes move from the small stead on his left to the cleared and salted strip of land on his right, he sees a large black panther cat crouched at the base of the sunstone wall. Where did that come from?

  He stops and studies the beast. While his hand rests on the top of the hilt of his sabre, he does not attempt to draw the weapon. The black panther cat’s eyes remain fixed on him. There is something … something he cannot fathom … yet he has no doubt that his sabre will likely not suffice against such a creature. What will?

  Fire! All wild animals fear—or are wary of—flame. Can you create a flame large enough to startle it? He smiles. It cannot hurt to try.

  He looks directly at the panther cat, then concentrates on replicating the flame pattern of a candle—a very large candle.

  A flare of light flashes up in front of the creature … then vanishes.

  Alyiakal feels as though his head has been cleft in two, and for several moments he cannot move.

  Abruptly … the giant cat vanishes. A black-haired young woman, scarcely more than a girl, he thinks, stands there. She laughs. “Fair enough!”

  “Who are you?” he asks, moving forward, if slowly.

  “A girl of the forest and the town,” she replies. “Nothing more.”

  He laughs softly. “Nothing more? When you can take on the semblance of a giant black panther and then vanish?”

  She frowns.

  Now that he is closer, he sees that her eyes are as black as her hair, for all that her skin is a lightly tanned creamy color. “I saw you do that eightdays ago. You didn’t really vanish, did you? You just made it seem so.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I followed your boot prints, and you climbed over the sunstone wall into the Accursed Forest.”

  “It’s not cursed. It’s just different.”

  “You’ve actually been in the … forest … and you’re alive?”

  “You sound so surprised. Why?”

  “Lancers die every season from attacks by the black cats or the stun lizards.”

  “That’s because they consider the cats and lizards enemies, and the cats and lizards can feel that.”

  “I think it’s more than that,” says Alyiakal, looking directly at her. Up close it is clear she must be at least several years older than he is; it is also obvious that she is striking. Not pretty, but something beyond. What that might be, he is far from certain.

  “Can you use that blade?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must be Alyiakal.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Magus Triamon said it was a pity you were already so proficient with such a weapon. No one else near Jakaafra uses a blade and can also sense both black and white.”

  “You’re obviously far better at that than am I.”

  “I’m older.”

  “Not that much,” he protests.

  “You’re young, and you’re kind. Trust me. I am older.”

  “What do you do in the forest?”

  “You don’t have to do anything in the forest.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She smiles. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Then show me.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “If anything happened to you, your father would seek those responsible. Magus Triamon would have to flee or die, and I could never see my parents again—if they survived your father’s wrath.”

  Alyiakal thinks, then says, “Could you show me some of the forest from the wall?”

  A smile that becomes a wide grin crosses her lips. “You’d do that after all the Lancers your father has lost?”

  “How do you … how much do you know about me … and my father?”

  “He’s in charge of the Mirror Lancers here in Jakaafra, and you live with him in the quarters, and you study with Master Triamon.” She shrugs. “Other than that … very little, except that you have courage and are willing to look beyond walls.”

  “Will you show me?” he asks again.

  “Since you’re asking. But you must promise not to enter the forest.”

  “You said it wasn’t dangerous.” He offers an impish grin.

  “It isn’t … if you know what you’re doing. You don’t.”

  Alyiakal can accept that. “I won’t.”

  “Then climb up.” She turns and scrambles up the sunstone so quickly that she is looking down at him before he even begins.

  He discovers that the stone is smoother than it looks. He almost loses his grip twice, but soon he is perched on the flat surface of the wall beside her, looking into the part of the Accursed Forest that cannot be seen from the wall road.

  Less than thirty yards from the base of the wall beneath Alyiakal is the rounded end of a pool, whose still waters look to be a clear deep green in the gloom created by the high canopy of the taller trees and the lower canopy formed by the undergrowth, trees still taller than any Alyiakal has seen anywhere outside the Accursed Forest. A long greenish log lies half in, half out of the water, except that when the log moves, Alyiakal realizes that it is a stun lizard, not that he has ever seen one, but only drawings of the beasts.

  “The stun lizard … are they all so big?”

  “That’s a small one. Some of them are more than ten yards from snout to tail, and they can stun an entire sq
uad of Lancers.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Shhhh … watch.”

  An enormous black panther pads along the side of the pond opposite the stun lizard, which freezes back into resembling a log. A cream-colored crane with silver-green wings alights at the far end of the pond, standing motionless for the longest time. Then, suddenly, the long beak stabs into the water and comes up with a squirming flash of silver.

  “Try to see the order and the chaos in each of them,” she suggests.

  Alyiakal had not thought of that, and even as he wonders why he should, he attempts what she has suggested. At first, all he can sense is swirling flows of order and chaos … but as he keeps watching, he can soon discern that the order and chaos within each of the forest creatures is locked in a tight pattern, and that while the patterns are different, there is something about them that is the same.

  “You need to go,” the woman who looks like a girl says quietly.

  He glances to the west. While he cannot see the sun, the angles of the shadows tell him that it is far later than he realized. Has that much time passed? He looks to her. “Thank you.”

  After he drops to the salted ground beneath the wall, he looks back up. She is still there, looking at him.

  “You didn’t tell me your name,” he says.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s better that way.”

  “Why don’t you want me to know your name?”

  “I don’t care if you learn my name … just so long as you don’t discover it from me.”

  Then she smiles … and vanishes.

  For several moments, Alyiakal can sense a web of darkness on the wall, but he sees nothing. Then the darkness drops away, leaving the top of the wall empty of order … and her.

  He turns and begins the walk back toward Jakaafra, walking quickly and hoping he will not be so late that Areya will tell his father.

  III

  When Alyiakal arrives at the small square dwelling under the canopy of the overarching oak trees on twoday, as often occurs, he has to wait for Magus Triamon to open the door and admit him. Rather than sit on the bench on the porch, he finds himself pacing back and forth until Triamon opens the door and appears.