“It’s not stupid,” snaps Kadara. “Recluce has the Eastern Ocean. That’s nothing more than a highway.”
Dorrin knows she is right, and that his anger is at being on a road that isn’t even a highway. His legs and thighs hurt, and Kadara and Brede have each other. As the timbered gates of Vergren appear, Dorrin reins in Meriwhen and lets the two blades lead the way.
Although the timbered city gates are heavy, and the oiled iron hinges twice the size of Brede’s forearms, the gates have been fastened back against the gray stone. They have not been closed in years, except to work the hinges. Only a single guard is present, and she sits behind an overhead crenellation, surveying the three horses and their riders. A sense of whiteness surrounds the guard, but her expression does not change as the three pass underneath. Meriwhen’s hoofs click on the stones.
“Where to?”
“We’ll start at the central square,” Brede replies. “All towns have them.”
On the right side of the narrow street walk two women in boots, trousers, and heavy shapeless shirts. Each carries a large basket of damp laundry, but neither looks or speaks as the horses edge by.
Dorrin glances down an alley, but, unlike the alleys in Tyrhavven, there is no rubbish, no mud, only hard clay with a few weeds growing next to the rough plastered back walls of the buildings. He grins at a pile of horse droppings, even as a youth appears with a shovel to remove them. The boy keeps his eyes from the horses and darts back into a doorway.
“It’s quiet.” Kadara’s soft comment is the only sound besides the clicking of hoofs.
As if to disprove the assertion, a horse and wagon lurch out of an alley before them. The wagon bed is of oiled but unpainted oak, as are the high spoked and iron-banded wheels.
“Gee-ahh!”
In the wagon are covered baskets, neatly lined up. The driver wears the same shapeless trousers and shirt that the laundry women wore. Brede reins up, as do Kadara and Dorrin, while the wagon driver eases his way into the narrow main street.
Whuuu…uffffff…
Dorrin pats Meriwhen on the neck. “Easy, girl. Easy.” Extending his senses, he touches the baskets, then nods—potatoes. They follow the wagon southward toward an opening in the stone and plaster buildings.
In the center of the square is a flat stone platform, ringed on three sides by a low brick wall topped with a slate capstone. Dull red bricks pave the area around the platform, running perhaps two dozen cubits to the stone curbs that form an approximate square.
On the north side, facing the square, cluster three buildings which appear to be a drygoods, a butcher, and a cooper. The southern side boasts a long narrow building without description or visible activity. On the western side is an inn. A recently painted sign, in green letters, proclaims The Golden Ram. Under the old Temple letters is a stylized golden ram.
Brede studies the green and white awning shading the varnished and shining double oak doors. “Too expensive.”
“Obviously,” adds Kadara.
A heavy-set man, wearing leathers, and a double-bladed sword in a shoulder harness, stands by an older brown gelding.
Brede reins up. “I beg your pardon…”
“Speak up, big boy.”
“Lodgings? Somewhere less expensive than…?” Brede gestures toward the Golden Ram.
“Take the corner street there. Bunch of places down a ways.” The mercenary points to the southeast corner of the square, swells his cheeks as if he wants to spit in the gutter, then looks toward the unmarked building and swallows.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” mumbles the bearded man, untying his mount.
The farm wagon creaks around the square and out of sight along the southwest corner street. Less than a dozen people walk the raised stone sidewalks that front the buildings on the square.
“Shall we?” asks Brede.
Dorrin looks at the well-painted and orderly-appearing inn, dreading where they may end up in order to keep expenses low. A good half kay down the street, after inquiries at the Gilded Cup and the Trencher’s Board, finds them at the Three Chimneys.
“How much for a place to sleep?” asks Brede.
“A copper a night—that’s the common room. You provide your own blankets, pallet. Darkness, you can sleep on the planks if that’s all you have.” The thin woman innkeeper rakes her eyes over the trio.
“And the stable?”
“That’s two a night a horse, just hay and water. No grain.”
“What about food?”
“Plain and good. Soup and bread. Yellow cheese. Beer or mead. Three coppers each for soup and bread. A copper more for the cheese, and two for beer or mead. One for redberry.”
“Well…we’re hungry right now.”
Dorrin’s stomach growls, as if to reinforce the message.
The wiry woman looks the three over.
“Sit there.” Her bony finger jabs toward a corner table. “Less trouble that way. No blades out in the house. Understand?”
“We understand.” Brede smiles.
The Three Chimneys cannot properly be called more than a hostelry, not with only two bunkrooms and a single common room for eating. Personally, Dorrin would have preferred paying more and feeling less out of place.
An older woman, neither heavy nor thin, with silvered hair cut short enough to reveal long ears, appears behind Kadara. Her graying apron, bearing the signs of past stains, is freshly washed. “The regular, dears?”
“Regular?” stammers Dorrin.
“Soup, bread, and beer. That’s three coppers, and a lot less than anywhere else in Vergren.”
“How about redberry?” the healer asks.
“That’s still three, but I could make the loaf a little bigger.”
“I’ll have that.”
“The regular, with cheese,” adds Brede.
“And you’d be needing that, young fellow.”
“Just the regular.”
As the serving woman steps toward the kitchen, Dorrin looks around the squarish room. Less than half the tables are filled, certainly because it is well past midday, and at many of the tables sit older men, silently nursing mugs and little else.
“Wonderful place,” observes Kadara.
“Not much sense in spending coins we haven’t figured how to replace.” Brede responds.
Dorrin rubs his nose, trying to stifle a sneeze. “Aaaachooooo…”
“It’s not that bad.” Brede grins momentarily.
“Aaa…choooo…”
“Here you be, dears.”
Three chipped brown earthenware bowls land upon the table, followed by three equally chipped mugs, and three large, scraped, and bent spoons.
“And here’s the bread.”
True to her word, she supplies Dorrin with the largest loaf of the dark brown bread, although the smallest loaf—Kadara’s—is well over two-thirds of a cubit long. The server slips a small wedge of cheese onto the table before Brede. “Be you needing anything else, dears?”
“No, thank you,” Dorrin answers.
She bobs her head and is gone to pick up a mug and a copper from a fat and bald graybeard.
Brede breaks off nearly a quarter of the loaf and chews his way through it even before Dorrin has had two mouthfuls. Kadara has almost finished her section of the bread in the same time.
Dorrin uses the battered tin spoon to sample the dark substance presented as soup—lukewarm, salty, and bitter, but without anything that feels dangerous. He takes one spoonful, then another, chewing on the bread between spoonfuls.
“…how may I help you, your honors?”
Dorrin looks up at the forced heartiness of the hostel keeper’s voice.
Three guards in white leathers stand in the doorway, two men and a woman. The men are clean-shaven, and all are hardfaced.
“The only large table I have is there,” announces the wiry woman, pointing, it appears to Dorrin, right at them, rather than at the vacant adjoining table.
The senior guard looks away and points. A fingertip of flame appears before the face of the serving woman, who turns quickly, sees the white leathers, and scurries toward the three guards. “Yes, your honors?”
“Soup and cheese, with the good beer, not the swill that Zera says is all she has,” states the man.
“Same here,” adds the woman.
The last guard only nods, preoccupied with cleaning his fingernails with the point of his white-copper belt knife.
The gray-haired server retreats through the smoke to the kitchen, and the rest of those eating pointedly ignore the White guards.
Dorrin licks his lips as the woman guard looks in his direction.
“I won’t eat you, sweetie. Not yet…” She leers at him, and the scar on her left cheek imparts a twist to the leer.
“Knock it off, Estil,” snaps the leader. “He’s a decade younger, and one of those pilgrim healers.”
“Where was he when I needed healing?”
“Knock it off.”
“All right.”
Dorrin glances toward the doorway, trying to ignore the conversation about guard rotations, someone called Jeslek, and the unfriendliness of the people in Vergren.
“…centuries later, and you’d think we’d personally fired the old keep…”
A bearded man swings open the battered door and staggers out into the afternoon, where a fine and cold spring rain has begun to fall. A gust of chill damp air flows into the hostelry, cutting through the stale warmth.
Thhuummpp…
The serving woman is setting mugs and bowls before the White guards, efficiently and quickly.
“About time…”
The senior guard hands the server a coin of some sort, and she nods.
“Why do we have to eat here?”
“You know why.”
“I know…because we have to show up everywhere, and besides it’s easier on the Council’s treasury if we eat cheap…”
The three from Recluce exchange glances. Brede pops the last of his bread into his mouth, while Kadara tilts her mug all the way back. Mechanically, Dorrin slurps the last of the soup and chews the remaining bread crust, although his stomach is more than full.
“Let’s go.”
Dorrin reaches for his pack.
“So long, sweetie!”
Dorrin flushes. Kadara grins, and a faint smile creases Brede’s face.
“Estil…”
“He’s sweet—not like you.”
Dorrin looks away from the last exaggerated leer and stumbles into the afternoon drizzle.
“You certainly made an impression there.”
Dorrin ignores Kadara’s comments, and instead looks toward the rail where the horses remain tethered. “Now what should we do?”
“Check out the stable. Then we can walk over to the farm market we passed, see about supplies for going on.”
Dorrin pulls his waterproof over his shoulders and wipes the rain off his forehead. “It’s too quiet here. Nobody says anything. Or not much.”
“We’re outsiders. What do you expect?”
XXI
The high plains shake.
A ball of light flares around the single figure in white who stands in the midst of that eye-searing radiance.
Whhhheeeeee…rrrmmmmm…
Smoke circles from the hills that shudder upwards around the white wizard with the glistening white hair and the eyes like points of sun.
…rrrrmmmmm…thrummmbblle…
Still, the ground shakes.
In the distance a river shakes from its bed, and silvered waters pour southward, inundating what had been meadows. At a greater distance, buildings rock, and stone walls shiver. Some roofs collapse upon their hapless inhabitants.
The hills shudder yet higher, dwarfing even more completely the magician who has raised them, yet they do not threaten him nor the glistening strip of white stone that stretches westward.
…wehhhhheeeeeeee…cracccckkkkk…crackkkkk…
Across the Eastern Ocean, five men and women, garbed in black, look upon a mirror. Those who do not shake their heads frown. One man does both. He is tall and thin.
“He builds mountains to protect their road.”
“Yet they do not rise to crush him.”
“Is he the result of too much order in Recluce?”
“How could we have less? Already we pay a high price.” The dark-haired woman looks to the thin wizard.
“He will be the next High Wizard,” says the thin man.
“Getting to be High Wizard is easier than keeping the amulet,” observes the woman.
In the mirror, the smoke swirls around the blinding point of whiteness.
XXII
What did he expect from the people of Vergren? The words had worried Dorrin all through the afternoon and evening, through the eerie walk along nearly spotless streets that were tinged with unseen whiteness, through an evening supper of stew not much thicker than the soup of the midday, and through a near-sleepless night on the dusty planks of the Three Chimneys.
Sleeping on hard planks in a garret with Kadara and Brede is bad enough, but listening to the two nuzzle and coo is bad enough—even though they are polite enough, or circumspect enough, not to make total love until he is asleep or after he has staggered up and out in the morning.
He scratches a flea bite under his armpit. While he can persuade the creatures to leave him while he is awake, his healing talents do not work quite so well asleep—although more accomplished magisters can erect wards that work even while they sleep.
As they ride eastward out of Vergren, the fog swirls around them, and water drips from slate roofs onto the stone. Townspeople appear—like the spirits of ancient angels—in and out of the fog, their steps silent on the stone pavement. A clinking harness echoes down the street.
“Quiet,” observes Brede, and his words sound almost hollow.
“You said that yesterday,” snaps Kadara.
“It was quiet yesterday.”
With his senses ranging through the fog and mist, Dorrin gathers nothing beyond the unseen whiteness that oozes beneath the entire town, almost like an unvoiced grief. Are all towns ruled by the White Wizards so quiet?
Or is it the spirit of Vergren that still languishes? Because Montgren helped the Founders? Or because the people instinctively embraced order?
Dorrin shakes his head. The White Wizards must have some order. They cannot be totally chaotic, not if Fairhaven has successfully ruled most of Candar for the centuries since Creslin fled Candar. Yet Vergren oozes despair amidst its order.
Meriwhen whinnies and steps sideways to avoid a pile of manure.
“Dorrin?”
“…uhh…what?” The healer turns toward Kadara.
“You need to watch where you’re riding. Stop thinking about machines and whatever.”
“I was watching.” But he straightens himself in the saddle, and pats Meriwhen on the neck.
After the walls of Vergren fade into the morning mist and disappear behind the hills, the loudest sounds along the stone road are those of hoofs and the voices of the three from Recluce. Even the sheep graze silently, like so many miniature clouds drifting across the damp hillside meadows.
Brede and Kadara converse in low voices.
“…Spidlarian blade is too thin, not enough metal to stand up to a hand and a half…”
“You wouldn’t fight it that way…use the edges to slide…”
“…still think that the shortsword is best all around…”
“…not enough length to protect you…”
Dorrin yawns. He is supposed to stay awake listening to technical talk about blades? He shifts his weight in the saddle and casts his senses out toward the endless sheep. Noth
ing roams the hillsides but the sheep, the shaggy dogs, and an occasional big cat.
“…shields…”
“Too cumbersome for mounted work…”
The healer yawns, wondering how long the ride will be.
Midmorning passes, and the low clouds have still not lifted. One hillside looks like another, and the sheep in each meadow could have been the same sheep that the three had passed leaving Vergren.
“How do you tell one sheep from another?” Dorrin mumbles as he reaches yet another hill crest. The narrow road drops out of the rolling hills that they have ridden up and down, up and down, ever since they left Vergren. The clay-packed thoroughfare descends before the three exiles—mostly straight—to the town ahead, where it then winds through the houses like a smooth brown river. Perhaps a handful of stores rise on the far side of the town, just short of the line of trees that may mark a true watercourse.
Dorrin peers at the stone bearing the name Weevett on the right-hand side of the road. “Wonder if they make wool here.”
“Probably.” Brede inclines his head toward the stone wall to his left, and to the sheep beyond. “They probably card and spin it everywhere around here.”
“Why are we doing this?” Dorrin asks.
“Because we need to get to Fairhaven. You know that.” Kadara flips the sword into the air and catches the hilt, then replaces it in the scabbard.
“Show-off. I meant why are we going to Fairhaven at all?”
“Because we have to if we ever want to get back to Recluce.”
Dorrin fingers the staff in the lanceholder. “They’ll never let us return, no matter what Lortren said. Did you ever run into anyone who has?”
“Lortren,” offers Brede.
“Besides her?” Dorrin should have guessed. Of course, Brede and Kadara believe they will be allowed to return. They are blades, like the white-haired magistra. And perhaps they will be allowed to return—after demonstrating their repentance or whatever total acceptance of the Brotherhood’s goals that may be required.
For him, it is already clear, the price is at the very least his rejection of his dreams of order machines and his acceptance of an irrational concept of true order.
The Magic Engineer Page 9