The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Crackkk… thrappp… crackk… The canvas on the outside trading tables cracked almost like trees breaking in a storm as we walked through the center of the market square. Less than half the booths on the Recluce side of the square were occupied, and but a handful on the outland side. A man in pale green browsed at the woodworker’s stall, and the same youngster sat on the stool. I grinned, but he continued to watch the customer.

  Just a handful of people, mostly dangergelders or members of the Brotherhood, wandered around the square.

  “There’s a weapons table.”

  “You want to see what’s there?” I asked. “It won’t be as good as what you have.”

  Without stopping, Krystal looked sideways at me, raising a dark eyebrow on a face more tanned than when she had arrived in Nylan. Her natural pace nearly matched mine, despite the difference in our height. “What I have? I have nothing except a belt knife and a small cutting knife. You expect me to step out in Hamor or Candar with those alone?”

  “Sorry.”

  Krystal stopped in front of the table.

  On light-blue felt were laid out a number of blades. A thin man with a waxed mustache, ropy arms, and a gray leather vest sat on a stool opposite us. His expressionless black eyes met mine.

  I looked through him. After all, ‘I wasn’t shopping for blades.

  Crackkk… The canvas of an empty table snapped in the wind, and the sting of salt air brushed my face.

  The proprietor transferred his unspoken demand to Krystal, who had lifted one of the thinner blades, the plainest one on the table. Even to me, it was the best. Not that I really wanted to even touch it.

  “You like that one?” His deep voice was flat, almost expressionless, like his eyes.

  She set the blade back on the felt. “I prefer this style… to…” she gestured at a scimitar with a swirled and gilded hilt and guard. “Do you have any others like it?”

  In the hands of the dark-skinned trader appeared two other blades. Around one glimmered scabrous blood-red force-swirls. Just looking at that unpatterned display turned my guts.

  Krystal reached for it.

  “No! Not that one.” I spoke before realizing it. But I didn’t want her even to touch the blade, not with the real hint of evil embodied in the chaos. For the first time I saw, really saw, a clear distinction between honest chaos and true evil.

  Crackkk… The flapping canvas punctuated the moment.

  Krystal frowned, but her hand stopped short of the hilt.

  “It is said to be cursed,” admitted the trader. His voice was still flat.

  My eyes focused on him, as they had on the blade, but discerned nothing, not that I would have known what to look for.

  “Try the other one…” I suggested.

  “You’re telling me about swords?” Krystal’s voice was anything but musical, almost waspish.

  I shrugged. “The pattern’s…” How could I tell her what I saw? How can you say that a pattern of force-swirls that no one else sees says that the sword will lead its wielder from chaos into depravity… or worse? How can you describe a set of unseen forces that are so chaotic that their only coherence is opposition to order? I had to shrug again. “Please… Krystal… just trust me.”

  An odd look, one I couldn’t identify, passed across her face and was gone.

  The trader looked at me. “You are an apprentice master, then?”

  His flat voice bothered me. Something was missing, although I couldn’t say what. “I am what I am,” was my answer-conceding nothing, admitting nothing.

  He inclined his head slightly, but waited for Krystal.

  “Lerris… what about the other blade?” This time she made no movement toward the sword.

  The second blade, slightly smaller, showed no force-swirls, only the honesty of forged metal.

  “It’s an honest blade, not turned to any use.”

  Krystal took it gingerly, then examined it in more detail, studying the metal in the sunlight. She did all the things with blades that people who like them do to discover whether they might be right for them, like flexing them and waving them around, and balancing them to determine whether they are hilt-heavy or blade-heavy.

  She liked it, that I could tell.

  So I studied the trader. Assuming most people had a soul, or that inner spark that passes for it, he didn’t. There was no life beyond the physical, and I tried not to shiver.

  That didn’t make his wares either good or bad, but it meant looking them over most carefully, and I wasn’t sure I was the one to do that. But the blade seemed all right.

  Krystal set the sword on the felt, slowly.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Ten gold pennies.”

  Krystal looked at the blade. “It’s good, but you could buy a Recluce ordered blade and a scabbard for that.”

  “It’s not ordered.”

  I understood immediately. “That’s an advantage in Candar, but not for us.” I shrugged, and started to turn.

  “Eight…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Krystal said quietly.

  “Six…”

  The west wind picked up, swirling my short hair.

  Cracckkk… crackkkk…

  “Five and a silver,” suggested the trader.

  “Four and two silvers,” I countered.

  “Done, apprentice.” His voice was still flat.

  “Lerris…”

  I ignored Krystal, knowing she could not pay for the blade; but she had not had anyone to help her, and I did not think my mother would have minded.

  “But…”

  The trader placed the sword in a cheap scabbard.

  I dug out the price in coins, marveling that I had even thought to bring enough.

  Crackkk…

  The trader’s eyes kept darting toward me. He took the coins as if he wanted us to leave, without a nod, and I gave the sword and scabbard to Krystal.

  “Lerris…” She tried to push it back at me.

  I pulled my hands away, gambling that she wouldn’t want to drop the blade. “Let’s go. We can talk on the way.”

  As we started toward the harbor wall, the trader began to pack his wares, hurriedly, but I ignored him, looking at Krystal. I wondered how he had gotten the devil-blade into the square, but that wasn’t my real concern at the moment.

  “It’s yours.”

  “I can’t take it.”

  “It’s yours,” I repeated, “You need a blade, and you need it before you end up in Candar or Hamor.”

  “I can’t…”

  “Krystal… you need it. I know you need it, and you know that. Call it a favor. Call it a loan. Call it anything you want.”

  She stopped. We were opposite the fourth pier, the one closest to the market square, and only a small sloop without an ensign was tied up. “We need to talk.”

  “How about here?” I pulled myself up on the black stone wall. As I scrambled around, I scanned the harbor. Besides the sloop and an old sailing ship with a combination of masts I couldn’t identify, the harbor was empty. Not even a sign of a Brotherhood ship.

  She set the scabbard and blade on the flat stones and vaulted up next to me. We sat with our backs to the water, facing a two-story building of black oak and black stone. The sign over the locked double doors read, in three languages it seemed, “Supplies.” The first line, in black, was Temple Script. The second was in green, which suggested Nordla, and the third was in purple, edged with gold.

  It was funny, when you thought about it, that Candar and Recluce shared the old Temple Tongue, although there were people in all cities who did, since it was the main trade language, while Nordla and Hamor had totally separate languages. I would have expected Candar to have its own language.

  I suppose that was why Magistra Trehonna insisted we learn a little of Nordlan and Hamorian.

  “Lerris.” Krystal’s voice was insistent, breaking my reverie, overriding the lap, lap, lap of the waves against the stone seawall.

 
I shifted on the hard stone, turning toward her, but letting my feet dangle. She was already cross-legged.

  “You didn’t have to do that. It’s not as though… I mean, I see how you look at Tamra…”

  “Tamra… what does she have to do with anything? She’s an arrogant bitch.”

  Krystal smiled faintly, but she didn’t giggle. She just waited, and the water lapped against the stones, and the wind gusted through my hair and pulled strands of hers from the silver-cords, softening her straight strong features in the afternoon light.

  The sun felt warm on my back, not unpleasantly so, and I waited to see if she had anything else to say. It was simple. She needed a sword, and I could help. I couldn’t help the world, and I wouldn’t help people who didn’t make an effort. I guess I agreed at least partly with Wrynn.

  “Lerris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Because you don’t ask. Because I like you. Because you take me for what I am. Because you don’t hide behind half-truths and platitudes. Lots of reasons, I guess.”

  She shook her head. “What do you think will happen to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Krystal looked down at the rectangular stones, black granite, that paved the road to the piers. The seawall where we sat was made of the same stone. “I don’t think I’m meant to stay in Recluce…”

  I felt the same way about Krystal, but couldn’t say why. So I didn’t. I’d seen her lose herself in fencing with Gilberto. Already, he was hard-pressed by Krystal-and he had the experience. “What will you do?”

  She didn’t answer me. Instead, we sat there quietly.

  “It’s mine! Mine!”

  From around the corner where the supply store faced the pier dashed two youngsters-a boy and a girl. The girl was running lightly ahead of an older or bigger boy, waving something in her hand.

  “You give that back…”

  The girl stopped at the dark wooden bench before the closed exchange. I wondered how you obtained currency or drafts or whatever traders needed that way on rest days.

  “All right. Here’s your stinky model. Let’s go out on the pier.”

  “You go. I’m going home.” The dark-haired boy tucked the model into his near-empty pack.

  “Oh, come on.” The redhead smiled at him.

  “I’m going home.”

  “Just for a moment?”

  “Oh… all right. But there’s nothing there but that little ship.”

  “So?”

  The two walked past where we sat with only a passing glance, the girl almost skipping above the stones, the stocky boy plodding after her.

  “There we go…” I didn’t know why I said those words, but that was the way I felt.

  Krystal glanced over at me. She shook her head slowly.

  I shrugged. That was the way I felt. “We ought to be going.”

  And we did, but neither of us exactly danced back to the dining hall and the chimes that announced the evening meal.

  XIV

  As THE SUMMER drew to a close, some things improved.

  As far as weapons practice went, Demorsal had been right. So long as I concentrated just on defense with the staff, nothing happened and I got better-so much better that even Gilberto couldn’t break through. Then he taught me how to use the staff against blades, and that was interesting. Why a swordsman would ever want to take on someone trained with a long staff was beyond me, but Gilberto assured me that some would. So I listened. Even there, I could barely make one move toward him.

  I was almost disappointed that he didn’t pair me against Tamra, but he just grunted and said, “You’re as good as you’ll ever need to be with the staff and truncheons. Now you need to learn about blades.”

  That was worse than the staff had been. Every inch of my body seemed to have welts from the wooden blades. I must have used more hot water in two eight-days than in my whole life.

  This time I improved faster, though, because I decided my whole use of any blade was to weave an impenetrable defense. I’d never hold out against a really skilled blade-master, but the idea was to learn enough to defend against the common ruffian types.

  Gilberto insisted I learn attacks.

  I was terrible. “Why bother?”

  He insisted. “There are times when an attack is a defense, and your body will recognize those times. You need to learn these automatically.”

  Occasionally, as a respite, he let me spar with the staff against Krystal and Myrten and Dorthae. That was more for their benefit, in case they were faced with a staff, but it was still interesting. Only Krystal ever came close to touching me. Of course, I couldn’t attack much, but occasionally I found I could tap them lightly in embarrassing places.

  Krystal laughed.

  Myrten looked more like an angry buffalo. “Think it’s funny, do you… ?”

  I couldn’t help grinning, and, strangely, he grinned back. “Young-old magister, you’re still a good kid…”

  A good kid? Not sure I ever would have called myself that. Or a magister. Me? But…

  Outside of the physical training, things got worse… or didn’t improve.

  Magistra Trehonna left, and was replaced by a smiling man named Lennett, who immediately launched into discussions on the theory of order. The theory of order? Who cared about the theory of order?

  Magister Lennett did, it turned out. And he insisted that we did, especially Tamra and me. Tamra smiled sweetly and asked polite questions.

  “Does that mean that a chaos-magician must employ order?” Her voice was almost dipped in honey as she leaned toward him. She eased forward on the gray pillow where she sat.

  How she had found a gray pillow, I didn’t know. The rest of us used brown.

  “Exactly!” bubbled Lennett. His eyes danced.

  My stomach turned at the sickly-sweet tone.

  “Even to manipulate chaos requires the use of order. In essence, a chaos-magician sets up a fundamental conflict by his very existence-”

  “They are at war within themselves?” asked Tamra.

  That was obvious, but why did Tamra keep playing up to him?

  “… why chaos-magicians have short life-spans unless they use other methods to artificially prolong their existence; and few have the talent. Fewer still can master the order-chaos conflict on that plane.”

  I thought about reading the book my father had tucked away, but I never got around to it. Besides, in traveling, I suspected, I would have more than enough time to read.

  “… and- Lerris!”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you explain the magic-reality strength theorem?”

  I repressed a sigh. “That’s the idea that the greater the magical composition of a construct, the less strength it has compared to something made out of natural materials by hand, rather than by magic.”

  “And what does that mean?” Lennett smiled and looked around the room.

  Myrten was running his hand through his unruly black hair, while Dorthae looked at Myrten, and Krystal looked toward the afternoon clouds. Sammel tried to stifle a yawn.

  Tamra smiled brightly. “It means that magic can diffuse strength or material over a greater area, but cannot build things that last.”

  So… what else was new? Chaos-magic was great for destroying things, but you still had to hire stonecutters and masons to build anything.

  “That is not precisely correct, as you”-he glanced from Tamra to me-“will discover.”

  Myrten snickered.

  “Order magic can be used to enhance natural strength, both by providing a defense against chaos and by strengthening the internal order of substances.” Magister Lennett shook his head. “But that is really a subject of advanced study. The important point, as Tamra has noted, is that an equivalentlyarmed individual can prevail against a number of magical constructs, provided… provided you are adequately trained and weaponed.”

  “Magister?” asked Sammel. “What about cases li
ke the power of the ancient wizards of Frven? Or the White Knights?”

  Lennett shook his head. “You are confusing two aspects of chaos. In pure destruction or chaos magic-that is, loosening the bonds of order which hold all materials together-chaos cannot be successfully opposed except by three factors. First is will. Your will to survive prevents any direct magical attack on your person except by the strongest of the chaos-magicians. You are still subject to temptation, and that is another issue entirely. Second is the natural strength of materials. A young person generally has greater resistance to magic, as does a building built of the strongest stone and best-braced timbers. Third is order magic itself, which can suffuse all things with a strengthening of internal bonds…” What Lennet said was probably true enough, but it was also generally meaningless. Only a strong magician would ever try a personal attack. Anyone using magical constructs would not employ them unless they were equipped with superior weapons. The White Knights had swords that would have made most great warriors damned near invincible. I remembered that from my lessons with Magister Kerwin.

  “… the greatest strength of chaos is its ability to thwart complexity…”

  “Is that why most nations don’t use much steam machinery?” Tamra smiled brightly once again.

  Wrynn snorted audibly.

  I tried to relax. Theory was fine, but I for one was getting very tired both of Tamra’s phoniness, and of Magister Lennett’s enthusiasm for explaining the obvious and avoiding the explanations behind the obvious. What was order magic? How did it strengthen internal bonds? Why did no one admit to practicing it? For that matter, how did chaos-magic work?

  Magister Lennett kept asking questions, and I began to think about Candar, about what I would have to do, and what I might face there.

  XV

  FROM THE BEGINNING-or at least it had seemed that way to me-we had been destined for Candar. But understanding that, and finding out that we would actually be leaving Recluce, were two entirely different things.

  We all waited in the same room where we had first gathered after entering Nylan. This time, each of us went in to see Talryn separately.

  The dark oak-paneled walls seemed even gloomier the second time around, and the pictures of the two masters on the wall seemed to have a more knowing look to them, almost as if they had a secret they weren’t about to share.