The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  With a last look around the room, I picked up the key, opened the doorway, and stepped out onto the hall carpeting and almost into Krystal, who was backing out of her room.

  “Oh… sorry,” I apologized.

  Clank. My key jangled against hers.

  We both smiled, more from nervous relief than from humor.

  “Rather lovely quarters for us outcasts,” I observed.

  “Lovely? I suppose.”

  “You don’t think so?” For some reason, I didn’t want to walk away from her.

  “Are you going to change what you are because of lovely quarters?” Her voice was both soft and musical, more relaxed than I had heard it.

  She had me on that one, and I wondered why I would listen to Krystal, and think about what she said, when if Tamra questioned me I was ready to fight.

  “What are you thinking, Lerris?”

  “Oh…” I didn’t really want to tell her. “Just… that I can listen to you, even when you raise questions.”

  “I’ll take the flattery.” She bestowed a soft smile on me.

  Clink. Wrynn stepped from her room into the hallway and looked at us.

  “Are you two going to talk forever, or can we get the sermon and have some dinner?” The blond looked at us, then bent over and inserted her key into the room lock.

  I decided not to follow Wrynn’s example, since I really doubted that locking the door made any difference in this particular inn.

  “Shall we go?” I asked Krystal.

  “I suppose we should.” She turned and made her way down the hallway toward the stairs, the sword I had given her still at her belt.

  Sammel, Myrten, Dorthae, and Wrynn were already seated at the rectangular table in the small dining room when we arrived. The place at the head of the table had been left for Isolde.

  I sat in the vacant chair at the foot of the table. Krystal sat on my left and Myrten on my right. My other choice would have been to the right of Isolde’s chair. I left that for Tamra.

  As I pulled out my chair, Isolde, face washed and hair brushed, stepped through the archway from the main dining area. Looking up, I nodded at her, receiving the barest inclination of her head in return. She glanced up one side of the table and down the other side, pausing as she stopped at the empty space left for Tamra.

  Almost as if she had been waiting for the notice, the redhead stepped through the archway.

  Isolde’s eyes flicked back to the rest of us, without really looking at any of us. “This is the last place where you can freely mention your origin,” began Isolde, her hands resting on the back of the red-oak chair at the end of the table. As when we had left the Eidolon, she wore black, all black. Tunic, trousers, boots, belt, and neck scarf. With the pale skin, she looked like a soldier-or worse. “Once you step outside the walls of this inn, you are subject to local customs, thieves, bandits, and soldiers-to mention the most obvious dangers.

  “As a practical matter, the road outside the main gates is generally safe for at least several kays into Candar, except for petty theft and assault, which can happen just about anywhere.”

  “Except Recluce…” muttered someone behind me.

  “Except Recluce,” affirmed Isolde. “But for various reasons, you have all found Recluce too confining, or Recluce has found you in need of the outside world. It is for that reason that you will travel alone. You made your decisions alone, and you must face the consequences alone, at least until you are ready to make your final decisions. But you all know that.

  “First… I promised an update on local conditions. As you discovered earlier, the duke has decided to use his control of the port to attempt to raise more revenue. Most of the trading nations are avoiding the port, and there will be more unrest in Freetown, enough that you should probably consider leaving the area quickly. Spidlar and Hydlen have taken over much of the trade, and the routes south of the West-horns to Sarronnyn…

  “Sligo, north of here, has suffered unseasonable weather, including early snowfalls, and food is getting scarce…”

  I couldn’t help yawning, but I managed to stifle it without it being too obvious. Krystal frowned, though.

  “… safe to travel in either Gallos or Kyphros, but not from one to the other because of the increasing skirmishes along their borders…”

  Finally, she looked around the room. “You have had enough lectures-”

  I agreed with that wholeheartedly and hoped she wouldn’t be using that as a lever for yet another one. I was hungry.

  “-And I won’t be adding to them-much.”

  I almost groaned.

  “But there is one last thing to consider. Those outside Recluce refer to their world, the rest of the world, as the ‘real world’. Candar will become your real world. If you die here, and some of you may die, you will die, permanently. But Recluce is also a real world, in many ways more solid than Candar. You have to decide which world is real for you. Which reality, with all its rules-whether they are the rules of order, or the mixed and changing rules of order competing with chaos-will be yours.”

  She gestured toward the archway through which a serving boy brought a tray heaped with dishes. “Here is supper. Afterwards, you may sleep in the rooms upstairs, or not, as you please. There will be fruit and pastries here in the morning. You may leave when you please, but you will all be out of the inn before sunset tomorrow. Those of you leaving Freetown should not wait until the last minute. Someone is always robbed that way. Given the current mood of the duke, I would not recommend staying in Freetown, but that is indeed your choice, the first of many.”

  Abruptly, she stopped, then pulled out her chair, -and sat. The plates came down upon the checked cloth, and the innkeeper, appearing from nowhere, briskly set a glass before each of us.

  “Wine or redberry ?”

  “Wine,” answered Tamra.

  “Redberry…”

  “Redberry…”

  “Wine…”

  “Redberry,” I answered, in turn, watching as the liquid nearly filled the heavy tumbler, then smiling as Myrten speared three chunks of steaming meat with a knife and deftly transferred them to his plate.

  We were all hungry, even Isolde, and little enough was said until later, when Tamra sipped from her tumbler, then asked brightly, “What will happen to the Duke of Freetown?”

  Isolde looked up from her plate at Tamra. Her face was expressionless even as she smiled. “Why… whatever will be, will be.”

  “That’s not exactly an answer,” pressed Tamra.

  “No. It is true and polite, and I will be happy to discuss the matter with you in much greater depth once you return from your dangergeld-assuming you choose to return and do not find Recluce too confining.” Isolde returned to cutting a sliver of buffalo from the slice upon her plate.

  Tamra glared, while the black magistra ignored the redhead’s impatience. I couldn’t help smiling.

  “You’re amused?” mouthed Krystal.

  After wiping the grin from my face, I answered, trying to keep my voice low enough that it would not be heard over the pleasantries being exchanged by Sammel and Dorthae. “Tamra has trouble when people don’t manipulate easily.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  I shrugged. Krystal was probably right, but Tamra’s whole attitude was to insist she was right and that the world should recognize it.

  “Good luck to you all.” Isolde’s quiet tone stilled the small room. “From this point on, you are all on your own. I hope to see you again, but that is your choice.” She nodded, turned, and walked out, the heels of her boots echoing faintly on the hardwood floor as she crossed the empty main dining room.

  “… abrupt…”

  “… typical of the masters…”

  Rather than say anything, I gulped a mouthful of redberry juice, then waited, looking to see who stayed and who left, except that the table quieted, and we all ended up looking at each other.

  “For all of the pleasant surroundings, they still don’t real
ly care.” Tamra’s voice broke the silence.

  I pulled back my chair. “I need some sleep.” I would have liked to talk to Krystal, but the thought of saying anything with Tamra hanging on every word bothered me.

  “It’s early yet,” complained Myrten.

  Nodding at the innkeeper, back behind the counter, I took the stairs two at a time. I wasn’t up to another argument, and staying downstairs would have led to that. Besides, after the next morning, I might never see any of them again, and I was getting tired of Tamra’s attitude. Then, it was clear she was tired of mine.

  The door opened easily, and I stepped inside. The room was just as I had left it, except darker, because the blackness outside was absolute, with not even a single light showing anywhere when I stepped to the window. The fog and clouds seemed thicker, but how could I really tell?

  … click…

  As I sat on the edge of the soft bed and pulled off my boots, I heard Krystal’s door open and close, but no sound of voices. Off came the tunic and trousers, and I reached up and turned off the lamp.

  With the quilt around me, I was asleep in instants, although I thought I heard a faint knock on my door once, just as I was dropping off; but I was too sleepy to get up and check, especially since it was probably my imagination.

  Still… I wondered, but I dreamed of neither red-headed girls nor of dark-haired women.

  XIX

  ONCE I STEPPED outside the inn the next morning, I could sense more strongly what I had felt the night before and what Isolde had alluded to in saying we would be safe there without weapons. For all the faded blue paint on the shutters, the weathered timbers and gray-painted plank walls, the building radiated order. No barred windows, no heavy doors, no guards-just order. Enough order that it just would not appeal to anyone bent on disorder.

  The clouds and fog of the previous day had vanished, except for higher puffy gray-and-white clouds that scudded quickly across a bright-blue fall sky.

  I looked at the inn again. The thick shutters were supported by heavy iron hinges, with iron hasps for the sliding locks that would be on the inside when the shutters were closed against weather or other forms of attack. The iron was clean and black, the hinges clearly functional. The red oak of the door had faded under the varnish to a grayed gold that almost matched the big bronze door handles on the double doors that were now folded back against the planks for the day.

  From a timber projecting above the open doors and perhaps two cubits below the second-floor window hung the neatly painted sign-Travelers’ Rest. The gray paving-stones were laid edge-to-edge from the front wall to the curb, a distance of five cubits or less, and stretched from one side of the building to the other. Already, the stones had been swept.

  Glancing up to the room where I thought Tamra had slept, I could see a glimpse of red through the half-open window. But the sea breeze gusting up from the harbor fluttered the fabric enough to tell me it was only one of the bright red curtains. Then I looked toward the back of the building, but Krystal’s room window was around the corner. She had either left earlier, or was still asleep.

  I shrugged and shouldered my pack, which didn’t seem nearly so heavy as when I had left Wandernaught, and, after a last look at the Travelers’ Rest, turned my steps toward the livery stable that had been listed on the wall behind the front desk of the inn. If I had to reach the Westhorns, it wasn’t going to be on foot, not unless I wanted to take years. A thousand kays or more-I still resented Talryn’s flat pronouncement. Someone definitely wanted me out of Recluce for a while.

  “Watch it, outlander!”

  I dodged a thin man wearing a short cloak, a ragged tunic not concealing a mail shirt underneath, and a short sword in a battered scabbard. Then I smiled politely, and stepped aside. He stopped and studied me.

  I waited, shifting my hands on the staff ever so slightly.

  “Told you to watch it…” His speech had a twang to it. Above his short gray-and-ginger beard, his face bore large pockmarks. The odor of stale beer, dirt, and other assorted filth almost forced me back another pace. “But you look like the peaceable type… so just hand over that pack.”

  I stood there for a moment, frozen, not having expected an attack within a block of the inn.

  “I said, hand it over!”

  I smiled, moving the staff up into a defensive posture. “I think you have the wrong person.” I hoped my voice didn’t shake the way my knees threatened to.

  “Ha!” His blade whistled out. “Now! Let’s have that pack!”

  All I dared to do was wait. The sword edge glittered even in the cloudy light of the morning.

  “Be a shame to carve you up, outlander…”

  I would have liked to shrug, but I didn’t, instead watching his eyes.

  Clunk. I blocked the short blade, knocking it away.

  “You do know how to use that staff a little, but not enough…”

  … clunk… clink… clunk…

  The responses were nearly automatic as I concentrated on anticipating his moves.

  … clunk… clink… clunk…

  He wasn’t nearly so good as Krystal or even Demorsal. So I waited, parrying, turning the blade rather than meeting it edge-on.

  … clink… clink… clunk…

  Sweat was pouring from his face, and he was breathing hard.

  … clink… clunk…

  Crack!… Whsssttt…

  “Aüieee… !”

  Clank…

  Suddenly, it was over. The small man, not much above my shoulder, I realized, backed away from me, leaving the sword on the dusty stones, clutching the back of his wrist where I had struck to disarm him.

  “Black bastard… witch spawn…” He did not move, but stayed well beyond the reach of the staff.

  I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t want the sword. I really didn’t want to hurt the man. He was more hungry than evil, but I couldn’t exactly turn my back on him.

  “So… up to trouble already, Lerris?”

  I recognized the voice, took a quick glance over my shoulder to see Myrten strolling toward me. Even as I glanced back, the man who attacked me was darting away down the street and twisting into an alleyway on the right.

  “That was stupid, youngster.”

  “What?” Still holding my staff with one hand, I reached down and picked up the fallen sword. Just a plain blade.

  “Looking away from him. Good thing he didn’t have a throwing knife.” Myrten wore a bright green tunic and dark green trousers. His cloak was heavy dark-gray leather. Like me he carried a pack, but his was half-slung over his left shoulder. He looked more like a clean-shaven minstrel or a bard than the thief I felt he innately was. Two large knives hung from his belt, but I could sense the small pistol under the left-hand false knife.

  I looked up the street. No one else had followed us out of the inn. Myrten was right. I shrugged. “I didn’t expect something quite so soon.”

  “What you expect isn’t what happens, particularly when you get close to chaos.” He half-laughed.

  I shrugged. “Want the blade?”

  “You could sell it,” he suggested.

  “Me?”

  Myrten laughed again, a short bark. “You’re right. That would be more than a little out of character. I’ll sell it and split the profit.”

  That seemed more than fair. “Fine. But where?”

  “Let’s just keep walking. There’s bound to be something.” Myrten seemed much more at ease on the streets of Freetown than in Nylan.

  “What about-”

  “We’re not traveling together, and we’ll certainly leave Freetown separately.”

  At the next cross-street, Myrten stopped. With dirt and clay packed over the paving stones and squarish mud-holes where some stones were missing entirely, the street looked more like an alley frequented by thieves or worse. Myrten • nodded toward the left.

  I frowned.

  “It’s early. Too early for the real professionals.” Myr
ten stretched his legs out, moving quickly, especially for a man so short.

  “What about our friend?”

  “Him? He was just hoping for an easy mark.”

  Most of the doors we passed were shut and barred with cold iron. Iron doesn’t have any magical power, despite the rumors. It’s effective because it takes so damned much chaos to break through it that doing it isn’t worth the effort. That was what Magistra Trehonna had said. It made sense, I suppose, which was why swords still carried the day and firearms were a novelty.

  After we had traveled nearly fifty rods down the narrow street, crossing yet another, wider street like the one on which the Travelers’ Rest was situated, Myrten slowed.

  We stopped before a narrow storefront. The planks were carefully painted in rust, and the shutters were black, trimmed in the same rust color. A square iron hook the size of my fist held open the iron-banded red-oak door.

  “Norn’s-Weapons” read the square sign above the iron grate that covered the single narrow window.

  “Shall we?” asked Myrten.

  I tried to sense what sort of place Norn’s might be… and failed. At least the shop did not radiate chaos. Neither did I feel any underlying sense of order. “It feels all right.”

  Myrten hadn’t waited for my assessment. So I followed him inside, suspecting a neat and dark shop with rows of weapons racked on dusty walls. I was wrong. The bright space inside, no more than ten cubits wide, stretched back nearly twenty cubits, light conning from a high roof that seemed more glass than timber. Ranged along the left wall were four large cabinets, each standing open to display its contents.

  First I checked the nearest cabinet-lightly oiled, polished, with dovetailed and mitered corners, made of solid grayed oak, originally probably red oak, with a tracery of fine lines bespeaking age. It contained knives, even more varieties than I had seen in Gilberto’s armory.