The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Watch it…”

  “Young pup…”

  “My apologies,” I offered to the man whose elbow I had jostled, even as I ducked past him. He glared over the edge of the chipped ceramic mug he held to his beard-encircled mouth.

  “Won’t bring back the mead… worthless time for a storm… Lass! More mead!”

  From the smell, whatever mead was, I didn’t have any desire to taste it. Nor did I have much desire to stay in the Snug Inn, except that I was hungry. Since I hadn’t learned how to eat hay or oats, that meant entering the inn.

  I looked at the space beside the man in brown, then shrugged and eased myself into place, wishing somehow I had brought the staff, but knowing it was safer in the straw of Gairloch’s stall. I still didn’t like leaving it.

  “You?” asked the brown man, bearded and hunched over his mug of steaming cider. From his muscles and his belt, I would have guessed a carpenter.

  Of course he didn’t know me. I hadn’t told him. “Lerris, used to be a woodworker before I left home.” All of which was true enough.

  “Woodworker? Too damned fair for that.” He glared at me.

  I sighed. “All right, I was an apprentice woodcrafter-never got further than benches and breadboards.”

  “Hah! Least you’re honest, boy. No one would admit that, weren’t it true.” Then he glared back at his cider, ignoring me.

  Left to my own devices, I waved at the serving-girl. A black-haired and skinny thing, she wore a sleeveless brown leather vest and wide skirts. She ignored me as well. So I began to study the people while I waited for her to get close enough for me to insist on something.

  At the table closest the hearth sat four people-a woman veiled below her eyes, wearing a loose-fitting green tunic over a white blouse, and presumably trousers. She was the only veiled woman I had ever seen. But if her lower face were unknown, her clothes were tight enough to reveal that her figure, at least, was desirable.

  Her forehead was darkish, as were her heavy eyebrows and her hair, bound with golden cord into a cone shape. Over the back of her chair was a heavy coat-of a white fur I had never seen.

  Two of the other men were clearly fighters, wearing surcoats I could not identify and the bowl-cut of hair worn under a helmet. One fighter was older, white-haired and grizzled, but his body seemed younger. His back was to me and I could not see his face, though I would have guessed it was unlined, despite the white hair. The other fighter was thin, youngish, with a face like a weasel and dark black hair to match.

  Between them, across from the woman, half-facing the fire, was a man in spotless white. Even from that distance, more than ten cubits, I could see his eyes were old, though he looked more like Koldar’s age, perhaps a trace older, perhaps even into his third decade. But the eyes had seen more, and I shivered and dropped my glance as he turned in my direction.

  The man in white smiled. His smile was friendly, reassuring, and everyone in the dining area of the saloon relaxed. I could feel the wave of relaxation, and I fought it off, just because no one was going to tell me what to feel. Was he the one who rode in the golden coach?

  “You in the back. I see you are cold. Would you like some warmth?” I felt he was looking at me, but his fingers pointed at three figures huddled against the timbered wall behind me and to my left. The two men and the woman, all clad in the shapeless gray padded jackets that marked them as herders of some sort, ignored the question and looked down.

  “Fine,” said the man in white. “I can tell you have come in from the blizzard’s chill. The warmth is on me.” He gestured, and in our corner of the long room, I could feel the dampness and chill dissipate, though we were far from the fire.

  The woman looked away from the wizard, for that was clearly what he had to be, and made a motion, as if to reject the heat. The two men looked down.

  Me… for the first time since Gairloch and I had ridden out of Hrisbarg, I felt comfortably warm, as if the long table where I sat were the one before the hearth, rather than the farthest from the fire. Yet the heat thrown by the wizard chilled me as well, inside, and it felt familiar, as if I too could have called it forth, though I did not know how. Nor did I want to try.

  At a small table in the corner nearest the hearth sat another man, the only person in the crowded inn sitting alone. He wore a dark-gray long-sleeved tunic, belted over similar trousers by an even darker belt. A dark-gray leather cloak lay over the chair beside him.

  His hair was a light brown that seemed gray, though from my distance he did not appear old.

  “The man in gray…” I mumbled to the carpenter.

  “Arlyn, call me Arlyn.” His eyes were glazed, not with alcohol, but as if he had been looking somewhere else. “Lass! More cider.” Arlyn waved the brown mug in the air. Several drops of cider splashed across my face.

  After wiping off the cider with the back of my hand, I asked, “Arlyn, who’s the man in gray?”

  “Justen. Gray wizard. Almost as bad as the white one. Antonin. Antonin will take your soul and your body. So they say.” He waved the mug again.

  This time the serving-girl turned toward us.

  “What’s for a traveler?” I made my voice hard.

  Her eyes turned to me from the mug she had lifted from Arlyn’s hand, running over my dark cloak, sandy hair, and fair skin. “Perhaps you should join the dark one, young sir.”

  Arlyn looked at me again.

  “I doubt I could afford such luxury.”

  The girl, for she could not have been much older than I, actually flashed a quick smile before her face turned cold and professionally false again. “Two pence for the fire, and five pence for the cider. Mead is ten pence a mug.”

  “Food?”

  “Cheese and black bread is ten pence; cheese and bear and black bread is twenty.”

  “Cheese and black bread with cider.”

  “Twenty-two pence.” She paused. “Now.”

  I shrugged. “Half now, and half when I get the food. Someone will take the cider.”

  Her face looked bored and tired already. “Fine. Twelve now. For fire and cider. Ten when you get the bread and cheese.”

  I fished twelve pence from my belt, glad in this surly lot that I had managed some change in Hrisbarg. “You’ll break a traveler in this weather.”

  “You could stay outside.” She slipped the coins through a narrow slot into a locked and hardened leather purse on an equally heavy leather belt, and handed me a wooden token. Then she was picking up mugs and coins all the way along the table, passing out tokens as she stacked the empty mugs on the heavy wooden tray.

  The door behind me opened, and another rush of cold chilled the back side of the common room again.

  A pair of road soldiers stood there, wearing heavy short riding jackets, swords, and carrying long-barreled rifles-used in peace-keeping, not in warfare, not when the smallest of chaos-spells destroyed their effectiveness.

  A thin man, wearing a greasy brown apron and waving a truncheon, waved toward the pair. “Areillas, Storznoy!”

  The bigger soldier-four cubits tall, with as much flab as muscle-jabbed the other, a man not much taller than the serving-girl. Then the two walked toward the innkeeper and the kitchen.

  Conversations dropped off to whispers, or less, as the two made their way toward the innkeeper.

  The heavier soldier said something to the thin innkeeper, who looked puzzled. The soldier raised his voice.

  “… said… demon horseman seen on the Duke of Freetown’s deadlands…” repeated the smaller soldier.

  The innkeeper shrugged. “Demon weather anyway.”

  “Roaches…” mumbled Arlyn the carpenter.

  “Why?” I asked, wondering about the demon horseman.

  “Paid by the Montgren Council to keep the road safe between the border and Hewlett… paid by the Thieves’ Guild for an exemption…” Arlyn looked for the serving-girl. “Where’s the cider?”

  The road soldiers went through the wide stone
arch into the kitchen and the serving-girl came out, holding high a tray of mugs, somehow not spilling a one. Vapor whispered from the hot cider as she neared the chilly end of the common area where we sat.

  Thunk.

  Thunk. The dark-haired server avoided my eyes as she set the mug down before me and the next before Arlyn.

  Thunk.

  “Look!” I yelled in Arlyn’s ear, pointing toward the wizard in white.

  The carpenter started, and I switched mugs with him.

  “Look where… just Antonin…”

  “He pointed this way,” I tried to explain.

  “Yell not at me… youth…” Arlyn growled.

  “I am sorry…” And I was, but not because I had yelled.

  Arlyn looked at the cider, but did not drink immediately.

  I took a sip of mine. “Oooo…” The searing of my tongue and throat explained why the carpenter had waited.

  A hush dropped over both the gentry and common areas of the Snug Inn. I saw that the man in white was standing, looking over at Justen, the gray wizard, whatever a gray wizard was.

  “A deed more than a deed…” said Justen, so softly that I could not hear all of his words.

  “A deed is a deed. Do appearances really deceive, Justen the Gray?” Antonin stood by his table.

  The woman in the green tunic ignored Antonin, her veiled face turned toward Justen. The gray wizard said nothing, nor did he even stand.

  “Actions speak louder than words. There are those here who hunger. Will righteousness feed them? Will the innkeeper feed them from the goodness of his heart and deprive his family and kin?”

  Justen seemed to smile faintly. “That is an old argument, Antonin, one scarcely worth answering.”

  “Is it wrong to feed the hungry, Justen?”

  The wizard in gray shook his head, almost sadly. I wondered how he would answer the white wizard’s question.

  “Is it wrong to feed the hungry, Justen?”

  Even the herders in the corner turned toward Antonin.

  “You among the herders-does one of you have an old goat, a tired ewe that will not survive the winter? Come… two silvers for such an animal. Certainly a fair price.”

  I found myself nodding. Even in early winter, a fair price for an animal that might easily die in the frigid eight-days ahead.

  The wizard in gray shook his head once more, then sipped from his mug, watching as Antonin beamed from where he stood by the table.

  “Innkeeper, for the use of your serving table, a silver also?” The innkeeper, wiping his thin hands on the greasy apron he wore, smiled briefly, not with his eyes, as he looked at the crowd. “Enough, esteemed wizard, but I would hope in your charity that you would make good any damages…”

  “There will be no damages.” Antonin gestured toward the herders. “Who will take my two silvers?”

  “Here, lord wizard.” A bent man shuffled forward, his curly and dirty gray hair springing wildly from his head. His leathers were filthy, so battered their original color was lost beneath the dirt, and so tattered that the yarn laced through and around them barely seemed to hold either his vest or trousers together. Dirty raw wool poked from the holes in trousers and vest.

  “Bring me the animal.”

  “Will he slaughter it here in the inn?” I asked.

  Arlyn chuckled. “You’ll see no knives here, youngster. The one’s a great wizard.”

  “Too great,” mumbled the traveler on my other side, who had said nothing since I had seated myself. He turned to his companion, an older man dressed in faded green with a heavy green cloak still wrapped around him.

  A chill wind bit through my own trousers as the herder left, though the doorway was open only an instant or so. Outside the wind was beginning to moan, and the early dusk was nearly gone. I wondered how much more ice would fall before I could leave the inn. Or would it be snow by morning?

  Arlyn’s slurp reminded me of the mug I held between both hands. I sipped the cider carefully, but could taste nothing foreign. Still, I waited after my first sip.

  Thunk.

  “Ten pence.” The serving girl laid down two heavy slabs of black bread and a thin wedge of yellow cheese. “And the token back.”

  I handed her the token and a silver.

  Now I had the cheese and bread, and wondered if I could eat it-safely.

  As I glanced toward the gentry section, I found the eyes of the gray wizard upon me..He nodded slightly, as if to say that I could.

  I looked at the cider mug between Arlyn’s hands. The wizard’s face was unreadable, which was answer enough. But why would he even answer my unspoken question? And why did I trust the man in gray and not the one in white?

  Taking a small bite from the tangy black bread, I tried to figure out the answers. Tamra would have called me a fool for even entering the inn. Sammel would have shared the stable with the animals, and who was to say who was right?

  The outside door opened, wider, and the wind dispersed the lingering warmth that had grown from the body heat of the crowd. I swallowed another chunk of the dry bread, washing it down with the lukewarm cider.

  Baaaaa…

  The herder passed near the end of our table, nearly brushing the man in green, as he carried a scrawny sheep slung over his shoulder toward the wizards.

  The inn door had shut, and the sudden odor of filthy sheep and unwashed herder nearly choked me. Had I not escaped from the ice and blizzard so recently, I might have been tempted to forsake the stench of the inn for the clean cold! of the outside. Trouble was that the outside was too cold.

  “Watch…” hissed the man in green to the traveler beside me.

  Thump.

  Arlyn’s head dropped onto the table. The cider mug was still half-full. I looked, listened, but he was still breathing.

  “Your sheep, ser.” The herder set the animal in the space beside the wizard’s table.

  Splattttt…

  The sheep repaid the warmth by defecating on the rust floor.

  The innkeeper looked nervously at the wizard.

  Antonin smiled, then gestured. Both soil and odor vast ished, although the faintest odor of brimstone remained.

  For a moment, everyone stopped talking, even the gentry,‘

  Baaaa…

  “You… promised… two… silvers…”

  “You shall have them, my man.” Antonin drew the coins from his purse and laid them on the edge of the table.

  … snaaaaath… snathh… Arlyn the carpenter was snoring.

  The herder pulled a small iron hammer from his pouch and touched each coin with it. They remained silver.

  “Stupid…” muttered the man beside me.

  The fellow in green nodded.

  Stupid? To check the coins provided by a wizard? I would have, but with Arlyn asleep, snoring on the table, there was no one else I dared to ask why it was stupid.

  Antonin stood, swinging his sleeves back to reveal bare arms. Not heavily muscled, as I would have expected, nor thin like a cleric’s, but knobby like a merchant’s.

  “Before you go, friend herder…”

  The herder turned back and looked down.

  “You, my friend…” The white-robed wizard gestured toward the innkeeper. “The two largest trays you have.”

  “Long ones be all right?”

  “Those would be best, friend.”

  If nothing else, the continued use of the word “friend” was not just annoying, but boring.

  With a sour look as he sipped from his mug, the wizard in gray glanced from the sheep to the wall, then let his eyes pass over me and along the common crowd.

  In the meantime, the innkeeper brought out two enormous wooden serving trays and set them upon the trestle table just beyond the gentry’s area. The veiled woman had turned her chair to watch, but the older fighter at Antonin’s table kept his back to me.

  The tradespeople, including a woman tinker with a broad face and muscles that would have exceeded those of either Kold
ar or his stonemason wife-to-be, reluctantly shuffled off the benches and stood at the end of the table away from the innkeeper.

  Antonin stepped past two gentry tables, both filled with travelers wearing fur collars on their cloaks-no women-and approached the trestle. He motioned to the herder. “Pick up the animal and put it on the table, right over the trays.”

  The herder did so, nearly effortlessly.

  The table shivered as the sheep wobbled there.

  “Watch,” hissed the man in green. I was watching, as was everyone in the inn.

  The wizard advanced; the herder stepped back, his hand on the leather belt where he had placed the silver coins.

  Antonin raised his hands.

  I closed my eyes and looked down, not knowing why.

  SSsssssssssss…

  Light like a sunburst flared across the room with the sharp hissing sound.

  Even with my eyes closed, the light had hurt. I squinted, blinking. The tears helped, and I could see long before anyone else could. Antonin had a nasty smile on his face, the look of a bully pleased at a beating administered to a small child.

  Justen had an even more sour look upon his face, and the rest-from the commons to the gentry-were still blotting their eyes, trying to see. Except for the veiled woman, who was looking at Antonin from deep-set eyes whose expression was unreadable from where I sat.

  “… ooooooo…”

  “Look at that…”

  In my observation of the wizards, I had forgotten the sheep. I tried not to gape with everyone else. But I did. The two trays were heaped with succulent sliced and steaming mutton, with joints at the edges, and with sweetbreads piled at each end. A sheepskin rug lay on the floor beside Antonin, who was toweling off his forehead with the back of his wide right sleeve. Outside of the joints on the tray, there were no bones.

  Sweat suddenly poured down my forehead. The common area felt like the kitchen when Aunt Elisabet baked bread for all the neighbors at winterdawn.

  I watched as the wizard in white smiled at the innkeeper, then at Justen, the gray wizard.

  “Meat. Honest meat for those who would go without.” Antonin turned to Justen. “Actions do speak louder than words, brother wizard. Tell me that it is wrong to feed the hungry.”