The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  At that point, I wasn’t quite sure whether to start all over! at the beginning, or to kick myself. For nearly half a year, had been carrying at least some of the answers to my own questions in my pack. Of course, that assumed that what was written down made some sort of sense, and that you could actually apply it. But I neither kicked myself nor started at the beginning. Instead, I started on the section on healing, since I wasn’t ready for more boredom.

  Not only did the words make sense, but so did the ideas, and I began to understand why what we had done with the countess’s sheep had worked and what Justen had alluded to in his remarks about the importance of the body’s internal order.

  “So you finally decided to see if the book made sense?”

  I almost jumped off the pallet when the gray wizard opened the door, realizing how late it must be by the fact that the candle was near to guttering out, and how long I must have been poring over the words on healing by the stiffness in my neck.

  “You’re that far?”

  I shook my head. “Reading about healing…” I confessed.

  “You couldn’t take the introduction, I gather?”

  “No… I’ve tried three separate times, and after half a year it’s still boring.”

  Justen yawned and began to take off his tunic. “Go back to it when you can. I didn’t, and I’m still paying.” He turned his back to me and pulled off his boots. “It’s time to get some sleep.”

  I closed the book and began to pull off my own boots.

  After the long days of riding, the concentration on the book, and the comfortable bed, I thought I would drop off to sleep. Lying there, exhausted, it shouldn’t have been any trouble at all

  Except… things tingled at the back of my mind. Like why Justen’s explanation for his work didn’t exactly answer all the questions. Then there were Tamra and Krystal. I’d heard about Krystal, yet Tamra should have been the more visible. Somehow, I should have heard something… somehow… from her, or about her.

  I couldn’t believe tha^t she had just disappeared, but news didn’t exactly speed from one duchy of Candar to another.

  Somewhere I finally fell asleep… looking into the darkness… until I shivered with a deep chill, and tried to turn over. Except I could not move. White!

  A white fog curled around.me so tightly that I could neither see nor move. I could not speak-trapped somewhere in nothingness, a nothingness bright enough to burn my thoughts.

  You promised… The words echoed without sound through my head, but I could not respond, could not see, twisting as I did within my skull. Yet the person feeling the whiteness was not me, for all the familiarity of the feeling.

  Was I dreaming? Or had Justen again enslaved me in that white prison? I couldn’t even see my arms, or move, or even feel whether my muscles would move. Yet I wasn’t in my bed-that I knew.

  You promised to show me the way… the way… the way… In,“the white fog, that mind-blinding light, were shafts of yellow, red, blue, violet-all spearing me, slashing at one thought, then another.

  Then a door closed, and the whiteness was gone. Sweat poured off my forehead as I sat up in the clean darkness.

  “You promised…” The unspoken words echoed in my thoughts, an edge to them that was familiar. But I had never said anything about promises. I hadn’t thought about promise.

  Then, I knew why the words were familiar, and my stomach turned. I only hoped that it had been a dream, that Tamra was not trapped in that same kind of whiteness that Justen had shown me. But I wasn’t sure. Not at all.

  XXXV

  WHEEBE… EEE…

  Gairloch was still protesting when I checked on him after a breakfast of three overpriced and overbaked corn muffins eaten next to two hung-over and scowling cavalry troopers. As usual, Justen was nowhere around, having left with the dawn on some wizardly errand.

  My haste in downing the leaden starch may have contributed to the growls from my own guts that nearly drowned out Gairloch’s gut-level protests.

  “Plain hay just not enough for you, fellow?” I set the saddlebags on the stall barrier, checking to see if my old saddle and the worn blanket remained where I had racked them. They were still there, proof either that the inn was honest or that my gear was worth less than that of other potential victims. My still-shielded staff remained tucked in the stall corner, but I did not actually handle the wood, since the shielding disappeared whenever my hands touched it-unless I cast larger shield.

  “Better,” was all that the gray wizard had said about my concealment efforts, and that admission had seemed grudging enough.

  Wheeee… eeee…

  “… oooo…”

  Thud.

  The soft scream from outside the stable might have gone unnoticed between Gairloch’s protests and my conversation except for the sound of that impact.

  With little thought, I grabbed my no-longer-invisible staff and burst from the stable, looking around the courtyard. Not only was the courtyard momentarily vacant, but I heard nothing for an instant.

  “Now…”

  The voice came from the alleyway, and, like many another perfect fool, I followed the sound until I came across two well-dressed bravos two rods or so toward the town center, standing in the morning shadows. Both looked up and toward me, the shorter one on the right releasing a woman in ripped clothing, then pushing her toward the brick wall behind him.

  The taller one already had his sword out, but he looked at me, and then at my staff… and laughed. “You’re already dead, boy.” He gestured to his companion, the one who had held the woman. “Let’s go, Bildal.”

  Without even looking at me or the huddled heap on the bricked pavement of the alley, the two strolled, almost arrogantly, toward the far end of the alley, the end that opened onto some sort of square where I could see wagons and horses passing.

  Around where I stood, looking from the backs of the departing bravos to the huddled and silent figure against the bricks, the back walls and iron-banded rear doors of homes or businesses remained steadfastly closed, the alley deserted.

  I shifted my study to the woman, who looked back at me blankly, unmoving, although her black eyes moved from my face to my staff and back. Tears oozed from her eyes, and her lips were tight. A reddish abrasion covered most of her left cheek, as if her face had scraped against the rough brick walls. Her clean, white, and plain blouse had been ripped open across the front, and she hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms as if to cover her breasts, partly revealed by the treatment accorded her and her garments.

  Despite the gray streaks in her black hair and the pockmarks on her face, the gaps in her garments showed more of a slender and curved figure than she would have wished as she eased herself into a sitting position without using her hands. Both wrists hung oddly, and the tears continued to seep from her eyes, though her mouth was set firmly against the pain.

  “Do with me as you will, black devil. Your days are numbered now.”

  I must have gaped. Here the woman had been beaten, assaulted and nearly raped, and I had saved her from that and possibly worse treatment, and I was a black devil?

  “The viscount will catch you.”

  I shrugged, feigning a calmness I did not feel. Since I might as well be hanged for a wolf as a sheep, I set down the staff and gently let my fingers touch her wrists.

  “Ohhhhh…”

  What exactly I did, that I could not say, except that with what I had learned from working the sheep and with something from what I had read, my mind put enough of the pieces together. My thoughts and senses touched the bones and flows and orders and disorders that wound through and around her system.

  “Oh…” she repeated more softly, gazing at her straightened wrists.

  “They’re not fully healed, and I can’t tell you when they will be, exactly. Just be careful.”

  At that, or because of the sudden lack of chaos within her system, she fainted, leaving me with yet another problem, and probably the local witch pat
rol gathering to collect my scalp.

  No one was going to be pleased, not the way things were going. Not Justen, not the viscount, not the beaten lady, although she would be younger and more attractive than she had been in years once she healed, and certainly not me.

  Even so, I couldn’t leave her unattended in the alley. That meant staggering back to the stable with lady and staff, and hoping that no one saw.

  “What have you there?” bellowed the old and rotund ostler, appearing from nowhere as I crossed the courtyard.

  “A lady of dubious virtue, and in the morning yet!” chortled one of the formerly sour cavalrymen. “Share your prize, young fellow?”

  “First… have to collect,” I explained.

  Justen appeared in the stable door, a bemused expression on his face-bemused, until he saw the ripped clothes and the bruised face. “A healer?” he asked.

  I shook my head firmly. “Rest…”

  Justen shook his head. “Bring her in here.”

  “Not in my stable!”

  A quick something passed from the gray wizard to the ostler, who shoved the coin into his belt.

  “I have to check on feed.” He grinned at me broadly as he headed for the main street.

  The cavalryman half-grinned, half-scowled, but made no move to inspect the “merchandise” as I stumbled into the stable.

  “What did you do?” hissed Justen.

  “Nothing… much.” I laid the woman on a loose pile of hay, not at all gracefully, trying to talk and not to gasp as I caught my breath. I felt drained, as if I had run a kay or so in heavy sand.

  “You idiot. You healed her. How many people saw the staff?”

  “Worse… than… that. Used… staff… bravos… then she cursed me… healed‘ her anyway.” I began to put the blanket on Gairloch.

  Justen turned to the stableboy, standing there open-mouthed.

  Without a gesture, the youth collapsed onto the straw.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Putting him to sleep. You’ll get the credit, provided you get out of here soon enough.”

  “Leaving before the viscount arrives with the local witch patrol?” The gray wizard stared at me. “How do you plan to get by the city guards?”

  “Can they stop what they don’t see?”

  Justen shook his head, then walked toward his saddlebags. “Keep saddling.”

  I kept saddling. Gairloch didn’t even whinny.

  “Here.” Justen helped tie a large canvas sack of provisions behind the saddle. Nothing special, just faded and heavy gray canvas, filled almost to overflowing. The contents had to represent a goodly portion of Justen’s stocks. Then he concentrated, and the sack appeared to vanish. “Remember to do that. It makes you less of a target.” Then he grinned. “I’ll get your pack.”

  I finished cinching the saddle and put the staff in place, then remembered to weave the light around the staff so that it also appeared to vanish. It wasn’t really weaving light, but changing the way the light reflected from the wood and steel, and the steel was the hardest part. A lot of steel, and you couldn’t avoid the heat-wave effect-that was clearly the case with the Brotherhood ships.

  By the time I had Gairloch ready, Justen slipped back through the stable doorway, carrying my pack and cloak. “You’d better get moving.”

  “What will you do?”

  He smiled sadly. “What apprentice? You’re a free wizard who deceived everyone.”

  “Thank you.” I didn’t mean for disowning me, but he understood anyway.

  “I just hope you’ve learned something from all this. You’re going to have to cross the Easthorns, but you should be able to handle it if you take the south pass. That’s the one that the south road from Jellico leads to. Now get on Gairloch and make yourself unseen.” He shook his head again. “And don’t let anyone touch you. If they have any sense of order, it could unravel the reflective pattern. And please read the introduction to your book before you try anything else.”

  Those were the last words from the gray wizard as I sat on Gairloch and wove reflections around us.

  Wheeee… eeee. Gairloch didn’t like being blind. Neither did I.

  “Easy, fellow.” I patted his neck.

  Wheeee… eeee.

  I patted him again.

  Sitting astride Gairloch was strange when I could see nothing except a featureless black. Sounds penetrated, but not sight. But we couldn’t just sit there. So I nudged Gairloch with my heels and we stepped out blindly into the courtyard, slowly, since I could not sense people or objects unless they were close to us.

  Click… click… Gairloch’s hooves sounded like thunder in my ears.

  “Stableboy? Where’s the stable lad? The chestnut needs a rubdown…”

  We eased around the rotund porter, hugging the brick wall of the alley until we were in the street, and I turned Gairloch southward, around where the central square seemed to be. The eastern gate was the closest, but instinctively I felt that we had more cover within Jellico, at least until they talked to either the woman or the stableboy.

  … click… click… •

  … creeakkkk…

  “… hold that wagon…”

  “… told her that young blade was no good…”

  “… watch it!”

  “Make way! Make way for the guard!”

  Feeling rather than seeing four mounted guards trotting toward the inn I had just left was more than a little unsettling, since my perceptions were not sharp, giving me only a rough outline of bodies and objects.

  Under my hands, the reins felt slippery… and even with the wind-gusts ruffling my hair and the cold tingling at my ears, the sweat dribbled down my face and my neck like icy trickles from a glacier.

  … Wheeee… eeeee…

  I patted Gairloch again to steady him.

  “… way for the guards…”

  “… no horse over there… don’t care what you heard…”

  At the first intersection, with no walls to hug, and storefronts and doors opening on both sides of the road, I eased Gairloch into the middle of the road, continually patting his neck with one hand and straining to sense objects and bodies before they could collide with us.

  “… guard revolt in Freetown .. shameful…”

  “Did you hear about the autarch?”

  “… in the market’s scarcely worth eating…”

  “… swore I saw a horse there for a minute…”

  I wiped my forehead, glad that I was not permanently blind, as we walked dick… click… clack… down the stone-paved streets of Jellico toward the south gate.

  “… way for the guard… make way…”

  “…after someone… second detachment this morning…”

  Another five men clattered past as I edged Gairloch toward the street edge.

  … Whheeeee… eeee…

  Then we took a wrong turn, leading back toward the square.

  “… five pennies for a pound of yams?…”

  “… try somewhere else, if you like…”

  I managed to get Gairloch turned around in the narrow street without brushing into anyone, but began to wonder if I should have stayed visible until I neared the gate. Of course, then someone would have seen us disappear, and that would have been that.

  I sighed-too loudly-next to an open window of a house that projected too far into the narrow way.

  “Who was that?”

  Gairloch and I eased back southward. In careful steps, we finally reached the southern gate.

  From what I could tell, there was nothing different occurring from the time when we had entered, even if it happened to be another gate. Close to twelve guards were stationed around the area, but my perceptions did give me a small jolt.

  Shielded much the same way I was, on the open ledge above the gate itself, rested a large caldron filled with oil. Under it was a set of burners -not in use at that moment, thankfully-but I wondered what else I had missed. That, and the fact that the good
viscount used visual concealment, sent another shiver down my spine.

  Slow step by slow step, Gairloch picked his way through the gate area. I kept patting his shoulder.

  “… under that sack?”

  “… open the pack slowly…”

  “… blackstaffer loose in the city…”

  “Where’s Jrylen?”

  I didn’t like the conversation between the figure that seemed to be the guard captain and the messenger who had raced up on foot, nor that Gairloch and I were less than a rod from the pair.

  “… on the wing…”

  “Get him here now. What does the blackstaffer look like?”

  I patted Gairloch again as we eased through the open gate, slow step by slow step, and out onto the stone pavement leading southward.

  … click… click… click…

  “GET HIM UP HERE!” The guard captain’s voice echoed out toward us. I shivered, and not from the wind out of the north, though that was chill enough. Crossbows carried a long way.

  “… hold up here, mother. Them’s guards having a stew about something…”

  We edged past the battered and narrow wagon on which two thin figures, radiating the honest disorder that had to have been age, sat and pulled a single mule to a halt.

  “… keep moving, old farts…”

  They didn’t but we did. I had to force myself to keep breathing with each step from Gairloch, to keep patting him and sending reassuring signals to him. Without the pony I would have been wearing crossbow quarrels.

  The bitterness of frozen and rotted field stubble swirled past me, and my legs seemed like they would knot into cramps so tight I would fall from the saddle… and my throat was tight…

  When we reached the crossroads a kay from the gate I .began to relax, but did not drop the light-reflective shield. While I was convinced we were too far for either an order-master or a chaos-master to detect the shield, if we appeared on an open road in plain sight of the walls, even a kay away, it would only be instants before a troop was dispatched. And although Gairloch was steady, I doubted that he could outrun true cavalry chargers on the road. In the mountains, perhaps, but not on the road.