The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Click… dink… The sounds were faint, almost inaudible.

  A cloak of reflection slipped around me, and I hoped I was doing the right thing, that the danger ahead was merely that of armed assassins, and not a chaos-master.

  Two men appeared, slipping toward where I had been. While I could only sense them, not see them, one was older, slighter, tinged with the white-red fire of chaos. The other was just a hired blade, faintly disordered, but not chaos-evil.

  They searched each side of the street, moving toward me. In turn, I moved from the shadows into the main street, where they would only look, while they might concentrate and poke into the corners and alcoves.

  Click…

  The second sound came from behind me, from the direction of the Tap Inn.

  I forced myself to breathe easily, standing flat against a bricked wall between shops with their night shutters down, feeling exposed and open, and relying only on a reflective shield. The knife in my belt felt inadequate, especially against the drawn blades of the pair that walked toward me.

  From the inn came a second armed pair, searching and moving toward me.

  I almost held my breath as the bulkier assassin walked right by me, holding a blade at the ready. As soon as they were more than a few paces past, I took one quiet step, then another, edging toward the square and toward Destrin’s.

  “… disappeared…”

  “… left the inn. I saw him.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “… in one of the houses?”

  I let them argue, stepping quietly toward Destrin’s, not dropping the cloak until I was safely inside the stable.

  Whheee… eeeee… eee…

  “Yes, I know. Your stall is filthy. I didn’t ride you today, and you’re out of food.”

  The food came first, and I brushed Gairloch for a while, both to reassure him and to think. Then came the shovel and the pail. No one had told me about the mess horses make, or the enormous effort it took to keep one stall clean.

  Late indeed it was by the time I got back to the shop, and Bostric was pulling out his bed.

  “How did it go?” I asked, washing my hands again in the basin I had refilled.

  “Fine. They say you won’t stay here, that you are a wandering type. Is that true?” Bostric had had more than a beer. Otherwise, he would not have dared to ask the question,“not without his more overly-respectful tone.

  I shrugged. “Probably. Go to sleep.”

  He did, and I thought about the armed men. Clearly, Jirrle had known something about it, but whether he had just known or actually put them after me was another question. The fact that all their swords had felt the same told me that they were the prefect’s men.

  I was running out of time, but so far, no one apparently wanted to move directly. That forebearance wouldn’t last, and I would still have to watch for the assassins.

  LIV

  I DID NOT sleep well that evening, even after setting and checking the wards. I tossed on the narrow pallet, sweating as I pondered what I knew. The “J” on the tax levy had to have been Jirrle. Jirrle was some sort of advisor to the prefect, and Jirrle did not particularly care for me.

  Then, to make me even more uneasy, in the night skies, thunder raged. Not the thunder of honest clouds striving among themselves, nor the man-made thunder of gunpowder blasting. Not even the illusory thunder of the wind created by chaos-masters bent on enhancing the fears of an already too-ignorant population. Thunder such as this had I heard only once before, on the plains of Certis, when the ice storms and the blizzard had done their worst to destroy me.

  So I tossed and sweated, and, on the other side of my curtain, Bostric snored-loudly, and without any sense of rhythm.

  In the end, I did sleep, and without dreams that I remembered, which was probably for the best, since I woke with a start just before dawn. I was soaked in sweat, though the night had been cool for summer, even for a long summer that was drawing to a close.

  After using the facilities off the alley, little more than an outhouse that drained into a covered sewer, and washing in cool water drawn from the covered tank in the back, I felt closer to human. Some fruit and a biscuit from the tray Deirdre brought down helped more.

  We could have eaten upstairs, but in the mornings I never bothered, since I liked to get started early, especially in the warm weather.

  “Why…oh, why am I apprenticed to a master who loves mornings…?” Bostric looked worse than I felt, but the words were merely a ritual he intoned every morning. He splashed his way through a sketchy wash, then wolfed down what I had left on the tray.

  “They’re all talking about you…” he mumbled.

  “Oh… ?” I was checking the chest against the sketches and the plan book.

  “Jirrle thinks you’re from Recluce…”

  I swallowed a cold lump in my guts, saying nothing.

  “… Deryl thinks you want Deirdre and the shop, and Grizzard doesn’t see anything remarkable in you and wonders why anyone is making such a fuss.”

  Shrugging, I took a last sip of the redberry and set the mug aside.

  “Jirrle also told Deryl that the chairs for the sub-prefect were going to cause trouble… but he wouldn’t say why.”

  Trouble? Chairs causing trouble? Then I shivered, recalling the reaction of my own staff to chaos. Once again, in pushing too hard, I hadn’t thought through the consequences. And the chairs had been black oak.

  “Are you all right?” I shook my head. “I’m… fine. I just realized I had forgotten something.” Although I knew I needed to talk to Brettel and I had finished the dower chest for Dalta, I had held off on delivering it, perhaps because we had received so much from Brettel. I didn’t want to impose so soon again on the mill-master, whether he was Deirdre’s godfather or not. In addition, Bostric was not quite ready. But now I would have to watch every corner for the Duke’s assassins…

  Despite what I had seen, except for Jirrle, nothing pointed toward me, yet I felt some greater force was rushing from beyond my perceptions straight for me. Or was I just imagining things, believing I could sense what I could not understand? The world of order and thoughts just made life more confusing, not less.

  Already, summer was coming to a close. The grasses were browning, and the hand of the long hot summer pressed down upon Fenard like an open stove. With the heat, the varnishes gave off more fumes, even in the late mornings.

  Although I tried to do the finish work while Destrin took the rests that grew fractionally longer each day, sometimes he persisted in tinkering with his benches, even as he coughed his lungs out.

  “Ace… accc… cuufff…” No longer did he pale when. he coughed -he was pallid all the time.

  “Let Bostric finish those joins,” I suggested.

  “I just came down. Are you trying to push me out again, Lerris? I’m the shop-master. It’s my business, and no outlander will tell me how to run it.” He glared at me, even as he had to support himself on the bench. “Ace… accc… acuuufff…”

  “I’m not trying to push you anywhere. Bostric is your apprentice, and he’s here to help you. If I can help him learn, fine. But how can he help if you insist on doing everything?” I pressed a touch more order upon his system, but only a touch. He was so fragile that anything more would have done more damage than the coughing.

  “Papa…” added Deirdre. When she talked to her father, her voice was firm, gentle, no matter what the pain she held inside.

  “All of you… you all want to put me away…” Even as he protested, Destrin let Deirdre lead him up the stairs.

  I laid down the plane and motioned to Bostric as soon as Destrin was out of sight. We looked over the bench Destrin had been resting against, rather than working upon.

  “Can you clean this up and finish it?” I asked.

  Bostric studied the seat plate. “How would you suggest I fix this?” He pointed to the beginning of an off-center hole, probably angled when Destrin started coughing.


  “You’ve got one or two choices-fill it and reset. Or cut the size and redo the spokes. Make it more ornamental…”

  Bostric licked his lips nervously.

  “Go ahead. Destrin can’t finish it.” I didn’t know how accurately I spoke.

  Whhssttt…

  Deirdre stood at the stairs. “Lerris… ?” Her voice was almost matter-of-fact. That she stood there at all told she needed something. Resourceful in all things, from running the accounts to developing her own cushioning business to running the shop and household food budget, she had asked nothing-except once. Yet behind the quiet facade, I had begun to understand, lay a strong will.

  “I’ll be right there.” Catching Bostric’s attention, I said, “Destrin and I need to discuss something. If a customer should show, just ring the bell, and I’ll be right down.” Then I followed Deirdre up the stairs. If she hadn’t been so upset, I almost would have smiled at Bostric’s hidden appraisal of Deirdre.

  “Papa… he’s moaning, and he doesn’t know who I am…” The seaming work she did was neatly laid on her table by the rear window. She probably earned more from the sewing than Destrin did from his infrequent benches, and saved more than that from her handling of his accounts.

  Bostric would do better than he knew, and I only hoped I had the time to help him be more than she knew.

  Destrin lay upon the wide bed, eyes closed, breathing raggedly and quickly, a bluish tinge to his fingers and a grayish look to his face. His eyes opened. “Kyren… where’s… girl

  “I’m here, papa.” Her thin voice was low. “Kyren… so… cold…”

  As I reached into that frail and wasted body, the burning, the pressure seared me, and I had to grasp the bedpost, even as my senses touched the knotted heart, easing a cramp here, letting the blood flow and strengthening what I could, the parts that had yet enough firmness to strengthen. It took a long time, gently as I had to work, and I didn’t remember sitting down.

  “Lerris… Lerris…” A cool cloth touched my forehead.

  My head was not splitting, but a dull ache and a great tiredness encouraged me not to move.

  “Something to drink? Redberry?” I asked hoarsely.

  Deirdre brought me a cup. A few sips and I felt almost normal, if light-headed. I eased myself out of the chair and tiptoed over to the bed. Destrin’s color was no longer grayish, only pale, and he slept. I nodded, but wondered how much longer I could hold him together, and whether I should, recalling the pain I had felt in touching him. My eyes blurred for a moment.

  “Lerris?”

  I had forgotten Deirdre was standing beside me.

  “You saved him… again.” Her voice was neutral.

  “Yes.” I shook my head. “I don’t know, Deirdre. I don’t know. He hurt so much.”

  She looked at me, questioningly, for the first time with tears flowing from both eyes.

  “I stopped the hurt, but for how long?”

  “Poor… poor papa…”

  “Don’t let him get up. Tell him he has a chill.”

  “How long?”

  I knew what she meant.

  “If he rests, if he is quiet^ perhaps half a year, but that’s just a guess. He could have died today, but he doesn’t want to.”

  I “Poor papa…”

  That afternoon, I paid Wryson two coppers for the loan of his wagon and followed it, and the red-oak dower chest, out to Brettel’s house. In case it was to be a surprise, I had covered it with a blanket.

  On the way across the avenue and toward the north road, we pulled up for a cavalry troop returning. A single prisoner, blindfolded, hands tied behind her back, wearing green leathers, swayed on the last horse. A dark splotch stained her short-cut blond hair. The prefect’s troops had left her an empty scabbard, perhaps because, disoriented and wounded, she still radiated order.

  The last four horses bore only empty saddles, and the reek of disorder, of chaos, was faint, as if expended in whatever battle they had fought.

  “… make way… make way…”

  … clink •… dink…

  “Make way… make way…”

  Sensing primarily tiredness and pain, nothing resembling new-cast chaos, despite my awareness extension, I waited until the troop had passed. Still, I was on edge until the wagon pulled inside the big stone warehouse. The woman in green bothered me. She could have been Wrynn or Krystal. She wasn’t, but she could have been.

  “Lerris, you’re earlier than I expected. I told you to take your time.” He still grinned.

  “Do you want to see it?” I glanced around.

  “Dalta’s at the market square.”

  Using both arms, I moved the chest, still covered, from the wagon.

  “Here.” Sperlin-Wryson’s driver-got a copper I couldn’t afford. “Just go straight back.”

  “Thank you, ser.”

  Not until the wagon rumbled down the ramp and back onto the north road did I turn back to Brettel.

  “You’re thinner, Lerris, hunted-looking.”

  “We passed a cavalry troop… lots of empty saddles.” Brettel just shook his head. “Why? The autarch isn’t bothering him.”

  I didn’t know the answer, either, except there were more soldiers in Gallos.

  “Do you want to see the chest?” I changed the subject back to the reason I had come.

  “Of course, of course.”

  After lifting the blanket gently, I waited, watching his face.

  He looked for a long time. Finally, he turned to me. “I can’t afford that. That’s a piece worthy of Dorman or Sardit- their best.”

  While it wasn’t that good, the chest was exquisite, and equal to the lesser but good pieces my uncle had done. But comparisons weren’t fair. I could see into the wood, and they couldn’t.

  So we stood there for a time, and Brettel kept gazing at the chest. “She won’t appreciate it.”

  “She will. Later, at least.”

  At last, he looked at me.

  “Why are you here? Now?”

  “To ask that you allow Bostric to marry Deirdre.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because Destrin is dying, and I have to leave before it’s too late, and before anything becomes too public. I only hope I haven’t waited too long.”

  “There’s a problem, Lerris.”

  “I can see a number.” My voice was wry, even to my own ears.

  “While Bostric has taken over the bench work and the simple chests, and his work is better than Destrin’s was, you’re still the craft-master…”

  “I’m no craft-master.” I felt I had to protest, but my guts turned at the thought that I actually might be approaching that level.

  “No… not if you compare yourself to Perlot and Sardit. And Dalta’s chest there even gives that the lie. If you consider Rasten or Deryl or Hertol or Ferralt, already they can’t compare. Not at all.”

  “Look,” I said. “Deirdre’s a good seamstress, almost good enough to carry the household on her own. It won’t be easy for them, but she has a dowry-”

  “She does?” the mill-master asked.

  “I made her a chest like Dalta’s, not quite as good, and she has a small dowry of five golds, not much…”

  “Lerris…” He shook his head.

  “I know… it’s not really enough, but-”

  “Lerris. What are you? You’re a stranger, who has lived here little more than a year, who has held death at bay, who has redeemed my god-daughter’s hope and future, and restored her father’s honor, and provided a dowry. Would that my own sons would go so far.”

  I was embarrassed at the tears rolling down his cheeks. So I said nothing. After all, if I hadn’t done what I could, who would have?

  “We need a wedding soon, while Destrin can still appreciate it.”

  “Have you asked him?”

  I shrugged. “No. I was afraid to upset him.”

  “Let me come back with you. Better now than later. Ask him while I am there.”

 
Brettel washed the sawdust off his face and uncovered forearms, changed from his leather apron into a linen shirt, and mounted a black mare-all in the time it took me to drink a glass of redberry.

  We rode back together. Thankfully, we saw no more of the prefect’s troops.

  LV

  DESTRIN SAT IN the armchair, his face gray-hued under the pallor, but without the deadly blue of the morning.

  “I brought an old friend,” I said, but didn’t get any further in my explanation.

  “Godpapa!” Deirdre didn’t quite shriek as she saw the mill-master. “It’s been so long.”

  “Here to pay your respects to the deceased, Brettel?” Destrin’s voice was waspish.

  “No. I’m here to discuss my god-daughter’s future.”

  “You can’t foster her. I told you that-”

  I touched Destrin’s shoulder and tried to calm him, both physically and by infusing him with a touch of order. “That’s not what he means…”

  Destrin leaned back in the chair, but his color was even a shade more gray.

  Deirdre looked from me to Brettel and back again, raising her eyebrows.

  “May I sit down?” Brettel didn’t wait for an answer, instead lifting one of the straight chairs from the table and setting in on the worn wooden planks directly across from Destrin. “Lerris, get a chair.”

  So I did, and I got one for Deirdre, and waited for her to sit down. It was her life we were talking about. She looked from her father to Brettel to me once again, then licked her lips.

  “What’s this about my Deirdre?” Destrin’s voice remained sharp.

  Brettel looked to me.

  I swallowed. “I think that she should consider a marriage proposal…” I began.

  “A master hand with wood you are, Lerris. But would you do right by her?”

  “No. I wouldn’t. That’s why I’m not asking. My asking for her hand could lead to her death.”

  Even Brettel swallowed.

  Destrin, surprisingly, didn’t. He did look at me, long. “You’re honest, boy. I won’t say much, but could you answer a question for me?”