The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  In spite of myself, I grinned. Me, an armed man? With a small knife and a staff that was only defensive?

  “Deres, Nershal, move it!”

  Five mounted figures drew together and began walking uphill.

  Clink… clinkedy… dink…

  “How far?”

  “Right at the hilltop!”

  “There’s no one there!”

  Nerve-wracking as it was, I guided Gairloch onto the side of the road, into the grasses, gambling that the scrunched sounds of damp grass would be less obvious than hoofprints suddenly appearing on the clay road.

  The nearest rider passed less than two arm-lengths from us as the five men headed up the road.

  “Check the road for hoofprints!”

  Somebody was thinking-unfortunately.

  We kept moving toward the troop. The wizard, a blob of white mounted on a horse that was probably also white, waited in the shade of a tall pine downhill from the man who shouted the orders.

  Wheeee… eeee…

  “What was that?”

  “Quiet,” I whispered into Gairloch’s ear, patting his neck. “Quiet…”

  We had to get closer to the white wizard, but not seem as though that were my purpose. So I kept Gairloch headed downhill, paralleling the road.

  “He’s past you! You idiots! Turn around! Look for hoof-prints! Marks in the grass!”

  By then we were nearly abreast of the heavy-set officer who bellowed. Beside him were two other mounted men, plus two prisoners on horseback-at least they were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind them. And I was powerless to do anything to save them-not with my own order powers, at least.

  Still… I found myself turning Gairloch across the road, straight toward the officer.

  “He’s headed toward you.” The flat voice carried uphill from the shaded wizard.

  “He’s headed this way!” The officer yanked his sword out, as did the pair beside him.

  Hsssss…

  “Aeüü… damned…”

  Hsss…

  Clang…

  “Harmin!”

  Wheeee… eeeee…

  Almost easy, it was. Just a quick blow with the staff to the wrists of all three men-who still couldn’t see me. So chaos-filled were they that the mere touch of the staff was agony. And I encouraged their horses to run-after knocking the reins of the two captives’ horses from the hands of the third man.

  Then I jammed the staff back into the holder and used my knife to slash at the bonds of the prisoners. That took too long. Trying to cut through rope from pony-back isn’t easy.

  Whhhhsttt!

  A bolt of pure chaos-fire licked around me, and I expanded the shield around the two.

  “Hold still!” I hissed.

  “Mmmmmppphhhh…”

  Gagged, of course, and probably telling me to get on with it.

  “Harmin! Get the bastard!”

  Whhhsssstttt… Another sheet of flame cascaded off my shields.

  I cut the woman’s wrist a bit, but finally severed the heavy cord, and pressed the knife into her hand. “You’ll have to free your friend!” I snapped, reaching up and yanking off the blindfold. “Don’t scream. You can’t see me!”

  “… not a silly bitch like…” she muttered as she used her other hand to rip off the blindfold and the gag.

  Gairloch wheeled away from the two captives. While I would have liked to run like hell, unless I kept the wizard busy there was nothing to keep him from frying the captives.

  So we charged, as much as a mountain pony and an idiot woodcrafter with a little ability with order-magic and a good staff could charge.

  Whhhssstttt…

  The heat and force nearly collapsed my shields in on me, somehow drawn to the staff before me.

  Thumpedy… thump… Gairloch’s hooves actually drummed on the meadow turf, and I grabbed for my staff again, hoping my trembling knees could hold me in place on the suddenly very unsteady Gairloch.

  “They’re escaping!”

  “Who’s escaping?”

  Whhhsttttt!

  The staff deflected the fire, but that was all it would do, gathering some and letting the rest sheet off, almost as if I were fighting with it, rather than with the other wizard.

  Whhhssttttt!

  “You see that?”

  “Forget the wizards! Get the captives!”

  “Where are they?”

  Whhhstttt!

  Gairloch and I half-tumbled, half-thundered downhill toward the wizard on his white horse.

  Whhhstttt!

  “Just keep going…”

  I got the staff ready.

  EEEüüi!…

  The white horse turned.

  WHHHHSSSST17 V 7 7 V 7 7 7

  “Aeeeeeüü…”

  “Ouuufffff…”

  Staff and firebolt had met at the white wizard’s fingertips.

  For a long instant, I sat there, momentarily near-deaf with the hissing still crackling in my ears… shaking my head… before realizing that the white horse had reared, and that a dead man lay on the turf, still dressed in white. Even as I watched, his face turned to ashes and bones, and then the bones began to disintegrate…

  “There he is! Another wizard! A black one!”

  My shields had gone with the clash, leaving me in full sight of too damned many Gallian soldiers.

  “Jernan! The captives!”

  Shaking, head splitting, guts turning, I nudged Gairloch past the heap of ashes that had been a white wizard, and back toward the road.

  “Use your bows!” bellowed the heavy-set officer. “Your bows, idiots!”

  Somehow I gathered enough of a light shield around us, just enough to cloak us for a while as we both staggered away.

  “He’s gone!”

  “Guess where he is!”

  I don’t know what they did-except that if they shot at us, they missed. I did know that I was now in big trouble. Antonin wasn’t about to overlook the killing of another white wizard, however accidental it might have been.

  And the autarch’s troops, assuming the captives made it back safely, wouldn’t be thrilled about a black wizard running around loose, either. While I wasn’t a black wizard, that was bound to be the way I would be described.

  My head ached. My buttocks ached. My eyes burned. My ears kept chiming in discordant minor keys, and there was a taste of bile in my throat. I’d played hero, and rescued two whole captives-maybe-and alerted every white wizard in Candar.

  Whheeee… eeee…

  “Yeah… I know…”

  Somehow we tottered along through the afternoon, at least long enough that the simmering disorder that represented Antonin and the mess I had made disappeared behind us.

  In the meantime, the clouds from the west rolled in.

  Thurrrummmm…

  The hills became more than hills and less than the East-horns, and the road stopped rising and falling and turned into a near-steady grade.

  Long before sunset, I turned Gairloch up a deserted arroyo that had tufts of grass and a clean, if narrow stream. There was an overhang sheltered from both the road and overhead observation.

  Then I unsaddled Gairloch, stacked the saddlebags, unpacked the bedroll, and collapsed. I did manage some silent wards, and a type of shield I’d read about but never tried. It didn’t make us invisible, just reduced the level of order that escaped from around us, something not very useful in hiding from bandits, but very useful in hiding from Antonin. The problem was that you couldn’t do both at once. At least I couldn’t, and Antonin was the bigger problem in the dark.

  Wheeee… eeeee…

  Slurrrrppppp…

  A wet tongue woke me into near-darkness.

  Thurrummmm…

  Despite the thunder, no rain had fallen.

  The ringing in my ears was gone, but not the shakiness in my hands, or the splitting headache that felt like thunder between my ears.

  After crawling down to the brook, dunking my head and drink
ing, the shakiness subsided to an occasional tremble, and I realized my crawl had covered my trousers with mud. I also realized that Gairloch was hungry.

  “Good horse… good pony…” I patted his neck, but he nipped at me just enough to indicate words weren’t what he wanted. Two grain cakes took care of his problem. He was a pig, but he’d saved my neck too many times to count. So I munched on travel bread, ignored my headache for a time longer, and brushed my four-footed savior.

  Then I had some fruit and more bread and went back to sleep.

  In the morning, I washed the mud off my trousers and laid them in the sun to dry. We both ate again before I washed myself up and even shaved. I was in no hurry. Antonin clearly hadn’t followed me, since I was still alive, and there was no point in heading into more trouble immediately. There was also no point in malingering.

  So, slightly after mid-morning, I resaddled Gairloch, packed up the gear, and headed back to the road.

  In one thing, I had been wrong. Coach tracks marked the cracking clay of the road.

  I shivered, but there was nothing else I could do.

  LIX

  IN A WAY, following the coach tracks was a relief. At least, I knew that Antonin was not tracking me directly. But then, I wasn’t sure that he even knew that I-Lerris-existed. The other thought, even more disturbing, was that he didn’t really care, that nothing I had done mattered. Even worse was the thought that perhaps my actions actually benefitted the white wizard.

  I frowned at the thought. Antonin had only seen my face once, in a crowded inn, and he had never heard my name. There would have been nothing to connect me to the ordered woodwork or even to the disasters I had created in Fenard. So all that he probably knew was that someone was working order in Gallos and Kyphros-someone strong enough or lucky enough to destroy a white wizard .

  That destruction I still did not understand fully, except how close I had come to being destroyed myself. Nor did I understand why Antonin had not immediately set out after me. I could only shake my head and press on.

  Gairloch dutifully carried me onward until we were clearly into the tree-covered rocks of the Little Easthorns, steep hills I would once have considered mountains. But then, the way I viewed a number of things had changed.

  Around midday, when I was looking for another stream or at least a shaded place, we came down another incline into a small dry valley. Gairloch skittered slightly. Underfoot the surface seemed flatter, and I looked around. On the right was a thick grove of scrub juniper bushes. On the left was a large and whitish boulder. I reined Gairloch to a halt. Whheeee… eeee…

  My spine tingled as I studied the rock that looked no different than any other rock along the dusty road. I glanced toward the scrubby off-green of the junipers, felt the same way. Something…

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on sensing what was really there.

  Or, as it turned out, what was not there. Neither the juniper nor the boulder was really there-just the semblance of each. Behind the semblance was the flat white surface of another wizards’ road-one that flew as straight as an arrow down a narrow valley that appeared to stretch east from the Westhorns all the way to the Easthorns.

  How many of the damned roads had the old chaos-masters built? Was that how they had held together their evil empire? How had the illusion lasted so long?

  Then I felt stupid as I thought it out. The road was old, but not the illusion. Antonin and his coach-they used the road. No wonder he seemed to be everywhere. Then I began to look at the coach tracks. There weren’t any. Something had smoothed them over. None ran down into the valley, and none ran out. But they had led to the crest of the hill behind me.

  So the chaos-master didn’t want his secret roads noticed. I smiled briefly and flicked the reins. “Let’s go.”

  Before riding on, I noted where the road ran for future reference. The road wasn’t evil-just its uses.

  We spent another night in the Little Easthorns, up another narrow canyon with a stream that did not merit the name, and even less grass. Gairloch had almost finished off the last of the grain cakes, and I began to worry whether I would have the coins necessary for food once we reached the more inhabited sections of Kyphros.

  I washed out one set of underclothes and laid them on the rocks, wringing them dry, wondering as I looked at the overhead clouds of gray whether I should have done so.

  After sunset, the thunder rumbled like coach wheels down a canyon road, like Antonin riding forth and sowing destruction across the Vale of Krecia. I thought that was the name of the place where I had met the white wizard, and if it weren’t… well… one name was as good as another. The flashes of the lightning hid behind the clouds in the northern half of the sky, back-lighting those dark sky-mountains.

  For all the thunder in the heavens, the air remained warm enough that the light breeze was welcome. I ended up tossing off the cloak and lying on the bedroll barefoot, sleeping in just shirt and trousers.

  The rain promised by the thunder did not arrive, and, in time, the clouds overhead vanished and the stars shone like tiny lamps in the sky, clearer than I had seen them since I had landed in Freetown, and nearly as clear as on a midwinter night in Recluce.

  Dawn crashed down on me like a tide of light, or so it seemed, with the red ball of sun bursting from a dark sky within instants.

  With no reason to tarry, Gairloch and I headed onward and downward. Being on the southern side of the Little Easthorns made a difference in one respect. Kyphros was warmer, a lot warmer, and drier. Even with just a shirt and no tunic, I was sweating-and it was well into fall.

  What the place would be like in the summer, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.

  Each step Gairloch took on the hilly road toward Kyphrien raised a reddish dust. Orchards seemed to prevail on the hillsides-orchards and grapes. The trees were of two kinds-gnarled olive trees with small pale green leaves, and some sort of fruit with which I was unfamiliar. There might have been several related types or different varieties of the same type. Whatever they were, the greenish fruits all grew on low spreading trees with dark-green leaves that might have been shiny except for the autumn dust. Some of the green fruits seemed to have an orange color mixed with the green, but since none of the trees were that close to the road, I really couldn’t tell.

  Unlike the stone and red-oak houses of the more northern principalities, the houses of Kyphros were white; but it wasn’t the white of chaos, just a soft off-white painted over timber and stone and plaster. The roofs were mostly of red tile.

  Wheeee… eeee…

  “It’s hot, and you’re thirsty. So am I.”

  We kept riding, but only. until the next crossroad, which consisted of half-a-dozen houses and a small building with a shaded porch. By then it was near midday.

  I wiped my forehead as I dismounted in front of the building.

  “Could you tell me where I might get some water for my horse?” I asked a tanned youngster with shaggy black hair, a boy who might have reached to my waist.

  “We have some. You will have to lead your… horse… around the back.” He pointed around the left side of the building. “Barrabra! A traveler!” Then he was gone.

  I scratched my head, itchy from the sweat and heat and dust, before taking the reins and trudging toward the corner.

  I stopped suddenly. Around the white-plastered corner of the building were several men armed with swords, waiting, and the fear they would have denied boiled from them. I didn’t want to fight, and I didn’t want to run. So I stood there, reins in hand, wondering what I would do next.

  Finally, I reached back and took my staff. That was all I had. I’d never gotten my knife back from the Kyphran soldier in all the confusion with the white wizard.

  I spoke loudly. “If I really meant you harm, don’t you think I would have fried you where you stood?”

  Two of them dropped the swords and ran. One shook his head. The biggest charged around the corner waving the blade in a way that showed he ha
d no idea of how to use it.

  Thunk.

  Clang. The sword banged against the wall and dropped into the dirt.

  “Just leave it there,” I said tiredly. “All I wanted was some water.”

  “But… you’re a wizard…” He was dark-haired, well-muscled, and wore faded white trousers and a sleeveless shirt. On his feet were sandals, not boots.

  “Says who? You made enough noise to warn an army.”

  “What are you?” He looked past me to the other man creeping up behind me.

  I half-turned in order to watch them both.

  The man who had come from the rear did wear boots, the same pale-green uniform, including the green leather vest, that I had seen on the prefect’s captives, and the way he carried the sword was more professional.

  “Who are you?” asked the soldier.

  “Me? I’m a woodworker at heart, who happened to displease the prefect of Gallos.”

  “Likely story.”

  He was right, unfortunately. In his position, I wouldn’t have believed me either. I shrugged. “All right. I’m from Recluce, and I created a little too much order in Fenard, partly through woodworking, and now I seem to have every white wizard in Candar after me.” *

  “That’s not much better.” He waited, however, probably for reinforcements.

  So I wove a shield and disappeared. Then I knocked his sword from his hand while he was gaping.

  While he was meditating on that, I reappeared, presented the sword back to him with my free hand. “It happens to be true, and I’m getting a little tired of playing games.”

  He paled slightly. “What do you want?” He sheathed the weapon.

  “I’m trying to see if someone I once knew…” I raised the staff.

  For the first time, he actually looked at the staff, realized that it was black. So help me, the man turned even whiter than the wall. He swallowed. “Why… ?”

  “I need to know.”

  “Is she a black-haired blade that can destroy any man?”

  I hadn’t thought of Krystal in quite that way. “One of them was black-haired and a master with almost any kind of blade. Black-eyed, pale-skinned-”

  “Hell…”

  I turned on the other man, who had edged toward his sword, still lying not that far from my feet, “Just hold it right there.”