The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “… will you be staying long?”

  I’d missed the first part of Minister Zeiber’s question, but the intent was clear.

  “No.”

  “And what are your plans?”

  I shrugged. “To do what has to be done.”

  “This is rather ambitious. Also, rather vague.”

  “It is vague,” I agreed cheerfully, with a growing awareness of the man’s underlying venality.

  Krystal’s face was impassive, but I could sense the humor beneath the facade.

  “I am afraid tomorrow will come early,” announced Kasee the Autarch. She rose from her chair. “Krystal, thank you for sharing the order-master with us. And you, Lerris-we appreciate your candor and your willingness to enlighten us.” The ruler nodded toward the Guard Commander.

  “Thank you, order-master,” added Ferrel, “especially for your rescue attempt and the ‘accidental’ charge. You saved a good score by taking out that wizard. I enjoyed returning your knife, and I won’t disabuse the guard by revealing the ‘accidental’ nature of your success.”

  “I appreciate your kindness, and your retrieving my knife.”

  Ferrel nodded and followed the autarch out. We were right behind, but, outside the dining room, in the wide red-oak paneled hallway, the autarch and Ferrel headed right. I followed Krystal to the left, down the dimly-lit halls, feet echoing in the hushed corridors.

  In time, we reached Krystal’s quarters, where the faithful Herreld waited. He had the door opened even before we had finished turning the last corner.

  “That will be all, Herreld.”

  He looked at me and back at Krystal.

  “If I need anything, I’ll ring the order desk.” Her smile was pleasant, but formal. “Good night.”

  “Good night, commander.”

  Thunk!

  Krystal dropped the heavy bar in place with the ease of long practice.

  “He wasn’t too pleased to see me come in.”

  Krystal didn’t answer the question, instead unbelted her sword and carried it into her bedroom.

  Thud… thud… The “thuds” came from the heavy boots, not the sword.

  She returned barefoot, still wearing the blouse, vest, and trousers she had on at dinner. “Let’s sit on the balcony for a little while.”

  Outside, a cool breeze caressed my face. Krystal took the right-hand chair and seated herself in the darkness. I sat and looked over the railing. There seemed to be more lamps in the guard yard below than in what else I could see of Kyphrien. Even the area below seemed dimly-lit for the guard force of a capital city.

  “People go to bed early.”

  “The price of candles and lamp-oil has doubled since midsummer.”

  “Oh… the war?”

  Krystal snorted. “Oil comes mainly from Spidlar or Certis, and the prefect won’t let the merchants cross Gallos to reach us. He also has an agreement with the Viscount of Certis. Between the two of them and the merchants’ greed…”

  “Food?”

  “We eat a lot of goats, cheese, and olives these days. And beans. We mustn’t forget the beans.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “I am tired, Lerris. We all are. Me, Ferrel, Liessa, and especially Kasee. She’s aged ten years in the past year. Dealing with Murreas alone is no banquet, but we need her as much as the Finest.” She leaned back on the balcony chair in the darkness, her voice low.

  “Obtaining the best troops money can buy?” That had to be the strategy. While Kyphrans like Shervan and Pendril were fine people, they didn’t make the disciplined force necessary to pick off Antonin’s madmen one at a time.

  “It’s getting harder and harder, and we’re paying three times what the new Duke of Freetown offers. Right now the Finest are two score short.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I reached over and squeezed her leg, just above the knee, trying to send a little order and strength her way.

  “Thank you. Sometimes…”

  I wished she had finished the sentence. There wasn’t enough light to see her face, and my order-senses didn’t read facial expressions well. Only a faint wistful longing surrounded her.

  “You wish what?” I finally asked.

  “That some things had been different. That I were younger. Or…”

  Again, she left the sentence unfinished, and I didn’t ask.

  “Sometimes, I do too,” I found myself answering.

  “You need to find some answers inside yourself first, I think.”

  She was right. Until I dealt with Antonin, or he dealt with me, there would be no answers. I sighed.

  “Hell, isn’t it?” Her voice was dry.

  I had to chuckle. I wasn’t quite up to laughing, but her tone was so wry I couldn’t help it. It was hell. Sitting on that cool balcony in pitch dark overlooking a city whose streets I had never walked, I talked to Krystal, the sub-commander, the autarch’s champion. I looked at a doorway that had once been open, a door through which I had not dared to walk.

  Why? I couldn’t say. Would that door be open to me again? I didn’t know that either.

  “I wonder if Kyphros needs another good woodcrafter…” I mused instead of confronting myself.

  “There aren’t many good woodcrafters anywhere. There aren’t many masters at anything anywhere, though.”

  Again, that lingering silence fell, and I heard a single set of footsteps on the stones below. In time, they died out.

  “Do you like being a master of the blade?”

  “Sometimes. When it’s used for good.”

  “And the other times?”

  I could feel her shrug, though she did not move from the chair. “You try to do as little damage as possible. You can’t support the best of rulers without some injustice. Wrynn never understood that.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Nothing. Not that I know of. She didn’t stay with the Finest long. She headed toward Sarronnyn through the southern passes, looking for a place where the people were strong and fair-minded.”

  “Poor Wrynn.” I felt sorry for her. Wherever she went, she wouldn’t find what she was looking for, just like I hadn’t been able to find the clear answers I so desperately wanted.

  “She won’t find them,” Krystal confirmed, almost reading my thoughts.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” I asked, not quite idly.

  “Part of it. I’m doing what I’m good at, and it has some value.”

  I didn’t ask about the rest. One look around the dinner table would have been enough to answer that. Instead, I looked out at Kyphrien, noting that the candles, lamps, and torches were fewer now, as more and more citizens went to bed, stopped carousing, or whatever.

  The breeze had picked up, bringing the first hint of chill since I had crossed the Little Easthorns. The faint smell of smoke came with the breeze, the smoke from torches and ill-adjusted oil lamps. Unlike Recluce, Kyphros and indeed, all of Candar, did not use coal-gas lamps.

  Krystal’s chair creaked. “Lerris?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need some sleep.” She stood up and stifled a yawn.

  It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t an invitation.

  “Oh… sorry. I’ll get my things.”

  “You can stay here. If you feel comfortable about it.” Then she added, and I could hear the smile in her words, “That’s just for sleeping.”

  Lonely as I felt, and much as I would have liked to hold her, and be held, she was right. Not that I liked it, but she was right. I had too many unanswered questions I had not even faced.

  “Besides,” she added with a short laugh, “it will add to my image.”

  “What? Having a poor woodworker stay overnight? That will improve your image?”

  “Come on inside. You were never a poor woodworker.”

  “I was a terrible apprentice.” I followed her in, letting her close the door. A single lamp burned in the main room.

  “That was then.” S
he gestured. “You want the bedroom or the couch? It’s long enough and firm enough.”

  I opted for the couch, ignoring the possible play on words. The quarters were hers, after all.

  “Good night.” She did close her door, if gently.

  Despite my unanswered questions, the couch was comfortable, and I slept more soundly than I had since leaving Fenard. I did not dream, nor wake with cold chills, nor hear the sound of coach wheels in the sky.

  I did wonder, before drifting off, what had happened to the lady who had once wanted me.

  LXII

  I WOKE UP early, in the chill winter grayness before true dawn with the blanket actually around my shoulders, looking at the ceiling and wondering. I had been drawn to Tamra and later to Krystal-but for different reasons, very different reasons. Krystal was my friend, yet my dreams of her were far more than friendly. And Tamra was a spoiled bitch, yet I still dreamed of her, though less frequently of late. What had changed? Or had anything? Or did I dream of Krystal because she seemed more attainable? Or…

  “You’re a confused mess, Lerris…” I muttered under my breath. Acknowledging it didn’t solve my confusion, but it might lead to more useful thought on the subject-assuming I had time to think about it.

  As silently as I could, I sat up, glancing through the single window. A few thin wisps of smoke already rose into the cloudy sky outside. Krystal’s door was shut, but she was awake or just waking up.

  I stretched, knowing that going out and achieving the impossible by defeating Antonin still wouldn’t resolve the questions whose answers I had sought. Was I going after Antonin in search of a glorious defeat in order to avoid admitting that there were no clear answers, or that they weren’t what I wanted?

  I shivered. That might be part of my problem, but it wasn’t all of it. After all, Justen had mucked around the edge for centuries, probably watching white wizards like Antonin burn themselves out one after the other. That was fine, if you were after a long life, but more than two centuries after the fall of Frven, Candar was still a conflicted mass of warring duchies.

  I stood up, letting the blanket fall, and gazed out at the eastern horizon, a faint red pink that subsided back into gray as I watched. Just in shorts, I wasn’t even cool, not once I was awake.

  Click.

  Krystal stood behind me, but I didn’t turn immediately.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.” I left the study of Kyphrien and turned toward my hostess.

  “Woodworking must be good for muscular development.” She wore a once-green scuffed leather tunic over a faded shirt with green leather trousers and battered boots. Some of the tiredness was gone from her eyes.

  “You’re ready to go,” I observed. “Some sort of hard work.” She grimaced. “Training.”

  Another set of pieces clicked into place in my thoughts. “You’re trying to buy time while-”

  She nodded. “It’s not working. The losses are too high.”

  I understood immediately. With Antonin’s chaos-support, the prefect didn’t need extraordinarily well-trained soldiers. The autarch did, and after a time the numbers who could be bought shrank, and only so many had the inclination and talent, and even fewer could be trained at any one time.

  Krystal presented a wry smile that held little amusement. “We do what we can.” She looked at me again, and I felt embarrassed. “Much as I like the view, you need to get dressed. We eat together with the guard in the morning.”

  I put on my traveling clothes, including the knife that Ferrel had returned at dinner, as quickly as I could. Krystal was doing something at her desk when I peered in, staff and pack in hand, ready to go.

  “Records, papers, and accounts,” she explained as she pushed back the chair.

  “Surely you don’t have to do the accounts for the guard?”

  “Chaos, no! But what tactics you can use depend on your equipment and your supplies. Not even the Finest can fight without horses or food.” She kept talking as she belted on the sword and pulled on the short jacket with the braid that served as her emblem of office. “Certain tactics cause a higher death rate for horses, and mounted troops need reserve mounts. While we have a grain levy, there’s a tradeoff between increasing the levy and taxing something else to buy the grain…” She shook her head. “I’m just beginning to understand a few of the complexities. Sometimes, fighting is the easiest part.”

  I nodded, thinking as we walked out the door and past the near-permanent sentry guarding her quarters. I ignored his hostile look, reflecting on what she had said. Certainly, money was important to something like woodworking, but I really hadn’t thought about it as the basis for fighting and warfare.

  In that light, what Antonin was doing made even more sense-unfortunately.

  “You’re quiet,” observed Krystal, not slowing her steps one whit as she took the wide stairs down toward the ground level of the building.

  “Thinking… Almost every day I learn something new, and it seldom answers the old questions. Just adds to the unanswered questions.” My guts twisted slightly at my overstatement, and I added another few words. “That’s the way it seems, but I guess that’s because the answers you find seem simple compared to the new questions.”

  In turn, Krystal was silent.

  The low-ceilinged guard mess hall contained space for more than a dozen-score guards at the long tables. Not quite half the seats were filled as we entered. Only a handful of heads turned, mostly of younger men, as Krystal marched up to the serving table.

  She took a single slice of thick bread, a scoop of some sort of preserves, a slice of hard white cheese, a boiled egg, and a steaming cup of a tea so bitter that I could smell it without even nearing the huge teapot.

  The cheese and egg were beyond me. I had two slices of the warm bread with the dark preserves, a battered apple, and tea.

  Krystal sat at a table in the middle of the room, alone except for me. As I sat down on the worn red-oak bench next to her, I caught sight of Ferrel leaving the mess, also wearing battered leathers.

  “You’ll pardon me,” Krystal said, with her mouth full. “I’d like to eat before business begins.”

  I frowned. Business?

  “Any guard can approach me now, ask questions, or make suggestions. They may not be quite as forward with you here, but there will be some.” She continued to munch slowly on the bread she had spread thinly with the preserves.

  Me, I had slathered my bread with the sweet preserves, enjoying each bite after my days of travel. Belatedly, I realized I did not remember much of what I had eaten the night before. I had eaten, that I recalled; but besides the salad and the lamb, I didn’t recall what had been on the plates.

  “Commander?” ventured a hard-faced woman wearing a single thin gold stripe on the shoulder of her vest. “You sent for me?”

  I almost choked, wondering when Krystal had sent for the woman, wondering if she ever slept.

  “Yes, leader Yelena. Would you be interested in an escort mission?”

  The sub-officer’s eyes flicked from Krystal to me. “I’d like to know more.”

  “Where are you going, Lerris?”

  I had to swallow several bites of apple and swig the too-hot tea. I didn’t know exactly. What I wanted was to find the wizards’ road that ran down the Little Easthorns without retracing my route from Gallos.

  “I’d like to see a map,” I began, “but, in general, along the old road to Sarronnyn, the one that no one uses now.”

  “The chaos-road?” suggested Yelena, her voice fiat.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what it’s called. But that’s where he is, beyond the point where the hidden wizards’ roads connect.”

  Both Krystal and Yelena turned to me. “Explain,” demanded the sub-commander, her voice as hard and authoritative as I had ever heard it.

  “There are hidden wizards’ roads throughout Candar. Sometimes the current roads are built right over the old roads built by the white wizards, but
many of the old roads are hidden. There’s one that runs, I think, the length of the Little Easthorns. It crosses the road from Gallos to Tellura somewhere after the top of the pass.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  I was more than a little puzzled at her coldness. “First, you never asked. Second… oh, shit… I see what you mean…”

  Now it was Yelena’s turn to look puzzled. I thought Krystal had softened slightly.

  “Logistics?” I asked. “Troop travel?”

  Krystal nodded.

  “I don’t think it will help, but, if you get me a map, I’ll show you where it goes.” Another thought struck me. “But unless you have another order-master, it won’t help. Where it crosses, the road is cloaked with illusions. Antonin hasn’t shared the roads with anyone, but I think he uses them to let everyone think he is everywhere.”

  “He’s been successful in that,” snapped the sub-officer. “I’ll get a set of maps.”

  Once she was out of earshot, before anyone else neared, I looked at Krystal. “I’m not a military strategist, and I don’t appreciate being accused, even silently, of incompetence. I admit it. I don’t know your business. Don’t expect me to.” I tried to soften my tone. “I know you’re against the wall. I can see it. I’d never withhold information or help, not knowingly. But I’m still having trouble learning my own business, let alone trying to understand yours.”

  Krystal pursed her lips, then met my glance. “I’m sorry.” Her tone was still flat.

  “Krystal… the first time I could have told you about the road was last night. Could you have done anything about it any earlier? Besides, I didn’t even know there were any wizards’ roads in Kyphros until I found that one, and I came straight to Kyphrien.”

  The stiffness finally receded. “I am sorry. It’s just…”

  “It’s that bad?” I asked.

  “Yes. It’s that bad. Maybe worse. Look around.”

  I did. For a long time. Then I swallowed. Fully a third of the guard were bandaged or otherwise disabled or incapacitated. Most of the sub-officers and officers were women, and most of the men were scarcely older than I was.