Colors of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “You are here.” Kinowin’s lips tightened. “I cannot say that any of this surprises me. Nor can I fault Jeslek’s desire to remove Ferobar without the use of armsmen. Such a removal will send a message to his successor-and to Syrma. For a time, at least, and Jeslek must have time to gather more golds.”

  “If I can remove Ferobar.”

  Kinowin laughed. “You can do that easily enough. What you must do is remove him after you have already left Hydolar.”

  “After I have left Hydolar?”

  “You would not wish your fellow mages to be attacked, would you? Nor the Lady Leyladin?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Also… few will suspect danger after three White mages have left Hydolar.”

  Cerryl nodded. “An illusion?”

  “Yes. Anya is quite good at them, and she will relish doing you a favor in Jeslek’s service. Also… you must make sure that no trace of Ferobar remains, except perhaps ashes.”

  “Confusion?”

  “If none are sure if or when he died, your escape will be far easier. There are enough factions in Hydlen that none dare attempt to impersonate him. Finally,” Kinowin added with a shrug, “disappearance upsets rulers and would-be rulers far more than death, which most expect to claim them sooner or later.”

  Cerryl nodded. The overmage’s words made great sense.

  “When do you leave? Tomorrow?”

  “First light.”

  “You’d better prepare.” Kinowin rose. “You might wish to take a warm jacket with winter hovering on the horizon.”

  Cerryl stood and replied. “Thank you.”

  “Thank me when you return.”

  LX

  Anya and Fydel, already mounted, looked at Cerryl in the orange light of dawn. Cerryl glanced at the big chestnut gelding and the red and white livery. Finally, he swallowed and pulled himself into the saddle. He shifted his weight, but the saddle was as hard and as unyielding as he had recalled.

  Fydel nodded to the lancer officer on the bay beside him. “Let us depart, Captain Reaz. We have a long-enough ride ahead.”

  A cold breeze out of the north blew at Cerryl’s back as he urged the gelding after the other two Whites. Kinowin had been right; winter was on its way. Behind him, he could hear the sound of lancers riding nearly in unison as the column left the stable courtyards and turned onto the Avenue south of the Halls of the Mages.

  Cerryl found himself riding beside Anya.

  They had almost reached the south gate to Fairhaven before either spoke.

  “Whatever you may be doing for Jeslek,” Anya said quietly, “I do suggest that you do it with great success and devotion.”

  “I intend to,” Cerryl answered as quietly.

  “And I would not let your feelings for the Lady Leyladin interfere. After all, Cerryl, there’s no real future between a Black and a White.”

  “I’ve been told that,” Cerryl answered. “Right now, she is a friend.” Because that’s all she’ll let it be.

  “Blacks who are friends can be useful, so long as you do not turn your back for too long. Also, Blacks who are linked to great factors can be even more useful, if you use your head and not your heart.”

  The sound of hoofs echoed down the Avenue as the column rode toward the south gate, the one Cerryl had spent guarding for too long. Even after making his maps of Candar as an apprentice - a time that felt more and more distant - it felt strange to be riding west to reach Hydolar, west for a time on the Great White Highway and then southwest on one of the lesser White highways until they reached the Ohyde River and Hydolar.

  “Have you thought more about Myral’s great visions?” asked Anya, in a abnormal tone. “You can see where they led him.”

  “I don’t know anyone who has escaped dying,” Cerryl pointed out. “Myral lived longer than most mages. His knowledge was useful for that.”

  “A few years. Someday… someday, a strong White mage will be able to live longer, far longer.”

  The cold certainty of Anya’s words bothered Cerryl. “I suppose that’s possible. I suppose it’s also possible that a strong Black healer might manage the same.”

  A strange expression, one Cerryl couldn’t define, flitted across the redhead’s face, so quickly Cerryl almost missed it.

  “That might be so, but you are a White, and you should follow your own path. Especially now.” She smiled, overly sweetly. “Jeslek expects you to bring honor to the Guild.”

  Honor? Power perhaps, but hardly honor. Then, he reflected, Fairhaven needed more power. The Guild-

  “What are you thinking?” Anya asked.

  “About power,” he answered truthfully. “About how the Guild needs power more than honor. If we were stronger, then we wouldn’t have to worry about having Guild representatives killed or chased out of other lands. We could suggest trade policies that would benefit all Candar and not have to argue and send lancers and wizards back and forth across Candar.”

  Anya laughed. “You sound just like Jeslek. Perhaps he did pick better than he knew.”

  “It’s true,” Cerryl said stubbornly, wondering why he felt he had to defend his ideas against Anya.

  “Oh… Cerryl, you and Jeslek will struggle and dream, and nothing will change. We can only change that close around us for comfort or personal triumph. The world will be what it will be.”

  Was there a trace of something else in her sardonic words? Envy? Pity? Cerryl couldn’t tell.

  Instead he shifted his weight in the saddle, trying not to think about just how sore he would be by the end of the day.

  LXI

  Even by midmorning of the second day, Cerryl’s legs ached and his thighs burned. He’d never ridden before becoming a student mage, and outside of his one trip to and from Fenard as an apprentice, he’d never spent much time on horseback.

  Fairhaven had faded into the low fall-golden hills behind them early on the first day, and since then they had ridden through low hills and valleys, and more low hills and valleys, each browner than the one before, as though drought and the coming winter had taken their toll. The heavy fall rains that had washed out so many crops, especially in Hydlen, had come-briefly-and gone, too late to help the land and too early for the next growing season, and the dryness had returned.

  Cerryl could hear Captain Reaz talking to Fydel.

  “…used to be greener here, far greener…

  “…demon-damned Blacks meddling with the weather again.”

  Cerryl had his doubts. More likely something about the mountains Jeslek had created in Gallos had as much to do with the unseasonable weather in Candar, and in Hydlen, as did anything the Blacks had done. Then, that wasn’t exactly something he dared say.

  “… meddle with everything… just ought to stay on their accursed isle.”

  Cerryl glanced from the two ahead of him to Anya, riding in silence beside him, her jaw-length red hair disarrayed by the light and warm breeze that now blew from the south. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Jeslek told you that I had a task to do for him in Hydolar.”

  “He did.” Anya nodded briskly, from where she rode beside him, as though her thoughts were elsewhere. She turned to him, and her eyes focused on the younger mage. “He also said that I could call upon you.”

  “He did,” Cerryl agreed. “So long as it did not hinder my ability to complete my charge to him.”

  “He did say that.”

  “I would like to request your assistance, Anya,” Cerryl said, careful to keep his words formal, for reasons he could not say but felt nonetheless.

  “With what?”

  “A seeming of myself… when the time is ready. That’s all.”

  “A seeming of you? Even Fydel could do that.” Anya laughed. “I will ask the same of you… in time. A favor, that is. To help me shift the ground slightly. Far less than in Gallos.”

  Cerryl nodded.

  “Have you thought more about the future?” An amused smile crossed Anya’s lips.
/>   “I have been advised to think most strongly about the present. By several,” he added after a moment. “I might not see any future if I don’t.”

  She laughed again, softly and ironically. “It is strange how a few seasons can change a man.”

  “We learn,” Cerryl said, blocking his annoyance from Anya’s possible truth-reading.

  “That doesn’t matter, either. Not most of the time.”

  “Why?” asked Cerryl, intrigued in spite of himself. Besides, it is a long ride.

  Learning affects only what you do. If you teach others, you change others. That was what Myral believed.“ Anya’s face grew distant, her eyes elsewhere. ”That doesn’t work, I’ve found. People only learn what they want to learn, or what they will accept. So most of that learning is wasted. Most of life is wasted if you try to help others. They take and do not appreciate. They reject the knowledge that you have struggled to gain, and they will walk on you or kill you for a silver-or less.“ After her words came the bright smile. ”Just watch closely, Cerryl. You’ll see what I mean. If you dare to look.“ Her eyes swept to the road ahead, as if to signify that she had said what she would say.

  Despite the sun that fell across him, Cerryl suddenly felt cold, even before the wind picked up, and very alone, even though tenscore lancers rode behind him.

  LXII

  Fydel and Captain Reaz had reined up on the last low rise before the road dipped southward in a gradual slope toward the red walls of Hydolar, circled on three sides by those walls and on the fourth by the River Ohyde. Beside the road, stretching toward the walls, were browned fields, so brown Cerryl couldn’t be certain whether they were grain fields or meadows burned brown by the unseasonably hot sun that had baked the land through the late summer and the past autumn. Only a handful of peasants’ cots were scattered across the fields, marked as much by the taller gray-leaved and wilted trees around them as by the huts’ earth-brick walls and thatched roofs.

  Cerryl studied the city’s high stone walls. To the southwest, beyond those walls, the River Ohyde glittered in the late-afternoon winter sun. On the far side of the river Cerryl thought he saw trees, even a patch of woods on a hill, but of that he was uncertain.

  “They’ve closed the gates,” observed the captain.

  “That’s not terribly welcoming. Do you think they plan to attack if we approach?” asked Fydel.

  Reaz shrugged. “I could not say.”

  Fydel turned in the saddle and addressed Anya. “Can you and Cerryl cast chaos fire at the gates if they open them to attack?”

  “Not from this far. That’s more than a key from here,” answered the redhead.

  Fydel looked at Cerryl.

  “Anya’s right. We might be able to loft a few fireballs that far, but it would be hard to hit the gate.”

  “Fydel,” Anya said quietly, “it’s not likely that any duke would attack a force of White Lancers unless he had to. Why don’t we ride closer and ask for the return of the healer? Cerryl and I will be ready to cast chaos fire if you need it.” She smiled crookedly.

  “We ride on!” called Reaz. “Be ready to lift lances.”

  “Ready to lift lances… Ready to lift lances…” The command echoed down the lancers behind Cerryl.

  Reaz dropped his hand, and the column started forward again.

  Anya edged her mount closer to Cerryl. “Be ready to offer me assistance.”

  Cerryl raised his eyebrows. “I thought we were going to request the healer’s return.”

  “We are. We also need to show Duke Ferobar that Fairhaven will not be mocked.”

  “How?” asked Cerryl, honestly curious as to what the redhead had in mind for humbling the new Duke of Hydlen.

  “How might Duke Ferobar feel if the east tower-there-collapsed?” Anya pointed.

  Cerryl followed her finger. “He might send all his lancers after us.”

  “He might,” Anya said, with a smile.

  “We’re to request the Lady Leyladin first, Anya,” snapped Fydel, again turning in the saddle. “Once we have her, then you two can carry out whatever Jeslek laid upon you.”

  “Or… if they won’t release her,” speculated Anya.

  “That, too,” grudged Fydel.

  Cerryl studied the red walls as they rode closer, noting how the air seemed to waver over the walls in the afternoon sunlight, even though it was cool, almost cold, on the plain outside the city, and how glints of light off helmets reflected from the parapets. Yet his senses told him that but a comparative handful of armsmen manned the ramparts.

  Somewhere around two hundred cubits from the closed and iron-banded gates, Reaz and Fydel reined up. Cerryl, his eyes on the fifty-cubit-tall walls, managed to stop the gelding short of crashing into the older mage or swerving into Anya.

  “Get the herald,” Fydel ordered.

  “Herald!”

  A squat figure with close-cropped mud-colored hair and jowls, flow-ing out of his uniform, answered the summons, reining up beside the captain.

  “The mage has a message for you to convey,” said Reaz. “Yes, ser.”

  Fydel rode forward from the others, ever so slightly, and began to talk to the herald, repeating his words time after time.

  Shortly, the herald eased his mount away from the column and drew forth a long horn from his lanceholder. He bugled the call. Cerryl winced at the off-key tones but wondered if they would have hurt any less had they been on key.

  There was no response from the high walls.

  The herald bugled again.

  After the third call, a series of notes echoed back.

  “On behalf of the High Wizard of Fairhaven, we have come to provide an escort for the healer and Lady Leyladin to return to her home in Fairhaven.” The herald’s clear tones carried toward the walls and the gate.

  “Wait,” came back the answer.

  Cerryl shifted his weight in the saddle, his eyes on the high red walls, then upon Anya. He was gratified to notice that Anya’s eyes were also upon the walls and that chaos smoldered around her, as if she were uncertain as to what the Hydlenese might do.

  “They could refuse to return Leyladin,” he offered, not hoping that, but wanting Anya’s reaction.

  “Then, we could bring down all the walls.”

  “How?”

  “Just help the ground and stone beneath the foundations shift… You can use chaos as if it were butter or a grease, you know. It flows; it’s not stiff like order.”

  Cerryl frowned. That made sense, but he hadn’t thought about it in that way-as he hadn’t about so many things, he kept discovering.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Captain Reaz shifting in his saddle. Was the good captain uneasy about what might happen as well?

  The cool wind flowed around the mages and the lancers, and the walls remained silent. Not a sound came from the browned fields beside the road, except for the faint whistle of the wind. Cerryl hunched up inside his jacket for a moment.

  A triplet of horn notes echoed from the walls, followed by a call: “How would the great Duke Ferobar know that you are what you claim?”

  Fydel whispered to the herald, and the man echoed his words: “Who else would bring tenscore White Lancers?”

  “Any brigand of means could dress men in white.”

  Anya smiled cruelly. “Tell him he shall have his answer in but a few moments.”

  “Just splash the gates in chaos fire,” Fydel snapped. “We want the healer first.”

  “As you wish.” Anya turned to Cerryl. “Make ready.”

  Cerryl nodded and began to raise chaos, careful to keep it around him but well away from his body, easing it from the earth, careful to match what Anya mustered.

  “Now!” commanded the redhead.

  Cerryl released his chaos fire with Anya’s. The two fireballs arched toward the walls, then merged. A wave of flame splashed and crested nearly to the top of the walls above the closed gates.

  As the chaos flame subsided, sections o
f the gates continued to burn, gray and black smoke rising from the wood into the cool afternoon air. Cerryl could smell the bitter scent of burning wood and chaos and even feel some of the heat, carried on the wind toward them. A patch of dried grass ten cubits or so from the side of the road by the causeway leading to the gate began to burn, then died as the flames consumed the last of the grass.

  “Ask them again,” Fydel told the herald.

  Sweat dripped from the heavy man’s face as he rode forward once more and bugled, then called, “On behalf of the High Wizard of Fairhaven, we have come to provide an escort for the healer and Lady Leyladin to return to her home in Fairhaven. You have requested proof, and we have provided it!”

  No answer came from the walls, save that men began to dash buckets of water from the parapets toward the gates beneath. Slowly, the flames vanished, until only few parts of the gates steamed and smoldered.

  After more buckets of water, even the steam and smoke vanished, but the wind carried the smell of wet ash to Cerryl. He shifted his weight once more in the hard saddle.

  A trumpet call echoed from the wall. “The Lady Leyladin will join you shortly. Once she reaches you, the hospitality of the duke is withdrawn, and none of the White persuasion are welcome in Hydlen once you depart on your return.”

  “What hospitality?” muttered Fydel. He turned to the herald. “Tell them we await the lady healer and will depart only when she is safe with us.”

  The herald wiped his brow, then bugled and repeated the message.

  “An attack for sure.” Anya turned to Cerryl. “Shortly after Leyladin rides to us. Are you ready to cast fire at the gates when they emerge?”

  Nodding, Cerryl blotted his forehead. Suddenly, despite the cool wind from behind him, the sun seemed to burn the back of his neck.

  The gates creaked ajar, and a single figure on a black mount rode forth. Cerryl caught his breath, but the blonde hair and the unmistakable sense of order that surrounded her reassured him.

  “We need to get her away from the walls,” he said to Fydel.