Colors of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Cerryl turned. “Zoyst, Natrey, this is the Lady Leyladin-one of the few healers. She’ll staying here.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you both.” Leyladin smiled warmly.

  Though neither guard returned the smile, Cerryl could feel their reserve lower. She can do that, and I can’t. They respect me, I think, but everyone loves her. Almost everyone, except Anya.

  Cerryl gestured toward the front sitting room.

  “These are your quarters? I expected…” She crossed the room and peered through the archway at the desk and table in the rear study.

  “Something more like a lancer’s?” Cerryl asked. “I do have a few rooms to myself, but I eat what the lancers eat.”

  “And you make sure they know that, I’m sure.” Leyladin’s eyes twinkled. “You don’t sleep here, do you?” She gestured toward the conference table.

  “I spend more time here.” He paused, then added, “Oh… I’ll show you.” He took her hand, and they walked to the foyer and the narrow steps up. “Up there.” He pointed to the top of the staircase.

  “Do you mind if I look?”

  “There are two other bedchambers up there. One is empty. I mean… there’s a bed and everything.”

  Leyladin smiled again. “I understood.” She started up the step, and, after a moment, Cerryl followed.

  The healer looked into the bedchamber on the left, then crossed the landing and stepped into the larger chamber. “This is lovely.” She studied the four-poster bed, the small settee, and the curved rails of the wash table. “You’ve even kept it neat.”

  “There’s nothing like the showers of the Halls,” Cerryl said, “and I have to heat the water with chaos.”

  “You’ll be… good… to have around.” The healer took a half-step toward the still-shuttered window, then turned, still smiling.

  “Are you hungry? There are some biscuits and cheese in the kitchen. Nothing like Furenk’s around here. I’m not sure there ever was.” Cerryl started for the doorway and the steps down to the kitchen.

  “Cerryl?”

  He stopped.

  “You may have seen me through your glass, but I haven’t seen you in more than a year. You don’t have to rush off after biscuits.”

  “I do,” Cerryl confessed. “I’m starving. I haven’t been able to see you in the glass for more than an eight-day. I haven’t eaten much.”

  An even softer smile appeared. “I actually worried you? I just wanted to surprise you, and I didn’t want to worry you. It was work, holding those shields on the road.”

  “You surprised me.”

  “I could stand something to eat.” She shook her head. “But there’s something more important.”

  Cerryl froze. What had he overlooked?

  “Nothing like that.” She stepped forward. Not only did her arms encircle him, her lips on his, but her body was against his as well, far warmer, far more yielding, and far more demanding…

  Forget about biscuits… His arms went around her.

  CXIX

  Cerryl glanced over at the blonde head on the pillow beside him, then leaned back in grayness before dawn. After all these years… why now?

  “…waited all these years…” Leyladin’s voice was thick with sleep, but she turned toward him. “… you waited, too.”

  “I saw you in the glass… more than a half-score of years ago.” He propped himself up on his left elbow to study her, and his fingers traced the line of her chin.

  “I didn’t know who you were, then.”

  “I didn’t know who you were, either.”

  “I haven’t changed much.”

  “You still like green.”

  Leyladin wrapped her shift around her as she sat up against the headboard, a pillow behind her.

  “You don’t need that,” teased Cerryl. “The shift, I mean.”

  “Oh?” She arched her eyebrows.

  “You didn’t last night.”

  “That was last night.” The archness of her voice broke into a laugh.

  Cerryl laughed with her.

  After a moment, she cleared her throat. “Oh… I’d better tell you. Kinowin made me promise.”

  “Promise what?” Cerryl didn’t want to talk about Kinowin or Jeslek or anyone else.

  “He had a message, one he didn’t want to write down.” Leyladin shook her head. “He’s getting old, like Myral did. He was always so tall and strong, and now he’s a little stooped, and he has to concentrate when he walks so that he doesn’t shuffle.”

  “So quickly?”

  “It happens quickly.” Her eyes misted as she looked at Cerryl.

  He shivered, knowing yet another reason why she had come to Spidlar.

  “It’s not that-yet.” Her voice thickened. “Life is short enough… It’s too short.”

  Cerryl was already discovering that. “Ah… what?”

  Leyladin swallowed. “He said… you did not need to fight Jeslek. Just follow Myral’s teaching about keeping chaos from you when you channel it, and you’ll do what Myral expected.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about fighting Jeslek.”

  “Kinowin didn’t think so, but he wanted you to understand that Anya is the real danger to Fairhaven.”

  “Because she doesn’t believe in it and because she’s using her ties to Jiolt to influence the traders?”

  Leyladin shook her head ruefully. “Why am I telling you this?”

  “Because I might not have known and because it helps for someone else to think the same thing and because I trust you and Kinowin.” He paused, thinking about the silksheen he had never been able to follow up on-that he had known went to Jiolt. “Besides, a lot of what I know about Anya is from what I sense but couldn’t ever prove. So it helps to know others have discovered things or feel the same way.” Cerryl’s stomach growled-loudly.

  “I suppose I should let you eat.” Leyladin leaned forward and her lips brushed his cheek.

  “If you want to abuse me like you did last night…”

  “Abuse? Who abused whom?”

  Cerryl found himself flushing.

  “You’re handsome when you do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Blush.” Leyladin grinned. “It goes all the way down.”

  Cerryl knew he was red at least from the waist up. “You.”

  “Go on. You get dressed first.”

  “Me?” Cerryl swallowed, realizing that any more byplay and he’d only embarrass himself more.

  “You can figure out what we’ll eat while I’m dressing.”

  “Oh.”

  “Let a poor woman try to regain a little mystery.”

  “Mystery-that you’ll always have.” Cerryl put his feet on the rug around the four-poster bed, then walked to the wash table. The water was cold, and he took a moment to infuse it with chaos.

  After shaving and dressing, he emptied the water out the north side window, where it did little damage, adding to the icy pyramid against the brick below, and refilled it.

  “Close the window… please.”

  “I’m sorry.” He closed the window and heated the water until it was almost steaming, even though his head was throbbing.

  “Dearest… you didn’t have to do that.” Leyladin leaned forward, and Cerryl didn’t care about the headache.

  “You-you are impossible.”

  Suddenly he swallowed. “You know what I feel… some of the time.”

  “I didn’t need much to know that.” The playful smile vanished, and she nodded. “At times, you know what I feel. It happens, sometimes, with mages.”

  Cerryl sat down on the edge of the chair. “I just thought I was imagining.”

  “No… dearest. Why do you think I’m here?”

  “Because I’m impossible?” He forced a smile.

  “You know better than that.”

  This time his smile wasn’t forced. He leaned over the bed and kissed his blonde healer, this time on the lips. “I’ll leave you t
o your mystery.”

  “Go get something for us to eat-if you know how.”

  “I manage.”

  “Good.”

  Somehow, the gray day felt sunny as he clumped down the stairs in his heavy white boots.

  CXX

  The wind outside had stopped wailing earlier in the day, as had the last of the snow flurries. The heavy snow of the past two days remained drifted across most of the streets of Elparta, except where the patrols had packed it into a second pavement-or ice.

  Inside the mansion, the fire in the library hearth-where two fresh logs rested upon a heap of coals-still had not removed all the chill of disuse from the room. The High Wizard remained wearing a crimson-trimmed white wool cloak. Jeslek surveyed the table in the center of the library, the room that had again become his command post. His eyes went from Anya to Cerryl to Leyladin before finally settling on Fydel. “I received your message, just before we departed Fairhaven. Why did you feel disinclined to accept the terms offered by the Spidlarians?”

  Fydel fingered his curly black beard and looked at the High Wizard. “I did not trust them. After I talked with Cerryl, I trusted the terms even less.”

  “Oh?” The High Wizard’s gaze fell on the youngest mage. “Cerryl, what did you say that so swayed your comrade, the elder mage?” Irony crept into Jeslek’s voice.

  Cerryl offered a smile he wasn’t sure he felt. “I do not recall the exact words, but there were several matters that bothered me. First, the Spidlarians fought for every span of ground, yet suddenly they offer terms that open the land to us? They offered terms that no land has ever accepted when conquered, not willingly.

  “The viscount and the prefect are our allies and supporters, yet they avoid keeping their promises. Spidlar is an enemy that offers more than our declared friends? Why should we expect more from an enemy? Also, the smith mage Dorrin continues to forge implements and parts of something with so much black iron that the order nearly twists the glass when I view him. The attacks on our patrols continue, even now.

  “With such logic, and such a high opinion of our declared friends, Cerryl, you would have Fairhaven take on all of Candar, and I doubt we can do such.” Jeslek chuckled, albeit bitterly.

  Why not? It might be easier than all this posturing and dissembling. “I never suggested such, High Wizard.”

  “Why is it that I mistrust words when my title is employed?”

  Fydel covered his mouth with a hand, suggestive of a hidden smile. Anya’s eyes brightened.

  “I would not know, ser. You asked my reasons.”

  “Then what did your words suggest? Properly suggest?”

  “I think that the large traders of Spidlar would offer anything to keep trading, but their armsmen might not be bound by such.”

  “Nor Recluce, either,” suggested Jeslek. “Have we heard more from them?”

  “No,” answered Fydel.

  “Just as well. Cerryl may have been right this time.” Jeslek looked toward Cerryl. “Would you put another log on the fire?”

  Cerryl nodded and slipped out of his chair. He took one log from the wood box built into the hearth and eased it into the fire, then followed with a second before returning to his chair.

  “For the conquest of Spidlar we will need more mages with firebolts,” Jeslek stated. “I have requested that another dozen mages join us before we begin the attack.”

  “Who?” asked Fydel.

  “They are largely junior mages-your former assistant Buar, Myredin, Bealtur, Faltar, Kalesin, Ryadd, those are the ones I recall. Eliasar added some others.”

  “Why so many?” Faltar frowned.

  “I intend to make an example of Spidlar so that we do not have to do the same to Hydlen, Certis, or Gallos.”

  Anya’s smile broadened. “Hydlen deserves such.”

  “I would rather have Hydlen’s golds than its corpses, dear Anya.” Jeslek coughed once.

  “So would I,” murmured Fydel. “Gold is more pleasant to smell and more useful.”

  “Corpses do not hold onto their golds,” countered Anya, “unlike traders. And traitors.”

  “Enough,” snapped Jeslek. “Corpses don’t earn more golds. Live traders do. Besides, the decision has been made.” He inclined his head, fractionally, in the direction of Anya and then Leyladin.

  The redhead rose smoothly from the chair, almost sinuously. “Fydel and Leyladin and I will depart then, since you have nothing else for us to hear or to undertake.”

  A puzzled look flitted across Fydel’s countenance, but Anya took his arm with a smile. Leyladin offered a faint smile to Cerryl as she rose. After the door closed, Jeslek leaned back, but his eyes remained hard and glittering, fixed more on the roaring fire than upon the younger mage.

  “The healer was most helpful, and I am certain she will remain so… so long as she holds to her course as a Black. And her sire supports the Guild and its efforts.”

  “I do not see that changing,” Cerryl said carefully. “Layel is well aware of the advantages the Guild offers one such as him.”

  “What of the healer? Will you bed her until she is gray?”

  I don’t see Anya’s talents being changed by whom she beds “There is no reason why either of us should change. Not according to Color of White or aught else I have studied.” Cerryl kept his voice level.

  “Too much closeness to a Black will weaken you,” Jeslek’s voice was flat. “You are not so strong as you consider yourself.”

  “I do not consider myself strong in comparison to you,” Cerryl replied bluntly.

  Jeslek laughed. “Ah, Cerryl, always honest about power. You deceive yourself about the healer, but not about power.”

  But I do deceive about power. “I try not to deceive myself where power is to be considered.” I try not to.

  Jeslek shook his head. “Go. Go and bed her… or whatever you choose. You are young, and you will see. Naught I can tell you will change that. Just remember. I have told you. Power is more true than any wench, and power is fickle indeed.”

  “By your leave?” Cerryl stood.

  “By my leave… but throw another log on the fire before you go.”

  Cerryl was beginning to sweat, but Jeslek had still left the cloak wrapped around him. “Of course.”

  Jeslek did not even look up from the table and the glass before him when Cerryl left the library.

  Did all White mages worry about their power being corrupted by close association with order? Or did Jeslek fear that Leyladin would make Cerryl somehow stronger? Cerryl concealed a frown as he stepped out into the corridor to find Leyladin.

  CXXI

  Followed by the four lancers who trailed him everywhere, Cerryl reined up short of the section of the river wall where the work crew toiled in the sunlight, an afternoon warmer than any since fall. The crew numbered eleven, all locals of some sort.

  The spritely white-haired Jidro set down an iron pry bar and walked toward the mage. “Best day in seasons, ser mage.”

  “I would agree. How are things going?”

  “The boys and I’ll have the wall ‘side the river be finished afore long,” Jidro said. “Took a mite longer than I’d thought. My recollections are better than my skills, these days.”

  “You’ve done good work, Jidro.” Cerryl felt at his pouch, then extracted a silver, leaning down from the saddle and extending the coin. “This is extra.”

  “Ser.” Jidro bowed. “I be thanking you, and saying that never did I think to get a bonus from a White mage.”

  “There’s more work, if you want it.”

  A puzzled look crossed Jidro’s face. “Word be that you folk be moving on.”

  “We are, but the other walls need repairs. Nor are the new sewers along the main avenues complete.”

  “I be willing, ser.”

  “Good. Kiolt is the one to see. He’s a lancer subofficer. I’ll tell him to expect you. If you have any trouble, I’ll be here for a time yet.” Cerryl turned his mount.

&n
bsp; “Thanks to ye, ser mage.”

  “Thanks to you, Jidro.”

  Cerryl rode back along the avenue, noting that two men worked on another house across from the river wall. Both avoided looking at him and the lancers who trailed him.

  “What was that all about?” Fydel had reined up just beyond the pier gate and waited for Cerryl. Four other lancers waited behind the square-bearded mage.

  “Finishing the repairs.”

  “I don’t see why you worry about the walls and the streets so much,” said Fydel. “In another few eight-days most of us will be gone, headed downriver. You, too, this time.”

  “I know. But we have to leave a detachment, and I persuaded Jeslek to leave a few dozen golds to finish the important repairs. Kiolt has agreed to supervise them. His father was a mason.”

  “Why?”

  Cerryl smiled. “Because it’s cheaper than having to conquer the place again.”

  “We’ll have to anyway, if it comes to that. People don’t remember what happened last eight-day. You expect them to be grateful for fixing the damage we caused?”

  “No. I think the locals here might remember that we can destroy or create, and the choice is theirs.”

  “Tell that to Jeslek or the Guild members in Fairhaven.” Fydel flicked the reins and turned his mount to walk back toward the south gate.

  Was Fydel right? Were most people so unperceptive? Or was it that too many White mages were contemptuous of the everyday people? Cerryl pondered as he rode up the hill. Pattera, the little weaver girl, had tried to warn him, years ago. Had he ever done one thing to repay her?

  Cerryl winced at the recollection. And what of Tellis-who had taught him the art of scriving and made it possible for him to be a mage? That’s not so bad… He nearly threw you out when the Guild started looking for you. Still… Tellis had helped him. Are you any better than Fydel?

  Cerryl wasn’t sure he was-or that he could answer himself honestly.

  Back at his quarters, Cerryl stabled the gelding, glad to see that Leyladin’s mare was in the adjoining stall. That meant she’d returned from her investigations to see what healing herbs and roots she had been able to find-or dig up from the partly frozen ground. He walked to the front entrance, where he nodded at the guards, stationed on the covered brick stoop outside the foyer now that the weather had improved.