Colors of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Probably, but what is she planning? I’ve checked with the lancers and the lancer officers. The companies that were loyal to her were the ones I sent to the southern fleet. Every one of her four young mages- Muerchal, Zurchak, Aalkiron… and the other one… I can’t remember his name…”

  “Giustyl,” Leyladin supplied.

  “They’re with Fydel and the fleet. Broka is also her tool, but I can’t do much about him. Still, he’s about the only older one left here, except maybe Gyskas, and I can’t see what he sees in her…”

  “Lust… sex.” The healer smiled. “Even High Wizards have been known to experience it.”

  “Woman…”

  “Well? Can you deny it?” Her smile grew broader. “No.” Cerryl frowned. “We’ll have to watch those two closely, but neither is that strong in chaos.”

  “Treachery of some sort, then.” Leyladin frowned. “I think I’ll have some of Father’s trade guards watch the house at night.”

  “That couldn’t hurt. Should we sleep here?”

  “At the house, they can’t tell where you sleep. It’s order-spelled against most glasses now. Besides, if Broka and Gyskas are involved, are you any safer here?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You could remove her…” Leyladin suggested, tentatively. “That wouldn’t work well for the future. By now, everyone knows that I can remove people without anyone seeing anything. If Anya disappears, it all points to me. And I can’t hold on as High Wizard just by sheer force. Removing people without the support of the Guild… look what happened to Sterol at the end. No one even said a word. They were all relieved. I have to position Anya as totally unreasonable… and leave her without supporters.”

  Leyladin raised her eyebrows. “If you look too much to the future, we may not have one.”

  “I know. I know.” The longer you’re High Wizard, the worse it seems to get. No wonder Sterol was so arbitrary. Cerryl took a deep breath.

  CLXXIX

  Leyladin sat up in bed, then slipped in the darkness from under the quilt and coverlet to the window, where she peered through a crack in the shutter-out at the heavy fat snowflakes that followed the afternoon’s cold rain, leaving a thin coat of slushy snow on the bushes and the ground.

  “There’s something out there,” she whispered.

  Cerryl climbed out of the silken sheets, wearing but a loose nightshirt, still groggy. He’d barely gotten to sleep, and deep as his sleep had been, it had not been restful. He shook his head, throbbing from the storm. Despite the pounding in his skull, he could sense something beyond, not exactly chaos, not exactly order.

  “A lot of iron… I can feel that,” she added in an even lower voice.

  “Iron… weapons.” Cerryl blinked and rubbed his forehead.

  Thurummmm… thurrummm… The thunder of the snow shower rumbled across Fairhaven and through Cerryl’s skull as he pulled back the inside shutters and fumbled open the window.

  Had there been a muffled yell… a clank of some sort?

  Through the heavy flakes of snow, the intermittent glow of the single outside house lamp glinted off dark iron. Figures in dark leathers slipped along the shadows by the wall, and a heavy pounding came from the front of the house.

  “Cerryl… there must be rwoscore armsmen out there, and…”

  And someone mustering chaos. Concentrating was hard, with his sleep-befogged mind and headache. You have to concentrate… you have to… “I know… there’s a pair of mages-I don’t know whom, though.”

  “He’s at the window there!” hissed a high male voice.

  Cerryl frowned. Despite the headache he began to muster chaos, as much as he could.

  Whhhstt! A firebolt flared toward the window, curving away and splatting against the bricks of the wall.

  Cerryl swallowed. He hadn’t even sensed the chaos. Leyladin’s shields had diverted it while he’d been fumbling, trying to create a larger chaos focus through the ground and storm.

  Leyladin touched his hand lightly, letting her dark order support him, adding to his shields, actually shielding him as he worked. “Go on… You can do it.”

  Can you? You have to. Ignoring the two sets of pounding-a heavy hammer against a door and storm-chaos and conflict within his skull- Cerryl struggled to raise the chaos he needed.

  Whhhstt! Another chaos bolt flamed toward the window, and again Leyladin diverted it.

  Cerryl could feel the strain she was under, trying to deal with chaos and his impossibly slow reactions. His eyes burned, and each of the armsmen in dark leathers seemed to have split into two armsmen.

  The ground rumbled, once, twice, and he smiled grimly as the chaos he had called forth infused the area around the house.

  Ssssssss! Orange-white flame seared upward through the ground, and steam hissed into being, wreathing the factor’s dwelling. Curtains of black-shot white chaos fire played around the walls and wavered across the ground. Gouts of steam flashed into the dark night air.

  “Aeeeüi!…” The screams of men being chaos-roasted filled the night, and the ugly unseen reddish white chaos of death rolled across the ground, swirling against the bricks of the dwelling.

  Whhhssst! Whssst! Two more firebolts flashed toward them, and this time Cerryl diverted them, his senses on the two figures that stood, seemingly impossibly, amid the chaos storm that filled the night.

  Whhhsst!

  The High Wizard straightened, taking a slow breath, and focused a narrower beam of chaos.

  The first figure flared like a white candle struck by molten iron. The second turned but did not take three steps before another white candle flared in the darkness.

  Cerryl bent forward, his hands on the wooden sill.

  Leyladin’s fingers trembled on Cerryl’s forearm, then tightened.

  “Finish it…”

  Cerryl closed his eyes to shut out the painful double images and concentrated on widening the swath of chaos to include those armsmen already retreating, even those trying to scramble over the stone walls.

  Sssssssss.‘

  The muscles in his arms and thighs tightened, almost cramping into knots. Outside, the ground steamed, so much that the air felt like a hot and damp summer night, shot through with an occasional brief gust of chill wind.

  Leyladin tugged gently at Cerryl’s arm. “There’s no one out there, but the front entry…”

  The healer at his side, Cerryl walked heavily but quickly toward the front door, holding some fragments of chaos ready.

  A leathered figure leaped across the tiles of the front Hall-almost reaching Cerryl before a golden light lance burned through his chest. Cerryl and Leyladin jumped back as the dull thud and clunk of covered plate mail echoed through the dwelling.

  Both glanced around.

  “I don’t see anyone else,” she whispered.

  Squinting through double images and eyes that stabbed pain, Cerryl swept the hall and foyer with sight and senses but could see no one. They eased toward the open front door and the lamp that spilled faint light across the still-steaming ground.

  “There were two running toward the square,” Leyladin said.

  “We’ll have to let them go,” he answered hoarsely.

  Leyladin bent and studied the body in green livery lying in the front foyer. “Gleddis… he once carried me on his shoulder.”

  Cerryl noted the sledge and heavy chisel on the stone stoop, and chunks of wood gouged out of the door frame. “I’m sorry.”

  “Lady? Ser?” Soaris padded up behind them, trousers thrown on over a nightshirt but barefoot. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Leyladin answered simply. “They killed Gleddis.”

  Soaris studied the fallen guard, then peered out into the now-still night, squinting to see beyond the faint semicircle of light thrown by the door lamp. “He saved you, and allowed ser Cerryl to destroy the others.”

  None of the armsmen would have been here, except for me. “Sometimes that’s cold comfort.” Cerryl’s words w
ere heavy.

  “He would not have died, had he not wished to do his duty.” Soaris studied the ground. As the wind from the storm rose and the ground dried and cooled, white ashes swirled up and mixed with white and fat snowflakes. Farther from the house, the flakes had begun to stick.

  Cerryl looked out beyond the doorway, through the double images and the reinforced headache. “Soaris… ?”

  “Ser?”

  “I can see our intruders left some weapons and metal implements. If you would not mind…”

  “I would be happy to gather them, ser. If nothing else, ser Layel could resell them at a profit.”

  “You should not have any trouble.” Cerryl massaged his forehead above his eyes.

  “I would think not, ser.”

  “Thank you, Soaris,” Leyladin said softly.

  Cerryl walked slowly through the front Hall. His legs barely supported him, and he took several steps into the front sitting room, where he sank into the nearest chair. His eyes were pain-seared, so much so that the images-when he opened his eyes-were doubled and tripled.

  “You’ll be all right.” Leyladin said.

  “Not… without… you…”

  Slowly, as she kneaded his shoulders and neck, the shaking subsided. The double images remained, if not so pain-seared as immediately following his use of focused chaos. His head ached, more than he could recall, perhaps more than ever, or perhaps just more than he wanted to recall.

  Soaris passed through the front Hall again, this time wearing boots and a jacket.

  “Anya. It was Anya.” Leyladin added, more softly. “I told you she planned something. She’s one of the few that know you don’t handle chaos as well in storms.”

  Cerryl refrained from nodding but tightened his lips, thinking about his comments to Anya about a storm only days earlier. “Stupid…”

  “You did fine.”

  “You can’t let anyone know anything, can you?” This time he did shake his head, if minutely. “For a bit, she’ll have to think we don’t know her connection. Until I can discover whose armsmen those were.”

  “She gets away with too much.”

  “Not this time,” Cerryl promised, his voice cold and distant. Not this time… but we do it my way.

  CLXXX

  As the tower door opened, Cerryl turned his eyes from the white blanket that covered the city to the man who entered the High Wizard’s apartment.

  The overmage bowed to Cerryl. “You asked for me, High Wizard?”

  “Kinowin, I’m still Cerryl except when formality requires it, and this isn’t one of those times. Please sit down and join us.” Cerryl gestured to the seat at the table beside him and across from Leyladin.

  “There are rumors…”

  “Doubtless all over the Halls. I’ve summoned Senglat since his lancers were the last in Certis. I’ve also summoned several traders. With large detachments of lancers to ensure the traders honor their… invitation.”

  A puzzled look crossed the overmage’s face as he sat beside Cerryl.

  “What sort of rumors have you heard?” asked Leyladin.

  “Oh, that the High Wizard summoned chaos to entertain you… that Broka could stand the new High Wizard no more and has left Fairhaven… that were Fydel here, he would be wearing the amulet… those sorts of things.”

  “Anya,” said Leyladin.

  “I fear she has discovered what I am doing,” Cerryl commented, “and would raise discontent against me as quickly as she can.”

  “Broka is not anywhere to be found,” Kinowin pointed out.

  “That is not surprising, since he attacked Leyladin’s dwelling last night, along with another mage-I don’t know who.” Cerryl shrugged. “We will have to play this out, and that is why it is best you are here.”

  “It would be wiser to have Redark here.”

  “Perhaps.” Cerryl’s voice was cool.

  “No,” added Leyladin.

  Kinowin nodded to her. “I bow to you in this, lady.”

  Cerryl pointed to the pair of fire-darkened iron blades, blades with even the wrapped leather of the hilt grip burned away. “What do you make of those?”

  “Armsmen’s blades. Not ours. Probably from Certis, possibly Gallos.”

  “We-or Soaris-collected several score of those last night.” Along with a few other items, like two white-bronze daggers

  Kinowin’s eyebrows lifted. “You must be doing something correctly, Cerryl. It takes most High Wizards several years to generate such enmity.”

  Thrap… After the knock, the door opened a crack. “Overcaptain Senglat.”

  Cerryl beckoned for the lancer commander to enter.

  The nearly bald overcaptain stepped up to the other side of the table, bowed, then straightened. “Ser?” His eyes took in the overmage and the healer.

  “Are you missing any armsmen, Senglat?” Cerryl kept his voice level, almost idle, not looking to his left where Leyladin sat, nor to Kinowin at his right.

  “No, ser.”

  Leyladin nodded her reaction that the overcaptain told the truth.

  After pulling on heavy leather gloves, Cerryl lifted one of the blades from the table. “Would you look at that?”

  Senglat stepped forward and took the blade, his eyes ranging over it, weighing it, before he replaced it on the wooden surface. “That be a Certan blade, ser. The tang is curved so, and the blood gutter, here, is shorter and wider.” Senglat frowned. “How did you come by this?”

  “Several-score armsmen attempted to attack the healer’s dwelling last night. Only their blades and coins survived, but the coins were all struck in Fairhaven.” New silvers, no less.

  “Several score?”

  “It is hard to tell, but we did recover forty-two blades.” Cerryl smiled.

  “There were forty-two outside armsmen in Fairhaven? That is hard to believe.”

  “No,” Kinowin said quietly, “there were forty-two armsmen who carried Certan blades.”

  “I am not sure either is good.” Senglat tightened his lips, then licked them.

  Cerryl nodded. “I’d like you to stay.” He nodded in the direction of the empty seat. “Pull it around some.”

  The overcaptain concealed a frown but eased the chair to his left, then seated himself, carefully, beside Leyladin.

  “We will be hearing from some traders next,” Cerryl said.

  The first trader to enter the apartment quarters was a wiry man dressed entirely in gray except for a wide green leather belt. Chorast bowed. “I am honored to be here.”

  “I hope so,” Cerryl said. “Have you hired any additional armsmen lately?”

  The small and wiry man blinked, then cocked his head sideways. “Why, honored High Wizard, would I be doing such in winter when I factor less and collect less? No… I have not.”

  “Have you had any armsmen disappear lately?”

  Chorast blinked again. “No, ser.”

  “Have you heard of other factors looking for armsmen?”

  “Not in more than a season. I heard that Loboll sought some guards for his shipments to Suthya last fall.”

  Cerryl wanted to nod to himself. The trader was confused inside, but his answers had been truthful. “How are you finding trading in Fairhaven?”

  “They say that you seek truth more than most High Wizards, Your Mightiness, and maybe that be so…” Chorast paused and smiled.

  Cerryl laughed. “Well put, Chorast. That means it’s hard, and you think it’s going to get worse, and the last thing you want to do is tell that to the High Wizard.”

  “There been times worse.”

  “But not many. Why are you staying?” Cerryl leaned forward.

  “Fairhaven’s my place, Your Mightiness. And… well, you took care of Layel, and folk say that you’re making the surtax stick in the out ports. First time in my life, anyway.” The hint of a smile appeared and vanished as the wiry trader’s eyes met Cerryl’s.

  “I am working to make it better for trade-and fairer
across Candar.”

  “Be true that you raised tariffs in Spidlar, ser?”

  “Some. They’re half of here,” Cerryl admitted. “I’d like to have all traders and factors pay the same.”

  “You do that, and the honest factors-I’m a scoundrel but an honest one, ser-they’d never want another High Wizard.”

  Cerryl nodded. “You’ve told me what I needed to know from you. If you think of something that might help all traders… come and see me.” He smiled. “Or send me a scroll if you think proximity to the High Wizard might be testing your judgment.”

  Chorast smiled as he bowed. “By your leave, Your Mightiness?”

  “You may go, honest scoundrel.” Cerryl was grinning as the door closed.

  “He told the truth,” Kinowin said.

  “I know.” Cerryl glanced toward Leyladin, then Senglat. The overcaptain shook his head. Leyladin offered the faintest of smiles.

  The next to enter was the trader Muneat. Somehow, despite his deep blue tunic and trousers and the silver-trimmed blue boots, he looked far smaller than Cerryl recalled. Remember, you were a scared apprentice scrivener then.

  “Your Mightiness… I am here at your command.” The trader touched his silver mustache as he straightened. “I cannot recall when a High Wizard… requested a factor’s presence…”

  “Nor on such short notice?” Cerryl offered a crooked smile. “I must apologize. These are not the best of times, for either factors or the Guild.”

  “I must admit that I am also pleased to see the honorable overmage, the overcaptain of the lancers, and the healer.” Muneat permitted himself a brief smile that stretched a third part across his broad and jowled face.

  “All are known for their honesty and fairness, I admit,” Cerryl responded. “There have been strange circumstances in Fairhaven lately, and their fairness is necessary.” He paused, fixing his eyes on Muneat, wondering just how much the man knew. “Have you purchased the services of any new guards or armsmen lately?”

  “No, Your Mightiness. In winter, after a year such as this?” Muneat’s eyes flickered, even as he kept them on Cerryl.