The White Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Cerryl looked at the iron blade, barely managing to repress a shiver at the deep blackness within the iron that almost felt as though it would burn his hands. “No, ser.”

  “Good. Now… see… this drops the gear off the track, so the blade stops even if the mill turns. Up there, that’s the water gate. Most times, the blade’s on gear track when the gate opens. That way, we fret less about breaking the gears.” Dylert fingered his beard. “Cost my father more coins to have the drop gear put in, but it’s better when a house has two doors. That’s what he said, and it’s saved me a blade or two along the way-and blades, they’re dear. Black iron, you’d best know.”

  Cerryl nodded. “That’s hard iron?”

  “The hardest. Not many smiths as can forge it, even with a black mage at their elbow.” He laughed harshly. “Good smith and a black mage-few of either, these days, or any times.”

  Cerryl managed not to frown. Why couldn’t white mages help a smith? Why did it have to be black mages?

  “Here… the entrance to the sawpit. You’ll be cleaning that.” Dylert frowned. His voice hardened. “You never go under the blade less the water gate’s closed and the drop gear’s open. Stay away from the blade even so. You understand that?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “No one but me tells you to clean the pit. Understand? Not Rinfur, not Brental, not Viental. No one but me. You understand?”

  The gray-eyed boy nodded.

  “First time, I’ll show you how. Not today.” Dylert smiled. “Be taking you a mite to get used to us. Let’s go to the barns.” He turned and started toward the big door. “Good days, we open the swing windows on the west. More light.”

  Cerryl’s eyes went to the iron blade, and he shivered. Black iron? Why did it feel so… dangerous? Then he turned and followed Dylert out of the mill and toward the first of the two barns.

  Dylert slid back the door, the same kind as the main mill door, and stepped inside into the middle of an aisle between racks of wood that stretched the length of the barn. “Some mills-like in Hydlen-they just put a roof over their cuts and say that’s enough. Lucky if the mill lasts from father to son. You want wood to last… then you have to season it right-lots of air, but you don’t let it get too hot or too cold. Our cuts are the best. Last season, a mastercrafter sent a wagon all the way from Jellico for my black oak. Something for the viscount… suppose that’s all he does now that Fairhaven…” Dylert shook his head. “There I go, woolgathering again.”

  Cerryl wanted the mill master to keep talking, and he nodded, without speaking, as Dylert continued.

  “This first barn here. See-it’s smaller. Mostly hardwoods-oak, lorken, maple. Some fruitwoods, like cherry and walnut and pearapple, when we can get it. Crafters, cabinet makers-they’re the ones who use it-and the builders who work for the duke or the white wizards. Fairhaven-they want a lot of white oak.” Dylert walked over to one of the racks on the left of the aisle. “See. You can touch it.”

  Cerryl let his fingers brush the wood, white, but with a trace of yellow or gold that would darken with age, like the chest Syodar and Nail shared. The white oak felt cool to his touch, reassuring, unlike the black iron of the saw blade.

  “People think there’s no difference between lorken and black oak.” The millmaster shook his head. “Not seen a blade struggle through lorken, they haven’t. Here.” He pointed to a stack of thin, nearly black planks, no more than a span wide and three cubits long. “Pick up the top one.”

  Cerryl had to strain for a moment. “It be heavy.” The dark wood felt warm to his touch, smooth as polished silver, yet prickly beneath the patina, and he quickly eased it back onto the pile.

  “That’s lorken. Not more than a handful of crafters can handle it. One big lorken log, and even the keenest mill blade needs sharpening. Got some logs on the back racks, seasoning till a buyer comes. No sense in blunting a blade.”

  Dylert led Cerryl to the next set of racks, also bearing dark narrow planks. “Lift one of those.”

  Cerryl complied. “Not so heavy.”

  “What else?” prompted Dylert.

  Cerryl replaced the plank. “I don’t think it be quite so dark, and it seems rougher.”

  Dylert nodded. “Black oak. It be hard, not so hard as lorken, not so heavy, not so smooth.” He snorted. “And folks say there be no difference.”

  Cerryl nodded. The dark oak hadn’t seemed so warm to the touch, either.

  The tall man walked toward the back of the barn. “Sometimes we get virgin logs, the big ones. If I’ve the time, I’ll crosscut a section. Takes a different blade, and a lot of care. But some of the cabinet makers like bigger wood sections. Can charge them as much as a silver a section that way.” He wiped his forehead. “Work, though. A lot of work, and the sections are brittle-break just like that if you drop ‘em. Only do a few a year.”

  Cerryl hurried to keep up with Dylert’s long stride.

  “A lot of guessing if you be a millmaster… keep the wide planks back here. Charge more for them, but a lot of folks rather’d use more of the narrower cuts…”

  The gray-eyed youth found himself struggling to take in all the words as Dylert turned at the rear wall and walked back toward the door.

  “Folks always want some lumber. Some years, we couldn’t cut and season enough… hate to let go of green wood… even if you charge less and it splits, folks don’t forget…”

  As soon as Cerryl stepped into the sunlight, Dylert shut the barn door and strode quickly toward the second barn.

  Again, the youth had to hurry to catch up.

  “This barn-it’s where we put the rougher cuts and the heavier timbers used for bigger buildings. Not that simple, but you’ll learn.” The millmaster opened the door and stepped inside, between another set of racks.

  Cerryl followed, his eyes adjusting to the dimness and taking in that the racks in the larger barn seemed fuller.

  “The racks on the right-they’re for planks, smaller timbers, that aren’t as good as those in the first barn. On the left here…”

  Cerryl squinted, concentrating on every word, even though his stomach growled, and sweat continued to ooze down his back.

  After going through all the racks in the second barn, and then escorting Cerryl back out onto the stone causeway that connected both barns and the mill, Dylert grinned. “Lucky I’d be if half of that stuck in your head, young fellow. But you’ll learn. Yes, you will.” Cerryl tried to look attentive. Dylert fingered his beard. “Now… for the house.” Cerryl could feel the weight of the new boots and his feet dragging as he followed Dylert back up the lane to the house, up the three steps that felt even steeper, and to the door in the middle of the porch.

  Dylert gestured, and Cerryl stepped inside. The kitchen ran most of the length of the space behind the front porch. At the left end of the kitchen was a hearth-of yellow bricks-that held two separate niches for fires and three iron oven doors for baking. Out from the hearth area were two large worktables, and two large cabinets were against the side wall nearest the hearth. A narrow many-drawered chest stood between the cabinets.

  At the right end of the kitchen was a long trestle table with a bench on each side and a straight-backed chair at each end.

  A woman looked up from a large wooden bowl on the worktable and smiled, dipping her hands in the wash bucket, then wiping them on a gray rag. Her brown hair was piled behind her head in a bun, from which wisps escaped in every direction.

  “Dyella, this be Cerryl, the young fellow raised by his uncle Syodor you heard me talk of.” Dylert patted Cerryl on the shoulder. “Dyella, she cooks so well you’d think I’d be twice my size.”

  “How could that be?” answered the thin-faced and black-eyed woman. “Never be said that you stopped long enough for the food to settle.” She glanced at Cerryl. “White, he is. You’ve run his legs off, Dylert, and he’s scarce arrived.” She lifted a knife and turned toward one of the long tables. When she turned back to Cerryl, she handed him a thick
chunk of bread. “Here. Eat it, so Dylert doesn’t have to scrape you off the planks, boy.”

  “Thank you, lady.”

  “No lady. I be Dyella, first, last, and always.”

  “Thank you, Dyella.”

  “Polite young fellow.” Dyella looked at Dylert. “Blankets.”

  “Oh…” Dylert nodded and stepped out of the long kitchen.

  Cerryl ate the bread slowly, feeling strength returning, his hearing sharpening.

  “Mind you, don’t try to keep up with Dylert. None I know can. Just do your best, boy, and that’ll be better than most. More bread?”

  “Ah…”

  “Don’t be shy. You walked all the way from the mines, and I’d wager not a morsel to eat since dawn.” Dyella thrust another chunk at him. “Now… why don’t you eat it and wait on the porch? Dylert’s fetching your blankets, and supper be needing my hand.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dyella smiled as she held the door.

  Cerryl sat on the bench and ate, slowly, trying to digest both the bread and the day.

  V

  A pair of pine logs lay on the three-axled timber wagon. The six draft horses, their breath like steam in the chill afternoon, stood facing south. The ox-drawn log cart faced north, toward the open mill door. The bed of the log cart was nearly a cubit lower than that of the timber wagon. Broom in hand, Cerryl stepped to the side of the mill, well away from the door, and back far enough that he would not be in the way of drovers or the loaders.

  “The first log, Viental,” said Brental.

  “First it be.” Viental half-dragged, half-lifted one end of the huge log, its girth more than two cubits, and swung the end from the timber wagon onto the ox-drawn log cart. Then he walked to the front end of the wagon, where he and Brental lifted the weight-bearing end and struggled to ease it onto the cart.

  The log cart groaned as the full weight of the pine log came to rest on it. Cerryl watched the rear axle bow ever so slightly, a stress that less-fine eyes and senses would not have discerned.

  Brental slipped the log wedges in place on the side closest to Cerryl, knocking them solid with his long-handled hammer. Then he walked around the oxen and, standing where the beds of the cart and wagon nearly joined, placed the forward wedge. The redhead had to walk around the cart again to place the rear wedge. Viental released his hold on the log. Brental reclaimed his goad. “Ge-ahh!”

  The log cart creaked forward and into the mill, and Cerryl stepped back into the doorway to try to finish getting the sawdust out of the door tracks before Brental brought the cart back.

  Viental half-shrugged, half-flexed his broad shoulders, swinging his arms. “Heavy, that one.” He grinned at Cerryl, yellow teeth flared out of the ginger beard braided below. “Ever think you could lift that, mill boy?”

  Cerryl shook his head.

  “Best you know that. Not one in a score dozen be lifting as I do.”

  “Not one in score of scores as bald, either,” called the lumber wagon driver from where he stood beside the lead horse.

  “Rinfur… I don’t see you handling the logs.”

  “I don’t see you handling the teams. You have to be smarter than the horses.”

  “Someday I be strangling you with that tongue.”

  The teamster grinned. “Not while I run faster and ride better.”

  Viental shrugged, then grinned. “And talk longer.”

  “Go see your sister,” suggested Rinfur amiably. “You do whenever you feel like it anyway.”

  “So? No one else lifts as I do.”

  Cerryl and Rinfur exchanged glances. Viental disappeared for days on end, always returning with the explanation that he had had to help his sister. Dylert refused to pay for the missing time but said nothing.

  “That right? Even the mill boy knows that. Right, Cerryl.”

  “No one lifts like you do,” Cerryl agreed.

  “See?”

  Rinfur continued checking the harnesses.

  Cerryl’s eyes flicked up to the house and then to the trees beyond, gray-leaved, almost brooding under the hazy clouds and waiting for winter and the snows and cold rains. A gust of wind stirred the leaves that had fallen, lifting a handful, then dropping them.

  The mill boy frowned. Why did the trees drop but half their leaves every fall? No one had been able to tell him-just, “That be the way it is, boy. Always been so.”

  There was too much that had always been so.

  With a gust of wind, Cerryl shivered, not because of the chill but in anticipation of the cold rain he felt would fall before night. His eyes went uphill once more.

  Behind the house, Erhana dipped a bucket into the well. Cerryl smiled. Close up, after all the practice with the scraps of mirrors and the flat sheets of water, he could do without either and catch glimpses of people just beyond his sight.

  He watched, first with his senses, then with his eyes, as Erhana carried a bucket of water from the well up the steps and onto the porch, each step precise.

  “Better start sweeping,” said Viental. “Dylert be coming from the second barn.”

  Cerryl picked up the broom.

  VI

  Clang! Clang!

  At the first bell, Cerryl peered out from the blankets, shivering. His breath was a white cloud that billowed into the air.

  “Darkness,” he murmured, trying not to move, not to let any of the cold air slip inside his blankets. There were no cracks in the heavy planked walls; the door fit snugly; and the window door was shut tightly-frozen shut, Cerryl suspected. But his cubby room had no hearth, not even a warming pan, though Dylert had sent him back down to bed the night before with two fire-warmed bricks.

  Clang!

  Cerryl clambered out from the blankets and began to shiver. His feet were cold and stiff as he wedged them, one by one, into his boots. Then he struggled into the patched canvas-and-leather jacket Nail had made for him. It was getting harder to tie shut. Had he grown that much over the fall and early winter?

  He lifted the two warming bricks-cold as ice-then tucked them under one arm. He opened his door, stepped outside, and shut it quickly, trying to keep the little heat in the room from escaping. Beside the path that led across to the mill and then up to the house the snow was more than knee deep, sparkling despite the lack of direct light in the moments before dawn.

  The smoke from the house’s kitchen chimney was a thick white plume that climbed through the still air into the clear dark green-blue sky of predawn. A smaller plume escaped from the chimney at the far end of the house, the one Cerryl thought was the hearth for the mill-master’s bedchamber.

  One foot skidded on the packed snow of the path, and Cerryl staggered, trying not to let the bricks slip from under his arm as he tried to catch his balance. He walked uphill carefully, eyes on the slick and icy surface, hands thrust inside the bottom of his jacket. Even the porch steps were slick, with a thin coating of the more recent snowflakes over the ice.

  Cerryl stamped his boots on the porch planks, trying to knock off all the snow, then reached for the boot brush. He could feel his toes jammed against the ends of the boots. He needed new boots, but the nine coppers he had saved wouldn’t pay for them.

  Bundled in a heavy leather jacket and leather trousers, Erhana opened the door. “Come on! Breakfast is ready, and you’ve a lot to do, Da says.”

  Cerryl stepped into the kitchen, letting Erhana close the door. For a moment, he stood there, letting the warmth fill him. Then he walked to the hearth and set the bricks by those brought up by Rinfur. “Thank you,” he said, nodding toward Dyella.

  “Little enough,” answered the millmaster’s consort with a smile. “This be going on, and you all sleep in the kitchen.”

  Cerryl slipped onto the middle of the bench, with Rinfur on his left. Viental, once more, had left to see his “sister.” Dylert sat at the end of the table, eating his gruel. On his right sat Erhana, still wrapped in her leather jacket.

  Dyella ladled the steamin
g gruel into the chipped bowl in front of Cerryl. “Seen your uncle recently? Before the snow, I be meaning,” she asked pleasantly. “Or your aunt?”

  “Aunt Nail, she stopped by coming back from Shandreth’s vineyard last fall.” Cerryl took a sip of water from the cracked cup that was his. “I saw Uncle Syodor an eight-day ago, before the snows started. He’d been helping Zylerant raise a barn.” He quickly swallowed some more of the gruel, welcoming the warmth, and took a small bite of the muffin beside his bowl. He held the muffin for a moment, enjoying its warmth on his cold fingers.

  “They see you a lot more regular than some,” observed Dyella, adding another ladle of the hot gruel to Cerryl’s bowl.

  “They’ve been good to me,” said Cerryl. “Good as they could be.” He ignored the glance from Dylert to Erhana, as well as Dyella’s raised eyebrows as she glanced at the millmaster. Instead, he concentrated on eating, and before he could finish the last of the porridge in the bowl, Dyella had added more.

  “You be needing this today. No sense in wasting it. Forgot Viental was gone.”

  “Thank you, Dyella.” Cerryl smiled.

  Rinfur cleared his throat. “I best be checking the horses, ser. Extra grain, you think?”

  “Half cup, no more,” said Dylert. “No telling when I can get another barrel. Not in this weather. Can’t hardly get to the road, except with the sled, and that’s not much for carrying.”

  “Half cup each, that be it.” The teamster stood, stretched, then fastened his jacket and tromped out of the kitchen and onto the porch.

  Erhana, despite the heavy coat, shivered as the chill air washed over her. “Cold out there.”

  “Be thankful you only have to fetch water, child,” said Dyella.

  “I have to get more?”

  “I have to cook, if you want to eat,” pointed out her mother.

  “Mother…”

  Cerryl smothered a grin by looking down at his bowl.

  “Erhana-not another word.”