The White Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Should he run?

  He shook his head. Running would only tell them he had done Wrong-and they’d kill him like his father and the fugitive at Dylert’s.

  They might anyway, but he hadn’t done anything that wrong, of that he was convinced. But… did they care?

  Should he get rid of the books and his father’s amulet? No… if they came for him, those wouldn’t matter, one way or another, and he wasn’t going to give up what little he had of his father out of fear.

  Still… he shuddered as he dipped the washrag into the bucket of too-chill water. For all his hopes, for all his dreams, he had nowhere to run and no way to escape.

  The cold water on his face helped… for a moment.

  XLV

  Tellis cleared his throat. “I continue to wonder about those mages. No one at the tower has said so much as a word, and yesterday Sterol requested that I come again the day after tomorrow to act as a copyist.” The scrivener scratched the back of his head, then fingered his chin.

  Cerryl continued to sweep the floor stones of the workroom, bending to ease the dirt and tiny leather and vellum scraps and bits of dried glue into the wooden dust holder. For days, Tellis had been muttering about the mages, for days, always half-questioning Cerryl, not quite insisting that Cerryl was the reason.

  “What do you think, Cerryl?”

  The apprentice finished sweeping the dirt and leavings into the holder and straightened, carefully emptying the holder into the waste bin before replying. “I don’t know, ser.”

  “They were here. How can you not think something?”

  “I was afraid,” Cerryl admitted. I still am. “I’d never seen more than one white mage before I came to Fairhaven.”

  “The one even questioned you.” Tellis’s voice bore the faintest tone of reproach.

  “All he asked was what I did and whether I was the only apprentice.” Cerryl slipped the empty dust holder onto its peg and leaned the broom in the corner. He stepped over to the washstand to clean his hands. “He stared at me for a moment, and then he left.”

  “That’s all he did?”

  “Yes, ser.” How many times had Cerryl told Tellis that?

  “But why would they ask about that book?” Tellis fingered his chin again. “They have to know I wouldn’t ever cross them.”

  “Neither would I,” Cerryl added. Not openly. It’s too dangerous. “I didn’t even know that there was such a book.”

  Tellis coughed. “Can’t get my throat clear. Not for anything.” He coughed again. “I just don’t understand. I’ve always followed the guidelines. Always.” His voice cracked slightly.

  “They are mages,” Cerryl said evenly, drying his hands and stepping toward the copy desk and the waiting volume-An Alchemical Manual.

  “That is just it,” insisted Tellis. “They must have a reason; they must have.”

  “They must have.” Cerryl leaned forward and inspected the quill in the holder, forcing his voice to remain even, trying to keep his hands from shaking. “They are mages.” He paused. “Do you want me to keep working on this, ser?”

  “That?” Tellis’s head twitched. “Oh, the manual for Nivor? If you can keep the letter width thin enough. That last page is barely passable. For a journeyman, yes, but not from Tellis the scrivener.” He frowned. “You aren’t listening to me these days, not enough.”

  “I try, ser. I’m cutting the nibs the way you showed me yesterday, and I am comparing the letters to the gauge.”

  “You shouldn’t have to compare. You should know.”

  “Yes, ser.” Cerryl lifted the quill.

  “See that you do.”

  The apprentice nodded.

  “I still don’t understand about the mages… Sterol trusts me with all of his books. Why would he send lesser mages into my shop? Why?”

  Cerryl kept breathing evenly and took out his penknife to resharpen the quill. After working on it, he stood by the copy desk, waiting, hoping he could either get on with the copying or go on an errand.

  “My shop,” Tellis repeated. “Why would any mage come to my shop? My shop, of all others.”

  “Stop moaning, Tellis,” interrupted Beryal from the doorway. “If they’d a wanted you on the road, you’d be pounding rocks already. Your high and mighty Sterol would a squashed you like a ground lizard under his shiny white boots. Same’s for your apprentice there. They were looking for something. They didn’t find it here. Count yourself lucky, and stop moaning. If they were after you, you wouldn’t be getting copy work.”

  Cerryl wanted to sigh in relief, or smile. He didn’t.

  “Beryal… you are not the one to lecture me.” Tellis turned and glared at the older woman.

  “I be telling you I’m on my way to the market, ser.” Beryal inclined her head. “Deria said there were some tender chickens a-coming from Howlett. Some roast fowl would do us all good. Course, I’d need a half silver or so, for that and all else you’d be needing.”

  Tellis sighed, then looked at Cerryl. “You can do what you can with Ivor’s book. Keep the letters slender. When I get back, you can scrub the floor in the front room.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “After that, you can scrub down the courtyard.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “The market, ser?” prompted Beryal. “You’d not be wanting me to be the last one in line for a fowl, you know?”

  Tellis gave another sigh and marched out of the workroom, Beryal trailing him.

  Cerryl felt like sighing, and did, if silently.

  XLVI

  Cerryl was only halfway through the workroom door when Tellis barked, “Cerryl, the letters on this sheet are too wide. It’s near worthless. Nivor won’t pay for such sloppy work. I’ll have to redo this page and the one before it.” Tellis lifted the sheets of vellum. “All these are good for is palimpsests-for low-coin copy work.”

  “Yes, ser. If you like, I can copy them over with narrower letters.” Cerryl kept his voice even, standing just inside the doorway.

  “Why didn’t you do it that way to begin with?” Tellis’s voice took on a tone that almost verged on whining. “I’ve showed you time and time again.”

  “I thought I was doing it the way you wanted, ser.” Cerryl struggled to keep his voice even and subservient.

  “It is not the way I taught you. Can’t you get anything right?” Tellis waved the vellum.

  Cerryl did not answer.

  “Can’t you? I have spent seasons instructing you, and you still make your letters too wide.” The scrivener’s eyes flicked to Cerryl and then toward the doorway to the front room. “I never had white mages in the shop, except to purchase books. Now… we are watched and questioned. What do you say to that?”

  “Ser, I have done nothing wrong.” Clearly, any answer would be useless, but not answering would be worse.

  “The only thing you do right is run errands and scrub the floor. Even your ink will fade before its time.”

  “Yes, ser.” Cerryl understood. For some reason, Tellis did not want to throw Cerryl out on the street, but he was going to make life impossible for his apprentice… so impossible that Cerryl would not stay. Yet at the moment, he dared not leave, not if his feelings were accurate, and they were all he had to guide him.

  “All your wages-what I owe you-would not pay for the vellum you have ruined.”

  “You may have my wages, ser. I would not displease you.”

  “You have displeased me.” Tellis sniffed. “Go empty the chamber pots.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “And wash them.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Wash them well.”

  Cerryl bowed and turned.

  “Then you can go to the Tenderer’s for hoofs. I need to make binding glue.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  As he stepped out of the workroom, the apprentice could still hear Tellis muttering.

  “A favor for Dylert… and where does it get me? Because he helped my son… and still, where, light forbid, is
the justice in it? This may right the balance, if I can but survive.”

  Cerryl stepped into the kitchen, wondering what he could do, and how he could stay, at least until the white mages lost interest in him.

  “Where you be going?” asked Beryal.

  “Tellis told me to empty the chamber pots and wash them.”

  Beryal smiled. “You cannot be doing that. Your own is clean, for I saw you do that, and so is mine, and my daughter would have your head faster than would Tellis were you to wake her so early.”

  “What can I do?” Cerryl glanced back toward the workroom.

  “The courtyard could use a sweeping, and Tellis could use some time by himself, and I will tell him that I told you to do that after you cleaned the two chamber pots.” Beryal looked at Cerryl. “He is fearful. He has seen what the mages do to those who displease them. He has seen such too many times.”

  “But he has done nothing, and surely the mages know that.” Cerryl glanced over his shoulder again.

  “His son…” whispered Beryal, looking toward the front room. “We all carry black angels, and fear is Tellis’s. Later…” Her voice resumed its normal timbre. “Go sweep the courtyard.”

  Cerryl picked up the broom and walked through the common room and into the courtyard, wondering if Tellis would complain about his sweeping as well. Beryal had started to say something about Tellis’s son. Had that been the Verial that Benthann had mentioned?

  Cerryl wanted to scream and cry all at the same time. No one said anything, and he was in no position to ask, and yet the answers affected him somehow. Would life always be like that?

  With a silent sigh, he started sweeping in the corner by the door making sure that the broom straws flicked each join in the stone tiles clean. He supposed he could scrub the tiles once more after he finished sweeping.

  “Cerryl!”

  He looked up from the broom. Tellis stood in the doorway, paler than the white granite of the avenue. “Yes, ser.”

  “The mages want you.”

  Cerryl forced his eyes away from the rear gate, the only possible escape, except that escape was a trap. Perhaps all life was a trap. He turned toward Tellis, still holding the broom. “Me, ser?”

  Tellis gestured.

  Cerryl walked toward the door, only slowing to lean the broom against the wall.

  “In the front,” rasped Tellis, pushing his apprentice in front of him and toward the front room with the bookcases and copied volumes.

  Cerryl walked through the common room and kitchen, knowing that Beryal was there, yet not really seeing her. He also ignored the murmured words of the scrivener, who followed.

  “This is what I get for doing a favor for Dylert… the white guards at my shop door.” Tellis sniffed self-sympathetically.

  In the showroom stood a single mage in white, a tall and rugged blond man with a purple blotch on one cheek, a mage whom Cerryl had never seen. “You are the scrivener’s apprentice?”

  Cerryl bowed. “Yes, ser.”

  “Your name is Cerryl?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “You are to come with me. Now. You need nothing. You bring nothing.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  The mage turned to Tellis. “You owe him nothing, and you are free to find another apprentice. Good day, scrivener.” The gray eyes, overlaid with a sheen of gold, fixed on Cerryl. “Outside.”

  “Yes, ser.” Cerryl understood he had no chance if he ran. His only hope was to stand firm and admit nothing more than the mages already knew about him, and to be unfailingly polite. He bowed and turned, opening the door.

  Outside the shop were six guards in white, and before them two others in white tunics and trousers like the mage, except that their tunics bore a thin red stripe across each sleeve.

  Already the day was hot, and white dust sifted through the air on the lightest of breezes. Cerryl wanted to rub his nose but didn’t, wrinkling it slightly to try to stop the itching.

  “Walk beside me.” The mage smiled, an expression without warmth, and absently brushed something darkish from the white tunic.

  The mage nodded to the guards and the two others in white.

  All the shutters flanking the way of the lesser artisans between the scrivener’s and the artisans’ square were shut. So were the doors, despite the bright sunlight and the warmth of the morning.

  Once on the main avenue, walking briskly toward the mages’ square and the white tower that loomed over it, Cerryl took more notice of his surroundings.

  They passed the last of the artisans’ shops and left the square behind. An ostler led a saddled chestnut out of the stable toward a tall man dressed in blue, standing before the small inn. The saddlebags on the horse bulged, indicating a traveler. Past the ostlery was the long grain exchange building. No carriages stood by the vacant mounting blocks, though the windows and the shutters of the exchange were open, and two men in maroon tunics talked in the arched doorway.

  At the grinding of ironbound wagon wheels, Cerryl could feel the white guards move closer. Did they think he would try to jump on a wagon-or under the wheels? The ubiquitous fine white dust rose from the avenue as the brown-stained wagon, behind two horses, rolled past. In the wagon bed were a half-dozen huge barrels, each nearly man-high, roped together. Who needed barrels that large?

  Feeling the dampness on his forehead, Cerryl stepped across the narrow side way and back onto the stone walk of the jewelers’ block. Perhaps half the iron-banded doors were open, and the air held the acrid odor of oil, hot metal, and other burned substances. Cerryl glanced sideways at the white mage, but the man’s oval face remained impassive.

  Beyond the goldsmiths’ and silversmiths’ shops was the long stretch of large houses, each behind low white-granite walls. In one garden, in the house beyond Muneat’s, two small children gamboled, a slender young woman watching from the shade of a tree trimmed into the shape of a sphere. In the next, two gardeners worked on pruning and shaping vines around an arbor.

  Yet the only sounds Cerryl heard were the delighted cries of the children, and he wondered how long children in Fairhaven showed such joy. As their cries died away, the murmur of voices from around the colored carts that filled the market square rose. The muted hubbub from the peddlers and the buyers gently drowned out the sound of the guards’ boots on the hard granite.

  Yet not a head turned as Cerryl and his small procession passed the market square and continued down the avenue, past another section of large houses with well-kept walls and gardens.

  Cerryl began to squint in the warm morning sun as he neared the wizards’ square. The wizards’ tower itself reared perhaps sixty cubits over the other lower buildings in the square, a blot of white stone that cast a shadow along the avenue.

  The glare from the tower, and from the lower white stone buildings around the square, seemed to pulse, as if each stone cast arrows of brilliance at him so that the shadow from the tower offered little relief from a sun that had gotten hotter with every step from Tellis’s shop.

  Cerryl could sense the unseen whiteness of chaos, curling around the tower itself like invisible smoke. With the glare and the chaos, he found it harder to make out the structures around the circular square, save all were of a granite even whiter than that which paved the avenue, and none except the tower exceeded two levels.

  The square itself held a pedestal, with a statue, surrounded by an expanse of grass, grass so dark green that it appeared almost black in the late morning sun. Rather than being in the center of a building or standing alone, the wizard’s tower rose from the south side of a building that otherwise appeared to contain two stories. There was no entrance to the tower from the avenue.

  The mage gestured to the squared archway above three steps nearly twenty cubits side to side. “There.”

  Although the last and smallest of the successive joined square stone arches that framed the entry to the building was more than eight cubits high, there were no carvings on the smooth stone, and no windows
flanking the entry. Cerryl found the featureless white stone unsettling. Even more of the fine white dust swirled up from his boots as he stepped through the entryway into a high-ceilinged foyer. Another framed entryway was to his right, and a hallway continued straight ahead.

  “The stairs.” The mage pointed to the stone-railed staircase to the left.

  Cerryl followed directions and started up the steps, realizing as he did that the white guards and the other two mages had remained in the foyer and that he and the mage climbed the stairs alone. At the top was another stone doorway-without a door-and a pair of guards.

  The guards nodded at the mage, who gestured for Cerryl to keep going. Cerryl stepped through the entryway to find another set of steps to his right.

  “Up the stairs,” ordered the mage. “To the third level.”

  Although the apprentice found himself panting halfway up the second set of stairs, the mage climbed silently, without straining. Cerryl noted that, despite the size of the building and the polished flat granite and fitted joins, there was no ornamentation anywhere-only smooth and featureless walls that seemed to go on and on. The fine white dust also seemed to catch in his throat and lungs and to make breathing even more difficult.

  When the mage stopped at a landing outside a blank white oak door, with a single guard, Cerryl tried to catch his breath, and the mage stood silently beside him.

  “Come on in, Kinowin,” grated a voice from the other side of the door, “and bring in the young man as well.”

  The stone-faced Kinowin opened the door and gestured for Cerryl to enter first, then followed him inside the tower apartment. Kinowin turned to the single mage in the room. “This is the scrivener’s apprentice, as you wished, honored Sterol.”

  “Good.” The white-clad mage who stood in the tower room was broad-shouldered, a head taller than Cerryl, but not so tall as the big mage who had escorted Cerryl. His hair was iron gray, and his neatly trimmed beard matched his thick and short-cut iron hair. His face was ruddy, almost as if sunburned. A golden amulet hung around his neck, and on his collar was a pin that resembled a golden starburst. “You may go, Kinowin. Wait outside until I summon you.”