The White Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  A line of straw dummies was set up before canvas hangings.

  “Archery. There’s three sets of hangings. Easier on the shafts and heads that way.” Eliasar picked up a curved stave from somewhere, or so Cerryl thought. “Now… here’s a bow. Here’s how you string it.” In a fluid motion that Cerryl could barely follow, the arms mage had the bow strung. “You try it.” As quickly as he had strung the weapon, Eliasar unstrung it and handed it to Cerryl.

  Cerryl had to use his knee and most of his weight to even bend the bow, and scraped skin off the sides of two fingers in somehow stringing the weapon.

  Eliasar took the bow, inspected it without words, then nocked an arrow and put a shaft through the left arm of the center straw figure. “Little off there.” A second shaft went through the middle of the figure’s chest. “Here you go.”

  The first shaft popped off the string on the draw because Cerryl’s sweaty fingers lost their grip. He wiped them on his trousers and tried again. That shaft skidded along the sand in front of the targets. It took five attempts before a shaft even hit the hangings.

  By then blood streaked the fingers of his right hand.

  “That’s enough. Clear you’ve had no training in arms.” Eliasar took back the bow, unstrung it, and wiped it down with a cloth he produced from somewhere.

  “You’ll never raise a blade-or a bow. So why do you suppose I made you do all this?” Eliasar grinned. “And you’ll do it a score or wore times before you ever ride with the lancers.”

  “So that I understand what lancers do?”

  Eliasar smiled coldly. “So you don’t do something that kills them or you because you don’t understand. You don’t understand. You haven’t even started to understand.” The grin returned. “Least you can Wear armor and move. Might be some hope for you.” Eliasar turned.

  “Let’s get that off you and get you back to the common.”

  Cerryl forced his steps to match those of the older mage, although he found himself practically panting to keep up.

  “Be another eight-day or two. Mayhap longer, if you get sewer duty but I’ll see you again. Then we’ll be showing you how to ride proper-like. That’s something you will do, and we’ll make sure you know that.”

  Cerryl had the feeling that Eliasar would, and that the mage enjoyed making life difficult for students.

  LV

  Cerryl looked down at the map outline lightly penned on the vellum spread across the table before him. He almost felt like jamming the quill into the smooth wood of the table or banging his head against the wall-or better yet, picking up Kesrik or Bealtur and pummeling either into a pulp, or tying them to a log and running through Dylert’s big saw.

  Already one eight-day and two days had passed, and all he had was an outline on vellum. His fingers still ached from his morning with Eliasar, and that hadn’t made copying any easier or quicker. He’d had to develop a real scale of distances, one that fit on the size vellum he’d been able to get from Arkos, and that had taken almost two days because none of the maps in the books or the bigger ones in the mages’ library really agreed, not that well.

  Not only were all the sizes and scales different, but often the names weren’t even the same. Some had Fenard spelled as Fenardre-after the ancient lord of Gallos, Cerryl guessed-and Jellico as Jellicor. The Westhorns were the Ouesthorns on some maps. One town in Certis had four names: Yytrel, Rellos, Estalcor, and Rytel. Cerryl figured, from the ages of the various histories and places, that the current name was Rytel- unless it had changed again.

  West of the Westhorns was worse, but he didn’t have to worry about that, darkness forbid.

  Because one of the places that Jeslek had mentioned-Quessa- wasn’t on any map anywhere, Cerryl had asked the few students he trusted, like Faltar and Lyasa and the diffident Heralt. None of them knew.

  While he would have been reluctant to approach any full mage he didn’t study with-effectively Jeslek, Broka, and occasionally Derka- he had to ask himself why Jeslek had forbidden such questions. To force Cerryl to search the library and all the histories? To make the task harder? Another of Jeslek’s endless tests?

  He looked at the map, then lifted it and reattached it to the working rack in the corner.

  Questions would have to wait.

  After washing up, Cerryl found himself marching up the avenue toward Fasse’s shop. Jeslek hadn’t forbidden him to talk to others who might know, and he thought he recalled that Fasse had come from Gallos. He hoped his recollections were correct.

  In the midafternoon, a line of wagons rumbled along the white stones of the avenue. A series of bells rang, and Cerryl smiled as he saw, trailing the cooper’s wagon, a white-sided refuse wagon.

  Once past the market square, filled mainly with women, he reached the jewelers’ row, where in the cool afternoon most doors were closed, except for one. As he passed the green-lacquered open door, he glanced inside, where a goldsmith held a glittering choker to the light of the door for a woman dressed in pale blue. Cerryl couldn’t have guessed how much gold was in the necklace, only that it was far more than he would likely ever see, even if he did become a full mage. For all of the strangeness in the Halls of the Mages, love of gold did not seem a magely fault.

  One guard in pale blue livery stood by the door, and another almost between her and the goldsmith. Cerryl nodded to the guard, who did not nod back, and kept walking, past the rest of the fine metalsmiths‘, past the grain exchange, and finally to the artisans’ square.

  The door to Fasse’s shop was ajar, and Cerryl edged inside. Fasse stood, polishing cloth in hand, by a gold oak chest.

  “Yes, young ser?” The twiglike and wispy mustache twitched as the cabinet-maker turned to Cerryl.

  Cerryl found the setting strange. A craftmaster-one whose loft he had slept in back at a time when he had barely a handful of coppers to his name-was calling him “ser.”

  “Fasse, my name is Cerryl, and once I slept in your loft. I am working on a project for the higher mages…” What else could he call Jeslek? “… and I thought you might be able to help.”

  “Young ser, you did look familiar.” Fasse’s brow furrowed as he stepped back from the gold oak chest he polished. “Yet, how could I be helping you?”

  “I am making a map, and there are some towns in Gallos… Might you know where Quessa is?”

  Fasse scratched the back of his head, his eyes going sidelong at Cerryl for a moment. “Hmmm… aye… I was there once, as a boy, but how… how would I say… explain… that be many years ago.”

  Cerryl waited.

  “Best as I recall, it be three days’ ride to the west of Hierna, only two days east of the Westhorns, the first hills, that be.”

  Cerryl swallowed. “Ah… I know where Tellura is, but not Hierna.”

  Fasse twisted one end of the thin mustache. “Tellura… I never went there, though all said it was to the south and east of Linspros and somewhere south and east of Hierna.” Then he hung the polishing cloth on a wooden peg next to one of the smaller wood racks. “And never having been there, I’d not know how to say to get from one to the other. Or how long one might have to travel.”

  “Do you know anyone in Fairhaven who might know?”

  Fasse twisted the other end of his mustache, scratching his head with the other hand. Then he pursed his lips. “Lwelter the potter-he might, seeing as his consort, she was Analerian, and they travel all Kyphros… might be that Hierna be too far north for herders.” Fasse shrugged. “Best I could do.”

  “Lwelter… where could I find him?”

  “You know Arkos the tanner? You must… ah…” Fasse swallowed.

  Cerryl ignored the audible gulp. “I know Arkos. Is Lwelter near there?”

  “Two shops toward the square. Leastwise, I think it’s two. You’ll find it, young ser.”

  “Thank you, Fasse.” Cerryl nodded and left, repeating as he walked toward the tanner’s what Fasse had said until he was sure he had the information firmly in mind.
>
  From what Cerryl could tell, the potter’s shop, the one with the outsized pitcher over the doorway, was three shops toward the square from the tanner’s. He opened the door gently and stepped inside.

  A young man, not that much older than Cerryl himself, sat on a stool, one foot pumping the treadle that powered the wheel. Cerryl watched as the base of a pot or a pitcher rose from the clay under the stubby fingers of the young potter.

  The potter never glanced at Cerryl.

  Finally, Cerryl cleared his throat. “I’m looking for Lwelter, the potter.”

  The slender man looked up from the wheel, then stiffened as he saw the white tunic and trousers. “Lwelter, ser?”

  “He might know something,” Cerryl said.

  “Lwelter?”

  Cerryl nodded.

  “As you wish, ser.” He turned on the stool. “Da! Mage here to see you.” Then he turned back to the wheel. “If you don’t mind, ser…”

  “Go ahead.”

  Shortly, a stooped man shuffled out from the back room. Lwelter’s sightless eyes looked past Cerryl. “Ser… ?” The cracked voice wavered.

  “Lwelter?”

  “That’s me. Always been me, even when I could see.”

  “I was talking with Fasse, and he said you might be able to help me. You once spent time in Gallos and Kyphros, he said.”

  “Been a long time back, a long time, when Deorca was younger than Flait here.”

  “What can you tell me about Quessa or Hierna?”

  “Hierna, ah, yes, that was the next town but one from Zrenca, and Zrenca, that was where I found Deorca.” A smile creased the thin and pale lips. “A long time back.”

  “How far is Hierna from Tellura?”

  “Not too far a piece. There’s a day, a short day between Hierna and Zrenca, but Zrenca is but a hamlet, not a proper town at all, you know.”

  “And how far is Tellura from Zrenca?” Cerryl asked politely.

  “I’d say, if there were a road, straight that is, it might take two days by horse, but the hills and the streams they don’t flow straight, and the roads wind more than the streams.”

  “Zrenca is two days straight west from Tellura?” pursued Cerryl.

  “Mostly, but I’d be guessing…”

  “And Hierna is another day west from Zrenca?”

  “Ah… no. Hierna… you go as much north as west from Zrenca, and a short day, a half day hard riding.”

  “Have you ever heard of a town called Quessa?”

  Lwelter shrugged. “Knew it be west of Hierna, more than a few days… two, mayhap three.”

  “How big is Hierna?”

  “You been to Weevett, young fellow?”

  In the background, the stubby-fingered young potter winced ever so slightly.

  “Well, Hierna’s half again as big as Weevett, lessen one’s growed more than the other in the last ten years.” Lwelter laughed.

  “Do you know anything about Quessa?”

  “Some said it was a hamlet like Zrenca. Never went there. Deorca had a cousin consorted with a miller there.”

  “Did you ever go to the Westhorns from Zrenca?” asked Cerryl.

  “Me? I was a potter, not a herder. ‘Sides, even then, folks worried about the black she-angels. Folks say they’re all dead. Don’t you believe it.” Lwelter cackled, shaking his head. “Don’t like the lowlands, the angels don’t.”

  “Da.” The word was firm. “The white mage knows all about the angels.”

  Lwelter stopped cackling. “You didn’t say he was a mage.”

  “He did,” Cerryl said. “You have been very helpful. Thank you ” He fumbled in his purse and handed a pair of coppers to the younger potter before turning and leaving.

  “… could have gotten us turned to ashes…”

  “… never said…”

  Ignoring the recriminations behind him, Cerryl walked quickly back to the wizards’ square.

  The dinner bell was ringing as he opened his cell door, and he washed quickly and hurried toward the meal hall. The others who ate there were already seated with platters, and he found himself alone at the serving table.

  After taking a chunk of oat bread, some cheese, noodles in white sauce, and a mug of the light ale, he sat down across from Faltar. He absently let his senses range over the food, though outside of the poisoned cider, he’d never found any other sense of chaos in food in the halls.

  “Where have you been?” asked the blond student mage.

  Beside Faltar, the curly-haired Heralt raised his eyebrows as he chewed some of the tough bread.

  “Trying to find out where Quessa is-and Hierna, and Zrenca, and…” Cerryl broke off a corner of the bread and dipped it in the white sauce.

  “Too bad scriveners can’t use glasses like real student mages…” came the murmur from Bealtur at the adjoining table.

  Cerryl stiffened momentarily, then smiled and turned to Faltar. “For some reason, the honored Jeslek did not want me to use a glass, and I would not think of going against his expressed wishes.” His face hardened slightly. “I’m sure he wouldn’t like to learn that anyone had suggested otherwise.”

  There was a satisfying gulp from the adjoining table.

  Faltar grinned. So did Heralt, if momentarily.

  Cerryl didn’t. He had too much drawing and copying ahead. Instead, he took a chunk of the oat bread and began to chew.

  LVI

  The isle of Recluce was hotter than the Sand Hills raised by the treachery of Nylan, and drier as well, and not even the sorceries of the dark mages nor the fires of Megaera could bring forth water from the dry earth and barren rock.

  Children shriveled and died; despite even the spells laid by Creslin upon his followers, more and more voices were raised in anguish and in pain, asking why Creslin had brought them to such a desolate place. He answered them not, but withdrew into himself, then sent forth ships to plunder the seas. Yet the plunder would not buy water, nor food enough…

  Why should all the gentle rain fall upon Candar and upon the lands of our enemies, and those who have sworn to destroy us? asked Creslin of Megaera. Why should we not turn the great winds so that the rains return to Recluce as they once must have fallen?

  Even the faceless black mages shivered as they heard Creslin’s words whisper across the barren rocks and bleached sands.

  Yet none would raise his voice when Creslin and Megaera set forth to raise the waters and the skies and fought the winds of Heaven, nor was a word spoken when fires blazed out of the sky and floods of water cascaded across Recluce.

  The fires burned across dry Montgren and the crops of Certis. Even the hardy oilseeds withered and dried, and the forests of Sligo blazed through the long summer.

  The floods subsided, and rains fell upon Recluce, and Creslin and Megaera rejoiced, never looking into a glass or caring about the destruction which they had wrought upon Candar…

  Colors of White

  (Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven)

  Preface

  LVII

  A woman in green crossed the hall and started toward the courtyard and the front building as Cerryl stepped out of the library workroom with his map in hand-a woman in green with red-blonde hair…a young woman.

  Cerryl looked for a moment, just looked. Could it be the girl from his glass? She was definitely a woman now.

  He glanced toward the steps to Jeslek’s quarters, then in the direction she had gone, pursing his lips. After a moment, he turned toward the courtyard. Even with that momentary delay, by the time he passed the fountain and reached the end of the foyer of the front building, she had turned and was headed up the steps to the tower.

  Cerryl walked more quickly, holding the map high so that he wouldn’t trip or drag it along the polished stones. He dodged around Lyasa, who gave him a questioning look, and offered a harried look that he hoped would cover his action.

  Lyasa raised both eyebrows but said nothing.

  By the time Cerryl reached the pair of g
uards at the base of the tower, breathing slightly harder than he would have liked, the young woman in green had vanished. No sound of feet echoed down the steps to the higher levels, either.

  He looked at the guard standing on the right. “Hertyl… the woman who just went up the steps… do you know her?”

  “Young ser, it be not my business to know any like her.”

  Cerryl caught the twinkle in the young guard’s eye and grinned. “Nor I… but you might know her name.”

  “I’ve heard that it be Leyladin. She is a merchant’s daughter, but some say she also be a healer.” Hertyl nodded toward the steps. “I do not ask where she visits.”

  Cerryl paused.

  The older guard cleared his throat.

  Cerryl understood the signal. “Thank you.” He looked at the map he held and then at the guards, nodding to both. “Best I be going. Good day.”

  “Good day to you, young ser.”

  Cerryl walked quickly, if slightly more deliberately, back toward Jeslek’s quarters.

  The red-blonde hair-it could be no one else. But what was she doing in the Halls of the Mages? Just a healer? Or something else? His thoughts went back to Benthann’s comments-sex? Was she the mistress or consort-to-be of a white mage? Of one of the older mages?

  His fingers curled until his hands were almost fists, and he took a slow and silent deep breath, trying to relax. He had no claim on her. He didn’t even know her, and she certainly didn’t even know he existed. Why was he reacting so violently?

  Besides, Jeslek had asked to see the map, and he dared not hasten, not after chasing the woman-Leyladin, not woman-practically to the white tower. Another test? Had Jeslek sent her past him?

  He shivered but left the front foyer hall and started across the courtyard.

  “Why were you in such a hurry?” Lyasa stood by the fountain, clearly waiting for him. Her olive brown eyes pinned him.

  “I got flustered…” That was certainly true enough. He inclined his head to the map. “Jeslek wants to see this, and I found myself going in the wrong direction.”