The White Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

“Hot, ser… real hot,” observed Jyantyl. “Be much longer afore you finish this tunnel?”

  “I don’t know. This one turns ahead of where we’ve gotten. I’d say a few more days, maybe an eight-day. That depends on how bad the collectors that are coming up are.” Cerryl wiped his forehead. “There’s also another secondary that joins-it must have been added later, because it’s not on the map. I’ll have to ask Myral about that.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  A covered wagon groaned past the group, and Cerryl’s eyes followed it momentarily, noting that it held full barrels of something. Ale? Beer? Wine? The dampness at the edge of the wagon bed indicated some liquid that had spilled or overflowed within the wagon.

  “Do I need to finish soon?” Cerryl asked.

  “Some of us… they be talking about sending us to Jellico or Rytel.”

  “Rytel?”

  “Only talk around the barracks, ser.” Jyantyl shrugged. “Some say Axalt is allowing all the free traders to cross into Spidlar that way. Maybe even traders’ guild types.”

  Cerryl nodded, not sure he understood but not wanting to confess his ignorance. “So the trouble there…”

  “I don’t pretend to know, ser… just that there be a storm rising in the north.” The older guard’s eyes flicked toward the wizards’ square, then toward the tower.

  “I don’t either, Jyantyl.” Cerryl nodded to the guard. “Until tomorrow.”

  “Yes, ser.” Jyantyl and the four lancers marched past the front enhance and around the north side of the building.

  Cerryl turned and climbed the steps, his legs aching.

  So… there were rumors about Axalt? Cerryl frowned. He knew nothing about Axalt, except its location. Then, there were so many places in the world about which he knew nothing. He laughed to himself. There was so much that he did not know about Fairhaven… Or women… or power.

  Once inside the front Hall foyer, he started toward the rear courtyard, then stepped aside for a slim hurrying figure in white.

  “Cerryl…” Anya glanced at Cerryl, almost as if puzzled, then abruptly made a face. “You need the attentions of the washroom, Cerryl.”

  “Yes, ser. I know.”

  “You don’t have to address me like Sterol, Cerryl. Anya is fine.” Again, she offered the blazingly warm smile he distrusted.

  “Yes, Anya.” He returned her smile with one he hoped was friendly and pleasant.

  “Later,” she said enigmatically.

  Cerryl kept from swallowing as she nodded and headed past him in the direction of the lower steps to the tower. He continued on to the washrooms, arriving as the first bells of evening rang.

  He hurried through his ablutions and started for the meal hall.

  Even from the archway, he could see that dinner was plain roasted fowl and boiled potatoes and bread-bread baked earlier in the day and already partly stale.

  Lyasa and Faltar sat at one of the round tables, and Kesrik, Kochar, and Bealtur at the one almost adjoining. Lyasa motioned to Cerryl, and he nodded in response as he loaded his platter. Plain food or not, he was hungry.

  As Cerryl neared the table, Lyasa glanced at him, then toward Faltar, then back at Cerryl.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Are you all right? The sewers…”

  “You mean,” he asked wryly, “have they had a ‘diminishing’ impact? Probably, but I suppose that’s the price you pay for control. Or the one I’m paying.”

  Cerryl could sense Kesrik’s eyes on his back-or perhaps Bealtur’s.

  Lyasa nodded tightly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Myral does fine.” Cerryl wanted to smile but kept his face as expressionless as he could as he set the platter on the table beside Lyasa.

  After he seated himself, he could feel Lyasa’s hand under the table, briefly touching and squeezing his upper leg, a gesture of reassurance and sadness, all in one. He wanted to tell her that it was all right, but steeled himself and murmured, “It’s hard, but it happens.” In a way, the words were true, just not in the way Lyasa would take them.

  Faltar looked up from his fowl, a puzzled look crossing his face.

  “You’ll understand later,” murmured Lyasa. “How long have you been in the sewers? One eight-day?”

  “Almost two. I’m not moving very fast.” Faltar shook his head and pulled a long face.

  “Most don’t,” said Lyasa. “Not at first.”

  “… can say that…” mumbled Faltar.

  “Have you heard anything new about Gallos or Spidlar?” Cerryl asked quickly.

  Lyasa glanced back over her shoulder, toward the table that Kesrik and Kochar had just vacated. Her face clouded momentarily. “Ah… no. I mean… nothing’s changed.” She lifted her mug and winced.

  “What’s the matter?” Cerryl asked, his eyes following Kesrik, wondering what Lyasa had seen-or heard.

  “Kinowin has taken over showing students about arms. He stuffed me into full armor and then beat me around some.”

  “To show you what guardsmen and lancers go through,” said Cerryl. “Eliasar did that to me.”

  “I certainly don’t want to be a lancer.” Lyasa laughed. “The black angels were crazy in more ways than one.”

  “The ones from Westwind?” asked Faltar. “They supposedly knocked everyone else around. I can’t believe it, though.”

  “You don’t think women are tough enough?” Lyasa’s eyebrows rose.

  “I didn’t say that,” answered Faltar quickly.

  “You didn’t have to say it.”

  Cerryl held back a grin.

  “You know a good number of the blades on Recluce are still women. So are some of the white lancers.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “So you did say something?” Lyasa kept a straight face.

  Faltar sighed, despondently, almost in the exaggerated fashion of a traveling minstrel. “Go ahead, flame me. Beat me… anything you wish…for I am in pain and misery…”

  “Next time…” Lyasa laughed.

  “There won’t be a next time,” Faltar promised.

  Cerryl laughed at his plaintive tone.

  “Why did you ask about things?” Lyasa turned back toward Cerryl.

  “Jyantyl-he’s the head guard for my sewer work-he said there were rumors about more guards and lancers being sent to Certis, and something about Axalt.” He paused. “What do you know about Axalt?”

  “It’s an old walled city. It used to be on the main trade road from Jellico to Spidlar-until the Great White Road was completed through the Easthorns. It’s not quite a land, but it owes no allegiance to any other ruler.”

  “Maybe we’ll all be mages before it comes to war,” suggested Faltar.

  “Maybe.” Cerryl wasn’t sure that was good. He broke off a chunk of bread.

  “War doesn’t make sense,” said Lyasa.

  “Many things don’t make sense,” pointed out Faltar, mumbling through his food again. “Why should war?”

  Thinking about Anya’s reaction when he’d entered the Hall, and so much that had occurred, Cerryl had to agree with Faltar. But there wasn’t much he could do, and he lifted his mug and enjoyed a swallow of cool ale.

  LXXVII

  Cerryl stepped into the tower room, glad that Myral had the shutters open and that a breeze blew in-except that the breeze stopped when he closed the heavy brass-bound door.

  From his seat by the table, where he sipped cool cider, Myral studied Cerryl. “You’ve been working on not holding chaos within yourself, have you not?”

  “I’ve tried to follow your instructions and suggestions,” Cerryl admitted. “It’s hard.”

  “Anything done well is often hard.” Myral smiled briefly. “Those to whom power comes naturally have difficulty understanding such until it is oft too late.”

  Cerryl refrained from noting that parables weren’t exactly going to help him, and eased into the chair across from the older mage.

  “H
ow is the cleaning on this one coming?”

  “Not too bad,” Cerryl said, “but there’s a place just ahead where another tunnel seems to join, and it’s not on the map.”

  Myral frowned, then rose and half-walked, half-waddled to the bookcase. Cerryl didn’t recall the older mage being so ponderous before, but said nothing as Myral returned to the table and unrolled the map scroll.

  “Where?”

  Cerryl pointed. “About there, right before that turn when it joins the eastern main tunnel.”

  Myral’s eyebrows rose, and his face cleared immediately. “Oh… that. It’s not a collector tunnel. Years and years ago, there was a group of ruffians-they called themselves traders, but they decided to use the sewers as a way out of the city to avoid the guards and the tariffs, and they built an entrance from the lower level of their building. That tunnel was never fully bricked up underground-just from the building side. If you followed it, you’d come to a brick wall. There was another bricked-up tunnel exit all the way out by the spillway, but that was filled in with rubble.” The older mage smiled. “They got away with it for almost a year.” He paused. “I told you how the sunlight striking the water on the spillways cleans the sewer water before it reaches the lake… ?”

  “Yes, ser. You took me out there and showed me how the sludge is trapped in the first basin, and then-”

  Myral waved vaguely as he straightened up and rerolled the scroll. “No sense in telling you what I’ve told you. These days-maybe I always did-I repeat myself too much. Happens when you get old.”

  “Old? You don’t look old.”

  “I’m old, Cerryl. Old, old, old for a mage. I have my vanities, and Leyladin helps me with them, but I’m an old man, good for telling about sewers and refuse and such, and little else.” Myral plopped back into his chair, breathing heavily. After a moment, he glared at Cerryl. “Go on. You go scour the sewer, and I’ll sit here and look important to myself.”

  Cerryl stood.

  “When you get to the smugglers’ tunnel, be careful. You’ll have to clean that out, or it will mean the secondary will have to be scoured sooner. But there’s no telling whether their workmanship was any good. You may have to get masons. Just let me know.” Myral laughed, then coughed. “It’s not as though I’ll be traveling far.”

  The younger man nodded again, then left, meeting Jyantyl and the lancers outside the barracks at the rear of the halls as usual.

  The morning went quickly enough, if not so swiftly as Cerryl had hoped, since he found another set of small collectors on the east side. One was nearly totally plugged, and he’d had to use firebolts and steam to bore through the sludgy mass.

  Even after he and the lancers had taken a midday break, Cerryl still felt tired, but he again unlocked the bronze sewer grate and nodded to Ullan and Dientyr, then started down the steps. At least in summer the tunnels were somewhat cooler than the streets.

  He tried not to breathe deeply at first, until his sense of smell was partly deadened. The odors were far worse in summer and would get even worse as the heat drew on toward harvest. Cerryl ignored the omnipresent stench and let his senses range up the sewage tunnel to his right. Somewhere ahead was the bricked-up smugglers’ tunnel.

  The wastewater flowed down the bottom of the sewer, below the slimy walkway… but there was something about it… a hint of turbulence… something.

  Cerryl let a small lance of the golden chaos light flare along the top of the water. A line of fire flashed even beyond the limits of his light lance. Something in the sewage was burning-an oil? He tried to sniff but could smell nothing. Where would oil come from?

  He loosed another bolt of chaos along the tunnel wall closest to him, but all that resulted were cleaner bricks and white ash. In the lingering flash he could see as well as sense the curve of the secondary tunnel.

  A brief tapping on the bricks echoed down the tunnel. Cerryl turned.

  “Sorry, ser,” squeaked Ullan.

  Cerryl returned to scrutinizing the tunnel ahead, frowning not only because of the smell of burned oil but because of something else.

  Ullan clicked or tapped the lance again.

  Cerryl ignored the tapping, trying to press his senses into the darkness of the tunnel.

  A scraping rose over the burbling of the drainage way.

  Suddenly, Cerryl could sense someone-something around the corner-waiting in the supposedly bricked-up tunnel. He began to gather chaos to him as he heard boots on stone.

  A faint light oozed out from the side tunnel, and two men appeared, dim shapes, shapes not clear even in his senses, let alone to his eyes. Cerryl blinked in spite of himself.

  One hung a bronze lamp from a hook on the wall, a hook Cerryl hadn’t noticed. Both men carried shields-large and dark glowing iron shields. They also bore dark iron blades that glowed with the reddened black of order, and moved silently and slowly toward Cerryl.

  Behind him, Cerryl could hear the two white lancers easing backward, almost silently.

  Myral had said the guards might not be much help. He’d also said that firing chaos against iron would jolt Cerryl.

  Cerryl stepped back slowly, trying to think. What could he do?

  The armed men moved toward him, shields forward.

  Whhhstt!

  Cerryl released a golden firebolt-not aimed at the leading man’s shield, where it would do little good, but at the sewer water directly before and beside the man.

  A second firebolt followed the first, and a third and a fourth.

  Cerryl held his shields against the chaos steam, keeping it confined, trying to direct it toward the armed men even as he backed away from them, but they continued to advance.

  He angled a gold lance light low-toward the leading man’s legs. It missed, but the second man jumped and crashed into the tunnel wall, staggering there for a moment, his shield low.

  Whhhhsttt! Cerryl flared another lance of the golden light into the man’s exposed face.

  “Aeei-” The choked scream died as the armsman clutched at his charred face and throat, then toppled slowly forward.

  As he cast another firebolt at the sewer water, the young mage backed away from the first armsman.

  The armsman rushed forward, then half-flung, half-pushed the iron shield at Cerryl, lifting the iron blade and scrambling the few remaining cubits between them.

  With a calmness he did not feel, even as the heavy shield crashed into him, Cerryl loosed another firebolt.

  The man plummeted forward, his body a charred mass.

  Cerryl pushed away the heavy shield, conscious that he would have burns on his hands. In several places, his white tunic was charred from the impact of the iron.

  He had to reach out and steady himself on the wall. His head ached, and his stomach churned, and he stood there, gasping, the darkness seeming to recede and flash toward him.

  Finally, he straightened and began to walk toward the steps. Dientyr stood there.

  “Ser?” The white lancer looked at the walkway.

  “Where’s Ullan?”

  “Ah… I don’t know, ser.”

  Cerryl kept walking until he reached the steps, where he sat down in the pool of light cast from the grate opening above. He didn’t care if his whites were filthy. He needed to rest.

  “Dientyr? Have someone get word to Myral… brigands in the sewer. They’re dead, but I’m supposed to let him know.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Cerryl ignored the relief in the guard’s voice and the rapid scramble up the steps. He just kept trying to catch his breath. Was it that he’d thrown so much chaos in such a short time?

  When he finally felt less shaky, he eased his way back up the tunnel slowly, looking through the darkness. But there was nothing left-ex-cecpt two partly charred figures, two iron shields and blades, and the smell of burned oil-and slime and sewage. Of Ullan there was no sign, either.

  He turned back to the steps to wait for Myral.

  Dientyr and another lancer precede
d Myral down the steps. A messenger in blue followed.

  “Cerryl?”

  “I’m here. There’s nothing here except me-and the bodies.”

  “Bodies?”

  “Two armed men-I don’t know why.”

  “Best we see.” With the guard leading the way, and the messenger trailing, the two walked the few dozen cubits to the scene of the attack.

  “Two of them.” Myral studied the two forms-the mostly charred one and the partly uncharred one. His face hardened as he used the white-bronze knife in his hand to lift one of the shields, but his breath rasped heavily as he straightened.

  Cerryl tensed. What had he done wrong?

  “It is not you.” The rotund mage turned to the messenger in blue. “I would have the honored Sterol meet me here.”

  “Yes, ser.” The messenger left, almost as though fleeing.

  “Maker’s marks… on the shields.” Myral continued to breathe heavily. “They’re from Gallos… only one trader in arms licensed to Gallos… shouldn’t be too hard to find who brought in iron weapons.”

  “I didn’t think iron weapons were allowed here.”

  “A few uses only…” Myral panted.

  “Ser… the steps back there. They’re clean. You could sit there.”

  “Not… a bad idea.”

  Cerryl led Myral back to the steps up to the grate.

  Even without Myral’s orders, the lancers stood guard over the charred shapes sprawled on the walkway. Another group had joined Jyantyl on the street above in guarding the grate.

  “Does this happen often?” Cerryl finally asked.

  “Every once in a while. That’s why we provide guards.” Myral took another deep breath. “People think the sewers are out of our sight-Sometimes, they’re right. We can’t watch everything. The locks help, but some people tunnel in, like those smugglers.” After a moment, he added, “After Sterol comes, we’ll check that old tunnel they built. I would gather that your attackers unbricked part of it. What happened to Ullan?”

  “I don’t know. He was gone by the time I finished with-” Cerryl gestured up the tunnel.

  “Most interesting. A missing guard, and an attack late in the day.”

  Late in the day? When someone knew a young mage would be tired? Cerryl hadn’t thought about that.