As he stood on the upper deck, where at least there was a light breeze that kept flies and other insects mostly at bay, Beltur kept looking around, because he was trying to space out his questions and didn’t wish to annoy Athaal by peppering him with inquiries, although he’d asked more than a few questions about Elparta already. And so, after a decent interval, he asked, “How do you use free order to heal, or to strengthen something?”
“If you’re trying to strengthen something in order for it to last, it can be a very good idea or a very bad idea, depending on the material and the circumstances. It’s a very bad idea for healing unless someone will die otherwise.”
Beltur couldn’t help but frown.
“Find me a dry twig or stick, and I’ll show you a few things.” Athaal returned to studying the western shore, which was largely wooded, perhaps because the ground between the trees appeared rocky and uneven, while the eastern shore was more like pasture.
Searching for a dry stick in a flatboat that had a tendency to ooze water, despite the caulking and the intermittent bailing of the crew, took Beltur what seemed like a glass before he found several stuck to the bales of wool, but it was doubtless more like a fifth of that when he returned with two and presented them to Athaal. “Here you are.”
“Good.” Athaal tucked the slightly larger and longer stick in his belt and held up the smaller, perhaps the length of spread fingers. “When this was growing and green could you have snapped it easily?”
“No.”
“That was in part because of the combination of order and chaos that infuses all living things. When they depart, the stick slowly dries and loses its strength. That leaves space, if you will, for order, or chaos, to be infused. If you infuse enough chaos, the stick will burn. If you infuse order…”
Beltur could sense order flowing from around Athaal into the stick.
The mage handed the stick to Beltur. “See if you can break it.”
Beltur took the short stick in both hands, tried … and failed, partly because of the order, and partly because the stick was so short.
“Wood is one substance that can be safely strengthened.” Athaal produced a copper from his wallet and handed it to Beltur. “Try to infuse some order into the coin.”
“I … don’t know…”
“Go ahead. You can put a little in.”
Beltur found gathering the order easier than gathering chaos, which disturbed him. Are you really a black? But after easing the first few bits of order into the copper, it was as if the coin had developed a wall against more order.
“You can stop trying,” said Athaal. “It’s not you. I might have been able to put a little more in than you, but not much more. That’s because metals, especially iron, are already highly ordered. There’s not much room for more order. Wood isn’t as ordered, but woods vary by the tree they come from. Lorken is the heaviest and most ordered, followed by black oak, but lorken is so ordered that it’s hard to work. That’s why staves and ax handles and the like are usually made from oak.”
“But … black iron…?” Beltur returned the copper.
“It’s made when a smith and a mage work together. The order has to be infused when the iron is red-hot and in just the right way. Don’t ask me exactly how. I don’t know. I do know that once it’s forged, it can’t be reworked, except by a mage and a smith.”
“What about healing?”
“You know that chaos takes different forms—the chaos of a fire, free chaos, the chaos of illness…?”
Beltur nodded.
“So does order. The order that is within living things is different from free order, or the order of the clouds or of metals. Only that order of the living type can truly heal, and it comes from the healer. A very experienced healer can mix free order and the healer’s personal order, but it still requires some order from the healer. That limits healing. Also, order that is infused from outside one’s body tends to seep away, unless it’s used to destroy wound chaos or flux chaos. Now, outside order can be useful in combating wound chaos and keeping someone alive while their body recovers, but knowing how much order is enough and how much the healer can afford to give takes years of training and experience. Healing can be very dangerous to a healer, especially one without much experience.”
“No one ever explained that to me.”
“I’m not surprised,” replied Athaal dryly.
“You don’t have a very high opinion of white mages, do you?”
“Of most of them, I fear not. Your uncle was one of the few I actually liked and respected, not that I knew him all that well.”
“He felt the same way about you,” Beltur admitted.
“I wonder if he knew you weren’t a pure white, or possibly even a white at all.”
“He might have suspected it after we left Analeria. I’d changed my shields to use more order, mostly order, in fact, and he said that my shields were much stronger. So he had to have noticed something. But he never said anything about it.” Because he really never had that much time to before … Wyath … Beltur shook his head. Even after an eightday, it was so hard to believe that his uncle was gone.
“It could be he felt he couldn’t help you as much if he acknowledged that you weren’t really a white mage.”
“Because Wyath and his white mages were beginning to drive the blacks out of the city?”
“They hadn’t done that yet, but it’s coming. Your uncle was wise enough to see the possibility.” Athaal turned his head abruptly, looking toward the west bank of the river.
Beltur did as well, in time to see a narrow boat, perhaps five yards in length, paddled by eight men, with a single sail, appear out of the reedy marsh, swiftly moving toward the flatboat that lay less than twenty yards away.
“Brigands!” shouted Boraad. “Sweeps in! Blades out!”
“Look to the east!” Athaal told Beltur.
Beltur saw a second boat of the same kind as the first pull away from behind a point in the still waters close to the eastern shore of the river. There were seven men, also paddling furiously.
“Here’s where we prove our worth,” said Athaal. “Not to mention staying alive and saving my cargo along with the others.”
“River pirates?” Beltur’s rhetorical question had definitely been unnecessary, but while Athaal had mentioned pirates, he hadn’t really believed he’d be in the middle of an attack.
“Do what you can to those on the east side. Do it quickly.”
Beltur hurried across the upper deck and stood about two yards outboard from the pilothouse, just trying to think what he could do. Shields were all that he could think of, and he immediately clamped one around the approaching craft, then began to contract it so that the men couldn’t paddle.
While he could maintain the shield, he wasn’t strong enough or skilled enough to be able to use it to crush the sides of the boat. That left him with a problem. Although the brigands couldn’t row, the current was carrying them at about the same speed as the flatboat, and their shielded craft was drifting closer and closer to Beltur.
Beltur began to compress the shield downward so that the men were forced to bend down. When he saw them flailing, he abruptly released the shield and blanketed the boat with a concealment. One rower jumped out of the boat, and then another, followed by a third and a fourth. Finally one man was left huddled in the back of the boat, grasping the gunwales frantically. Beltur used a small shield to push him out of the boat, then released the concealment, leaving the boat floating free and seven men struggling, with various degrees of success, to swim toward the shore, while their boat continued to drift closer to the flatboat. In just a few moments, it was clear to Beltur that none of the brigands were going to end up anywhere close to the flatboat.
He scanned the eastern shore, but didn’t see any more brigands or boats. So he turned to move across the deck to see what Athaal might have done, only to see the black mage standing behind him and smiling.
“Rather drastic, but effect
ive,” observed Athaal.
“I couldn’t think of what else to do. Not in a hurry.” Not that wouldn’t have killed them outright. And Beltur hadn’t wanted to do that, since he had the feeling that Athaal would have felt that excessive. “What did you do?”
“I just created a shield that angled across the water, and moved the order away from part of the bow. The current and the shield forced them onto a mud bar, and the bow split.”
Beltur wished he could have thought of something that simple and elegant.
“Sweeps! Gather in that boat!” ordered Boraad. “Be a shame to see it go to waste.”
“If Boraad takes the boat,” added Athaal, “it will also be a while before that crew can attack anyone else. He’ll be pleased to have the boat. It looks to be a nice craft. He can sell it in Elparta.”
Beltur watched as two of the men used their sweeps to bring the empty boat alongside the flatboat, but it took almost half a glass before they were able to hoist it aboard.
Once that was accomplished, Boraad moved from the pilothouse to stand beside Athaal. “I like your apprentice’s sense of justice, but why did their boat vanish for a time.”
“It just seemed to vanish,” replied Athaal. “He was making the brigands think they had been blinded. That’s why they all jumped into the water. They realized that they wouldn’t be able to see if they stayed with the boat.”
Beltur could see that Athaal didn’t want to talk about concealments, and yet everything the black mage had said was perfectly true.
“I wouldn’t want to be out in the water and blind,” agreed Boraad with a nod. “Neatly done, and the Prefect can’t complain that an Elpartan trader killed innocent Gallosians.” The trader snorted. “He’ll find some other excuse to increase tariffs.”
“Is everything tariffed?” asked Beltur.
“No,” replied the trader, “just everything of value.”
“Are there brigands all along the river?”
“No, but there’s no telling where they might be,” said Boraad. “They move a lot so that the Prefect’s men have a hard time finding them.”
“The Prefect’s efforts aren’t out of kindness,” added Athaal. “If the river gets too unsafe, traders will send goods other ways, and he’ll lose tariffs.”
Beltur almost asked whether Denardre cared about those killed by brigands, but he already knew the answer to that question. Instead, he just nodded.
The flatboat continued downstream as if nothing had happened.
XXIII
Well before midmorning on oneday, another warm and clear day, but one cooler than had been the case previously, Boraad called out, “Junction Rapids ahead! All sweeps out!”
Beltur immediately looked around. The west shore of the River Gallos gave no indication of anything unusual, and the only thing different on the east side was that the riverbank sloped upward and kept climbing up a tree-covered slope to a ridge a good hundred yards above the river and possibly almost a kay to the east. He looked ahead, but all he could see was that the river curved eastward around a point about two kays ahead that looked to be where the long ridge ended. “I don’t see any sign of rapids.”
“You will,” said Athaal with an amused expression. “Just beyond that point is where the Passa River joins the River Gallos, and the river shoots down the Junction Rapids into the Border Gorge.”
“Between Gallos and Spidlar?”
“That’s why it’s called the Border Gorge.”
Not again. Beltur wanted to hit his own head. The last thing he needed to do was ask stupid questions. Instead, he just nodded and looked forward as the flatboat neared the curve in the river.
“The name isn’t quite accurate. Maybe it was once. The gorge is entirely in Gallos, and several miles of river beyond the gorge are also Gallosian.”
Beltur still didn’t feel that much better after the explanation.
“We’ll need to clear the upper deck before long,” said Athaal after a time. “It’ll be a bit rougher than the Rushing Gorge.”
Beltur nodded again. The Junction Rapids would be the second rapids since they had passed Maeryl, the first being the Rushing Gorge, where the water had seemed to tumble over itself and wind through some tight curves before settling into a more placid section. Outside of the flatboat’s bouncing some in the rough water and occasional spray, the Rushing Gorge hadn’t been particularly uncomfortable, although the boat had rolled and pitched a little, but not enough that he and Athaal had been discommoded as they had remained on the upper deck and watched Boraad and the sweepmen guide the boat through the gorge.
Beltur looked forward again, but the water seemed calm, almost placid, although it seemed as though the flatboat was moving faster than it had a short time before.
As they neared a point near where the ridge on the east side of the river ended, Athaal said, “Time to go below.” He made his way to the side of the upper deck and then climbed down the wooden slats affixed to the inside of the hull that doubled as a ladder, then along the half bulkhead that restrained the cargo until he stood at the back of the open section of the lower, roughly near the middle. Beltur followed.
“When it gets rough, you might want to grab a timber or the top of the bulkhead.”
“You know all the sailor’s terms,” said Beltur cautiously.
“When I was younger, I accompanied my father on a few trading voyages.” Athaal shook his head. “River trips once or twice a year are more than enough for me.”
If he accompanied his father … That meant his father had to be a wealthy trader himself or likely a ship’s captain … possibly a ship’s officer, but nothing less.
Beltur was still thinking about that when he became aware that, from somewhere ahead, he could hear an unfamiliar sound, one that combined a roaring and a rushing. Then, suddenly, the flatboat lurched, and Beltur had to grab one of the timbers behind him that braced the upper deck just to keep his feet. When he looked up, he saw that the bow had dropped enough that all he could see above the double timbers was river, and mostly spray and foam.
The flatboat rolled side to side, then pitched, and a line of spray sheeted over the bow, a fraction of which struck Beltur across the face and neck. The water felt like ice, far colder than anything he’d felt from the river water so far.
“Ohh!”
“Cold, isn’t it?” asked Athaal, raising his voice above the roaring of the water through which the flatboat seemed to alternately bounce, skid, or drop.
More cold spray flared across Beltur.
The flatboat seemingly jerked to one side, moving quickly enough that Beltur felt as though his arm would be pulled from his shoulder. Then a wave, or part of one, came over the side and drenched Beltur in ice-cold water, just before the bow rose, and then plunged, with the result that more spray and water cascaded into the open section of the lower deck, sloshing back and forth as the flatboat rolled back and forth as the bow rose and fell, rose and fell.
When the bouncing, rolling, and pitching finally subsided into a slight rocking, Beltur was shivering from the cold water that had soaked him through and through, and was ankle deep.
“Time to bail,” announced Athaal, untying a pair of buckets that had been lashed to one of the bracing crossbeams. “The sooner we get the water out, the less damage to the cargo. Only fill the bucket half full. Then lift it and pour it over the side.” He handed Beltur a bucket, keeping one for himself.
As he bailed, Beltur realized that the rapids had answered another question he’d had but not asked, and that was why Boraad’s flatboat was among the largest he’d seen on the river or at the few piers they had passed, but after going through the Junction Rapids, he definitely understood. He doubted a much larger craft would have been able to survive, not without even more flooding or damage.
For the first quarter glass, bailing wasn’t that hard—just set the bucket sideways, let it fill with the slight rolling of the boat, then lift it overhead and tilt it so that the bilgewater w
ent into the river. Bailing for the second quarter glass was uncomfortable, but because two crewmen joined them, the four removed more water. After that, bailing became painful and tedious, because even with the sloshing it was impossible to get more than a few digits of water into a bucket.
When Boraad called down, “That’s enough,” Beltur’s shoulders and arms both ached and twinged. His hands were wrinkled and cramped from the cold water, and his clothes were still soaked.
Once they climbed back to the upper deck, Beltur glanced around, taking in the river, now almost twice as wide as it had been before the rapids, and the straight but rocky cliffs of the Border Gorge before asking, “Why is the water from the other river so cold?”
“The Passa River comes out of the Easthorns. It’s mostly meltwater from the snow. The Easthorns aren’t as high as the Westhorns, but they still have snow at the top all year around.”
No wonder it’s so frigging cold. Beltur just nodded.
The air was also definitely cooler, but then, they’d been traveling north for almost an eightday, and they were floating down a much colder river through a high-walled gorge that had to be shaded about half the day. The sky was clear, however, and after two glasses or so, Beltur’s garments were mostly dry. While the walls of the gorge were not nearly so high as they had been farther upstream, the ground on each side of the river sloped up fairly steeply and consisted mostly of rocks and large boulders. From time to time, to the west of the river, Beltur caught glimpses of a narrow road that ran through the seemingly inhospitable land. Then the land bordering the river began to flatten.
Slightly after midafternoon, as the flatboat began to leave the rocky terrain behind, except for a long redstone bluff several hundred yards to the east of the river, Athaal pointed ahead. “There. You can see the great south wall of Elparta.”
When Beltur looked, he realized that Athaal meant exactly what he said. Even from what had to be a distance of more than two kays, the walls were impressive. As the flatboat drew nearer, and the sweeps guided it toward the east side of the river, Beltur could see that the piers were outside the walls and that a tower stood at the southwest corner of the city walls, just at the edge of the water, with another tower directly across the river from it, with roughly a hundred yards between them. The walls were a good twenty yards high, and the towers overtopped them by another ten yards. Perhaps a hundred yards upstream of the first pier, on both sides of the river, was another kind of wall, a crude line of heaped rocks and boulders almost twenty yards high that ran to the river’s edge.
The Mongrel Mage Page 20