The Order War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  He blinked, wiping his forehead. The ground seemed to shiver, and he sat on the hot stone and took the water bottle from his belt, swallowing about half of the remainder and studying the bottle before replacing it in his belt. How much longer could he could keep finding water?

  Some of the dizziness abated. In time, he stood and eased downhill, placing each booted foot carefully on the loose rock, looking for an overhang or a shady spot before the full heat of midday, or, equally important, for one of the small, green tub cacti and the moisture it would contain, or for another pocket of rock water, or a small sinkhole.

  According to his all-too-rough calculations and his own sense of direction, the high forests of Naclos were still days away. All that lay behind him or ahead of him was stone, the endless gray stone of the Stone Hills, a dry ocean of rock.

  “Ocean of rock, ocean of stone… can’t drink either one.” He laughed hoarsely, then continued to slog along the partly shaded dry washes mat headed roughly southward, his eyes and senses alert for water or for the few edible cactus fruits.

  One foot… and then the other… one foot… and then the other… while overhead, the white-orange sun blazed through the clear blue-green sky. One foot… and then the other…

  LXVI

  “The Whites have taken both Rulyarth and the harbor. Suthya is surrounded on all sides.” Claris rubbed her forehead for an instant, then sipped from the black glass goblet on the Council table.

  The roar of surf from the beach below the Black Holding provided a background for the cold drizzle that fell beyond the closed windows. Only two of the oil lamps in the wall sconces were lit.

  “You can see why I felt that any significant commitment of resources to the Tyrant was premature at best.” Ryltar brushed back a wispy lock of brown hair.

  “Ryltar…” The third counselor coughed, then moistened her thin lips. “Our handful of volunteers cost the Whites dearly. Perhaps more would have saved the Sarronnese.”

  “Jenna, dear, have we learned nothing in the centuries since the Founders? The great Creslin himself could save only those who were willing to save themselves, and that was with all his power. The Sarronnese were not willing to fight, not the way Southwind would, or even Suthya.” Ryltar lifted his goblet, then set it down without drinking.

  “And now Suthya and Southwind stand alone, each separated by a Sarronnyn held by the White devils. Not exactly promising, you must admit.” The black-haired and broad-shouldered older woman shook her head, then took another sip from the goblet.

  “Let’s be honest, ladies. Where would we have gotten enough troops to have made a difference in Sarronnyn? Without leaving Recluce itself defenseless? All told, we have… what? Score forty marines? Another score twenty students with some skill at arms? We have not exactly pursued the art of land warfare.” Ryltar smiled.

  “Why it is that your reasoning always leaves me queasy, Ryltar?” Jenna glanced outside as a flash of lightning overpowered the glow of the oil lamps. “Perhaps it’s because you have been the one who has continually opposed increasing the number of marines. Or increasing the iron-ore shipments from Hamor.”

  Ryltar shrugged. “I don’t deny it. One must pay for such expansions, and I have always opposed increasing tax levies.”

  “Let’s not get into that this evening,” suggested Claris. “The point is that Fairhaven has taken another step in its master plan for conquering Candar. The question is what we intend to do about it?”

  “Ah, yes. The great master plan.” Ryltar smirked.

  “Ryltar…” Jenna sighed.

  “We still have to face the facts. First, our ships will stop Fairhaven from ever being a threat to us, even if all of Candar falls. Second, as we just discussed, we scarcely have the trained troops to make much of an impression. And where would we send them? To Suthya, already surrounded? To Southwind-which Fairhaven may wait years to attack, if it ever does?” Ryltar turned in the dark wooden armchair and stared at the oil lamp beside the painting of the silver-haired man that hung on the inside wall overlooking the table. “What can Fairhaven really do to us?”

  “Destroy our basis of order-”

  “Jenna,” interjected Claris, “we’ve discussed this time after time, and you won’t change Ryltar’s mind tonight or any other night. Do you have any specific ideas?”

  “Fine. Just- Oh, never mind.” Jenna paused. “At least the engineers could forge a huge supply of those black iron arrowheads and we could send those to the Suthyans.”

  “How would we pay for them, and for the iron?” countered Ryltar.

  “I suspect, given their effectiveness, the Suthyans would willingly pay for such weapons,” added Claris dryly. “That’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t like it. We’re not supposed to become arms merchants to the world.”

  “We’re not. And, as you like to point out in regard to armies, we couldn’t ever build that kind of force… but we could send a few thousand arrows.” Jenna smiled sweetly.

  “I don’t like it, but…” Ryltar smiled grimly “… it’s far better than sending our people to die. We did lose more than half of those ‘volunteers,’ you know.”

  “I know. Including your nephew, if you consider what he did a loss.”

  “Jenna…”

  “I beg your pardon, Ryltar.”

  “I accept your apology, fellow Counselor.”

  Another flash of lightning from the storm on the Eastern Ocean flared through the Council Room, and the windows rattled with the thunder that followed.

  “I think that’s enough for tonight,” suggested Claris. ‘ Til talk to Altara and Nirrod later in the eight-day about the arrows.“

  Ryltar stood, nodded, and departed silently.

  Jenna gathered several documents and slipped them into a leather folder.

  “You were hard on Ryltar.” Claris glanced from the windows to the younger woman.

  “He’s hard to take. Doesn’t he understand?” Jenna shook her head. “Sometimes I think we never should have stopped the practice of exile. The whole idea of the trial posed by dangergeld makes sense. Some people just can’t understand what we have and stand for without seeing the alternatives.

  “It would take a danger greater than any we have faced to get people to agree to that.”

  “That’s why there’s a Council,” snapped Jenna. ‘-To make the unpopular decisions that have to be made.“

  “Jenna…”

  But the youngest counselor had already taken her folder and stalked out.

  LXVII

  When he finished anchoring the blanket in place, Justen eased into the shade and scraped away the hotter sand until he reached the cooler rock and clay. After checking for insects and spike rats, he unfastened his belt and laid the blade aside, then pulled off his boots, ignoring the blisters on his feet. Keeping chaos from the open sores was not a problem, but he had no real strength with which to heal them.

  Finally, he turned and leaned his back against the stone before opening the quarter-full water bottle. He drank half, saving the rest for when he started out again at twilight, and carefully recapped the bottle.

  His eyes had scarcely closed when he saw the tree again.

  Once more, Justen put his arm out to the lorken, except that now the black-barked trunk was surrounded not by a carpet of short green grass, but by sand that burned with the heat of the sun. He tried to step forward, but the sand burned through the soles of his boots.

  “Keep trying to find this tree, and it will find you.” The slender young woman with the silver hair, still dressed hi brown, and still barefoot, appeared in the heat beside the dark and massive trunk that radiated coolness and order.

  He tried to speak, but his tongue was so dry that he could not.

  “The path to finding the tree, and to finding yourself, will be yet more difficult.” Her voice chimed with the sad and muted silver he recalled from the last dream.

  “More difficult…” Justen mumbled through thick lips. �
�More difficult?”

  “The order that is truth is colder than the Roof of the World in winter, drier than the Stone Hills, and farther than Naclos for a White mage.”

  The tree and the woman faded, but the hot sun flared, and Justen woke with a start to find that something had shaken a corner of his blanket awning loose and that the heat of the sun fell on his uncovered forearm with the force of red-hot iron.

  He eased to his feet and crawled outside his makeshift awning to reset the rock that had held one corner of the blanket in place. His bare feet burned before he managed to get back behind his shelter.

  Even when he finally drifted off into another period of uneasy dozing, his feet still felt hot and his eyes gritty, but no more images of trees or of the silver-haired woman came to him.

  As the slightly cooler air of twilight fluttered the blanket that served as his awning and sunshade in the afternoon, Jus-ten leaned forward, trying to moisten his lips with a too-dry tongue. Once more, with his inability to find enough water, his eyes felt gritty and swollen, and they burned as he forced them open.

  He rumbled for the water bottle, then concentrated to steady his hands as he drank the last from it.

  After shaking the sand from his boots, he eased them on and stood up, glancing to the west. From the orange glare, he could tell that the sun was close to setting.

  Next, he shook the blanket clear of the boulder. His hands trembled again when he rolled it up. The first time he tried to slip it into the leather loops and strap, he fumbled, and it unrolled onto the sand.

  “Darkness…” He coughed and tried to swallow, but his throat was so swollen that he would have choked had there been any moisture in his mouth to swallow.

  Finally, he had the blanket rolled up, and he began plodding southward again, along another dry gully.

  Even before the orange of sunset had faded, he stumbled and fell on his knees. A sharp-edged stone cut through his trousers and bruised and gashed his right knee, which began to throb dully.

  Slowly, he picked himself up, looking for a cactus or some sign of water. Seeing neither, he kept walking.

  Scritttch…

  At the sound of the spike rat, his eyes slowly focused on the low boulder where the rodent had been, but his feet continued to move. Then the toe of his left boot caught, and he felt himself falling forward.

  For a long time he lay on the hard, rocky ground.

  Scrittchh… scrittch…

  Something tugged at his trousers. Finally, he rolled on his side in time to see the spike rat skitter out of sight behind a rounded stone.

  A little later, as twilight faded into darkness, he gathered enough strength to sit up, and finally to stand.

  “Got… find… water.”

  He stood in the midst of water, cool water flowing through the Stone Hills, yet he could not open his mouth and drink. All he could do was to put one foot in front of the other.

  Then he could no longer do even that, and he slumped beside a rock.

  “… how it ends?” Had he spoken the words, or thought them? Did it matter?

  Still, the wondrous water flowed through the hills, the water he could not touch or drink, though he watched it and sat amidst its swirls and dancing spray.

  “Gunnar… Krytella…”

  The dead Iron Guard rode the bay mare through the shallows toward him, but the torrent carried rider and horse away. A black lorken began to grow from the middle of the streambed, and its blackness oozed over him.

  LXVIII

  The tall man tossed one stone, then another, out across the sand and into the waters of the Gulf of Candar. He picked up a small, flat stone, dropped it, and walked down to the water’s edge, where in a thin line of white, the Gulf nibbled at the white sands of Recluce.

  His eyes took in the heavy gray clouds, foretelling winter, that churned across the offshore waters toward him. Then he shook his head and began to walk southward, back toward Nylan. His booted feet kicked sand as heavy steps carried him down the narrow beach under the cliffs and toward the wider expanse of sand that in turn led to the breakwater of the harbor.

  As he neared the breakwater, a figure in black joined him.

  “Are you all right?” asked Altara.

  “I’m fine.”

  “That’s why you’re prowling the beaches all the time? That’s why you were talking to Turmin about whether Blacks could scry?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re worried. He’s your brother, wherever he is out there.” The chief engineer nodded toward the waters of the Gulf of Candar.

  “At least you say ‘is.’ ”

  “I think you’d know.”

  “He’s in trouble, Altara, and I don’t even know where he is. I should have stayed with him.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “He saved me from Firbek. If he hadn’t-”

  “He’ll be all right. He is a survivor, Gunnar.” Altara laid a hand on the wizard’s forearm for a moment.

  “Not many survive what he’s undergoing, I think.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Worse, probably.” Gunnar looked out toward the storms, the twilight, and thought of the long winter ahead. “Worse.”

  Part II

  Order-Mending

  LXIX

  Justen woke shivering in the dark. How could he shiver in the heat of the Stone Hills? Had he just imagined the water? What had happened to all the water? And to the Iron Guard? As he turned his head, a line of fire burned from his eyes to his neck, and he shuddered.

  “Do not move yet,” a husky and musical voice told him. “You are still very ill.” The words were like high Temple, but somehow different-more lilting, more like a song.

  “Where…” Justen’s voice was so dry that the single croaked word was all he could manage.

  “Hush. Please drink this.”

  Liquid dribbled onto his lips, and he licked it away, then took several small sips of the bitter-tasting drink. After a moment, his unseen rescuer placed the bottle against his lips. He drank some more.

  The heat of the air that flowed across his face told him that he was still somewhere warm, if not hot, but he could not see. Had he gone blind? Or was he in the demons’ hell for his misuse of order?

  He tried to reach his face, his eyes, but his arms would not move.

  “Your eyes will heal. They are only swollen.” Again, the musical voice.

  As if the struggle had exhausted him, he sank back, and the blackness welled over him again, just like the shade of the lorken he had never seen, save in dreams.

  When he woke once more, it was cooler, darker even through his swollen eyelids. His body still felt like every cubit had been beaten and then left in the sun to rot.

  Wordlessly, the bitter liquid was offered, and wordlessly, he drank.

  The third time he woke, he could swallow more easily, but his eyes still felt puffy, and he did not try to open them, although his hand crept across his cheek to a filmy substance that covered his eyes and most of his nose.

  An involuntary shudder sent another wave of white fire from his eyes to his neck.

  “Please do not try to move quite yet.”

  “My eyes…” Justen rasped.

  “They will heal, but you must rest. Please drink some more.”

  Justen slowly drank the proffered bitter liquid, feeling stronger as it seemed to flow through his body. Or was someone infusing order into his limbs?

  Again, he slept.

  When he woke, the air was hot with the heat of midday, and his eyes remained locked in blackness. Had he but dreamed of drinking and of the musical voice? Was he still lying against the rock in the middle of the Stone Hills?

  He licked his lips; the swelling seemed almost gone, and when he swallowed, his throat did not bind with dryness. Remembering the pain when he had tried to move his head earlier, he let his fingers touch his face lightly, brushing what felt like scabs across his cheek and a bandage across his eyes.

>   “You feel better.” The musical words were not a question.

  “Yes.” Justen swallowed.

  “Can you hold this and drink?” Justen took the water bottle, which felt like his own, and managed to drink from ft with only a bit of the liquid drooling out the side of his mouth.

  “Drink as much as you can. It helps the healing.”

  When his stomach protested and even before he could speak, cool fingers lifted the bottle from his hands.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Where are we?”

  “You may call me Dayala. We are in the Stone Hills.”

  Justen frowned at the lilt to her voice, the tone that seemed somehow familiar, yet totally unknown. He moved his head ever so slightly, realizing that it was on a pillow and that he lay on some sort of mat.

  “How… where did you find water?”

  “I brought some, but you would have been able to find it in time. Do you wish to sit up?”

  “Yes.”

  The faint breeze ruffled his air, and the sound of gently flapping fabric passed him, confirming his suspicions that he lay within some sort of tent. The arms that helped him, though smooth, were as firm and strong as any engineer’s or smith’s. As he leaned back against whatever supported the pillow, he asked, “You are a woman?”

  “You scarcely needed to ask that.”

  “I can’t see.”

  “Do you need to?”

  Justen flushed, then reached out with his perceptions. Woman… yes, but a deep blackness surrounded her, like a well of order. He shivered. Never had he felt anyone with that much order or certainty. And yet, that order seemed to hold within it… something. Chaos? He shivered again.

  “You… must be from Naclos.”

  A faint sense of laughter swept over him.

  “It may seem funny to you…” Then Justen had to grin, even though the gesture hurt the corners of his mouth. He had been rescued, and he was irritated because she was amused?