Magi'i of Cyador (24 page)

Brevyl watches, unblinking, as Lorn turns, then opens the aged white oak door that predates the emperor Alyiakal.

In the narrow corridor outside the majer's study, with the order scroll in his hand, Lorn nods at Kielt.

"Be wishing you a good trip and success, ser," offers the senior squad leader.

"Thank you, Kielt." Lorn walks slowly out of the square tower and into the gray fall afternoon. A light mist seeps down from the low-hanging clouds, leaving a glistening sheen of water on the stones of the outpost courtyard.

"Maran." Lorn murmurs the name to fix it in his mind. Brevyl had dropped the name advisedly, most advisedly. The question wasn't why so much as what he expected of Lorn-and Brevyl definitely expected something. Then, Brevyl had always been like that, never acknowledging the slightest possibility that Lorn might have some magely abilities. The Mirror Lancers were happy to benefit from those abilities, but would never acknowledge them in any positive way. That Lorn understands all too well.

After standing for several moments in the misty courtyard, Lorn begins to walk toward the officers' barracks.

XLI

Lorn folds the heavy winter tunic and lays it on the bed next to the other uniforms he has folded before he will pack them in his kit bags.

As he lifts an undertunic, he catches a flash of greenish light and picks up the silver-covered volume. He flips through the pages he has not read recently. Had the ancient writer written aught about duty changes from a bad outpost to a worse one? His lips quirk as another question surfaces. Why is there no poetry written in Cyad? Lorn frowns. He cannot remember ever seeing a written poem before Ryalth-yet he had known what the verse had been. He stops at the one verse that catches his eye and reads softly, aloud, if barely.

Do not ask me which carillon has rung

or if the Forest's silent god has sung.

Best you watch white granite towers,

raised in pride, doze in the dusky sun

until the altered green-bloody rivers run

down to the coming night where chaos cowers.

Wondering how and why chaos could cower, Lorn still winces at the images, and riffles through the unmarked pages until he comes to a short verse standing by itself-about smiles. Perhaps...

He reads.

Smiles are so fragile,

like images on the pond of being,

reflections only made possible

by the black depths beneath.

What had been written is not exactly a poem, he reflects. Still... do not smiles hide depths no one wishes to see?

Poetry will not help with the Accursed Forest, nor speed him to Cyad and Ryalth. He closes the book, and slips it into the bag between his smallclothes.

XLII

In the orange light of dawn at Syadtar, Lorn stands beside one of the fluted white columns supporting the sunstone portico that shelters travelers waiting for the firewagons which link the farflung cities of Cyador. The chaos-powered vehicles roll along the polished stone highways from warm and western Summerdock to the southern delta city of Fyrad, from Cyad to Syadtar, as they have for more than two centuries.

With the threat of the chaos-towers failing, Lorn had at first wondered why the use of firewagons was not curtailed-except that such would make no difference until a tower actually failed. He smiles, thinking about how Lector Abram'elth had let that slip.

In the cold morning breeze, Lorn stretches as he waits for the firewagon that will carry him back along the Great Northern Highway until it joins with the Great Eastern Highway, where he will transfer to another firewagon to carry him back home to Cyad. The two green canvas bags at his feet carry uniforms and little else, save the antique Brystan sabre, wrapped in his undertunics, and Ryalth's silver-covered book, in his smallclothes.

At the second set of columns, a good thirty cubits to Lorn's left, stand a half score of passengers who will be travelling in the rear compartment. Among the brown and gray tunics are the maroon cloak of a mastercrafter and a yellow cloak trimmed in purple. The woman wearing the yellow cloak is gray-haired and carries a leather instrument case, possibly a sitarlyn. Lorn is not sure of that, having been raised in the household of a magus where the order vibrations would skew the use of a chaos glass or even shatter it.

Boots scuff on the clean white stones of the platform. Lorn turns to his right and watches a heavy-set merchanter, followed by a porter and a hand cart. On the hand cart are three roughly cubical canvas-wrapped objects, each about two cubits on a side.

"Here." The merchanter points down beside the column adjacent to the one flanking Lorn.

The porter silently tilts the two-wheeled handcart into a upright position, then carefully checks the three containers to ensure they rest securely on the cart's carrying ledge.

The clean-shaven and gray-haired merchanter in blue nods brusquely and looks toward Lorn, taking in Lorn's cream and green uniform and the double bars on the lancer officer's collar. "Furlough, Captain?"

"Duty change," Lorn answers pleasantly.

The merchanter laughs pleasantly. "You're one of the good ones, then."

"Good enough."

"The poor ones never make captain before they hit the Steps. The fair ones stay here until they get unlucky or old." The merchanter nods. "Seen them come and go, one way or another."

"Are you with a clan house?" Lorn asks, noting the fine cut of the man's blue shimmercloth tunic and the polished cupridium boss on the silver belt buckle.

"Stitheth. One of the oldest in Syadtar."

"What kinds of goods..." Lorn lets his voice trail off, as if he were uncertain as to whether he should even inquire.

"Durables-clays, timbers from Jakaafra, leathers, well, hides really... all kinds-from the finest in gaitered stun lizards to bull leathers for the most durable boots. Dyes and polishes, lacquers..."

"All very necessary goods." Lorn nods. The merchanter has been careful in his house description-using the word the "oldest" rather than "finest," although Lorn has few doubts that the Stitheth clan is among the wealthier houses, since Syadtar is far from the sources of all the goods traded by the house, and most would have to come by horse-drawn wagons rather than by firewagon because their bulk would make firewagon transport unprofitable. "Doubtless all most profitable in Syadtar."

"We have been fortunate," acknowledges the merchanter. At the low rumbling of heavy wheels on stone, Lorn glances to the west, where the morning sun glints on the white-lacquer-like finish of the approaching firewagon as it nears the embarking portico.

Behind the curved glass canopy at the front of the vehicle, the two drivers-one white-haired, the other gray-haired-wear the green tunic of a transporter. All drivers are former senior squad leaders in the Mirror Lancers, something Lorn had learned at Isahl.

Eight passengers emerge from the firewagon, only one from the forward compartment, a magus of indeterminate age who nods briefly to Lorn and continues past the lancer officer carrying but a small duffel of white shimmercloth. The seven passengers from the rear compartment all wear brown or gray, except for a woman in the yellow of an entertainer.

All the passengers vanish into the streets of Syadtar.

As Lorn and the merchanter beside him wait, the two drivers and two porters slowly unload crates and baskets, while a young enumerator watches.

Then another pair of drivers appears-one bald and the other with salt and pepper hair. The driver with the black and gray hair begins to walk around the firewagon, checking each of the six wheels, the fastenings, and the array of chaos cells behind the rear compartment.

"First compartment. Travelers westward! Travelers westward!" announces the bald driver. "First compartment."

Lorn bends and lifts the two duffels, careful not to let sabre and scabbard strike the one in his right hand. As he walks toward the open front compartment door, the wind carries voices from the second platform to him.

"...don't see why they get to travel first free..."

"Because half of them don't live long enough to get pensioned off, Vorkin. They can't take consorts with them, if they can find one, and they never are home. That's why. You want to live like that?"

"Still... wasn't that bad for your uncle."

"You weren't there."

"Saw enough, I did...."

"Hush!"

A faint smile crosses Lorn's lips and vanishes.

Behind Lorn, the merchanter directs the porter toward the cargo bay of the firewagon, the space separating the smaller front compartment from the larger rear one.

Lorn has to bend forward to slide the duffels under the thinly padded curved bench seat, and he pushes them to the far side. Then he has to unclip his scabbarded sabre from his belt. After setting it against the outside wall of the compartment, he takes the rear window seat on the left side, so that he can see ahead.

Through the cupridium-braced white oak behind his head, he feels the rest of the goods and crates being loaded, and then the clunk of the cargo doors being closed.

The merchanter peers into the compartment, smiling as if in relief. "A bit of space here, captain. Until Coermat for certain, anyway." He takes the rear-facing seat on the right side, as if to be seated as far from the Lancer officer as possible, then stretches out his thick legs. "Might not be so bad this time." His words end with a yawn.

"It's better not to be cramped," Lorn agrees pleasantly. "Closing up, sers." The bald driver peers into the compartment, before withdrawing and closing the door.

"You'll pardon me, captain. I had to do the accounts before I left, and there wasn't much lamp oil left." The merchanter nods politely, leans his head back, and closes his eyes.

The firewagon rolls forward slowly and smoothly picks up speed. Lorn watches the white sunstone buildings of Syadtar pass and vanish behind him.

He will not return to Syadtar. That he knows.

XLIII

The firewagon rumbles through the twilight toward Chulbyn, the town that exists only to serve as the station for transferring passengers and urgent freight from the firewagons plying the Great Northern Highway to those using the Great Eastern Highway. Even though the chaos cells that power the rear wheel motors are behind the second compartment, Lorn can sense the waning of the cells' power. This trip will be the vehicle's last, until those cells are replaced with the recharged cells periodically carried from Cyad to the replenishment waystations.

Across from him snores a thin senior enumerator, while the Stitheth merchanter sleeps quietly in the far corner of the firewagon's forward compartment.

The firewagon lurches ever so slightly, as if the wheels had struck something, and then crushed it, before the faintly rumbling sounds of normal travel resume. For a moment, the enumerator's snores cease. But only for a moment, Lorn reflects.

The firewagons on the Great Northern Highway are smaller than those on the Great Eastern Highway, for all that the travel distance from Cyad to Chulbyn is less than a third the distance to Syadtar. Has it always been that way? Leaning back in the seat that become harder and harder, Lorn fingers a chin getting all too stubbly.

Will Cyad seem any different? Lorn smiles. Different it will seem, but in what ways he does not know. He hopes he will be able to recognize those differences and that he can spend some time with Ryalth.

A frown replaces the smile. Has Myryan been able to deal with being Ciesrt's consort? He takes a long and slow breath. Should he have taken matters in hand there? Will he ever know? Does he want to know?

Outside the forward compartment of the firewagon, as chaos powers the vehicle along the gleaming white pavement of the Great Northern Highway, the twilight deepens into night. Inside, the enumerator snores; the merchanter sleeps, and Lorn ponders the days ahead.

Part IV - Lorn'alt, Cyad

XLIV

The firewagon passes between the two sets of angled whitened granite pillars that symbolically mark the northern boundary of Cyad, the City of Eternal Light and Prosperous Chaos, and at that moment those pillars are half in the late afternoon sun, half in shadow.

Lorn sits in the middle of the rear-facing seat in the first compartment. To his left is the silent Lancer majer who had boarded the firewagon in Chulbyn and who has spoken to no one. To his right is a black-haired and sharp-nosed merchanter, almost as silent as the majer. Across from Lorn sits a painfully thin young woman in the pale green of an apprentice healer, with her father by the door to her right. Her father - even more spare than his daughter - wears the unadorned white of a magus, without the lightning bolt pin of an upper level adept. The magus alternates between studying the younger men in the compartment, although his observations of Lorn are less intense, as if he has already decided Lorn is scarcely worthy of attention.

Lorn leans back, waiting until the firewagon completes its traverse of the city and arrives at the main firewagon station to west of the Palace of Light. His thoughts are upon Ryalth and Myryan... and upon Jerial and his parents. None have seen him as a Mirror Lancer officer.

He does not look up as the chaos vehicle takes the upper Way of Far Commerce and passes the three-story sunstone residences of the merchanter clan principals, small palaces on the fourth highest hill within Cyad. Nor do his eyes lift as the firewagon, moving smoothly over the polished granite blocks that floor all thoroughfares in Cyad, glides by the exchange halls that dwarf all but the Palace of Light and the structures that comprise the Quarter of the Magi.

"You're from Cyad, then, Captain?" asks the majer, addressing Lorn for the first time on the entire journey of more than two hundred kays from Chulbyn.

"Yes, ser."

The majer nods. "I thought so. You've seen it before, many times."

In the seat facing Lorn, the magus lifts his eyebrows, and he tilts his head, as if viewing Lorn for the first time.

"Yes, ser." Lorn nods politely to the majer, but the other officer relapses into silence.

A time later, when the firewagon slows to a stop, Lorn eases himself erect. After the driver opens the door to the front compartment, Lorn nods to the magus. "Good day, ser."