Magi'i of Cyador (36 page)

He smiles. He has no choice but to see what fruit will ripen in the years and seasons that lie before him. In the meantime, he sits on the edge of his bed and reads through the marked and ancient pages.

When late afternoon approaches, he re-dons the enumerator blues, and the waterproof and takes the rear stairs down to the rear garden gate.

"Who will aid in your creations..." he murmurs as he walks eastward along the northern walkway flanking the Road of Perpetual Light. In the continuing rain, the wind ruffles his hair and flaps the gray waterproof that covers the enumerator blues. "...no one who knows the path you have chosen...." While those words could have meant that no one knows his goals, which he hopes to be true, the less obvious meaning is what his mother intended.

He hopes Ryalth has returned from the Plaza, and is relieved when she opens the door. Her eyes are both deep and opaque as she looks at him. She does not speak, but motions for him to enter. Lorn does so, stepping around the interior privacy screen and keeping a pleasant smile upon his face.

Ryalth closes the door gently, firmly, then faces him, her back to the green ceramic screen. "They found Shevelt's body last night-with a Dyjani dagger through his back. Everyone in the trading quarter was talking about it." She studies Lorn.

"I heard that he'd angered the Dyjani...." Lorn says carefully.

"The plaque?"

"It is safe. Do you want it back?"

"No." Almost eye-to-eye, she looks levelly at Lorn. "You know that Tasjan denies the bad blood. Publicly, anyway. I suppose he has to. He's the Dyjani Clan Head. Shevelt's father Fuyol threatened to dismember all of Tasjan's heirs." Ryalth shakes her head. "Fuyol is as hot-tempered as his son was. Before he finished his screaming, at least four other house heads went to see him. They all suggested that such threats were unwise, and the rumor is that some of them suggested to Fuyol privately that a score of merchanters were quietly rejoicing at Shevelt's death. They also suggested that he name Veljan as his heir. Veljan's much more levelheaded." The redhead looks at Lorn. "He's more dangerous, but that is because his consort is very bright. She is the middle daughter of Liataphi."

"The Third Magus?" Lorn's eyebrows lift.

"Liataphi has four daughters, and no sons. One daughter died years ago. Syreal was far too young when she threatened to run off if she couldn't consort with Veljan. There was a compromise...." Ryalth breaks off and looks hard at him. "You knew this, didn't you?"

"I knew that Liataphi has no sons and that he has been trying to find younger Magi'i as consorts for his daughters. I'd heard Syreal consorted with a merchanter, but I didn't recall who that was, and I didn't know that there was a large settlement for her." He pauses. "It was large?"

Ryalth nods. "More than many."

"So the Magi'i would not be displeased with Veljan."

"One of Veljan's and Syreal's sons has the chaos talent and is being taught at the academy," Ryalth notes. "There are rumors that he will be accepted as a student mage."

"So long as Liataphi and Fuyol hold their power."

"They will." Ryalth steps forward and hugs Lorn. "You won't be here that long, and you haven't even hugged me."

"No... I haven't." His arms slip around her.

"You didn't have to do it," she whispers in his ear. "You didn't."

"I did," he murmurs back. "You would have had to handle it, and you could, but this way... you can use those skills for something else, when I'm not around."

"I worry...."

"I do also." Lorn steps back and offers a crooked smile.

So does she. "We don't have much time left, but you'll get something hot tonight."

They both find themselves flushing.

LIX

Lorn lifts the two green bags that contain his clean uniforms, laundered by the ever-unseen Kysia, and the ancient Brystan sabre that holds a shimmering cupridium finish and an edge that is every bit as sharp as the lancer sabre in the scabbard clipped to his green web belt. He has tested the Brystan weapon, and it feels better than his own sabre-except both are his.

He takes a last look around the chambers, checking to see that he has not forgotten anything, and then turns. With a wry headshake, he steps into the gray light outside his door and starts toward the formal stairs. He does not get far, because his parents appear from their chamber at the end of the corridor. Both wear heavy white woolen robes-lined with the finest Hamorian cotton, he knows.

"I know you don't like good-byes," his mother offers, "but it will be more than a year before you get back to Cyad." She steps forward to hug him.

"Two, at least," Lorn admits, lowering the kit bags and returning the embrace. He can feel the wetness on her cheeks, and he swallows. "I will be back."

"We know, dear." Nyryah gives him one more embrace before stepping back.

Kien'elth grasps Lorn's forearm with both hands. "It was good to see you, and to see how much you've changed in four years." He smiles. "I didn't think it would turn out this way, but you've done well, and I think you're happier doing what you do."

Even Vernt appears, standing behind his parents, although he is fully clad in the shimmercloth of a third-level adept. "Take care, Lorn."

"I will do that, but you be careful as well." Lorn steps forward and claps Vernt's forearm, adding in a lower voice, "The Quarter is just as unforgiving as the Accursed Forest." He can sense the frown that their father does not express, but he does not explain his words to either his brother or his father, who already understands what he has said, nor his reasons for voicing what they know without his advice.

Finally, he steps back, glancing around.

"You saw Myryan last night... didn't you?" asks Nyryah.

"I did."

"Jerial asked if she could be the one to see you off downstairs," Nyryah adds.

"We could all do that," insists Kien. "She shouldn't..."

"She asked it as a favor, and she never asks, dear." Nyryah looks blandly at her consort. "We should let her have that small favor."

"If Lorn doesn't think ill of us." Kien half-chuckles.

"That's fine. It doesn't matter where," Lorn replies, even as he wonders why Jerial has made such a request.

After another hug from his mother and handclasps from Vernt and his father, Lorn finally walks down the marble stairs, to find that Jerial, as the others have said, waits alone by the front door. Her face is composed, almost drawn, and her eyes flicker to the empty stairs behind Lorn.

"I didn't want to leave without... but... I didn't want to intrude...." He sets down the green bags once more.

"I know you have to go." Jerial hugs him-a long and warm embrace, warmer than any Lorn can recall since childhood. Then she steps back and lifts something wrapped in cream shimmercloth-matching the fabric of the dress uniform he wears. She slips it into his hands. The object is roughly two and a half spans square and hard. Lorn can feel the polished wood beneath the cloth.

"It was father's," Jerial murmurs. "He thought he misplaced it several years ago. I knew you would need it sooner or later. It would be better if you didn't use it until you return to duty-away from Cyad. Vernt has no use for it; he has his own, and he'll never master it the way you will... the way you should... if you'd like to return to Cyad someday." Her smile is somehow both professional and warm-and disturbing. "If they hadn't let me see you off alone... you'd still have it."

Lorn bows ever so slightly, understanding. "Thank you. I can't tell you how much."

"Everyone has told you to be careful." Her eyes are bright, but the unshed tears do not streak her cheeks. "I will, too, but... believe in yourself, Lorn."

Still holding the screeing glass, he hugs her once more before stepping back, then quickly slipping the glass into the left hand bag, the one without the Brystan sabre.

"And I arranged a carriage for you. The driver is waiting. You don't need to start a journey to the Accursed Forest by carting those across Cyad on foot." She raises her dark eyebrows. "That's a lesson, younger brother. Save yourself for what you alone can do."

"Yes, elder sister."

They both smile.

Lorn lifts the bags and steps around the privacy screens, then walks down the steps to the waiting carriage.

"Firewagon portico, ser?" asks the driver.

"The one near the harbor," Lorn confirms as he slides the kit bags into the carriage.

"Yes, ser."

As the carriage begins to roll westward toward the harbor and the hint of filmy fog that irregularly shrouds the piers, Lorn turns and watches the house, but his mental images are of Myryan, who had cried the afternoon before when he had stopped to say that goodbye... and of a red-haired trader and the tears she-and he-had shed the night before.

His lips tighten, and his eyes harden.

Part V - Lorn'alt, Jakaafra

LX

At the creaaking from the front wheels, the round-faced second level adept Magus who sits across from Lorn shakes his head. "They need better maintenance." His eyes show an occasional flash of the goldenness that may in future years give him the sun-eyed appearance of more senior Magi'i. Fine lines already radiate from the corners of those eyes, for all that he is but a handful of years older than Lorn.

Lorn nods to the magus. Every few kays, a creaaaaking has filled the front compartment of the firewagon that rolls along the Great Eastern Highway toward Jakaafra. The sound seems to come from the front wheels and lasts but a few moments before fading away.

"Firewagons should be silent," the magus continues. "Don't you think so, Captain?"

"They should be as well-maintained as possible," Lorn responds.

With a definitive nod, the magus looks to the undercaptain on Lorn's right. "Don't you agree, Undercaptain?"

"Yes, ser," replies the dark-haired undercaptain. A faint sheen of perspiration covers his forehead, but he makes no move to blot it away.

Sitting on the left side of the compartment, facing forward, Lorn watches the magus seated directly across from him, but the man in white shimmercloth closes his eyes. After a time, so does the black-haired undercaptain.

Seemingly the only one even half-awake in the late afternoon, Lorn rubs his chin, his fingers feeling the stubble and the griminess of the long trip in the firewagon, and they are not scheduled to reach Geliendra until late afternoon. He shifts his weight on the too-lightly padded and contoured bench seat, then once again glances out through the window, a window whose ancient glass creates the slightest of distortions, rendering the fields and dwellings that they pass less substantial, as if they were not quite as they should be.

Once the firewagon had traversed those few kays of the Eastern Highway that bordered the northeast corner of the southern grasslands- roughly halfway between Cyad and Geliendra-the land beside the highway has become far more lush than that through which Lorn had passed on his way to Syadtar-or even that of the fertile areas around the lancer training base at Kynstaar. While he has expected to see the furled gray leaves of winter, there is green everywhere, much more than he would have expected. Yet Fyrad and the southeastern lands of Cyador are warmer, far warmer, than cool Cyad, at least in winter.

Wrapped in his own silence, Lorn watches, as outside the firewagon passes the towns, and then the well-tended holdings. Yet, for all the prosperity of those glazed brick dwellings with their intricate exterior green ceramic privacy screens, their immaculate brick outbuildings, their woodlots with their borders as neat as if they had been measured by a enumerator... Lorn feels vaguely uneasy. Is it because those houses are more truly Cyador than the massive sunstone and granite structures of Cyad itself? Or that such regularity is somehow at odds with the chaos that supports it? Or something deeper?

He frowns, letting his order-chaos senses reach beyond the firewagon, beyond the comforting warmth of the chaos cells at the back of the vehicle.

From what he senses, the regularity of the holdings that the firewagon carries him past is what it seems. Yet... something does not feel right. Or is it that he does not feel in accord with those regular holdings and what they represent? He can almost sense the chaos glass in his bag, as if it burned to be released. Yet he knows that the glass holds no chaos itself, and serves merely as a focus.

Lorn takes a long slow breath, and closes his eyes, hoping that he can sleep for some of the remaining ride to Geliendra.

LXI

As the carriage driver reins up the two horses, Lorn glances at the twin pillared sunstone gates spaced wide enough for three carriages abreast, then at the white oak gates themselves, oiled and polished, but clearly ancient from their deep golden color. Two Mirror Lancer guards stand before each of the ten-cubit-high pillars that hold the gates, and the gates themselves are swung back into the compound, a sure indicator that they had not been built to withstand a true siege.

"We stop at the gate, sers," announces the driver of the open-topped carriage. "Be four for the two of you."

"Thank you." Lorn hands over five coppers, then opens the half-door, careful to swing his sabre clear, and then stepping down to and walking across the granite paving stones the open luggage rack on the back where he pulls out his two green bags. He looks down, not quite sure why. While the pacing stones are smooth and clean, as are all paving stones in Cyador, these bear traceries of fine hairline cracks.

"Ser... I could pay my own-" begins the undercaptain, reaching for his single bag.

"You could, Nythras, but consider it a favor that you'll repay when you're a captain," replies Lorn with a smile.

"Thank you, ser."

Neither of the guards looks directly at the two officers as they walk through the gates. Inside, Lorn pauses, glancing northward at the proliferation of one- and two-storied white granite structures inside the square of walls that stretch a good kay or more on a side. The compound at Geliendra is twice the size of the one at Syadtar... if not more.

The undercaptain glances sideways at Lorn.