Natural Ordermage (56 page)

… the principal duty of a mage-guard is to maintain order and contain chaos, not to protect commerce or to side with one individual against another or one group against another. All will cite order as their cause, but order is not a cause, nor is chaos, and one must be maintained and the other contained against all those who would misuse them…

Then there was the section dealing with the military.

… any unregistered source or concentration Of free chaos is forbidden within a quarter kay of any imperial military station, port, or vessel. If such a source cannot be immediately removed, its immediate destruction is required and authorized…

While that made sense, given what free chaos could do around various explosives, the idea that immediate destruction was authorized and required left Rahl with a cold feeling.

But… there were reports to copy, and he could not change the Codex. He reached for the first report on the stack.

“Did you actually read the Codex?” asked Rhiobyn, from his place at the middle of the copying table.

“Of course he did,” returned Talanyr humorously. “He didn’t have it read to him by tutors as a child. Some of us actually had to learn to do our own reading. By ourselves.”

“Sometimes, one wishes you had enjoyed a tutor, Talanyr. Then you wouldn’t sound like one, and you’d recognize how annoying it is.”

Rahl suppressed a smile and began to read the first report he had to copy.

He had finished four reports by early midmorning, when Thelsyn inspected what had been done. Shortly thereafter, Taryl stepped into the copying room. His eyes went from one clerk to the next. “Now that you clerks are generally caught up with the reports, we need to get on with your training. Talanyr, report to the duty desk for now. Rhiobyn, Mage-Guard Jaharyk will work with you. You know where to find him. Rahl… you come with me.”

Rahl cleaned his pen and replaced it in the open-topped box, then capped the inkwell. He was the last to rise, if not by much.

Taryl did not speak until the other two mage-clerks had left. “We’re going to see Khaill. He wants to test your weapons skills to see what sort of training you’ll need. He has to report on the ability of all mage-guards each season, just as I do for their order-skills.”

“You’re the head order mage-guard here, ser?”

“Effectively. There aren’t any titles here, except for Mage-Captain Wulmyrt. In the cities, most stations are headed by mage-captains, except for the largest, which have overcaptains. The districts are run by mage over-commanders, and they report to the Triad. I work with order-skills, and Jaharyk works with chaos-skills. We both know something about the other side, because some of the basics are similar and rooted in order. Now… go get your truncheon. I’ll wait for you by the duty desk.”

“Yes, ser.”

After his difficulties in Guasyra on eightday, Rahl was not looking forward to sparring or having his weapons skills tested, but there was no help for it, and he hurried to the juniors’ section of the west barracks wing of the mage-guard station. He returned quickly with the truncheon in place on his belt.

Taryl was beside the duty desk, talking to Talanyr, and Rahl stood back, listening.

“… most of the time, nothing happens. The logs and duty book go into a dusty file. If there’s trouble, and something goes wrong, though, the Mage-Guard Over-commander and the Triad demand all the records. If something’s wrong, or missing, you’ll end up at Highpoint station for the rest of your natural life, which will be far longer than you’d ever wish. Is that clear?” Rahl didn’t hear what Talanyr said in reply. “Good.” Taryl turned and motioned for Rahl to accompany him.

Rahl didn’t dare say anything, and Taryl didn’t volunteer anything, but Rahl did wonder what Talanyr had done to displease Taryl.

The exercise room was a long stone-walled room beyond the armory. The south side had three narrow windows, and there was a single small skylight. The floor was slightly roughened redstone, but a section of the northern end, perhaps ten cubits by fifteen, was covered in thick cloth mats.

A mage-guard was working there with two of the women guards on hand-to-hand tactics, but when he saw Taryl and Rahl, he said something to them and walked toward Taryl.

“Khaill, this is Rahl. I mentioned him to you.”

“You did.” Khaill resembled Magister Zastryl in bearing and in general size, but Khaill was older, with a worn and rugged countenance and fine limp brown hair. He was also stockier. He studied Rahl for several moments. “So… you’re an exile, a merchanting clerk, a loader, and now a mage-clerk?”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl met the mage-guard’s glance evenly, without challenge, but without looking away. “You prefer the truncheon, I hear.”

“Yes, ser.”

Khaill walked to the side of the exercise room and returned with a truncheon similar to the one that Rahl bore. “I would like you only to defend against my attacks.”

With those words, he immediately jabbed his truncheon toward Rahl.

Rahl slid-parried and sidestepped, not wishing to give ground, then blocked the return strike, giving a half step, then moving forward to the left.

Khaill offered two quick thrusts in succession, and Rahl beat both aside, continuing to move, first to one side, then the other, not allowing the mage-guard to force him toward a wall.

After another series of engagements, Khaill was fractionally slower in recovering, and Rahl managed to step in and catch the other’s half guard with enough force to jerk Khaill forward slightly. Rahl did not take the opportunity to strike, but beat Khaill’s truncheon down almost to the floor, stepping on it for a moment, before dancing back, and then parrying the uppercutting strike

Khaill stepped up his attacks, but Rahl wove a defense effective enough that none of the mage-guard’s blows came close to striking other than Rahl’s truncheon.

After a time, Khaill stepped back. “That will do.”

Rahl also moved back and blotted the dampness off his forehead.

“You have only recovered a small fraction of your order-skills, Taryl says. Is that correct?”

“Yes, ser.”

The stocky arms-mage nodded. “Even so, your skills with the truncheon are more than adequate. Can you handle a falchiona?”

“I used to be able to… for a short time.”

“Pick one out.” Khaill gestured toward a rack set against the west wall. “Then put on one of the heavy jerseys.”

Rahl studied the blunt-edged weapons in the rack, hefted one, then another. Although all of them felt somehow wrong, he finally selected the one that felt the most balanced in his hand. Was that wrongness because he was regaining some slight ability to sense order and chaos? The heavy jersey he struggled into had thin plates set in what looked to be shimmersilk and stitched over a padded woolen tunic. He was sweating even more heavily by the time he walked back to where Khaill waited, holding a falchiona similar to the one Rahl had selected.

“I don’t want you to attack here, either. Just defend.”

Khaill’s weapon was clearly the blade, and Rahl felt far more awkward with the falchiona, but he managed to deflect most of the attacks, although Khaill did manage to strike the plates on his right shoulder twice. One would have been crippling in a real fight, although the other would only have been glancing.

The arms-mage stepped back. “Now, try to defend with the truncheon.”

Rahl fared far better using the truncheon against the falchiona, although it was shorter than a blade, but that sparring only went on for a short time before Khaill once more stepped back.

“Interesting.” Khaill nodded. “You can go, Rahl. I would like a few words with Taryl.”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl struggled out of the practice jersey/armor as quickly as he could and hurried from the exercise room.

Once outside the training chamber door, which he did not fully close, he slowed almost to a halt, listening and hoping to overhear what might be said.

“… if he didn’t have that hint of order all the. way through,” said Khaill in a quiet voice, “I’d have said he’d been trained as a bravo.”

“In a way, he was… Reduce armsmasters, he said. He might do well in time, perhaps in a port city…”

“… don’t know where you find them, Taryl…”

“… where I can… where I must… there are never enough.”

Taryl’s words would have chilled Rahl… except that the conversation suggested that Rahl might have a future away from Luba.

On fiveday, Taryl caught Rahl as he was leaving the mage-guards’ mess at breakfast and drew him aside.

“Have you been studying the Codex and the Manual?”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl had, particularly since he’d gotten his own copy and returned Taryl’s, although he had noted which sections of the mage-guard’s Manual had been the most perused.

“What is the one fundamental necessity for any land to survive?”

Rahl knew what he thought, but that wasn’t what Taryl wanted, and he had to quickly think back on what was in the Manual of the Mage-Guards. “The need to maintain order, ser.”

“What is the role of the Triad?”

“To assure that order is maintained and chaos is used only for just and lawful purposes, ser…”

“Why are all mages, except healers, forbidden to engage in commerce?”

Rahl remembered the prohibition, but he did not recall any reason being stated for it, other than the fact that mage-guards were not to take advantage of their position. “Because they could use their abilities and position to personal advantage?”

“They certainly could,” Taryl replied dryly. “Why shouldn’t they? Everyone else in the world does.”

“Because they represent the Emperor,” Rahl guessed. “If they represent him, they have to be impartial and above reproach, and if they get into commerce, they can’t be either?”

Taryl nodded slowly. “Simple as that seems, a goodly proportion of mage-guard trainees have trouble with understanding it.”

“But… ser… if those with order- or chaos-talents cannot be other than mage-guards or healers, but a number don’t understand that… ?” Rahl wasn’t quite sure how to finish the question.

“What happens to them? They’re put in places where there’s no temptation, like Luba, or the quarries, or Highpoint station, or the Afrit rubber plantations, or the mines.” Taryl nodded. “That’s enough for now. I’ll be examining you at any time from here on. The questions will get harder.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Now… go get your truncheon. Talanyr and Rhiobyn will do the copying today. You’ll be accompanying Grawyl. He’s one of the mage-guards who deals with loaders and breakers. You won’t ever be a primary mage-guard here, because you don’t handle chaos, but you need to see how they work. Grawyl knows that. Meet him at the duty desk.”

“Yes, ser.”

Rahl hurried back to his room, grabbed his truncheon, and made his way to the station wing of the building. Grawyl, whom he knew by sight, but not by name, was waiting. He was big—a good head taller than Rahl, broader in the shoulders, and his brilliant green eyes, black eyebrows, and short-cut black beard gave him a menacing impression.

“So you’re the one Taryl reclaimed from the loaders. They didn’t call you Rahl there, I’d wager.”

“No, ser. Blacktop. That was before I got my memory back.”

“Blacktop… Blacktop… oh, you were one of the quiet scary ones… ready to explode all the time, but you never did after the first time. Bushy black beard, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Rahl didn’t remember exploding, only that there had been a time of heat and pain.

“I remembered you, and that means you shouldn’t have made it.” Grawyl laughed good-naturedly. “But then, one way or another, most of us here shouldn’t have survived.” He turned, expecting Rahl to follow him out to the wagons.

Rahl did, taking his place in the second seat beside Grawyl.

“Ready, ser?” asked the driver.

“Ready.” Grawyl didn’t look at Rahl while he continued. “We’ll move from crew to crew. We check with the overseers. Some of them can spot trouble before it happens, and some don’t know why something happened even afterward, Most of those don’t last.”

“What happens to them?”

“They get killed, or hurt—or they end up as workmen or something like it. There’s always a need for someone.”

As they sat in the mage-guard wagon that carried them northward through the already-hot morning air, Grawyl continued. “Only one rule here, really. Don’t threaten. Just act. Threats mean nothing. But don’t act unless you’re sure of why you’re acting.”

Ahead of them, to the northwest, under the thin and hazy gray clouds, the air above the massive blackened furnaces shimmered and wavered from the heat radiated from the furnaces. Only the faintest hint of a breeze touched Rahl’s face.

“Some mage-guards have a hard time remembering that the loaders and breakers, and even the sloggers,” Grawyl went on, “are men. They do a job. If we hurt them, especially if we kill them, we’ve hurt someone, and we need a good reason. On top of that, there’s one less to do the job. So, one of our jobs is not only to provide a stronger form of discipline than the overseers, but it’s also to watch the overseers, to make sure that they don’t abuse their power.”