The Magic of Recluce (38 page)

My eyes blurred, though I could see nothing.

My legs trembled, and I sat on the granite stones.

My arms felt like water, and I let them drop.

My head was throbbing, and splitting, and I let it, but I struggled, fighting to reflect that fearful pattern, realizing that I might well end in that white prison demonstrated by Justen if I did not succeed.

My eyes twitched against closed lids.

My breath panted as though I had run uphill for kays.

And I held the mirror pattern against the fountain.

Clunk
.

The blurriness was gone from the blackness before my unseeing eyes, and my legs remained weak, but did not tremble. My head ached—but both patterns were gone.

Only the splash of water remained.

“…help…”

“…Tallian…”

I began to walk toward the other courtyard and the gates, understanding that there would indeed be hell to pay, and before too long, either.

“…wizardry!”

“Tallian says to check around the fountain!”

Two guards ran past me toward the fountain courtyard I had left, one of them nearly hitting me as I dodged against the wall.

In all the rushing, I just waited until the gates opened. Then I walked to the market square area and reappeared out of the shadows, not that anyone was watching, with the half-dozen horsemen speeding from the palace.

I did not quite run to Destrin's, belatedly realizing what could well happen. But I did burst in the door.

“Bostric.”

“What…?” One look at me and his face was probably as pale as mine felt.

“How fast can you and Deirdre get to Brettel's?”

The most-recent journeyman in Fenard gulped.

“Never mind. Just get Deirdre down here. All hell is about to break loose.”

“But…”

“Do it.” I gathered my staff and pack, the book, and the small strongbox with Deirdre's dowry, before hurrying out to the stable to saddle Gairloch. He didn't even whinny.

When I got back into the shop, Bostric and Deirdre each carried a small sack.

Deirdre looked at me. “Papa…he won't leave…”

I dashed upstairs.

Destrin sat in his armchair. His eyes were clear.

“We need to leave, Destrin.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You're right, Lerris—wizard, or whatever you are—but I'm not strong enough to keep up with you young people. You can care for my Deirdre. I can't, and I'll slow you down. And I'm almost dead anyway…would have died seasons ago without you.”

“We can take you.”

“I'll fight you, young wizard.” He smiled a yellow-toothed grin.

I could tell he would. “Good-bye, then, Destrin. I won't be back.”

“I know. Take care for my Deirdre.”

There wasn't much else to say. I reached down and hugged the cranky old man, but my steps were heavy down the stairs.

“You…couldn't…”

I looked at Deirdre. “He'll fight to stay in his house. Trying to take him would kill him.”

She nodded, but the corners of her eyes were wet. Then she ran upstairs again.

I pursed my lips, wondering how soon the soldiers would reach us.

“What are we doing, Lerris?”

“Going to Brettel's.”

It seemed like forever before Deirdre came down, and her eyes looked back up the stairs. “He…said…he'd scream and yell…if I didn't go…”

Destrin would be cranky to his last breath.

Then I felt like hitting my head with my hand. I tiptoed back up the stairs. With Destrin it was easier than with the guards. Almost before I could react, he was asleep.

He weighed little enough, even for me.

Deirdre's eyes widened as I carried him down.

“He's just asleep.”

I put Deirdre on Gairloch, just so she could hold the sleeping Destrin, and we started out, my feelings extended as far as I could.

I didn't like what I was about to do, but, again, there wasn't any choice.

“Bostric? Deirdre?”

They looked at me. “I'll be right with you, but you may not be able to see me. If the guards see me, they might…get upset…” I finished lamely. What I said might be true, but I didn't know. They might be more than upset to see me, but with Antonin off fighting the autarch, I wasn't sure if anyone had actually traced back how the chairs had come to the sub-prefect, or if anyone really cared.

I just couldn't chance it.

“If you say so, wizardly one,” quipped Bostric.

Deirdre looked at me. “Whatever you say.”

Bostric frowned, but I'd be gone before long, and he would have her all to himself, the lucky bastard.

So we set out toward the north gate. Even carrying the staff that I had used so little over the past year, all I could sense was a vague confusion in the direction of the palace, even after we reached the gate.

The guards scarcely gave them a second look, although I did weave a light cloak around the sacks and packs.

When we reached Brettel's I reappeared. It was still mid-afternoon, with the dusty dryness that comes when the crops are nearly all in and the grass has browned. In the unseasonable heat, I felt like I had been up for two days straight.

“You were here.”

“I said I would be.”

“Lerris?”

I turned to the approaching mill-master, feeling my legs tremble, and sat down abruptly before I fell, still holding the staff.

“You're hurt!” Deirdre exclaimed.

“Just tired.” I glanced up at Brettel, who looked like an angry giant from my viewpoint on the ground.

“I should have known.” His eyes were focused on the black staff.

“All hell is breaking loose,” I added. Not only was I exhausted, but my speech was getting repetitious.

“What did you do?” The mill-master looked less than amused.

“Me? I just created a little order.”

Brettel snorted. “Get Destrin into the guest wing, the bed in the small room.” He was talking to Dalta, the blond vision.

Enough energy returned to my legs that I could stand.

“…Bostric will stay in the mill quarters with Arta, and Deirdre will sleep somewhere in the main house…” He turned to me. “What about you?”

I shook my head. “I need some food and rest, but staying here is too dangerous to you. Even being seen here isn't good.”

“No one here will speak.”

“No one saw me come here,” I affirmed, leaning on my staff.

He looked both worried and relieved.

I waited until the others began to follow Dalta. Then I handed him what had been in the strongbox. “That's Deirdre's.”

He didn't insult me by insisting it was mine or any such nonsense, just accepted it gravely. “Thank you.”

“Thank you. I regret having to leave so soon, but…”

“Now—” he began.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked. My voice was hoarse and tired.

He nodded.

“Antonin set up a fountain of chaos in the palace. They must have bathed the soldiers in it or something. That's why…” I shook my head. I couldn't explain exactly why the fountain had turned them into mindless creatures ready to follow any order, but I knew it had. That was why the officers stayed away. They had to think. Besides, they were already corrupted.

Brettel frowned. “You seem to think Antonin is evil, Lerris.”

Was a goat stubborn? “Yes.”

“Does that make the autarch good? How do you know she isn't worse?”

I nearly shivered right there, in the heat and all. Given the history of Candar, the legacy of Frven and the White City, it was a good question. And I didn't know the answer. Finally, I shrugged. “If that's the case, neither one is going to be very happy with me.”

Brettel smiled wryly. “I'm glad you feel that way, but I'm also glad you refused Deirdre. You're either going to be very powerful or very dead before long.”

The sadness in his eyes told me which he thought it would be.

I slept the rest of the afternoon, although I had never been able to sleep in the light except when I was sick. But then, I'd never melded chaos and order before.

Deirdre woke me. She did it with a kiss on the cheek—a gentle one—then sat down at the foot of the bed—Brettel's bed. Who his wife had been, I had never learned, except she had to have been beautiful and special.

“Will you come back?”

“Not unless you treat me like Brettel.”

“That will be hard.”

We both knew that.

“Would anything else be fair to Bostric? Or you?”

She kissed me again, lightly, as she stood up. “Supper is ready.”

By the time I washed, everyone was gathered around the big table—Dalta, Deirdre, Bostric, and Brettel. Destrin, they said, was still resting, but seemed fine, if pale.

The stew was good, the berry biscuits better, and the conversation nonexistent. It was time to go.

Deirdre, Bostric, and Dalta stood on the porch, waiting, as I walked to the stable with Brettel. Inside were two newish saddlebags, stuffed, in addition to my own older saddlebags and bedroll.

“You didn't have—”

“Lerris.” The tone was firm. “You didn't have to do what you did. All I ask is that you do your best to keep the innocents from getting hurt too badly.”

“I'll do what I can.” I knew exactly what he meant. Whether what he wanted was within my power was another question entirely.

I saddled Gairloch, then put the staff into the holder, and added the saddlebags.

“Do you know where you're going?”

“Kyphrien first, to answer your question.”

“And then?”

“That depends on the answer. Probably into the Westhorns to find something I've avoided.”

Brettel pursed his lips. “Good luck.”

He walked me part way to the road. Even though she never left the porch, I could tell Deirdre was crying, and my own breath was ragged. For some reason, as I turned Gairloch onto the north road in the twilight and drew my reflective cloak around me, I thought of Justen, the gray wizard, wondering how many good-byes he had said over the years, and how many times he had returned to find only change and death waiting.

I
N ADDITION TO
making my way to Kyphrien, that maligned capital of Kyphros, I had one other little chore to attend to, one I wasn't exactly thrilled about as Gairloch and I plodded back around the north road again.

This time I chose the east gate, not because east was where we were going, but because the guards there were the sloppiest. Nothing ever came from the east.

The main trade roads ran north and south, and south was the road to Kyphros, which is where I was headed and where the prefect's troops all rode or marched. The east road, as I well knew, only straggled across broad farmlands from the Easthorns, and few traders or anyone else traveled that route.

Sloppy or not, I stopped well beyond the guards, listening behind my cloak of light, and checking the ramparts above the gate. There were no bowmen on duty. The sun had dropped behind the city, and the shadows were long.

“…Rephren should be here…”

“…bastard's late…”

Creaakkkk
…

“Another damned farm wagon.”

“It's your turn…”

“…lazy frigger…”

As they turned to the farm wagon, I dropped the reflective cloak and let Gairloch walk toward the guards.

Click…click…click
…

“Where he'd come from?”

The stouter guard turned to me. “Where to, fellow?”

I gestured vaguely. “The mountains.” With mountains in three directions, it was an honest answer, especially since it was true.

“What's that?” He pointed at the staff, which I had purposely left unconcealed.

“That's my staff.” I edged Gairloch practically on top of the poor man, forcing him to back up.

“I don't know…wasn't there something…?” He frowned, looking at the other guard, who was pawing half-heartedly through empty sacks piled around a few open sacks of potatoes in the wagon bed. A grizzled farmer, clearly waiting to head home with what he had not sold, watched silently from the wagon's bench seat as the younger guard checked the produce.

“I'm sure there was, officer,” I said politely, “but since I'm leaving it can't matter that much.” I flicked the reins and guided Gairloch around him.

“Wait…you!”

At that point I drew the cloak around us, and spurred Gairloch down the stone ramp.

“Wizard! That fellow was a wizard!”

“…huhh…what fellow…”

I left them to sort it out.

Cling! Clang! Cling! Clang!

By the time the alarm chimes rang, I had eased up on Gairloch and began to let him walk until we reached a narrowed lane, which would, in time, wind its way back around Fenard to meet up with the south road toward Kyphros.

Before long Antonin or Sephya, or both of them, would be back. They could not have missed the change in the city's order-chaos balance. Even now I could feel it, and I suspected a great many illusions were wearing thin, perhaps even those cloaking the street of harlots. Then again, understanding how even I liked to deceive myself about women, perhaps not.

Gairloch walked on, his steps shorter, as they always were when he walked blind, until we were shrouded by trees and shadow, and I dropped the cloak. Night would be as good a cloak for a time.

Wheeee…eeee

I patted his shoulder. “I know. You don't like the darkness. Neither do I.”

It was well past full night, and moonless, before we turned onto the south highway. The section we traveled was empty, but the dust bore the traces of horses—another cavalry troop, I thought, headed toward Kyphros.

I did not see any trace of coach tracks, nor sense any lingering odor of chaos, but I kept my ears open for the drumming of hooves as Gairloch bore me southward, past farm cottages faintly lighted by single candles or lamps, past darker clumps of sheep behind railed fences, past the occasional howling dog.

Some sort of insects whirred and chirped and buzzed. And I rode steadily onward into the night.

In time, we came to another river, spanned by a stone bridge, a bridge well-mortared and solid, the sort of bridge that would resist any chaos-master's efforts.

A thought occurred to me, and I grinned. The bridge was solid, and over running water, which might help.

So while Gairloch drank, I studied the bridge, finally drawing from the calmness around me a greater sense of order, and of purpose, and infusing it into the stones. Lying there on the long fall grass, I thought long and hard, trying to recall more from the book, knowing there was more I wanted to do.

But I waited, letting my mind drift through what I had learned until the knowledge returned to me.

Then I tuned the bridge to the order underlying the superficial chaos of the river, and to the order of the deep stones underneath.

I almost whistled as I remounted Gairloch, except I was tired again. Using order was work. The hard white cheese that Brettel had packed helped restore me, as did the water from the canteen I had filled at the river.

That bridge was going to cause Antonin, or at least the prefect's chaos-washed troops, some trouble.

By the time the crescent moon had appeared, both Gairloch and I were tired, and took refuge in a copse of trees—a woodlot, really—not too far from the road. I did set wards before I collapsed on the bedroll.

Again, I dreamed of a black-haired woman, but the details eluded me, and that bothered me. Were my dreams pushing me toward Krystal because she was from Recluce, or for better reasons?

A bright gray sky woke me, sunlight diffused through high thin clouds. That, and the extraordinarily cheerful sound of some bird I did not know and wanted to strangle.

After stowing my bedroll and saddling Gairloch, I rode until we crossed another stream, where we had breakfast. By now we were in the flattest of the low rolling hills between Fenard and the Little Easthorns, that not-quite-mountain range that ran nearly three hundred kays north and south to connect the Westhorns with the proper Easthorns.

In her generally boring lectures on geography, Magistra Trehonna had noted in passing that the Little Easthorns were contrary to normal geology and might well represent a very early attempt at geological chaos-mastery. If so, the perpetrator probably had not survived the attempt, one way or another.

I doubted the theory, especially considering the effort it took me to accomplish generally minor tasks like neutralizing chaos fountains and order-trapping bridges.

Theory or not, we had another day or two of travel and more than a few bridges to cross before we reached Kyphros…and I had more than a few questions I needed to ask myself. More important, I needed answers for myself, and I was the only one who would find them. That was all too clear.