The Order War (39 page)

“There’s no point in attacking this late in the year.” Beltar glanced out the window of the coach. “Let some time pass, and let the Suthyans feel some pressure. Anyway, before we deal with Suthya, we need to convince the Sarronnese that we’re not White devils.”

Eldiren shifted his weight on the padded cushion and rubbed his forehead, massaging the thin white scar above his right eyebrow. “The Sarronnese will be as bad as the Spidlarians. Worse, much worse.”

“Anyone can be convinced…somehow.”

“Like you convinced Zerchas, perhaps,” responded Eldiren dryly.

“Well, yes. If all else fails.”

“Aeee…” A dull thump followed the cry, and the coach slowed.

Beltar yanked open the door in time to see a mounted figure spurring his horse up the long, sloping hillside. The coach driver’s body slumped limply against the roof of the coach, an arrow through his chest. The guard beside the driver struggled with the reins.

Two squads of White lancers raced up the hill in pursuit of the attacker, but the attacker seemed to be widening the gap.

As the guard wrestled the coach to a halt, Eldiren looked
at Beltar. “I think we have a great deal of convincing yet to do.”

“Bah! They’ll learn.”

Eldiren’s eyes followed the White lancers, who had continued to fall behind the single rider. “When we can’t even catch one man?”

“You should talk.” Beltar lifted his arms. A huge fireball arced from the White Wizard across the hillside, landing on the fleeing rider. Fire splayed in all directions, and smaller fireballs bounced downhill. One struck the leading lancer. A quick scream, and two pyres of greasy smoke dotted the hillside, each one consisting of both horse and rider.

Beltar grinned.

“Was that really necessary?” asked Eldiren.

“I couldn’t let him get away with it.”

Eldiren looked back toward the charred lancer and mount, and at the greasy smoke swirling into the gray sky. “I’m sure our lancers understand that you couldn’t let him get away with it.”

“Stop carping. You couldn’t have done anything.”

“You are so right, Beltar. Unlike some, I do know my limitations.”

The stocky White Wizard glanced away from Eldiren and at the guard. “Get him down, and let the healer look at him.”

“He’s dead, ser.”

“Then get another driver. We still have to get to Rulyarth.”

“Yes, ser.”

Eldiren refrained from the smallest of headshakes.

“Justen, tomorrow a Bristan trader will dock here at Diehl. The ship will take you home to Recluce.”

“Recluce isn’t home. Not now.”

Her smile was sad. “You cannot say that until you return
there. And if you do not, it will always be home. Home must be relinquished at the hearth, not at the ends of the earth.”

She lifted a leather bag and set it on the bed. “These are for you.”

“What does the bag have to do with the trader? Or my leaving?”

Dayala eased the stones onto the coverlet.

“Why, Dayala? These are worth a fortune…anywhere.”

“The ancient said that you would need them on your quest.”

“Is that just another way to bribe me to leave?”

“That is unfair, Justen. She has no need to bribe.”

“To make me feel better?”

“I do not think she values you that cheaply.”

“Then why?”

“Because you are powerful, more powerful than you know. You will twist anything to do what you think is correct. These will help make that twisting easier on everyone else.”

Justen’s face took on a puzzled expression.

“I still do not understand all that you do,” Dayala went on, “but you make things from the parts of the earth, from the metals and other substances. If you must build everything yourself, you will twist more than if you can buy parts or metal.”

Justen paced around the table, trying to grasp the meaning behind Dayala’s words. “If I make things myself, it creates more…disorder…more chaos?”

“Of course.” Dayala smiled as if what she said were so obvious as not even to be a question.

He shook his head.

“Justen, think of it this way. If you buy your iron from Yual, he has already made it in the most orderly manner. While you have greater skill with the forge, you do not have his skill in extracting the iron, and you will disrupt the earth and the forest more in making your iron…”

“I understand.” Justen smiled wearily. “But the ancient gives me too much credit.”

“Not enough, I think. And there is another reason, a self
ish one.” Dayala slipped the stones back into the bag.

“Oh?”

“Having such resources may keep you from being too delayed in what you must do.”

“You want me to come back?” He shook his head, feeling the pain she felt. “Sorry…stupid question. But why can’t you come with me?”

Her lips tightened.

“I don’t want to leave,” he protested.

“You cannot stay. Not now.”

“Will I ever be allowed to stay? I’m not a druid. Isn’t this just a kind way of forcing me to leave?”

“Kind?” her voice broke.

Justen watched as the tears flowed, as her entire fabric of order shivered somehow, not losing itself, but…suffering. Then his arms were around her.

“How can she do this?” Justen’s eyes burned. “She’s no Ryba…no Angel. There isn’t a drop of warmth or kindness—”

“Order is not kind, nor is the Balance…and you are a druid.”

He swallowed, recalling the ancient Angel’s words: “
You did not ask for comfort. You asked for wisdom
.” Yes, he had asked for wisdom. He had asked what had to be done to reknit the world into one fabric. He had not asked to be separated from the one being…

“We have the hope of a long life, Justen. But would you be happy living it if all Candar were under the White Wizards and all the oceans under the hand of the Black Mages?”

“No.”

Dayala smiled sadly, then spoke into his silence. “Tomorrow you will just walk down to the dock. Diera will tell the captain it is our wish that you be transported to Recluce. The Bristans stop at Nylan on most of their trips, anyway.” Dayala looked toward the harbor, avoiding Justen’s eyes. “We also have a cargo of lorken, which will be worth far more to them in their trade at Recluce.”

Justen nodded. From what he had heard, most woodwork
ers outside of Recluce preferred not to use lorken, despite its strength, its deep, black color, and its tight grain.

“We have tonight.” He took her hand.

“We have tonight.” Her fingers grasped his hungrily.

The black trousers and shirt felt strange to him as he walked hand in hand with Dayala down to the stone pier in the harbor.

“You have the stones?”

Justen nodded.

“Try to save some of them for as long as you can. I cannot tell you why, but my feelings say that you will need them.” Dayala squeezed his hand.

“I trust your feelings.”

“Then trust them enough to know that you will return.”

He squeezed her hand back, and they walked to the end of the pier, where the sole ship was moored. Justen could sense that the engine was cold, but the crew moved across the scrubbed decks with a sense of purpose.

The Bristan ensign—the sun above an ice floe—flew at the jackstaff, and emblazoned on the upper part of the ship’s stem in gilt letters was the name
Nyessa
. The railings were recently varnished, and the brasswork glittered.

They stopped opposite the plank to the ship, and Justen gave Dayala a last embrace, a last kiss, a long sharing of salty lips and tears. Their fingers lingered for an instant after the kiss, until Justen finally stepped away and shifted the pack on his back. Then he walked up the gangway.

“You the honored passenger?” asked the squat man in the green jacket.

“Justen.” The druid-engineer inclined his head. “I understand that the port-master arranged my passage.”

“Bikelat, second mate,” replied the officer. “Oh, she arranged it all right. Captain Gaffni’d take you to Hamor for
the cargo she transferred.” The officer glanced from Justen to Dayala, who remained on the pier, and back to Justen. “Don’t know what you did, and don’t know as I’d want to.” He paused. “Need to stand back, ser. We were just waiting for you.”

As Justen stepped aside and then moved along the rail, from where he looked down at Dayala, the officer called, “Forward sheet up! Let’s go!”

Two hefty sailors, a man and a woman, cranked up the gangplank while canvas billowed out overhead.

“Lines away!”

Justen locked eyes with Dayala, and for a moment, they seemed together.

“Wouldn’t be leaving a lady like that, fellow.” The second shook his head as he came up beside Justen.

“Not exactly my choice, either.” Justen’s throat was thick as he watched the green water widen between them.
Good-bye…love…

Her fingers touched her lips.
I am…with you always…

“You’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re talking to her…” The second stepped back.

Justen forced a rueful smile. “I was born and raised on Recluce, trained as an engineer.”

“Darkness save…someone,” muttered the officer. “Glad they like the captain.”

Justen frowned as the man walked away toward the poop deck, where the captain supervised the piloting out of the bay. Then he watched the pier until Dayala was less than a spot on a finger of stone.

Not until after the
Nyessa
cleared the twin hills and the channel between did smoke begin to stream from the funnels. Shortly thereafter, the heavy engines began to turn the paddles and the Bristan trader chugged northeast across an almost glassy sea.

Justen climbed to the poop and stood by the fantail, still glancing back, still sensing the twined strand of…something…that led back to Naclos. Was this what made him a
druid—that he loved and was bound to one? Or was it something deeper? Or was he a druid at all?

Finally, he turned to study the sea ahead, its swells beginning to grow choppy as a breeze freshened out of the southwest.

Justen kept one hand on the poop railing as the
Nyessa
plowed into a wave that buried the bowsprit. Green water gushed down the deck, and spray flared close to where Justen stood. In the early morning light, despite the noise of the wave, the ship seemed quieter.

Of course, Justen nodded to himself. The paddles were silent, and the steam engine was cold. While the wind held, the captain didn’t need to burn the coal.

“Always get a good wind coming out of Diehl,” observed the second, pausing beside Justen for a moment, his long blond hair slicked back by wind and spray. “Most times, anyway.” He glanced at the blacks Justen wore. “Don’t see how…you a druid and one of those mage types. Didn’t know anyone could be both.”

“I’m not sure you can. I started out as an engineer…smith type. Somehow I ended up in Naclos to avoid the Whites in Sarronnyn.”

“Talk about going from the flame to the forge.” The second whistled. “Bet Wesser would like to get you looking at his engines! You know engines?”

Justen nodded. “Most types.” How long had it been since he had dealt with steam and turbines and screws and shafts and condensers? Though more than a year, he still thought of himself as an engineer. But was he? Could someone who had sensed the great forest and who remained tied to a druid—perhaps was a druid—be an engineer?

As he thought of Dayala, her warmth, her quiet depth, a wave of sadness poured across him. He pursed his lips. He suffered two exiles of sorts: one from Recluce, one from Na
clos. Yet he was scarcely cheered to return to Nylan, except to see Gunnar, Elisabet, and his family. What could he tell Altara, or the Council? That their pursuit of order was almost as wrong to the ancients as Fairhaven’s pursuit of chaos?

Who would believe him? Yet how could he lie?

His stomach growled.

The edge of another wave spilled across the forecastle, and below on the damp deck, two sailors re-coiled lines, ignoring the thin sheet of water, while another surefootedly clambered up the mainmast. Across the poop deck, another sailor, a heavy-shouldered woman, took a hammer to a metal pin on a winch crank.

Justen’s stomach growled again. He straightened and headed for the crew’s mess, located under the bridge, where it took up a space not much bigger than two of the cabins like the one Justen shared with the third mate. Two short tables were bolted to the floor, as were the backless benches. The grooves in the table held racks containing deep baskets.

Breakfast was dried fruit—pearapples and peaches—biscuits, and tea that slopped from a metal pitcher with each lurch of the
Nyessa
. Justen sat in one corner, where he could wedge himself between the bench and the bulkhead.

Two sailors sat at the other table, and the third mate lurched into the mess and sat across from Justen. “Rough weather seems to suit you, Ser Justen.”

“It’s not too bad, not so long as I’m careful how I walk.” Justen shrugged and poured tea into one of the battered gray mugs. After trying to crunch a biscuits and feeling the hard wedge slice at his gums, he dunked the biscuit in his tea mug.

“See that you found the only way to eat cook’s biscuits. Bloodied my gums on them more than once,” observed the third officer cheerfully.

The two sailors eased quietly out of the mess, but the woman nodded behind the third’s back and shook her head sadly.

“Wonderful day. Clear, breezy. Makes a man glad to be upon the sea.”

Justen nodded and reached for a pearapple. It tasted
smoky and salty, but he ate it anyway, reflecting that it was far tastier than gray cactus.

“Captain’s got us running right before the wind. Master of using the wind, the old man is.” The words spewed out with fragments of biscuit.

Justen smiled faintly and took another sip of tea.

The sandy-haired wizard dashed through the doors of the engineering hall, looking from right to left and back until he spied the tall, dark-haired engineer. “Altara! He’s safe. He’s on his way into port.”

The chief engineer set down the calipers. “You can finish that, Nurta.” She walked around the tool forge and toward Gunnar. “How soon?”

“I think it’s the ship off the channel. I think.”

“I’ll meet you there.” Altara nodded at Gunnar. “Go on. He is your brother.”

Gunnar dashed back through the hall and out into the bright summer sun, settling into a quick walk down the hillside as he judged that the Bristan ship—the ice-floe ensign made that clear—had not yet passed the outer breakwater.

There was something odd about Justen, that he could tell even from a distance—some sort of fine order-thread that seemed to stretch back toward Candar. He grinned. But then, there had always been something odd about Justen.

Gunnar walked more quickly, knowing that he would be on the pier before the ship arrived.