Natural Ordermage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Gifts to mage-guards are forbidden, except, modest gifts by immediate family members…

  Manual of the Mage-Guards

  Cigoerne, Hamor

  1551 A.F.

  LIX

  In the twilight, just inside the long cookshack, Blacktop stood in the chow line, shuffling forward behind the others. When he reached the spot just before the serving kettles, a white-haired man with a withered right arm and a wooden post for a leg below his right knee handed him a battered and shallow tin bowl.

  “Take it, Blacktop.”

  “Thanks, Oneleg.”

  The old man grunted and handed another tin bowl to the loader behind-Blacktop.

  What the servers dolloped into Blacktop’s bowl was the same at every meal. He thought it was, from what he could remember, a mixture of over-cooked quinoa, lumps of root vegetables, onions, peppers, a little olive oil, and meat shredded so much that it was impossible to tell from what it had come. Another server added a wedge of bread, and a third handed him a large tin cup filled with thin and bitter beer.

  He left the servers and headed for the long wooden tables with the long wooden benches. He settled down beside the older loader called Brick. Blacktop ate quickly, using the bread to scoop out the stewlike mixture, but not ravenously. After each mouthful, he took a small swallow of the bitter beer. At some time—he could not remember when, not exactly—he had seen how the other loaders picked at men who gobbled their food, taking small morsels to annoy them. Small morsels were still food, he’d realized. It did not hurt that he was larger than most of the other loaders, but not enough larger that he stood out. His weather-tanned skin was more golden than brown, too, he had noticed, unlike the others, but his hair was blacker.

  After he had finished, he turned to Brick. “What do they do with all the coke? Does it all go to make the steel?”

  “You asked that before.”

  He probably had. “Sorry. I don’t always remember.”

  “Might be for the best. You don’t know what you’ve lost. Some of us do.” Brick’s voice thickened.

  That was a thought. What had he lost? Would he ever find out? He didn’t know what to say to that. “Tell me again about the coke.”

  “Frig if I know where it all goes, except to the blast furnaces. Only know that it takes a lot of coal to make it. Don’t see it going elsewhere.”

  “And the steel goes everywhere?”

  “All across Hamor.”

  Blacktop considered. Hamor had to be big, very big, with all the blast furnaces that filled the vast valley. That was another thing he should have known. “I wish I could remember.”

  “Even if you don’t remember, Blacktop, you’re smart. Specially for an Adan. You do what you have to. Don’t do more. Don’t do less. See the sloggers?”

  Too tired to respond energetically after a long day unloading coal, Blacktop gave the faintest nod.

  “They’re sloggers ‘cause the wizard mage-guards burned their brains. You go against the overseers, and that’s what happens. They can’t talk, just grunt and pull the wagon traces till they can’t pull no more.”

  “Why did the mage-guards do that? Did the overseers tell them to do that?”

  “No. The mage-guards are above the overseers. Overseers just do what they’re told, like us, except they don’t get whipped. Coratyl said the high overseers have a special book, and so do the mage-guards, but the mage-guards’ book is real different, real special.”

  “A book?” Blacktop asked. A special book? Hadn’t he had a special book once? He thought he had, but there was so much he did not remember.

  “You know, with letters on the pages? That’s what they teach in school. Or didn’t you go to school out there in the east?”

  “I don’t remember.” He thought he must have gone to school.but he could not have said why. “I think so.”

  “Can you read and write? Like your name?”

  Blacktop frowned. Then, slowly he used his forefinger to write the word Blacktop in the brownish gray dust that coated the table. The word was correct. That he knew, but it was not his name. Why couldn’t he remember his true name?

  “That looks like letters,” Brick grudged.

  Blacktop wrote the word letters. He thought there was another word for letters, and he found his finger tracing out another word. They both meant the same thing, but they were different words.

  His head throbbed so much that he had to close his eyes, but he opened them quickly. Somehow, he was afraid that if he kept them closed for long, he would forget that he could read and write.

  He traced another word, it was a name, but it was not his. It was a name he should have known, but he did not. Why couldn’t he remember? His hands began to clench into fists.

  “Careful now, Blacktop,” cautioned Brick. “Last time you got all upset, they called in the mage-guards, and you were near-on as brainless as a slogger for almost an eightday. Weren’t that me and Wylet kept telling you what to do, they mighta made you a slogger. A fella’s head can’t take that often.”

  Blacktop was angry. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to kill someone, and Brick was telling him not to try. He had to trust Brick on that… because he couldn’t remember. Had he killed someone before? Was that why he was here?

  A heavy bell clanged. -

  “Clear the tables! Move out! Make it quick!”

  Blacktop rose and turned toward the doors that led across the courtyard to the bunkhouse. Just before the door, he put the tin dish in one rack and the large cup in the other. Then he walked across the dusty packed earth. He was even more tired than usual.

  Not that much later, in the hot darkness of the long bunk room, he lay on the thin straw pallet, looking at the underside of the tile roof. He could see the faint lines where the tiles had cracked and the sullen red gray of the night clouds seeped through. He could read and write. He had to remember that. He had to practice his letters, and what they meant, if only in the dust on the cookshack tables.

  Could the writing tell him something? His name? Why he had become a loader in the ironworks?

  In time, his eyes did close.

  LX

  The evening slop was worse than usual, and even Blacktop had to pause after scooping out the first half of it with his bread and swallowing each mouthful convulsively.- He followed each with a small swallow of the bitter beer. He knew he’d want several swallows after eating to rinse away the rancid taste.

  “Rather eat ground steel’n this shit,” muttered Brick from where he sat beside Blacktop. “Or slag.”

  “Or coal,” murmured someone else.

  “Slag would cut your guts to pieces.” Absently, Blacktop traced out the word steel in the dust of the tabletop, then the word copper. No matter how often the tables were wiped, there was always dust, either from the furnaces or the ovens or from something else. He frowned. There was something that linked the two. Pen nibs—they were copper-tipped, but how did he know that? He must have seen one. But what had he done that he would know that?

  Abruptly, an image formed in his mind—one of a red-haired girl handing him a pouch that held pen nibs. He could not see them, but he knew that was what the pouch had held, and she had said, “Here they are.” She had said more, but he could not remember what her words might have been.

  “What’s that?” asked the loader across the table.

  “Nothing,” replied Blacktop. “Just designs.”

  “They were words,” said Brick from beside Blacktop. “I don’t know ‘em, but I know words when I see ’em.” His voice rose slightly—-just enough for two of the guard patrollers to move toward the table.

  “He was just drawing in the dust,” muttered the loader.

  “How would you know, Flats?” demanded Brick.

  Without another word, Flats rose and carried his bowl and cup to the next table, reseating himself with his back to Brick and Blacktop.

  The two guards halted, then half turned, surveying the cookhouse for signs of othe
r unrest. Both had their hands on the hilts of their falchionas as their eyes passed over each and every one of the loaders, breakers, and sloggers.

  From under a lowered brow, Blacktop watched the two guards. He didn’t want any trouble with the guards. He’d seen what happened when a loader went against the overseers or. guards.

  “They won’t bother us none, so long as we’re quiet,” Brick said in a low voice. “Never have, anyways.”

  Blacktop finished the dinner slop without saying anything. The guards moved slowly until they were out of sight behind him. He wasn’t about to look back because that would draw their attention.

  Brick leaned closer to Blacktop. “They were words, weren’t they?”

  Blacktop nodded, just slightly.

  “Can you write my name?”

  Blacktop didn’t want to, not at all, but without Brick’s help he would have been a slogger. He leaned closer to the older loader, then wrote Brick in smaller letters in the small area of dust beside the older loader’s tin cup.

  “What are you doing there?‘ The words came from an overseer who strode toward the table, followed by the two guards Blacktop had lost sight of.

  “Writing…” Blacktop admitted.

  “You know your letters?”

  “I seem to know a few, ser.”

  “Overseer, Blacktop.“

  “I seem to, overseer.”

  The overseer paused. “Don’t do it anymore.”

  “Yes, overseer.”

  “You do it anymore, and you’ll answer to more than me, Blacktop.”

  “Yes, overseer.”

  The mumbles that ran around the tables were so low that

  Blacktop could not make them out, but he had the feeling that most of the loaders were less than pleased at the attention he had brought to them. Just from a few words?

  He finished the last sip of the beer, then rose, with a few quick words to Brick. “See you later.” With his tin dish and cup in hand, he headed for the wash racks, where he left both. Then he turned and stepped out through the doorway and took the foot-packed walk to the loaders’ bunkhouse. Overhead, the low gray clouds were tinged with a sullen red glow from the ovens and furnaces.

  Later, as Blacktop lay on his straw pallet, looking up at the underside of the cracked roof tiles, he couldn’t help but ask himself why the overseers were against his writing simple words in the table dust? It didn’t make much sense, because he hadn’t been writing anything, and whatever he’d written would soon be gone. Besides, Blacktop hadn’t run across anyone else among the loaders and breakers who could read single words, let alone more.

  What was it about words? But then, how did he know about-them? It was as though his hands and fingers remembered more than his head, but he had to admit he was beginning to remember images. Still, why had he lost his memories, and why couldn’t he remember more? And who had the redheaded girl been? Why had he remembered her when her face had looked so disinterested and as if she couldn’t have cared less?

  He looked at the tiles above, trying to find answers to those questions and to others he could scarcely frame, questions lost in the fuzziness of a forgetfulness whose source he also could not remember. And beneath it all, he knew, was rage, a seething red force whose cause was also lost.

  LXI

  The next morning, as Blacktop filed out of the cookshack behind Brick, his eyes slit against a hot wind that swirled grit around the loaders, an overseer waited with two guards.

  “You Blacktop?” asked the overseer.

  “Yes, overseer.” Blacktop blinked, trying to get the fine grit from his left eye.

  “You’re to come with me. The guard-captain has some questions for you.”

  Blacktop didn’t want to accompany the overseer. Overseers usually meant trouble. He looked at the overseer and the guards behind him. He didn’t see a mage-guard anywhere, but they were never far away. That he had learned. “Yes, overseer.”

  “Down the walkway there to the wagon. You go first.”

  The wagon that stood down the stone walk from the cookshack was one with two rows of seats behind the driver. Blacktop had seen such wagons occasionally, carrying guards, mage-guards, or others who were neither loaders, breakers, nor sloggers.

  “Get in the second row, Blacktop. The one right behind the driver.”

  “Yes, overseer.” Blacktop realized that each time he had to say those words, he could feel anger, yet he could not ever show such anger, not if he wanted to live. Or if he were ever to find out how he had come to the ironworks… and who had been responsible.

  He climbed up onto the wagon.

  The overseer and one guard took the seat behind him, while the other guard sat beside the driver, turned so that he was watching Blacktop. The driver flicked the leads of the two drays, and the wagon began to move, its iron tires crunching on the grit that covered the stone-paved lane.

  Blacktop took in everything he could as the wagon continued southward down the gradually sloping way. The lane paralleled the blast furnaces, then continued across a stretch of flat ground- To both the right and left of the lane were structures with roofs but no walls. He had seen them from the loaders’ enclosures and from the cookshack area, but had not been able to discern their function. Now he could see that they held iron. Some held stacks of heavy plate; others thinner plate, still others iron bars.

  Beyond the warehouses to the west, he could make out a stone structure composed of multiple layers of arches. From the bridge, if it happened to be that, ran a smaller arched bridge to each of the blast furnaces. Farther to the south, the structure curved westward and ran toward the mountains. In fact, Blacktop realized, it ran right into the mountains. Unbidden, the word aqueduct came to mind. Of course, there had to be water for the furnaces.

  Again… he wondered how he had known that, but that question could wait as he studied the area. He could also see that almost nothing grew in the valley, except sparse patches of grass and scattered scraggly bushes and twisted low evergreens. Just beyond the point where the storage warehouses ended, the lane began to climb a low rise toward a group of buildings set on a low mesa. As in the rest of the valley, little grew on the rock-strewn sides of the low mesa.

  When the wagon reached the crest and the road leveled out, Blacktop could see that there were four buildings. He could also feel a cooler breeze out of the south, and he looked carefully past the structures. Directly south of the mesa was a gap in the low mountains that encircled the valley, and from that gap, he thought, the wind blew.

  The stone walls of the buildings might once have been white marble, but all the stone was a brown-tinged gray. Even the narrow windows looked to be the same shade. The wagon creaked to a stop before the middle building.

  The archway had no columns before it, and only a single wide stone step to serve as. an entry. “Off, Blacktop.”

  Blacktop eased himself off the wagon, then stood and waited.

  “Follow me.” The overseer walked the fifteen cubits to the archway.

  So did Blacktop, conscious that the two guards trailed him, ready to cut him down if he so much as stepped sideways. As he neared the building, he saw that the walls were old and pitted, as well as stained.

  In front of him, the overseer opened the plain oak door and stepped into a square foyer. He turned right down a narrow corridor, walled in the same pale marble as the exterior of the building, but without the staining and pitting. The second door on the left was open, and the overseer entered.

  A guard wearing a falchiona surveyed the overseer.

  “Overseer Stolt reporting with the loader Blacktop, as ordered.”

  “Wait.” The guard turned and opened the door to his left. He took a half step into the chamber, and said, “The overseer is here.” After a moment, he stepped back. “The guard-captain will see you and the loader.”

  “Go ahead, Blacktop.”

  Blacktop walked through the door into a smallish chamber that held little besides a table desk, two chairs
, a stool, and a set of file chests stacked against the wall on both sides of the narrow window before which the table desk was set.

  The guard-captain was standing, waiting beside the table desk. She was a woman, with, gray-and-white hair cut as short as any man’s. Her shoulders were broad and muscular, and eyes watery gray and rimmed in red. Her face was so weathered that Blacktop couldn’t tell what her age might be, save that it was beyond middling. Beside her was a mage-guard, a thin-faced man who looked to be nearly as old as she was. Neither smiled.

  “You may wait outside, overseer.” The guard-captain’s voice was like rumbling gravel, slightly softened by sand. “Close the door.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  The guard-captain did not speak until the door closed. “The overseer claims you were writing on the table, Blacktop.”

  “Yes, ser, but only in the dust. I didn’t make any real marks on the table.”

  “That’s good. We don’t like destruction of any sort here in Luba. This is where all that Hamor builds begins.” She laughed, softly, harshly. “That was not my real question. Can you write?”

  “I think so, ser… it’s been so long, and there is so much I don’t remember.”

  “What did you do before you came here?”

  “I don’t remember, ser.”

  She glanced to the mage.

  “He does not remember, Captain.”

  “Do you remember anything?”

  “Just one or two things, ser. I remember a girl giving me a pouch, and I think it held pen nibs, and I remember being rolled into something hot and dark.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Just the words… and how to write them; ser.” The mage-guard nodded.

  The guard-captain pointed to the stool at the side of the desk. “Sit down. There is paper. There is a pen. Write something.”