Natural Ordermage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Nothing like that anywhere else!” shouted Dymat. “Did I not tell you?”

  “You did,” Rahl called back, wondering how much pig iron or iron ingots the flatbed wagon could carry. He also couldn’t help but wonder why there were no massive steam engines elsewhere in Hamor and nothing like the giant steam tugs. Then he nearly shook his head. How could there be? If such machines required constant attention by ordermages, if there were many at all, they would require all the mages in Hamor.

  Dymat walked toward the open portal of the mill, and Rahl followed. They stopped some thirty cubits inside the portal. Under the high roof, supported by wide stone columns, the mill stretched almost a kay from where Rahl stood, and the noise from the welter of machinery battered at him. The air above the far end of the mill was so hazy that the details of the brick columns there were blurred.

  Dymat gestured, then bent his head so that he was effectively shouting into Rahl’s right ear. “The pigs come in hot, but not hot enough for milling. They go through what they call a regenerative furnace, then a hammer forge and a cogging mill. That’s where they get cut and shaped into the slabs that go into the plate mill here. The slabs are about a hundred stones, and they get rolled by the big flywheel engines. The wheels are more than seven thousand stones, and they flatten the iron to whatever the thickness necessary. Most are quarter span, but for warship armament, they sometimes produce plate that’s a full span in thickness. Just follow me.” The mage-guard turned and began to walk down the open space on the left side of the towering furnace, from which waves of heat welled. The furnace looked more like a huge oblong box, but Dymat spent little time inspecting it, looking at it almost cursorily as he passed. At the end of the furnace was a set of massive rollers, each as large as Rahl’s own body, set in an even more massive frame that extended from the slot in the back of the furnace to the next assembly, presumably the hammer forge, Rahl thought.

  The hammer forge was even higher than the regenerative furnace. Through the structure of iron beams and supports, Rahl could make out what looked more like an enormous oblong that rose… slowly, and then came down with great force. With each impact on the red iron, iron sparks flew; the stone floor shook; and hot air gusted around him, air that was metallically acrid.

  Dymat took a few steps, paused, studied, then took a few more, slowly making his way toward the western end of the giant forging apparatus. There he stopped well short of it and studied it for a long time.

  Rahl had no idea whether the ordermage found any chaos or not, because not only were his normal senses battered and numbed, but he had no feeling at all in the way of order-senses. But because Dymat did not seem disturbed, Rahl had the feeling that nothing was amiss.

  At the west end, while Dymat continued to study the forge, Rahl watched as a section of reddish iron moved slowly over another set of the massive rollers toward the next assembly. Two men stood by a set of enormous levers. One looked briefly at the mage-guard, but his eyes went back to the slab emerging from the hammer forge and rollers that held and carried it forward.

  The heat from the forge and the mill was far more intense than anything Rahl had felt as a loader.

  Dymat paused and motioned for Rahl to join him.

  Rahl nodded and stepped forward.

  “Plate mill!” announced Dymat, gesturing toward the next assembly. “Slabs from the hammer forge come in here to the first set of pinions, then to the roughing rolls, and finally the smoothing rolls. Any chaos in the pinions or the rolls, and we’d have iron and steel exploding all over the mill. That’s because they’re turning, and there’s already chaos being structure-trapped into the iron. You can see the chaos-red of the slabs. The iron can hold great chaos, even when heated to melting, but chaos in the mill… that’s something else.”

  Again, Rahl followed as Dymat slowly inspected the plate mill. Once more, Rahl could sense nothing.

  As he followed and watched the order mage-guard, Rahl was more than certain that, if there were any way he could avoid it, he wanted no part of being a mage-guard at the ironworks.

  By the time Rahl had finished his day with Dymat and climbed aboard the wagon back to the mage-guard station, his eyes and lungs burned. His ears rang, and all he could smell was hot metal.

  “Isn’t it a grand place?” demanded Dymat.

  Grand? That was one word for it, Rahl supposed. He nodded, then added, “Yes, ser.”

  There was just enough time before dinner for him to wash up and get the grime off his face and hands and out of the corners of his eyes. Even so, he was the last at the juniors’ table in the station mess.

  He could barely wait for the servers to place the pitcher of lager on the table, but he still allowed Talanyr and Rhiobyn to fill their mugs first. Then he filled his mug and immediately took a long swallow to ease his throat. After fumes of the mill and having to shout to make himself heard to Dymat, his throat felt raw.

  He immediately refilled the mug.

  “Where did you go today?” asked Rhiobyn.

  “The mill… with Dymat.”

  “Are you hoarse?” asked Talanyr with a grin, keeping his voice low. Rahl nodded.

  “It’s not my favorite duty,” Talanyr added.

  Rhiobyn smiled broadly. “They won’t even let us near the mills or the blast furnaces, except to light off a cold furnace. It’s another benefit of being on the chaos side.” He stopped as a server set a platter of burhka and noodles in the middle of the table and a basket of bread on the side.

  “How can you even sense chaos in all that?” asked Rahl.

  Talanyr shrugged. “I can’t. It might be that being partly deaf helps.” He frowned. “But Taryl can, and so can Dymetrost. It could just take higher-level order-skills.”

  Rahl nodded. That might be possible, and he was far from having any real control over whether his order-senses were present or not. Being able to sense chaos in the mills might be a true test of sorts, not that he was looking forward to anything along those lines. He filled his platter with the burhka and noodles, then took a small mouthful and a bite of bread.

  “How is the arms training coming?” asked Talanyr.

  Rahl swallowed before answering. “Much better. Khaill seems pleased, and I don’t get many bruises anymore. I still sweat a lot. He makes you work hard.”

  Rhiobyn and Talanyr exchanged glances. Finally, Talanyr spoke. “If you’re really good with weapons, you might get assigned to a city patrol station.”

  “From here?”

  “It does happen, more than you think,” Rhiobyn said. “That’s for clerks and junior mage-guards. Most of the seniors will stay here.”

  “Is that because… ?” Rahl decided not to say more.

  “It depends,” replied Talanyr. “Some of the mage-guards actually want to stay here. Dymat likes his duties here. So does Dymetrost. Others prefer it to Highpoint or coastal duty in the north.”

  “If you could choose,” asked Rahl, “where would you like to be stationed?”

  “Someplace smaller near Atla. Really, I’d like Rymtukbo, but that’s too close to Jabuti, and you never get stationed near your hometown. It’s too hard to be fair if you know people. Sometimes, they’ll move a mage-guard who’s gotten too friendly, too. They do it more than once, and he’s likely to end up here.”

  Rahl could see why the Triad would follow that policy, but was it necessary for all mage-guards?

  He stifled a yawn and then took another mouthful of dinner. It had been a long and tiring day.

  LXXIX

  On fourday and fiveday, Rahl spent most of his time back in the copying room, because, whenever he was gone, the reports tended to pile up. At the end of each day, Taryl sent him off to spar with whoever was working out in the weapons exercise room, but more often than not, he ended up against Khaill or Taryl himself.

  Right after midday on sixday, Taryl entered the copying room, carrying his satchel. “Finish up whatever reports you’re working on and meet me in the training ch
amber.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Taryl nodded and was gone.

  “When he does that, I get worried,” offered Talanyr from the other end of the table.

  “You two have it easy,” suggested Rhiobyn. “They don’t throw chaos-bolts at you.”

  “Not yet,” Talanyr replied, “but wait until an ordermage drops a shield around you, and you can’t draw chaos from anywhere, and then he starts in on you with a staff or a truncheon reinforced with order.”

  Rhiobyn winced. “They don do that in training.”

  Talanyr lifted his eyebrows. “They do what they think is necessary.”

  “As will I, if you don’t get back to copying,” added Thelsyn from the doorway. “You need to finish that report and get on your way, Rahl. You don’t want to keep Taryl waiting.”

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl dipped his pen in the inkwell. He finished Grawyl’s report, both copies, and hurried off to the weapons-training area.

  The door to the chamber was ajar, but when he stepped inside, he discovered that the space was dark, with the windows shuttered and covered in heavy dark cloth. Even the skylight had been blocked with something and shed no light on the training floor. A single tiny candle, surrounded by a frosted and heavily smoked glass mantle and set in the northwest corner of the chamber on the floor, was the sole source of illumination once Taryl shut the doors.

  The thin-faced mage-guard held two heavily padded staffs. He extended one to Rahl. Rahl took it and waited.

  “We’re going to spar and keep sparring for as long as necessary. You will not ask any questions, and you will follow directions.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Taryl stepped back and took his staff in both hands. Rahl did the same.

  In the dim light that was barely brighter‘ than total darkness, at least to Rahl, Taryl’s staff flickered toward Rahl’s left shoulder, and Rahl parried, aware that Taryl was far better than Khaill or any other mage-guard he had faced. He concentrated on following both Taryl’s body and the staff.

  Even so, Taryl’s staff immediately swept under Rahl’s, guard, and Rahl had to jump backward, his boots skidding on the stone pavement. He barely maintained his balance, and his next block was awkward and required a circling retreat.

  Taryl moved forward, seemingly effortlessly, even as his staff cracked Rahl’s wrist. “Concentrate. Do you think that you’ll always be the best?”

  Rahl forced his attention back to Taryl, trying to follow and anticipate -the mage-guard’s actions in the minimal amount of light afforded by the single shielded candle.

  For the next series of passes, although Taryl did most of the attacking, Rahl thought he was holding his own, or as close to it as possible.

  “Stop!” Taryl stepped back.

  Rahl lowered his staff, warily.

  “I’m going to put out the candle. You’re to do the best you can. I’ll tell you when I’m in position, and when to expect the first attack. I would suggest you concentrate on defense.” Taryl turned .and walked toward the corner and the lone candle.

  Rahl swallowed. He was supposed to defend himself against one of the best he’d ever faced in total darkness— without any real control of the order-senses that had once allowed him to function in darkness?

  Taryl bent over the shielded candle.

  Then pitch-black darkness surrounded Rahl. He could barely hear Taryl’s footsteps as the mage-guard approached.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl held his staff in a guard position.

  Taryl’s first blow was to the right end of the staff, forcing it almost to the floor.

  Although Rahl neither sensed it nor saw it, he pivoted away, not fighting the pressure, but letting it swing him slightly, as he reversed the guard position with the left side of the staff, before stepping back—right into a blow across his left thigh.

  He staggered, then hobbled back quickly, trying to keep his staff up and moving, attempting, to weave a defense against an attacker he could neither see nor sense.

  The padded end of Taryl’s staff slammed into his chest, and, off-balance as he was, Rahl tumbled backward. His buttocks hit the stone floor hard, and he barely managed to hold on to the staff with his right hand.

  “Get up,” came Taryl’s voice, calm, almost cold. “In a real fight, if you sat there and pitied yourself, you’d be dead.”

  In a real fight, thought Rahl, he wouldn’t be blind and fighting a master mage. He scrambled to his feet and repositioned his staff.

  No sooner did he have it up than Taryl’s weapon clipped the back of his right calf.

  “You don’t always get to fight just one person,” added Taryl, somewhere to Rahl’s right. “You won’t be able to keep your eyes on everyone.”

  Rahl turned and took a blow to his left shoulder, and then one to his right. He retreated, but the blows kept coming, no matter how hard he tried to anticipate them.’ ,

  “Stop thinking, and start feeling,” came from Taryl, who followed the words with a slash to the staff itself, striking so hard that Rahl’s fingers were momentarily numbed.

  Rahl thrust wildly, and was rewarded with a return jab to his gut, just hard enough to double him up and send arrows of pain through his abdomen and chest.

  It wasn’t fair! Rahl struggled erect.

  “No… it” isn’t fair,“ Taryl said out of the darkness, his staff lashing out and thudding into Rahl’s thigh. ”Life isn’t fair. We don’t get what we’ve worked hard to develop. Other people cheat and lie and prosper, and we do everything right and honestly and suffer. That’s often the way it is.“

  Another staff blow—almost taunting—struck Rahl’s left calf, and he danced leadenly to his right, trying to weave a defense against a mage he could not see. .

  “Superiors abuse their position and make us suffer.” Taryl’s padded staff thudded into Rahl’s upper left arm. “It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.”

  Rahl tried to keep his staff moving, but it was getting heavier and slower. In the darkness, the tears streamed down his face. This wasn’t an exercise. It was sadistic torture.

  “It’s not fair when you can beat anyone in the light, and they make you spar in the dark.”

  Rahl threw out a parry, catching something. Then he stepped back to the left, only to run into another blow.

  “We don’t get to choose the way of the world. We have to deal with it as we find it. So… deal with it. You don’t have the luxury of waiting for things to be perfect.”

  Rahl forced himself back into a defensive posture.

  “Don’t fight the darkness. Accept it.”

  Accept it. That was easy enough for Taryl to say. He had order-senses.

  “Listen… if you ever want to be more than a checker or a clerk… listen. Listen to the darkness as well as the light.”

  Rahl tried, but, just as soon as he felt something, another blow struck from somewhere, no matter how he tried to defend himself.

  “Feel… unless you want to die!” snapped Taryl.

  The padded staff jabbed Rahl’s chest. ‘

  Rahl backpedaled quickly, taking a deep breath and just trying to get a sense of the room, of the darkness.

  There was a blur to his left, and he brought up the staff in a parry, actually avoiding being hit. He stumbled and took another blow, but grasped a brief image of Taryl and dodged the next thrust.

  Slowly, Rahl began to sense where Taryl and his staff were, and even more slowly, he began to be able to block and to parry, to sidestep and to avoid some of the sudden attacks.

  He still took blows, but they were far fewer, as his order-senses strengthened, and he was able to weaken the impact Of many of those that did strike.

  Still, his arms ached, and his legs burned. He was sweating heavily, and breathing loudly, and still Taryl pressed him, but… he could sense where the older mage was, and even the staff’s position.

  For all that, Taryl kept attacking, and Rahl was forced to defend… and defend.
/>
  At some point, he became one with his order-senses— but still Taryl pressed.

  Then, abruptly, came the words. “That’s enough.”

  Rahl could sense Taryl as the mage-guard moved to the south window and pulled away the black cloth covering and opened the shutters. Then he walked back to Rahl, who was as much leaning on the padded staff as holding it.

  “Why did I do this?” asked the mage-guard, looking at the younger man.

  Still sweating and breathing heavily, Rahl stared at Taryl. After a moment, he said, “Was it to prove my shortcomings?”

  “In a way, but not in the way you think. Inside, you were still arrogant. You still are, but now there are some doubts. You have always had the feeling that you could overcome anyone, if the odds were anywhere close to even. Rahl… the odds are almost never close to even. Most times, the thieves and brigands—and the others you’ll have to bring to justice—won’t stand a chance against you. Some few times, it will be the other way. You have to understand, not just with your head, that there’s always that slight chance that you might come out on the short end of the staff.”

  Rahl knew that. He did… didn’t he? Except…

  “Have you ever lost a fight anywhere except here?”

  Rahl wanted to look down. “No. Not really.”

  “Would it have made any difference if you had been surrounded by three men with staffs or blades in that darkness, rather than me? Until the end, that is?”

  Rahl had to think about that. “Until I could sense you… ah… probably not.”

  “Oh, you could have killed one or two, but not all three, and that’s an instance where, if you’re not totally successful, it doesn’t matter. Ah, yes, I killed two, but the third killed me.”

  Rahl winced. He hadn’t thought that, and yet…

  “Good.”

  “I meant what I said about fairness. Life is not fair. Some people have ability; some do not. Some have wealth; most do not. Some are fortunate; some are not. Horrible things happen to good people, and fortune often smiles on the evil. That is the way of the world. A mage-guard’s duty is no more and no less ”than to make the world less unfair by reducing the unfairness created by evil. But never think that you will make matters fair or just. You will not. You will only make them less unfair and less . unjust.“ Taryl smiled ruefully. ”Why else did I do this?“