Colors of Chaos (Saga of Recluce)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Cerryl opened the door, then waited for Isork to step around the desk. Duarrl and four men stood in a loose row in the entry hall. The four patrollers straightened slightly as Isork and Cerryl approached. Isork’s eyes rested on each of the white-uniformed men in turn before he spoke.

  “This is Mage Cerryl. Duarrl’s told you some about him, I’m sure. I’ll tell you one more thing. He was raised in the mines and worked his way out of a sawmill.” Isork nodded to Duarrl.

  “Here they be, ser.” Duarrl pointed to a tall and thin man with dark red hair and the faint trace of a scar above his left eyebrow. “Reyll.”

  “Noyr.” The next patroller was squat, even shorter than Cerryl, but twice as broad, and his hair was jet-black, his eyes equally black.

  “Churk.” Churk offered a broad smile with his mouth, but the blue eyes remained distant under the short flax-gold hair.

  “Praytt.” After meeting Cerryl’s eyes, the last patroller’s green eyes flicked from side to side, as if he had to study everything around him all the time.

  “All right, once we cross the Avenue, we’ll do it like a sweep, except this is so Mage Cerryl knows what a sweep’s like, and also so you don’t forget.” Duarrl grinned at the four patrollers. “First four blocks, Noyr and Praytt…you be in front of us. Reyll—the left alleyway, Churk, the right.” He nodded sharply, and the four started for the doorway.

  Isork looked at Cerryl and then at Duarrl. Cerryl understood—listen to Duarrl and try not to do anything stupid. Cerryl followed Duarrl out to the Avenue, out into a day that was already gusty, with a hint of chill, forecasting the cooler days of late fall after harvest. The six waited for a lumber wagon to rumble past before crossing the divided pavement of the Avenue. On the other side, Reyll and Churk eased away from the other four.

  Cerryl had walked through some of the area east and south of the square on the last part of his sewer duty, but he’d walked through it, not studied it. So he tried to take in all the details poured forth by Duarrl.

  “Vuyult—sells baskets and chairs, things woven from withies. Also sells withies themselves to the traders from Kyphros…

  “There…the long warehouse with the gray timbers…used to belong to Hefkek…till he got bigger than his trouser…sold it to some brothers from Biehl…They grind all sorts of stuff…make pigments…Traders take ’em everywhere…

  “…Bavann…says they’re all his daughters and cousins.” Duarrl snorted. “Always different daughters and cousins, and they’ve stayed young, and his beard’s gone from black to gray. Doesn’t make trouble, though, and we’re here to keep the peace, not to judge what folk do behind doors and walls…”

  Cerryl had to nod at that, though he wondered at times if some of the mages didn’t cross that line. After all, he hadn’t exactly made any trouble, yet the Guild had sought him out and would have sent him to the road crew or killed him if he hadn’t been acceptable to the Guild.

  Duarrl stopped at the edge of a small square with a fountain. The water spurted out of a time-worn marble vase taller than a man. “They say this be the old square, the center of Fairhaven before the first Whites fled from the Westhorns.” An apologetic smile crossed the patroller’s thin face. “Not that I’d be knowing that, you understand, ser, but that be what the folk say.”

  “It could be true,” Cerryl said. “I wouldn’t know. That’s the sort of thing no one would have a reason to lie about.” He glanced around the near-empty square. An old man sat on the sunny side of the fountain basin, covered with a patched gray blanket, his eyes closed. Beside him rested a yellow dog with pointed ears, whose nose twitched as it surveyed the pavement.

  A woman struggled down the narrow street to the east of the fountain, bent under a load of willow rods, while a cart pulled by a small donkey creaked past her and toward the square. On the far side, two boys, not even to Cerryl’s chest, tossed a ball back and forth.

  “Good folk here,” observed Duarrl. “Mostly from the countryside. Stay in the houses along the square for a time. Then they go back to the country or make enough coins to move north.”

  A black stone structure, almost cubical, stood at the far side of the square. Because it had been initially obscured by the fountain, Cerryl hadn’t really seen it. The stones were dark gray, and the side of the wall that Cerryl saw was polished smooth—except in a handful of places where something had struck the stone and left a grayish gouge and radiating cracks.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh…that be a lodging house for laborers come from the country. Messil—he’s Praytt’s cousin or some such—runs it.”

  “That black stone?”

  “Aye…said it was a Black Temple years and years back, long before Fairhaven looked as it did. Folks say at first no one could move the stones. A shame to waste it, Messil claims, saving only outsiders’d sleep there. Still, he runs a quiet lodging house.”

  A Black Temple in Fairhaven—they were scarce enough anywhere, and to find what had been one in the White City? Cerryl let his senses range over the building, finding only faint traces of the order that had once reinforced all the stones, but no more order than reinforced the stones and masonry of the Great White Highway.

  “It probably was,” Cerryl reflected.

  “You know any of this part of the city, ser?” Duarrl asked deferentially.

  “Not much south of Arkos’s tannery—I’ve been in the potter’s place. Lwelter’s, I think.”

  “Old Lwelter died last season,” Duarrl said.

  “I met his son, but I don’t remember his name.”

  “Flait be the one who has the shop now.”

  Cerryl nodded. “He wasn’t exactly pleased when I appeared at his door.”

  “Begging your pardon, ser, but more than a few would rather not see the pure White at their door, much as they prefer the city itself.”

  “I was one of them,” Cerryl confessed with a laugh. “I preferred not to encounter mages.”

  “You did not expect to be a mage?”

  “No. I thought it impossible for a poor boy.”

  Duarrl nodded, then pointed ahead to a signboard hung out over the street, bearing the black outline of an oversized pot above a fire. “There be The Black Pot. Fansner’s the keep. I’d not eat there. Good folk, but the fare…” He shook his head.

  “Where would be a good place to eat?”

  “The Broken Blade. Turgot has a good stew,” mused Duarrl. “Then the bakery down the way there, Jeloran’s. No signboard, but you can smell it. Nothing like The Ram or Furenk’s. Sometimes, The Blue Heron be not too bad.”

  Cerryl watched as Reyll slipped out of yet another alleyway and shook his head.

  “Alleys are clean today. Not always like that. Betimes, you be ashing rubbish and things may not be rubbish.”

  The mage nodded. Tossing rubbish in the streets or alleys was considered breaking the peace, because it could catch fire or harbor flux.

  Duarrl pointed down the narrow street to the south. “Where the tin smugglers live. Second and third houses.”

  Cerryl’s eyes followed the lead patroller’s gesture, picking out the pale blue and pink plaster-fronted brick houses. “You let them live there?”

  “Ser, we all know they smuggle tin in, but they don’t use wagons, and the laws don’t say anything about goods folk carry on themselves. ’Sides, how would the coppersmiths make their bronze—the little shops? They’d not be able to buy tin from the factors. A factor like Muneat, he won’t sell tin in less than five stone lots. Chorast likewise.”

  “What else gets smuggled in like that?”

  “Most anything, I’d guess, but so long as it’s in small lots, and they don’t use the sewers or break the peace…” Duarrl shrugged.

  Cerryl kept listening, all too aware of how right Kinowin had been, of how little he truly knew about Fairhaven.

  XXVIII

  AFTER NEARLY AN eight-day of walking the southeast quarter of Fairhaven, Cerryl was gaining an appreciation o
f just how much he hadn’t known about the city—as well as very sore feet. So he was pleased to be able to ride the big chestnut out beyond the southernmost part of Fairhaven to where the sewers ended—at the southeastern side of Fairhaven, beyond and to the east of the southern gates.

  A single white granite building stood on the edge of the plateau that marked the end of Fairhaven and overlooked the ponds and fountains. Cerryl tied his mount to one of the stone hitching blocks on the shaded east side of the stone building that was mostly warehouse.

  Duarrl and Cerryl walked another fifty cubits south, to where they could survey what lay below. The four patrollers had dismounted but remained in the shade beside their tethered mounts.

  “The other problem we get is the sewer outfalls. Have to check those regular-like. Isork thought you ought to be along. Otherwise he’d have to come, seeing as there’s always the possibility of smugglers or some such.”

  “I found that out. I ran into smugglers—or brigands—when I was on sewer duty.” Cerryl nodded. “Isork mentioned that, I think.”

  Duarrl laughed. “For a little mage, you been a lot of duty places—mines, sawmills, sewers battles.”

  “I did spend a little time with a scrivener,” Cerryl admitted. “That’s where the Guild found me.”

  “Doesn’t that beat all…” Duarrl shook his head.

  For a moment Cerryl looked down across the tiered ponds and the fountains that sprayed foul water into the air to be cleansed by the chaos of the sun. A hint of ancient chaos seeped from beneath the granite that walled the slope—a hint that suggested the hillside was far from completely natural.

  The sewage flowed directly from the two main tunnels into four settling ponds. The pond on the west end was empty of water, and a dozen prisoners shoveled the settled mix of offal, sludge, and other solids into handcarts, which were pulled by ropes to the side where the contents were loaded into a larger wagon. The solids were carted off to a dry gorge to the northeast of the city on the eastern side of the hills where runoff would only seep into the higher grasslands southwest of Lydiar.

  Cerryl studied the group but didn’t see any sign of Lyasa. Perhaps she was not on duty yet or somewhere else in the vast sewer collection system. His eyes drifted downhill.

  From the settling ponds the water flowed into channels that spread the sewer water into thin sheets that flowed down the flattened sloping granite inclines, exposed to the chaos of the sun, to be collected into another set of ponds that fed the lower fountains. Those fountains, in turn, flung the water into the air in fine sprays where the pure chaos of the sun would destroy much of the remaining unnatural chaos in the water.

  The lowest tier of ponds remained covered mostly with water lilies, and the cleansed water flowed over the granite lips on the south side of the ponds and into another granite channel that led to the Haven River. Although Cerryl would not have wished to drink the cleansed water, Myral had often assured him that it was far cleaner than the water used for drinking in any other city in Candar. That reminded Cerryl to chaos-clean water from anywhere else in Candar or drink ale or wine.

  “Glad we don’t have to supervise that.” Duarrl gestured toward the sewage workers. “Just provide the prisoners and a few guards.”

  “Disciplinary duty?” asked Cerryl.

  The lead patroller nodded. “Little things—not showing up for duty, the first time, or being late a couple of times.” He grinned at Cerryl. “The mages who supervise—they tell me that’s disciplinary duty, too.”

  “So I’ve heard. I’ve not had to do refuse duty.”

  “Well…let’s go.” Duarrl turned and motioned to the four patrollers.

  Cerryl and Duarrl walked down the granite steps to the landing that held the grated bronze door covering the entrance to the sewer walkway. A second bronze grate covered the sewer tunnel itself, a grate that angled from the tunnel top out over the stone lip where the sewage dropped into the twin channels that split and carried the sewage to the two settling ponds. Two hundred cubits to the west was another tunnel and door.

  Cerryl frowned as he studied the grated bronze door, then glanced at the stones of the extended walkway. He extended his senses to the gate, then turned to Duarrl. “Do you have a key? I turned mine in when I left sewer duty.”

  Duarrl fumbled through the ring on his belt. “Here…I think that’s it.” He looked at the gate and then at Cerryl. “You think…?”

  Cerryl smiled apologetically. “Someone’s opened the gate, and not too long ago. There’s blood on the stones and no chaos in the lock.”

  “Fellows,” Duarrl turned, “we might have a problem here.”

  Cerryl turned the key and levered back the oversized grate door. He stood for a moment looking into the gloom. Behind him, four blades slid from their sheaths. After relocking the gate open, Cerryl squinted momentarily, then extended his order senses. Someone had been in the sewer tunnel recently—very recently.

  At the end of the tunnel by the grate door, the walkway was wider than in the tunnels under the White City itself—nearly three cubits, almost wide enough for a cart, if a small one. At that thought, Cerryl looked down. Was there a trace of wheels in the slime?

  “Ser? Ah…we can’t see in the dark.” Duarrl sounded apologetic. “If you’d wait a moment until I get a striker out…”

  “I didn’t know the patrollers carried lamps.”

  “Have to be two lamps with every patrol.”

  “Just hold out the lamps, then.” Cerryl turned and waited for Reyll and Churk to extend their lamps. Hyjul and Saft stood back, as did Duarrl.

  Whst! The tiny firebolt lit the first lamp wick. A second firebolt flared Churk’s lamp into light.

  “That do?” asked Cerryl.

  “Ah…yes, ser.”

  Cerryl could sense something, rubbish, a bundle, something, on the walkway perhaps thirty cubits ahead. As he walked, he began to gather chaos around him—not to him, as Jeslek might have done, but around him.

  A scraping sound echoed down the wide tunnel, but not loud enough for a man. Cerryl could sense something on the walkway, and the sickening rotting odor was far worse than just sewage. The scraping had probably been rats.

  “Let’s have a lamp. There’s nothing alive here.”

  Churk’s small lamp was enough to reveal what Cerryl had feared.

  Cerryl wanted to gag but swallowed silently. The corpse had been a man—he thought, although the stench was worse than that of the sewage that gurgled in the tunnel beside the walkway. The figure wore rags, but anything else—boots, belt, purse—had been stripped. His face and chest had been burned, so much that the features were an unrecognizable blackened mass.

  “They forced him to open the lock,” opined Duarrl.

  “There are traces of chaos,” Cerryl said. “Not a lot of blood. He probably died when the chaos exploded out of the lock.”

  Duarrl bent down but did not touch the body. “There’s nothing on him. Not a thing.” He straightened, then looked at Cerryl. “Might as well get rid of it. Can’t see who it was. No sense in burying it.”

  Cerryl swallowed, then let the chaos swell, before releasing it.

  WHssst!

  When the flare of light subsided, all that remained was drifting ash, and a single copper lying on fire-scoured stone.

  “They missed a copper.” Duarrl snorted. “Churk…your turn, if you want it.”

  The flaxen-haired Churk bent down gingerly.

  “Careful…” Cerryl cautioned, “It will be hot.”

  “Thank you, ser.” Churk set his blade aside and took out a leather glove and picked up the coin, then straightened. “Hot enough that there be no flux clinging to it.”

  “No,” said Duarrl. “Let’s see if we find anything else ahead. Doubt that we will, but you never know.”

  Churk walked ahead, lamp in one hand, shortsword in the other.

  After nearly four hundred cubits, past one set of stairs to a locked overhead grate, Duarrl stopped. �
�Not going to find anything now. Let’s head back.”

  As they turned and started back in single file, Cerryl glanced through the gloom at Duarrl. “What do you think they were smuggling? They used a cart—a small one—but it was heavy enough.”

  “You could tell it was a cart?”

  “There were traces…The wheels crushed some of the slime. That makes another form of chaos.”

  Someone swallowed in the darkness.

  “See why you don’t underestimate mages, fellows?” Duarrl laughed before looking toward Cerryl. “If they had a cart, had to be something heavy. Couldn’t be finished goods, like woven wool or the like. Take too long to get the smell of sewer out. Arms of some sort, I’d guess. Maybe oils or perfumes. Had to be something worth killing over. Though folks like that’d kill for a few silvers.”

  Their steps echoed hollowly down the tunnel over the gurgle of the sewage as it pulsed toward the treatment ponds.

  Once everyone was out, Cerryl took Duarrl’s key. “I’ll need one of these.”

  “You’ll have it tomorrow, ser.”

  “Good.” Cerryl locked the grated door closed, returned the key, then forced himself to gather an enormous bolt of chaos, forcing it into the heavy lock.

  “This time…there won’t be just one body.” He kept his voice low enough so that only Duarrl could hear his words.

  The lead patroller nodded.

  To the west, the prisoners continued to fill the wagon with the sludge from the empty settling pond.

  “We’ll need to watch this more often,” Duarrl said to Cerryl as they walked back to the sewer building—and the waiting horses.

  Cerryl nodded. He had his own ideas. He doubted that the old entrance to the sewers off the Avenue—the one where he’d been attacked by brigands—had ever been sealed and he had to wonder why.

  XXIX

  CERRYL PICKED UP the note that lay on his bed, looking at the handwriting on the folded parchment—parchment, not the cheap brown paper used by some merchants. “Cerryl,” he murmured as he read the single name on the outside. Then he smiled as he saw the green wax seal. He broke it and read quickly, smiling more broadly at the green ink.