The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Mind-throwing? Had the wizard sent his thoughts elsewhere? The sheaths indicated that he was prepared for his body to be carried without his consciousness. And he was still breathing.

  Still, I rode next to him, hands still on the staff, feeling the warm wood against my hands.

  Something about that bothered me, but I wasn’t about to sort that out until we were out of the valley, well out.

  The Council of Magicians, Fairhaven-something in my studies, something that Magister Kerwin had said, had to do with this place.

  OOooooeeee…

  The sound hadn’t been a real sound at all, only a sound in my mind. The howler hadn’t been able to make a real sound until I recognized him.

  I let my thoughts seethe, took another look at Justen-who was still breathing-and wondered what I should do.

  Rosefoot kept stepping forward, and so did Gairloch. So I waited, wondering where the magician’s thoughts had gone.

  Ooeee…

  The cry had more of the feel of a mental whimper, as if whatever cried were about to die forever.

  How something that was dead could die was beyond me, but that was the way it sounded.

  Both ponies kept picking their way up the long gradual trail, still heading straight south, until we passed through another set of melted stone gates. The south set contained dark streaks embedded in that dead white, as though they had burned and then melted.

  The odor died down, and I finally put the staff back in its straps. Justen still lay sprawled across Rosefoot-still breathing-and the ponies kept walking.

  Then I realized something. The palms and the insides of the fingers of my gloves, except for just the fingertips, had burned away; but there were no burns anywhere on my hands. Nor were there any other burns on my clothes; just a line of charred leather, outlining the missing sections of the gloves. It was a wonder they had stayed on so long. I peeled them off, folded them, and tucked them into my belt.

  The afternoon began to grow darker and I glanced overhead, but the clouds were still about the same. The wind was picking up, the way it often did in the late winter afternoons.

  “Uhhhhh…” Justen started to shake his head, then stopped as if in pain, as he slowly righted himself.

  “Lerris…” he looked back over his shoulder without finishing the sentence for a time. Then he spoke again. “That should be the end of Frven.”

  “Frven?”

  “That’s what they called it at the end.”

  This time I did shiver-shudder would be more like it.

  Fairhaven… Frven. The second name should have been familiar from the first. City of the Chaos Council, brought down in a hail of fire more than two centuries earlier. I shuddered again.

  “You saw Frven… Fairhaven… before it became the chaos-masters’ city?”

  Justen, still looking back, nodded absently. “I was younger then.”

  I tried not to shudder a third time. Justen looked about my father’s age, and he had been alive two centuries earlier?

  “You helped bring it down?” It was a wild shot, but everything seemed strange.

  “Two ma-magicians created another sun, right above the city, so hot it melted everything like candle wax in a furnace.” Justen straightened in the saddle, and I noticed that the arm sheaths had disappeared. “We need to keep moving, since it will be late when we reach the main road.” He shook his head to clear it. “I should say that it already is late.”

  “How can it be late afternoon already?”

  “That’s a property of Frven. It used to be much worse.”

  Justen lifted his canteen and slowly swallowed nearly all the contents.

  The brush and trees beside the narrow road were beginning to look more normal, with only traces of the shiny whiteness in their stalks and trunks, but the way still looked deserted.

  “Lerris…”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a problem… a real problem.”

  I sighed. Now all I needed was someone else to tell me that I had a problem-a real problem. But what was I to say to a magician?

  “Yes.”

  “You did two things wrong and one thing right in Frven. You didn’t listen closely enough and paid attention to that soul-I think it was Perditis-and almost let him become real again. That would have raised every magician in Candar against you both, because Perditis would have taken your body and soul. You used your staff for defense. That was right. But then you burned your gloves off to grasp the staff.”

  “Why was that wrong? The gloves, I mean.”

  “Because you used destruction to enable preservation. That very nearly cost you your soul again, and might have if I had not been able to shield you.”

  “Shield me?”

  Justen did not answer immediately, but began chewing some travel bread, as if he were starving, while he rode. Finally, he swallowed and spoke again, his voice dimmed by the faint whistle of the wind and the clop, clop of hooves.

  “I didn’t intend staying in the second plane nearly that long, but, since I was there, I decided to seal off most of the rest of the lost souls. Should have done that earlier, I suppose, but it’s such work.”

  Justen was sounding suspiciously like my relatives, not ever exactly answering anything while blaming me for my failures. On the other hand, I had felt that howler or demon grasping at me, screaming Mine! Besides, where had the day gone? We could not have lost five or six hours on a less than twelvekay trip on a straight road, narrow though it was.

  I sighed again, swaying in the saddle. Riding was still not natural to me, and my legs, though in shape, were still not used to the pony.

  “All right. Once again, I seem to be missing something.”

  “Young Lerris,” answered Justen dryly, “you also seem to have forgotten a few other things, such as letting me know that you are magister-born, that you carry the staff of a magister, and that you have not chosen your path.”

  My mouth must have dropped open. I could say nothing. Banister-born? Not having chosen a path? The staff didn’t surprise me, for some reason.

  Justen shook his head sadly. “Once again your origin burns through.”

  “But…”

  “Nowhere else do they send out their best, untrained and untested, to find their way in a world that either ignores them or tries to destroy them.”

  “Destroy?”

  “Yes, destroy. You are from Recluce the beautiful, the isolated, the powerful. The island nation that has humbled every fleet sent against her, destroyed every challenge contemptuously, and refused to take any real responsibility outside her own boundaries.”

  “But…”

  “No… it’s not your fault, not yet, and I suppose that is why I will help you, young Lerris. Then, at least, I will have someone to blame if Recluce continues to ignore the world. Not that poor Justen can do anything about it.”

  “Wait a moment,” I protested. “You’ve been around two centuries, and you let Antonin do all his fancy tricks and you never raised your staff, never said a word. Why not? How can you blame Recluce? Or me?”

  He just sighed. “So much potential, and so much ignorance… where, oh where shall I start?” He eased Rosefoot closer to Gairloch.

  The road ahead seemed to merge into a much wider, but heavily-rutted highway.

  “Is that the main road?”

  “It is, but the next decent place to stop is about three kays farther along. So I’ll try to answer your questions… while I can.”

  This time I took a swallow from the canteen attached to Gairloch’s saddle, after looking in all directions. The main road was empty, as were most roads in Candar late on a winter afternoon. I tightened my cloak against the slowly rising wind. Most of the snow, small dry flakes, had blown clear even before we had left Hewlett. In Eastern Candar, the snow is light and seldom sticks, unlike the high ranges of the Westhorns, where winter means snow upon snow until even the evergreens are buried to half their height.

  “Even if you are f
rom Recluce, you know that there is order and there is chaos. Magic is either, or some of both. White magicians follow chaos. Black magicians follow order. And gray magicians try to handle the best of both, and are regarded with great suspicion by both black and white.”

  “White is chaos, but why?”

  “Lerris, do you practice being obtuse?” Justen sighed. “White is the combination of all colored light. Black is pure because it is absent all light.”

  That was something that, strangely, no one had ever mentioned-not that I remembered, anyway. I nodded for him to continue as we finally picked our way off the old road from Fairhaven, or Frven, and back onto the main road. I could once again see dusty hoofprints, a day old or more, in the chalky dirt.

  “The problem with both white and black magic is their limitations. Most white magicians are just a little bit gray. No one can handle pure chaos, not anyone born since the Fall of Frven. There are a number of black magicians. I can tell that from their actions, but a truly good black magister cannot ever be discovered unless he or she wishes it.”

  I must have frowned.

  “That’s because of the limitations. Look… think of it this way. Too much chaos and even the internal order of your body becomes disorganized. That’s what happens, in a way, when you become old. White magicians all die young, and the more powerful die younger, unless they switch bodies like Antonin.”

  “Switch bodies? But how?” I kept sounding stupid, and I hated sounding stupid. But Justen was answering some questions, more than old Kerwin had.

  “He has worked an arrangement with… several local rulers. He provides certain services, and he can have the body of anyone condemned to die. He’s in his fifth body now, but I doubt he can survive more than one more transfer.” Justen stopped speaking and looked up the road, as if measuring the distance. He swayed a bit in the saddle, and I realized he was pale as fresh-bleached linen.

  “You see, young Lerris, with each transfer it takes longer to rebuild his body image and energies because his soul ages, even though his body doesn’t. Chaos disrupts the soul itself.”

  I could see the peaked roof of a wayfarers’ hut and the cleared space surrounding it, as we plodded around a gentle curve-a refreshing change from the deadly straightness of the road into and out of Frven.

  The hut looked empty, though well-kept. Neither surprised me, for Justen had indicated Weevett was but a few hours’ ride ahead, and most travelers would prefer a warm inn to the best of huts.

  “We should stop.” Justen said nothing besides the three words, and I realized that it took all his energy merely to remain in the saddle.

  Nothing more than four stone walls, two shuttered windows, a door, a thatched roof, and a small hearth-but it was swept clean and empty, for which I was grateful.

  At the same time I wondered why some poor soul had not tried to appropriate the place, since it was far more hospitable than the ramshackle thatched wattle-and-daub dwellings outside Hewlett and, presumably, Weevett.

  Even though I half-dismounted, half-fell off Gairloch, the pony remained fast as I turned to look after Justen. The wizard in gray was gray all over. He said nothing as I helped him off Rosefoot and onto the stone bench outside the hut.

  With short gusts, the wind was picking up, swirling scattered pieces of dried and colorless straw around my boots, puffing dust and scattered snowflakes at Justen’s face.

  I found a short axe in Justen’s pack, poorly-sharpened but adequate, and carved out some shavings to start the fire. There looked to be a small creek downhill from the hut, but Justen needed the fire more than he needed the water.

  The flint and axe-steel were sufficient; but then, I’ve never had trouble starting fires.

  Justen watched as I unstrapped a small kettle from his saddle kit.

  “Going to the stream.”

  He might as well have been asleep, for all that he looked at me. For some reason, I stopped and took my staff from the makeshift sheath on Gairloch. The pony tossed his head once, and chuffed. His breath was like steam. I swung the kettle in my right hand and grasped the staff in my left, though the water was almost within sight of the hut.

  As I scrambled down the path, worn down by years of usage, I felt watched. But then, one way or another I had been watched all day.

  Crack.

  Thunk!

  A figure in rusted armor lay at my feet, between me and the stream bank.

  The staff had moved in my hand, reacting before I had seen more than a flicker of movement.

  This time I studied the overhanging trees, and the underbrush. But now there was a sense of emptiness.

  Hssssssss…

  As I looked back down at the fallen figure, mist began to rise, slowly at first, then quickly, forming a small luminous whirlwind. The shaggy, man who had been inside the armor was gone, and only the rusted metal links and few plates remained. Then they began to crumble in on themselves, and they too were gone.

  For somebody who hadn’t been sure about magic, I was seeing a lot. Or I was losing my mind. I preferred to think that magic was real.

  Scooping up a kettle full of water, I hurried back to the hut. Justen had straightened himself up a little, but still sat in the chill outside, rather than by the small but bright fire.

  I hung the kettle on the hook over the fire, then I took Gairloch’s reins and stood there, wondering whether I should unsaddle him and let him browse or tie him near the hut. Finally I began to unsaddle him, lugging the tack and saddlebags into the hut. I undipped the reins but left the halter part of the hackamore in place.

  Rosefoot whinnied gently, as if to ask for the same treatment. I obliged her as well. By the time I finished, Justen had dragged himself into the hut and onto the single rude bench inside.

  “Any tea?”

  “Bring me the reddish pouch.”

  “This one?”

  He nodded, and I handed the pouch, more like a small bag, to him.

  “Here. Two pinches in the kettle.”

  Using the wadded corner of the horse blanket, I levered up the lid of the kettle and eased the black stuff inside. It didn’t look like tea, but within minutes the hut began to smell like senthow tea.

  I rummaged around until I found two tin cups, and poured from the kettle.

  Then I looked outside again, but both horses were well within sight, grazing at a patch of grass sheltered by grease-berry bushes. By now it was almost dark.

  “The horses?”

  “They will be all right now.”

  “Now?”

  Justen sipped the tea from his cup. His smile seemed lopsided. “That blow you landed on the warimage echoed enough to warn off all but the strongest of white creations.”

  “Warimage… ? White creations… ?” I shook my head. Again, I was sounding stupid.

  “After you have something to eat, young Lerris. I could use some sustenance as well.” The pallor was gone from his face now. He merely looked tired.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Take one of the green packages and empty it into the pot. You’ll need some water. It makes fair stew.”

  After another trip to the stream, some time heating the water, and some time waiting for the gooey mess to cool, I was surprised to find it tasted like stew, and not a bad one.

  Then I had to clean up the pot, and repack all the packages. Justen watched with an amused look, almost relaxed in the firelight.

  As I finished repacking, I remembered some of my earlier questions.

  “You never did finish explaining that bit about why Antonin couldn’t grab another body.”

  “There is nothing else to explain. Chaos corrupts the soul. The more corrupt the soul, the faster it ages a body. Each transfer exhausts both body and soul. At some point, the soul cannot recover enough from the last transfer before the next one must be made.”

  “Which body are you wearing?”

  “My own. It’s really much easier that way, although it does create a number of limi
tations-as you saw today.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “Only if you had been captured. That was one reason why I had to keep shielding you and rending the revenants. You beckoned to all of them, and you have very few defenses against… deep temptations.”

  I sipped my cool tea. Justen had long since finished his.

  After saying nothing, I finally stood up and added a small log to the fire.

  “Did you mean what you said about choosing a path?” I finally asked.

  “You are magister-born, a born magician if you will, like it or not, and all magicians must choose a path-black, white, or, for a few, gray.”

  “Me? A magician? Hardly. Not a good woodworker, and not a potter. But a magician? My mother’s a potter, and my father… well, I always thought he was just a householder.”

  This time Justen shook his head. “Humor me, young Lerris, and you are young…”

  - Humor him? Why should I? What did he expect, insisting I was some sort of magician in secret?-

  “… but you have to make a choice.”

  “Why? I could refuse to choose anything. Even assuming I’m what you think I am.”

  “Refusing to choose is a choice. In your case, your choice is more limited because of what you are.”

  “Huh?” Justen squared himself on the bench, looking more and more like Magister Kerwin, though Kerwin was white-haired and frail-looking, and Justen was brown-haired and thin-faced, with smooth skin. “If you choose the white, you can never return to Recluce, for the masters bar anyone associated with the white from your island nation. Second, your soul screams for order and explanation, even though you want to reject it. And your desire for order would keep you from mastering more than the simplest of chaos-manipulations.

  “While you are now in effect stumbling through the gray, in the end the conflict of balancing order and chaos would destroy you. So… you either choose the black, or risk destruction in white or gray… or you reject all three… and become a soul for a white master like Antonin to feed upon.”

  “Wait a moment! Just like that? Thank you very much, and I should become a black master on your say-so?”