The Magic of Recluce

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  People create patterns, too, and by becoming Destrin’s journeyman, my presence was changing the patterns in Fenard. How much the order I had added changed things… who could tell?

  Before I rode Gairloch out to the mill to check the available black oak for the sub-prefect’s chairs, I made sure to cross the market square, stopping to buy a biscuit, nodding to the few people I recognized or thought I recognized, and listening, always listening.

  The high clouds were hazy and gray, yet the day was humid, almost steamy, and sweat dripped from my forehead. The late and short spring was turning to summer.

  The market looked the same as always, a scattering of small stalls, carts, and merchandise strewn across the open expanse of granite, all of it able to be moved at day’s end when the sweepers pushed through their brooms and refuse carts and the open space returned to a cavernous granite-walled emptiness.

  The prefect was bright, or his advisers were. Half a silver a day was what it cost to use the market if you had a stall, a penny if you could carry your wares on your back. For that you got guards posted at each street departing the plaza and guards who patrolled in leather vests with clubs. You also got some guards who looked like merchants and hangers-on. If you couldn’t fit your goods in a single stall, you had to find a permanent store or sell to someone who had one.

  A fair trade, all in all. Sellers got a place relatively free from theft and graft. The prefect got revenue and information, particularly since his open market was one of the few in Eastern Candar exempt from major corruption. Reputedly the autarch’s markets were better, but the prefect’s border posts supposedly confiscated anything coming from the south without the prefect’s authorization.

  I hesitated as I neared the fountain.

  “… did you see the golden coach?”

  “… came through the west gate, as if it had come from below the Westhorns…”

  The second speaker was Mathilde, the plump blond flower lady whose flowers seldom lasted more than two days. People with chaos in their blood should never handle living things, yet they seem to enjoy plants and pets and delight in gossip. She bulged out of a long tunic and stretched the seams of her faded purple trousers. Unwashed and gnarled toes protruded from her battered sandals.

  “Probably some retainer of the prefect’s,” I offered gratuitously.

  “It couldn’t have been. There were two armed guards and a blood-red banner on the coach staff. The prefect doesn’t allow mounted armed guards inside the city gates, saving his own.”

  “Maybe they forgot…”

  “Young fellow, are you trying to provoke me?”

  I grinned at the flower seller. “Just trying to be charitable to the poor guards that had to chase their boss across the countryside.”

  “Poor guards, my trousers! That coach was worth a fortune, and the geldings that carried those guards were a matched pair. And I saw a veiled woman in that coach, the kind they sell in Hamor only to the wealthiest of landowners. Not only that, but the coach was of wood and leather, without a scrap of iron…”

  I shrugged. “Some chaos-wizard, then, on his way to help the new Duke of Freetown. That’s where everyone is headed to make their fortune. He just stopped to pay his respects to the prefect.”

  “Wrong again!” cackled Mathilde. “The coach is stabled at the prefect’s palace.”

  “Why does the prefect need a chaos-wizard?” asked the peddler, as she unpacked and placed her crooked pots on the ledge by the dry fountain that had not worked since before I came to Fenard.

  “The rumor is Kyphrien…” hissed Mathilde.

  Kyphrien? I almost stopped then and there. Instead I looked at a particularly crooked pot, so ugly I could never have been tempted to buy it. “Kyphrien? The autarch?”

  “Why not?” asked Mathilde. “The prefect and the autarch aren’t friends.”

  I nodded and put down the pot, well-aware that the ragged man edging up to look at the other pots on the lower step of the fountain was some sort of spy for the prefect, and a chaos-tainted one at that. “Do you think the autarch is planning something?”

  Mathilde saw the ragged man in the tattered brown leathers that were a shade too clean and shrugged. “Who knows what rulers plan? I just sell flowers, like you work wood.”

  Looking at the flowers mock-regretfully, I grinned falsely. “I’d buy some, but I’d better get to the mill.”

  “You still supporting that broken-down crafter? Why don’t you open your own shop?”

  “I’d have little without him. Someday…”

  “Oh… it’s the golden-haired daughter… you want it all, you schemer…” She leered at me, and the pot peddler looked at us both as if we were crazy, while the ragged spy looked at no one.

  Listening again, I stepped down from the fountain and headed toward Fair Road.

  “… never see better-cured leather west of Recluce…”

  “… only half a silver for this, scabbard and all…”

  ‘’Fresh yams! Fresh yams!“

  Wiping my dripping forehead with the back of my short-sleeved working tunic, I saw another man in ragged leathers, not following me, but watching the arms merchant and noting the blades.

  “… the finest in worked steel… flexible enough… sharp enough to cut a spider’s web…”

  “… finest Hamorian cotton… cool to wear… the finest in cotton…”

  “Winter-saved apples, order-spelled and ready to eat…”

  I shook my head at the fruit vendor’s outrageous claim. Winter-saved apples they might be, and even kept in the coolest of root cellars, but order-spelling fruit took more effort than any order-master in his right mind would ever want to do-unless you were talking about killing off the vermin, and cool water and care did almost as well.

  “… a half-copper for a tale of adventure! A song of joy…”

  A thin woman in rags lingered around the minstrel’s corner. Her muscles were too heavy and her skin too smooth for her to be the beggar she played.

  I did not shake my head this time, but I wondered what the autarch wanted to know, and why Kyphrien was important.

  At the iron gates to the market square, gates which were rusted open, I suspected, three guards watched the road and the passers-by. Two in leathers, with their clubs and blades- and one posing as a stonemason’s helper. The mason was restoring a damaged arch leading into a leather shop.

  The shops on that unnamed street I never frequented, not with my limited funds and disinterest in pure luxury.

  My feet carried me automatically toward the turn leading back to the alley behind Destrin’s and the stable. Gairloch needed the exercise, and Brettel’s mill was far enough to make it better for both of us if I rode.

  Another reason for Destrin’s problems-the shop he had taken over from his father had catered to the personal needs of merchants and their ladies, supplying a level of Grafting Destrin could not match. Destrin’s rough benches and chairs belonged in the trade quarter, but he refused to move from the once-proud house and shop.

  Again, I thought about the bid on the chairs for the sub-prefect, wondering if it had been a good idea, even though I could see no other alternative.

  Gairloch could tell I was worried, and he danced around a lot as I saddled him.

  “Settle down!” I finally snapped. And he did.

  I kept thinking about the bid on the chairs.

  Compared to the work that would be involved in completing the sub-prefect’s chairs, getting the bid for them had not been all that hard. Destrin had signed the paper, and I put it in the envelope. Then we all had gathered on the steps of the sub-prefect’s house the next morning.

  “For a bid of ten golds, the commission on the five matched chairs is let to Destrin the woodworker.”

  “What?” Jirrle had been on his feet, his face purpling. But a younger man, with similar features, hauled him back down.

  “Bids were also received from Jirrle, the woodcrafter, and from Rasten. If the chairs
are defective, the bidder will pay a default fee of one gold and the second bidder will be awarded the commission.”

  I had winced at that, not that I expected the quality to be inadequate, but was that phrase merely a way to get out of the contract? I shook my head, not knowing what exactly I would do if that were the case.

  Although Brettel’s mill was nearly a kay farther down than anyone else’s, he offered better prices, at least to me. He also knew what was happening. Few of the other crafters talked to me, for I was only a journeyman working for an excuse for a woodcrafter.

  “Lerris! What now? Some seconds on green oak? Perhaps some red oak limbs?”

  “Actually, I was looking for something else… green oak twigs for baskets!”

  Brettel shook his white-and-silver thatch. “That bad, now?”

  I raised my shoulders. “Black oak.”

  “So… the rumor was true. You did underbid Jirrle and Rasten on that chair set. Jirrle was livid. He said that Destrin couldn’t make one straight spoke, let alone enough for a single chair. I agreed.” Then the mill-master grinned. “I didn’t tell him that his journeyman was probably going to do it all.”

  “Me? A broken-down excuse for a woodworker?”

  “Is that what he called you?”

  “Not to my face…”

  Brettel’s face dropped the joviality. “Black oak’s expensive, Lerris.”

  “I know. We can cover it, and what choice is there?”

  “Didn’t the tavern benches help? Those were better than anything Hefton ever turned out.”

  “They helped, but the quarterly assessment is coming due.”

  “Deirdre?”

  “Unless we can deliver on the benches…”

  Brettel shook his head. “Old Dorman feared this, but what else could he do?”

  I shrugged. “I owe him something.”

  “What if the prefect finds out you’re a craft-master?”

  “Brettel. I’m scarcely a master. I never even technically finished my journeyman training…”

  Brettel’s eyebrows raised, and I realized my mistake.

  “… but there’s no requirement in Fenard for guild certification…”

  “… so that’s why you chose Destrin…”

  “I had a problem with the mastercrafter…”

  The mill-master nodded to himself, as if I had cleared up a minor mystery. “What do you need?”

  “Black oak. I’d like to look at the logs.”

  Brettel frowned again, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to see the wood before it was shaped. We couldn’t afford any wastage.

  He turned and headed toward the racks at the back of the brick stacking-warehouse.

  I followed, glancing around and noting again how orderly Brettel kept his milled timbers and planks.

  “Here you are. Graded in size down. The ones with the two red grease slashes are a gold per log, the single reds are five silvers, the blues are two silvers, and the yellows are one silver.”

  I’d figured it out already, how to use the heartwood for the spokes and braces and the wood around the heart for the backing and seat plates. Now all I had to do was find four logs that met the measurements.

  “How much more if I ask for the cuts?”

  Brettel shrugged. “Nothing, if you stay and they’re normal straight runs through the saw.”

  I began checking the blue logs, sensing them as well as looking, but only two were right, and that meant I needed two reds.

  After a time, I pointed. “These two, and this one.”

  “I’ll give you the bigger one there for five silvers.”

  I stared again, all too aware of my double sight as I studied the log Brettel had fingered. On the outside it looked generous, but the heartwood was not old and hard and dense, even brittle, but soft and spongy. When you bought black oak, you were paying a premium for the heartwood, so dense it rarely decayed, and so tough that the best in edged steel was barely good enough to cut and shape it.

  “That’s not quite right,” I told Brettel.

  “It’s fine,” the mill-master insisted.

  I shrugged. “It’s not what Destrin needs. Either this one-” I pointed to the smaller log to the right “-or that one.”

  Brettel raised his shoulders, obviously thinking I was crazy, turning down the larger prime log for the smaller ones. “Then it’s still five silvers each for the two single reds.”

  “That’s what I’ll need.”

  Brettel didn’t quite shake his head as he greased the stump end of the four trunks with Destrin’s mark, a large “D” with a half-circle over the top of the letter. “Who’s paying?”

  “I’ll take care of it.” I had the coins in my belt. While Brettel was honest, he wasn’t about to cut black oak on my word. I scrambled around to come up with the coins.

  He checked them with the cold iron, just out of habit. “You want to do the cuts now?”

  “If you can.”

  “Things are slow today. With that wizard at the palace, people aren’t working. They’re all afraid to do anything.” He trundled a work cart to the log pile, then unstrapped the log clamps.

  “They were talking about some coach in the market…”

  “Antonin’s, I’d bet. He’s often here to meet with Gollard.”

  “Gollard?”

  “The prefect.”

  “Does that have to do with Kyphros?” I wondered how I could help Brettel with the heavy log.

  “Gollard… wanted… the sulfur springs back… in the Little Easthorns.” In between words, with the aid of a steel bar and the clamps, singlehandedly the mill-master had levered the first log onto the cart.

  “Can I help?”

  “Just… get… in the way.”

  “Sounds like he wanted to make more gunpowder.” Why, I couldn’t see, since anyone with the slightest hint of chaos-ability could set the devil’s brew off from a distance.

  “Who… knows…” Brettel was working on the third log. “The autarch’s cavalry… carved up… Gollard’s… elite troop. With raw recruits. Some wench… killed… his son-in-law.” Brettel stopped and grinned. “Not a few people cheered that.”

  I shook my head. After all my time in Fenard, I still didn’t know why the prefect and the autarch were at each other’s throats. “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?” Brettel handled the last small log as if it were a toothpick. I doubted that I could have even moved it.

  “Why are they fighting? The autarch and the prefect, I mean?”

  Brettel strapped the logs onto the cart before answering. “Rumor has it that her mother was a wizard’s daughter-”

  My mouth nearly dropped. I had assumed the autarch was a man.

  “-And that the mother used her wiles to split off what used to be Gallos south of the Little Easthorns. Then the mother conquered old Analeria after the prince died. The daughter took over a few years ago and added parts of the West-horns that Hydlen claimed, but never really ruled. Gollard figured, in his best guess, that the daughter wasn’t a wizard. So he tried to retake Kyphros.

  “He almost made it. Broke her army and the cavalry, but the peasants rose and burned their fields and opened the dikes. The cavalry couldn’t maneuver in the mud, and some mistakes were made. No one was clear how, but instead of a victory, Gollard lost half his army and most of his officers.

  “The autarch started recruiting women, the best she could find.” Brettel shrugged. “Now Gollard’s troops usually lose, but the autarch never enters his territory.”

  By now, we were approaching the saw; the belts leading from the waterwheel were motionless.

  “What cuts?”

  Taking the grease pencil, I outlined what I had in mind with each of the logs.

  “Should have thought of that myself.” Brettel pursed his lips. “Need to set this up. I can make these and deliver the planks and those square sections late this afternoon.”

  “That would be fine.” I took the hint, and walked back
to where I had tied Gairloch while Brettel began to set up the saw.

  Wheee… eeee…

  “All right.” I patted him on the shoulder and pushed his nose away from my pockets, which were empty.

  Kyphros versus Gallos-order versus chaos? Or was it that simple? Woman versus man? The more I found out, the less I knew, and I suspected I was far from the first man to realize that.

  “Come on.” I mounted my shaggy beast and flicked the reins. “Come on.”

  Whheee… eeeee…

  “All right,” I said again.

  So we halted by the bottom of the millrace for him to get a drink of the cold water, and I even stopped by the granary and bought a small sack of feed for Gairloch.

  LII

  AFTER GETTING THE bid for the sub-prefect’s chairs, and after getting exactly the lumber I wanted from Brettel with a bit extra thrown in for no extra cost, we still had to actually craft the chairs.

  Besides worrying about the actual work, I worried about a lot of other things. I worried that Destrin would get sicker and die. I worried that Bostric would slip with the plane, or that I would get careless.

  I worried that Jirrle would somehow find a way to attack me. I worried that Antonin would find out exactly who and where I was and attack. Even though I ate, I felt harried and thinner.

  “You look tired,” Deirdre told me.

  Since I felt tired, I probably looked that way as well.

  Every night I set wards on the shop, but I wasn’t sure what good they would do, and I kept my staff close to my bed.

  I used my senses to keep studying the wood each step of the way, checking to make sure that no hidden cracks or stresses would erupt to mar the wood or the finish. When I found two, both Bostric and Destrin thought I was crazy for refusing to use sections of what appeared to be perfectly good wood.

  “It’s good wood, Lerris.”

  “Not good enough. It’s flawed.”

  “How? Where?”

  “It just is.” How could I explain without letting them know I was a beginning order-master?

  “If the honored craft-master who claims he is only a journeyman says so, it must be so.”