Colors of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “You’re worse than Anya.”

  “Perhaps. Now… will you stand back and let me finish? It would be better if you did not make a scene.”

  “Jeslek will know of my displeasure.”

  “I am certain he will… if you choose to let him know. If you think, upon reflection, that is wise.” Cerryl stepped forward, ignoring Fydel, his eyes beyond the lancer tied to the post. He raised his voice “I ordered that no man, woman, or child in this town be hurt unless they attacked one of you. This man not only beat and killed a woman, but he lied to me about it. She did not threaten him; she did not wish to be used by him. He disobeyed, and he lied. He will pay the price.” Cerryl nodded brusquely, then raised chaos.

  For first time the lancer began to struggle, lunging against the ropes and the post-realizing that the slender mage meant his death.

  Whhsttt! The firebolt engulfed the prisoner, flaring into a brief column of flame and greasy black smoke. Within instants, only white ashes drifted in the cold air.

  Cerryl nodded to Teras. “You may dismiss them.” His eyes went to the still-mounted Senglat. “You are dismissed as well, Captain.”

  Senglat’s eyes flickered from Cerryl to Fydel and then dropped. “Yes, ser.”

  Cerryl remained almost rigid until the lancers had begun to move and until Senglat turned his mount down the street toward the makeshift stables.

  “… means what he said.”

  “… other mage looked like the little one kicked him silly.”

  “… Hiser said he was tough.”

  “… one they kicked out of the Patrol ‘cause he was too mean… that’s what Yurit heard.”

  Cerryl looked at Fydel, whose color had gone from livid to near-white.

  “I see why Isork wanted you off the Patrol.”

  “Do you?” Cerryl turned. His head ached again, and he felt exhausted, more emotionally than physically.

  Fydel opened his mouth, then closed it. After a long pause, he spoke. “You cannot accept things as they are. You want them to be as they should be. Men are not as they should be but as they are.”

  “They won’t be any better by doing their worst,” Cerryl answered. “Neither will we.” But what is “better”? He wished he knew.

  Leaving Fydel and his mount in the street, Cerryl walked slowly back into the quarters building, back past the immobile guards and into the silent structure.

  Force… maybe Anya was right, but Cerryl didn’t have to like it. Not at all.

  CX

  Windswept piles of snow had drifted against the stone fence-wall on the eastern side of the road, flakes swirling and shifting across the surface of the drifts in the light winter wind. Behind the stones were trees, Mostly saplings, and the stumps where larger trees had once stood. The sound of a score of mounts’ hoofs echoed off the frozen clay of the road as Cerryl and the lancers rode north.

  Downhill from the western side of the narrow road, a stream burbled, ice-fringed, but its dark water clear in the center. Splotches of snow dotted the narrow field beyond the streambed, and trees with winter-grayed leaves rose behind the field.

  “The place is around the next bend,” Hiser announced.

  As he passed the midpoint of the gentle curve in the road, Cerryl leaned forward in the saddle. A narrower road curved eastward rising beside the stream. Both road and stream cut through the middle of the field. The wide berm of stone-faced earth and the rough-planked building beside it were the first signs of the mill. A single large timber barn stood to the left of the mill and an unpainted house uphill of both, with a thin line of smoke rising from the chimney.

  The arrangement of the mill and the outbuildings looked little like Dylert’s, where Cerryl had spent his years after leaving the mines and Uncle Syodar and Aunt Nail, yet the feel was similar.

  While there were recent tracks on the road to the mill and house, all the plank-sided buildings were shuttered, all the doors fastened tight. A dog’s tracks crossed a patch of windblown snow before the low one-story house, but no dog was in sight. The plank walls of the house were water-stained, and the roof sagged.

  Cerryl wanted to shake his head as he mentally compared Dylert’s null and the house before him. “Let’s see if anyone’s here.”

  At Hiser’s nod, one of the lancers dismounted and, hand on sabre, used his free hand to pound on the door. Cerryl waited, but there was no answer.

  “Try again. Say who ser Cerryl is,” ordered Hiser.

  The lancer pounded on the door. “Ser Cerryl, the city commander of Elparta.”

  Again the door remained closed.

  Cerryl could sense no chaos, but he felt exposed. Then, he was always feeling exposed anymore. “I’m Cerryl, and I’m a White mage, and I don’t mean any harm-unless you won’t meet with me.”

  The door opened but a span. Cerryl could see the heavy chains.

  “Yes, ser?”

  “Come on out. If I wanted to, I could burn down the door, but it wouldn’t do either of us much good.”

  Hiser smothered a grin.

  Slowly, the bearded man eased out into the chill wind, and the door shut firmly behind him. “Mill’s closed. No way to get logs down till spring.”

  Cerryl glanced at the bearded millmaster, then nodded at Hiser, before dismounting and stepping up to the taller man. Disliking it, but knowing the necessity, he raised equal order and chaos from the area around, letting it smolder around him. His gray eyes fixed the mill-master’s pale green ones.

  The miller’s eyes widened, and he looked at the rut-frozen ground.

  “Let’s take a look at your mill.”

  The miller glanced at the score of lancers and at Riser’s hard blue eyes. “Ah… as you wish, ser mage.”

  Two lancers, sabres out, led the way as the stocky man walked ponderously along the frozen red clay to the planked door in the middle of the building. He opened the door and paused. “Dark inside. But one lantern and no striker.”

  “Hold up the lantern,” Cerryl said dryly, waiting until the miller did before focusing a touch of chaos on the wick.

  The lantern flared into light. The millmaster swallowed.

  “Inside,” Cerryl suggested.

  One of the lancers took the lantern from the miller and stepped into the mill. The millmaster followed, and then came Cerryl.

  Cerryl studied the mill floor, covered with sawdust that had to have been there since fall-or even summer. The few racks flanking the blade, wrapped in oiled cloth, were empty.

  “Now the storage barn there.” Cerryl gestured in the general direction of what he knew had to be the curing and storage barn.

  With a deep breath the millmaster turned, and the four walked from the mill across the road and to the sliding door. The bearded man’s hands fumbled as he unlatched the big door and pushed it sideways.

  Perhaps a third of the racks contained planks, mostly smaller cuts, though Cerryl noted perhaps two dozen heavy oak planks that might work for refurbishing the piers. After walking to that rack and checking the planks, he turned and left the barn, then waited for the millmaster to slide shut the heavy door. The wind whistled more loudly as the four walked back toward the house and the still-mounted lancers and their subofficer.

  Before the house, Cerryl turned once more to the bearded man. “We need timber. More than what you have here. You need your mill. You have no logs to cut, but there is enough water in the river to run the blade. The ice isn’t that thick, and the mill is undershot anyway. It was designed to work in the winter.”

  “Ah… yes.” The miller glanced at Cerryl.

  “I once worked in a mill. Do you have a wagon and a team?”

  “Yes, ser.” The millmaster’s eyes darted toward the outbuilding to the west of the long house.

  “Then you will turn that wagon into a sledge. Remove the wheels. I will send a half-score of able men to help you fell and move the logs. If we get timbers and planks from those logs, you will get golds. Not many, but more than if I have to burn
the mill. The choice is yours.” Cerryl forced a smile like Anya’s-hard and bright.

  “You drive a hard bargain, ser mage.”

  “No. There are many who lost everything. You get to keep what you have and work hard for a few golds. Most would envy you.”

  The bearded man’s eyes did not meet Cerryl’s.

  “Best you prepare,” Cerryl said firmly. “You will have workers tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Yes, ser.” The resigned tone was barely audible.

  Cerryl ignored it and remounted the gelding.

  As they rode back down the narrow road, Hiser glanced at Cerryl. “You promised men.”

  “The troublemakers… Bring them out here tomorrow. The first one that makes more trouble, bring him back to me.”

  “Ah…”

  “I’ll kill him with chaos,” Cerryl said flatly. “In front of all the lancers. Don’t think I won’t. And any others who lay a hand on the locals, except to defend themselves.”

  “Ah… after the last one… you won’t have trouble, ser.” Hiser grinned raggedly. “What will you do when the troublemakers reform?”

  “I’ll think of something.” Cerryl shrugged. “Or maybe we’ll have enough planks, or maybe the locals will want planks, and the miller can pay some of them.” He flicked the reins.

  Planks and timber will be the least of your problems. Of that he was certain.

  CXI

  Cerryl reined up by the south gate to Elparta, where the heavy wooden gates had been rebuilt and replaced on the gate pillars. The damp wind seeped through the oiled leather of his white jacket. He shifted his weight in the hard and cold saddle as he studied the river walls, the tumbled stones still sprawling away from the low wall cores that had been shifted and tilted in places by Jeslek’s use of chaos on the River Gallos. The tumbled section ran northward to the middle river gates and then farther downriver to the north city gates.

  After a moment, Cerryl turned to Riser, mounted and waiting on his left. “We need to work on those… the river walls.”

  Most of the houses on the hill where he and his lancers were quartered had been repaired and reshuttered, if crudely. So had the dwell ings in the area to the north and east of the south gate-not a hundred cubits from where he surveyed the river and where Fydel had quartered the majority of the White Lancers remaining in Elparta.

  “What about the other houses?” asked Riser.

  “They’ll have to wait.” Besides, if we get the walls and all the piers back, come spring, there will be people returning and paying crafters to rebuild-or doing it themselves.

  “Ought to wait,” grumped Ferek. “Fools, all of ‘em.”

  Fools? Or just fearful? “Perhaps. It doesn’t matter. Finishing the piers and then the gates and the river walls comes next. Without trading facilities, the city will suffer more in the years to come.”

  “Should suffer,” murmured Ferek under his breath.

  Cerryl ignored the comment. “Tomorrow, have them start on the river side, all the way past the barracks houses, up to the trading gate- the middle one. After that, we’ll see.”

  “That be several eight-days’ work.”

  “I imagine so.” Cerryl flicked the reins. “We’ll go by the Market Square on the way back. Didn’t you say people are showing up to trade?”

  “Some,” answered Riser cautiously.

  “When they think we’re not looking,” added Ferek.

  The three, followed by four lancer guards, rode along the avenue from the south gate toward the center of Elparta. Away from the river, the smell of fish and mud dwindled, but the air seemed smokier.

  As he neared the edge of the Market Square, Cerryl slowed the gelding. One of the stores-a chandlery-had been repaired, although the door was shut and the windows shuttered. A shutter on the adjoining cooper’s shop clattered slowly against the mud-splattered plaster of the wall, moved back and forth by the wind.

  A bellow, inchoate but loud, echoed across the seemingly empty square, followed by a scream and another, sharper yell.

  Cerryl glanced around, then at Riser.

  Before either could speak, a man in a green vest and an oversized and open brown cloak ran out of an alleyway, darting around a pile of brick and mud. He dashed toward Cerryl. “Ser mage! Help! They’ll kill me, they will.”

  Another man, swinging a sabre, his belt undone, scabbard banging against his leg, charged around the rubble and after the ginger-bearded and vested man.

  “Halt!” bellowed Ferek.

  Both the bearded man and the man chasing him slowed, then stopped as they saw the six lancers with unsheathed blades. The sabre-swinging man was a lancer, Cerryl could see, despite the afternoon shadows that lent an air of gloom to the dilapidated square.

  The vested and bearded man turned to Cerryl. “Your lancer… he took out his blade and he threatened me. He said if I did not have my daughter… service him… he would kill us both.”

  Cerryl glanced at the unbelted lancer, who had sheathed his sabre.

  “It’s a lie!” yelled the lancer. “Ser,” he added quickly as he saw the white cloak.

  “He said he would kill us both, I swear,” insisted the man with the curly beard and gold earrings.

  Behind the two men were another pair of lancers, dragging a woman forward.

  “What have you to say?” Cerryl’s gray eyes focused on the single lancer.

  “They’re lying. She’s a trollop and a cutpurse and-”

  “See this cut? Do you see it, ser mage?” demanded the man in the vest, pointing to a short slash across his chin that dripped blood onto a stained shirt that might have once been white silk and onto a dirty brown cloak. “Your lancer did this to me.”

  Cerryl looked at the woman, struggling in the arms of two lancers who half-dragged, half carried her toward Cerryl, the subofficers, and the four lancer guards. One of the lancers lugging the woman kept looking down at her open cloak and ripped blouse, which showed half-exposed full breasts.

  “He tried to kill me,” insisted the bearded man.

  “They… she offered… They tried to kill me…” stuttered the accused lancer, glancing from the bearded man to the woman.

  Cerryl fixed his eyes on the woman. “Did you steal the lancer’s Purse?”

  “I stole nothing.”

  “Did you offer yourself to him for coins?”

  “He forced himself on me.” The woman drew herself up as much as possible with the two lancers restraining her.

  “She had a knife, ser,” added one of the lancers holding the woman. “What about the knife?” Cerryl asked.

  “I had no knife. What would I do with a knife against such a brute?” Cerryl smiled tiredly and turned to the lancers. “Bring her out into the street here. Let her go and stand away from her.”

  The two men looked at each other, then frog-marched the dark-haired woman forward, abruptly releasing her.

  Cerryl seized chaos and flung it, almost contemptuously. Whhhsst! Where the woman had stood was a pillar of fire.

  The man in the green vest ripped himself out of the hands of the lancer and started to run.

  Despite his headache, Cerryl forced himself to concentrate.

  Whhssst! A second firebolt created another heap of flaming charcoal that subsided to white ash.

  Cerryl looked at the stunned single lancer. “They lied. You did also, but not so much. If I find you like this again, you’ll join them.” His eyes went to the two unknown lancers - from Fydel’s forces probably, since he recognized neither. “Tell your comrades.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Cerryl glanced at Ferek, then Hiser, before turning the gelding toward the low hill that held their quarters.

  “Darkness-fired lucky, you were…”

  “Coulda been you…”

  “Fair… he is… cold as the Westhorns, too.”

  Cold? Cerryl almost laughed, half in frustration. You’ll be the most disliked mage in Candar the way things are going. Or the second mo
st disliked, after Jeslek.

  He leaned forward and patted the gelding’s neck. Horses didn’t talk back or mutter behind his back. At least, his didn’t.

  CXII

  Chaos by itself guarantees neither prosperity nor the failure of prosperity; chaos guarantees but life, while order in excess must lead to death.

  The nature of man is that of chaos, and not of order, for man is alive, as is chaos, and the goal of order is perfect stillness and all parts of a whole in an unchanging array.

  Yet chaos unchecked is as ruinous to a prosperous land as order unchecked, and the excesses of man can be checked successfully only by the application of chaos bounded by order.

  Order applied directly to that which is man will retard, if not destroy, that spirit of life nurtured by the flame of chaos; likewise, all life upon the world is nurtured by that flame of chaos that is the sun itself.

  A land bound to chaos may fail to prosper, but it will not destroy itself, for chaos is as life; a land bound to order must, in the end, destroy itself, and all around it, for order is like the ice of the north in the times of the Great Chills, seeking always more order, until nothing lives within its scope.

  A great mage must strive always to use chaos for prosperity, that is, growth and change bounded by the chill of order, yet never must he pay obeisance to order, for order will take his spirit and leave him a shell of what he might have been, as a mighty city empty of all souls, as a seed without kernel, as a hearth without flame…

  Colors of White

  (Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven)

  Part Two

  CXIII

  In the private study, empty while he waited for Teras, Cerryl stood over the conference table and concentrated. The silver mists of the glass swirled, then parted.

  Leyladin stood in the corner of the front foyer of the Halls of the Mages in Fairhaven. With her was the dark-haired Lyasa, and the two talked, apparently quietly, for there were few gestures. Abruptly Leyladin turned her head slightly and smiled but for an instant, and Cerryl knew she had sensed his presence through the glass. Lyasa raised her eyebrows, also momentarily, and Cerryl released the image.