The White Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Be raining for a long time,” Rinfur said with a shrug, stepping out from the porch and striding toward his room in the first lumber barn. “Might as well get wet so as I can get dry soonest.”

  “I can always get wet,” answered Viental with a deep laugh. “Better to stay dry, I say.”

  The rain dripped off the edge of the eaves steadily, in a pattern that seemed to pound into Cerryl’s skull. Abruptly, he stood.

  “Going to get wet, are you?” asked Viental.

  “It will happen sooner or later,” the youth answered, starting down the stone steps.

  “Not for me,” called Viental.

  Cerryl walked through the rain and the growing twilight back to the barn. Once inside his room, he pulled off the damp canvas jacket and hung it on the peg by the door.

  At least inside his room, the pounding of the rain wasn’t quite so pronounced. Still, for a time Cerryl sat on the edge of his pallet, trying to ignore the splatting of the rain and the throbbing in his skull that almost kept rhythm to the patter of the rain on the side of the barn.

  Tap! Tap!

  Cerryl frowned, then went to the narrow door, opening it.

  A broad-shouldered figure stood there, patch over one eye.

  “Unc-”

  “Hush!” Syodor’s hand covered Cerryl’s mouth. “Not a word. Follow me.”

  “In the rain?” asked Cerryl, inadvertently massaging his forehead again, trying to relieve the dull pressure behind his eyes.

  “Only safe way,” said Syodor, the water dripping off his oiled leathers, turning and slogging across the meadow grass away from the lumber barn.

  Cerryl threw on his too-small canvas jacket and followed his uncle toward the line of oaks across the hill.

  Crack!

  A line of lightning flashed, followed by the drumroll of thunder.

  Cerryl winced. The lightning-or the thunder-kept thrumming through his skull, but Syodor plunged onward, toward the ancient oaks.

  “Couldn’t do this, lad, except when I knew the rain’d last. Had to do this afore long.”

  Do what? Cerryl wondered but did not ask, just stepped up beside his uncle and kept walking, his boots squishing on the wet grass and soggy ground. His hair was soaked again, and rain began to ooze down his neck. He shivered, more from his headache than from the chill of the cold water seeping down his spine.

  “Wish you were older, but there be a time for aught and all, and that be now…” The gnarled miner’s voice died away as he came to a stop under the dark oak, the last one in the line leading from Dylert’s house across the hill and overlooking the lower meadow. Syodor reached inside his oiled leathers and handed Cerryl a small oblong package-something wrapped in old mine canvas. “Brought these for you, young fellow. Don’t you be opening ‘em here. Rain be spoiling them.”

  “What… are they?” Cerryl could sense the faintest of white glows, even beneath the canvas.

  “Books, your da’s books. Wish I could have taught you letters.” Syodor shrugged. “Best no one knew you lived, and we feared anyone knew letters’d tell the mages. They might have come for you.”

  Even as he wiped water away from his eyes, Cerryl kept his face calm, ignoring the headache as well. Finally, he asked, “Uncle, you never told me. What happened to my da? And mother?”

  “The white mages killed your da… with their magic. They sent the lancers after your ma. She finally went to ‘em. That was after you were safe with us.” Syodor peered out from under the oiled leather hood. “Figured they knew about her, she did, but not about you. You were but a mite then, fit in my hand.”

  “But why?” Cerryl swallowed. “What did he do?”

  “Your da… I don’t know…‘cept your ma, she told Nail that he took some books ’cause no one would teach him. That he wanted to learn how to be a real mage, not a rock mage nor a hedge mage. He learned his letters somewhere. Never did say where.” The miner looked away from Cerryl and downhill toward the damp clay of the road from the mines.

  After a moment, Syodor pointed to the canvas-wrapped books that Cerryl held. “Them… might be them. I thought about destroyin‘ ’em…” He shook his head. “Your da died for ‘em. Mighta been crazy, thinking he could have been a great mage, if he’d been born to coins, but we don’t choose our folk. Even so, don’t seem right that way. Seen you with your scraps of glass.” He laughed. “Didn’t think as we knew, did you, lad? Someday… anyway, seeing as you be what you be… time you have ’em.” His jaw squared. “Don’t tell a one aught about ‘em. No one. Mages might think they be lost forever…’less they hear, and they listen on the wind. ‘Cept in the rain.” A rough smile crossed his lips. “You be like them. Your head, it aches in the rain, does it not?”

  Cerryl nodded.

  “Their glasses… their magery, the falling water makes it hard for them to see. Hard, too, for ‘em to see into caves or small rooms… that’s what your ma said, anyhow. Like your da, she saw more than most folks…”

  Cerryl wanted to shake his head, or yell, or something. There was so much more he wanted to ask, and his head ached, and he didn’t even know where to start. “But… why… why… did the white mages kill her?”

  “Couldn’t say for sure… She never told either Nail nor me. Said the less we knew… safer you’d be.”

  “She had to leave? Why?”

  “They had lancers a-looking for her most places… Shandreth asked me once if I’d seen her. Had to tell him no, even when she was eating and sleeping not a hundred cubits from the hearth.”

  “Looking for her?”

  “Don’t know as who else. White lancers… they be mean men, Cerryl. You stay clear of them, no matter what it be taking.”

  Cerryl shivered, thinking about the day he’d seen the white lancers in Hewlett. They’d looked mean then.

  “The mages… they be mages, but the lancers are killers, without souls, no better than the old black demons of the Westhorns.” Syodor fingered his chin. “Could be a mite worse, from what I hear.” He shrugged. “Well, boy… got to be going, be well away from here afore the rain lifts. Wouldn’t want my image showing in the glass, not with the power of them books showing, too.” Syodor extended a big hand and clapped Cerryl on the shoulder. “We’ll be seeing you as we can. You know that, lad, do you not?”

  “I know.” Cerryl swallowed. “I know.”

  “Be off now.”

  Cerryl stood under the dark oak, watching until Syodor vanished into the rain and mist. Then he walked slowly back to the lumber barn.

  In the dimness of the room, Cerryl eased open the canvas, glad that he could see better than most in the dark. There were two slender books, bound in age-darkened leather. His eyes watered as he glanced at them.

  Then he frowned. Between them was a white-bronze circlet. He turned it over. Two rough patches in the metal on the back indicated brackets or something had once been attached.

  Except for a thicker rim, the circlet, a half-span across, was of uniform thickness and smooth to the touch. Yet… Cerryl studied it for a long time in the darkness.

  Finally, he nodded. Somehow, the pin or ornament was made of two separate metals that met in an undulating edge, put together so smoothly that he could not feel the joins, only sense them with the sight that was not sight.

  The books went behind the board with the book fragment he already had cached there, but the circlet-that he kept, his fingers around it even when he lay back on his pallet and drifted into an uneasy sleep.

  XI

  A. soft breeze brushed across the porch, carrying the scent of late apple blossoms, the turned earth of the garden to the southwest of the house, and the less welcome odor of the horse manure Cerryl had spent the day cleaning out of the stable.

  Cerryl sat on the edge of the porch, his boots on the top stone step, looking eastward, supposedly toward Lydiar. The more distant hills were fading into the early twilight.

  “What do you do at the mill, Cerryl?” asked Erhana from the ben
ch behind him.

  “Whatever they need me to do. You saw me with the shovel and manure.” Cerryl’s hair was still damp, plastered against his skull, and his forearms itched, despite his washing in cold water before dinner. Without the nightly washing before dinner, he had discovered, his arms became covered with an ugly red rash, and after dealing with the stable, he’d definitely needed to wash up, almost all over.

  “Da-Father-Siglinda says that I should say ‘Father.’ Father doesn’t let me in the mill. He let Brental in there when he was smaller than I am.”

  “Brental will have to run the mill.”

  “I wouldn’t want to.” Erhana lifted her head slightly-Cerryl could tell that without turning. “I’m going to have a wealthy consort and live in a fine house in Lydiar.” Her voice dropped slightly. “You didn’t say what you really do in the mill.”

  “I sweep floors, stack the timbers, move things, clean the sawpit. Brental’s beginning to teach me about the oxen.” He paused, then asked, turning finally to look at the dark-haired girl, “What do you do with that lady in the parlor?”

  “She be-she is not a lady. She’s Siglinda, and she gives me my lessons.” Erhana cocked her head and offered a superior smile. “I’m learning my letters.”

  “Oh?”

  “Letters are important for a lady.”

  “I’d wager you don’t know them well enough to teach me.”

  “Why would you want to know letters? You’re always going to be working in the mill.”

  “See?” Cerryl said with a grin. “You can’t do it.”

  “I can, too.”

  “You’ll have to prove it.” Cerryl looked disbelieving.

  “I don’t have to prove anything to you.” Erhana sniffed.

  “You don’t. That be right,” Cerryl said, grinning again.

  “You couldn’t learn letters, anyway.”

  “You don’t know that, not until you try and I can’t learn.” Cerryl smiled. “Of course, that might mean you couldn’t teach me, either. Your da, he says…” Cerryl let the words trail off.

  “He says what?” Erhana’s voice sharpened.

  “Nothing… nothing.”

  “You’re… nothing but a mill rat, Cerryl.”

  Cerryl forced a shrug, intent on keeping any concern from his face. “If you really knew your letters, you could teach them to a mill rat. You’re just calling me names ‘cause you can’t.”

  “Cerryl… you are…” Erhana paused. “You are…”

  He stood. “If you’re that good, you can teach me letters. I be here every night after supper.”

  “I don’t have to teach you anything.”

  Cerryl forced a smile, then grinned before turning and walking down toward his cubby room.

  “Cerryl…”

  He forced himself to keep walking.

  XII

  Cerryl rubbed his forehead again, trying to massage away the dull ache from somewhere deep within his skull. The massage didn’t help, and he resumed restacking the flooring planks, ensuring that there were indeed ten in each pile, as Brental had instructed him-a dozen stacks of ten.

  He paused, his eyes going to the half-open mill door and to the steady rain beyond, rain that had fallen from gray skies for the past two days. He looked back at the span-wide planks, his eyes watering. With a sigh, he counted the last stack again. Ten.

  Why did the steady rain give him such a headache? Syodor had said it affected all the white mages. He could use his mirror fragments to pull up images-places like Fairhaven, the white city, and even the cows in the lower pasture. Did those things mean he was a mage-or could be? Or that the mages would kill him, as they had his father, if they discovered him?

  He’d only been able to have a few sessions with Erhana and her copybooks, but already he could pick out some of the letters in his books, although the script was curved and more elaborate than that in hers. He could make out a handful of words, not enough to read anything… not yet.

  His fingers went to his belt pouch and tightened around the talisman-was that what it was?-that Syodor had given him. Had it been his father’s? Or had his father picked it up somewhere?

  “… afore midsummer, Dorban will be here for the seasoned oak- the big timbers for the shipyard…” A good thirty cubits away, Dylert’s voice trailed off.

  “He always complains,” said Brental, “but he comes back.”

  Cerryl did not turn his head. He’d learned years earlier that his hearing was sharper than that of most folks. He’d also learned that he gained more information by not letting on.

  “He hopes that we’ll lower the price if he complains enough…”

  Cerryl kept listening as he started in on the third pile.

  “Oooo.” He stopped and carefully eased out the splinter. Although he tried to be careful, wood had splinters, some of them sharp enough to cut deeply if he_were careless or if his mind wandered-as it just had.

  Cerryl shook his head. Was Erhana right? That he’d spend the rest of his life in the mill, the way Rinfur was?

  His lips tightened, but his eyes and attention went back to the hardwood planks.

  Standing closer to the big blade of the saw itself, Dylert and Brental continued talking, but Cerryl shut out their words.

  Outside the mill, the rain continued to fall, beating on the roof, on the stones, and inside Cerryl’s skull.

  XIII

  Cerryl hurried out of the mill and along the causeway, noting the bean plants in the garden on the hill, already calf-high in the midmorning light. He found it hard to believe that summer had slipped into Hrisbarg, almost without his knowledge.

  The gray-haired Siglinda’s voice drifted down from the house porch toward the mill, clearly audible with the wheel and the saw silent. “No! He is going to the market. Read what is on the page. In any case, ‘be’ is not a verb cultured people use, except with the subjunctive.”

  Cerryl half wondered what she meant, what the subjunctive was. He tried to hold on to the idea that he should use “is” instead of “be.” Still, he needed to find Dylert.

  He slipped into the first lumber barn, then froze as he saw the two figures by the racks. He waited, listening, so still that he could feel himself blend into the white oak stacked on his left. In the racks across the narrow side aisle of the second lumber barn were the various-sized planks and timbers of first-quality black oak.

  “I am most certain that the duke would confer his best wishes upon you for providing what I need at a most reasonable price,” said the small stocky man in the gray tunic. “His best wishes…”

  Dylert stood at the edge of the center aisle, gesturing toward the racked black oak cuts. “Fine talk, master cabinet maker,” said the mill-master with a gentle laugh, “but cutting lorken or black oak means sharpening the blade for darkness-near every log. Best wishes don’t pay for the work or the time. Nor the wear on the blade.”

  “I’m not asking you to deliver, Dylert. I’m the one paying a wagon to carry it all back to Lydiar.”

  “You haven’t much choice, Erastus. There’s no one in eastern Lydiar who’s taken care to preserve black oak and lorken. You want good lorken, you’ll come to me, or go a fair piece west of here.”

  Erastus offered a shrug. “The duke has insisted on a black-oak-and-lorken chest. I had thought you might understand.”

  “Let the duke pay for it, then,” answered Dylert.

  “I’m already paying for the wagon. Three golds for the wood,” suggested the crafter.

  In the shadows of the wood racks, Cerryl frowned. Erastus’s words felt wrong. Was that because he bargained?

  “Erastus, it’s four golds for that much lorken. That doesn’t include the oak you need for bracing.”

  “You’re a brigand, Dylert, a black-bearded brigand with the smile of a streetwalker and the heart of a mage.”

  Dylert laughed. “You know better than that. Six golds for the lot, and I’ll even throw in some of the pine planks for your apprentices to
work with.”

  Erastus sighed. “You don’t bargain much. How about a few lengths of golden oak as well?”

  “A few,” conceded Dylert.

  “Be generous,” suggested Erastus. “If the duke isn’t grateful, then I will be.”

  “I’d count on your gratitude far more than the duke’s,” answered Dylert. “Far more.”

  “Six golds,” Erastus agreed. “Once the wagon’s loaded, and I’ve seen the wood.”

  “Fair enough. You’ll get the best.”

  “I’ll bring the wagon to the door here.” Erastus gestured.

  The millmaster nodded, then watched as the crafter walked out, passing within a half-dozen cubits of Cerryl.

  Once Erastus was out of the mill, Dylert beckoned toward Cerryl. “What do you want, lad?”

  “Brental sent me. There’s a crack in the second big blade. He said you should know. He and Viental are changing it now.” Cerryl waited.

  “Darkness and demons! First, Erastus and now a cracked blade. That’s a good ten golds for a blade like that.” He shook his head, then fingered his trimmed black-and-silver beard. “Ten golds… where…” His eyes focused on the youth. “You move like a serpent, young fellow. Never saw you until Erastus was leaving. How much did you hear?”

  “Just the part about the duke wanting a black-oak-and-lorken chest, ser. And after that.” Cerryl met the millmaster’s eyes.

  “Well… let it be a lesson to you. Folks always expect that you’ll do more for less if a duke or a great man wants something. Sometimes, it’s like as true. Most times, the great man never heard. Old Erastus there, he was trying to get me to charge him less. You think that he’d be asking a copper less from the duke had I even given him the lorken? Ha!” Dylert snorted. “Now… another blade to be reforged and tempered and cut and sharpened… They don’t think of that when they want the wood cheap. No, they don’t.”

  Cerryl nodded.