The White Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Now you know. Even in Fairhaven, cold iron is the best protection for gold and silver and gems.” Beryal chuckled. “Though fewer try to break that iron here.”

  “What happens to those they catch?”

  “The road.” The woman shrugged. “It’s almost always the road, except for those that offend the mages. Most of them don’t get that far, they say. I wouldn’t know… don’t want to know.” A shiver followed the shrug.

  Beryal didn’t say more, and Cerryl didn’t ask, but he understood the shiver, especially after what he’d already seen… and heard.

  After the jewelry row came the houses behind low whitened granite walls, each with a gate for pedestrians and one for horses and carriages. All the horse gates were open.

  The avenue widened, forming another circle around a bare, stone-paved expanse. Every peddler and merchant in the square hawked from a cart-red carts, green carts, blue carts, green-and-gold carts.

  “No dawdling.” Beryal walked briskly past the pair of white-uniformed guards who surveyed the paved stone expanse and the circle of carts drawn up upon it. Cerryl forced himself not to look at the I guards but to keep his eyes on the carts and the handfuls of people surrounding them.

  “Ser, would you have sea emeralds… or the flame rubies from Southwind?”

  Cerryl shook his head, wrinkling his nose at the oppressive scent of the cloth thrust practically under his nose and stepping back, bumping ,into a square-faced woman, who glared at him.

  “My pardon,” he said quickly and turning.

  “Oil soaps, smooth as a bairn’s cheek…”

  “Elixirs! Get your elixirs here… the best in tinctures of the sea…”

  The apprentice dodged two thin women who bustled toward Beryal and him as if to separate them, then eased closer to Beryal.

  “Where… ?” murmured Beryal to herself, rather than to Cerryl, as ‘ she strode past a blue-and-cream cart piled high with baskets and into a clearer space in the middle of the circular square.

  Cerryl followed, glad to get an uncrowded breath.

  A flash of golden-red hair by a green cart caught Cerryl’s eye, and he forced himself to turn slowly, so slowly he felt as though he were barely moving. The golden-red hair belonged to an older woman-one a good decade older than the girl Cerryl had seen but once in the screeing glass and never dared to seek again. The reddish blonde-haired woman walked briskly away from a cart where roasted fowl turned on a spit, fowl placed there so recently that the skin was still dun and far from golden, and no savory odor filled the square.

  Cerryl glanced sideways at Beryal, who seemed not to have noticed his momentary interest.

  “There.” Beryal walked swiftly toward the red cart and a white-haired woman wrapped in a blue woolen shawl.

  “Spices, the finest spices… spices from Austra, fennelseed and seristar from far Hamor…” The seller stopped as Beryal stepped up to the cart. “Your pleasure, lady? Perhaps some seristar? Or sweetmint leaves?”

  “I might be thinking of peppercorns,” began Beryal. “Were they not too dear.”

  “The best in peppercorns are those from Sarronnyn, and you are most fortunate, for those I have.”

  “I cannot taste the difference. Have you any from Hydlen?”

  “They are poorer. See.” The white-haired woman fumbled with the Pouches on the cart shelf, then extended both hands. “The dark and round ones-those are from Sarronnyn. The wizened ones… from Hydlen.”

  “Plump peppercorns oft be soft.”

  “These are round and firm. See.” The seller placed one in Beryal’s palm.

  Cerryl eased away from the two and toward the gold-and-green cart adjoining the spice peddler’s space. Several knives and daggers were laid out on a cheap cotton velvet cloth of green.

  “Be wanting a short blade, young ser?” The man by the cart was built like a barrel and wore only a tunic in the chill sunlight. Blackened teeth marked his too-friendly smile.

  Cerryl pretended to study the blades, then shook his head.

  “Bronze blades, white-metal blades, iron blades, steel blades-whatever please you,” persisted the seller.

  “They look good,” Cerryl said politely, “too good for a poor apprentice.”

  “This one”-the big man pointed to a dark iron blade less than a span long-“good for eating, cutting in the shop, takes an edge with ease. Only a silver, just a silver.”

  Cerryl shook his head sadly, not that he wanted any sort of iron blade. The darkness within the metal bothered him, for reasons he couldn’t even explain to himself.

  “As you wish, young fellow.” The peddler turned to a brown-bearded man in faded blue trousers and a sheepskin jacket. “You, ser? A skinning knife? The finest in the eastern lands right here…”

  Cerryl slipped back toward Beryal, his eyes traversing the square-no sign of golden-red hair. Why did he keep thinking of the girl in the glass? It had been more than a year-more than two-since he had seen her, and only in a glass yet. He shook his head, but he kept studying the traders’ square while Beryal continued her haggling.

  “You call that cumin? Looks and smells like water-soaked oris seeds.”

  “Alas, my lady, a dry year it was in Delapra.” The seller shrugged. “This is what I have. Five coppers a palm, and a bargain at that.”

  “One, and you do well at that,” countered Beryal.

  Cerryl let a faint smile cross his face as he slowly surveyed the square and waited.

  XXXI

  Cerryl walked slowly down the lesser artisans’ way. His breath puffed from his lips in white clouds, and he found himself hunching into his battered leather jacket, his hands up under the bottom edge to keep them warm. He should have worn his gloves, but Tellis had been so insistent that Cerryl hurry that he hadn’t dared to go back to his room for them.

  He saw that the weavers’ shutters were ajar, and he paused, peering through the narrow opening to see Pattera and her sister working away, Pattera at the big loom, her sister Serai at one of the backstrap looms. As he watched, Pattera tucked the shuttle into a leather bracket on the loom frame and, wrapping a brown shawl around her, scurried toward the door.

  With a faint smile, Cerryl stepped back from the window and turned to wait before continuing toward the tanner’s. The latch clicked, and the door opened.

  “Cerryl… wait, I can spare a moment. Father’s gone to Vergren for some more wool.”

  “Pattera… now that he’s come, would you close the shutters all the way?” called Serai from inside the weaver’s.

  “It wasn’t like that.” The brown-haired girl flushed and looked away from Cerryl, even as she latched the shutters. “I mean… leaving the shutters ajar. I just like to see people go by. Serai doesn’t.”

  “People are different,” Cerryl agreed. “Even sisters.”

  “Especially sisters.” Pattera paused. “Where are you going?”

  “Out to Arkos’s. He’s finished some more of the good vellum that Tellis needs for something.” Cerryl smiled crookedly. “Tellis won’t say for what, but I’d bet he’s going to copy something for the mages. That’s always what they ask for.”

  Pattera nodded. “They want virgin wool, too.”

  “Why? Do you know?” Cerryl had his own suspicions, but he wanted to hear what Pattera had to say.

  “I can walk a little ways with you. Is that all right?” she asked shyly.

  “Of course.”

  “About the wool,” Cerryl prompted, resuming his walk down toward the square, since Arkos’s place was a good ways beyond Fasse’s cabinet shop, well to the south and east.

  “Oh… Father says it’s because the virgin wool is stronger and resists chaos better. There has to be chaos around the mages and what they wear, with all the chaos some of them must handle.” Pattera paused, then added, “Don’t you think so?”

  Cerryl offered a shrug as he walked. “I would guess so. I certainly wouldn’t be the one to say.” His eyes flicked across the bright blue shu
tters of the potter’s shop, firmly closed against the chill, and to the empty square ahead, where the wind blew a small white dust spout across the white granite stones of the thoroughfare.

  “The sheep in Montgren have the best wool-except for the black wool of Recluce, but we couldn’t ever scrape up the coins for that.” Pattera shook her head. “They say it lasts forever.”

  “Tellis says that a good book should last for generations.” Cerryl frowned. “Then he says that the ones used by the white mages never do. When they look at books in the shop, they never touch them.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “I thought so, too,” Cerryl lied.

  “How do you know?” Pattera asked.

  “I’m guessing, in a way,” he admitted. “I’ve never seen them touch one. They ask Tellis or me to show them the book or open it to a page, and if they buy anything, we wrap it so that they don’t touch it.” After a moment, he added, “They must touch them sometimes, but I haven’t seen any one of them do so.”

  “That is strange.”

  Cerryl stopped at the edge of the avenue and looked at the brown-haired weaver. “Do you want to come with me?”

  “I’d like to, but Serai would get mad and tell father.” Pattera grinned. “Sisters are like that.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Cerryl admitted. “I grew up alone.”

  “Father said you were an orphan.”

  “I was raised by my aunt and uncle, and then they died in a fire.” A mage fire, and I don’t know why.

  “Oh… Cerryl, I’m sorry. At least we have father.” Pattera glanced back up the way. “I’d better be going.” With a quick smile, she turned and scurried back toward the shop.

  Cerryl watched for a moment, then waited for a canvas-covered wagon heading out of Fairhaven to pass before crossing the square. He put his hands back under his jacket and began to walk more quickly. At least it wasn’t raining.

  XXXII

  After settling into his jacket and wrapping his blanket around him, Cerryl opened the book-Great Historie of Candar-to the strip of leather that served as his place mark. The worn binding testified to its age, but Tellis had insisted it was the most accurate of the histories. The scrivener had also insisted that Cerryl read the book.

  The apprentice scrivener yawned, but forced himself to look at the pages, clear enough to his night vision in the dimness that he didn’t bother with the candle.

  … yet Relyn was skilled with words and his blade, for the black demon Nylan had given him a mystic blade and an iron hand in return for his own good right hand, which Ryba the evil had sliced off to place Relyn in bondage to Nylan…

  After the battles for the Westhorns, Relyn made his way eastward, beguiling all who would listen with song-gifted words and honeyed phrases.

  … Relyn, traitor as he was to the great heritage of Cyador, not only built the first black Temple east of the Westhorns, but spent his years preaching against the truth of the old Empire.

  Where the first Temple rose is uncertain, for it was rightly burned by Fenardre the Great as an abomination…

  Later, Relyn fled from Gallos through ancient Axalt and came to Montgren and spent many hours with the shepherds who lived there… with him came the teachings of the black demon Nylan and the forbidden songs of Ayrlyn…

  … and Relyn brought them the way of forging the iron that burns chaos and cannot be broken, and the shepherds turned their forests into charcoal and their hills into gaping pits and charnel heaps and wrought the blades that severed souls… and bloody Montgren came into being…

  Cerryl half shook his head and yawned. Montgren bloody? The peaceful land of shepherds and rolling meadows, of fine wool and stillness?

  He rubbed his forehead. He still didn’t understand all the words, but more and more were familiar, and many he could puzzle out from how they were used.

  … in the time after the rebuilding of Jellico, many of those writings were put to the torch, accursed as they were…

  Cerryl rubbed his forehead again. How could writings about what had happened or what someone believed be accursed? He could see how a history could be wrong. Or how what someone believed might upset others, but were people really such fools as to think that words on a page carried a power beyond their meaning?

  Or were they fools? He closed the book gently. If Fenardre the Great had killed all those whose beliefs he opposed and burned their writings, who would know? Especially if he had scriveners write down what he wanted.

  Cerryl shivered. How could he know whether what he read was truth… or what the writer wanted the reader to believe was truth? He was just an apprentice scrivener who had seen very little of the world. He knew about the mines, the sawmill, the trees, something about plants and gardens, and he was learning about books and letters, and a little bit about Fairhaven.

  Had Relyn been an evil man or just someone Fenardre and the whites didn’t like? How could Cerryl ever tell?

  He set the book aside and lay back on his pallet, eyes wide open for a long time before they finally slipped shut.

  XXXIII

  Cerryl set the quill in the holder, then yawned.

  Tellis glanced from his worktable and away from the thin green leather volume on which he was completing the last steps of binding-something Cerryl had seen only intermittently, as though Tellis were keeping it from him. The scrivener looked at his apprentice and the copying desk. “I trust that your yawn is because you were awake late and reading the Great Historic, not because you find the trade book so boring.”

  “I have been reading the Historic,” Cerryl answered, trying not to reveal just how boring he found copying Rules, Laws, and Accompaniments of Trade.

  “And what has it taught you about the founding of Fairhaven?” asked Tellis, straightening, and sweeping a scrap of old velvet over the thin volume.

  “Ser… I’ve not read that far. I’ve just finished reading about Relyn and how he brought iron forging to Montgren…”

  Tellis brought his hand down in a chopping motion. “And that does not tell you about Fairhaven? Cerryl… Cerryl… you must read what is written and what is not written.”

  Cerryl let his face reflect the puzzlement he felt.

  “You have read, then, about how the black demons brought down ancient Cyador and seized all of Candar beyond the mighty Westhorns?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “And how this Relyn started spreading their teachings to the east?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Then… where did the white mages go? Does that not suggest something to you?” Tellis snorted in exasperation.

  “They must have come east and built Fairhaven?”

  “What does the very name Fairhaven suggest?”

  Cerryl nodded, feeling stupid as he realized that Fairhaven effectively meant white haven, or the equivalent.

  “Well?”

  “A place of refuge for the whites,” Cerryl supplied.

  “Oh, young fellow, I’m not angry at you. No one has taught you to think, and a scrivener must learn to think, especially about words and what they mean and where they came from.” Tellis shook his head slowly and sadly. “Words say so much more than anyone supposes. So much more.”

  “Master Tellis?” Cerryl ventured after a moment of silence.

  “Yes?” Tellis’s tone was patient.

  “How can you tell whether what is written in a book is true? I mean, if it’s about something you don’t know?”

  Tellis smiled. “There may yet be hope for you. A good question that is, a very good one, and one for which there exists no simple answer. Still… I will try.” The scrivener fingered his bare chin for a moment. “First… nothing which is written tells all the truth, even if every word be true, because the scrivener chooses which parts of the truth to include and which to exclude.”

  Cerryl nodded. That made sense, but it didn’t help much.

  “So you must always keep in mind that some of the truth is absent. Then, you must ask
if the words that the writer used are in accord with each other. That is why I have my doubts about many parts of The Naturale Historic of Candar. The book is written pleasantly enough, if that be the only guide, but,” Tellis frowned, “there are sections that do not agree. It records that the first druids slew all the armies of Cyador at the Battle of Lornth. How could that be when the historian earlier wrote that Nylan forsook the way of the blade and when he went barehanded into the forest of Naclos after the battle? Or that Ayrlyn slew scores, yet was a healer? There hasn’t ever been a healer who could lift a blade.” The scrivener snorted. As the snort passed, a wistful look flitted across his face and vanished.

  “Could things have been different then?” asked Cerryl.

  “It is possible, but,” emphasized Tellis, “but… people and their traits change seldom, and it is more likely that the historian erred than that people changed in great measure.”

  Cerryl concealed a frown, attempting to look as though he were considering the master scrivener’s words. At the same time, questions raced through his mind. The white mages were jealous of their powers-did that mean they always had been? If people truly didn’t change… was that why Candar was little different from in the days of Cyador-with one white empire replacing another, one black power replacing another?

  “How do you tell a truly good ruler?” he blurted, as much to cover his confusion as to seek an answer.

  “That is another good question.” A crooked smile crossed Tellis’s lips. “And one even more difficult to answer. A good ruler may not be loved by his people, for all people have appetites greater than their abilities and must be restrained. That is one task of a ruler. He must also ensure that the roads are good, and that enough grain is stored away for times of famine and pestilence. Both tasks require taking from the people, and seldom do we like those who take from us.” Tellis picked up a thin wisp of leather or vellum, possibly a trimming from the binding frame, and tossed it in the direction of the waste bin. The scrivener missed, and Cerryl knew he’d have to pick it up later.