The White Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Cerryl turned over once more and looked through the darkness at the ceiling beams again. He wanted to sigh, but what good would that have done? He could almost feel the white-dusted volume calling him.

  Tellis hadn’t said no one else could read it, but that no one else was supposed to copy the book. Cerryl winced at the self-deception. No one else was supposed to handle it because the white mages didn’t want anyone besides a craftmaster they trusted to read it. A craftmaster who was the son of a mage?

  Sooner or later, they’ll find out that you can handle chaos a little ..-if they don’t know already. Wouldn’t it be better to learn what you can now? Momentarily ignoring the thought, he turned over on the pallet. Then he turned back. Some moments later, he found himself looking at the ceiling beams once more.

  Finally, he sat up and swung his feet over the side of his bed, not letting them touch the cold stone of the floor for a moment. Then he stood. He eased open his own door and surveyed the dark and silent courtyard. The sole sounds were those of the breeze and the clopping hoofs and creaking of a wagon somewhere down on the avenue.

  Cerryl took a deep and silent breath. Wearing only the jacket and his smallclothes, he padded noiselessly across the courtyard. The door to the common room scraped, but only slightly, as he closed it behind him and eased around the table and through the kitchen.

  Cerryl slipped into the workroom, not lighting a candle, and trusting his own night vision. The key slid from its recess beside the door into his fingers, and the cabinet lock barely snicked as he turned the key arid opened the door. The book itself lay in the first drawer, half-illuminated to Cerryl’s senses by the traces of chaos power dusting it. For the moment, he left it there untouched.

  None of the white mages would be able to tell that Cerryl had read it, because his own faint chaos power traces would be obscured by their far vaster power. Still, he rinsed his hands in the cool water remaining in the pitcher, wanting to reduce further the faintest residue of the chaos energy that seemed to flow within him and out through his bare fingers. After drying them on his own towel-still damp from when he had washed before dinner-he turned back and lifted the book from the drawer and carried it to the copy stand, setting it down and opening it roughly halfway through, toward where he thought the second section might begin.

  In the dimness, even with his night vision, he had to strain to read the words on the page to which he had turned.

  A mage must use order to channel chaos, for nothing else can contain the pure flame of chaos, yet he must not be constrained by that order, lest his power to use chaos for good be turned to naught…

  Cerryl flipped through more pages. He wanted answers, not philosophy.

  … there be two types of healing, the use of order to strengthen the flesh and the use of chaos to destroy all manner of illnesses arising from whence the elements of the world mortify the flesh… in the second, the mage must ascertain the very source of the mortification… his energies must but destroy that source and none other, for any other destruction will most assuredly destroy also the patient…

  Cerryl wanted to beat his forehead. How was he supposed to concentrate chaos energies inside someone? He understood the ideas, even those he hadn’t known about. Technique was the question, not philosophizing about the technique. He flipped through several more pages.

  … those marshaling the fires of the air must understand that the aether itself acts as though it were a function of order, pressing in upon the energies of chaos focused by the mage…

  That didn’t tell him anything, either. At least he didn’t think it did His forehead was damp, despite the chill night air in the workroom but he read on.

  … so that even a line of chaos fire will reassemble itself into a globe of such fundamental fire when hurled through its own power over even the shortest of distances…

  Cerryl forced himself to keep reading. Maybe he just didn’t know enough. Maybe.

  How long he read-that he had no idea, except that his head felt as though it were twirling on his shoulders and filled with burning sawdust when he replaced the book in the cabinet and relocked it. The key went back into its recess, and he retraced his silent steps back to his room.

  He closed the door and looked through the darkness at his pallet, frowning. He felt as though someone were observing him, yet nothing moved, nothing offered the slightest of sounds, except the wind.

  Finally, with a shiver, he slipped under the blanket, realizing that his feet were like blocks of ice. He shivered again, and might have once more, except his eyes were too heavy.

  XXXIX

  From his makeshift copy post at the end of the worktable, Cerryl looked away from the propped-up copy of Herbes and Their Selfsame Remedies and stifled a yawn. The nighttime reading was taking its toll, particularly late in the day, and yet he dared not yawn around Tellis. Not too much, anyway.

  “Sleepy again, I see,” observed the master scrivener from the copy desk where he labored over Colors of White. “You mayhap spending time with the Historic?”

  “I have been reading,” answered Cerryl. “There is much I don’t understand.” His nose wrinkled at the faint smell of some substance that had worked its way into the worn surface of the worktable-or was it the discarded oak galls festering in the bottom of the waste bin?

  “Then you should ask,” ventured Tellis, his eyes back on Colors of White, his fingers steady as he replicated the letters on the virgin vellum. “What do you find hard to understand?”

  Cerryl dipped his own quill and copied for a moment before replying. “There is so much.” He paused, ensuring the quill was well clear of the vellum before he spoke. “There are mentions of iron birds that brought the white way to Candar, but little is said of the time before Cyador.”

  “I thought you had questions about matters difficult to understand.” Tellis continued to copy, his eyes on the book, the quill nearly a blur under fingers swift and sure.

  “Those as well, master Tellis.” Cerryl nodded, then copied another few words, his thoughts jumbled as he tried to recall something he could claim was confusing.

  “Such as?” prompted Tellis.

  “Well, there are so many things, but I do not understand about Westwind. How could anyone live on the Roof of the World? No one lives there today, but the histories say it was even colder then, yet Westwind prospered until it got warmer.” Cerryl wanted to smile to himself at coming up with the question. Instead, he dipped the quill and resumed copying.

  “Oh, Cerryl.” Tellis actually sighed. “You read, and you understand the words, and yet you do not see what is before you. When the winters were colder, then only the angels could bear the Roof of the World for much of the year, and they did not have to spend so much gold and effort to defend themselves. Few could reach their citadel. After the great change, when the years got warmer, then the western lands thought about what had once been theirs, and they sought to reclaim those domains, for the warmer weather made the summers in the lowlands harder on the flocks and herds and the green grasses of the highlands more attractive. The Roof of the World was easier to reach for more of the year, and the guards were stretched thinner. Do you not see?”

  “When you put it that way, master Tellis, it is clear enough, but that is not the way the Historic reads.” Cerryl frowned as he noted the fractional widening of his letters. He wiped the quill’s nib clean and took out the penknife to sharpen the point.

  “The Historic is written for men who think, not for those who wish every word explained.”

  Although Tellis’s voice was mild, Cerryl winced. He supposed he deserved the reprimand. He tried the reshaped nib on his palimpsest then nodded at the letter width.

  “You are younger than your years in your thoughts and far older in your heart,” Tellis added. “I can do little for your heart, but for Dylert’s sake I will press you to think. Another puzzling question-a better one?”

  Cerryl did not answer immediately, stifling a yawn once more.


  “No matter how tired you are, Cerryl, you must always keep your thoughts and wits about you.” After a moment, the scrivener added, “In Fairhaven, especially.”

  Cerryl looked down, trying to dredge up another question, a better one. After what seemed far too long, he spoke. “Nowhere does it say why the black mages can control the winds. The white mages can create fire, and I know fire creates drafts, but…” He let the question hang.

  “That is a better question,” said Tellis.

  Cerryl had hoped so. He covered his mouth with the back of his free hand. Was it the bitter odor seeping around the writing board he had laid over the battered surface? Or just his own tiredness?

  “The great winds are spawned, we are told, in the cold places of the world, above the Roof of the World and in the far north. Leastwise, that is where the great winds seem to come from. The black mages, as their ancestors the black angels, are creatures of the cold and, hence, are closer to the chill and the wind, while the white mages come from the warmth of the sun and hold to mastery of flame and prosperity.” Tellis nodded at his explanation.

  “But it takes fire to forge iron, and the white mages cannot bear its touch,” countered Cerryl.

  “Touch cold iron sometime, and feel it suck all heat out of you.” Tellis smiled. “Remember, nothing is as it seems, and though I do my best to instruct you, there is much beyond what even a master scrivener knows, even one raised with the education I was fortunate to receive.”

  Cerryl covered his mouth again, wishing he did not have to yawn so much.

  “A good thing it is we are near finished for the day.” Tellis glanced at Cerryl and shook his head. “You go. A quick nap will do you good. Beryal or Benthann will knock on your door. No reading-a nap, dinner, and a good night’s slumber. Tomorrow I’ll be at the tower, for they want a copyist, and you must speed copying the Herbes book. Nivor asked about our progress yesterday.”

  “Yes, ser.” Cerryl nodded politely. The herbal book wasn’t totally boring, but he did not find it nearly so interesting as even the Historic which he read periodically in order to answer Tellis’s questions.

  “Off with you.”

  Cerryl closed the Herbes book, cleaned the quill, and stoppered the ink then washed his hands. Tellis did not look up from his copying of The Colors of White.

  “‘Dinner won’t be that long,” Beryal announced from the kitchen as Cerryl passed through the common room and stepped out the back door into the courtyard.

  “Thank you, Beryal.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve as he stood for a moment in the light and cooling breeze, a breeze that carried the scent of wet wool from the alleyway.

  Cerryl took a step, then another, and stopped, looking around from the middle of the courtyard. He glanced toward the rear gate, confident he would see Pattera there. The space was empty. He frowned, certain that someone had been watching him.

  After a moment, he turned back toward the main part of the house, but no one stood in the doorway to the common room. He glanced back at the gate, and then at the side door to the room Tellis and Benthann shared. The doors were closed, and the gateway empty.

  Slowly, he walked to his room, but the feeling of being watched continued as he opened his door. The room was empty.

  Abruptly as it had come, the feeling of being watched vanished. Cerryl shuddered as he closed the door.

  With the chill in his bones, all thought of sleep vanished. He checked the shutters-closed tightly. Then, almost furtively, Cerryl eased the screeing glass from behind the wooden panel he had loosened, leaving his books there.

  Could he? He looked down at the silver-rimmed glass, seeing the thin-faced reflection of a youth with barely a hint of a beard-if that. Not even a man yet, and why was he even thinking about using the glass? His eyes went to the closed shutters. Yet he had to do something. More and more, he felt that everyone else pushed him, directed him, that everyone else had the answers and that he would have fewer and fewer choices, especially if he waited until he got older.

  He glanced back down at the glass, then frowned. Did he dare? Did he not dare? Was it the girl with the red-blond hair? Or the redhead?

  He should have given up on the girl in green, yet he kept thinking about her. Why? How could a scrivener’s apprentice aspire to any consort?

  “Consort?” He barely murmured the word. What an idiotic notion! He couldn’t rightly aspire to being a white mage, for all his talent and his secret study. He couldn’t even aspire to great wealth, such as that shown by Muneat.

  He pushed back those thoughts, swallowed, and looked down at the mirror. As he concentrated, surprisingly the white mists formed and cleared.

  The young woman sat at a writing desk, a golden oak desk in a small room. The walls were hung with green silks, and behind her was a high bed covered with blue-green silks and pillows. The oiled gold oak window shutters were closed.

  Quill pen in her hand, she looked down at whatever she wrote. Then she set the quill in the holder. Abruptly, she frowned.

  She was older, Cerryl could tell. Then, so was he. Her face crinkled into a frown, and she glanced up from the writing desk, her eyes going in one direction, then another.

  She stood and walked to the window, then turned, her eyes going to the glass on the wall.

  Abruptly, Cerryl released his hold on the glass. She’d known she was being watched, but how?

  Even so, he could feel heat radiating from his glass, as though someone had thrown chaos-fire at it just as he had broken off his viewing. He wiped his forehead, suddenly feeling even more tired.

  Quickly, as though he feared he were being observed by some other scrier, he slipped the silver-rimmed mirror back into its hiding place. After a moment, he took a deep breath, relieved that the feeling of being watched had not returned. He’d gotten away with using the glass.

  This time, a small voice in his head reminded him. This time.

  With a brief smile, he pulled off his boots and lay down on the pallet, his eyes closing almost as soon as he stretched out.

  Almost immediately, he found himself walking across a high-vaulted room, a hall really, where the ceiling was supported by fluted white stone columns. The room was empty, yet it was not.

  “You… you don’t belong here, scrivener’s apprentice. He will turn you to ashes if you stay.”

  The voice was sultry, but Cerryl couldn’t make out the face. He turned, but there was no one beside him.

  “I won’t be seen, not if I don’t wish to be. We whites control the light, you know. If you were worth anything, you could, too. In little ways, anyway.” The unseen laugh was cruel, as he remembered from somewhere.

  Thrap!

  “Come on, you sleepy apprentice. Dinner be awaiting!”

  Cerryl struggled out of the whitish fog. Had the redheaded white mage really been in his dreams? He hadn’t seen her, but the voice had belonged to her. How could he forget that voice? He shivered.

  “Cerryl!”

  “I’m coming,” he rasped. “I’m coming.” His head felt as though it were being squeezed in the nipping press.

  “Good thing you are.” Benthann’s voice faded away as he struggled into a sitting position and pulled on his boots.

  After a moment, Cerryl stood, almost staggering as the pain of the headache came and went. He gathered himself together and made his way from his room, across the courtyard, and inside into the common room.

  “Did you get a nap?” Tellis looked up from the burkha steaming on his platter.

  “Yes, ser. You were right. I was tired.” Cerryl slid onto his end of the bench, careful not to get too close to Beryal. He broke off a chunk of the dark bread and set it on the edge of his platter, then used the ladle to serve himself a portion of the hot-mint brown stew. “This smells good.”

  “Always does, and you always say it does.” Beryal laughed. The apprentice shrugged and scooped up a mouthful of stew with the bread, trying not to gulp it down.

  “Be s
ummer before too long, real summer.” Tellis grunted, then served himself more of the burkha.

  “It was hot today,” Cerryl said, taking a long swallow of water, still half amazed that the water in Fairhaven was fit to drink.

  “Be hotter yet in an eight-day or so. Then people be out in the streets all the time.” Beryal snorted. “Too hot to stay inside.”

  “I was standing in the courtyard this afternoon, and I know someone was looking at me.” Benthann turned to Beryal. “Tellis and Cerryl were both in the workroom, and you were at the market. When I looked up and down the alley, no one was there.” She frowned. “Hasn’t been the first time in the last eight-day, either.”

  “Swore I could have heard someone in the back alley last night.” Beryal’s eyes lifted from the crockery to Cerryl. “Did you hear anything?”

  “I fell asleep trying to read the Historie.” Cerryl managed a sheepish expression and dropped his eyes. He had fallen asleep over the Historie more than once.

  “Lad…” Tellis cleared his throat.

  “Even your dutiful apprentice can’t always stay awake over those musty books.” Benthann laughed. “Proves he’s a normal young fellow after all.”

  “He’s normal, all right.” A faint smile crossed Beryal’s lips.

  Cerryl flushed.

  Benthann laughed. “A scrivener can’t fall asleep over books,” announced Tellis, “normal or not.”

  “You’re a spoilsport.” Benthann offered an overfull pout. “Eat,” ordered Beryal. Cerryl followed her orders, partly because it was easier, especially with his headache, and partly because he was still hungry.

  After dinner, Tellis and Benthann vanished into their room, and after he helped Beryal-silently, his thoughts still on the girl in green and the power she had almost thrown through the glass at him-Cerryl crossed the courtyard to the rear gate, then walked toward the street. The girl-except she was a woman now-or her family had coins, but not so many, he suspected, as Muneat. Did anyone really need all those coins, all those silks?