The White Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “… the sewer student… say he’s spent an eight-day between two grates-two nearby grates.” Kesrik looked up and smiled blandly. Beside the stocky blond sat a redheaded youth in a new student mage’s tunic, the red stripes at the end of the sleeves bright and fresh. On the other side of the new student sat Bealtur.

  Cerryl smiled back at Kesrik and continued toward the serving table. His stomach growled after the long day.

  “… be a long year for him.” Bealtur didn’t bother to look in Cerryl’s direction.

  “… supposed to clean at least one collector all the way,” murmured Kesrik. “At least one.”

  Myral hadn’t mentioned that; he’d just told Cerryl to clean it out as well as he could and stop by every morning to report on his progress.

  Every morning, the rotund mage had answered Cerryl’s few questions and repeated the same instructions, not appearing either pleased or displeased.

  Cerryl concentrated on filling his platter with stewed fowl, still checking for chaos in the food and finding none. Then he stepped toward the table with Faltar and Lyasa.

  “They say you’re having a hard time of it,” Faltar said quietly as Cerryl slipped onto the stool.

  “Trying to…” Cerryl paused, wondering if he should even mention the means. “Yes, it’s hard, harder than I would have thought.” He took a bite out of the hot crusty bread.

  “No one has an easy time in the sewers,” said Lyasa. “I didn’t.”

  “… finding that out…” mumbled Cerryl, finding himself gobbling down his food.

  “It takes a lot of energy, and you’re going to be eating a great deal more.”

  Faltar glanced from Cerryl to Lyasa.

  “It just does,” said Lyasa. “You’ll see.”

  Cerryl would have smiled, if he hadn’t had a mouthful of stewed fowl, at the way Lyasa also avoided mentioning the use of chaos-fire.

  “It’s hard work, and I imagine Cerryl got the filthiest secondary in the system.” Lyasa popped a last morsel of bread into her mouth.

  Faltar brushed blond hair off his forehead. “You two are keeping secrets. I can tell.”

  “When you go to work on the sewers, you can judge that.” Lyasa turned to Cerryl. “Did you know that the Council has worked out a trade agreement with both Certis and Sligo?”

  Cerryl decided that Lyasa wasn’t just changing the subject, but thought he should know about the trade agreement, not that he knew anything about trade. “And? The way you say that means there’s something unusual about it.”

  “They’ve put a tax on goods from Recluce-wool mostly, I’d guess.”

  That didn’t help Cerryl much.

  “We don’t need their wool,” said Faltar. “Montgren has plenty of sheep.”

  “Spidlar doesn’t. Gallos doesn’t. Kyphros does, but not northern Gallos.”

  Cerryl broke off a chunk of the still-warm bread, then took a sip of the ale. “That should mean something.”

  “Geography…” suggested Lyasa.

  Cerryl mentally called up the map Jeslek had required. “Gallos doesn’t have any ports-except Ruzor, and that’s a long way from Fenard.”

  “The south is Kyphros. It may be part of Gallos, but the Kyphans don’t think so. Anyway, Ruzor’s no good except for the south, and they don’t need wool there anyway, not a lot. Besides, the Analerians have their own sheep.” Lyasa shrugged, as if the implications were obvious. “Sterol and Jeslek both spoke in the meeting… that’s what I overheard.”

  “They’re worried about Recluce.”

  “Cerryl, the Guild has been worried about Recluce since the time of Creslin and Jenred the Traitor.” Faltar laughed, then turned to Lyasa. “What about Recluce?”

  Lyasa lifted her shoulders again, then dropped them. “I don’t know. Not for sure, but the prefect of Gallos doesn’t listen much to Sverlik, and the Spidlarian Traders’ Council has never allowed a white mage into Spidlaria. Not in years, anyway.”

  “Trouble in the west, then?” asked Cerryl. “With the traders preferring to use the sea and Recluce?”

  “And not to pay road taxes to Fairhaven,” suggested Faltar.

  “I don’t know for sure.”

  Cerryl had a feeling Lyasa did, but he didn’t press the issue as he looked at his empty platter. He stood. “I still have to study for Esaak.”

  “You have to study while you’re on sewers?” asked Lyasa, pushing jet-black hair back over her ears.

  “The most honored Jeslek informed me that I was woefully deficient in mathematicks.” Cerryl laughed softly. “I still am, Esaak informs me.”

  “He so informs all,” said Faltar dryly.

  “Even so…” Cerryl gestured toward the corridor to his cell.

  As he left the meal hall, he could hear Bealtur murmur, “Yes… go study, for all the good it will do…”

  Once in his cell, Cerryl picked up Naturale Mathematicks and dutifully opened the book, taking out the slate and chalk stick. Three pages and a dozen problems were all he managed before his head was swimming.

  He closed the book and stood. He began walking in a narrow circle in his room. He was tired but not that sleepy, and if he tried to sleep, he’d just wake up in the middle of the night. Besides, he still hadn’t followed up on Myral’s-and everyone’s-suggestions about light and chaos-fire. He paused. That wasn’t right. Various mages had suggested he study light. None had linked it with chaos-fire. Was that another of the unmentioned links or bits of knowledge that he’d assumed were tied together?

  Light, trade, Recluce, sewers, mathematicks, Recluce… Cerryl found himself rubbing his forehead. His eyes went to Colors of White, then toward the Mathematicks book. Finally, he lifted Colors and slowly opened it.

  Light? What did it say about light? He flipped through the sections, trying to recall what he had read, the pages that had dealt with light. He found one section and read it, then frowned.

  Cerryl studied the words again… There was something there.

  … light, being the spirit and manifestation of chaos, has neither order nor more than minimal cohesion… but embodies all the power of primal chaos in a manifestation that must be weaker than its source in order for those objects on which it falls to survive…

  That made sense… in a vague sort of way. He closed his eyes and tried to think, then opened them as he found himself jerking as if he were about to fall asleep.

  Darkness knew, he was tired enough. He read the next few lines.

  … the challenge facing any mage is to strengthen the power of chaos embodied in light without reducing light to mere streams of color without true power…

  Mere streams of color without power… did that mean some streams of colored light had true power? How could that be? His eyes closed, and he forced them open.

  The implication was that light from the sun was less powerful than it could be… and somehow that was tied into separating-or strengthening light by separating it into different beams of color.

  Maybe tomorrow…

  He barely managed to pull off his boots and hang up his whites before collapsing onto his bed.

  He didn’t remember waking up or even eating before he went to the secondary collector to begin his cleaning duties once again, but was that because he had been so tired?

  Still… he found himself back underground, standing in a long and slimy sewer… a secondary collector, and the oozing scum from the drainage way seemed to grab at his boots, with armlike branches that clutched.

  Cerryl tried to wield chaos-fire, but his firebolts were but small globes of flame that sputtered across the greened bricks without searing them clean. Each step found him trying to yank his boots free. Even when he did not move, he had to lift his boots and kick them free of the clutching ooze and slime.

  He glanced over his shoulder, but the white lancers had vanished and so had their lamp. And the grate at the top of the steps was again closed, locked with a bronze lock that bore double order and chaos twisted around it.
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br />   Cerryl felt heat at his back, and he turned to the space he had been cleaning. A fireball of chaos abruptly swelled up before him on the brick walkway. Lines of light, light that burned like chaos-fire, but more brightly, flared from the chaos ball, and his tunic burst into flame, and he could feel his face blister and the lances of light rip through him like spears of fire.

  Cerryl bolted up in his bed abruptly. Sweat poured from his forehead. It had only been a dream, a realistic dream, but only a dream.

  Still… he could feel chaos-and something else-nearby. His eyes and senses scanned his cell, but no one was within the room. He massaged his forehead. It had to be the dream.

  After a moment, he padded barefoot across the cold stone to the door, lifted the latch, and eased the door to the corridor barely ajar. His eyes said that no one was about in the darkness well before dawn, yet his senses indicated that someone was, just past his door. Then Faltar’s door eased open and closed.

  Cerryl swallowed. He had seen no one, not even Faltar. Yet someone had passed. He sniffed the air. A scent… a faint fragrance… somehow familiar… sandalwood and something.

  The only mage who wore any fragrance was Anya-at least the only one he knew. But… Anya-going to Faltar’s cell? Why? Faltar was only a student mage, and probably a good year from becoming a full mage, perhaps longer, since Faltar had been in the halls longer than Cerryl but still hadn’t even done anything in the sewers.

  Anya… why? Why was she bedding-or seeing-Faltar in secret? And what else had he missed? Cerryl rubbed his chin, feeling a few signs of the beard he had wondered if he would ever grow. What had Anya done to avoid being seen?

  Light? Had she used order to wrap light around her?

  Abruptly, he realized his feet were chilled and getting colder, and that he stood with his door ajar. He eased the door shut and the latch back in place as silently as he could, and climbed back into his bed, his thoughts spinning.

  Every time he turned, there was light-some aspect of light-and he still didn’t understand… not well enough. Colors of White offered oblique hints… and little more. Myral offered hints… and little more.

  With a sigh, Cerryl pulled the thin blanket around him.

  LXVI

  Cerryl glanced through the gloom of the secondary sewer runnel at the line on the bricks where the slime began, then concentrated on raising his order shield and then channeling chaos. His nose twitched at the noisome odors rising from the scum on the section of drainage way to his right.

  As in his dream, a globule of chaos-fire barely arced out before him, burning clear a patch of bricks no more than two cubits across, leaving the slightest of white residues. If you can’t do better than that, it will be a long day, and seasons in the sewers.

  He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. The second time, he forced his shields down at an angle.

  Whhssstt! The chaos-fire sprayed across the bricks, almost like liquid, scouring a patch nearly twice the size of the first.

  Behind him, Ullan nervously clunked his spear butt on the bricks of the walkway, and the muted thunks echoed around Cerryl. The student mage paused, not wanting to say anything… but the sound was distracting.

  “Stop it,” whispered Dientyr to Ullan.

  Cerryl waited until the echoes died away, and then turned the chaos-fire on the tunnel wall across the drainage way.

  Whhhssttt! This time the fire arced too low, barely scouring the bricks a cubit above the water level.

  Cerryl frowned. He’d done so much better before he’d started thinking about how to handle and direct the chaos-fire. Why was that? He knew he didn’t want to spew fire wildly-or even half-wildly. He’d seen how little good that had done for the fugitive back at Dylert’s mill.

  “Less order… more chaos…” he murmured, and tried a third time. The results were better but not much-a patch on the walkway perhaps three cubits long and one wide.

  Doggedly, he kept at it, slowly scouring the bricks on the walkway and the wall. When he had a section nearly ten cubits long cleaned, he turned the fire on the scum in the drainage way. A quick-running fire burned across the surface, leaving the turbid and slow-flowing water free of the scum and an odor that mixed ashes, dung, and worse.

  Slowly, he cleared the bricks, noting almost absently that he had to take longer and longer breaks between each effort… and that Ullan had started tapping the lance on the bricks again. He glanced back at an for a moment.

  “Sorry, ser.” Ullan bobbed his head, and the thin mustache twitched.

  Without speaking, Cerryl turned back to the work at hand.

  Once, as a firebolt seared a chunk of branch, Dientyr whispered to Ullan again. “Stop banging that lance. He’s no Jeslek, but he’s got enough flame to fry us.”

  No Jeslek? Not yet. Cerryl tightened his lips for a moment, then just let the fire fly.

  WHHHSSSTTTT! The fire cascaded into the tunnel wall across the drainage way and splattered in all directions, scouring clear an irregular patch nearly ten cubits long and half again as high.

  “Ulppp!” The gulp from Ullan was followed by stillness.

  Cerryl smiled to himself, but the expression faded quickly. Somehow… somehow, he had to manage to combine control with the relaxed flow of chaos… somehow. And that was hard when he still didn’t really understand what he was doing.

  Recalling what Myral had said, Cerryl tried to concentrate on separating chaos into a stream of red light and one of green… but that wasn’t what he got. Instead, three separate beams flared-yellow, blue, and red-flashing across the slime on the walkway, leaving a hint of steam but not scouring the glazed bricks clean.

  “… was that?” murmured Ullan.

  “Shut up… don’t know, and don’t want to find out,” muttered Dientyr. “Get us both turned into ash.”

  “Ooooffff.”

  Even without turning, Cerryl had the feeling that Ullan had gotten an elbow, or something, in the gut. He glanced at the faint miasma of steam that dissipated as he watched. Three colors?

  He took another deep breath and faced the wall across the drainage way.

  LXVII

  Esaak’s fat hand flew across the slate, leaving behind a line of numbers “You see? If you take the area of the cross-section… Bah!” Esaak stared at Cerryl. “Do you not see?”

  Cerryl was having great trouble, not with understanding why it was necessary, but with Esaak’s explanations.

  “You do not see why the study of mathematicks is necessary despite all I have said… despite the evidence of Fairhaven.” The heavyset mage gave a deep sigh, and his wattled jowls wobbled.

  “Ser…”

  “You are cleaning the sewers, are you not?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Does the water, when the sewer is clean, not flow below the drainage way?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “How did the engineer who built that secondary tunnel know how big to build it? Did he just guess?”

  Cerryl felt blank. He knew that the engineer couldn’t have guessed. Esaak wouldn’t have asked the question, but why was the older mage asking such an obvious question? “He used mathematicks.”

  “Brilliant. Now… how and why?”

  How? That Cerryl didn’t know. “He used mathematicks to make sure it didn’t fall apart or wasn’t too small. I understand that, ser. It’s the formulas and the way to manipulate numbers I have trouble with.”

  “Cerryl… you are so bright, and so stupid.” Esaak wiped his sweating forehead. “No… no one ever taught you anything, did they?”

  “No, ser.”

  “How did you learn to read? Jeslek and Sterol say you read well-at least history and maps.”

  “I persuaded a tutor of my master’s daughter to teach me the letters, and I worked at her books-those she would lend me. Tellis the scrivener helped me some later.”

  “It is too bad they taught you nothing of numbers. What a waste. We will do our best, though it is late in your life f
or such.” Esaak paused. “This formula-it shows…” Esaak paused. “You know a watering trough? Well, the bottom of the sewer tunnel is like a trough…”

  Cerryl forced himself to concentrate, hoping that he would still understand after he left Esaak’s chambers and headed out to the sewer again.

  LXVIII

  Cerryl rapped on the brass-bound white oak door.

  “You may come in, Cerryl,” called Myral.

  As normal for cold mornings, the older mage was sipping hot spiced cider from an earthenware mug. The shutters were closed, but wispy glimmers of bright sunlight flickered through hairline openings in the frame, glimmers that seemed to move with the breeze that brushed the tower. Myral had a white woolen lap robe across his knees, although Cerryl felt the days were getting warmer.

  Myral followed Cerryl’s eyes to the lap robe. “The days might seem warmer, but I’m colder. I’m tempted to ask Sterol to send me to Ruzor, except…” He shook his head and forced a smile. “It’s warm there all year.”

  “Some would say it is hot there.” What had Myral almost said?

  “These bones could use some heat. At times I would not mind the heat of the Stone Hills.” Myral took another sip of cider.

  Cerryl glanced at the small hearth, where a handful of coals still glowed.

  “The coals provide more lasting heat than a fire.” Myral cleared his throat. “Your progress?”

  “Another thirty cubits yesterday, ser, more or less.” Cerryl stopped, then added, “I had a problem the other day.”

  “With the lancers or you? Be precise, Cerryl.” Myral frowned. “What kind of problem?”

  “With me. I was trying to be more exact. I was trying to direct the chaos-fire, and the harder I tried, the less force I had.” Cerryl swallowed. “Ah… then I tried to think more about light… the way you said, and I got three flashes of light at the same time-red and yellow and blue. They barely scorched the slime. But whatever it was I did, I couldn’t do it again.”