Outcasts of Order

by L. E. Modesitt Jr

  “It’s too deep,” she murmured.

  “The chaos around the bone, you mean?”

  She nodded.

  “I can do a little, I think.”

  “Not too much,” added Margrena from beside Beltur.

  “Because of the natural…?” asked Beltur, not wanting to use the word chaos, feeling that would upset the man, who looked to be perhaps a few years older than Beltur.

  Margrena nodded.

  Once more setting down the basket whose contents he had yet to use, Beltur eased free order into the ugliest reddish-white areas around the bone ends. At least, that was what he sensed. When he finished, he looked to the man. “That should help some.”

  “It … doesn’t hurt, quite so much.” After a moment, the man added, “I didn’t know there were men who were healers.”

  “Beltur is both a mage and a healer,” said Margrena. “There aren’t many who are both.”

  “You’re fortunate,” added Jessyla.

  Beltur wouldn’t have gone that far. He worried whether the free order would be enough, but he’d had the feeling that using any more than he had would have caused too much disruption of the natural chaos. So much of this is feel … and you have so little experience. As it was, he might have tried too hard without Margrena’s gentle warning.

  “Try to breathe easily,” said Margrena, motioning Jessyla toward the fifth and last pallet bed in the chamber.

  Beltur reclaimed the basket and followed.

  The graybeard in the fifth bed lay on one side, half moaning, half snoring, as if every breath took a great effort. Beltur could tell that it did, and that there was little any of them could do. He stepped back and looked to Jessyla, barely shaking his head.

  Margrena joined them, murmuring, “Let him sleep. If he’s fortunate, he’ll slip away.”

  When the three left the chamber, Margrena immediately turned to Beltur. “Did that take too much effort? With the consumptive?”

  Beltur shook his head. “I could do it all with free order. That’s not as hard.”

  Margrena frowned.

  “You pointed that out to me a time ago. Natural order comes from us. Free order doesn’t.”

  “You can tell the difference?”

  This time Beltur was the one confused. “You can’t?”

  She shook her head. “Order is order.” She paused. “Except to you, it’s not.”

  “From what you said, I thought all mages and healers…”

  “I don’t know about mages, but I don’t know any healers who can tell the difference between kinds of order.”

  “But you can tell the difference between wound chaos and flux chaos and natural chaos.”

  “It doesn’t feel any different to me,” replied Margrena. “It’s where it is. Does it feel different to you?”

  Beltur considered what Margrena said, and she was right, at least mostly, because natural chaos was deeper within the body and bones. He’d never thought of it that way because he’d sensed the difference in feeling a difference he felt like color.

  “Beltur?” asked Margrena gently.

  “I was thinking about what you said. Yes, the various kinds of order and chaos feel different to me, partly almost in colors and shades.”

  “I told you that—” began Jessyla.

  “Later, dear. Later.” Margrena shook her head. “Not here.” She looked to Beltur. “Not now.”

  Another thought crossed Beltur’s mind. “There aren’t any pallets in the hall up here. Only on the first floor.”

  “That’s because those who need them are too weak to climb the steps. The Council won’t let them stay overnight, anyway. Not if there aren’t beds enough. People sleeping in the hall spread the chaos and corruption.”

  “Do they have anywhere to go?”

  “Some do. Some don’t. The Council says it’s not up to them to provide housing. There’s no point in talking about it. That won’t change anything. We need to go through the other chambers up here.” Margrena walked toward the next door.

  She never reached it, because Klarisia appeared at the top of the staircase, gesturing frantically. The three followed her down the steps to a chamber in the middle of the building, listening.

  “… young woman struggled in. She’s been badly beaten, and she’s large with child, and she’s having severe contractions…”

  “Is she bleeding?” asked Margrena.

  “There’s some seepage, but I don’t have a good feeling about her,” said Klarisia as she reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the main lower corridor. “This way.”

  As the last one to enter the small room, even from yards away, Beltur could sense the wound chaos of the bruises around the outside of the woman’s enlarged abdomen. She lay on a slightly raised pallet bed, with another, black-haired healer whom Beltur had not met standing beside her.

  “The baby’s in the birth canal…” offered the black-haired healer, mouthing, “The bleeding’s increasing…”

  Klarisia nodded.

  Margrena motioned for Beltur and Jessyla to stay where they were.

  Beltur still tried to sense more carefully beyond the obvious. When he did, what worried him even more than the bruises or the small trickles of visible bleeding were the streaks of chaos deeper within her body, surrounding the unborn child.

  Should you do something with order? But what? What would it do to the mother or the child?

  “Keep pushing…” said one of the healers.

  “Hurts … Ohhh!… hurts … so much!”

  Still holding the basket, Beltur could sense when the healer beside the woman offered a touch of order, but that faded quickly with another contraction and wave of pain.

  Margrena did not look in Beltur’s direction, but murmured something to Klarisia, and the two of them moved to the other side of the woman. Beltur edged forward, trying to get a better sense of what was happening, knowing that he knew nothing except what he’d read, and trying to reconcile those words with the reality before him.

  Then … seemingly suddenly, the roundness of the baby’s head appeared, and with it, a gush of blood … and more blood.

  Margrena and Klarisia were there, one easing the infant from the mother, the other with cloths and order, trying to stanch the flood of blood, but there seemed no end of the blood.

  In too short a time, the room was silent, and a black mist swept over Beltur.

  “The child?” whispered Jessyla.

  Beltur didn’t have to say a word. He knew that they all sensed that the child was dead, as was her mother. But the child had been dead before birth, Beltur suspected from hindsight, since only a single black mist had chilled him, although he wasn’t about to mention that unless asked.

  Margrena motioned for Beltur and Jessyla to step outside. He did so and closed the door behind Jessyla, who had turned pale. He still felt stunned. So fast …

  Jessyla was silent, equally stunned, he thought.

  Beltur set down the basket and stood there. He was still standing there, trying to work out what he might have been able to do, when Margrena eased out of the room and shut the door.

  She looked at Beltur. “You sensed something as soon as we entered the birthing room, didn’t you?”

  “There were chaos streaks inside her womb. I didn’t know what they were, but they were from where the blood was coming, I think. Even if I’d known that she was bleeding so badly inside, I don’t know what I could have done. Shields wouldn’t have done any good, nor would order.”

  “Sometimes, there isn’t anything that any of us can do.” Margrena’s voice was low.

  “But if she hadn’t been so badly beaten…” began Beltur.

  “That was why she was beaten. Someone didn’t want her to have that child, perhaps any child. There’s no real way to find out. No one knows who she was. Klarisia never asked her. We don’t ask. If they tell us, that’s their choice.”

  Beltur understood that. “No. I meant that someone must know w
ho she was.”

  “Someone knows, but no one here does. No one has the time to go out and ask hundreds of people if they knew a woman who was with child who was beaten and then vanished. You’d likely find more than one poor woman who vanished, but those who did it would deny even knowing her, and anyone else who did would likely be afraid to say anything.”

  That, too, Beltur unfortunately understood.

  “We need to see to the children’s room.” Margrena turned.

  Beltur and Jessyla picked up their baskets and followed her.

  By the time the city chimes rang out the fourth glass of the afternoon, Beltur had used shields to help Margrena and Jessyla set and splint bones. He’d cleaned out wounds himself, if with Margrena watching. But the one thing that stayed with him was the woman who had hemorrhaged and died even as she gave birth to a child who had arrived stillborn.

  He still had no idea what he could have done.

  When the three finally left the healing house, Beltur was tired and felt he was on the verge of light-headedness. The light but chill wind helped somewhat, and after walking a ways, he looked to Margrena and said, “Earlier today, you said I was a healer and a mage.”

  “You are. There is little doubt of that,” said Margrena. “If you work at it, you could become a great healer. Most mages turn from that path.”

  “Why?” asked Jessyla.

  “Beltur,” said Margrena, “how did you feel while that woman was dying? Honestly feel?”

  “I felt I couldn’t do anything, or that anything I tried would have failed or made things worse.” But how could I have made it worse? She died.

  “You were right. At that moment, it was too late to do anything at all. All too often with healing, the best we can do is not enough.” She turned to Jessyla. “And, no, Daughter dear, I’m not giving up. We have to try, but we have to accept that there are times when we cannot save people.”

  The best we can do is not enough. Those words seemed to echo in Beltur’s thoughts as the wind chilled his exposed forehead.

  XVII

  By early afternoon on sevenday, as Beltur patrolled the market square, his feet were again getting cold, not quite numb, even after he’d eaten his loaf and downed a mug of Fosset’s hot cider. The sky was green-gray rather than green-blue because of a high haze, and the sun seemed dimmer and more distant. Uncomfortable as patrolling was becoming, Beltur worried that, from what he calculated, he only had four more eightdays of patrol duty. Four more eightdays before steady pay disappears.

  When the chimes rang out first glass, Beltur was almost to the corner of West Street and Patrol Street to meet Laevoyt, where he could see the tall patroller standing and waiting. By now, a good half of the market square had been cleared, and the other half was piled with packed snow taller than a man. Four young men from the workhouse were still shoveling the packed snow into wagons.

  As he stopped next to Laevoyt, Beltur shook his head. “They’re still shoveling. And it all gets dumped in the river?” Even as he asked, Beltur realized it was a stupid question.

  “Where else? Until the river freezes over. Then they dump it on the ice. What are you fretting about?”

  “What everyone frets about, I suppose. Having enough coins to get through the winter.” Beltur wasn’t about to mention the image of the dying woman that was all too fresh in his mind, or the fact that he’d felt so helpless. In some ways, even more helpless than when Athaal had died, because, then, he’d been able to do something, even though it hadn’t been enough.

  Laevoyt smiled, but shook his head. “Sort of troubling when mages worry like patrollers.”

  “Not all mages. I don’t think I’d worry as much if I’d been raised here. I’d be established in some way. Getting established is harder when you know so few people.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way. Makes sense, though.”

  “It’s also a problem when there isn’t much copper coming to Elparta in the winter, and when there aren’t many merchants and traders from other places passing through. Not many folks here want or can afford cupridium. With all the time I spent as a mage-officer, I didn’t have as much time to look for other possibilities as I’d hoped.”

  “I know you liked Athaal…” ventured Laevoyt.

  “An awful lot of what he did—at least that I know about—consisted of work dealing with animals, piers, crops, and mills, and most of that doesn’t happen in the late fall or winter.” Beltur paused, thinking about pier inspections. You should talk to Veroyt about that. In fact, he should already have talked to Veroyt. Another chance possibly missed.

  “You’re so good as a patrol mage that I sometimes forget there’s still a lot you don’t know about Elparta. Others might think the same way.”

  Beltur smiled wryly. “Thank you for that.”

  “We’d better get back to patrolling.”

  Beltur nodded. “Until fourth glass.” He turned and headed east on Patrol Street, since Laevoyt had headed south on West Street.

  By the time the chimes rang out fourth glass, the square was almost deserted, except for one handcart that a vendor was slowly pushing away—and the two patrollers. Beltur was more than ready to sign out as he and Laevoyt walked toward headquarters.

  “The acorn woman was back again,” offered Beltur, just trying to make conversation. “Haven’t seen her for several eightdays.”

  “She’ll be here every so often. She’s hoarding the acorns like coppers.”

  “For her they are.”

  Laevoyt laughed.

  Once he signed the duty book and left headquarters and turned north on Bakers Lane, Beltur found himself walking into the teeth of a stiff and much colder wind that had come up since he’d left the market square. Or maybe the buildings around the square had blocked the wind, and the straight north-south line of the lane had channeled and strengthened the wind.

  When he finally stepped into the house, he heard voices coming from the kitchen. For a moment, he wondered if Margrena or Jessyla had stopped by and were talking to Meldryn, but the second voice was male. After taking off coat, cap, scarf, and gloves, and hanging the coat on the wall peg, Beltur hurried toward the kitchen. There he found Meldryn and Lhadoraak seated at the table. Each had a mug of hot spiced cider, and there was an empty mug on the table—clearly for him.

  “The kettle’s still hot,” said Meldryn. “After walking around all day in the cold, I figured you could use some warming up.”

  “Thank you. It’s really cold out there.” Seeing Meldryn’s amused expression, Beltur added, “I know. It’s not as cold as it’s going to get, and the weather outside is warm compared to what’s coming.”

  Both other mages smiled.

  Beltur took the stove mitten and lifted the kettle off the iron hook over the hearth coals and filled the mug, then replaced the kettle and sat down at the table beside Lhadoraak. He took a swallow of the cider and then held the mug under his nose, enjoying the warmth and the scent of cloves and cinnamon, spices generally reserved for company, before asking, “What brings you here on this only modestly cold afternoon?”

  “Taelya.”

  Despite the warmth of the cider, Beltur felt a momentary chill. “Is something wrong?”

  “Ah … not … wrong … concerning.”

  The way Lhadoraak said the words, Beltur had a good idea what the other mage meant, but he just asked, “Concerning?”

  “She’s growing. She’s healthy and definitely stronger. She’s eating like a sailor in home port.” A brief smile crossed Lhadoraak’s face, then vanished. “What did you do to her?”

  “I told you.”

  “Is that all?”

  Beltur could sense the worry behind Lhadoraak’s words. “That’s all. Why?”

  “She’s showing magely abilities.”

  “That shouldn’t be surprising. She is your daughter.”

  “But she’s too young. Besides, I’m a black, and Tulya’s enough black that she could almost be a healer.”
/>   “You’re suggesting that Taelya might be a white?”

  “She used chaos to light the lamps the other day. Chaos. What did you do?”

  “I didn’t change anything about Taelya,” Beltur said. “The illness she had … it was hiding what she is. Or what I suspected she is. She’s most likely to be a white mage.” And strong, if abilities are showing up this young.

  “Women aren’t mages, and not white mages,” protested Lhadoraak.

  “Are you willing to tell your daughter she can’t be what she is?”

  “How do you know what she’s going to be?”

  “I don’t, but her order/chaos pattern looks more like a white’s than a black’s, and if she can light lamps already, she’s a beginning mage.”

  “She can be trained black.”

  “You can try,” said Beltur. “My uncle tried to train me as a white. In the end, it didn’t work.”

  “You’re saying she has to be a white?” Lhadoraak took a deep breath. “After the invasion by the Prefect and his white mages, and the way Waensyn and Cohndar talk … well…” The fine-featured mage flushed.

  “You mean how they talk badly about me, and I’m only a black raised by a white, and you’re worried that if Taelya is actually a white…?”

  Lhadoraak nodded. “Tulya’s even more worried. Especially with the way the Council’s behind Cohndar.”

  “Has Cohndar ever paid much attention to you?” asked Meldryn.

  Lhadoraak frowned. “Now that you ask … not really. He’s only dropped by the house once in the past two years.”

  “Then why would he have any reason even to suspect your daughter might be a white?”

  “I suppose he wouldn’t … but he still might drop by sometime.”

  “He might,” agreed Meldryn, “but so long as he’s not close to Taelya…”

  “I see what you mean. For a few years anyway.”

  “I told Lhadoraak,” Meldryn said in his deep mellow voice, “that you might be able to help, since you’re the only one with any real experience in dealing with chaos magery.”

  “That’s if you’re willing,” added Lhadoraak. “I was wondering if there’s any chance…”

  “Become a black?” Beltur shook his head. “That would likely leave her so weak as to make her easy prey for any mage, black or white. If you and Tulya agree, and Taelya’s willing, I can try to teach her how to use chaos in a way that will limit the bad effects of chaos magery and make her as strong as her talents will allow.”