Students of the Order

by Edward W. Robertson

  STUDENTS

  OF THE

  ORDER

  To Dr. Scott Mykel.

  PROLOGUE

  Brakk, mightiest thief of the Drabak tribe of Clan Kran-Dak—so mighty, in fact, that the other Drabak had asked him at spearpoint to leave—looked down on the war camp and smiled.

  He squatted behind a whiptree, resting his palm on the smooth trunk. Tents sprouted from the valley two hundred feet below. The canvas was bright green with yellow stripes. Clan Artusk. He tried to count the tents, but gave up after twenty. There were at least twenty twenties of tents, though, and with at least two warriors to each tent, that gave you…well, he didn't know how many warriors. A hell of a lot, that much he did know.

  This was good. When people were many, they thought they were safe.

  He found a dry patch of dirt and made himself comfortable. A breeze rattled the branches, carrying the yeasty-sweet smell of fallen whiptree pods. On three different occasions, the wind held a whiff of farts, too. It didn't seem possible for the scent to carry that far from the camp, but while the eyes were known liars, the nose was as honest as a saint. Brakk had been thinking about stealing some of their dinner, but he was starting to wonder if that was such a good idea.

  The sun put itself to bed behind the mountains, blanketing the valley in shadow. The warriors toiled at a great deal of drills, trench-digging, and mule-tending. Many of the troops looked small for Artuskers, but then again, he was watching them from very high up. They were all working very hard, and as Brakk sat in the shade, it made him feel as though he'd made a lot of good decisions in life.

  The sunset dawdled like a young boy waiting on the road for a glimpse of the prettiest girl in town. As blackness took over, campfires sparked between the disorderly rows of tents. When most had been put out, and the camp slept, Brakk put on his claw-shoes, stretched his legs, and started down the slope.

  It had rained the morning before, and when you put rain on the red clay of the hillside, you got snot-slick mud that wanted to throw you down and bash your bones. But Brakk's claw-shoes dug deep, and the exposed roots of the whiptrees shaped the clay into steep stairs. After being trained in the jungles of Garuvaru, where the nighthowlers shrieked every time you kicked a loose pebble, the descent was so easy Brakk almost felt pity for the war camp.

  He circled through the woods, stopping when he stood across from the big red tent of the chieftain. A sentry stood outside the tent. Brakk dropped into the knee-high grass, wormed his way to the tent, and crawled under the flap.

  Five minutes later, he was back outside with a pack half stuffed with gold coins, a dragontooth dagger, and fine ivory jewelry carved from the tusks of the monsters the Wai-Dak caught at sea. It was a good haul. But it wasn't yet a great haul. And how could Brakk call himself a great thief if he didn't thieve to greatness?

  The War Mothers' tent was a quarter of the way around the camp. Brakk retreated to the woods, circling toward it. Firelight wavered to his right. Gruff voices muttered to each other. They spoke in Artusker dialect, but two of the warriors had a hard Tusker accent.

  Frowning, Brakk edged through the woods until he could see the fire. A short man gave Tusker-accented orders to a mixed troop, half of which stood a hand taller than the other half. The taller ones wore green-trimmed yellow. Very sharp. The shorter ones were dressed in the orange of autumn leaves. Their lower fangs jutted over their upper lips.

  Brakk wasn't quite sure what he was seeing. Artuskers and Tuskers, that much was obvious, but if his eyes weren't lying to him about what he was seeing, the two clans should be stabbing each other in as many places as they could reach with as many knives as they could carry.

  Instead, they were…speaking to each other. Like people who liked each other. Earlier, he'd seen them working together, too. Like they were part of the same—

  "Hoy!" One of the Tusker's arms shot up and pointed at Brakk. He'd forgotten about their damn cat's eyes.

  He took off at a sprint, claw-shoes spraying turf with each step. His well-stuffed pack bounced against his back. A bow twanged. He ducked, the shaft whisking past him and clattering into the thin trees at the edge of the clearing.

  Boots trampled behind him. Branches nipped at his face. Cursing, he veered onto a game trail and raced uphill. The thugs chasing him launched more arrows, but the thicket of whiptrees protected him better than any shield.

  Five minutes later, he was sweating into his leaves and the stupid oafs were still chasing him. Another ten, and he started to worry. He'd left Und's Fist in a hurry, leaving most of his tricks behind. The forest was so thick the warriors could follow him by sound alone. There were at least ten chasing him, maybe more. Only one of them had to able to run further than he could.

  Then it was time to find out if any of them could climb like he could.

  At the next fork in the trail, he veered left. There was barely enough moonlight to watch out for his footing, and after another few hundred yards of uphill running, his nerves drew as tight as lyre strings. Had he gone right past it? If so, how would he—?

  A mossy rock canted from the side of the trail. He swung left, eyes darting. There was a basic rule of thieving: be at least as smart as a rabbit. He'd found himself the bolt-hole on his way in. A hole in the ground just wide enough for him to squeeze through. He slid down the tube, arms spread across the sweating stone, claw-shoes barely slowing his descent. He landed with a grunt.

  Sudden silence. The hole smelled foul, like a bear rotting in its den. But if there was a bear, at least it was dead. And he was alive and carrying treasure. Grinning in the darkness, Brakk swung his pack around and groped it. Those fools. Even when Tuskers and Artuskers were working together, there was no catching a Kran.

  He let his lungs and heart settle, listening for sounds of pursuit. The stench was starting to make his brain feel dumb. The close space was as hot as a roast pig. He wiped his brow. The sweat on his hand was black with grime.

  But how he could he even see his hand in the first place? There was no moonlight down in the hole. He turned in a circle. The back of the tunnel glowed softly. He shielded his eyes and stepped forward. Around a bend in the tube, a tongue of red-hot earth gushed toward him.

  He turned to run. One of his claws caught in a crack, tripping him to the rocky ground. He tried to stand, but his left knee was as flimsy as a blade of grass.

  Brakk the thief closed his eyes, clutched his treasure to his chest, and thought of home.

  1

  WIT, an Adept Wizard of the Order of Isadoro, collected his books and papers in the early morning and went to the tower that stood at the center of the capital city of Kroywen. The tower, started nearly eighty years ago, was still under construction and little dots of workers could be seen moving about on scaffolding and planks atop the enormous structure. Wit saw Cardozo, the wizard principally responsible for his training, standing by the tower, his white-haired head tilted up, watching one of the worker-dots moving along one of the planks. Wit stood beside the older wizard and watched as well.

  One of the ropes holding the plank gave way, and it swung ninety degrees to the ground. The dot that Cardozo had been watching held on for a moment before plummeting to the earth. Cardozo smiled to himself.

  "I hope he didn't hit anyone," said Wit.

  Cardozo looked at the young man. "Why?"

  Wit's skin was a muted brown, his close-cropped hair was blue, and his wide eyes were a murky green. He wore the simple gray trousers and tunic of the Order. Cardozo was tall, thin, with a white beard and white hair. He wore a light black robe and carried a wooden staff topped with a heavy ball of polished black stone in his left hand. His right arm, injured long ago, hung at his side a
t an awkward angle.

  Wit shrugged. "One more thing for us to worry about, right? And those can be tricky, what were they doing under the tower, did it fall due to negligence or what?"

  Cardozo nodded. "What do we have this morning?"

  "Sir. There is a man who got bit by a griffin, a dwarf who lost his foot when a cart turned over, and, um, something to do with the materials used on the Youngkent wall."

  They moved around the base of the tower towards a small entrance in the back. "Tell me about the dwarf and his foot."

  "The fellow who was driving the cart was drunk and behind schedule. He was going far too fast according to a dozen witnesses. Turned the thing over and it ended up on the dwarf's foot."

  "Could he have gotten out of the way?"

  "Probably not."

  "Whose cart?"

  "Lord Lexus."

  Cardozo nodded. "And what was that about the Youngkent wall?"

  They had entered the tower and were proceeding through a winding corridor. "I only just was able to look at the papers, sir, so I don't know that I have it all."

  "And?"

  "Well, about five years ago the dragars of Youngkent and the dwarves of Jacobs came to us for a Contract about the building of a wall. They had apparently been trying to get one built for a while, and kept running into problems, so the Contract they finally signed was rather specific. Now Youngkent is saying that the dwarves have breached it."

  "Well, have they?"

  Wit's discomfort deepened. "The Contract was very specific."

  "You told me."

  "It seems that what the dwarves, err, did, had to do with one of the more technical aspects of the—"

  "Boy, there is either a breach or there isn't. Did Jacobs breach?"

  "I couldn't say, sir."

  They were at the rear entrance to the great hall. Cardozo shot Wit a look of disgust for a moment, and then pushed the door open. The door opened just to the side of a raised platform with chairs on it. Cardozo ascended the platform, sat in the central chair and looked over the small groups of people scattered about the hall before him: a bandaged man, a dwarf on crutches, Lord Lexus. At the back of the hall a group of dragars in black cloaks and a group of dwarves were conspicuously occupying opposite sides of the room.

  A sergeant in gleaming armor approached Cardozo and leaned over to speak to the sitting wizard. Wit paused for a moment at the entrance and leaned against the wall, reeling from his elder's displeasure. He rubbed his eyes and tried to place it in context—Cardozo had let him create several Contracts all on his own two weeks ago, but a week before that Wit had forgotten the amount of gold that a dragar should get for losing a finger. Progression through the Order was mysterious. In theory, by following Cardozo around, assisting him when asked, and not making a conspicuous fool of himself, Wit was positioning himself for an attractive posting, either in the capital or one of the more important territories in the Alliance. However, if Cardozo ever took a dislike to him, the eastern reaches were well known to be filled with various metals and dwarves who were incapable of mining them without extensive Contractual supervision. Young wizards would get sent out there, and never be seen again, until they returned to the capital decades later, with long beards and weak eyes, and intricate opinions about how to calculate the purity of mithril.

  Wit had actually received the papers from the Youngkent Contract early the evening before and had spent the entire night reading and re-reading them until he had fallen asleep in his chair, and woken with stiff limbs to the first rays of the sun. He had no idea if the dwarves had breached their Contract.

  His self-pitying reflections were interrupted by a man who smelled of beer. The man was wearing a formal tunic in a way that suggested strongly that he was unused to it. It appeared that he had tried to comb his long hair, but abandoned the effort at some early stage.

  "You're with the Order?" the man asked Wit.

  "Yes."

  "You the one deciding today, your honor?"

  "I work for him. What do you need?"

  "Was wondering, your honor…if maybe, when they decide my case, when it comes to the matter of the damage, well I'll be Bound to serve the damage, and I wanted…I'm a good man, you see, I just…"

  Wit shook his head. "Why are you here?"

  "I'm a carter, sir, and my cart ran over a dwarf's foot, and I'm here to be Bound to my damage."

  "We'll determine fault, before it comes to that."

  The man shook his head. "The fault lies with me and I'll be Bound for the damage."

  Wit nodded.

  "I was just hoping, that, I could do my damage under the dwarf that I injured, and not under the lord."

  "You haven't got any gold."

  "I have almost twelve pieces, sir, and I could…"

  Wit sighed with exasperation. "You haven't got enough gold."

  "No, sir."

  "Well, then it's for the dwarf to decide how the damage will be."

  "Well, could you maybe ask him to take me? Ask that I be put under him. Oh, sir! I am a good man, and I would be a terrific help, I am sure that for a man with no foot I would be wonderfully helpful…I would cook for him, help him about, why, sir…"

  "It's not for me, or you, to decide. It's for the dwarf."

  "But a dwarf will always want the gold, you know that. And then the lord will come to me for contribution. And I have seen the men what the lord has taken contribution from, and please, sir, please!" Tears welled up in his eyes.

  "I'll see what I can do."

  Wit made his way into the room. The dwarf's simple clothes were crisp and neat, his beard was trimmed, and the end of the dwarf's leg was wrapped in a bandage. He had found a seat at the end of one of the benches that lined the large hall. He looked up expectantly as Wit approached.

  Wit smiled apologetically. "I have heard that Bader the witch makes a very good poultice, if you are still in pain."

  "You'd know wouldn't you?" The dwarf smiled. "With all the broken and the injured in the Alliance coming through this hall, you'd know where to get the good stuff."

  "Word gets around."

  "It isn't as bad now. I have been seeing a medicine man, and he has me doing all right."

  "I am glad." Wit cleared his throat. "I spoke with the man who was driving the cart."

  "I hold him no ill-will. I am merely here for my gold. Of course, I wouldn't wish being hobbled like this on anyone. But for me, well, it could be worse. This city life—it sure is fine and grand for a young man, but when you get to be my age, you start to yearn for the hills you were born in. Have you ever been out to the Eastern Mountains?"

  Wit shook his head.

  "Do yourself a favor, and go. You've never seen real beauty until you have seen them. Oh, what a treat it is! Now, my brother has been building an inn, on one of the roads that leads to the mines, and two hundred gold pieces gets me a half a share of it. I'll spend my days serving pies and ale to the lads in the mine, and if I ever want a look at the glorious hills I'll only have to take a short hop to my doorstep."

  "The man wanted to ask if you might consider taking him as damage."

  There was a heavy pause. "That won't get me my gold?"

  "There's the matter of fault," said Wit. "Some lies with the carter and some with the lord, but we have yet to determine how much with each. You may collect your damage from both or one or the other of them…"

  "But this chap is the one that run over my leg. It might be safe to say that most of the fault lies with him."

  "It is likely."

  "And if I take my damage in the form of a drunken ass who can't drive a cart straight, it will leave me with no gold, no inn in my lovely mountains, and no foot."

  "You could have gold for whatever part of the fault lay with Lord Lexus."

  "Will it be two hundred?"

  Wit opened his mouth, but the dwarf cut him off. "You couldn't say. But it doesn't seem likely, does it?"

  "No." Wit paused. "Speaking quite plainly
, sir, Lord Lexus, when he takes a man in contribution, is not kind. Among the lord's many holdings is a ghoul pasture, and that is where he sends those men."

  The dwarf's face paled. "I've heard of them…an awful thing. Spend your days up to your arms in rotting guts, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But I've no foot and I'm ready to go home…he could have avoided it all if he'd not gotten drunk on his cart."

  "It is your damage, and you are to decide how to take it," said Wit.

  The dwarf nodded and Wit walked to the platform.

  He took his place in one of the chairs slightly behind and to the side of Cardozo, who confounded the young wizard by nodding at him pleasantly.

  The importance of looking at things from elevation was central to the Order's teachings and as Wit watched the group of people that he had moved among from above, he felt the Order's power begin to tug at his intestines. The people before him changed. He saw more of them than he had before. As he looked at the dwarf he also saw the Eastern Hills. Wit knew that if he, Wit, were ever to look at the endless gray mounds it would fill him with a mixture of boredom and dread—but he saw them with the dwarf's eyes and they filled his heart with pride and a sense of safety.

  The bright-armored sergeant walked to the center of the platform. "Silence! The Wizard Cardozo sits before us. Those who seek his aid will now approach him." Cardozo nodded benignly to the hall. "The Matter of Toque the Griffin Farmer and Finmetten is now before us. May those parties approach."

  A skirbit and a man with bandages over his chest and arms approached the platform. The skirbit was a little over four feet tall, with leathery wings folded over its back, trotting on spindly legs. The creature was covered in yellow fur, and studied the room with beady red eyes.

  Cardozo stared absently into space for a moment. "Does one of you seek to invoke Our Power?"

  "I do, sir," said the bandaged man.

  "All seeking Our Power must answer three questions. If the answers are incorrect, you will be under an obligation to the Order, the nature of which I shall determine. Are you prepared to answer the questions, and render your obligation should you fail to answer them?"