The White Order (39 page)

   “And they ... just stood there? I am not sure I understand.” Deltry's voice was easy, warm, conversational.

   “I... came upon them in my duties in the tunnels,” Cerryl said carefully. “The first two attacked. I had no choice, since they would have killed me.”

   “But what did you do? Turn them stone?”

   “No. I can't do that. I turned them into ashes with chaos-fire.” Cerryl felt a twinge in his skull at the exaggeration. He'd merely killed them, while Sterol had turned them into dust and ashes.

   Deltry swallowed.

   “You had to ask, didn't you?” commented Slekyr into the silence, his voice slightly ironic.

   Deltry offered a smile, both to Slekyr and Cerryl. “My apologies, ser.”

   Cerryl returned it with a smile he hoped was almost shy. “I understand. Four years ago I would not have believed it, either.”

   “You are not from Fairhaven, then?” asked Slekyr.

   “No. I came from Hrisbarg and was apprenticed to a scrivener in Fairhaven.”

   “Some have said that all mages come from higher birth ...”

   “I am afraid mine was not high, nor that of some others,” Cerryl replied, glancing toward the platter of meat making its way down the table and trying not to drool.

   “Some mages come from high families,” confirmed Lyasa, “others from where their talents are discovered. The skills are rare enough that the Guild does not waste them.”

   “Even women mages, I see.” Slekyr's eyes lingered on Lyasa for a moment.

   “They are fewer, but still number among the Guild.” Lyasa's head inclined toward the head of the table. “Anya is one of the more powerful mages, and she is most definitely a woman.”

   Both Deltry and Slekyr nodded politely.

   “We hear that the prefect of Gallos has begun to make life difficult for some in Certis,” suggested Lyasa, taking the half-empty platter and serving herself some of the brown-sauced meat.

   “Mostly talk,” suggested Slekyr easily. “We can sell our oilseeds to Hydolar as easily as to Gallos.”

   “Just not for as much, perhaps,” suggested Lyasa with a smile.

   “There is that, but the viscount is hardly likely to go to war over a few coppers' difference in a barrel of seed oil.” Slekyr took a deep swallow of wine.

   Cerryl took little more than a sip, then concentrated on serving himself and eating the half-tough meat and the not-quite-dry rye bread.

   “And wool?” asked Kochar politely.

   “Many would sell us wool.” Slekyr reached for the wine pitcher and refilled his goblet.

   “Are you from Jellico?” asked Lyasa.

   “Me? No. I come from Rytel. .. and most of the family's still there.”

   “How did you get to be a captain?”

   “I'm not... yet... but an armsman. Well.. . like many a thing, I didn't quite plan it that way ...”

   Cerryl ate and listened, listened and ate, occasionally looking toward the head of the table, where Jeslek listened and ate, ate and listened to Shyren and Rystryr.

Under the early harvest sun, Cerryl fidgeted in his saddle again, a saddle that seemed as hard as the glazed bricks of the sewer tunnels, and as unyielding. He knew that for all his efforts he still swayed and bounced far too much.

   The western side of Certis was hillier, but the oilseed fields were interspersed with meadows where grazed small herds of cattle. Not sheep? Then, the meadows were more lush than those of Montgren. Scattered stone houses reared out of the green hills, located seemingly without pattern.

   Cerryl wondered why they had even gone to Jellico. It was more than four days out of the way, since they were headed to Gallos on the Great White Highway, and all they had done was stay for two days and ride off.

   Then, he had no idea exactly what Jeslek and Eliasar were conveying to Rystryr. A show of magely force? A trade agreement?

   He shrugged. Who knew? No one was telling him-that was certain. His eyes went to the way before them. Ahead on either side of the Great White Highway, looming into the western sky, lay the Easthorns. Even in late summer, the tops of the peaks were crowned in snow, and by harvest time, snowfalls had resumed on the higher slopes.

   Despite the heat, as he glanced toward the mountains, swaying in the saddle, Cerryl shivered. He had no doubts that the road through the Easthorns would be cold.

   “More snow than usual,” commented Fydel from his mount in front of Cerryl. “It could be a cold winter in Candar. There are times when it would help to have weather mages.”

   “Not like the accursed Creslin, thank you,” said Anya.

   “Megaera was red-haired, you know.” Fydel laughed. “I wonder if, way back, you might be related.”

   Fire flared from Anya's fingertips, lancelike fire. “Would you like to see how I am otherwise like her, dear Fydel?”

   Cerryl could sense Fydel's order shields rise, and perceived that the square-bearded mage's shields were nowhere strong enough to contain the power that rose around Anya. He swallowed, half-wondering if Faltar had any idea of the power Anya could raise.

   “I think that the overmage would be less than pleased if we turned chaos-fire among ourselves.” Fydel's voice bore an edge.

   “The overmage will find much work for your chaos, Anya.” As Jeslek turned the saddle, his voice was mild, but the sun-gold eyes burned. “And your other talents.”

   Anya smiled, more brightly than normal, and more falsely, the chaos-fire lance gone as though it had never been. “I am here to do your biding, honored Jeslek.”

   “Good. And I hope all of you are using your senses to study the road.” Jeslek turned and resumed his conversation with Klybel.

   Lyasa coughed, lightly, and Cerryl looked to his left. The black-haired student lifted her fingers in imitation of Anya and then raised her eyebrows, mouthing the words “Did you see that?” Cerryl nodded.

   “What are you talking about?” asked Kochar abruptly. “The snow,” answered Cerryl, grasping for the first words that crossed his mind that made any sense. “Fydel was saying that it might be a cold winter with all the snow up there already. Lyasa wanted to know if I'd seen where he pointed.”

   “Oh...”

   “I have the feeling the way is going to get colder.”

   “Fine by me,” suggested Kochar. “I'll take cold over heat any day.” Cerryl wasn't so sure, although his face was sunburned and his legs ached, cramping so fiercely that he knew that when he did dismount, he would barely be able to stand for several moments after he did. “You haven't felt the mountain cold,” added Lyasa. Cerryl wasn't certain he wanted to, not as he recalled how cold his winters with Dylert had been. He shifted his weight in the saddle again, his eyes traveling to the Easthorns once more, then to the shadows cast by the chestnut on the white granite of the road, the hard white granite of the road. Only slightly past midday, and that meant a great deal more riding.

   He took a deep breath, trying to relax. '

   The Great White Highway seemed endless, and they had yet to reach the base of the Easthorns.

Cerryl wrapped the heavy white leather jacket around him, and stood in the stirrups to try to warm up his legs. In the early morning, his breath puffed out like a cloud. Although the sky was clear and it was well past dawn, the sun had yet to clear the eastern edge of the gorge through which the Great Highway ran.

   The sound of hoofs echoed through the stillness, stillness broken abruptly by the shrill ye-aah! of a vulcrow that flapped off a dead pine limb and into the middle of the artificial canyon that contained the highway.

   “Amazing,” murmured Kochar, a smile upon his face, as if the cold bothered him not in the slightest.

   Cerryl ignored the redhead's comment and settled back into the saddle, rubbing one thigh, then switching the reins to his left hand and rubbing the other. The chestnut whuffed once.

   In places, the gray stone of the cliffs seemed to have been peeled away as if by a mighty knife. Cerryl nodded to himself. Even he could sense the residual chaos of that effort of centuries past.

   To the left of and below the wall separating the highway from the lower section of the gorge was a stream of cold and tumbling water, violent enough even in harvest season that light spray occasionally cloaked Cerryl and the chestnut, spray that felt like ice. Small patches of ice had formed during the night on the stones next to the wall, where the late afternoon sun had cast shadows the day before.

   “Amazing...” mumbled Kochar once more.

   “The cold or the highway?” Lyasa's voice was sharp.

   “The highway. It is made of order, yet formed by chaos ...”

   Even Cerryl understood that whatever was built lasted longer with greater order. Chaos had great power, but it was the power of destruction. The great whites of the past had cut the granite with chaos, but the masons had joined the stones with skill and order. While the slope of the pavement was gradual, it was continuous, and the ancient stones still held flush.

   Cerryl could sense some areas of greater residual chaos, places where he suspected the highway had been repaired-or rocks that had fallen from the cliffs had been removed.

   “The Guild maintains it by chaos,” said Lyasa. “Fine, but I'm still cold. I'm from Worrak. It's not this cold in midwinter even in the Lower Easthorns.”

   “Gallos will be colder than Certis,” said Fydel, turning in his saddle. “It is past the peak of harvest there-in the north where Fenard is. That's because it's between the Easthorns and the Westhorns.”

   “Even young Cerryl knows that,” said Anya. “He created a most accurate map.”

   “He doubtless needed to,” said Fydel.

   “Fydel.” Anya's voice was as cold as the ice beside the stone highway wall.

   Fydel turned abruptly, his eyes on Jeslek's back.

   Lyasa coughed.

   Cerryl glanced at her, catching her mouthed words: “Watch out...”

   He nodded, understanding all too well. If Anya happened to be too interested in him, he needed to be careful-most careful. “It should get warmer once the sun hits the road.”

   “I hope so,” answered Lyasa.

   “Amazing,” whispered Kochar to himself.

   Cerryl shook his head, trying to ignore the chill in his thighs and his frozen ears, hoping Anya would confine her overt attentions to others.

Cerryl swayed in the saddle as the chestnut carried him up the winding trail away from the Great White Highway. Ahead rode Jeslek and the other mages, and behind followed the students, with the line of lancers stretched out after them on the narrow mountain trail for hundreds and hundreds of cubits.

   A light layer of fresh-fallen snow covered the rocks and mountain grasses between the scattered junipers and low pines, but the sunlight had been strong enough to melt the snow off the trees-at least on the sunny side. The chestnut carried Cerryl by a pine leaning over the trail so low that he had to duck, a pine so twisted and buffeted by the mountain winds until only the limbs on the southern side had retained needles.

   Although there was still some snow on the trail before Cerryl, he had no doubt that the way behind him was rapidly becoming sloppy, since the lancers' mounts would churn damp earth and clay and snow into cold mud. He hoped Jeslek had another way back. He took a deep breath, but the midday was warm enough that he didn't puff a cloud of white when he exhaled.

   Lyasa rode before Cerryl and Kochar behind him. Jeslek disappeared as his dusky-white mount carried him out of sight and down from the ridgetop that Cerryl's and Lyasa's mounts still climbed.

   Cerryl sniffed the breeze, detecting a faint odor of brimstone that strengthened as the gelding carried him over the ridge and downward. Below, in the small valley steamed a small lake, surrounded by greenish blue ponds, from which also rose steam.

   “Here lies the key to our future in Gallos.” From where he had reined up his mount on a hillock overlooking the lake and hot springs, Jeslek gestured toward them.

   Cerryl had to work to keep from wrinkling his nose at the odor of brimstone. He glanced over his shoulder, back along the winding trail.

   “Smells,” murmured Kochar, reining up beside Cerryl and Lyasa.

   “Of course it does. It's a chaos spring,” answered Lyasa from where she had reined up beside Cerryl.

   “Chaos spring?” asked Kochar, brushing ice crystals off his red hair.

   “The water flows up from where chaos has gathered closer to the top of the ground. Haven't you read your books?”

   “Oh... yes ... I never thought of that here.” Kochar bobbed his head.

   According to Colors of White, the entire center of the world was filled with chaos, just like the sun. Cerryl nodded to himself as he recalled what he had read. It made sense that some of that chaos might be closer to the surface of the ground.

   “Cerryl,” Jeslek called, “you should be able to trace the fire of chaos that feeds the springs. You also, Lyasa.”

   “Yes, ser.” Cerryl straightened himself in the saddle, trying to ignore the chill that burrowed through the white leather jacket as he attempted to let his senses flow into the rock and heat beneath the ground.

   “And, Kochar ... try to follow what they're doing.”

   “Yes, ser.”

   Cerryl let his senses flow across the small pond less than fifty cubits downhill, picking up a diffuse and wavering line of... something. Letting his senses follow the unseen reddish white line, he could feel a darker and deeper whiteness that oozed around the rocks below the pond, and beneath the greenish blue of the larger lake to the west.

   Another probe-one more like a huge battering ram-rumbled by his and arrowed toward the depths. Cerryl felt like a fly brushed aside by a diving vulcrow, shivering as he sat astride the chestnut.

   Kochar shook like a gray winter leaf in a gale. Even Lyasa swallowed.

   Cerryl wiped his forehead, suddenly damp despite the chill. Beneath him, he could sense Jeslek's powers rearranging the vague patterns of darkness and reddish chaos that lay beneath the earth rearranging them so that a fountain of reddish white bubbled through the spaces between the rocks and oozed up underneath the spring to the south of the lake.

   The ground trembled again.

   From his mount Jeslek smiled ... smiled as steam geysered from the spring into a plume that rose nearly a hundred cubits into the green-blue sky of Candar.

   Rain, hot rain, cascaded down across the greenish blue lake, and then droplets fell on Cerryl and the others, and even on the lancers farther up the trail.

   “That! That is but the beginning,” said Jeslek as the plume subsided into a three-cubit-high fountain of boiling water. “How ...” murmured Kochar under his breath. Beside Jeslek, overcaptain Klybel's eyebrows rose momentarily. Jeslek smiled. “You all doubt, but there will be no doubt. The very earth will break Gallos, and you will see.” His hand jabbed at Anya and Fydel. “Put down your shields and protect the ground beneath you. For I will lift the chaos under you and fry you if you do not.”

   “Jeslek...” Anya's voice was calm.

   “I will do this, and you cannot stop me. Even Sterol could not. Now ... do as I say.”

   “As you wish, overmage,” conceded Anya. “As you wish,” echoed Fydel.

   Cerryl watched with eyes and senses as the unseen darkness concentrated in the rocks beneath the two full mages and as the reddish whiteness rose from the depths, rose and spread around them-one tendril seemingly drifting sideways, uphill toward the stone underneath the students.

   Without a word, Cerryl began to create his own shields. As he did, he could feel another presence beneath the ground, and his eyes went sideways. Lyasa nodded. Neither spoke.

   A sense of heat built up around him, and the chestnut gelding sidestepped, tossing his head slightly and whuffing twice. Cerryl absently patted his mount's neck. “Easy ... easy.”

 
  Trying to hold an order shield was never easy, and doing so on horseback while the earth rumbled was even more difficult, but Cerryl had no doubts that Jeslek was either testing them-or trying to set up an “accident” to remove one student mage. Either way, it didn't matter.

   He focused on channeling order around them and chaos back toward the massive concentration that Jeslek raised from deep beneath the ground, so far down that Cerryl could not even sense from where Jeslek gathered such forces.

   Rrrrrrrrrr...

   The chestnut whickered and tossed his head, stepping sideways once more, toward Anya's mount, a black mare that bared her teeth at the gelding.

   “Easy ...” murmured Cerryl. “Easy.”

   “Darkness ...” whispered Kochar. “Darkness on us all.”

   “Chaos, more likely,” replied Lyasa tartly. “Keep working on your shields if you don't want to roast.”

   Slowly, the underground chaos concentration shifted westward, away from the lake, and the fountain in the spring dropped to mere seething bubbles, even as the concentration itself swelled. Cerryl's head was throbbing, yet he dared not release the shields, not with all the power raised by Jeslek.

   He darted a glance sideways, catching sight of sweat streaming down Lyasa's face, and a grim expression on Anya's more distant face.

   Gurrrr... rrrrr...

   Cerryl's mouth opened as the ground trembled, and then trembled again. His eyes went beyond the immediate hillside to the west of the lake toward the lands of Gallos-except a line of hills seemed to be rising more than a kay away. Were they actually rising? Rising above the once-higher nearer hills?

   He swallowed. The ground was rising, and steam billowed from cracks in the rocks wide enough to swallow a mount and rider.

   His senses went full back to the shields, now an intertwined effort of both full mages and the three students. The more distant line of hills continued to rise, and the ground around the lake began to ripple ever so slightly.

   Another geyser spurted skyward from the center of the lake below, then collapsed as suddenly as it had risen. A sickening, sucking gulp followed, with a curtain of steam clouding the lake momentarily. More hot rain cascaded around Cerryl, then dispersed, as did the mist, to show an empty and steaming lake bed-rent by a fissure a half-dozen cubits wide.

   Still the hills to the west continued to rise, groaning, trembling, thrust up skyward by the welling of chaos from beneath, that chaos loosed and chevied earthward by the overmage.

   Jeslek and his mount were like a statue, a statue frozen by the power of the forces welling from and around the white-clad and white-haired mage.

   Rivulets began to gurgle down the hillside to the north of Cerryl rivulets formed from the quick-melted snow. The ground rumbled once more, and to the south, the misted hills lurched upward.

   Cerryl drew from the chaos that flowed away from the central tap drew and channeled it around him and the others, funneling it back toward the overmage in an effort to push chaos away from the order shield that he and the others-mostly Anya and Lyasa-held.

   The Highway trembled ever so slightly, as the hills to the north of them shuddered upward, as chaos and steam twisted together and wreathed the new mountains-to-be.

   The late afternoon sun was almost touching the tops of those steam-shrouded hills before the shaking of the earth subsided to a mere grumbling.

   Cerryl's head ached, and stars flashed before his eyes, half from the effort of holding shields and half from struggling with his mount. Not that he blamed the chestnut, not as scared as he had been, wondering whether he would see another sunrise.

   “Eat something from your pack, you idiot,” hissed Lyasa, “before you fall out of your saddle.” Her face was pale.

 
  “You better do the same,” he answered in a raspy voice, grasping for the small ration pack.

   The hard cheese and dried bread helped-after he moistened his mouth and lips enough to be able to swallow. The. flashing stars before his eyes slowly vanished, but he was conscious of being light-headed, and the food didn't remove that sensation.

   Jeslek, who had remained almost like a statue, abruptly turned his mount as though no time at all had passed. “You see, Anya, Fydel- it's not all that difficult to raise chaos through the ground, and mountains with it. Still... we must protect the highway-and that will be your task-and that of the students.” Jeslek's sun-gold eyes flashed at the three younger mages. “For a first try, your shields were not bad, but you'll all have to do better than that.” Jeslek turned to Klybel. “Now, overcaptain, let's return to the Highway. We will proceed into Gallos.”

   “He's not going to raise more mountains, is he?” asked Kochar.

   Both Lyasa and Cerryl stared at the redhead.

   Kochar swallowed and looked down at his mount's neck and mane.

   Cerryl glanced around. To the north and east, all seemed as it had been, but to the west... low mountains that had not been there before stretched a dozen kays or more toward the horizon.

   Yet, the Great White Highway remained-untouched, if dwarfed by the new heights.

   Had Jeslek called forth chaos-and shielded the highway? Why? With such power, surely he could have used the stuff of chaos to cut a new passage through the uprisen rock. Cerryl scratched his head, aware suddenly that his face felt flushed, almost burned.

   Then ... was not chaos like the light of the sun? He glanced at Lyasa as she turned her mount. The black-haired student's face seemed more olive-tanned than before. Kochar's cheeks and forehead were bright red.

   Cerryl turned the chestnut, aware that his thighs were close to cramping once again.

   “Back to the Highway!” Klybel's order rang out over the hissing created by steaming rocks and the places where the meltwater ran into the heated lake bottom and spring.

   Standing momentarily in the stirrups helped relieve the incipient cramping, but Cerryl was all too aware of the stiffness and soreness that would not be relieved.