The White Order (24 page)

   “Best we head back.” Faltar appeared at Cerryl's elbow.

   “Did you find anything?”

   “No. One pretty girl, but not that pretty.”

   “That wasn't what I meant.” Cerryl turned toward the Halls of the Mages.

   “Oh... things? What would I do with anything except books? Derka would only ask me what value it had.”

   “We can't hold property, can we?”

   “No. Didn't Jeslek tell you that?”

   “Not in so many words. He never says anything directly.”

   “Derka doesn't much, either.”

   “I wonder why.”

   “We're supposed to figure it out, and if we can't, well, then. . .” Faltar left the sentence unfinished.

   Cerryl knew well enough what the other meant-all too well.

Cerryl sat at the table, looking blankly at the slate and the wedge of chalk beside it. The whole room smelled of chalk, unlike any of the other mages' chambers he had been inside.

   Standing at the other side of the ancient table was the heavyset Esaak, wearing flowing white robes of the older style, rather than the white tunic and trousers used by Sterol and Jeslek and all of the younger mages.

   “Master scholar Cerryl... might I have your attention?” Esaak's jowls wobbled as he spoke, and his voice rumbled.

   “Ser?”

   “Have you read any of the book I left for you? Naturale Mathematicks, it is called, if you do not remember.”

   “Only a few pages, ser.”

   “Why not more, might I ask? Is the ancient and honored study of mathematicks beneath you?” Esaak half-turned, walking a few paces across the dusty floor.

   “No, ser. I fear I am beneath it.”

   “Such refreshing honesty.” The older mage's words dripped irony. “You seek to disarm me with false modesty.” He coughed several times, with a rumbling deeper than even his bass voice.

   Cerryl felt tongue-tied, feeling he was off on the wrong foot.

   “Well?”

   “No, ser. I can read and write, but my education has been limited to history mostly. The honored Jeslek has insisted that I read all of Colors of White and complete a large map within a short period of time. I have to do some anatomie drawings for the mage Broka. I read the first section of the Mathematicks, but much of it was so unfamiliar ...”

   “Tell me what you thought you read ...”

   Cerryl wanted to sigh.

   “Go on. What was the first section about? Surely, surely, you can tell me what the words said?”

   Why did all the mages ask questions rather than tell anything? It seemed to Cerryl almost as though he were being asked to teach them. He moistened his lips. “Ser .. . the very beginning I understood. That was about the history of reckoning, where the first use of numbers were words like 'yoke' and 'pair' or 'couple'-two things because we have two hands. Then, as people gathered more goods or crops, or lived in larger settlements, larger numbers were needed, and they came up with terms to count larger groups of things, like 'score' and 'stone'...”

   “What is similar about the two?”

   Cerryl looked as blank as he felt.

   “They're each a pair multiplied by ten,” snapped Esaak. “A stone is a pair of fists ten times over. A score is a couple of hunters ten times over. Go on.”

   “Then the book started talking about something called partition enumeration...”

   “And when it got a little difficult... you stopped reading?”

   “No, ser. I kept reading. I understood the idea of dividing groups of things into groups of the same size and using symbols to represent larger numbers, like ten score, but when it started on how to scrive such numbers, and that you had to have a symbol for nothing ...”

   “Why shouldn't there be a number for nothing? Isn't not having something as important to know as having something?”

   That wasn't exactly what Cerryl had meant. At least, it wasn't what he thought he'd meant. “It is, ser. I meant...”

   “What did you mean? Mathematicks is precision, not vague statements about a few stone or score. How would you like it if a lancer scout told you that the force you faced was a bunch of scores of arms-men?”

   “I'd want to know more.”

   “And you should.” Esaak gave an even louder and more dramatic sigh, readjusting his robes as he did. “You know ... you're all alike. All of you seem to think that what we teach you is because we owe you something.”

   “Oh... the days, the years I have spent pounding and prying knowledge into empty-ordered heads. For what? So that you can go off and dash your brains out against some evil-hearted order magician from the black isle? So you can overload a ship and sink it in the sight of rough water?” Esaak exhaled noisily.

   Cerryl waited, not knowing what to say, or even if he should attempt to say a word.

   “You all can see the value of even learning to fire-scrub sewers, or to memorize every bone in the body the better to destroy it, or to make maps for the day when you will direct lancers in battle ... But what is behind it all? Mathematicks! Calculations! Numbers!”

   Cerryl felt like slinking out by the time Esaak was through, although the older mage had said enough-eventually-that Cerryl could grasp the idea of a symbol of nothing as a place holder for calculations. It made sense, but, like too many things, no one had ever explained it.

   There was one question that Esaak had raised and not really answered-what did all the mages do besides make life difficult for student mages? If Jeslek happened to be any example, they didn't spend all that much time with students, just enough to set them on projects and complain about the results. They came and went, and so did many carriages and wagons, and Cerryl had overheard talk about various rulers, and soldiers, and even sewers. Jeslek had talked about governing but said that it wasn't ruling but guiding, without ever defining what he meant.

   Cerryl felt dazed. He had learned much already, but none of it really answered the question of what exactly the white mages did. Everyone talked around everything without describing it.

   Slowly, he walked back to the common, then began to hurry as he realized he was due to meet Eliasar. He dropped the book on his cell desk and practically ran to the common.

   The blocky mage rose from the corner table and looked toward the flustered Cerryl. “You can slow down. Where were you?”

   “Esaak was tutoring me on mathematicks ...”

   “Is he still using that stupid example about 'a bunch of scores of lancers'?”

   “He did use a phrase like that, ser.”

   “Let's get you out to the armory, boy, and I'll tell you why it's a stupid phrase.” Eliasar turned and marched toward the rear corridor.

   Cerryl found himself nearly running to keep up with the quick steps of the battered-looking Eliasar.

   “Old Esaak is right about one thing. Numbers and calculations are important, but in battle-ha! Who knows?” Eliasar stepped into the rear courtyard, striding past six mounted lancers without even looking at them.

   Cerryl gave the mounts and their riders a slightly wider berth than the mage.

   “Look-I need to know exactly how many horses I'm taking on an expedition to say, Spidlar. Spidlar's as good an example as any. We'll be fighting there before long, anyway, unless I miss my guess. How much feed does a mount require? How many mounts? How many days? So how much grain do I need? How many lancers? How many levies that we have to feed? How much can I count on from foraging? That's the sort of things, you need numbers for. Darkness, half the time in a fight, you can't see how many, or where, or know if what you've got is even where it should be. And you don't have time to use a glass, and even if you did, you probably couldn't figure out what you saw quick enough to use it before it changed.”

   Eliasar marched through an open doorway and into a long room filled, it seemed to Cerryl, with racks and racks of weapons. The white mage passed the line of white bronze lances, shimmering in their racks, and stopped in the rear before another set of racks, yanking out what appeared to be a padded shirt. “Put that on. Right over your runic. Won't be wearing it that long anyways.”

   Cerryl pulled on the padded shirt.

   “Now this.” Eliasar extended what appeared to be bronze body armor of some sort, a combination of breastplate and back plates and shoulder gauntlets or whatever they were called. “Over your head.”

   The student mage struggled into the heavy bronze half-armor.

   “Remember this is white-bronze. Good steel is heavier.”

   Heavier? Cerryl wasn't sure he could have carried heavier armor.

   “And this is only partial armor.” Eliasar picked up a long heavy blade and a pair of gauntlets and marched out, as if expecting Cerryl to follow. “You won't wear this, probably not ever, but you'll wear it today.”

   The youth followed the older mage back out and across another courtyard, along yet another corridor and out into an empty practice yard where a heavy wooden post, more like a heavy slashed tree trunk, stood. Eliasar stopped a half-dozen cubits short of the post. “How do you feel?”

   “It's heavy,” admitted Cerryl.

   Eliasar handed Cerryl a pair of bronze gauntlets. “Put them on.”

   Cerryl pulled on the gauntlets, flexing his fingers. Surprisingly, the fingers of the metal gloves moved easily.

   “Take this.” Eliasar extended the blade, then pointed to the wooden post. “Go ahead. Take a whack at it.”

   Cerryl just looked. “I don't know how.”

   “Just lift the blade and chop.” Eliasar stepped back several paces.

   Awkwardly, Cerryl lifted the blade and swung it. The white bronze bounced off the wood, and Cerryl staggered back a step, trying to keep his balance.

   “Strike again.”

   Cerryl levered the blade around, and his whole arm ached as the blade struck the post and rebounded.

   “Do it again.”

   With both hands on the big hilt, Cerryl forced another thudding blow to the post, followed by yet another, further numbing Cerryl's arms.

   “Keep at it!” demanded Eliasar.

   When the arms mage finally allowed Cerryl to stop, the youth was drenched with sweat, and he could barely lift the blade to hand it back to Eliasar.

   “It's not so easy, is it?” asked the blocky mage, taking the gauntlets back as well.

   “No, ser.”

   “You barely swung that blade for a tenth part of a morn, and some battles last all day. Best remember that when you order armsmen to fight.” Eliasar turned, clearly expecting Cerryl to follow, leading him to yet another courtyard that Cerryl had no idea existed.

   A line of straw dummies was set up before canvas hangings.

   “Archery. There's three sets of hangings. Easier on the shafts and heads that way.” Eliasar picked up a curved stave from somewhere, or so Cerryl thought. “Now ... here's a bow. Here's how you string it.” In a fluid motion that Cerryl could barely follow, the arms mage had the bow strung. “You try it.” As quickly as he had strung the weapon, Eliasar unstrung it and handed it to Cerryl.

   Cerryl had to use his knee and most of his weight to even bend the bow, and scraped skin off the sides of two fingers in somehow stringing the weapon.

   Eliasar took the bow, inspected it without words, then nocked an arrow and put a shaft through the left arm of the center straw figure. “Little off there.” A second shaft went through the middle of the figure's chest. “Here you go.”

   The first shaft popped off the string on the draw because Cerryl's sweaty fingers lost their grip. He wiped them on his trousers and tried again. That shaft skidded along the sand in front of the targets. It took five attempts before a shaft even hit the hangings.

   By then blood streaked the fingers of his right hand.

   “That's enough. Clear you've had no training in arms.” Eliasar took back the bow, unstrung it, and wiped it down with a cloth he produced from somewhere.

   “You'll never raise a blade-or a bow. So why do you suppose I made you do all this?” Eliasar grinned. “And you'll do it a score or wore times before you ever ride with the lancers.”

   “So that I understand what lancers do?”

   Eliasar smiled coldly. “So you don't do something that kills them or you because you don't understand. You don't understand. You haven't even started to understand.” The grin returned. “Least you can Wear armor and move. Might be some hope for you.” Eliasar turned.

   “Let's get that off you and get you back to the common.”

   Cerryl forced his steps to match those of the older mage, although he found himself practically panting to keep up.

   “Be another eight-day or two. Mayhap longer, if you get sewer duty but I'll see you again. Then we'll be showing you how to ride proper-like. That's something you will do, and we'll make sure you know that.”

   Cerryl had the feeling that Eliasar would, and that the mage enjoyed making life difficult for students.

Cerryl looked down at the map outline lightly penned on the vellum spread across the table before him. He almost felt like jamming the quill into the smooth wood of the table or banging his head against the wall-or better yet, picking up Kesrik or Bealtur and pummeling either into a pulp, or tying them to a log and running through Dylert's big saw.

   Already one eight-day and two days had passed, and all he had was an outline on vellum. His fingers still ached from his morning with Eliasar, and that hadn't made copying any easier or quicker. He'd had to develop a real scale of distances, one that fit on the size vellum he'd been able to get from Arkos, and that had taken almost two days because none of the maps in the books or the bigger ones in the mages' library really agreed, not that well.

   Not only were all the sizes and scales different, but often the names weren't even the same. Some had Fenard spelled as Fenardre-after the ancient lord of Gallos, Cerryl guessed-and Jellico as Jellicor. The Westhorns were the Ouesthorns on some maps. One town in Certis had four names: Yytrel, Rellos, Estalcor, and Rytel. Cerryl figured, from the ages of the various histories and places, that the current name was Rytel- unless it had changed again.

   West of the Westhorns was worse, but he didn't have to worry about that, darkness forbid.

   Because one of the places that Jeslek had mentioned-Quessa- wasn't on any map anywhere, Cerryl had asked the few students he trusted, like Faltar and Lyasa and the diffident Heralt. None of them knew.

   While he would have been reluctant to approach any full mage he didn't study with-effectively Jeslek, Broka, and occasionally Derka- he had to ask himself why Jeslek had forbidden such questions. To force Cerryl to search the library and all the histories? To make the task harder? Another of Jeslek's endless tests?

   He looked at the map, then lifted it and reattached it to the working rack in the corner.

   Questions would have to wait.

   After washing up, Cerryl found himself marching up the avenue toward Fasse's shop. Jeslek hadn't forbidden him to talk to others who might know, and he thought he recalled that Fasse had come from Gallos. He hoped his recollections were correct.

   In the midafternoon, a line of wagons rumbled along the white stones of the avenue. A series of bells rang, and Cerryl smiled as he saw, trailing the cooper's wagon, a white-sided refuse wagon.

   Once past the market square, filled mainly with women, he reached the jewelers' row, where in the cool afternoon most doors were closed, except for one. As he passed the green-lacquered open door, he glanced inside, where a goldsmith held a glittering choker to the light of the door for a woman dressed in pale blue. Cerryl couldn't have guessed how much gold was in the necklace, only that it was far more than he would likely ever see, even if he did become a full mage. For all of the strangeness in the Halls of the Mages, love of gold did not seem a magely fault.

   One guard in pale blue livery stood by the door, and another almost between her and the goldsmith. Cerryl nodded to the guard, who did not nod back, and kept walking, past the rest of the fine metalsmiths', past the grain exchange, and finally to the artisans' square.

   The door to Fasse's shop was ajar, and Cerryl edged inside. Fasse stood, polishing cloth in hand, by a gold oak chest.

   “Yes, young ser?” The twiglike and wispy mustache twitched as the cabinet-maker turned to Cerryl.

   Cerryl found the setting strange. A craftmaster-one whose loft he had slept in back at a time when he had barely a handful of coppers to his name-was calling him “ser.”

   “Fasse, my name is Cerryl, and once I slept in your loft. I am working on a project for the higher mages ...” What else could he call Jeslek? “. .. and I thought you might be able to help.”

   “Young ser, you did look familiar.” Fasse's brow furrowed as he stepped back from the gold oak chest he polished. “Yet, how could I be helping you?”

   “I am making a map, and there are some towns in Gallos ... Might you know where Quessa is?”

   Fasse scratched the back of his head, his eyes going sidelong at Cerryl for a moment. “Hmmm ... aye ... I was there once, as a boy, but how .. . how would I say ... explain ... that be many years ago.”

   Cerryl waited.

   “Best as I recall, it be three days' ride to the west of Hierna, only two days east of the Westhorns, the first hills, that be.”

   Cerryl swallowed. “Ah ... I know where Tellura is, but not Hierna.”

   Fasse twisted one end of the thin mustache. “Tellura... I never went there, though all said it was to the south and east of Linspros and somewhere south and east of Hierna.” Then he hung the polishing cloth on a wooden peg next to one of the smaller wood racks. “And never having been there, I'd not know how to say to get from one to the other. Or how long one might have to travel.”

   “Do you know anyone in Fairhaven who might know?”

   Fasse twisted the other end of his mustache, scratching his head with the other hand. Then he pursed his lips. “Lwelter the potter-he might, seeing as his consort, she was Analerian, and they travel all Kyphros ... might be that Hierna be too far north for herders.” Fasse shrugged. “Best I could do.”

   “Lwelter ... where could I find him?”

   “You know Arkos the tanner? You must... ah...” Fasse swallowed.

   Cerryl ignored the audible gulp. “I know Arkos. Is Lwelter near there?”

   “Two shops toward the square. Leastwise, I think it's two. You'll find it, young ser.”

   “Thank you, Fasse.” Cerryl nodded and left, repeating as he walked toward the tanner's what Fasse had said until he was sure he had the information firmly in mind.

   From what Cerryl could tell, the potter's shop, the one with the outsized pitcher over the doorway, was three shops toward the square from the tanner's. He opened the door gently and stepped inside.

   A young man, not that much older than Cerryl himself, sat on a stool, one foot pumping the treadle that powered the wheel. Cerryl watched as the base of a pot or a pitcher rose from the clay under the stubby fingers of the young potter.

   The potter never glanced at Cerryl.

   Finally, Cerryl cleared his throat. “I'm looking for Lwelter, the potter.”

   The slender man looked up from the wheel, then stiffened as he saw the white tunic and trousers. “Lwelter, ser?”

   “He might know something,” Cerryl said.

   “Lwelter?”

   Cerryl nodded.

   “As you wish, ser.” He turned on the stool. “Da! Mage here to see you.” Then he turned back to the wheel. “If you don't mind, ser . . .”

   “Go ahead.”

   Shortly, a stooped man shuffled out from the back room. Lwelter's sightless eyes looked past Cerryl. “Ser... ?” The cracked voice wavered.

   “Lwelter?”

   “That's me. Always been me, even when I could see.”

   “I was talking with Fasse, and he said you might be able to help me. You once spent time in Gallos and Kyphros, he said.”

   “Been a long time back, a long time, when Deorca was younger than Flait here.”

   “What can you tell me about Quessa or Hierna?”

   “Hierna, ah, yes, that was the next town but one from Zrenca, and Zrenca, that was where I found Deorca.” A smile creased the thin and pale lips. “A long time back.”

   “How far is Hierna from Tellura?”

   “Not too far a piece. There's a day, a short day between Hierna and Zrenca, but Zrenca is but a hamlet, not a proper town at all, you know.”

   “And how far is Tellura from Zrenca?” Cerryl asked politely.

   “I'd say, if there were a road, straight that is, it might take two days by horse, but the hills and the streams they don't flow straight, and the roads wind more than the streams.”

   “Zrenca is two days straight west from Tellura?” pursued Cerryl.

   “Mostly, but I'd be guessing ...”

   “And Hierna is another day west from Zrenca?”

   “Ah ... no. Hierna ... you go as much north as west from Zrenca, and a short day, a half day hard riding.”

   “Have you ever heard of a town called Quessa?”

   Lwelter shrugged. “Knew it be west of Hierna, more than a few days . . . two, mayhap three.”

   “How big is Hierna?”

   “You been to Weevett, young fellow?”

   In the background, the stubby-fingered young potter winced ever so slightly.

   “Well, Hierna's half again as big as Weevett, lessen one's growed more than the other in the last ten years.” Lwelter laughed.

   “Do you know anything about Quessa?”

   “Some said it was a hamlet like Zrenca. Never went there. Deorca had a cousin consorted with a miller there.”

   “Did you ever go to the Westhorns from Zrenca?” asked Cerryl.

   “Me? I was a potter, not a herder. 'Sides, even then, folks worried about the black she-angels. Folks say they're all dead. Don't you believe it.” Lwelter cackled, shaking his head. “Don't like the lowlands, the angels don't.”

   “Da.” The word was firm. “The white mage knows all about the angels.”

   Lwelter stopped cackling. “You didn't say he was a mage.”

   “He did,” Cerryl said. “You have been very helpful. Thank you ” He fumbled in his purse and handed a pair of coppers to the younger potter before turning and leaving.

   “... could have gotten us turned to ashes ...”

   “... never said ...”

   Ignoring the recriminations behind him, Cerryl walked quickly back to the wizards' square.

   The dinner bell was ringing as he opened his cell door, and he washed quickly and hurried toward the meal hall. The others who ate there were already seated with platters, and he found himself alone at the serving table.

 
 After taking a chunk of oat bread, some cheese, noodles in white sauce, and a mug of the light ale, he sat down across from Faltar. He absently let his senses range over the food, though outside of the poisoned cider, he'd never found any other sense of chaos in food in the halls.

   “Where have you been?” asked the blond student mage.

   Beside Faltar, the curly-haired Heralt raised his eyebrows as he chewed some of the tough bread.

   “Trying to find out where Quessa is-and Hierna, and Zrenca, and...” Cerryl broke off a corner of the bread and dipped it in the white sauce.

   “Too bad scriveners can't use glasses like real student mages ...” came the murmur from Bealtur at the adjoining table.

   Cerryl stiffened momentarily, then smiled and turned to Faltar. “For some reason, the honored Jeslek did not want me to use a glass, and I would not think of going against his expressed wishes.” His face hardened slightly. “I'm sure he wouldn't like to learn that anyone had suggested otherwise.”

   There was a satisfying gulp from the adjoining table.

   Faltar grinned. So did Heralt, if momentarily.

   Cerryl didn't. He had too much drawing and copying ahead. Instead, he took a chunk of the oat bread and began to chew.