L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

Kadara opened the door. “Healer!”

Deybri was moving toward them when she saw Kadara and Rahl. Her eyes widened, then lingered on his wounded arm.

“Rahl ran into a chaos-driven Hydlenese at the harbor square. Rahl stopped him from stealing a vendor’s cashbox, and he went after Rahl.” Kadara offered a lopsided smile. “The thief is dead, but he did slash Rahl, and I thought you should look at the wound.”

“Chaos-driven…I should.” Deybri gestured to a stool before the window. “Sit down here, if you would.”

Rahl was happy to sit down. Even after eating, he was still tired, as if he’d worked all day spading his mother’s garden.

Deybri unbound the dressing, then took a bottle of liquid from the plain cabinet set against the wall and soaked a cloth before cleaning the top of the slash, as well as the area around it. The liquid stung, but not badly. Her fingers rested just at the edge of the wound.

Rahl could feel a warm/cool darkness touching and penetrating the gash. “Is that order?”

“You can feel that?” asked Deybri.

Kadara leaned forward slightly, looking at Rahl.

“Yes, healer. I mean, I feel something that’s there, but not there, and black and warm and cool all at the same time.”

Kadara and Deybri exchanged glances.

For a moment, Rahl could feel the air tightening around him-except that it wasn’t.

“Did you feel something?” asked Kadara.

“Something pressing in on me.”

Deybri glanced to Kadara.

“He’s not aware of his shields. No wonder they sent him here.”

Rahl glanced back and forth. Again, people were using words he knew, but they didn’t make much sense.

Kadara looked to Rahl once more. “There’s a way to use order to keep either order or chaos from touching you. That’s what I meant by shields. Most mages have to learn how to create such shields. You’re doing it without understanding what you’re doing. In fact, you’re doing a number of things with order without thinking about them. That can be very, very dangerous, and, if you don’t learn to control them, you will get in a situation that will kill you. It’s only a matter of time. If you don’t learn control, your failures may kill people around you as well.”

Rahl looked to Deybri.

She nodded.

“There wasn’t much wound chaos there, almost none at all.” Deybri turned to Rahl. “Did a mage dress it?”

Rahl nodded.

“That explains it.”

“Or most of it,” Kadara added.

The healer took a fresh dressing from the cabinet. Her hands were swift and gentle as she re-bound the wound. “You’re to come here every afternoon after the midday meal until we tell you that you don’t have to. Even if you’re supposed to be somewhere else. Do you understand?”

“Yes, healer.”

“I’ll make sure the other magisters know,” added Kadara. “Now, we need to get you some rest.”

Rahl stood. He wasn’t light-headed, but he had felt better than he did at that moment, usually much better.

As Rahl stepped out of the infirmary, Kadara leaned back inside the doorway and said in a lower voice, “I’ll be back later.”

Deybri did not speak in reply, and Rahl could not see or sense any gesture in response.

Then Kadara returned. “We need to get you back to your room. You need some rest and a good night’s sleep after that.”

Since putting one leg in front of the other was getting more and more difficult, Rahl had to agree. He walked silently beside the magistra until they reached his chamber.

“You don’t need to think about everything right now. You need to get some rest. Just lie down until supper.”

After Kadara left, Rahl stretched out on the bed. What had he done? The thief had said that Rahl had burned him, when Rahl had tripped the man. Rahl certainly hadn’t been aware of using order when he’d hit the man with the ivory carving, but what else could explain why the thief had died? He’d only felt that reddish whiteness that strongly once before, with the man with the sword in Land’s End.

He swallowed. Had the conflict between order and chaos been what had killed that man as well? Was that part of the reason why he was so tired?

He had more questions, but he found his eyes closing, even as he tried to think of what they were.

Rahl didn’t really want to get up early on eightday. His arm ached, and he felt even more exhausted than he had when he’d gone to bed the night before, but he knew he wouldn’t feel better unless he ate, and, if he wanted to eat, he had to get up while the mess was still serving.

He washed up and forced himself to shave, but didn’t shower, not with the dressing on his upper arm. Then he walked to the mess. There were perhaps fifteen people in the hall, and he knew none of them. Tired as he was, he found himself eating two complete helpings of cheesed eggs and sausage and almost half a loaf of bread, with two mugs of ale. He didn’t feel nearly as tired after he’d eaten, but he also didn’t feel all that energetic as he walked back to his quarters.

While it was too nice a day to sit inside, he didn’t have that much energy. Still, he forced himself to go to the washing area and wash out his dirty garments and undergarments-except for the one ruined summer tunic-and hang them out to dry. On oneday, he’d need to see if he could get a replacement tunic. He just hoped he didn’t have to pay to replace it…because he couldn’t.

At that moment, he realized that Kadara had to have paid for his meal in the canteen the afternoon before. He hadn’t even noticed that.

Her words about his being able to do things with order without thinking about it also came back to him. Was that why the Council had pushed him out of Land’s End and sent him to Nylan? Kadara had clearly thought so. But why?

Rahl thought about the magisters and magistras he’d met in Nylan. Almost all of them seemed more powerful than those on the Council. Had Puvort set up Rahl to be sent to Nylan because he could have been as powerful as the northern mages? Or because they feared that he would become powerful? Kadara had said that Rahl could be a danger to himself and others, and those words had felt true.

But…how…and why?

He shook his head. He was still tired, and he needed to know more.

Finally, he decided that he might as well read The Basis of Order. If he tried to relate what he read to what he knew or had done, maybe that would help. After a little wandering around, he found a secluded stone bench near the garden and settled there, opening the book and letting the morning sunlight warm him.

He had read several pages when his eyes slowed in reading one passage. He went over it carefully, and then reread it.

…all that is, everything that exists, is little more than the twisting of chaos within a shell of order, and the greater the complexity of those twistings, the more solid the object appears. A thumb of lead or gold may appear more solid than a flower, and may indeed overbalance the scales, yet there is no difference in the fashion in which they are constructed, only that the chaos is twisted more lightly and that the shell of order is stronger. Hard coal is heavier than wood, and, as such, when it burns it releases more chaos-fire…

Rahl frowned. Was that why black iron was heavier, because it contained more order and chaos than simple iron? That would also explain why Khalyt had been so excited about his ideas for building a steam turbine to propel ships, because it would use less black iron and provide greater power.

He read another page, and then another, before coming to another section that struck him as interesting.

In substance, there is no difference between chaos and order, for neither has substance in and of itself, but as a result of how they are structured. Likewise, that structure determines how much order and chaos can be encompassed and how it will be released, if it can be, should the structure fail or be caused to fail…