L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

Be caused to fail? The book didn’t mention how that might happen, just like it didn’t go into details about how much was accomplished.

He read through several more pages until he came to another section.

If one studies the light from the sun, it is like chaos, and yet it is not. It has a power not unlike chaos, yet its structure is more like unto water, and it flows through the air like a breeze, yet it weighs so little that it might be as nothing…

Sunlight like water? With weight…and flowing through the air?

After several pages more, he closed his eyes, leaned back against the stone wall behind the bench, and let himself doze.

In the darkness of eightday, not long before lamps-out, Rahl walked along the path in the garden. The afternoon nap had helped, but he still felt a little tired. As he walked, he kept his eyes closed, confirming that he navigated more in deep darkness by his order-senses than by his sight. Still, he was trying to sense more than just the general position of things, but where exactly they were and how solid they might be.

Still without using his vision, he followed the stones through the patch of brinn, trying to put his boots down in the exact center of each hexagonal stone. When he had crossed the brinn, he stopped on the narrow walk that separated it from the sage on his left and the mint on his right. The sage bed was elevated a good span and a half above the mint and grew in drier and sandier soil.

He opened his eyes and checked his location. He was on the edge of the stones, but that wasn’t too bad. The first time, he’d almost tripped on the raised border of the sage bed.

As he stood in the cool of the evening, he also tried to recall the difference between seeing and sensing. After a moment, he closed his eyes and began to move forward.

Then he sensed someone approaching on the main walk, but not who.

He opened his eyes.

It was an older man, dressed in the same grays as Rahl wore. He looked at Rahl, then inclined his head. “Good evening.”

“Good evening.”

Rahl waited until the other was out of sight before he resumed his exercises in the garden. He couldn’t say why, but he felt that he needed to learn something about order before long.

He’d discovered more than a few aspects of order by trying things, but what he had not discovered was how he did what he did. Once he considered the possibility of doing something, it was almost as though he could either do it, or he could not-even when he knew that other mages had been able to accomplish what he tried.

As the time neared for the lamps-out bell, Rahl made one last order-sensed navigation through the garden, this time between the mint and the parsley, before opening his eyes and making his way back to his quarters.

There he lit the lamp and reclaimed his towel before heading to the washstones to wash up before climbing into bed. He finished quickly and returned to his chamber.

Absently, he put out the wall lamp by tightening a miniature order shield around the wick. He could do that, but he could not erect a shield such as that around anything living-even to protect it. He’d tried to shield a tree-rat from a terrier, and that hadn’t worked. He hadn’t even been able to put shields around insects.

Then he laughed. He hadn’t even thought of it, but he hadn’t really needed to light the lamp at all.

Was that part of his problem, that he still was doing too many things by habit rather than asking if he should be, or whether he could handle them in a different fashion?

He began to disrobe, stifling a yawn. The end-days had been long.

On oneday, Leyla met Rahl outside the small study. “We’ve decided to change what you’re doing. You won’t be working with Magister Sebenet any longer.”

What had he done wrong there?

“It’s not your work. In fact, Sebenet’s not at all happy about it. He thinks you have the makings of a good typesetter and printer, but that’s not going to help you. From here on, you’ll be spending all morning in Hamorian classes. Magister Thorl says you have a great ability with languages, and your experience there and with the printing indicates that you learn better by doing than by reading.”

Rahl had only been trying to tell the magisters that for an eightday, but he just nodded.

Leyla glanced at his arm. “You’ll be doing arms training in the afternoon. There’s plenty you can do with that while you’re healing. Deybri says it’s not that deep.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. It was Kadara’s suggestion-after your difficulties over the end-days. She said you’re one of those who has to learn everything the hard way. Learning arms will be very hard for you. Probably not the truncheon or the staff, but everything else.”

“What about studying order?”

“That’s up to you. You have your copy of The Basis of Order. We’ll answer any questions you have.” Leyla’s eyes met his. “Frankly, if you don’t figure out better control, you won’t be able to stay in Nylan, but you’re spending as much time and effort fighting us as trying to learn. We think that your only hope is to learn on your own-at least for the next few eightdays. Then we’ll see.”

Rahl found himself bristling inside once more. They hadn’t wanted to tell him all that much, and now they were saying that it was because he was fighting them. Of course he was fighting them. He was trying to get them to tell him something useful. The only one who’d really been all that helpful hadn’t been a mage at all, but a healer. Rahl wasn’t certain that Kadara would have said nearly so much as she had if Deybri hadn’t been there.

“Oh, Rahl,” Leyla said tiredly, “please do stop it. You want us to give you easy and simple answers on how to handle a set of complex skills you haven’t investigated, haven’t tried to figure out, and don’t seem to want to. You have natural order-talents, but they’ll never be more than that until you look into yourself and see what you’re doing and how, and that’s not something we can do for you.”

“You could tell me how things are supposed to work.”

“Such as?”

Rahl found his thoughts going in all directions. He hated being put on the spot, trying to come up with a quick reply, as if it were all his fault if he didn’t. “How do you put order into things?”

“Unwisely, if you look at it that way.” Leyla sighed. “Let me try to explain this in very simple terms. You have both order and chaos in your body. If you use the order in your body and put it elsewhere, you’re going to unbalance your body, and you’ll get sick or die, because the remaining chaos will overpower the order and break down parts of your body. Now…there is a certain amount of free chaos and order around us all, but it’s spread out thinner than the air we breathe. A strong mage can gather either and use that. If he gathers too much, it’s likely to result in attracting an equal amount of chaos-or draw someone who holds that much free chaos within them. If there are reasons why that does not happen, then a focus of the opposite force will appear somewhere in the world, more likely nearer than more distant. You have the ability to draw some of that free order from around you, but you’re not really aware of it, or how you do it. I suspect that’s why the thief had to attack you, although he wasn’t aware of it, because his chaos was drawn to your order. That’s why we maintain strong defenses against chaos here in Nylan, because the black iron of our machines represents concentrated order. That’s also why we discourage order-magery in Nylan, except for healing, because it makes matters worse.”