L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

Kadara turned, stopped, and waited.

Rahl hurried across the grass between paths to her.

“You might have taken the walks, Rahl. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m sorry, Magistra Kadara…I was trying to follow your advice…and I did something wrong.”

“You did something wrong?” The magistra sighed. “What?”

“I think I undid all the order-links in a part of the black wall. The western end where it meets the walk.”

“Did it fall down?”

“Ah…part of it exploded.”

Kadara looked at Rahl intently, then asked, “Can you ride?”

“Not really.”

“You’re about to learn, and it’s likely to be another lesson you won’t enjoy. Follow me.” She turned and marched along the walk, turning onto another stone walk that ran southeast.

Rahl almost had to run to catch her.

Before long, he found himself bouncing on the back of a mount that the training center duty ostler had assured him was as “gentle as an old dog in front of a fire.” That might have been, but Rahl spent more than a little effort holding on to the rim of the saddle as he followed Kadara along a riding trail through the meadow grasses, seemingly halfway between the stone walkway he had followed earlier and the black wall.

When she reached the end of the riding trail-which ended a good hundred cubits short of the end of the wall and the paved space with benches-Kadara just continued riding through the grass until she reached a point a few cubits short of the benches. There she reined up, but did not dismount. She just studied the ruined end section of the wall for a time. Rahl could sense her order-probing the stones and the ground beneath the wall.

Finally, she turned in the saddle. “Tell me, as well as you can, exactly what you did.” Her voice did not sound angry, but tired, almost resigned, and that disturbed Rahl far more than anger would have.

“I was sitting on the bench there.” He pointed. “I could feel both the breeze and the sunlight, and I was thinking about how The Basis of Order said that sunlight was chaos with a structure. The black wall had a lot of order in it, and it felt sort of like the description of sunlight. I was sitting on the bench, and I was just trying to feel how it was all put together, and…then everything came apart, and I was thrown into the grass. When I managed to get up and look at things, the wall was like it is now.”

“You didn’t try to unlink or take anything apart?”

“No, magistra. I was just trying to figure out how the links worked. You and Magistra Leyla had both told me that I needed to look more into things and try to figure them out for myself.”

Kadara studied Rahl. She shook her head. “You’re lucky you don’t have to think about shields. Otherwise, you’d be dead. Look at all those stone fragments around the benches. Do you see that arc?”

Rahl did.

“Your shields stopped them. That’s the pattern.” She turned her mount. “We might as well head back. Tomorrow morning, you’ll need to meet with all of the mages at the training center.”

Rahl managed to get his mount turned and headed back behind Kadara, thinking that her calm and resigned words were far more frightening than had been the sentence of exile to Nylan handed down by the Council.

On eightday night, once more, Rahl did not sleep all that well, even though he had tried to read himself to sleep with The Basis of Order. Usually, when he tried to read it at night, he immediately fell asleep, but the order-chaos explosion at the wall kept going through his mind. All he had been trying to do was to see how the builders had constructed the wall and how they had linked the order in the way in which the chaos structured by order had actually strengthened the stones of the wall and the wall itself.

He got up earlier than normal, showered, shaved, and put on his cleanest tunic and trousers before making his way to breakfast. He didn’t feel that hungry, but decided he’d best eat well with what faced him. He took the eggs scrambled in with sausage and half a small loaf of dark bread and a mug of ale. Often he had cider in the morning, but he’d felt he needed the ale with what lay ahead of him.

Perhaps since he was earlier than usual on oneday, there weren’t quite as many people in the mess, and most who were wore the training grays. Because the mess wasn’t that crowded, and because he really didn’t want to talk to anyone, he picked the empty end of a table, but no sooner had he seated himself than Anitra got up from where she had been sitting. She made her way immediately to his table, settling down right across from him.

“Someone blew up part of the black wall in the west. Did you hear that?”

“They did?” That was a safe enough answer for Rahl.

“Engineer Selyrt said it had to be a chaos-mage. Someone else said a Hamorian warship fired a cannon at it. What do you think?”

Rahl took a swallow of ale before answering. “I don’t think it could have been either. The black ships would have known if a warship were that near, and almost any magister around would have known about a chaos-wizard who was strong enough to do that.”

“Then who could have done it?”

“Probably someone with the best intentions who didn’t realize what would happen.” That was certainly true as well.

“Doesn’t that beat all.” Anitra shook her head. “Engineers weren’t happy. Selyrt said it would take a lot of work to repair it.”

“It’s a tall wall, and damage to even a small part would take work. What do you think?”

“Don’t know, but I think you know more than you’re saying.”

“I probably am.” Rahl forced a laugh. “Isn’t that true of all of us?” He took a mouthful of eggs and sausage, hoping that would discourage the apprentice machinist.

“I don’t know. I say what I know…mean what I say.”

“You’re more honest than most. Most people have things they’d rather not have others know.”

“You have things like that?”

“Yes.”

“Want to tell me?”

Rahl smiled. “I’m like everyone else in that. I’d rather not. I’ve done stupid things, and it’s painful to remember them, let alone repeat them.” He grinned. “And then, I’d feel that everyone would know I was stupider than I am.”

Anitra looked at him, then nodded. “Suppose so. Wager that’s true for all you mage types.” Then she stood. “I’m off. Going to meet Sheyna. We always walk down to the engineering hall together.”

“Have a good day.”

“We will. She makes the walk fun.”

Rahl couldn’t help smiling for a moment. Then he ate the last of the eggs and bread and ended with a swallow of ale.

He forced himself to take his time in cleaning up his dishes and in making his way to the training hall.

Early as he was, Kadara was already there. So was Leyla.

“You can wait in the study,” Leyla said. “One of us will get you when it’s time for you to come before the board in the hearing chamber.”

The board?

“The training center’s board of magisters,” added Kadara.

As the two departed, Rahl took a seat in the study. The door was left ajar, but, unlike what had happened in Land’s End, when he had come before the Council, there were no guards. In fact, Rahl realized, he hadn’t seen anything like the Council Guards in Nylan. There were patrollers, but they didn’t seem to be the same. Was that because they were more interested in keeping law, rather than enforcing the will of whoever ran Nylan? But then, where could anyone go in Nylan and not be found before long?

Try as he might, even with his order-senses, Rahl could hear nothing.

After a time, he shifted his weight in the chair. Then he stood-and reseated himself…and squirmed in the chair some more. What were they saying? How difficult could it be to decide to exile him?