L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

“They won’t bother us none, so long as we’re quiet,” Brick said in a low voice. “Never have, anyways.”

Blacktop finished the dinner slop without saying anything. The guards moved slowly until they were out of sight behind him. He wasn’t about to look back because that would draw their attention.

Brick leaned closer to Blacktop. “They were words, weren’t they?”

Blacktop nodded, just slightly.

“Can you write my name?”

Blacktop didn’t want to, not at all, but without Brick’s help he would have been a slogger. He leaned closer to the older loader, then wrote Brick in smaller letters in the small area of dust beside the older loader’s tin cup.

“What are you doing there?” The words came from an overseer who strode toward the table, followed by the two guards Blacktop had lost sight of.

“Writing…” Blacktop admitted.

“You know your letters?”

“I seem to know a few, ser.”

“Overseer, Blacktop.”

“I seem to, overseer.”

The overseer paused. “Don’t do it anymore.”

“Yes, overseer.”

“You do it anymore, and you’ll answer to more than me, Blacktop.”

“Yes, overseer.”

The mumbles that ran around the tables were so low that Blacktop could not make them out, but he had the feeling that most of the loaders were less than pleased at the attention he had brought to them. Just from a few words?

He finished the last sip of the beer, then rose, with a few quick words to Brick. “See you later.” With his tin dish and cup in hand, he headed for the wash racks, where he left both. Then he turned and stepped out through the doorway and took the foot-packed walk to the loaders’ bunkhouse. Overhead, the low gray clouds were tinged with a sullen red glow from the ovens and furnaces.

Later, as Blacktop lay on his straw pallet, looking up at the underside of the cracked roof tiles, he couldn’t help but ask himself why the overseers were against his writing simple words in the table dust? It didn’t make much sense, because he hadn’t been writing anything, and whatever he’d written would soon be gone. Besides, Blacktop hadn’t run across anyone else among the loaders and breakers who could read single words, let alone more.

What was it about words? But then, how did he know about them? It was as though his hands and fingers remembered more than his head, but he had to admit he was beginning to remember images. Still, why had he lost his memories, and why couldn’t he remember more? And who had the redheaded girl been? Why had he remembered her when her face had looked so disinterested and as if she couldn’t have cared less?

He looked at the tiles above, trying to find answers to those questions…and to others he could scarcely frame, questions lost in the fuzziness of a forgetfulness whose source he also could not remember. And beneath it all, he knew, was rage, a seething red force whose cause was also lost.

The next morning, as Blacktop filed out of the cookshack behind Brick, his eyes slit against a hot wind that swirled grit around the loaders, an overseer waited with two guards.

“You Blacktop?” asked the overseer.

“Yes, overseer.” Blacktop blinked, trying to get the fine grit from his left eye.

“You’re to come with me. The guard-captain has some questions for you.”

Blacktop didn’t want to accompany the overseer. Overseers usually meant trouble. He looked at the overseer and the guards behind him. He didn’t see a mage-guard anywhere, but they were never far away. That he had learned. “Yes, overseer.”

“Down the walkway there to the wagon. You go first.”

The wagon that stood down the stone walk from the cookshack was one with two rows of seats behind the driver. Blacktop had seen such wagons occasionally, carrying guards, mage-guards, or others who were neither loaders, breakers, nor sloggers.

“Get in the second row, Blacktop. The one right behind the driver.”

“Yes, overseer.” Blacktop realized that each time he had to say those words, he could feel anger, yet he could not ever show such anger, not if he wanted to live. Or if he were ever to find out how he had come to the ironworks…and who had been responsible.

He climbed up onto the wagon.

The overseer and one guard took the seat behind him, while the other guard sat beside the driver, turned so that he was watching Blacktop. The driver flicked the leads of the two drays, and the wagon began to move, its iron tires crunching on the grit that covered the stone-paved lane.

Blacktop took in everything he could as the wagon continued southward down the gradually sloping way. The lane paralleled the blast furnaces, then continued across a stretch of flat ground. To both the right and left of the lane were structures with roofs but no walls. He had seen them from the loaders’ enclosures and from the cookshack area, but had not been able to discern their function. Now he could see that they held iron. Some held stacks of heavy plate; others thinner plate, still others iron bars.

Beyond the warehouses to the west, he could make out a stone structure composed of multiple layers of arches. From the bridge, if it happened to be that, ran a smaller arched bridge to each of the blast furnaces. Farther to the south, the structure curved westward and ran toward the mountains. In fact, Blacktop realized, it ran right into the mountains. Unbidden, the word aqueduct came to mind. Of course, there had to be water for the furnaces.

Again…he wondered how he had known that, but that question could wait as he studied the area. He could also see that almost nothing grew in the valley, except sparse patches of grass and scattered scraggly bushes and twisted low evergreens. Just beyond the point where the storage warehouses ended, the lane began to climb a low rise toward a group of buildings set on a low mesa. As in the rest of the valley, little grew on the rock-strewn sides of the low mesa.

When the wagon reached the crest and the road leveled out, Blacktop could see that there were four buildings. He could also feel a cooler breeze out of the south, and he looked carefully past the structures. Directly south of the mesa was a gap in the low mountains that encircled the valley, and from that gap, he thought, the wind blew.

The stone walls of the buildings might once have been white marble, but all the stone was a brown-tinged gray. Even the narrow windows looked to be the same shade. The wagon creaked to a stop before the middle building. The archway had no columns before it, and only a single wide stone step to serve as an entry.

“Off, Blacktop.”

Blacktop eased himself off the wagon, then stood and waited.

“Follow me.” The overseer walked the fifteen cubits to the archway.

So did Blacktop, conscious that the two guards trailed him, ready to cut him down if he so much as stepped sideways. As he neared the building, he saw that the walls were old and pitted, as well as stained.

In front of him, the overseer opened the plain oak door and stepped into a square foyer. He turned right down a narrow corridor, walled in the same pale marble as the exterior of the building, but without the staining and pitting. The second door on the left was open, and the overseer entered.

A guard wearing a falchiona surveyed the overseer.

“Overseer Stolt reporting with the loader Blacktop, as ordered.”

“Wait.” The guard turned and opened the door to his left. He took a half step into the chamber, and said, “The overseer is here.” After a moment, he stepped back. “The guard-captain will see you and the loader.”

“Go ahead, Blacktop.”

Blacktop walked through the door into a smallish chamber that held little besides a table desk, two chairs, a stool, and a set of file chests stacked against the wall on both sides of the narrow window before which the table desk was set.