L. Modesitt - Ordermaster

“We may not, either, not after attacking.”

“Do you think these white wizards-especially the powerful one-will let me just ride up to wherever they are and attack them?”

“Why will they meet us?”

“Because Lyras is going to be with the attacking force,” Kharl said.

Lyras paled. His swallow was audible in the stillness of the chamber.

“These two wizards have never sensed me, not up close, and most whites don’t seem to be that good at locating blacks. Lyras will show someorder-magery, and I’ll do what I need to do while they’re concentrating on our force.”

“That could be dangerous,” Hagen said. “They could wipe out our entire force.”

“If I can’t do what I need to do, you can order a retreat. Or Casolan or Norgen can.”

“It’s best, I think, if I’m there.” Another grim smile crossed the lord-chancellor’s lips. “One way or another.”

Kharl understood.

Hagen rose. “We may not need to ride out until fiveday, but you should be ready tomorrow, mages.” His eyes went to Lyras.

“Yes, lord-chancellor.” Lyras’s voice carried resignation. He looked to Kharl. “Ser Kharl.”

“I will see you both in the morning,” Hagen added, in dismissal.

Kharl inclined his head, then turned and left the study. Lyras followed.

Outside, in the corridor, the older mage turned to Kharl. After a moment, he said, “You have learned much, ser Kharl, but do you think you can face one of the most powerful mages from Hamor?”

“I can certainly face him,” Kharl said, with a laugh. “Whether I can prevail … that is another question. If I can, it is best to end this now. If I cannot, then it is also for the best.”

“For the best?”

“We could retreat, and harass, and attack, and in a year all of Austra would be in flames, and most would be starving.” Kharl did not add that there was already too much blood on his hands, and too many deaths weighing upon him. At times, his mouth, his food, everything still tasted of ashes.

“You are saying …”

“I am saying that there are worse things than being conquered. I would rather not live under the emperor. I will do my best so that does not happen. What we do does not affect us alone. Already, Lord Ghrant has lost more than half his lancers and armsmen, one way or another. Hundreds of women are already widows, and thousands of children are orphans. How many will there be in a season, in a year? What sort of land will Lord Ghrant have then, if he has any at all?”

Lyras looked away.

For all of his words to Lyras, Kharl was worried. Just how would he be able to stand up to a mighty white wizard? He was wagering on his ability to make something out of a few words in The Basis of Order and out of the few abilities he had perfected.

Unlike most black mages, he had learned little about healing, no matter how he had tried, and he could barely sense what the weather might do, let alone change it or influence it. He had no idea how to help things grow, the way Lyras and the druids did. He could not feel what was deep beneath the earth, nor in the water. All he had learned was how to sense order and chaos, to harden substances, especially air, to create shields against chaos, and to release chaos by unbinding order.

After he and Lyras parted outside of Hagen’s chamber, Kharl had gone to the top of the north tower, but he had been unable to discover a way to put into action the words in The Basis of Order.

Still thinking about Hagen’s revelations and his own too-proud words to Lyras, Kharl had left the tower and walked slowly through the corridors of the Great House. He crossed the rear courtyard and made his way out to the smithy, an armorer’s smithy, although the forge was shared at times by the estate smith and the farrier. If the forge happened to be hot, perhaps studying the chaos within the coals might give him some hints. Besides, he had spent enough time in his quarters, and sitting down for any length of time would just leave his leg stiff again.

The armorer was not using the forge, but the farrier was, shaping a horseshoe. The horse to be reshod was a dun mare, one that Kharl thought might be the mount that Lady Hyrietta often rode. Since he had returned to Valmurl, he had seldom seen the dark-haired lady with the heart-shaped face, or Lord Ghrant’s two sons, even at a distance.

The farrier glanced at Kharl, nodded, and went about his business, thrusting the tongs holding the shoe into the forge.

Kharl stood in the doorway to the smithy, letting his senses range over the forge fire. The energy of the forge was what he would have called honestchaos, without the reddish overshades of the chaos-fire spewed forth by the white wizards. Or by what he had done in unbinding order to release chaos.

The farrier’s hammer struck the horseshoe on the forge, and Kharl sensed the change in both order and chaos within the iron. There was a flow, an ordering, in the metal … but why? Kharl continued to follow the farrier’s actions for a time. He could sense the slight ordering in the shoes, and he could tell that the mount’s feet would be protected by more than the shoe, if only slightly. But why?

He frowned and let his senses take in the farrier himself. There was the faintest sense of blackness about the man. In a way, Kharl decided, the farrier had a touch of the order-mage within him. Only the slightest touch, but a little. Did all the best crafters have a trace of order-talent? Kharl wouldn’t have been surprised at that, but that observation and its application would have to wait.

As he took in the smithy, and especially what was happening with the horseshoes, he began to pick up the pattern, a faint pattern, but it was there. There were ties between the farrier and the horseshoe, and even though the farrier had added but the slightest trace of order from himself to the shoe, there was a link. Kharl tried to follow that link, but it was so delicate that even reaching out to touch it shattered the connection, and it was so faint that the farrier didn’t even seem to feel it.

After a while longer, Kharl nodded and stepped back, thinking as he began to walk back through the warm noon sunlight toward the small dining room. The Basis of Order had been right. There was a connection or a tie. That suggested that the linkage might be used. Could it be a way back through the white wizard’s shields? How could he find out?

He laughed, briefly. There wasn’t any way to find out, not short of trying, and failure could be costly, and probably deadly.

He turned toward the small dining room. Whatever might happen, he needed to eat, and he needed to make sure he had plenty of provisions on the ride-or campaign-against the rebels and the Hamorians.

Fourday found Kharl back in the saddle before dawn, in the green-and-black uniform of an Austran armsman, riding with Undercaptain Demyst and his squad on a side road at the south edge of the Nierran Hills, not all that far from Lyras’s cottage. Kharl smiled briefly as he recalled the meeting with the older mage in the small cottage of red sandstone, with its glass windows and green-painted shutters and front door. Lyras had offered refreshments, hospitality, and almost no advice, except how to determine where Kharl’s skills might lie. While he had always suspected the reason for that, Kharl was truly beginning to understand why. Handling of order-or of chaos-had to come from understanding, and that could never be taught, only experienced.

There was barely enough space for two mounts abreast on the clay track that wound under the sandstone cliffs on the north side of the fast-moving and swirling dark waters of the rod-wide stream. The road was no more than two cubits above the spring runoff. Immediately to the south of the stream were low meadows, some of which were still partly underwater, and beyond them a long sloping expanse of firs along the north side of a narrow ridge. South beyond the ridge, Kharl knew, were the open hills that rolled down toward the northeastern part of Valmurl. Those hills held kay upon kay of orchards and berry patches.