L. Modesitt - Mage-Guard of Hamor

"You are kind, lady," replied Taryl.

"How could I not repay such as you have done?" Her eyes flicked to her left, to the Emperor. "If you will excuse me."

Both Rahl and Taryl bowed.

After that, Rahl lost count of the names and introductions.

When the time came for their departure, he was more than glad to accompany Taryl out through the marble halls and columns and back to their coach-waiting several hundred cubits away from the rotunda concourse, unlike a number of others lined up at the entrance. Most of those were far more ornately decorated than the one that had brought the two mage-guards.

"We don't need to make a departure," Taryl murmured, but he said nothing more to Rahl until they were in the coach and had left the outer gate of the Palace well behind.

Then he turned to Rahl. "What did you think of the Emperor?"

Rahl wondered how he could respond to such a question. "An honest and direct answer, ser?"

"So long as we're in private, Rahl."

"He's intelligent, good-hearted, and he chose his consort well."

"That he did. Better than even he deserved but what Hamor needs."

Rahl could sense something behind Taryl's words, but wasn't sure he should ask or even hint.

"What else? Was that all you noticed?"

"The Emperor is possibly too kind to be as effective as he needs to be. He seems like the kind of man who might give too many second chances."

"He already has, especially to his brother, but he has begun to learn the costs of ill-advised kindness." Taryl leaned back in the coach seat. "One of the hardest things to learn is when to offer kindness and when not to."

"Is there any rule to that?"

Taryl laughed softly in the darkness. "Only that you will always make mistakes."

Because it was end-day, far fewer mage-guards had been at breakfast, and Rahl had eaten alone. As Taryl had requested, after breakfast, Rahl waited outside the quarters entrance. Before long, a duty coach, one of plain and drab tan, halted. From inside the coach Taryl opened the door and gestured for Rahl to join him. Once Rahl was seated, the driver flicked the leads, and the coach eased away from the quarters.

"We have a short ride," said Taryl.

Rahl managed to conceal his puzzlement behind his shields. "Yes, ser. Might I ask where?"

"We're going to visit an empty powder bunker." Taryl's smile was polite and brisk.

Rahl sensed he would not get any more information, not at that moment, and forced himself to sit back, although he doubted he would find relaxing possible.

The coach turned east and, after a quarter kay, southward, proceeding past the troop barracks and along an older paved road that had been cut through another berm running east and west from the river. Beyond the berm were only grass-covered bunkers, and the coach pulled up at the third one.

Taryl got out and waited for Rahl.

Rahl descended from the coach and looked westward along the short stone ramp that led to the bunker's entrance-an open doorway below ground level.

"This will be another type of examination," Taryl said. "It is obviously to your advantage to do as well as you can. Absolute failure could be quite painful, possibly deadly."

Rahl managed to keep his irritation behind his shields. "Might I ask if this has anything to do with what my future assignment in the mage-guards will be?"

"Anything that you do, or fail to do, will affect your future," Taryl said dryly. "Generally, total failure in any field of endeavor is painful and often deadly. I can only say that you will be examined through confrontation of all sorts, from verbal through order and chaos. You are to walk into the bunker and close the door behind you. Beyond that, I cannot say."

Rahl thought he might have detected some concern behind Taryl's personal shields, but that could have just been wistful thinking. "Yes, ser."

"When you are finished, I'll be here."

Rahl wasn't exactly cheered by the older mage-guard's choice of words, but he nodded, then walked down the stone ramp to the door, heavy double-planked and ironbound oak. He stepped through the door and closed it, then turned in the total darkness. The floor underfoot was packed clay, not stone, and he could sense two figures inside standing ten cubits or so from him. Both were shielded, but one's shields were order-based, and the other's bore chaos.

"Step forward."

Rahl couldn't tell which figure spoke, but he stepped forward until he was roughly three cubits away.

"Were you told to stop?"

"No, ser."

"Why did you?" The questions came from the figure who radiated order, rather than the one who held chaos.

"Stepping forward usually means to meet someone, not to walk into or past them, ser."

"You were born in Recluce, were you not?"

"Yes, ser."

"You were exiled, were you not?"

"Yes, ser."

"Explain why. Briefly, and without excuses."

"I was and am what the magisters called a natural ordermage. I was unable to improve my skills under their teaching, and whenever I attempted to teach myself, I made severe mistakes. They decided that I was too much of a danger to Nylan and prepared me for exile-with the exception that I was not to attempt any active use of order until I departed."

"Did you?"

"Not that I was aware of or that they told me, ser."

"Did not this inability to learn suggest a grave deficiency in you?"

Even though Rahl knew that his interrogator was working to make him angry, he still felt irritation, although he thought he was keeping it behind his shields. "I may have a deficiency in being unable to learn certain aspects of handling order from merely reading-"

" Merely reading?" The words were mocking. "Merely reading?"

"From reading by itself without an effort to work out in practice what the words mean," Rahl said evenly.

"Then that is what you should have said. Do you always use words that incite and irritate others, Mage-Guard?"

"I attempt not to, ser."

"Attempting is not succeeding. As a mage-guard, what you attempt matters little if you fail. Effort is honorable, but meaningless unless it leads either to present or future success. Life does not reward pointless and unsuccessful effort. Why should the mage-guards?"

Rahl nodded, but did not speak.

"Answer the question, Mage-Guard. Why should the mage-guards reward pointless and useless effort?"

"They should not, ser, not unless it is useful in teaching a mage-guard or unless it leads to success either by that mage-guard or another."

"You killed a superior officer in your last posting. While you may have felt it was justified, there is a real question as to whether it indeed was. Was it not just because you had failed to follow your captain's orders? Or because you actively flaunted those orders?"

Rahl had thought about that question more than a few times in the eightdays since he had left Swartheld. "No, ser."

"That is a simple and convenient reply, but one with little meaning-except your conviction. Why did you not follow your captain's orders?"

"Begging your pardon, ser, but I did follow those orders. I did not understand at first the meaning of all that I had seen, and when I did tell the captain, he felt that I was exaggerating the seriousness of the situation. When I observed what was happening in the course of my assigned pier watch, I tried again to tell him, but he had already vanished. I believe, as does Overcommander Taryl, that he had already been killed by the undercaptain. Even so, I told the undercaptain, and he called me aside. There he insisted that I had disobeyed orders. Keeping one's eyes open while on duty and then reporting what one has seen to one's superiors is not disobeying orders. He attempted to kill me. Obviously, to me, and as events later proved, he was attempting to cover up what was happening. I was not skilled enough to disable or to immobilize him, and in trying to remain alive to report what was happening, I did kill him."