L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

The Seastag slowed to little more than headway as it turned starboard into the second large pier, one for oceangoing vessels that held but one other vessel, on the far side.

Shortly, lines went out.

“Crew one! Take the forward line,” ordered Bemyr. “Crew two…you got the stern line.”

Once the lines were around the bollards, the paddle wheels slowed to a halt. Kharl was the last man in the first crew as they reeled in the line, walking the ship into the pier and snug against the fenders.

“Double up, and make those lines tight!” ordered Furwyl from the front of the poop deck.

The shrillness of the bosun’s whistle cut through the low voices of the deckhands.

“Deck crew to the foremast!” called Bemyr.

Kharl followed the others, standing at the rear of the group.

“No unloading tonight. We got in too late, and their crews are already off,” Bemyr added. “No shore leave until tomorrow. Not until we’ve off-loaded. We’ll start early.”

A series of groans swept across the deck crew.

“No duties tonight, except sentries on the lines and gangway,” Bemyr added.

Kharl waited as most of the others in the deck gang slipped away.

“Didn’t bother you, did it?” asked Reisl. “Why not?”

“I don’t have anyone to see, and little coin to spend.” That was true enough, although Kharl also had little desire, not after Charee’s death.

“And you’re not interested in women?”

“Not in those likely to be interested in me right now,” Kharl replied wryly.

Reisl laughed. “Tell you’ve been around.”

Not as much as he should have been, Kharl reflected.

The second day in Lydiar, Bemyr put Kharl in the first shore leave section. The cooper stepped off the gangway in late afternoon, under a clear sky, although a chill fall wind blew out of the northeast off the Great North Bay. Bemyr had admonished the entire leave section to be back by midnight-when the curfew bell rang.

Once more, Kharl waited and let the others pour off the ship and along the pier toward lower Lydiar, past the Sligan merchanter tied on the opposite side of the pier and inshore of the Seastag . Then, wearing his heavier tunic, he stepped off, with a nod to the quarterdeck watch. He took deliberate steps along the pier. He had decided against taking the staff into Lydiar. There was little sense in being identified as a blackstaffer from Recluce, and he hoped to avoid areas of the town where he might need the staff-or any weapon.

The timbers of the pier were thick enough, but the wood was grayish, with barely a trace of brown remaining, showing that it had been years since the pier had been built or substantially repaired. Even from looking at Lydiar from the ship, Kharl had gained the impression that most of Lydiar could have used some repair. As he walked off the end of the pier and onto the first waterfront street, Kharl studied the warehouses facing the harbor. One was clearly vacant, with the doors and windows removed. Another had the windows on the upper level boarded up. None looked to have been recently stained or painted.

Kharl turned uphill, passing a chandlery less than fifty rods up the street from the piers. The narrow porch was bowed, and the roof above the porch sagged. The shutters were peeling, and the small windows were splattered with salt and grime. Kharl kept walking, past a tavern-the Red Keg-where he’d seen several of the deck crew enter. Just beyond the tavern was a fuller’s, but so dingy that Kharl wouldn’t have wanted anything cleaned there.

Two youths glanced from the alley across the street at Kharl, taking in his size, then disappearing into the shadows. Kharl snorted and kept walking, his eyes and senses alert, but he neither sensed nor saw the youths returning.

The street was paved with a combination of older granite blocks and newer red sandstone replacements. At the end of the block on which the tavern sat, the main street crossed a narrow lane before curving to the right and ascending more steeply past narrow two-story dwellings with sharply pitched roofs. Kharl kept walking, until he reached the top of the hill-and found that he hadn’t climbed a hill at all, but more of a gentle bluff, because to the west the land neither rose nor fell that much. Perhaps half a kay west was an ancient stone wall that looked to mark the western edge of the city.

On Kharl’s right, the area that comprised the edge of the hill or bluff was open ground, rocky, and intermittently grassy, a strip perhaps ten rods in width that ran from the edge of the avenue to where the bluff steepened, then dropped downhill to the meaner dwellings on the hillside below. To his left, were modest dwellings, although several with more pretension had low hedges to separate their grounds from the street.

Kharl turned southeast, following the wide avenue at the edge of the bluff. Within twenty rods, the houses had become noticeably larger and grander, and constructed of solid gray granite, with grayish tile roofs. Each had a gray stone wall before it, slightly more than shoulder high, with iron grille fencing above the stonework. Behind each wall was an enclosed space, some with lawns, and others with formal gardens. The shutters on the grander dwellings were more freshly painted, and in such shades as blue, dark green, or maroon.

A carriage passed Kharl, followed by another, and a man on horseback, wearing a deep blue jacket. A small wagon rumbled down the granite-paved avenue, coming toward the cooper, but the driver scarcely glanced in Kharl’s direction. The housemaid on the side porch of one of the houses looked in Kharl’s direction, then quickly away.

After half a kay, the houses ended, suddenly, as did the avenue, although a side street led back westward, away from the bluff edge. Directly before Kharl was an unkempt mass of undergrowth extending a good fifty cubits. Beyond that was a mass of tumbled white stone. Kharl realized that he stood at the edge of the former hold of the Dukes of Lydiar.

Following a narrow path, Kharl made his way through the undergrowth. The bushes and twisted high grass ended, abruptly. Nothing grew past a point five cubits from Kharl’s boots until somewhere on the farther southern side of the ruins. He could sense why nothing grew there, for the rocky soil looked and felt dead. It did not look evil or menacing, but it was…empty. He could sense neither order nor chaos, just a feeling of great age. One of the white stones was a good five cubits long and half that in height and width. It had been cut, as if by a mighty knife, into two pieces, one twice the size of the other. Another stone still bore the imprint of a lightning bolt, black-etched into the white stone. Amid the larger stones were fragments of columns, and roof tiles, as if the entire structure had been smashed and the remnants tossed and stirred.

After a time, Kharl retraced his steps back to the avenue and followed the side street, then another avenue, making his way around the ruins, until he came to another street that led downward toward lower Lydiar.

Less than a hundred cubits down from the edge of the bluff, on the right-hand side of the street, behind a narrow garden surrounded by a knee-high wall, twin lamps beckoned from each side of the doorway of an establishment that billed itself as a café. Kharl paused and looked over the building, then stepped forward. It felt more orderly than any he had seen in Lydiar, and the mixed aromas of food smelled inviting, tinged with seasonings he did not recognize.

A menu was chalked on slate beside the door. It took him several moments to decipher the meanings, and the prices, before he opened the door and stepped inside. He could certainly use a meal other than shipboard cooking, even if the prices were higher than in more modest places.