L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

The patroller looked at Kharl and the dark staff, then at the merchant, then back at Kharl. “Is that staff yours?”

“It is, ser.”

“Where did you get it, if I might ask?”

“It was given to me in Nylan by the Brethren who-”

“Thought so.” The patroller looked to the merchant. “Do you really want to make that complaint, Wexalt?”

The merchant licked his lips nervously. “I could have been mistaken, I suppose. It is missing, but I didn’t see him take it…”

“I thought it might be something like that…” The patroller smiled at Kharl. “Better take your man back to your ship, ser.”

“We’ll be heading back.” Kharl fixed his eyes on Flasyn. “Now.”

“Ah…yes, ser.”

As he turned toward the harbor and the outer pier that held the Seastag, Kharl did hear the patroller’s words.

“…better be more careful, Wexalt…real staff…no one can even hold one of those unless it’s theirs…anyone who holds one doesn’t lie…you’d look like a fool…and if anything happens to one of those blackstaffers…doesn’t often…usually anyone who tries ends up dead…not too patient with games that hurt folk…”

Kharl had hoped to have a bite to eat, but he was going to have to forgo that. He also had more to think about, especially about the comments of the woman on the hillside.

In the growing darkness of the late-fall evening, Kharl stood on the quarterdeck by the gangway, looking blankly down at the white stones of the pier, then up to the west, above the hills beyond Southport. There, the sky was fading from a deep purple to a violet blackness, and the stars were so clear that they seemed not to twinkle at all. The air was still comfortably warm, and only a hint of a breeze blew in from off the Eastern Ocean to the south.

“Any of the crew back yet, carpenter?”

Kharl turned to face Furwyl. “Not yet, ser.” Except for Flasyn, and he wasn’t about to mention that to the first.

“Most of them won’t be back until after Bemyr relieves you. They missed shore leave in Ruzor. Be harder for some of them here.”

Since Furwyl seemed in a talking mood, Kharl asked, “Why would that be?”

“Southport’s another place where the Legend is strong. Marshal of Southwind is a woman. Women run things. You saw those twin shortswords the Arms carry?”

“They’re Westwind-type blades, aren’t they?”

“That they are, and they can throw them as well as use one in each hand. Most women here are armed, and they won’t hesitate to use them. They’ll also use them on any man who seems to be getting the better of a woman. That said…some of them like sailors a lot, but they want to do the choosing. Some of the crew have a hard time with that.”

“What happens?”

“The captain has to pay their way out of the wayfarers’ gaol.” Furwyl laughed. “Usually means they end up owing a good chunk of their crew share to the captain. They remember that. It’s about the only thing that some of them recall. Let me know if there’s any trouble. I’ll be in my cabin.”

While the first’s cabin was little more than a pantry-sized oblong with two bunks, he didn’t usually have to share it with anyone, Kharl reflected. “Yes, ser.”

The deck was empty, and dim, the only lights being the stem and stern night lanterns, and the larger lantern that shed faint illumination on the quarterdeck and the top of the gangway.

It had been a strange day, as many had been in the past two seasons. Something had happened to him. Everyone looked at him differently. But was that just because of the staff? Or had they always and he just hadn’t seen it? Or had it happened sometime in the last eightdays? He fingered his beard.

It couldn’t be just the staff. He’d been having problems with some people before that. He’d angered Egen by keeping him from Sanyle. Why had he done that? Not because anyone had told him, but because he had felt that what Egen had been doing was wrong. Why had he felt that? Because he had felt it. There wasn’t a better answer.

He nodded slowly.

That suggested to him that doing the right thing was attuned to order, to the blackness he had seen in Nylan, in the druids, and in the strange woman on the hillside. He had always sensed it, but never thought much about it. He had just accepted those feelings, but others had not. Charee had been more concerned with how what he did affected the family. While Charee would never have harmed anyone, she also would not have gone out of her way to help someone if it might cause trouble for her or her children. Kharl had done what he felt was right, without thinking, and the result had been disastrous.

He frowned again. He didn’t want to be like Charee-he couldn’t be that way. Yet doing as he had been doing was going to get him in trouble again, before long. What could he do differently?

He laughed softly to himself. The answer was what the woman on the hill had said-to think about how to use his enhanced senses. Not to act thoughtlessly from his feelings but to learn to think about how to act in response to others’ actions. In a way, he had done that with Flasyn, without truly understanding why. He’d only known that saying that the merchant was the thief would have only made matters worse.

Kharl looked out to the white oblong that was the pier. Despite the lack of light, it seemed clear enough to him. His night sight had always been good, but lately, or since leaving Brysta, it had seemed even better. But was it his eyes?

Musing on that thought, he closed his eyes and tried to sense the pier and the gangway. Even without looking, they seemed clear to him. Was that just his imagination?

He concentrated on the nearest part of the Seastag ’s railing, then reached out and tried to place his hand just above the varnished surface. He opened his eyes.

Even in the dimness he could tell that his fingers were but a span above the wood, and for the first time, he knowingly perceived the difference between what he was sensing and what he was seeing. He shivered as he stood there on the quarterdeck in the darkness, a darkness that was far less than that to him.

What next? He had a little more power than he once had had. He frowned. No…he had known that the staff had given him some power, or he had thought it had been the staff, but from what the mage in Nylan had said, the two druids in Diehl, and the woman on the hill, and what he had just discovered…he had always had the ability. He just had not known it. His life had been like that-always learning late what he should have known earlier.

That would have to change. How…he wasn’t quite sure, but whether it meant reading more of The Basis of Order and trying to find things in the book that he could do-or try-he had to so something more than travel and watch and react.

He had to.

Three days later, the Seastag steamed out of Southport and headed westward. Kharl found himself glad to be at sea, because he’d spent much of the in-port time working with a shipwright to replace the metal rigging fittings that the Gallosian cannon had damaged or blown away. He’d decided against any more expensive meals, and read several more chapters of The Basis of Order . After three and a half days at sea, when Seastag tied up at a rickety wooden pier in Dellash, Kharl was still trying to figure out how he could put some of what he read into actual practice.

No one had told Kharl much about Dellash, so that he’d finally had to ask Ghart, who had told him that Dellash was the port on the isle of Esalian. That Kharl had known, but not that it had been held by Lord Fentrel until, less than ten years before, the Duke of Delapra had enlisted a renegade wizard to bring down the hold around Fentrel, then taken the isle.