L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

“Could be,” Kharl agreed.

“You going back to see Lyras any time soon?”

“I hadn’t planned on it.” Kharl offered a laugh. “I haven’t figured out half of what he told me last time.” Nor had he had a chance to try several of the ideas Lyras had suggested. He hadn’t found the passage in The Basis of Order about staffs, and he hadn’t been successful, so far, in trying to become invisible. But that could have been because he was still tired. Or maybe he was missing something.

“Mages are like that.” Tarkyn paused. “You’re getting like that.”

“Must be getting older, like you,” Kharl countered.

“Reisl said he saw you looking at a leaf in the mess the other day. Just looked at it, and it got real stiff. Then, after a bit, just fell apart into white powder. Scared him stiff. He likes you, but still scared him.” Tarkyn waited.

Kharl almost swallowed. He hadn’t realized that Reisl had been watching that closely. After a long moment, he finally said, “I didn’t mean to scare anyone. It was something Lyras suggested. Told me to study little things. I did it wrong. The leaf was almost dead anyway, but…I didn’t help it. It’s hard work. I had to go to bed early that night. I was that tired.”

“For doing that to a leaf?”

“Well…I was outside studying the rain,” Kharl added. “That was hard, too. No one ever told me that even learning little things about magery took so much strength.” He was pleased that he’d managed to tell almost all the truth without revealing too much, and not much more than Tarkyn already knew.

The older carpenter nodded. “Heard that from others. Said that one of the mages that destroyed Fairven-or might have-had been a big brawny smith…came back a skinny old man. Others never came back at all.”

“I could see that. Just the little things, just studying things, and I felt so tired, like I’d worked a forge all day. I guess that’s why I keep telling people I can do a few things, but that I’m not a mage and might not ever be one.”

Tarkyn laughed. “I’d believe that, except for one thing.”

Kharl raised his eyebrows in question.

“You’re the kind that never gives up…leastwise about that sort.”

Kharl wondered. Hadn’t he given up in a way about Charee, and about Warrl?

“Trouble coming,” said Tarkyn, looking over Kharl’s shoulder.

Kharl turned and watched as Furwyl crossed the gangway between the ship and the edge of the dry dock and made his way across the main deck.

“You about finished?” asked the first mate.

“Just did,” Tarkyn said.

“Good. Put all your tools back in the carpenter shop below, and the ones you carried over to that shed. Then get your personal gear back aboard. We’re refloating the ship. Captain wants us out of here and ready to sail morning after tomorrow. We’re moving to the Lord’s Pier soon as we get clear.”

“Mind telling us why, ser?” asked Tarkyn.

“Captain didn’t say much, except that we needed to be ready to shove off.”

Kharl wondered how much of Hagen’s urgency had been created by the reports of conflict between Lord Ghrant and his elder brother.

By threeday evening, after two frantic and hectic days, the Seastag was back in Valmurl harbor proper, tied to the innermost pier for oceangoing vessels, the so-called Lord’s Pier. The last of the wagons that had been lined up on the pier had been unloaded in late afternoon, and the cargo stowed below. Now, the pier was empty, except for an occasional sailor. But a handful of vessels remained in the harbor, and no others at the Lord’s Pier.

Because the day had been warmer, and because the light was brighter, Kharl had come topside to read and found a quiet place forward of the paddle wheels. Hunched in his winter jacket, wearing a glove on the hand that held the book, but not on the one that turned the pages, in the dusk he looked down at the open page of The Basis of Order . He had read the words before, but he read them again.

Order cannot be concentrated in and of itself, not even within the staff of order, and no man can truly master the staff of order until he casts it aside.

How could anyone master something that he cast aside? And why should anyone cast aside something as useful as a staff?

The next words had not been much more help.

For order cannot be divided in two without its power being diminished by four, and if it be divided into four parts, then its power is less by another fourth, so that the total of all portions is but one sixteenth of what it would have been undivided. Likewise, so it is with a staff imbued with order for whoever wields it…

Kharl closed the book. He would have to think even more about what those words meant. He almost wished he’d gone to see Lyras again, but he’d had so little time when he hadn’t been busy or so tired from work and from what efforts he had made to try to do more with his order-abilities.

“You’re not tired now,” he murmured to himself. Not so tired as he had been, anyway.

He tried to recall what the mage had said about making himself invisible to others, something about letting light flow around him, that light flowed like water. But from where did it flow? Kharl glanced at the western sky above the roofs and towers of Valmurl. Some light flowed from the sun. Did it flow from lanterns or fires or torches? He had not found anything in the book about invisibility, or how to do it. He’d found very few references to light, and most of those referred to the chaotic nature of light, how it was not ordered.

He paused. He’d tried to let light flow around him before-a number of times-and nothing had happened. Lyras had said that becoming invisible was a trick, but one he’d never mastered. And he thought Kharl could? The carpenter laughed to himself.

Still…what was the harm in trying?

Could he try to order the light, use his senses to smooth it around him? As if he were really not standing there on the deck? He just leaned back against the chill wood of the paddle wheel frame and closed his eyes, trying to feel or sense the light.

Nothing-he sensed nothing. Except…something like a whispering white breeze. Was that light? He tried to ease it around him, as if he were not there. Nothing seemed to change, and he opened his eyes-only to find that he couldn’t see. He was surrounded by blackness.

He swallowed and pushed at the light, and his sight returned.

For a time, he just sat there in the chilly dusk, breathing heavily and holding on to The Basis of Order .

What had he done? Did being invisible mean that he wouldn’t be able to see? He tried to recall what Lyras had said. Something about needing his order-senses? Then Kharl remembered. “You’ll be blind.” He shivered.

He considered. He’d been blind, and now he wasn’t. So…what was it? If the light flowed around him, and he needed light, even a little bit, to see…He shook his head. It was so obvious. He really hadn’t been blind. He just hadn’t been able to see because he’d had no light to see. But did that mean that others couldn’t see him?

Slowly, he stood. Did he want to try again? If he didn’t, how would he learn? But he also recalled that moment when he couldn’t see. He took a slow deep breath and tried once more.

The second time the blackness was just that-blackness, no light. He tried to place where he was with his order-senses, and began to feel what was around him. Then, carefully, he eased his way aft, toward the quarterdeck where Rhylla had the deck duty.

He could sense her as he neared the railing, but he tried to make no sound. She turned, then leaned forward as if peering in his direction. Then she turned toward the gangway and pier.