L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

“He did.” Anya nodded briskly, from where she rode beside him, as though her thoughts were elsewhere. She turned to him, and her eyes focused on the younger mage. “He also said that I could call upon you.”

“He did,” Cerryl agreed. “So long as it did not hinder my ability to complete my charge to him.”

“He did say that.”

“I would like to request your assistance, Anya,” Cerryl said, careful to keep his words formal, for reasons he could not say but felt nonetheless.

“With what?”

“A seeming of myself…when the time is ready. That’s all.”

“A seeming of you? Even Fydel could do that.” Anya laughed. “I will ask the same of you…in time. A favor, that is. To help me shift the ground slightly. Far less than in Gallos.”

Cerryl nodded.

“Have you thought more about the future?” An amused smile crossed Anya’s lips.

“I have been advised to think most strongly about the present. By several,” he added after a moment. “I might not see any future if I don’t.”

She laughed again, softly and ironically. “It is strange how a few seasons can change a man.”

“We learn,” Cerryl said, blocking his annoyance from Anya’s possible truth-reading.

“That doesn’t matter, either. Not most of the time.”

“Why?” asked Cerryl, intrigued in spite of himself. Besides, it is a long ride .

“Learning affects only what you do. If you teach others, you change others. That was what Myral believed.” Anya’s face grew distant, her eyes elsewhere. “That doesn’t work, I’ve found. People only learn what they want to learn, or what they will accept. So most of that learning is wasted. Most of life is wasted if you try to help others. They take and do not appreciate. They reject the knowledge that you have struggled to gain, and they will walk on you or kill you for a silver-or less.” After her words came the bright smile. “Just watch closely, Cerryl. You’ll see what I mean. If you dare to look.” Her eyes swept to the road ahead, as if to signify that she had said what she would say.

Despite the sun that fell across him, Cerryl suddenly felt cold, even before the wind picked up, and very alone, even though tenscore lancers rode behind him.

FYDEL AND CAPTAIN Reaz had reined up on the last low rise before the road dipped southward in a gradual slope toward the red walls of Hydolar, circled on three sides by those walls and on the fourth by the River Ohyde. Beside the road, stretching toward the walls, were browned fields, so brown Cerryl couldn’t be certain whether they were grain fields or meadows burned brown by the unseasonably hot sun that had baked the land through the late summer and the past autumn. Only a handful of peasants’ cots were scattered across the fields, marked as much by the taller gray-leaved and wilted trees around them as by the huts’ earth-brick walls and thatched roofs.

Cerryl studied the city’s high stone walls. To the southwest, beyond those walls, the River Ohyde glittered in the late-afternoon winter sun. On the far side of the river Cerryl thought he saw trees, even a patch of woods on a hill, but of that he was uncertain.

“They’ve closed the gates,” observed the captain.

“That’s not terribly welcoming. Do you think they plan to attack if we approach?” asked Fydel.

Reaz shrugged. “I could not say.”

Fydel turned in the saddle and addressed Anya. “Can you and Cerryl cast chaos fire at the gates if they open them to attack?”

“Not from this far. That’s more than a kay from here,” answered the redhead.

Fydel looked at Cerryl.

“Anya’s right. We might be able to loft a few fireballs that far, but it would be hard to hit the gate.”

“Fydel,” Anya said quietly, “it’s not likely that any duke would attack a force of White Lancers unless he had to. Why don’t we ride closer and ask for the return of the healer? Cerryl and I will be ready to cast chaos fire if you need it.” She smiled crookedly.

“We ride on!” called Reaz. “Be ready to lift lances.”

“Ready to lift lances…Ready to lift lances…” The command echoed down the lancers behind Cerryl.

Reaz dropped his hand, and the column started forward again.

Anya edged her mount closer to Cerryl. “Be ready to offer me assistance.”

Cerryl raised his eyebrows. “I thought we were going to request the healer’s return.”

“We are. We also need to show Duke Ferobar that Fairhaven will not be mocked.”

“How?” asked Cerryl, honestly curious as to what the redhead had in mind for humbling the new Duke of Hydlen.

“How might Duke Ferobar feel if the east Tower-there-collapsed?” Anya pointed.

Cerryl followed her finger. “He might send all his lancers after us.”

“He might,” Anya said, with a smile.

“We’re to request the Lady Leyladin first, Anya,” snapped Fydel, again turning in the saddle. “Once we have her, then you two can carry out whatever Jeslek laid upon you.”

“Or…if they won’t release her,” speculated Anya.

“That, too,” grudged Fydel.

Cerryl studied the red walls as they rode closer, noting how the air seemed to waver over the walls in the afternoon sunlight, even though it was cool, almost cold, on the plain outside the city, and how glints of light off helmets reflected from the parapets. Yet his senses told him that but a comparative handful of armsmen manned the ramparts.

Somewhere around two hundred cubits from the closed and iron-banded gates, Reaz and Fydel reined up. Cerryl, his eyes on the fifty-cubit-tall walls, managed to stop the gelding short of crashing into the older mage or swerving into Anya.

“Get the herald,” Fydel ordered.

“Herald!”

A squat figure with close-cropped mud-colored hair and jowls, flowing out of his uniform, answered the summons, reining up beside the captain.

“The mage has a message for you to convey,” said Reaz.

“Yes, ser.”

Fydel rode forward from the others, ever so slightly, and began to talk to the herald, repeating his words time after time.

Shortly, the herald eased his mount away from the column and drew forth a long horn from his lanceholder. He bugled the call. Cerryl winced at the off-key tones but wondered if they would have hurt any less had they been on key.

There was no response from the high walls.

The herald bugled again.

After the third call, a series of notes echoed back.

“On behalf of the High Wizard of Fairhaven, we have come to provide an escort for the healer and Lady Leyladin to return to her home in Fairhaven.” The herald’s clear tones carried toward the walls and the gate.

“Wait,” came back the answer.

Cerryl shifted his weight in the saddle, his eyes on the high red walls, then upon Anya. He was gratified to notice that Anya’s eyes were also upon the walls and that chaos smoldered around her, as if she were uncertain as to what the Hydlenese might do.

“They could refuse to return Leyladin,” he offered, not hoping that, but wanting Anya’s reaction.

“Then, we could bring down all the walls.”

“How?”

“Just help the ground and stone beneath the foundations shift…You can use chaos as if it were butter or a grease, you know. It flows; it’s not stiff like order.”

Cerryl frowned. That made sense, but he hadn’t thought about it in that way-as he hadn’t about so many things, he kept discovering.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Captain Reaz shifting in his saddle. Was the good captain uneasy about what might happen as well?

The cool wind flowed around the mages and the lancers, and the walls remained silent. Not a sound came from the browned fields beside the road, except for the faint whistle of the wind. Cerryl hunched up inside his jacket for a moment.