L. Modesitt - The White Order

Cerryl blinked. The reddish white glow surrounding the blackness of the blade-had he seen that? Right through the heavy log? He thought he had before, but on this afternoon, the glow seemed brighter. He squinted, leaning toward the mill, his fingers tightening around the broom handle.

Why could he sense something he couldn’t see? Not see properly anyway. The reddish white glow was there-the same glow he’d felt in the mines that even Syodor had avoided-and the same glow that, in a much lesser degree, permeated the books from his father.

He frowned. Another question, one he pondered, time and time again. Why had his uncle never mentioned that he had been the masterminer? Cerryl hadn’t learned that until Dylert had said so.

He studied the yoke, then nodded. Even Brental would be pleased. He looked back at the blade. It seemed brighter, yet with an angry reddish tint, one he hadn’t seen before.

He bent down to lift the yoke to carry it back up to the stables, but his eyes went back to the mill, where the reddish white of the blade, that color no one else seemed to see, loomed over the massive log and the mill blade, almost as though it were ready to lash out at Brental and Dylert. He took a step down the causeway, then stopped and glanced back again.

His lips tightened before he set down the brush and yoke and scurried into the mill, almost running down the center aisle, the clomping of his heavy boots drowned in the screech of the saw and the thumping of the waterwheels.

Dylert, standing on the platform above and to the right of the saw, waved him back.

Cerryl shook his head and pointed toward the blade.

Dylert gestured again, impatiently.

“Please, ser! Stop the blade,” Cerryl shouted, but his words were lost in the whining of the blade. He pointed to the blade again, gesturing, trying to make Dylert understand. Then he glanced toward the drop gear on the small platform below Dylert.

Before Cerryl had taken more than a pair of steps, the millmaster had dropped down to the drop gear lever and yanked it.

Cerryl took a deep breath as the whining screech of the blade died down, and a dull clunk reverberated through the mill.

Dylert turned away from the drop gear, clambered back to the water gates and closed them, and set both wheel brakes.

Brental looked from Cerryl to the saw platform, where the blade was still hidden, locked in the big pine log.

Viental just scowled.

The millmaster climbed down and walked toward Cerryl. “Now. . never seen you run like that, lad. Hope this be worth it. Best be worth it, indeed.” His face was streaked with sweat, with sawdust plastered across his cheeks and imbedded in his beard. His jaw was set, waiting.

Cerryl swallowed. “Ser. . the blade. . something be-something is wrong with it.”

After a moment, Dylert frowned. “You be seeing that from without?”

“Hearing, ser,” Cerryl lied. “It. . sounded wrong. I know. . you are the millmaster. . but I had to tell you.”

“Hpphhmmm. Sounds he hears,” grumbled Viental.

Brental glared at the stocky laborer.

“Well. . we be shut down. Might be looking afore anything else.” Dylert frowned. “If there be a crack or flaw,” he shrugged, “then we stand lucky. If not,” he looked at Cerryl, “a lot of work you’ll have to do, young fellow. A darkness lot to make up for this.”

“Yes, ser.”

Dylert glanced at the other two. “Got to clear the blade anyway. Let’s be at it.”

Cerryl stepped back and watched as the three men wrestled the log off the blade. Sweat continued to ooze down his back.

“Now. . he has to hear it. .” mumbled Viental, with a look at the youth.

“Time enough to complain when we find he be wrong,” answered Dylert. “If he be wrong. Cerryl’s not a flighty chap, like some.”

A last shove by Viental, and the log slipped away from the blade. Brental looked at the drop gear and then at the water gates before taking a cloth and brushing away the sawdust that had swirled around the circular toothed blade.

The color drained from the redhead’s face. “There’s a crack here. . might not a held another pass.” His eyes went to Cerryl.

Then Dylert glanced at Cerryl, frowned, then grinned. “Guess you might yet make a mill man, boy. Anyone hear a blade off-true like that. .” He shook his head. “My da, he claimed he could. I never could. That be why. . I check the blade so often. Thought he was a-tellin’ tales.”

Cerryl looked down for a moment, his eyes on the sawdust-covered stones around the saw platform. “I wasn’t sure, not all the way, but. . I didn’t want anyone hurt, and you talked about how a broken blade. .”

“He listens, too,” said Brental. “Glad I am that he does.”

Viental shook his head ruefully. “Know why my mother said to wait afore talking.”

“Well. . good thing Henkar got the new blade forged and tempered. . This rate we’ll never survive. . two blades this season. Best we get to it,” Dylert said. “Can’t be cutting with a cracked blade.”

While the three men wrestled to replace the blade, Cerryl stepped back and slipped out of the mill, trying to keep from shaking as he did. Again, he’d barely managed to avoid revealing what he had really seen.

Outside, in the hot but slightly cooler shade by the now-silent millrace, he swallowed.

Finally, he lifted the heavy yoke and walked slowly uphill toward the stables.

CERRYL LOOKED AT the handcart, upside down on the flooring stones just inside the mill door, then at the dark-stained and battered half bucket filled with grease.

With a slow and silent deep breath, Cerryl reached into the bucket and dipped out a globule of the dark substance with his right hand and methodically began to grease the cart wheels and axle, using a thin stripped fir branch, barely more than a twig, to push the grease where his fingers couldn’t reach.

Behind him, at the other side of the mill, Dylert directed Brental and Viental as the three continued cutting a half-dozen oak logs from the upper woods, logs that Dylert had marked and felled a season before. Cerryl’s eyes went to the saw platform, but his senses only saw the normal whitish red of the cutting, not the angry red of a stressed or cracked blade. He nodded and looked back down at the dark gray grease.

After another repressed sigh, he dipped out more grease.

“Some folk here to see you, Cerryl.” Erhana stood in the door to the mill, her voice barely audible over the whine of the big blade and the thump, thump of the wheels.

“Me?” Cerryl finished daubing grease on the top exposed part of the cart’s axle. “To see me?”

Erhana smiled, then added, “Your aunt and uncle, I think.”

Cerryl looked around for the grease rag, then saw it under the side of the upended left cart wheel, where he’d placed it to keep any extra grease from falling on the floor stones. He picked it up and wiped his hand as clean as he could, then straightened, and walked out the door into the sunlight.

Overhead, the summer sky was filled with white puffy clouds scudding westward, clouds that cast fast-moving shadows across the hills of western Lydiar and the forests to the north of the mill.

Cerryl glanced from Erhana to his aunt and uncle and then back to the brown-haired girl. “Thank you.”

Erhana nodded and slipped uphill toward the house where Dyella was carding wool in the shade of the porch.

“How are you?” Cerryl asked after a moment.

Syodor carried a small pack. Nall stood beside him, empty-handed. Both looked downcast, somehow smaller than Cerryl recalled them.

“You’ve grown.” Nall licked her lips nervously.

“My feet have, anyway.” Cerryl offered a smile.