L. Modesitt - The White Order

“What’s Fairhaven like?”

The teamster laughed. “A poor driver like me be not the one to tell. The buildings, most like be made of stone so white it glitters. All the ways and byways be paved with white stone like the wizards’ road. Peaceable, too. A girl could walk stark naked, they say, and not a man dare touch her.” Rinfur grinned. “Never seen such, but some say the white mages send out female lancers like that to tempt the wild.”

Cerryl moistened his lips. He wasn’t sure whether they were already dry from the dust or from what he was hearing.

“Those try to molest ’em, well, they end up working on the great highway on the far side of the Easthorns. Working till they die, some folks say.”

The wagon slowed as it climbed the low hill to the east of the mill.

“Do you know why master Dylert sends a wagon to Fairhaven?” Cerryl asked, wanting to say something.

“Don’t know as I understand,” said Rinfur, “Fairhaven being half again as far as Lydiar, and master Dylert not sending wagons to the port.” He shrugged. “Near on twice a year, I take a wagon to Fasse. Always white oak. The good oak. He’s from Kyphros, says there’s no white oak there.”

Cerryl looked over his shoulder at the planks and small timbers neatly secured in the wagon bed. “It must be worth a lot.”

Rinfur shrugged again. “Can’t say as I know. The coins go by messenger.”

By messenger? Dylert had charged Erastus something like six golds for a quarter of a wagon half the size of the mill wagon-or less. That had been black oak, but even if Dylert charged half that. . Cerryl shook his head. At least fifteen golds of wood lay stacked in the wagon.

At the thought of coins, Cerryl felt those in the purse and frowned. From what he’d figured, Dylert owed him about twenty coppers, or two silvers. The purse held more than two silvers-that he could tell.

Three silvers and ten coppers. Why? Dylert had been generous enough in giving him clothes and better boots. Because the millmaster wanted Cerryl away from the mill? Because he felt he owed something to Syodor?

The wagon slowed as it reached the hillcrest, then picked up speed slowly.

“Easy. . easy now,” murmured Rinfur.

Cerryl put out a hand to the end of the wooden wagon seat to steady himself.

As the wagon came down the low hill, Cerryl squinted. Ahead was a line of sparkling white-white despite the orange light of the rising sun, a line of white that arrowed to the right through the hills as though the hills had been cleaved to allow the road passage.

On each side of the wizards’ road was a low stone wall, and to the south that wall separated the road from a small river.

“Something, be it not?” asked Rinfur. “Ah. . here we go. Be a relief to get on the main road to Fairhaven.” Rinfur slowed the team with a slight pressure on the leads as he guided them past an empty stone booth, no more than four cubits by four. “Sometimes, they have a guard here, check if you paid the road taxes.”

“And if you haven’t?” asked Cerryl. “How can you tell?”

“Don’t let you on. There’s a medal on the side of the wagon, driver’s side. Bound with magic, some ways.”

The wheels rumbled on the flat stones, and Cerryl recalled Syodor’s statement about the road having been paved with souls. He tightened his lips, then forced himself to relax-as much as he could as the wagon picked up speed on the flat and white stones of the main road, now heading due west. West toward Fairhaven.

CERRYL WIPED HIS forehead. Despite the gentle dry breeze out of the west, he still found himself sweating in the midday sun. His eyes went from the team to the road, so straight that he could see the gentle crown of the road more than two hundred cubits ahead.

After half a day, the road still amazed him-so level that Dylert’s causeway seemed rough by comparison, stretching for kays, the entire length with low walls on each side. On the inside of the wall on both sides was a half-cubit-wide drainage way formed of the same smooth stone blocks, with large stone drains no more than every fifty cubits. Not a blade of grass nor a single weed marred the space between the walls.

His eyes drifted to the left, the south side of the road, where the pinkish white stone wall dropped almost fifteen cubits to the nearly dry stream below.

“What else do you know about the wizards’ roads?” he finally asked Rinfur.

“What be there to know?” countered Rinfur, not taking his eyes off the team. “My grandda, he drove the roads, and it be said that his grandda drove them as well.”

“They don’t look that old.” Cerryl looked at the low stone wall to the left. His eyes said that the even edges and slightly rounded corners looked as though they had been quarried and set within the past few years, yet there was a sense of darkness and age about the stone, a sense that he could feel rather than see.

“They be old.” Rinfur laughed. “Some folk say that the black demon Creslin-the whites forced him to build half the road afore he escaped, and that be why he created the black isle, so as to build a land that would bring down Fairhaven. Been generations, and it hasn’t happened. Don’t look as it will, either.”

Cerryl shivered, looking at the road, so straight, so ordered, so perfect. Ahead was a faint mistlike cloud of dust, partly shrouding a wagon rumbling toward them.

“Over now. . now. . Ge-ahh!” called Rinfur. The team edged to the right.

The brown-haired youth watched as the other wagon neared. Two men sat on the seat of that wagon, drawn by a matched team of four grays. Both men wore cyan livery. The driver flicked the reins, almost imperceptibly, and the wagon, larger even than Dylert’s wood wagon, edged toward the wall on the south side of the road.

The brasswork of the oncoming wagon glistened in the midday sun like spun gold, and the cyan paint shimmered metallically, and a brown canvas was strapped over the wagon bed, hiding whatever the cargo might be.

Behind the wagon rode four lancers in the same cyan livery as those who had followed the white wizard to the mill in pursuit of the renegade wizard. Cerryl forced himself to sit erect, to look casually at the wagon as it passed.

White dust drifted up from the wheels of the cyan wagon as it passed on the left, headed toward Lydiar, Cerryl supposed. Neither the driver, nor the soldier beside him, gave Cerryl or Rinfur more than the briefest glance. Nor did the lancers who trailed the wagon.

“Do you know whose wagon that was?” Cerryl asked.

“Mayhap the duke’s-having his colors and his guards,” answered Rinfur, “a-coming back from Fairhaven. If you can’t get it in Lydiar or Fairhaven, folks say you be not getting it anywhere.” Rinfur gave a low chuckle. “ ’Cept on Recluce, and it not be healthy to say that too loud.”

“Why doesn’t anyone talk about Recluce?” asked Cerryl.

“ ’Cause it be not exactly healthy, especially in Fairhaven. The whites have no love of the blacks. Never have, and never will, not since the days of the ancients when the black demon Nylan overthrew ancient Cyador and brought darkness back to Candar.” Rinfur shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. “Enough said, lad. Dylert says you know your letters, and you be going to apprentice with Tellis, the scrivener. Well. . I’d be expecting Tellis has books that be saying more than this poor teamster ever knew. . and reading be safer, too.”

Cerryl glanced back, but the road was clear.

Rinfur flicked the reins. “Now. . the traders’ square in Fairhaven, that be something the like I never saw before. . spices, and blades of metals of all colors, and. .” He shook his head. “That be something you need see. .”