L. Modesitt - The White Order

Cerryl nodded and listened as the wagon rumbled westward.

WITH THE RUMBLING of the big wheels on the smooth wizards’ road and the hot afternoon, Cerryl found his eyelids getting heavier and heavier. The late afternoon sun, shining directly at his face, offered another incentive to let his eyes close.

“Darkness!”

At Rinfur’s expletive, the team swerved, and Cerryl found himself grasping for the sideboard with one hand and the wagon seat with the other. His eyes popped open.

“Demon-cursed messenger! Think they own the road,” mumbled Rinfur as he guided the team back from nearly scraping the right-hand wall.

Cerryl glanced over his shoulder, but all he could see was a mist of white road dust.

“Course they do. You don’t give them the road, and the wizards have you whipped.”

“Even if it happens on the part of the road in Lydiar, or Certis?” asked Cerryl, shifting his weight on the hard wagon seat.

“Don’t be wagering on that. The wizards rule their roads. And a lot more besides that.”

Cerryl waited.

“Dylert, he was telling me. Years ago, it was. The old line of dukes, the ones in Lydiar I be meaning, they told their traders not to be paying the road tariffs to the wizards. Three days later, there were two-hundred-score lancers on the road outside Lydiar and a score of white wizards. Never said a word, did they. Just marched into Lydiar and cast fire down on the duke’s palace. He was in it, a course. Ruins stood for nigh-on forty years ’fore anyone dared rebuild it-even the new duke the wizards named.”

“If the white mages are so powerful, why aren’t they the dukes of Lydiar and Certis and. .”

Rinfur raised his free hand.

“Used to be a Duke of Montgren, once upon a time. He befriended that black demon-Creslin, I think. The whites killed him and all those in the keep. Then they leveled the keep. Montgren still belongs to Fairhaven.”

“But you said they did that to Lydiar. Leveled the duke’s place, I mean, but there’s still a Duke of Lydiar.”

“Got me,” said Rinfur. “All I know be that no duke or viscount or whatever in his mind be crossing the white mages. No teamster not give way to a white messenger.” He shrugged. “That be enough.”

Cerryl glanced ahead. The almost mountainous hills the road had bored through after they had left Hrisbarg had already dwindled into low rolling hills, half topped with trees, half with meadows, and each line of hills seemed lower than the previous set.

“Won’t be long. Hills about to end,” confirmed the driver.

Cerryl nodded and watched.

Fairhaven rested in a gentle valley, and the road descended ever so gradually toward the mixture of white structures, white road, and green grass. The trees were mainly ever-greens barely again as tall as the roofs they shaded. Cerryl saw no leaf-bearing trees, none. Was that why Dylert could send white oak to Fairhaven?

The paving stones of the road, somewhere along the way, had turned from pinkish granite to slightly off-white gray granite, as had the stones of the walls. As the wagon cleared the last low hill, the road walls ended, replaced with a long curb slightly more than a span high. Beyond the curb was green grass, green still despite the nearing of harvest.

Cerryl had trouble seeing the city ahead against all the whiteness, a white that seemed somehow brighter than it should have been even with the clear sky and the glare of the late afternoon sun in his face. The glare seemed to intensify as the lumber wagon rolled closer.

“Ahead be the gates,” explained Rinfur, gesturing almost directly in front of the wagon, down the avenue of white stone wide enough for at least four wagons abreast.

Cerryl tried to see where Rinfur pointed, but the sun hung just above the horizon, and looking westward only left Cerryl with a headache and an image of blinding whiteness from the sun off the white of the road.

Rinfur began to rein in the team, slowing the wagon gradually until it creaked to a stop behind a mule cart piled with pottery. In front of the mule cart was another wagon, a small one drawn by a single bony horse and filled with gourds or squashes. The squash wagon stood just short of a small white stone building outside the gates. The stone gates did not seem that tall to Cerryl, not more than ten or twelve cubits high, not particularly impressive for a city that ruled, in one form or another, much of Candar.

The two white-clad soldiers or guards stepped up to the driver of the squash wagon, inspected the wagon, poked desultorily at the squashes, and motioned the farmer past the gates. The mule wagon creaked up to the gates, and Rinfur eased the lumber wagon forward but had to touch the brake to ensure the wagon stopped completely.

A squealing continued after the lumber wagon slowed. Cerryl turned. A coach and a wagon had lined up behind them. The coach, dark gray with a pair of grays, was driven by a teamster in gray as well. The driver avoided Cerryl’s eyes. Behind the coach was another wagon, but the coach blocked Cerryl’s view, and he looked back toward the gates.

The two guards had stepped up to the driver of the mule cart. One gestured at the medallion. The driver gestured, shrugging as if he did not understand.

Cerryl strained to hear the words.

“. . your pass is two years old. .”

“I did not know, ser.” The cart driver shrugged, looking at the soldiers helplessly.

“You knew. Don’t lie to us.” The taller soldier took the driver by the arm and pulled him off the cart.

“Handlers!” called the second guard. At his word, two men jumped from somewhere and unhitched the mule, leading it away down a lane to the east toward a low structure. A stable? Cerryl wondered, still looking at the unattended cart of wood and pottery.

Whhsttt! Whhhstt! Two firebolts flared from the top of the guard tower, enveloping the cart. When Cerryl’s eyes cleared and the flames had died away, all that remained before the gates was a calf-high pile of white dust, sifting back and forth in the light breeze.

Cerryl managed to keep from swallowing as he could half-see, half-feel the currents of red-tinged white energy that swirled around the gates, energies apparently unseen by anyone save the mages who had employed them-and Cerryl.

Two men in chains appeared from the gate, one bearing a broom, the other a scoop and two large buckets. Almost before Cerryl could swallow, the ashes and the men in chains were gone, and the soldier was motioning for Rinfur to pull up the lumber wagon.

Cerryl turned to Rinfur.

“It happens, young fellow. See why you not be crossing the white mages?” Rinfur chucked the reins gently, just enough to get the team to take a dozen steps or so and bring the wagon up to the white guard building.

The two white-clad soldiers stepped away from the white stone curb, just as they had with the wagon and the cart, almost as if nothing had happened. One inspected the medal on the wagon side. The other looked at Rinfur. “Goods? Destination?”

“White oak from Dylert, the millmaster of Hrisbarg. The wood be going to Fasse, the cabinet maker off the artisans’ square.” Rinfur’s words were polite, even, and practiced.

How often had the teamster carried white oak to Fairhaven?

The second soldier’s eyes lingered on Cerryl for a moment, then passed on, dismissing him as scarcely worthy of scrutiny, before lifting the canvas in the rear and studying the stacked woods. Then he nodded to the other soldier in white. “Wood.”

The first soldier stepped back and nodded. “You can go.”

“Thank you,” answered Rinfur politely.

Cerryl managed to keep from swallowing until the wagon was rolling again, past the gates and down the avenue. Shops and dwellings were set back from the avenue, and the avenue itself was divided so that on the side taken by Rinfur, all the carts and wagons and riders traveled toward the center of Fairhaven.