L. Modesitt - The White Order

He saw that the weavers’ shutters were ajar, and he paused, peering through the narrow opening to see Pattera and her sister working away, Pattera at the big loom, her sister Serai at one of the backstrap looms. As he watched, Pattera tucked the shuttle into a leather bracket on the loom frame and, wrapping a brown shawl around her, scurried toward the door.

With a faint smile, Cerryl stepped back from the window and turned to wait before continuing toward the tanner’s. The latch clicked, and the door opened.

“Cerryl. . wait, I can spare a moment. Father’s gone to Vergren for some more wool.”

“Pattera. . now that he’s come, would you close the shutters all the way?” called Serai from inside the weaver’s.

“It wasn’t like that.” The brown-haired girl flushed and looked away from Cerryl, even as she latched the shutters. “I mean. . leaving the shutters ajar. I just like to see people go by. Serai doesn’t.”

“People are different,” Cerryl agreed. “Even sisters.”

“Especially sisters.” Pattera paused. “Where are you going?”

“Out to Arkos’s. He’s finished some more of the good vellum that Tellis needs for something.” Cerryl smiled crookedly. “Tellis won’t say for what, but I’d bet he’s going to copy something for the mages. That’s always what they ask for.”

Pattera nodded. “They want virgin wool, too.”

“Why? Do you know?” Cerryl had his own suspicions, but he wanted to hear what Pattera had to say.

“I can walk a little ways with you. Is that all right?” she asked shyly.

“Of course.”

“About the wool,” Cerryl prompted, resuming his walk down toward the square, since Arkos’s place was a good ways beyond Fasse’s cabinet shop, well to the south and east.

“Oh. . Father says it’s because the virgin wool is stronger and resists chaos better. There has to be chaos around the mages and what they wear, with all the chaos some of them must handle.” Pattera paused, then added, “Don’t you think so?”

Cerryl offered a shrug as he walked. “I would guess so. I certainly wouldn’t be the one to say.” His eyes flicked across the bright blue shutters of the potter’s shop, firmly closed against the chill, and to the empty square ahead, where the wind blew a small white dust spout across the white granite stones of the thoroughfare.

“The sheep in Montgren have the best wool-except for the black wool of Recluce, but we couldn’t ever scrape up the coins for that.” Pattera shook her head. “They say it lasts forever.”

“Tellis says that a good book should last for generations.” Cerryl frowned. “Then he says that the ones used by the white mages never do. When they look at books in the shop, they never touch them.”

“That’s strange.”

“I thought so, too,” Cerryl lied.

“How do you know?” Pattera asked.

“I’m guessing, in a way,” he admitted. “I’ve never seen them touch one. They ask Tellis or me to show them the book or open it to a page, and if they buy anything, we wrap it so that they don’t touch it.” After a moment, he added, “They must touch them sometimes, but I haven’t seen any one of them do so.”

“That is strange.”

Cerryl stopped at the edge of the avenue and looked at the brown-haired weaver. “Do you want to come with me?”

“I’d like to, but Serai would get mad and tell father.” Pattera grinned. “Sisters are like that.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Cerryl admitted. “I grew up alone.”

“Father said you were an orphan.”

“I was raised by my aunt and uncle, and then they died in a fire.” A mage fire, and I don’t know why .

“Oh. . Cerryl, I’m sorry. At least we have father.” Pattera glanced back up the way. “I’d better be going.” With a quick smile, she turned and scurried back toward the shop.

Cerryl watched for a moment, then waited for a canvas-covered wagon heading out of Fairhaven to pass before crossing the square. He put his hands back under his jacket and began to walk more quickly. At least it wasn’t raining.

AFTER SETTLING INTO his jacket and wrapping his blanket around him, Cerryl opened the book- Great Historie of Candar -to the strip of leather that served as his place mark. The worn binding testified to its age, but Tellis had insisted it was the most accurate of the histories. The scrivener had also insisted that Cerryl read the book.

The apprentice scrivener yawned, but forced himself to look at the pages, clear enough to his night vision in the dimness that he didn’t bother with the candle.

. . yet Relyn was skilled with words and his blade, for the black demon Nylan had given him a mystic blade and an iron hand in return for his own good right hand, which Ryba the evil had sliced off to place Relyn in bondage to Nylan. .

After the battles for the Westhorns, Relyn made his way eastward, beguiling all who would listen with song-gifted words and honeyed phrases.

. . Relyn, traitor as he was to the great heritage of Cyador, not only built the first black Temple east of the Westhorns, but spent his years preaching against the truth of the old Empire.

Where the first Temple rose is uncertain, for it was rightly burned by Fenardre the Great as an abomination. .

Later, Relyn fled from Gallos through ancient Axalt and came to Montgren and spent many hours with the shepherds who lived there. . with him came the teachings of the black demon Nylan and the forbidden songs of Ayrlyn. .

. . and Relyn brought them the way of forging the iron that burns chaos and cannot be broken, and the shepherds turned their forests into charcoal and their hills into gaping pits and charnel heaps and wrought the blades that severed souls. . and bloody Montgren came into being. .

Cerryl half shook his head and yawned. Montgren bloody? The peaceful land of shepherds and rolling meadows, of fine wool and stillness?

He rubbed his forehead. He still didn’t understand all the words, but more and more were familiar, and many he could puzzle out from how they were used.

. . in the time after the rebuilding of Jellico, many of those writings were put to the torch, accursed as they were. .

Cerryl rubbed his forehead again. How could writings about what had happened or what someone believed be accursed? He could see how a history could be wrong. Or how what someone believed might upset others, but were people really such fools as to think that words on a page carried a power beyond their meaning?

Or were they fools? He closed the book gently. If Fenardre the Great had killed all those whose beliefs he opposed and burned their writings, who would know? Especially if he had scriveners write down what he wanted.

Cerryl shivered. How could he know whether what he read was truth. . or what the writer wanted the reader to believe was truth? He was just an apprentice scrivener who had seen very little of the world. He knew about the mines, the sawmill, the trees, something about plants and gardens, and he was learning about books and letters, and a little bit about Fairhaven.

Had Relyn been an evil man or just someone Fenardre and the whites didn’t like? How could Cerryl ever tell?

He set the book aside and lay back on his pallet, eyes wide open for a long time before they finally slipped shut.

CERRYL SET THE quill in the holder, then yawned.

Tellis glanced from his worktable and away from the thin green leather volume on which he was completing the last steps of binding-something Cerryl had seen only intermittently, as though Tellis were keeping it from him. The scrivener looked at his apprentice and the copying desk. “I trust that your yawn is because you were awake late and reading the Great Historie not because you find the trade book so boring.”