L. Modesitt - The White Order

Cerryl tried to gather himself together as he bowed.

“Go.”

“Yes, ser.” He bowed again, turned, and hastened down toward the square and toward Nivor the apothecary’s.

The woman in white-she was certainly a mage, and not all that much older than Cerryl. He shivered, recalling the cold eyes that had changed color with every word and the cruel laugh. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she had meant about his learning more might be enough. Enough for what?

He shivered, though he tried not to do so. So much went on in Fairhaven that few saw. His brief experience with master Muneat had shown him one side of it, but that wasn’t all. Though he saw little of the power of chaos that lay hidden, that power he could feel, unlike that of the golds of the factors. And the hidden chaos made him shiver, unlike the golds.

CERRYL LAY ON his back, under both the thin blanket and his leather jacket, not quite shivering but not exactly warm, either. His eyes looked generally in the direction of the ceiling beams, but his thoughts were well beyond his room.

Tellis had the complete volume of Colors of White , the whole thing, with the sections missing from the volume Syodar had given Cerryl. The apprentice scrivener turned on his side, drawing his legs up so that he was curled into a ball, trying not to think about the volume locked inside the chest in the copy room, and trying even harder not to think about the key in the hidden niche by the door.

“It’s not as though. .” he murmured. As though? As though he would be stealing? He wouldn’t hurt the book. He’d read it in the workroom in the dark. Stealing knowledge? But did knowledge belong to anyone? Or was that how the mages stayed in power-by keeping their knowledge to themselves?

Cerryl turned over once more and looked through the darkness at the ceiling beams again. He wanted to sigh, but what good would that have done? He could almost feel the white-dusted volume calling him.

Tellis hadn’t said no one else could read it, but that no one else was supposed to copy the book. Cerryl winced at the self-deception. No one else was supposed to handle it because the white mages didn’t want anyone besides a craftmaster they trusted to read it. A craftmaster who was the son of a mage?

Sooner or later, they’ll find out that you can handle chaos a little. . if they don’t know already. Wouldn’t it be better to learn what you can now? Momentarily ignoring the thought, he turned over on the pallet. Then he turned back. Some moments later, he found himself looking at the ceiling beams once more.

Finally, he sat up and swung his feet over the side of his bed, not letting them touch the cold stone of the floor for a moment. Then he stood. He eased open his own door and surveyed the dark and silent courtyard. The sole sounds were those of the breeze and the clopping hoofs and creaking of a wagon somewhere down on the avenue.

Cerryl took a deep and silent breath. Wearing only the jacket and his smallclothes, he padded noiselessly across the courtyard. The door to the common room scraped, but only slightly, as he closed it behind him and eased around the table and through the kitchen.

Cerryl slipped into the workroom, not lighting a candle, and trusting his own night vision. The key slid from its recess beside the door into his fingers, and the cabinet lock barely snicked as he turned the key and opened the door. The book itself lay in the first drawer, half-illuminated to Cerryl’s senses by the traces of chaos power dusting it. For the moment, he left it there untouched.

None of the white mages would be able to tell that Cerryl had read it, because his own faint chaos power traces would be obscured by their far vaster power. Still, he rinsed his hands in the cool water remaining in the pitcher, wanting to reduce further the faintest residue of the chaos energy that seemed to flow within him and out through his bare fingers. After drying them on his own towel-still damp from when he had washed before dinner-he turned back and lifted the book from the drawer and carried it to the copy stand, setting it down and opening it roughly halfway through, toward where he thought the second section might begin.

In the dimness, even with his night vision, he had to strain to read the words on the page to which he had turned.

A mage must use order to channel chaos, for nothing else can contain the pure flame of chaos, yet he must not be constrained by that order, lest his power to use chaos for good be turned to naught. .

Cerryl flipped through more pages. He wanted answers, not philosophy.

. . there be two types of healing, the use of order to strengthen the flesh and the use of chaos to destroy all manner of illnesses arising from whence the elements of the world mortify the flesh. . in the second, the mage must ascertain the very source of the mortification. . his energies must but destroy that source and none other, for any other destruction will most assuredly destroy also the patient. .

Cerryl wanted to beat his forehead. How was he supposed to concentrate chaos energies inside someone? He understood the ideas, even those he hadn’t known about. Technique was the question, not philosophizing about the technique. He flipped through several more pages.

. . those marshaling the fires of the air must understand that the aether itself acts as though it were a function of order, pressing in upon the energies of chaos focused by the mage. .

That didn’t tell him anything, either. At least he didn’t think it did. His forehead was damp, despite the chill night air in the workroom, but he read on.

. . so that even a line of chaos fire will reassemble itself into a globe of such fundamental fire when hurled through its own power over even the shortest of distances. .

Cerryl forced himself to keep reading. Maybe he just didn’t know enough. Maybe.

How long he read-that he had no idea, except that his head felt as though it were twirling on his shoulders and filled with burning sawdust when he replaced the book in the cabinet and relocked it. The key went back into its recess, and he retraced his silent steps back to his room.

He closed the door and looked through the darkness at his pallet, frowning. He felt as though someone were observing him, yet nothing moved. Nothing offered the slightest of sounds, except the wind.

Finally, with a shiver, he slipped under the blanket, realizing that his feet were like blocks of ice. He shivered again, and might have once more, except his eyes were too heavy.

FROM HIS MAKESHIFT copy post at the end of the worktable, Cerryl looked away from the propped-up copy of Herbes and Their Selfsame Remedies and stifled a yawn. The nighttime reading was taking its toll, particularly late in the day, and yet he dared not yawn around Tellis. Not too much, anyway.

“Sleepy again, I see,” observed the master scrivener from the copy desk where he labored over Colors of White . “You mayhap spending time with the Historie? ”

“I have been reading,” answered Cerryl. “There is much I don’t understand.” His nose wrinkled at the faint smell of some substance that had worked its way into the worn surface of the worktable-or was it the discarded oak galls festering in the bottom of the waste bin?

“Then you should ask,” ventured Tellis, his eyes back on Colors of White , his fingers steady as he replicated the letters on the virgin vellum. “What do you find hard to understand?”

Cerryl dipped his own quill and copied for a moment before replying. “There is so much.” He paused, ensuring the quill was well clear of the vellum before he spoke. “There are mentions of iron birds that brought the white way to Candar, but little is said of the time before Cyador.”