L. Modesitt - The White Order

Cerryl’s head ached, and stars flashed before his eyes, half from the effort of holding shields and half from struggling with his mount. Not that he blamed the chestnut, not as scared as he had been, wondering whether he would see another sunrise.

“Eat something from your pack, you idiot,” hissed Lyasa, “before you fall out of your saddle.” Her face was pale.

“You better do the same,” he answered in a raspy voice, grasping for the small ration pack.

The hard cheese and dried bread helped-after he moistened his mouth and lips enough to be able to swallow. The flashing stars before his eyes slowly vanished, but he was conscious of being light-headed, and the food didn’t remove that sensation.

Jeslek, who had remained almost like a statue, abruptly turned his mount as though no time at all had passed. “You see, Anya, Fydel-it’s not all that difficult to raise chaos through the ground, and mountains with it. Still. . we must protect the highway-and that will be your task-and that of the students.” Jeslek’s sun-gold eyes flashed at the three younger mages. “For a first try, your shields were not bad, but you’ll all have to do better than that.” Jeslek turned to Klybel. “Now, overcaptain, let’s return to the Highway. We will proceed into Gallos.”

“He’s not going to raise more mountains, is he?” asked Kochar.

Both Lyasa and Cerryl stared at the redhead.

Kochar swallowed and looked down at his mount’s neck and mane.

Cerryl glanced around. To the north and east, all seemed as it had been, but to the west. . low mountains that had not been there before stretched a dozen kays or more toward the horizon.

Yet, the Great White Highway remained-untouched, if dwarfed by the new heights.

Had Jeslek called forth chaos-and shielded the highway? Why? With such power, surely he could have used the stuff of chaos to cut a new passage through the uprisen rock. Cerryl scratched his head, aware suddenly that his face felt flushed, almost burned.

Then. . was not chaos like the light of the sun? He glanced at Lyasa as she turned her mount. The black-haired student’s face seemed more olive-tanned than before. Kochar’s cheeks and forehead were bright red.

Cerryl turned the chestnut, aware that his thighs were close to cramping once again.

“Back to the Highway!” Klybel’s order rang out over the hissing created by steaming rocks and the places where the meltwater ran into the heated lake bottom and spring.

Standing momentarily in the stirrups helped relieve the incipient cramping, but Cerryl was all too aware of the stiffness and soreness that would not be relieved.

IN THE DIMNESS, away from the cookfire, Cerryl pulled off his white leather boots, coated in chaos dust but free from mud, and stretched out on his bedroll, his eyes on the white silk tent where Jeslek reclined on a cot. “Ohhhh. . darkness. .”

To the east, a faint glow lighted the horizon, the red-limned light from the scattered lines of molten rock that had burst from the ground with the hills Jeslek had raised into small mountains.

Cerryl took another long breath.

“Even the ground feels better than a saddle,” Lyasa said wryly.

“It’s hard,” complained Kochar, sitting disconsolately on his bedroll, his boots still on. “Too hard to sleep on.”

“Try it,” suggested Lyasa.

“I’m going back to the fire. I’m cold.” Kochar stood and ambled back in the direction of the silk tent, its white sides an orange from the light of the slowly dying cookfire.

The rustling murmur of lancers preparing their bedrolls and the muted talking they did conveyed a sense of the summer that had already passed in Gallos, a sense of summer dispersed by the chill breeze out of the northwest, a breeze bringing the odor of damp and decaying grass.

Lyasa eased her bedroll closer to Cerryl’s, then removed her boots and pulled her blanket up to her shoulders. “This way we can talk, and no one will think anything.”

I’m sure they’ll think something . “I doubt that.” Cerryl shivered, despite his double blankets. Feeling guilty, he eased the edge of the top blanket over Lyasa.

“That’s even better. And warmer.” The black-haired woman laughed softly. With her lips less than a span from Cerryl’s face, the laugh tickled his left ear. “They will think but of two apprentices taking comfort where they may. Jeslek and Anya both are used to such, as both couple like hares, given the chance.”

“You know this?”

“I have been spared, saved only that I am beneath him. None are beneath Anya, not if it will serve her.”

“I know.” Cerryl thought of poor Faltar, who saw nothing but Anya’s beauty and wonderful and false smile. “I know.” After a moment, he added, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Who else dare I tell? I am a student mage also, and any full mage who wishes me. . I cannot leave. .”

Cerryl’s throat tightened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t. . I thought I was the only one. . like that.”

Lyasa offered another soft laugh, half-sweet, half-bitter. “I know that as well. We are alike, you because you have no family, and I because I am a woman with a talent for chaos. As for you. .” Lyasa’s voice held a regretful shrug. “I was wrong. I would be your friend. I would always be your friend, and I will give you my body, if you wish it.”

“I do not understand. I have not asked. .” Cerryl swallowed.

“No. Nor will you, and you and I both know the reason.”

Cerryl was afraid he did. Leyladin. Yet he had never done more than speak with the green-eyed gray mage. “You said. .”

“I did, and I was wrong, and that is why I am your friend, and your ally. If you can survive Sterol, and Jeslek, and Anya, you will save us all.”

Cerryl shook his head. “I’m still a student, and every time I look, Jeslek is trying to test me in some other way.”

“He is not testing you. He is trying to get you to make a mistake that will kill you. He dares not kill you outright, and you must be strong enough to withstand him when he succeeds Sterol as High Wizard.”

Jeslek as High Wizard? How could he not become High Wizard with the power he already commanded? And how could Cerryl withstand that kind of power?

Lyasa reached out and gave him a one-armed hug. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Her words echoed in his ears even as he drifted off to sleep, savoring the comfort of her closeness, and only her closeness. “You don’t have to do it alone. You don’t have to do it alone.”

Even so, a blond mage with red highlights in her hair filled his dreams, and as he seemed to watch her walk through endless corridors, corridors he could never quite enter, he half-dreamed, half-wondered if he would ever see Leyladin again. And what he could do about it, if ever he did.

CERRYL REFASTENED THE white leather jacket against the damp wind out of the north. His eyes went back along the column of lancers stretched eastward on the Great White Highway, reined up and waiting.

Ahead, Jeslek gathered chaos around him, so much that his jacket and trousers seemed to glitter silvered white under the midmorning gray. A light misting rain swept from the low clouds.

A trumpet sounded, faintly at first, then more loudly. A row of armsmen in purple appeared on the hill to the north of the Great Highway.

“So. . the Gallosians have decided upon a show of force.” Jeslek laughed, and his laugh carried easily to Cerryl. “Much good it will do them.”

Beside the overmage, Klybel remained silent as the armsman in dark purple rode down the hill and toward the mages. He bore a polished iron oval shield, the blue-trimmed messenger’s pennant drooping from the staff rising out of the lance holder. Scattered raindrops slid across the cold metal as he reined up a good thirty cubits from Jeslek.