Recluce - Colors Of Chaos Part 81

"It's not that," mused Cerryl, fingering his chin with his free hand. "Viental and Rinfur and I-back when I was a mill boy-we worried about whether we'd have warm clothes for the winter and enough to eat and, sometimes, whether we might get hurt, but we didn't want to think much about that. Now, I have more than enough to eat, clothes I couldn't have dreamed of, and a beautiful woman I wouldn't have dared to look at-and I still worry. I probably worry more."

"That's because you can do more about your life."

"Can I? Or do we just think we can?" Cerryl cleared his throat, then squeezed Leyladin's hand. "I used to think so, but what can even the High Wizard do? If he didn't fight this war, or something like it, no one would pay tariffs in a year or so, and the Guild would have a bigger war or problem."

"You really think so?"

"Jeslek created mountains upon mountains-and I still had to kill the old prefect of Gallos. He-we-took down two towers of Hydolar and killed one, maybe two dukes, and the Hydlenese are still grudging their obligations."

"You're just saying that everyone is bound by the world and the bounds are less obvious but just as real when you have wealth or power?"

"Something like that." Cerryl stopped under the shadow of some kind of oak, almost more a tall bush than a tree, that had grown out of the jumble of rocks at the insh.o.r.e end of the breakwater.

"There's one good thing about when we talk," offered Leyladin, looking toward him.

"There are several good things." Cerryl grinned.

Her green eyes danced for a moment. "No one thinks we're talking seriously."

"Who says we are? Or that we have to keep talking that way?"

"I do," she answered firmly.

Cerryl gave a long and dramatic sigh. "About what?"

"You have that tone, ser mage. The one that asks if we can get through with your philosophizing and my trivial questions and get on with l.u.s.t." Leyladin's red- blonde eyebrows arched.

Cerryl choked, then coughed his throat clear.

"Jeslek's not the same," she offered, pursing her lips for a moment.

"I know, but I don't know how, except there's more chaos around him all the time."

"So long as Anya's there," suggested the healer.

"Besides Anya. And he was definitely but politely ordering Anya around, more than he used to do."

"He doesn't trust her. I wouldn't. She used to sleep with Sterol, and maybe she still does when she can."

"Is he still in the White Tower? Sterol, I mean?"

"He's biding his time," Leyladin said. "He hasn't given up hope of reclaiming the amulet, no matter what he says."

"About Jeslek.... I won't be able to ask you once you go. So what should I do?"

"Do what he asks, so long as it's not dangerous to you, and wait. And never be alone with Anya. Not without lancers or someone around."

"I already learned that."

"See that it stays learned."

"I will." He paused, then took both her hands in his. "Now ... can we enjoy a little tiny bit of l.u.s.t?" he asked plaintively.

Leyladin laughed. "A tiny bit."

"That's all I ask."

"That's all you ask to begin with," she corrected, but her face turned to him, and their lips met under the s.h.i.+fting shadows of the young oak.

Cx.x.xIII.

On the flat beside the river, lancers were striking the silk tent shared by Jeslek and Anya and rolling the silk walls into bundles. On the shady side of the pine tree, on the softer needles where he had laid out his bedroll, Cerryl concentrated on the gla.s.s.

When the silver mists parted, more reluctantly than normal, Cerryl beheld a s.h.i.+p, a strange vessel moored in a channel or quay area beside a s.h.i.+pwright's works. The sense of black iron infused the s.h.i.+p-the same feeling that Cerryl had gotten from the wagon the smith had driven to Kleth before the last battle.

Between the road traps and the battle, Fairhaven had suffered greatly from the smith's devices, and now the s.h.i.+p was another creation of worry.

Cerryl let the image fade, then fingered his chin. He was glad, in a way he could not explain, that Leyladin was on her way back to Lydiar-on one of the White s.h.i.+ps that had patrolled the Northern Ocean and sealed off any flight by the Spidlarian traders, or those who had waited until the last moment, anyway.

Finally, he made his way downhill to where Jeslek stood in the morning sunlight.

"You look troubled, Cerryl," Jeslek observed. "More troubled than you have, and you have looked troubled of late." A raw smile appeared and vanished.

"I have been using my gla.s.s, as you requested, ser. The smith is doing something with a s.h.i.+p-and it involves order and black iron." Cerryl shrugged.

"What he does I cannot determine, but the black iron he brought to Kleth cost us dearly."

"I recall." The High Wizard nodded. "I appreciate your diligence, and as we near Diev, Anya and I will consider what we might best do."

"There is even more order and black iron in that vessel," Cerryl persisted. "I cannot tell what it may be, as it is in a s.h.i.+p on the water, but I like it little."

"One s.h.i.+p cannot make that much difference," said Jeslek with an indulgent smile. "We will deal with it. Besides, if he does flee, the blockade s.h.i.+ps will capture his vessel-or sink it."

"If they do not," added Anya, "then he is gone and will trouble us and Spidlar no more." Her pale eyes fixed on Cerryl. "Best you make ready to ride. We have many kays to cover."

Cerryl ignored her order and turned to Jeslek. "I will see what I can discover in the days ahead." He nodded, then turned away.

Cx.x.xIV.

Cerryl reined the gelding in at the top of the rise, glancing toward the woods on either side, then to the northwest, along the line of the undulating road, unable to see more than a kay ahead through the light afternoon mist that turned the horizon into a s.h.i.+fting gray curtain. The damp brought out the scent of fir and pine in the woods that had flanked the road for most of the day's travel.

Not only was the hilly and winding road that led from Kleth to Diev empty of all traffic, but also the rain and weather had erased all sign of horses or wagons, as if no one had traveled that way in eight-days.

Cerryl and his lancers comprised the vanguard. As usual, when Black Order threatens.

The main body of the Fairhaven forces followed nearly a kay behind. He took a deep breath, trying to sense any trace of concentrated order or black iron, but throughout the two days from Kleth he had seen nothing and sensed nothing, and the road had remained deserted. The few cots near the road were also deserted.

As if we were a destroying horde, or something.

"Are you sure this is the way, ser?" Hiser glanced at the worried mage.

"It's the right way, all right. We're about halfway to Diev."

"It be unnatural quiet. Even when I was in Gallos and the High Wizard raised the mountains ... saw some folk. Not many, but some." Hiser leaned forward in the saddle, peering at the road ahead through the warm misting rain that had barely dampened the dust. "Still no one out there."

"There won't be until we get nearer to Diev."

"What about the blue armsmen?" asked the subofficer. "What happened to them?"

"Not very many survived the battle and Kleth, and most of those came this way.

That was over three eight-days ago. Some fled along the coast out of Diev." Cerryl shrugged, still studying the downhill stretch of the road ahead with both sight and senses, neither of which revealed anything but trees and underbrush. "Those who didn't... I guess they're pretending to be peasants or something else." He urged the gelding forward. "This section seems clear." You hope.

Hiser eased his mount along beside Cerryl's. "Ser, beggin' your pardon, but we been fighting here for two years, and I don't see as why everyone's so feared of you mages. I mean, the way you rule. You don't do much different as from other rulers."

Cerryl laughed, softly. "But we do. We cast chaos fire, and most of us can tell if someone lies to us. Chaos fire is something most folk can't raise, and that creates fear and envy."

"But... arrows'll kill a man just as dead. Blades and lances, too. Or the flux."

"People fear what they don't understand, Riser. That's why many White mages and common folk fear Recluce, too." Cerryl's eyes flicked toward the upslope that lay beyond the narrow brook that wound under the stone bridge at the bottom of the incline in the road. "No one wants someone around who can tell when he lies.

We all lie, and truth is something every man or woman fears." He s.h.i.+fted his weight in the saddle and shrugged. "Then, people don't want to pay for what the Guild does. They want the roads and the prosperity, but they want someone else to come up with the golds. The Guild and Fairhaven cannot survive for long without the roads and their tariffs, and places like Spidlar want to use the roads to sell cheaper goods from Hamor and Recluce without tariffs. The Guild hasn't been challenged in a long time, and people have forgotten what a chaos war can be like."

"Like as they won't forget this one."

"They will, as soon as they can." Unless the Guild changes things. He paused.

Was that what Jeslek had once had in mind?

Cerryl glanced through the mist, which had begun to turn into true rain, wondering if Leyladin had reached Lydiar, wondering what really lay ahead in Diev. Did the smith have more devastating devices? Another surprise? Or would Diev fall as Spidlaria had?

A gust of warm rain carried the scent of pine to him as the gelding's hoofs clattered on the narrow stone bridge.

Cx.x.xV.

In the orangish light that came with dawn Cerryl walked toward the silk tent that stood several-score paces from the herder's dwelling, not quite a house but more than a hut or a cot, where he and Fydel had spent the night. Beyond the tent, trails of smoke from the cook fires spiraled into the sky, and the odor of cooking mutton hung in the still air. Cerryl swallowed, half-hungry from the smell, but not sure how well even more of the heavy and strong meat would settle. Better heavy food than none. He scratched at a vermin bite on the back of his forearm, from some insect that had escaped the chaos dusting he had given the squalid dwelling. He stepped carefully, knowing his boots threatened to slip on the rain- slicked and trampled gra.s.s, or on horse droppings, if he were not careful.

"Chaos or not, you didn't get them all," muttered Fydel, several paces behind the younger mage, scratching his own bites.

"Better than what it might have been."

Fydel grunted in response.

Cerryl circled around the High Wizard's tent, making for the cook fires. "Our High Wizard and his aide are not stirring yet."

"They've been stirring all night, no doubt." Fydel snorted. "Let us see if there's something to eat."

They joined Hiser and Teras by the cook fire, where Cerryl took a joint that was hot and dripping. He stood by the cook fire, alternating mouthfuls of hard bread and tough mutton, leaning forward enough that the juice didn't drip on his whites. Fydel chewed more noisily, but neither spoke while they ate. Ears alert, Cerryl listened to the scattered comments of the officers and subofficers around the nearby fire.

"... move so slow ... nothing here."

"There wasn't much there, either, when the blues used that order fire to wipe out a couple-dozen-score levies and some mages ... what's your hurry?"

"Just want to get it over."

"... so you can get killed sooner in another war, say with the Hydlenese?"

Cerryl found himself smiling crookedly at the last words.

"You think we'll have to take Hydlen, too?" asked Fydel.

"We'll have to do something. I'd wager soon rather than later, but that rests with the Council and the High Wizard."

"The Council will follow Jeslek."

"As it should be," interjected Anya.

"Good morning." Cerryl turned and inclined his head.

"Morning," Fydel grunted.

"Cerryl... Fydel, Jeslek would like to meet with you now." Anya's voice was cool, preemptory, and she turned with the last of her words and walked back toward the white silk tent.

"Full of herself," mumbled Fydel through a last morsel of bread.

She always has been, even when she first beguiled you. "Perhaps, but Jeslek is not patient these days."

The two followed Anya back to the tent.

Inside, Jeslek sat on a stool before the small table, sipping wine from the single goblet. "Come in. We have much to do today."

Standing at his shoulder, Anya nodded.

Cerryl and Fydel stepped forward and stood across the table from the High Wizard.

"Cerryl, you have found no traces of the Black one's works along the road, is that not so?"

"So far," Cerryl replied cautiously.

Jeslek frowned. "A moment, and I will return." He stood. "Anya, you may proceed. You know my wishes."

Cerryl repressed the frown he felt. Jeslek had left hurriedly. A touch of the flux?

Shouldn't the High Wizard have been able to control that?

"The harbor and center of Diev lie less than ten kays ahead," Anya said. "Cerryl, have you screed the town this morning?"

"I did. Before I ate. The smith had left his forge and was at the s.h.i.+pwright's on the harbor. I could see no bodies of armsmen, but those around him did bear arms."