The White Order (The Saga of Recluce #8)(130)

“He doubtless needed to,” said Fydel.

“Fydel.” Anya's voice was as cold as the ice beside the stone highway wall.

Fydel turned abruptly, his eyes on Jeslek's back.

Lyasa coughed.

Cerryl glanced at her, catching her mouthed words: “Watch out...”

He nodded, understanding all too well. If Anya happened to be too interested in him, he needed to be careful-most careful. “It should get warmer once the sun hits the road.”

“I hope so,” answered Lyasa.

“Amazing,” whispered Kochar to himself.

Cerryl shook his head, trying to ignore the chill in his thighs and his frozen ears, hoping Anya would confine her overt attentions to others.





White Order





XC




Cerryl swayed in the saddle as the chestnut carried him up the winding trail away from the Great White Highway. Ahead rode Jeslek and the other mages, and behind followed the students, with the line of lancers stretched out after them on the narrow mountain trail for hundreds and hundreds of cubits.

A light layer of fresh-fallen snow covered the rocks and mountain grasses between the scattered junipers and low pines, but the sunlight had been strong enough to melt the snow off the trees-at least on the sunny side. The chestnut carried Cerryl by a pine leaning over the trail so low that he had to duck, a pine so twisted and buffeted by the mountain winds until only the limbs on the southern side had retained needles.

Although there was still some snow on the trail before Cerryl, he had no doubt that the way behind him was rapidly becoming sloppy, since the lancers' mounts would churn damp earth and clay and snow into cold mud. He hoped Jeslek had another way back. He took a deep breath, but the midday was warm enough that he didn't puff a cloud of white when he exhaled.

Lyasa rode before Cerryl and Kochar behind him. Jeslek disappeared as his dusky-white mount carried him out of sight and down from the ridgetop that Cerryl's and Lyasa's mounts still climbed.

Cerryl sniffed the breeze, detecting a faint odor of brimstone that strengthened as the gelding carried him over the ridge and downward. Below, in the small valley steamed a small lake, surrounded by greenish blue ponds, from which also rose steam.

“Here lies the key to our future in Gallos.” From where he had reined up his mount on a hillock overlooking the lake and hot springs, Jeslek gestured toward them.

Cerryl had to work to keep from wrinkling his nose at the odor of brimstone. He glanced over his shoulder, back along the winding trail.

“Smells,” murmured Kochar, reining up beside Cerryl and Lyasa.

“Of course it does. It's a chaos spring,” answered Lyasa from where she had reined up beside Cerryl.

“Chaos spring?” asked Kochar, brushing ice crystals off his red hair.

“The water flows up from where chaos has gathered closer to the top of the ground. Haven't you read your books?”

“Oh... yes ... I never thought of that here.” Kochar bobbed his head.

According to Colors of White, the entire center of the world was filled with chaos, just like the sun. Cerryl nodded to himself as he recalled what he had read. It made sense that some of that chaos might be closer to the surface of the ground.

“Cerryl,” Jeslek called, “you should be able to trace the fire of chaos that feeds the springs. You also, Lyasa.”

“Yes, ser.” Cerryl straightened himself in the saddle, trying to ignore the chill that burrowed through the white leather jacket as he attempted to let his senses flow into the rock and heat beneath the ground.

“And, Kochar ... try to follow what they're doing.”

“Yes, ser.”

Cerryl let his senses flow across the small pond less than fifty cubits downhill, picking up a diffuse and wavering line of... something. Letting his senses follow the unseen reddish white line, he could feel a darker and deeper whiteness that oozed around the rocks below the pond, and beneath the greenish blue of the larger lake to the west.

Another probe-one more like a huge battering ram-rumbled by his and arrowed toward the depths. Cerryl felt like a fly brushed aside by a diving vulcrow, shivering as he sat astride the chestnut.

Kochar shook like a gray winter leaf in a gale. Even Lyasa swallowed.

Cerryl wiped his forehead, suddenly damp despite the chill. Beneath him, he could sense Jeslek's powers rearranging the vague patterns of darkness and reddish chaos that lay beneath the earth rearranging them so that a fountain of reddish white bubbled through the spaces between the rocks and oozed up underneath the spring to the south of the lake.

The ground trembled again.

From his mount Jeslek smiled ... smiled as steam geysered from the spring into a plume that rose nearly a hundred cubits into the green-blue sky of Candar.

Rain, hot rain, cascaded down across the greenish blue lake, and then droplets fell on Cerryl and the others, and even on the lancers farther up the trail.

“That! That is but the beginning,” said Jeslek as the plume subsided into a three-cubit-high fountain of boiling water. “How ...” murmured Kochar under his breath. Beside Jeslek, overcaptain Klybel's eyebrows rose momentarily. Jeslek smiled. “You all doubt, but there will be no doubt. The very earth will break Gallos, and you will see.” His hand jabbed at Anya and Fydel. “Put down your shields and protect the ground beneath you. For I will lift the chaos under you and fry you if you do not.”