The White Order (The Saga of Recluce #8)(27)

Slowly, Cerryl walked down the lane, avoiding the star-shaped patch of soot, until he reached the area where the dead man had thrown the blade. A faint glint of something tugged at his eyes, except that tug urged him to look away.

He fought the feeling and followed it to a deeper patch of grass. Gingerly, he picked up the blade by the hilt, a hilt of bronze, apparently wrapped in something like silk.

Cerryl studied the blade, noting that it was not iron or steel or anything like it, but more like the metal of the knife that had been his father's.

The sound of boots on the road alerted him, and he slipped the blade behind him as he turned.

Brental smiled. “You need not hide that blade, Cerryl. I see we had the same thought. You found it, and it be yours. Might I see it?”

After a moment, Cerryl extended the blade sideways, looking over Brental's shoulder as Dylert walked down the lane from the barn.

Brental took it, then squinted. “I can hardly see it. It twists your eyes right well away from it.” He shivered and quickly handed the blade back to Cerryl. “It be yours, if you wish it.”

Cerryl took the blade back.

Dylert nodded, as if to agree that the blade was Cerryl's.

Brental glanced past Cerryl, toward the Lydiar road, before speaking. “You saw the firebolt? The flame the poor fellow cast? Pity-poor chaos flame, too, it was.”

“Chaos flame?” blurted Cerryl.

“Aye,” answered Dylert. “The fellow with that blade there, he'd a been a renegade white-one who'd not follow their rules. Strict they be, about chaos and its use.” He looked hard at Cerryl. “Seen a handful over my years. A man has the talent and not be under their rules and protection, the white mages, they like as not kill or ruin a fellow ... and them's the lucky ones.” He shook his head slowly. “In their own way, they be fair, fairer than most dukes and the like. But a man should walk a fair piece to stay on their good side. Aye, and he should.”

Their good side? Had they one? Cerryl wondered.

“Glad I be as just a mill man,” said Brental, following his words with a nervous laugh.

Cerryl forced himself not to look down at the blade in his hands, a blade that felt strangely comfortable and simultaneously uncomfortable as he held it loosely.

“Well...” Dylert added into the silence, glancing to the west where the sun hung low over the house. “Day's done. Be time soon for dinner.” He turned and walked briskly back uphill.

After a moment, Brental nodded and followed his father.

With the near-setting sun warming his face, Cerryl looked down at the blade, the same white bronze as the knife from his father, recalling how the dead man had knocked down arrows and firebolts ... and how his efforts had been in vain.

And how he had sought Cerryl. The youth shivered.





White Order





XXI




Cerryl reread the passage in Colors of White, trying to keep the sounds and images in his head, as he'd overheard Siglinda tell Erhana during one of the tutoring sessions when he'd been stacking hearth wood outside the millmaster's house.

“... all that is under the sun can only be because of the chaos of the sun. Even the wisest of mages cannot perceive any portion of all that exists on and under the earth itself except through the operation of chaos.”

He wanted to shake his head. He understood the words, but there was something about the meaning that eluded him.

Brental had said that the man who had fled the lancers of Lydiar- and the white wizard-had flung chaos fire against the wizard. Cerryl had seen that, and how the wizard had turned it back with little more than a glance. Or so it had seemed. Still, the fugitive had held his own for a time against outlandish odds.

Cerryl wasn't sure if he wished the blond man had won or not, but he wouldn't soon forget the cold and impartial attitude of the white wizard, acting as if the fugitive were little more than vermin to be destroyed.

He cleared his throat, realizing he had been murmuring the words, and clamped his lips shut as he studied the page again, then flipped to another page, farther along.

Still nothing about chaos fire.

He tried another page, and then another.

He glanced down at Colors of White again. Why didn't he have the second part, instead of a worthless history? The second part would have explained everything, like how to create chaos fire.

He frowned, touching his chin, a chin that remained beardless and smooth. Could he create chaos fire?

In the dimness, he held up his left hand, concentrated on somehow making fire appear at his fingertips, the way the fugitive had.

Was there a glow there? He squinted through the gloom at the faintest spark at the tip of his index finger. Then the point of light vanished. He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead. A deeper and ugly red glow lingered in the air for several moments.

Cerryl took a deep breath, then another.





White Order





XXII




In the light drizzle that drifted from the low-hanging gray clouds, Cerryl used the dark brown laundry soap and washed his hands and face at the well, the one uphill of the south end of the porch. He shook his hands as dry as he could in the damp air, then began to walk toward the porch of the mill master's house, noticing that Rinfur was already stepping into the kitchen. Viental had gone-again-to visit his “sister.”