The White Order (The Saga of Recluce #8)(68)

Beyond the goldsmiths' and silversmiths' shops was the long stretch of large houses, each behind low white-granite walls. In one garden, in the house beyond Muneat's, two small children gamboled, a slender young woman watching from the shade of a tree trimmed into the shape of a sphere. In the next, two gardeners worked on pruning and shaping vines around an arbor.

Yet the only sounds Cerryl heard were the delighted cries of the children, and he wondered how long children in Fairhaven showed such joy. As their cries died away, the murmur of voices from around the colored carts that filled the market square rose. The muted hubbub from the peddlers and the buyers gently drowned out the sound of the guards' boots on the hard granite.

Yet not a head turned as Cerryl and his small procession passed the market square and continued down the avenue, past another section of large houses with well-kept walls and gardens.

Cerryl began to squint in the warm morning sun as he neared the wizards' square. The wizards' tower itself reared perhaps sixty cubits over the other lower buildings in the square, a blot of white stone that cast a shadow along the avenue.

The glare from the tower, and from the lower white stone buildings around the square, seemed to pulse, as if each stone cast arrows of brilliance at him so that the shadow from the tower offered little relief from a sun that had gotten hotter with every step from Tellis's shop.

Cerryl could sense the unseen whiteness of chaos, curling around the tower itself like invisible smoke. With the glare and the chaos, he found it harder to make out the structures around the circular square, save all were of a granite even whiter than that which paved the avenue, and none except the tower exceeded two levels.

The square itself held a pedestal, with a statue, surrounded by an expanse of grass, grass so dark green that it appeared almost black in the late morning sun. Rather than being in the center of a building or standing alone, the wizard's tower rose from the south side of a building that otherwise appeared to contain two stories. There was no entrance to the tower from the avenue.

The mage gestured to the squared archway above three steps nearly twenty cubits side to side. “There.”

Although the last and smallest of the successive joined square stone arches that framed the entry to the building was more than eight cubits high, there were no carvings on the smooth stone, and no windows flanking the entry. Cerryl found the featureless white stone unsettling. Even more of the fine white dust swirled up from his boots as he stepped through the entryway into a high-ceilinged foyer. Another framed entryway was to his right, and a hallway continued straight ahead.

“The stairs.” The mage pointed to the stone-railed staircase to the left.

Cerryl followed directions and started up the steps, realizing as he did that the white guards and the other two mages had remained in the foyer and that he and the mage climbed the stairs alone. At the top was another stone doorway-without a door-and a pair of guards.

The guards nodded at the mage, who gestured for Cerryl to keep going. Cerryl stepped through the entryway to find another set of steps to his right.

“Up the stairs,” ordered the mage. “To the third level.”

Although the apprentice found himself panting halfway up the second set of stairs, the mage climbed silently, without straining. Cerryl noted that, despite the size of the building and the polished flat granite and fitted joins, there was no ornamentation anywhere-only smooth and featureless walls that seemed to go on and on. The fine white dust also seemed to catch in his throat and lungs and to make breathing even more difficult.

When the mage stopped at a landing outside a blank white oak door, with a single guard, Cerryl tried to catch his breath, and the mage stood silently beside him.

“Come on in, Kinowin,” grated a voice from the other side of the door, “and bring in the young man as well.”

The stone-faced Kinowin opened the door and gestured for Cerryl to enter first, then followed him inside the tower apartment. Kinowin turned to the single mage in the room. “This is the scrivener's apprentice, as you wished, honored Sterol.”

“Good.” The white-clad mage who stood in the tower room was broad-shouldered, a head taller than Cerryl, but not so tall as the big mage who had escorted Cerryl. His hair was iron gray, and his neatly trimmed beard matched his thick and short-cut iron hair. His face was ruddy, almost as if sunburned. A golden amulet hung around his neck, and on his collar was a pin that resembled a golden starburst. “You may go, Kinowin. Wait outside until I summon you.”

Kinowin bowed. The heavy white oak door clunked shut.

Brown eyes that appeared red-flecked studied Cerryl for a time.

Cerryl stood, waiting, conscious that the mage had not mustered any power to concentrate chaos-not that Cerryl could sense, in any case. The room was a personal chamber-a large personal chamber that contained a desk and matching chair, several white wooden bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes, a table in the center of which was a circular screeing glass, and four chairs around the table. At the far end of the chamber, behind the mage, was an alcove, bigger than Cerryl's room at Tellis's, which contained a double-width bed and a washstand. Against the stone wall at the mage's left hand was another small table holding but a large bronze handbell.

“You will answer my questions.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Where were you born?”

“I don't know, ser.” That was true. Cerryl had no idea where he had been born.