The White Order (The Saga of Recluce #8)(92)

“Lift the grate.”

Cerryl struggled and lifted the grate, discovering that it opened on a pair of hidden hinge pins nearly as thick as his wrists.

“Swing it back against the wall.”

When the grate was against the wall, another bronze ring protruding from the building wall extended through the bars of the grate. Myral relocked the grate in the open position and returned the key to his purse. The two guards stood back from the square opening.

“Did you see what I did?”

“You did something with darkness there.”

“Exactly.” Myral smiled. “All sewer locks are charged with chaos. I'll explain in a moment.” He turned to the guards. “Remain here until we return.”

“Yes, ser.” The older and grizzle-bearded armsman nodded.

Myral stepped onto the top stair within the circular opening and started downward.

Cerryl glanced over his shoulder, back at the bronze grate that Myral had locked open, and at the pair of white lancers guarding the entrance to the main sewer tunnel. A faint smile crossed the lips of the taller and younger guard, then vanished.

Looking back down, Cerryl followed the older mage into the darkness barely lit by the oil lamp Myral carried down the narrow and unrailed brick staircase. Their boots clicked on the hard bricks.

The first odors-a mixture of barnyard and fish and rotten meat, or worse-almost gagged Cerryl.

“You'll get used to it,” Myral called back over his shoulder.

Never... I hope not. Cerryl swallowed and kept heading downward, trying not to think about the source of the foulness.

At the bottom of the stairs, Myral took several more steps before he turned and waited.

The main sewer was a square tunnel of red glazed bricks whose braced and squared granite arches were a good two cubits above Cerryl's head as he stood at the foot of the narrow staircase. On the left side was a walkway, about two cubits wide, except where the cubit-wide stairs descended. To the right of the walkway was the drainage way that carried the sewage, the surface of the turbid waters another cubit or so below the walkway.

“In storms, the waters can rise halfway up the staircase.” Myral paused, then added, “You don't work in the sewers during heavy rains.”

The younger man looked back at the stairs, imagining all that filthy water rushing through the tunnels.

“The secondary sewers are just tall enough to walk in-sometimes-and the collectors for them are little more than covered and glazed brick trenches anywhere from one to two cubits square.”

Cerryl decided not to ask how he was supposed to clean the collectors.

“You won't be working the collectors to begin with. You'll start on the secondaries once I'm sure you can handle the work. Now ... we'll go a little farther, until the walkway starts to get slimy. It doesn't take long down here.”

A dozen cubits or so farther from the stairs, Myral halted. “I'm going to demonstrate how to use chaos to clean away the filth. Watch me, with your eyes and your senses.”

As the mage turned back toward the darkness, Cerryl could sense the buildup of chaos, a white unseen fire that seemed to flicker around the older mage, yet behind the white of chaos was a dark mist, a dilute blackness, the same as Myral had used with the lock, except there was more of it.

Whhhssttt! A line of flame splashed across the bricks of the walkway. Where there had been green-and-black slime there now were only powdery white dust and clean bricks.

“What did you sense?”

“A black mist and chaos force beyond it, going away.”

“The black was an order shield. Unless held back, chaos force will expand equally in all directions. That's why people seldom unlock the sewer grates. Someone usually dies if they do.”

“You pack chaos into the lock?”

“People would be using the sewers for everything if we didn't. Now watch again.”

Once more, Myral repeated the process, and Cerryl tried to capture the feel of it, the constriction and the release as the chaos-fire arced away from the older mage, leaving another circle of clean brick, perhaps a cubit in diameter.

“You see?”

“I think so.”

Myral turned to Cerryl. A tip of flame flickered on his index finger. “We'll start with the shield. Try to replicate the black mist. Squeeze the flame up into a thin line.”

Cerryl concentrated. Nothing. Why was he trying to control Myral's chaos force?

“No. Order is not an absence of chaos. Try this. If chaos is fire, flaming where it will, order is ice. You have seen snowflakes, have you not?”

“Yes, ser.” Hot in the tunnel despite the cold wind above, Cerryl wiped his forehead.

“If you look at a snowflake, each one is an ordered pattern, a repeating lattice.”

Cerryl didn't know what to say.

Myral blotted his forehead, streaming sweat, with the back of his sleeve. Then he sighed. “Pure chaos has no pattern, only power. Pure order is like death or ice, with a perfect structure and no life. Think about a pattern, any pattern. Build it in your mind-a net, a web, a lattice...”

Cerryl nodded.

“... and pattern it around the chaos.” Myral continued to sweat as the chaos-flame danced on his fingertip.

The second time, the student mage created the image of a black net shrinking around the chaos-fire. He blinked as the point of chaos-fire winked out.