Natural Ordermage (53 page)

“Good recovery, Rhiobyn,” said Talanyr dryly.

The younger mage-clerk flushed under his olive skin.

“Someone drugged me with nemysa,” Rahl said. “Mage-Guard Taryl discovered! could write when I started to get back some of my memories…” He continued with a brief explanation of what had happened after that.

“Taryl’s a good sort,” offered Talanyr quietly. “He’s a lifer here, though.”

“Why is that?” asked Rahl.

Even Rhiobyn leaned forward.

“I don’t know exactly, but he did something to upset the Emperor’s brother’s mistress. That was when Halmyt was Emperor.”

“Is Mythalt the Emperor now?”

“Where have you been?” asked Rhiobyn.

“I lost my memory, remember? He was the Emperor before that happened. I haven’t heard any news in something like two seasons.”

“He still is,” Talanyr said. “He’ll be Emperor for a long time. He’s less than half a score older than I am.”

“What’s he like?”

Talanyr shrugged. “He’s the Emperor. Who knows what an Emperor’s like? I’d imagine he likes women and good food and being in charge. Who wouldn’t?”

“Have there ever been mages who were Emperors?” Rahl ate another biastra, enjoying the taste of what he was thinking of as real food.

“The histories say that Sanacur the Great was, but that was a long time ago. Not recently, unless they’ve kept it hidden.”

“How do you know all that?” Rhiobyn slurped his beer slightly. “I’m sorry.”

“My father was the local scholar. He ran the school,” replied Talanyr. “He insisted I know more than any of the other students.”

“Where are you from?” Rahl asked.

“Jabuti—it’s a little town in Afrit that’s almost on the border with Merowey, in the western highlands.”

“How did you get here?”

“How does anyone end up as a mage-trainee?” Talanyr laughed, softly. “I was ten, I think, when I decided to strengthen with order a basket I’d broken because I didn’t want anyone to find out. I got away with it and a few other things for nearly five years, until a friend of my father visited us. He was an ordermage. Well, he wasn’t that good a mage, and he’d been the historian of the mage-guards, but he could sense order and chaos. Since the

Codex forbids isolated mages, except healers, before I knew it, I was in the juniors’ school in Cigoerne, and, after four years, on my way here.“

The Hamorian Codex forbid isolated mages? Magister Thorl had never mentioned that, Rahl realized. “Who did you piss off?” asked Rhiobyn. ‘Everyone, I think. The school head said that I concealed enormous arrogance behind a facade of politeness and humility.“ Talanyr finished his ale and picked up the pitcher in the center of the table, half-refilling the mug.

Rahl wondered if the school head had confused self-confidence and poise with arrogance, or if Talanyr had just been punished for being too able for someone from an out-of-the-way place. “How did you do in your studies?”

“Well enough. What about you?”

Rahl accepted that Talanyr didn’t wish to talk about himself more. “I left school early. My father tutored me, and I read a lot. I was a clerk in Swartheld when a mage-guard…” Rahl shook his head. He’d only get in trouble by misleading them. “I’m from Recluce, and I upset a magister in the north. So they sent me to Nylan, and I didn’t fit in there, either, because I couldn’t learn order-skills the way the others could. That was why they sent me to Swartheld as a clerk.”

Rhiobyn’s mouth hung open.

“You can stop gaping, Rhiobyn,” suggested Talanyr. “Hamor gets more than a few mage-guards from Recluce. Sometimes, Recluce even gets an ordermage or two from Hamor, no matter what they say.”

Rhiobyn shut his mouth, if only for a moment. “But…”

“It takes time to recover from nemysa poisoning,” Rahl replied, “and I need to learn more about the mage-guards.” After a pause, he added, “The mage-guards could always use another clerk, Taryl said.”

“That’d be the truth,” said Talanyr. “We’re more than an eightday behind on reports as it is.”

“Do you-write quickly?” asked Rhiobyn.

“Fairly quickly. I was a scrivener for a while.”

“People still copy books by hand?”

“In most places except Nylan and Hamor, I expect,” ventured Talanyr.

“But why? Printing is so much easier and less costly.”

Rahl and Talanyr exchanged a quick glance before Rahl nodded to Talanyr.

“Printing presses don’t work very well without order-magery, not the high-speed ones, because chaos breaks them down too quickly,” Talanyr began, “and Nordla and Austra don’t care that much for mages. Fairhaven has made it difficult for ordermages to remain in Candar anywhere east of the Westhorns.”

“Austra and Nordla don’t speak Hamorian,” Rahl pointed out. “That means that the books would have to be translated first if they were printed here, and books are heavy. It would cost a-lot, to ship them.”

“Who would want to do that when so few people would buy them?” continued Talanyr. “After all, Rhiobyn, how many books have you read lately?”

The slighter mage-clerk looked to Rahl. “How many have you read?”

“I was reading the World Geography and History…”

“That’s good, but it’s dated,” said Talanyr.

“There weren’t that many choices in the reading room for the checkers. I wasn’t interested in reading about steam engines and hoists.” Just how much had Talanyr read? Rahl wondered.

“Better than the reports you’ll be copying tomorrow,” predicted Rhiobyn.

On sixday morning, Rahl was seated at a long table in the rearmost room of the mage-guards’ station in Luba, a small building tucked against the base of the eastern cliff of the mesa. The filing room had one skylight and no windows. The wooden surface was grained like oak, but different, and had an orangish shade to it, brought out more by an ancient oil finish.

Thelsyn, a gray-haired ordermage with a weathered if unwrinkled face, stood at his shoulder! “Young Rahl, it’s simple enough. Each mage turns in daily reports of any incidents or occurrences. The task of clerks is to take the rough reports and turn them into final form. You make two copies, one for our files and one to be sent to headquarters in Cigoerne. Each season, the reports are bound before being dispatched. If you have any questions about a specific report, set that report aside and wait for the mage who wrote it to check in with you. They’re supposed to do that twice an eightday. Most do.” The last words were delivered sardonically.

“Yes, ser.”

Thelsyn extended two sheets. “These are samples. Follow the example with regard to margins and letter size. You do know what margins are, I assume, since you are listed as once having been a scrivener?”

“Yes, sir. Is a standard hand acceptable?”

“Standard hand?”

Rahl took out the pen and wrote out the words “standard hand.”

“That’s standard hand.” He wrote another version of the words. “This is merchant hand.”

Thelsyn looked at both examples, then laughed. “Whichever is faster and easier. They’re both better than anything anyone else can do.”

Rahl decided to use standard hand. He picked up the pen and took the top report off the pile to his right, then took a sheet of the smooth beige paper and set it before him.

“You must write well,” said Talanyr from the far end of the table. Rhiobyn was serving as the duty messenger. “Thelsyn never says that.”

“One advantage of my humble past,” Rahl replied.

“More writing and less talking.” Thelsyn stood in the doorway once more.

“Yes, ser.” Rahl wondered how he’d managed to return from where he’d gone so quickly. He had seen the mage-guard leave.

“Remember that.” Thelsyn turned. !

Rahl returned his attention to the first report, from a mage-guard named Wenyna. Her writing was hurried but clear, once he realized that the hooked curlicue was an “e,” and he was able to finish two copies of her daily report quickly.

The next one was a different matter. Rahl had to crosscheck the scribbling against the roster of all the mage-guards even to make out the scrawled name—Shaelynt. He looked at the scrawled symbols on the sheet before him, struggling to make out the words, feeling as though he were working out some kind of puzzle. The first half page took him longer than two complete copies of Wenyna’s report.

The report after that was better, if disturbing, because it , dealt with a loader who had attacked one of the servers in the loaders’ cookshack and thrown the old man into a kettle of boiling water. Why had the loader attacked the server? The servers were as much prisoners as the loaders . and breakers.

After making that set of fair copies, he cleaned the pen. Then he got up and stretched and wiggled his fingers. He was little more than a glorified scrivener—except one without order skills.

Rahl could recall all too well that he had once thought he would be more than happy to have been“ a scrivener living in Land’s End for the rest of his days. Now… if he didn’t recover his order-skills, he’d be a clerk or a checker in Luba to the end of his life, and that was not what he wanted—even if he had no clear idea of what he did want.

Just after he’d reseated himself and started on the next set of reports, Thelsyn reappeared.

“Rahl, let’s see what you’ve done.”

“These here, ser.”

Thelsyn picked up the completed copies and leafed through them. Then he nodded, turned, and departed.

After Thelsyn left the copying room, Rahl glanced to the other end.

“You must be good,” observed Talanyr. “He always complains about mine and Rhiobyn’s.”

“He’ll find something else I do to complain about.”

“Such as talking too much,” suggested Thelsyn.

This time, Rahl realized that the mage-guard had not really left the chamber, but used magery-to create that impression. “Yes, ser.”

When Thelsyn did leave, it did appear as though the mage-guard had actually walked out, but, to be safe, Rahl wrote out another set of reports and started on the next one before he said anything more.

“Does everyone just stay here in Luba all the time? The mage-guards and clerks, I mean?”

“Oh, no,” replied Talanyr. “This is lousy duty, but we’re not confined the way the prisoners are. We get either sevenday or eightday off, usually eightday, and we can take the regular transport wagon to Guasyra. It makes a run after breakfast and leaves from the square there just about the time of evening bells. Or, if you’re really adventurous, you can come back on the early-morning run.”

“What’s in Guasyra?”

“Good food… well, better food… women, if you’re not too particular; young men, if your tastes run that way…”

Rahl winced.

“I thought not. You leave a girl behind?”

Deybri was anything but a girl, and Rahl hadn’t so much left her behind as been forced to leave Nylan—and her. He’d kept having dreams about when he’d seen her the last time, and her words about the past having no hold on him. If it had no hold on him, why did he keep thinking about her?

“I wonder how much it would cost to send a letter to Nylan,” he mused aloud.

“It’s three coppers a sheet anywhere west of the Heldyn Mountains and four to the east,” replied Talanyr, “and two silvers over that to any port in the world on a Hamorian vessel. I don’t know about what it costs on other lands’ vessels.”

“More,” said Rahl dryly. Still, he was now getting paid at the rate of five Hamorian coppers an eightday. If he were careful…

As the sun shone over the eastern hills, Rahl and Talanyr sat in the third row of the long transport wagon while its iron tires rumbled over the stone road that rose gradually from the Luba Valley toward the southern pass. At Talanyr’s urging, not that it had taken much, Rahl had agreed to accompany him to Guasyra on eightday. Rahl had certainly wanted to leave Luba and the ironworks, as much to know that he could as for any other reason, and it had been so long since anyone had wanted him to accompany them anywhere. On the other hand, he had but six coppers to his name. He tried not to think about that. At the very least, he could walk around the town and learn more about Hamor.

“The town’s south of Luba, but isn’t the Swarth River to the east?” asked Rahl.

“It is, but Guasyra sits on the north side of the Rynn. It’s a small river that runs out of the mountains and into the Swarfh, but, even without the cataracts east of it, it’s not deep enough for the iron barges and the steam tugs: It’s better that way. It’s still a small town. Well… for around here. It’s still three times the size of Jabuti.”

“Is there a town where they load the iron?”

“That’s Luba. It’s just docks and loading, and it’s almost as grimy as the ironworks. It’s also ten kays farther away from the .ironworks than Guasyra is,, but it’s a flat road almost the whole way, and that’s easier on the drays that haul the steel. The Emperor Halmyt thought about building a canal east from the ironworks, but the high mages told him not to. He got so upset that he tried to have one of them killed, but whatever he had in mind didn’t work, and his heart stopped.”