The Magic Engineer (11 page)

“You certainly made an impression there.”

Dorrin ignores Kadara’s comments, and instead looks toward the rail where the horses remain tethered. “Now what should we do?”

“Check out the stable. Then we can walk over to the farm market we passed, see about supplies for going on.”

Dorrin pulls his waterproof over his shoulders and wipes the rain off his forehead. “It’s too quiet here. Nobody says anything. Or not much.”

“We’re outsiders. What do you expect?”

The high plains shake.

A ball of light flares around the single figure in white who stands in the midst of that eye-searing radiance.

Whhhheeeeee…rrrmmmmm…

Smoke circles from the hills that shudder upwards around the white wizard with the glistening white hair and the eyes like points of sun.

…rrrrmmmmm…thrummmbblle…

Still, the ground shakes.

In the distance a river shakes from its bed, and silvered waters pour southward, inundating what had been meadows. At a greater distance, buildings rock, and stone walls shiver. Some roofs collapse upon their hapless inhabitants.

The hills shudder yet higher, dwarfing even more completely the magician who has raised them, yet they do not threaten him nor the glistening strip of white stone that stretches westward.

…wehhhhheeeeeeee…cracccckkkkk…crackkkkk…

Across the Eastern Ocean, five men and women, garbed in black, look upon a mirror. Those who do not shake their heads frown. One man does both. He is tall and thin.

“He builds mountains to protect their road.”

“Yet they do not rise to crush him.”

“Is he the result of too much order in Recluce?”

“How could we have less? Already we pay a high price.” The dark-haired woman looks to the thin wizard.

“He will be the next High Wizard,” says the thin man.

“Getting to be High Wizard is easier than keeping the amulet,” observes the woman.

In the mirror, the smoke swirls around the blinding point of whiteness.

What did he expect from the people of Vergren? The words had worried Dorrin all through the afternoon and evening, through the eerie walk along nearly spotless streets that were tinged with unseen whiteness, through an evening supper of stew not much thicker than the soup of the midday, and through a near-sleepless night on the dusty planks of the Three Chimneys.

Sleeping on hard planks in a garret with Kadara and Brede is
bad enough, but listening to the two nuzzle and coo is bad enough—even though they are polite enough, or circumspect enough, not to make total love until he is asleep or after he has staggered up and out in the morning.

He scratches a flea bite under his armpit. While he can persuade the creatures to leave him while he is awake, his healing talents do not work quite so well asleep—although more accomplished magisters can erect wards that work even while they sleep.

As they ride eastward out of Vergren, the fog swirls around them, and water drips from slate roofs onto the stone. Townspeople appear—like the spirits of ancient angels—in and out of the fog, their steps silent on the stone pavement. A clinking harness echoes down the street.

“Quiet,” observes Brede, and his words sound almost hollow.

“You said that yesterday,” snaps Kadara.

“It was quiet yesterday.”

With his senses ranging through the fog and mist, Dorrin gathers nothing beyond the unseen whiteness that oozes beneath the entire town, almost like an unvoiced grief. Are all towns ruled by the White Wizards so quiet?

Or is it the spirit of Vergren that still languishes? Because Montgren helped the Founders? Or because the people instinctively embraced order?

Dorrin shakes his head. The White Wizards must have
some
order. They cannot be totally chaotic, not if Fairhaven has successfully ruled most of Candar for the centuries since Creslin fled Candar. Yet Vergren oozes despair amidst its order.

Meriwhen whinnies and steps sideways to avoid a pile of manure.

“Dorrin?”

“…uhh…what?” The healer turns toward Kadara.

“You need to watch where you’re riding. Stop thinking about machines and whatever.”

“I was watching.” But he straightens himself in the saddle, and pats Meriwhen on the neck.

After the walls of Vergren fade into the morning mist and disappear behind the hills, the loudest sounds along the stone road are those of hoofs and the voices of the three from Re
cluce. Even the sheep graze silently, like so many miniature clouds drifting across the damp hillside meadows.

Brede and Kadara converse in low voices.

“…Spidlarian blade is too thin, not enough metal to stand up to a hand and a half…”

“You wouldn’t fight it that way…use the edges to slide…”

“…still think that the shortsword is best all around…”

“…not enough length to protect you…”

Dorrin yawns. He is supposed to stay awake listening to technical talk about blades? He shifts his weight in the saddle and casts his senses out toward the endless sheep. Nothing roams the hillsides but the sheep, the shaggy dogs, and an occasional big cat.

“…shields…”

“Too cumbersome for mounted work…”

The healer yawns, wondering how long the ride will be.

Midmorning passes, and the low clouds have still not lifted. One hillside looks like another, and the sheep in each meadow could have been the same sheep that the three had passed leaving Vergren.

“How do you tell one sheep from another?” Dorrin mumbles as he reaches yet another hill crest. The narrow road drops out of the rolling hills that they have ridden up and down, up and down, ever since they left Vergren. The clay-packed thoroughfare descends before the three exiles—mostly straight—to the town ahead, where it then winds through the houses like a smooth brown river. Perhaps a handful of stores rise on the far side of the town, just short of the line of trees that may mark a true watercourse.

Dorrin peers at the stone bearing the name
Weevett
on the right-hand side of the road. “Wonder if they make wool here.”

“Probably.” Brede inclines his head toward the stone wall to his left, and to the sheep beyond. “They probably card and spin it everywhere around here.”

“Why are we doing this?” Dorrin asks.

“Because we need to get to Fairhaven. You know that.” Kadara flips the sword into the air and catches the hilt, then replaces it in the scabbard.

“Show-off. I meant why are we going to Fairhaven at all?”

“Because we have to if we ever want to get back to Recluce.”

Dorrin fingers the staff in the lanceholder. “They’ll never let us return, no matter what Lortren said. Did you ever run into anyone who has?”

“Lortren,” offers Brede.

“Besides her?” Dorrin should have guessed. Of course, Brede and Kadara believe they will be allowed to return. They are blades, like the white-haired magistra. And perhaps they will be allowed to return—after demonstrating their repentance or whatever total acceptance of the Brotherhood’s goals that may be required.

For him, it is already clear, the price is at the very least his rejection of his dreams of order machines and his acceptance of an irrational concept of true order.

“Felthar,” adds Kadara.

“Another blade.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

Dorrin shifts his weight in the saddle trying to stretch his legs. Meriwhen whinnies.

“What Dorrin is saying, Kadara, is that very few healers return.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know,” Dorrin says heavily. “But it’s true.”

Since there is little to say beyond that, the three ride silently eastward and downhill into Weevett, past yet more sheep grazing on the rolling hillside.

In the spring light, the road throws white glare up into the faces of the three riders. Dorrin rides with his eyes squeezed almost shut, relying more upon senses thrown to the faint breeze that smells of new-turned earth than the blurry images that dance before his eyes. His senses twist when he directs them toward the city down in the valley, and he begins to alternate between sense and vision, squirming in the saddle.

“What’s the matter?”

“The glare.”

“What glare? It’s a bit bright, but not that bad.” Kadara looks toward the midmorning sun, then back toward Dorrin.

Dorrin still squints.

In the gentle valley ahead, white structures not quite randomly placed are interspersed with white roads, green grass, and evergreens barely taller than the roofs they shade.

“Not any tall buildings.” Brede glances from the whiteness of the road and from the low city ahead to his right, to the west. “You’d think the wizards would have a tall building or two.”

“There might be one near the center of Fairhaven,” offers Dorrin, “but there won’t be many. Tall structures and chaos don’t really go together.”

“Why not?” Kadara also looks to the side of the road.

“Because,” explains Dorrin, “chaos has the tendency to weaken any material, and the higher you build something the more support it needs. That’s why we ought to build machines.”

“Huhhh…you still worried about machines?” Brede shakes his head.

“He’s always thinking about machines,” Kadara adds softly.

“I mean it,” Dorrin insists. “Order can hold machines together, even against chaos, if they’re built of good black iron. But chaos couldn’t possibly use such machines.”

“That’s all right in theory, but if the machines are so good, why does the Brotherhood oppose them and why are you here?” Brede squints toward the city and the horse and wagon that appear to be moving out from Fairhaven and toward them. “Someone’s headed this way.”

“Because they’re afraid of them, and they don’t understand them. Machines can only do what they’re built to do—”

“Dorrin…we’ve heard it before,” interrupts Kadara, “and we’re not the ones you have to convince.”

Dorrin closes his eyes. Rather than form a reply, he gropes with his senses to find the wagon. “The wagon’s empty, and there’s just a driver. He feels like an old man.”

Creeeeaaakkk…
As if to punctuate Dorrin’s observation, the sound of ill-lubricated wheels squeaks toward them.

First, against the morning brightness appears a wavering
black silhouette. The silhouette creaks into the brown-boarded shape of a farm wagon pulled by a single large, if swaybacked, gray horse.

“Geee…ahhhh…” The driver’s flat, emotionless voice carries from the bench seat. The wagon trundles down the left side of the stone-paved road, squealing past Dorrin so closely that he could reach out and touch the driver’s whip. He does not. Instead, his lips purse, and he swallows.

The driver looks no older than he or Brede, but feels ancient to those senses which can—sometimes—show reality more clearly than mere eyesight.

Dorrin chucks the reins to catch up to Brede and Kadara, for he has fallen behind as the wagon has passed. Before he reaches them, a messenger, dressed in white, with a red slash across his tunic, gallops past. Two more wagons pass in the other direction.

In time, the three near a pair of low and empty towers, built of whitened stone, resembling gates.

Dorrin studies the gates, then glances at the pale green leaves of the spreading trees and the trimmed bushes beyond them, then back at the whitened granite of the gatehouse and the pavement and curbs. His forehead throbs, warning him that he must try to figure out why he feels so assaulted by what is the White City, the center of all that is Candar and will be Candar for generations, if not millennia, to come.

Creaaakkk
. Another wagon passes, heading westward out of the wide divided boulevard that the east-west highway has become as it enters the White City. White indeed is the city, a white more blinding than the noonday sands on the eastern beaches of Recluce. White and clean, with off-gray granite paving stones that sparkle white in the sun, and merely shine in the shade.

After following Brede and Kadara past the old and empty towers, Dorrin looks across the valley, amazed at the confluence of white and green. Green leaves cloak trees that should be taller, in some fashion. The leaves flutter in the light breeze, interposing themselves between the lines of white stone walls and boulevards that intertwine. Yet for all the grace and curved lines, the great avenues—the east-west highway and the north
south road—seem to quarter the city like two white stone swords.

They pass an invisible line inside which almost all the buildings appear white. A central strip of grass and bushes, curbed in limestone, separates two roads of the boulevard. Although it is spring, even warmer than in Tyrhavven and Vergren, he sees no flowers, no colors except the greens of shrubs and grass and the whites of the curbstones and pavement. All of the horses and carts headed into the city are using the right-hand road, while those leaving use the left road. All those on foot use the outside edge of the roads. Toward the center of the shallow valley the whiteness becomes more pronounced and the greenery less. A single stone tower rises from the center of the city.

Dorrin takes a deep breath, then casts his senses to the winds—and reels in his tracks, barely withdrawing into himself at the swirling patterns of whitish-red that seem to fill the entire valley, that seem to twist and tear at his whole being. He wipes his suddenly dripping forehead with his sleeve. White wizardry seems to permeate everything, for all the artful stonework laid by skillful masons, and the greenery of the trees and grasses.

Dorrin barely catches Kadara’s words to Brede.

“Just what are we going to do here? And how can we afford to keep traveling? Everywhere we stay it costs more coins. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have all that much left—not if we’ve got to spend a year in this forsaken country.” Kadara eases her mare up beside Brede.

Dorrin wipes his forehead again, then reaches for his water bottle. He takes a deep pull, almost draining it.

“It’s simple enough,” offers Brede. “We take jobs with a trader, or something.”

“With what they pay? And the way they look at women blades?”

“Do you have a better idea? You’re the one who just pointed out that we need coins.”

“There must be something better.”

“I can’t sleep here tonight.” Dorrin cuts the discussion short.

“Why not? You can’t do this, and you can’t do that, and all you want to do is go off someplace and build stupid machines.” Kadara’s voice sharpens.

“There’s too much chaos.” Dorrin shivers, feeling again the tentacles of whiteness that seem to creep from the road, from the buildings, like the stinging spines of jellyfish hidden just beneath an ocean’s surface.

“It’s a perfectly pleasant and clean-looking city, Dorrin.” Kadara gestures at the well-kept grass in the median strip between the two roads. “There’s no reason not to enjoy it for a while.”

“Fine. You stay here. I can’t. I’ll meet you somewhere.”

“Dorrin, that’s the stupidest…”

“Kadara.” Brede rides closer to the healer. “Can you tell us why you can’t sleep here? Besides the chaos?”

“It’s everywhere, like invisible jellyfish with pointed spines. It just hurts for me to ride, and it’s hard to look at anything without my eyes watering and stinging. Already, sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.”

Dorrin looks down at the pavement, then up at the low oaks that barely clear the house tops, their trunks somehow paler than those of the trees in the hills of Montgren. “Even the trees aren’t quite right.”

“Do you need to leave now, or can we talk to some traders first?”

“I
think
I’m getting the hang of it…but I don’t think I could rest anywhere around here.”

“Wonderful…not only does he dream up impossible machines, but he sees impossible jellyfish and strange trees.”

Both Brede and Dorrin glare at Kadara.

“I happen to trust his feelings, Kadara, and if you want to sleep in Fairhaven by yourself, I’ll be more than happy to ride with Dorrin.”

Kadara looks down at the mare’s neck. “I’m sorry. It’s just…a little hard to believe.”

Dorrin grins in spite of the stinging in his eyes. “If it didn’t hurt so much, I wouldn’t believe me either.”

“Is that just chaos?” asks Brede.

“Just?” Dorrin’s tone is wry.

Brede laughs. “Point to you, Dorrin.”

“You two. Men…” mutters Kadara.

“We still need to find some traders,” Brede says. “Do you think they’ll be around the central square?”

“How would I know?”

“Well…we’ll check the square first.”

Dorrin nods. The square seems as good a place as any to begin, and it’s easier to follow Brede through the hidden swirls of chaos. Another farm wagon creaks past, heading back in the direction of Montgren.

“Why don’t you just ask someone? You men seem to think it’s a disgrace to ask for directions. It’s a lot easier to ask than to ride forever.”

Brede blushes. “Fine. You ask.”

“I’d be happy to.” Kadara eases the mare in front of Brede’s gelding and toward two men unloading a wagon before an unmarked building. “Sers…could you tell me where I might find the traders’ area?”

A potbellied man with a shock of wispy white hair that stands on end in the breeze drops a sack of flour onto a hand cart, then looks up. “Free traders or the licensed ones?”

“The ones in the city.”

“That’d be the licensed ones. Most of ’em got places around the traders’ square.”

“I’m new here. Is that near the main square ahead?”

“That’s the wizards’ square.”

The second wagoner spits into the gutter, then lifts another sack, avoiding any eye contact with the three riders.

“Where is the traders’ square?”

“Take the avenue here a ways past the White Tower until it forks. The right fork leads there.” He shakes his head and hefts another sack, letting it rest almost upon his protruding gut.

“Thank you.”

Neither wagoner acknowledges her appreciation.

As the three ride toward the wizards’ square, they pass a squad of white-coated troopers, all of whom turn cold eyes upon them. Even though chaos twines around each of the white riders, Dorrin forces himself to meet the cold eyes of the leader, trying to look as open and curious as the rawest traveler. None of the White guards speaks, nor do the three from Recluce, and the loudest sound is that of hoofs.

As they near the White Wizards’ square, Dorrin senses the increasing chaos—that and the lack of trees. Now only grass and low bushes comprise the greenery.

Squeakkk…

The healer looks down a narrow alley at the cart, which is wheeled by a man wearing little more than rags who is chained to the cart he pulls. Behind the cart are a woman wreathed in the unseen white of chaos and dressed completely in white and another raggedly dressed man. Behind them are two armed White guards on foot.

The White Wizard gestures at a pile of rubbish, and a line of fire runs from her fingers to the heap on the stones.

Whhhsttt
. White ashes drift lazily down.

The second man quickly bends and sweeps the ashes into a pan which he empties into the small cart.

Squeaakkk…
The cart rolls on.

Dorrin swallows. No wonder the streets of Fairhaven are clean. But the cleaning method also explains his dislike for the city. Years of that casual chaos-clean-up have certainly cloaked Fairhaven with white dust that bears the imprint of chaos.

“That seems like a waste of magic.” Brede’s voice is low.

“Probably a punishment for the wizard as well. Of course, it was a woman.” Kadara glances back at the alley, although the cart is no longer visible.

“Can we ride around the square?” Dorrin asks plaintively, wincing from the forces that swirl in the white buildings ahead.

“I’d like to see it.”

“I’ll meet you on the far side.”

“Will you be all right?” asks Brede.

“Better than if I ride through that…stuff.” Dorrin glances at the single four-story tower rising above the square, then shivers, swaying in the saddle, at the force of the energies that surround the White Tower. He forces a smile as he senses the lines of black that contain the tower’s white granite blocks. Even the chaos-masters must use some order!

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“If I stay away from the worst of it, I can handle it for a while.” Dorrin pats Meriwhen’s neck. “I think,” is whispered to himself as Brede edges the brown gelding toward Kadara.

Dorrin turns right at the next cross street and angles down a narrower way. Although he feels Brede’s eyes on his back, he does not look back, concentrating instead on avoiding the few pedestrians who hug the edges of the thoroughfare. None look
up at him as they walk quickly along the white-granite streets, their feet lifting puffs of the fine white dust that rises, then sifts back into the narrow joints between the stones.

At the end of the first block, he turns Meriwhen to the left, along a street paralleling the main avenue. After less than a hundred cubits he reins up while a vendor maneuvers a food cart into a small narrow oblong of greenery in a wider part of the street.

Perhaps five men in shapeless gray tunics wait for the vendor to set up his grills and set forth a few already-cooked pastries. Once more, no one looks up at the healer, acting almost as if he did not exist. By the time he rejoins the avenue, Brede and Kadara are waiting for him.

“Took you a while.”

“You went the more direct route. See anything interesting?”

“There really weren’t many people in the square,” Brede says slowly. “Would that be because they’re afraid of the wizards?”

“Why? The wizards keep the city clean and free from most crime.” Kadara nudges the mare into a walk. “Let’s go.”

“That much focus on chaos probably makes people uneasy,” speculates the healer, easing Meriwhen into line behind Kadara.

More than a score of people throng the traders’ square, and wagons creak in and out of the buildings that flank it.