Wellspring of Chaos (18 page)

They walked along the narrow path. Kharl let her lead the way, afraid that he might set too fast a pace for her.

“We’re moving away from him,” Jeka said after they had walked another twenty rods toward the spot where Angle Road met the ring road. “Think so, anyway.”

“He’s probably stopped south of us, then.” Kharl could feel the dampness in the air, and the wind began to gust around them.

“Wind feels good,” Jeka said. “Long’s it doesn’t rain.”

A ways farther along, perhaps a quarter kay, Kharl found a break in the hedgerow and squeezed through, watching the road carefully as he did. From beside the hedgerow, he could see Angle Road just ahead, and the old stone bridge where the road crossed Souangle Creek. Two wagons had passed the crossroads, heading out away from Brysta, in the direction of Sagana and Alturan. The road looked clear, and he didn’t see any other easy way to cross the creek, except by the Angle Road bridge.

He turned and beckoned. “We need to hurry.”

“Wizard’s getting closer.” Jeka shivered.

Kharl looked to the south on the ring road. He thought he saw mounted figures. He grabbed Jeka’s arm and stepped up his pace, quickly crossing the ring road and hurrying along the right side of Angle Road, even though every step hurt his already sore feet. He could imagine that every step felt worse to Jeka.

By the time they reached the bridge over the creek, Kharl was almost dragging Jeka, and except for a wedge of blue-green to the east, the sky was filled with gray clouds that seemed to darken more with each moment.

He glanced ahead. There was almost a half a kay to go before they reached the low stone wall that encircled Vetrad’s mill and lumber barns. “We’ll cross and wait under the bridge.”

“Good… need to rest,” Jeka gasped.

Kharl had to half carry her down the weed-tangled slope and under bridge. They huddled together on a pile of stones amid the mud and gathered against the stone buttress on the north side, the only really solid footing. There they waited.

A gust of wind whipped under the span of the bridge, so strong that Kharl had to gather the tattered beggar’s cloak around him to keep it from being blown off him—or so he felt. Then the wind died away. He looked upstream, in the direction of the millrace, but he could not see it. He could see that no rain was yet falling. In the comparative silence after another gust of wind from the oncoming storms, Kharl heard voices.

“… doesn’t know which way she went from the crossroads…”

“… doesn’t know? He always knows…”

“You want to tell him?”

The riders did not stop and look under the bridge, as Kharl would have done. He wondered why. Did they not think of it? Or did they want to cover as much ground as they could before the storm struck?

Kharl and Jeka continued to wait, amid more gusts of wind, and a pattering of rain that came, then went. In time, the pair of riders returned, the hoofs of their mounts echoing on the paving stones of the span above.

“… didn’t go this way… miller was out, and he would have seen them…”

“… tomorrow… maybe…”

So Vetrad was out? Kharl took a deep breath. That meant they’d have to take the way along the creek.

He waited for a time, then crawled up the steep slope and, crouching beside the stone restraining wall of the bridge, studied Angle Road. It was empty. “Come on,” he called down to Jeka.

He waited until she reached him.

“We’ll cross the road. Looks like a path along the creek there on the other side. Just about a half kay…”

“You said that a kay ago…” Jeka attempted a smile.

“Suppose I did.”

The path was overgrown and narrow, but it was also mostly shaded by weedy trees, interspersed with an occasional oak and, surprisingly, at one spot, an ancient black lorken. Another pattering of rain on the leaves overhead came and went, and a series of deeper thunderclaps rumbled overhead.

Finally, Kharl could see the stones of the lower spillway of Vetrad’s millrace. “We’re almost here. Through the berry bushes, and across the narrow meadow to the tall barn.”

“I… hope… so…” panted Jeka.

They stopped at the edge of the berry bushes, stripped of every last berry. The meadow looked empty. An even deeper thunder roll rumbled over them, and the rain began to fall. The first raindrops were fat—and far apart. They hit the ground or the meadow grass slowly, then splattered.

Kharl had not taken four steps when Jeka’s legs gave way, and she sprawled out full length on tannish meadow grass. He turned, then scooped her up. He was amazed at how light she was, even as tired as he felt.

“Can’t carry me…”

“It’s not far.”

From his times of scouting out Vetrad’s stocks, Kharl knew that all the barn doors would be locked, but that the rear door facing the small orchard at the edge of the meadow was low enough, with a gap above it, that they could scramble through. Vetrad wasn’t worried about people. He just didn’t want them taking his timbers and billets, and the doors and locks were more than enough for that. Even so, by the time they huddled under the overhang by the small door, the rumble of thunder was all around them. A bolt of lightning struck somewhere on the ridge to the east of the millpond, so close and so loud that Kharl’s ears rang.

“You just wait here,” he told Jeka.

“Where are you going?”

“Saw some pearapples on the trees. Looked near ripe, and no one’s going to be looking now. Won’t be long.” Kharl hurried back into the storm.

There was more wind than rain, although his ragged cloak was still damp when he returned with almost a half score of pearapples.

“Door’s locked,” Jeka said dully.

“Look up.” Kharl picked Jeka up and lifted her so that she could scramble through the opening above the doorframe. Then he tucked the fruits into his trousers as best he could and jumped, catching the edge and slowly levering himself up. Going down was easier.

Jeka stood waiting in the dimness.

“This way,” he said, leading her along the wide space between the stacks of rough timbers, until they reached the ladder to the oak lofts.

“Up there.”

Once he reached the top of the ladder, Kharl led them along the catwalk to the left and to the space just under the eaves behind the last row of red oak billets. Kharl hadn’t remembered it as that large, but compared to where they had been sleeping, it was spacious, a good five cubits by five, although it was only three in height. “No one comes here. Too dry to cure the oak properly. Dries too fast, uneven.”

Jeka sank onto one of the planks, covered in shavings, sitting there.

“They should clean out the billet shavings, but they never have. It’s not as hard as it looks.” Kharl extended a pearapple. “Eat. There’s a place where we can get water, if the rain keeps up.”

“Don’t feel the wizard at all,” Jeka said after several bites of the fruit.

“Not at all?” questioned the cooper as he finished his own pearapple, far better than the poor apples that had begun the day.

“Nah…” She cocked her head to the side, gaminelike. “Not since it really started raining.”

Kharl frowned. Rain? Could rain do that? Running water was supposed to slow wizards. He wasn’t sure that it did, but what was rain but water running down from the skies?

“Feels good.” Jeka yawned. “Can we go back tomorrow?”

“We’ll see.” Kharl found himself yawning.

Later, as the rain streamed down, coming off the roof of the lumber barn in thin sheets, for the first time in days, Kharl fell asleep immediately.

The journey back into Brysta proper was far easier than their flight— except that Jeka had been right about the effect of so much fruit on Kharl, and that had slowed their travel. By late afternoon, they had reached the upper cross streets of Brysta. Kharl insisted on observing his cooperage from a distance. While there was no guard, and the proclamation had been taken down, it was boarded shut.

Somewhat later, they had reached the White Pony, where Jeka used some of Kharl’s coppers to buy them some fowl and bread. After eating, and visiting the fountain, they had made their way back to Jeka’s place. Along the way, Kharl had checked the harbor, but none of the vessels he knew had ported. There had also been no trace or sign of the white wizard, and that bothered Kharl almost as much as if the wizard and his men had been chasing Jeka.

Still… she could use the respite, and Kharl had no doubts that sooner or later the wizard would show up once more, although he had to admit to himself that he didn’t understand why he felt that way.

While Jeka dozed in her hidey-hole, in the space between the walls, under the inadequate roof, in the last light of day, Kharl leafed through the blackstaffer’s book, trying to find something that would give him some insight into what had happened with the wizard.

… the greater the effort to concentrate order within material objects, the greater the amount of free chaos within the world…

What in light was free chaos? He turned another few pages.

… all that is, everything that exists, is little more than the twisting of chaos in a shell of order, and the greater the complexity of those twistings, the more solid the object appears. A thumb of lead or gold may appear more solid than a feather or a flower, and may indeed overbalance the scales, yet there is no difference in the fashion in which they are constructed…

He kept turning the pages, reading a phrase here, a sentence there.

… the form of everything under the sun is determined by the amount of order and chaos and the way in which they are combined and intertwined…

After more than a glass of turning pages, he had found all too many incomprehensible phrases. He turned yet another page, stopping and rereading it.

Water is of both chaos and order, yet it is order, and represents order, for its structure overweighs its parts…

Kharl rubbed his forehead. How could water have parts? Water was. You could boil it or freeze it, and it changed to steam or ice, but it was still water. He took a deep breath and kept reading.

Because water is both order and of order, yet comprised of parts that are totally chaotic, it challenges chaos with the depth of its order. Truly a river people or a sea people must hold to order or they will be lost. Chaos fares best upon the dry land, and least in a steady rain or snowfall…

Rain or snow affected chaos? A faint smile crossed Kharl’s lips.

Even a fog will affect a chaos-wielder, but only those who are of the weaker sort. A steady rain is a patterned fall of ordered chaos. A raindrop is ordered, and the fall of each is unpatterned, chaotic, yet all raindrops falling together results in a pattern ordered by chaos, and that order can weaken or destroy many of the links of power created by those who wield chaos, as the fires of sun itself can weaken those who wield order, if they do not understand that the sun is a furnace of chaos…

The cooper blinked. What did the sun have to do with order and chaos? Like water, it was. It gave warmth and light, and how could those be of chaos? And the sun weakened order? The book implied that a chaos-wielder could affect the sun. How could that be? A wizard could no more affect the sun than… Kharl couldn’t think of a comparison.

After a time, the cooper closed the book and nodded to himself. He did have one answer, but more questions than ever.

On sixday, Kharl was awake with the sun, bright and clear as on the day before, and cool, but without frost. He could see clouds forming out to the west over the open ocean, and there was a brisk wind off the water, promising rain sometime in the afternoon. He thought about reading more from The Basis of Order. He’d had to stop the day before when his mind had finally quit grasping the words, as if there had just been too many new ideas banging around inside his skull—ideas he couldn’t yet connect to each other. There was so much he didn’t know.

What could he do about the wizard? Should he even try? How could he not, when Jeka had been the only one to offer him help and a place to hide? He glanced at his pack, debating whether to take out the book and start once more.

With a sound between a grunt and a groan, Jeka rolled out of her hidey-hole and looked at Kharl. “Need to get us something to eat.”

“You don’t feel the wizard?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ll go to the lower market.”

“I can go.”

Jeka shook her head. “No one’d sell cheap or fair to you. No one looks at me. Some folk still watch you. They might tell Egen. You never know.”

She was probably right about that, Kharl thought. “But… if you see or feel the wizard, you stop and come back here. Quick as you can.”

“I can do that. Got some coppers?” The gaminelike urchin grinned.

“Just a few.” Kharl grinned back as he handed her three.

He watched her scramble over the wall, gracefully, wondering if he should have insisted on going himself, but he wanted to try to read more in the book, because he still didn’t know what he could or should do about the white wizard.

After a moment, Kharl took The Basis of Order out from his pack and opened it once more, hoping that the words would make more sense. The first words he read seemed so obvious that he wondered why they were there.

… there is more that lies beneath the surface of anything, whether it be the ocean or the mountains… Do not assume that what lies beneath is the same as what lies above, nor that it is different…

The next words were far from obvious, and meant nothing to him, nothing at all.

In substance, there is no difference between chaos and order, for neither has substance in and of itself…

Nor did many of the pages that followed help much, either. His head began to ache, but he kept reading, doggedly.

Sometime in early afternoon, Jeka climbed back over the wall and dropped down before Kharl. Her face was contorted.

“Hurts… he’s after me…”

“Who? The wizard?”

Jeka nodded. Then she pulled out half a loaf of bread and a small wedge of hard cheese. “I got you this.”

“Have you eaten?” Kharl took the bread and cheese.

“Yes.”

“As much as this?”

“About the same.”

The words rang true, and Kharl began to eat. The headache he had not thought had come from reading began to subside, if slowly. When he had finished, he made his way along the walls and past the crude latrine to retrieve the black staff.

Jeka looked at him as he brought it back. “You want me to touch it?” She shivered.

“It might help.”

Jeka edged forward, then grabbed the staff, suddenly, before Kharl could reach out. Without even a cry or a murmur, her eyes closed; her knees buckled, and she dropped in a heap.

Alarmed, Kharl bent forward, but he could see that she was breathing. He half dragged, half carried her into her sleeping space. When he was certain she was still breathing, and seemed to be sleeping, he eased back away and sat down against the wall.

The staff had some power. That was certain. It could break whatever spell the white wizard laid on Jeka, but the effect didn’t last.

Kharl tried to read more of The Basis of Order, but the words flowed by him without making much sense. Then he stood and stretched, and tried to figure out how he could deal with the wizard—or if he should even try. Then he just sat against the wall.

A good glass passed before Jeka moaned.

Kharl lifted the canvas and peered into the hidey-hole. ”You all right?“

“No… my head still hurts.”

He waited for a time, and finally Jeka eased out into the indirect light of a cloudy afternoon, although the only place where rain looked to be falling was offshore.

“Wizard… he’s… bastard like Egen,” she muttered.

Kharl agreed silently. “Do you feel any better?”

“The cord thing is gone. My head hurts.”

Kharl looked at her. “Do you know someone who could tell you where the wizard lives?” Jeka dropped her eyes. Kharl waited, but she did not reply. “You already know? Because that’s where you stole the silver from him?“

“He was kicking a peddler woman… pushing her… she said he hadn’t paid… He was awful mad… served him right.“

“But stealing from a wizard?”

“Told you… didn’t know he was a wizard then. Just thought he was a dandy. Never miss a silver. He was stealin‘ from her… didn’t think it was so bad to steal from him…”

“I need to know where he lives.”

“Not all that far from the White Pony, ‘cept it’s up the hill and north.“

Kharl glanced to the west. The afternoon rain that was so common in mid- and late fall looked to be moving inshore. He hoped that the coming storm would help conceal Jeka from the wizard. “You’ll have to take me there.“

Jeka looked down. “I’m tired again… don’t know why.”

Kharl gestured in the direction of the wall and the serviceway beyond. “Let’s go. You climb over first.”

Jeka dragged herself to the wall and over it, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. She just stood and watched as Kharl climbed, then descended into the shadowed serviceway.

“You bringing that staff?”

“It might help.”

“Long as no one looks too close,” she replied.

Kharl stayed almost abreast of Jeka as she wound her way through alleys, serviceways, and, occasionally, streets, but they did not stay on the streets long, and only on those streets that seemed crowded. The general direction was eastward. They did stop by a fountain, one that Kharl had not visited before, and drank. The water helped Kharl some, but Jeka looked pale and drawn, more so than earlier.

As they paused in an alley entrance, Kharl glanced at the cross street. Jeka was turning onto one of the older streets in upper Brysta, where large houses had been set within twenty cubits of the street itself with ancient brick sidewalks, The yellow bricks were worn and, in some places, had been replaced with more reddish bricks. In other spots, there were just muddy gaps. The dwellings remained imposing two- and three-story edifices, but Kharl could sense the feeling of time and wear.

“Not far…” she said in a low voice. “Past the next street, on the right side.”

The next block had slightly larger dwellings, but they seemed less well kept—and older—and several had iron fences, and a few had iron-banded doors and shutters.

Jeka suddenly stiffened, then sprinted away from Kharl, moving faster than he’d ever seen her move. She dashed down the street, then turned in at a high wooden gate in the middle of a short stone wall. The gate opened as she neared. A guard in burgundy stepped outside and closed the gate, stationing himself directly in front of the closed gate.

Stunned into momentary stiffness and silence, Kharl drew back into the shaded part of the alley. Trying to grasp what had happened, he stood close to the brick wall that enclosed either a courtyard or a garden. Where he was would have been in the shadow cast by the wall and the dwelling to the left of where he stood, except that the western sky was now completely cloud-covered. After a moment, Kharl shook his head, trying to clear his mind. Then, he bent forward and peered around the corner.

The guard did not even look in Kharl’s direction.

The cooper straightened. Now what? What could he do?

He had to do something. For eightday after eightday, he’d just tried to survive, and one of the few who had helped was Jeka. Knowing what he knew about the wizard, he just couldn’t walk away. And he couldn’t wait. Not with what had happened to the other girls.

Taking a firmer grip on the staff, he edged out of the alley and began to hobble down the irregular stone walk flanking the narrow street. The wind had picked up, out of the west, and the clouds had thickened, but no rain was falling.

As he made his way in the direction of the guard, Kharl was glad he had brought the staff.

The guard watched, bored, but cautious, as Kharl hobbled toward him.

Kharl halted, a good four cubits back from the man. “A copper, ser… a copper for a poor man… just a copper.” He leaned on the staff and took a step sideways, a step that brought him nearer to the brawny guard.

“Be on your way, fellow.” The guard turned, catlike.

“A copper…? Surely, you can spare a copper?” Kharl asked, as he took a step forward and paused. He could sense some of the white fog around the guard.

“Out of here!” The guard reached for his blade.

Kharl brought the staff up from below, a lesson he’d learned years before, and never forgotten.

The blade went flying. The guard gaped, but only for an instant before the iron-banded end of the staff slammed into his gut. As the man doubled over, Kharl used his two-handed grip to bring the other end into the man’s temple. The unseen whiteness around the guard vanished.

A rasping sound followed the collapse of the first guard. Then the gate burst open, and a second guard came charging out, his blade out, glistening in the flat light. Kharl brought the staff into his ready position, noting that the guard’s blade was more of a bronzed white than the silver gray he’d expected and seen on occasion when bravos had flashed theirs on the streets of Brysta.

As he struck with the longer staff, Kharl also wondered how the wizard’s guards could carry blades, since the wizard wasn’t a lord or a merchant. He supposed Lord West would either make an exception for a wizard or just look the other way.

The second guard parried Kharl’s first thrust, but had to back up from the force of the blow, dealt by a staff that felt more solid than mere wood. There was little enough space between the open gate and the wall, and Kharl slammed the staff into the guard’s knee. The man staggered, but tried to bring his blade around.

The move was too late, and Kharl hit hard enough that he could feel something snap in the man’s shoulder area. He didn’t wait, but struck again… and again.

Then he stood there, dumbly, for a moment, trying to catch his breath, as he looked at the two immobile forms on the stones.

After another series of gasping breaths, he lurched through the open gate and up the three steps onto a small porch just large enough to shelter three or four people from the rain while waiting for entry. He turned the antique brass lever handle, and the door opened.

Kharl was only halfway through the doorway when he heard hurried steps and saw a tall figure stop at the back of the wide, deep and dim foyer. The ragged cooper could sense the cloud of that same unseen whiteness, and threw the staff up in front of him, even before the wizard flung a burst of whitish red fire at him.

The fire cascaded away from the staff—mostly. Some flame flared against Kharl’s left leg, but he kept the staff up as he took two steps forward, ignoring the searing pain.

Another firebolt flashed toward Kharl, running up his left arm, hotter than the coals of the forge, hot enough to bring up patches of flame on the ragged cloak.

Charging forward through the pain and the heat, and the smell of burned hair, Kharl thrust the ironbound staff right into the wizard’s midsection. For an instant, flame flew in all directions, but not at Kharl. The wizard’s mouth dropped open.

Before the wizard could recover, Kharl reversed the staff and tried to bring the other end against the other’s jaw and neck. While the blow was not terribly strong, it was enough to jar the wizard and allow Kharl to advance with another blow.

In moments, the wizard collapsed.

Kharl drove one end of the staff straight down into the center of his chest. Ribs and bones cracked, and the wizard went limp, lifeless.

Kharl stood there, stupidly, looking at the figure on the floor. The dark hair turned white. The smooth skin wrinkled, then turned whitish yellow, tightening around the skull. The hair became more wispy, then vanished, as a skull replaced the face that had been there moments before. Before Kharl could even swallow more than once, all that remained of the wizard were his garments and a pile of whitish dust that, in turn, began to vanish.

Kharl stepped past the clothes and to the first door on the left, polished oak that had aged into a deep gold, with dark grain lines. He opened the door gingerly. The chamber beyond, some sort of sitting room, was empty. Kharl closed the door and stepped past the archway to the dining area, also empty.

He hurried through the entire first level, but it was uninhabited, and he struggled up the stairs all too conscious of the growing pain in his arm and leg. Outside, thunder rumbled, and he could hear the patter of raindrops. He just wished that it had started to rain earlier.

In the first small bedchamber at the top of the wide and ancient oak stairs, Jeka lay on the bed, her eyes wide. One wrist was tied to the bedpost on the left side, and a coil of rope lay on a coverlet that was a dull green and so old that Kharl could not make out the pattern on the fabric. He moved around the bed, toward the side where Jeka’s hand was tied. Her eyes did not follow him, nor did she offer any sound or movement, still staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

He fumbled with the rope, trying to hurry, but finding the knot difficult with only one hand. Jeka did not move when he untied the one bound wrist.

Kharl doubted that he could carry Jeka and the staff, and he feared that if he touched her with it, she would collapse again. “Stand up,” he ordered her quietly. Jeka stood. “Follow me.”

He hobbled down the stairs. Jeka followed, woodenly. Kharl didn’t even try to find a rear door. He just wanted them out of the dwelling as quickly as possible.