Wellspring of Chaos (21 page)

What could he say back? After a moment, he replied with the only thing that came to mind, “And with you.”

The two both nodded and continued onward, past Kharl and up the hill.

Kharl wondered why the woman had gone out of her way to offer the strange greeting, and what she had said to her companion.

Rather than going straight back to the Seastag, Kharl looked for somewhere to eat. He still had silvers left, and a handful of coppers, and after the ship’s food, he wanted a good meal, perhaps the first one in a season.

The first inn—the Copper Kettle—he approached, while looking neat enough, and smelling clean enough, did not appeal to him, for reasons he could not have explained. He walked westward along a slightly narrower street, although one still broad by the standards of Brysta, and stopped abruptly at a smaller place, more like a tavern really. He went inside. The public room was not large, holding fewer than ten tables, with only two occupied, but that wasn’t exactly unexpected in late afternoon.

A tall woman, broad, but not fat, wearing a dark green shirt and trousers with a spotless white apron, smiled at him. “Any table that’s free.”

Kharl moved toward a table in a corner, one that was bright from the late-afternoon light slanting through the unshuttered windows, but not painfully so. He leaned the staff into the corner, trying to keep it out of the way, and settled into the armless chair that allowed him to survey the room. In one way, there was nothing at all remarkable—nine round tables and chairs, wooden floors, white-plastered walls, bronze lamps in brackets on the walls. In another, it was all astounding. The tables were well crafted of red oak, covered in a hard finish, and they were clean. The same was true of the chairs. The floors were of wide golden oak planks, also finished with a smooth sort of varnish, Kharl judged, and without a speck of dirt or dust on them. The windows had glass, and the glass had been kept spotless. He’d never seen what might have been called a common eatery so clean.

“Do you know what you want?” asked the white-haired woman who had greeted him. Her eyes flickered to the staff, then back to Kharl.

“I don’t even know what you have,” he admitted.

“Not everything we usually do. Let’s see. White fish or red fish, battered and fried. Always have a fish chowder. Also, we’ve got a quarter fowl, and chops. Chops might be a bit tough. All comes with mashed potatoes and fried pearapples, except the chowder, of course. Just bread. Fish is two coppers, fowl and chops three. Ale or wine is two, redberry one.

“What’s the best?”

“Today… the white fish.”

“I’ll try it, with an ale.” Kharl fumbled in his belt wallet.

“Pay when I bring the ale.” She smiled and slipped away.

Kharl just watched her go, admiring her grace, even though he knew she was years older than he was.

She returned with the ale almost immediately, and Kharl placed the silver on the table. “Need some change.”

“Where are you headed?” she asked as she deftly swept up the silver, then looked strangely at the Brystan coin, then at Kharl, before shrugging. “Silver’s silver.”

“It is,” Kharl agreed. “Some things don’t change. Lydiar, I think.”

“Better there than Hamor.” She smiled politely. “Do you know when you leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You’ll have good weather.” With another smile she was gone.

Kharl sipped the ale, far better than any he could recall. Then, that might have been because it had been so long since he’d had good ale. As he took a second swallow, he thought over the servingwoman’s questions. There was some sort of honest misunderstanding, he knew, and it centered on the staff. Did she think he was a blackstaffer, being sent out?

Jenevra had been young, but the woman hadn’t seemed surprised at all. Did that mean that the Brethren or whoever ruled Recluce could send people out as blackstaffers at any age? He frowned. He should have asked more questions of Trelyn, but he just hadn’t thought of them. He’d always been like that, not fully understanding things until much later, if then. That didn’t seem to have changed. He took another sip of the ale, enjoying it.

When the server returned with his meal, set on a new-looking crockery platter, accompanied by a small basket of bread as well, she slipped six coppers onto the table.

“Thank you.” Kharl left two coppers on the table. He hadn’t even thought about coinage. He’d just discovered that silvers converted one for one, but coppers? Who knew? He supposed Tarkyn or the captain did, but he thought he ought to find out, before he ordered anything in Lydiar or anyplace else. He wasn’t so sure the Lydians would be as accommodating as people in Recluce.

As the woman had promised, the fish was good—light and flaky under the crisp golden batter, and the potatoes were rich and filling, the pearapples a pleasing combination of tart and sweet. He left nothing— except the coppers.

When he stood to leave, the server smiled from across the room. “Best of fortune.”

“Thank you.”

Kharl didn’t want to return to the ship, not immediately. So he kept walking. In time, he came to a square, except it wasn’t a square, but a park, with trimmed hedges, and yellow and orange flowers, and stone walks amid the green grass, grass that was trimmed short. The trees were all evergreens, some of types Kharl had never seen. He stood on the street side of the black stone wall and watched as two boys and a girl played some sort of tag, with two adults looking on from a nearby stone bench.

After a time, he walked farther downhill toward the piers on the western side of the harbor. He was curious, because even with the sun about to set, and the light falling across the westernmost set of piers, a sort of shadow lay across them. Kharl could not make out any of the vessels, although he could see the ships at the other piers clearly, and there were no clouds in the sky.

When he neared the piers, he discovered several things. First, the street ended at a black stone wall, with a guard post in front of the open iron gate manned by two soldiers or marines in black uniforms. Second, the guards had weapons in racks that had to be rifles. He looked again. No, they weren’t rifles, exactly, and their barrels were far too large. Third, he could see through the gate the late-day sunlight falling on the piers, yet there was a darkness that blocked any view of the ships.

Kharl knew that there was at least one vessel there; he could almost sense its solidity, but no masts extended above the ten-cubit-high wall. He immediately turned east, because the cross street in front of the piers also ended just to the west, with another black stone wall. He could sense the guards watching him, and he did not look back until the black wall ended—or rather made a right-angle turn harbor ward. He walked on another fifty cubits before turning.

The way the walls were set, there was no way to see what might be tied at the pier behind the walls, but whatever was tied there did not have masts that extended very high.

The guards and the walls suggested that this section of the harbor held the dreaded warships of Recluce, but if such warships were so fearsome, why were they being hidden? Was there something about them that the rulers of Recluce did not wish known? After a moment, he shrugged and continued walking along the edge of the harbor.

When he finally returned to the ship, after looking at shops, vessels from Hamor and Candar, as well as from Nordla and Austra, it was well into evening.

He took the staff back down to the carpenter shop. For the first time in days, Tarkyn wasn’t there. Kharl replaced the staff in the bin and headed back toward the forecastle. He slowed as he passed the women’s crew quarters, hearing voices ahead, then stopped just outside the hatch.

“… tell you… something strange about him…”

“… imagining things…”

“… wasn’t imagining… he’s walking down the street, and two of those creepy types in black… they greet him… like he’s one of ‘em

“So? He works hard… doesn’t slack, and keeps his mouth shut…”

“… tell you… strange…”

“… worry too much, Asolf… you drank too much, too. Get some shut-eye…

“… tell you…”

“Sleep it off.”

Kharl waited quietly for a time before entering the forecastle. When he did step in and begin to ready himself for sleep, both Asolf and whomever he had been talking to were asleep, as were about half the crew—those that were aboard.

Kharl lay back on the thin mattress, thinking. How could he discover how he might be more than just a cooper? By further reading of The Basis of Order? By looking more deeply into things?

After a time, he drifted into sleep.

Is there a source—a wellspring—of order or of chaos? Can something exist without a source? And if there be such, what is indeed the wellspring of chaos? Or that of order? There is but one, for chaos can be said to be the wellspring of order, and order the wellspring of chaos. These are so because, for so long as there is life, neither chaos nor order can exist by itself for long without the other.

Yet for so long as there have been peoples upon the face of the world, there have been those who championed order over chaos, or chaos over order. There have been those who denied the power of one, or of both. All creatures that live are born, and birth is the triumph of life. All creatures, from the largest to the smallest, are brought low by death, and death is the triumph of chaos.

If all things that have been born were never to die, within generations the very earth would be filled until none could move, and there would not be enough sustenance for all. If nothing were to be born, there would be no towns or roads, no grasses upon the ground, no fishes in the sea, and all would be desolation…

How can one say, then, that chaos is greater, or that order is?

—The Basis of Order

After breakfast, before he headed down to the carpenter shop once more, Kharl glanced forward as he stood on the main deck, pitching but slightly. In all directions, he could only see the gray-blue waters of the Northern Ocean. Or they might be sailing the Gulf of Candar by now. He’d asked Furwyl, but the first said he wouldn’t know if they were actually in the Gulf until he took his noon sightings. The unseen border between the two varied with every map, in any case, Furwyl had pointed out.

Just another thing that he’d thought was more certain than it was, Kharl reflected as he headed down to the carpenter shop. He stepped inside to find Tarkyn working on his scrimshaw.

“I see that staff is still in the bin,” offered the older man.

“I tried to give it back.” Kharl shrugged. “The magister wouldn’t take it.”

“He say why?”

“He said it was mine now, and that I should take care of it.”

“Might see a little use, if we’re unlucky. Not like it once was. Not like twenty years ago, when there were pirates everywhere,“ mused Tarkyn. ”Nowdays, only have to worry when you’re close to shore near Renklaar or Jera… maybe Biehl and Quend.“

“There were that many pirates? I thought Recluce had always taken care of them.“

“Not just Recluce. The white wizards of Fairven hated pirates as well. That one thing they agreed upon, and before the cataclysm, there were few pirates indeed, and most of them did not last long. After the cataclysm… then there were many.”

“After the fall of Fairven?” asked Kharl. “I didn’t realize that was a cataclysm.“

“Aye, that it was.” Tarkyn set down the scrimshaw on the narrow bench built into the bulkhead. “Great waves swept out of the ocean and smashed into the harbors. Wasn’t a war fleet anywhere that survived, not even the ships of Recluce. I heard tell that even the black iron of their mages is not so strong now as then. Many of the steam engines that once worked did no longer, and those that did had not the power they once had…” The carpenter coughed and cleared his throat. “My grand-sire once said that the ships of Recluce were of black iron and more than two hundred cubits in length, and moved twice as fast as a horse at full gallop. Now… they are swift, but not that swift, and little more than half that in length.”

“They don’t let people see them in Nylan.”

“Don’t let folk close anywhere. Still mighty ships. Saw one take down a Delapran pirate once. Like a shark half out of water she moved. Shells, something that looked like a cannon but wasn’t. Couldn’t have been half a glass before the pirate was sinking in flames from stem to stern. No… one thing a skipper doesn’t want to do is offend Recluce. Even worse than offending the Hamorians, for all their ships and guns. Upset the blacks, and you won’t have a ship for long, that’s certain. That’s why the pirates are few, and why they stay close to shore. At times, makes you wish for the old times, when there were almost none.”

“Does anyone know what caused the cataclysm? Fairven is… it was… somewhere in the middle of Candar. How could its fall cause great waves?”

Tarkyn laughed. “Folks have wondered that for years. Pride… that’s what it was. Ever since Cerryl the Great, the white mages got more and more sure of themselves. Cocky. First, they took over Certis, and Hydlen, and then Gallos. Before anyone knew it, they held all of Candar east of the Westhorns.“ He snorted. ”Was that enough? No… they started building a great road through the Westhorns, so as they could march their white lancers right into Sarronnyn.“

Kharl hadn’t heard that part of the story. “What happened?”

“Recluce sent some black mages. They were proud, too. Thought a few troopers and mages’d be more than enough to stop Fairven. They weren’t. The whites smashed ‘em and the Tyrant of Sarronnyn. Whites had all of Candar under their thumbs, except the Great Forest, Delapra, and Southwind. Might have gotten them, too, except that something happened.” Tarkyn smiled, as if inviting Kharl to ask.

“What?”

“Fairven fell in a single afternoon. No one knows how. Some say mages from Recluce. The one-god believers claim their god leveled it with thunderbolts. Others say the very earth revolted. One thing’s sure. Something melted most of the buildings—and they were stone—like they were wax in a furnace. Nothing grows there, and anyone who goes there these days doesn’t come back. Some of the hilltops are like black glass. Heard of a fellow who climbed one. Days later, his hair fell out, got sores all over. Two eightdays later he was dead.”

“I still don’t see how that caused great waves in the oceans.”

“Who knows? One thing certain though. The land moved. Some of the roads—the old stone roads… in places, they’re just split. Other places, the mountains fell on them, buried ‘em and anyone who was traveling ’em them.”

Kharl shook his head. “It’s still hard to believe. They ruled forever, and then, in one day, they were gone.”

“Like a mighty ship on the ocean,” said Tarkyn. “Proud, with sails billowing, engine pourin‘ out smoke. No one checks the hull. Ship-worms… can’t see ’em until it’s too late. A storm, and the hull gives in, and the ship sinks, just like that. Lands are like ships. Don’t see the worms till it’s too late.” The carpenter glanced at the lathe. “We could use another top gaff.”

Kharl nodded. “Spruce?”

“You don’t want oak that high…”

Kharl stepped toward the overhead wood bin, but he was still thinking about lands being like ships with shipworms. Was Nordla like that? Or Recluce? How would you ever know… until it was too late?