Recluce - Colors Of Chaos Part 42

"Any brigand of means could dress men in white."

Anya smiled cruelly. "Tell him he shall have his answer in but a few moments."

"Just splash the gates in chaos fire," Fydel snapped. "We want the healer first."

"As you wish." Anya turned to Cerryl. "Make ready."

Cerryl nodded and began to raise chaos, careful to keep it around him but well away from his body, easing it from the earth, careful to match what Anya mustered.

"Now!" commanded the redhead.

Cerryl released his chaos fire with Anya's. The two fireb.a.l.l.s arched toward the walls, then merged. A wave of flame splashed and crested nearly to the top of the walls above the closed gates.

As the chaos flame subsided, sections of the gates continued to burn, gray and black smoke rising from the wood into the cool afternoon air. Cerryl could smell the bitter scent of burning wood and chaos and even feel some of the heat, carried on the wind toward them. A patch of dried gra.s.s ten cubits or so from the side of the road by the causeway leading to the gate began to burn, then died as the flames consumed the last of the gra.s.s.

"Ask them again," Fydel told the herald.

Sweat dripped from the heavy man's face as he rode forward once more and bugled, then called, "On behalf of the High Wizard of Fairhaven, we have come to provide an escort for the healer and Lady Leyladin to return to her home in Fairhaven. You have requested proof, and we have provided it!"

No answer came from the walls, save that men began to dash buckets of water from the parapets toward the gates beneath. Slowly, the flames vanished, until only few parts of the gates steamed and smoldered.

After more buckets of water, even the steam and smoke vanished, but the wind carried the smell of wet ash to Cerryl. He s.h.i.+fted his weight once more in the hard saddle.

A trumpet call echoed from the wall. "The Lady Leyladin will join you shortly.

Once she reaches you, the hospitality of the duke is withdrawn, and none of the White persuasion are welcome in Hydlen once you depart on your return."

"What hospitality?" muttered Fydel. He turned to the herald. "Tell them we await the lady healer and will depart only when she is safe with us."

The herald wiped his brow, then bugled and repeated the message.

"An attack for sure." Anya turned to Cerryl. "Shortly after Leyladin rides to us.

Are you ready to cast fire at the gates when they emerge?"

Nodding, Cerryl blotted his forehead. Suddenly, despite the cool wind from behind him, the sun seemed to burn the back of his neck.

The gates creaked ajar, and a single figure on a black mount rode forth. Cerryl caught his breath, but the blonde hair and the unmistakable sense of order that surrounded her rea.s.sured him.

"We need to get her away from the walls," he said to Fydel.

"We all need to get away from the walls." The square-bearded mage glanced toward Anya. "You two had better prepare. We are not staying a moment, longer than we must. I would rather not rely on chaos fire against the lancers the duke could muster."

Recalling Fydel's feeble attempts in Gallos two years earlier, Cerryl could understand the older mage's concerns. Cerryl glanced at Anya.

"She's close enough now. Follow me." Anya's face seemed unreachable, her eyes glazed over.

Cerryl swallowed and tried to send his own perceptions after Anya's, following her line of chaos toward the large chunks of bedrock underlying the tower. How did she know?

Somewhere, he could hear Fydel talking to Captain Reaz and then to the herald.

He could also sense the growing order as Leyladin's mount trotted swiftly toward the lancers.

"Lancers, turn about!"

"... turn about!... Turn about!"

Cerryl could sense how Anya eased chaos in the lines between the rocks and how she concentrated chaos in one rock, s.h.i.+fting it from one to another, and he tried to replicate her actions.

The ground s.h.i.+vered as one soft rock deep beneath the tower collapsed in upon itself.

Seemingly in the distance, the herald bugled again as Leyladin reached Fydel.

"Lady Leyladin, are you all right?" asked the bearded mage.

"I'm tired and hungry, and worried, but I'm otherwise right."

After a second triplet, the herald called, his voice not quite shaking, "Remember the might of Fairhaven, and do not think to challenge it again, lest the full might of the High Wizard fall upon you. You have been warned!"

Fydel glanced in Cerryl's and Anya's direction.

Cerryl could feel the sweat pouring off his forehead as well as down the back of his neck, could feel the rocks s.h.i.+fting beneath the tower. Another section of the deeper rock collapsed, but the tower s.h.i.+vered.

Cerryl thought of water ...

What about letting water meet chaos? Even as he channeled more chaos beneath the tower, he also sought a stream of water, easing it edging from the levels below the rock toward the chaos he built, forcing them together, more and more tightly.

HSSSSttt!! Crumptt! A section of ground exploded out from beneath the base of the tower walls, and steam sprayed upward, the heat welling even toward the lancers.

"Ride! Let us ride!" ordered Fydel. "Too close."

The ground shook more violently, then trembled several times more. With a rumble, more stones slid out from the bottom of the tower. Others seemed to crumble and fragment.

Hot droplets of rain cascaded down around the mages.

Screams that might have been were lost in the roar of falling and grinding stone.

The ground shook yet again.

"That's enough!" snapped Anya, reeling in her saddle as she wheeled her mount.

Cerryl shook his head.

"Are you all right?" Leyladin eased her mount next to Cerryl's.

"We must ride!" snapped Fydel.

Cerryl reached for Leyladin's hand. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I'm glad to see you."

"I have to go. I'll catch up with you later." If I can.

"Fydel, catch his seeming!" ordered Anya.

Confusion crossed Leyladin's face as Cerryl thrust the gelding's reins at the healer and slipped from the saddle.

"Ride with them. You have to go."

"Healer!" snapped Fydel.

Cerryl staggered to the side of the road, his sight cut off as he lifted his light s.h.i.+elds to keep the Hydlenese from seeing him, though a part of his mind pointed out that they wouldn't see much in all the dust.

Behind him, the thrumming of hoofs faded as Leyladin and the White Lancers rode eastward and back toward Fairhaven.

A few more patters of hot rain dropped around him, and he moistened his lips to try to keep from coughing. Why weren't there any riders coming after the lancers?

He cast his senses toward the ma.s.sive gates, then smiled. Anya or he or something they had done had buckled the causeway enough that the gates could only open partway.

The dusty and saddle-sore mage walked slowly toward the gates, placing his feet carefully and using his chaos-order senses to guide him.

As the rumbling of displaced stone had stopped, he could hear screams and moans from the east-from his left. Was toppling the tower necessary?

He tightened his lips and kept walking toward the gates.

A half-dozen mounts trotted along the road, then reined up.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds .. . gone ..."

"Not about to chase 'em with half squad."

"No others ... ?"

Cerryl eased along the side of the causeway, trying to move silently, not to raise dust with his boots to undo the effect of the light s.h.i.+eld, but the attention of the lancers was to the north.

". .. stables went... lot of 'em... White demons!"

Cerryl edged around the still-warm wood of the singed gates and along the stones of the archway behind the gates. A dozen armsmen stood at the far end, glancing through the archway toward the lancers on the causeway and then to the east toward the fallen walls and towers.

Step by unseen step, the young mage eased his way along the stones and toward the open inner gate.

Just short of the gates, he stopped and flattened himself against the wall stones as a clatter of hoofs echoed through the shadowed archway. Another squad of lancers rode past him, the last rider so close he could have touched the mount without stretching.

After another deep breath, he eased along the timbers of the open inner gate and then along the inside of the outer walls for another fifty cubits, where he slumped into a recess formed between two stone columns that provided some additional support to the gates or archway.

For a time he just sat there, unseen behind his light barriers and unseeing, wondering what he was doing in Hydolar. Wasn't destroying a tower and killing people enough of a warning?

He took a deep breath.

LXIII.

Finally, Cerryl stood, partly sheltered between the stone b.u.t.tresses for the gate, wincing at his sore muscles, hoping he was ready to find Duke Ferobar.

Comments still swirled from the lancers and armsmen by the gates, now arrayed in groups, as if waiting for some sort of orders.

"White b.a.s.t.a.r.ds ... kill 'em all!"

"... don't mess with them wizards."

"... can't tell us what to do."

"They just did, Muyt, and I'd wager that nothing happens."

A grim smile crossed Cerryl's lips. That was certainly what Jeslek hoped for, but even Cerryl doubted the effect would last long. In Fairhaven, peacebreakers went to the road crew or were turned to ash. The next day or eight-day, there were more peacebreakers-not nearly so many as he'd seen elsewhere, but they were there, and he doubted that people in Hydlen were that different.

Taking a last deep breath, beneath his full light s.h.i.+elds, he stepped gingerly across the open s.p.a.ce before the gate area and into the shadows on the west side of the street facing the gate. There Cerryl dropped the full s.h.i.+eld and eased around himself the blurring or bending effect that seemed to cause others' eyes to slide away from him, as if he were not there, and, incidentally, allowed him to see.

He walked down what seemed to be the main street, old and reeking of raw sewage and far narrower than even the streets of Jellico or Fenard. The second stories of many houses or shops protruded another cubit more into the street than the street-level walls of the buildings, giving the street an even gloomier appearance. Most of the walls appeared to be timber or planks or woven withies roughly plastered over and once painted and now faded and peeling.

"Spices .. . good spices for poor meat. . ."

"Oils... oils here..." A wizened woman swung an aged and stained wicker basket as she chanted.

Cerryl winced. He wouldn't have wanted anything the woman sold.

A small brown dog darted from one alleyway and past Cerryl before disappearing behind a hunchbacked peddler. Beyond the peddler two women stood on a narrow raised porch, though Cerryl couldn't determine what the shop was.

"Deris! The Whites brought down the east tower-that's what Gurold said-and then they rode off, just like that. Delivered some message to the new duke ..."

"Should I care? This is what? The third duke since winter? Bread still be too dear, and getting dearer."

"Dearer yet, if the duke must raise coins from us to rebuild his fine tower."

Cerryl eased past the women and the porch, frowning at their words. The combination of the hubbub, the smells, and the confining nature of the street had already given him the beginning of a headache, and their words did not help. He was already tired after a long day of riding.

Perhaps a block later, where the street widened fractionally, a small boy looked up, his eyes wide, clearly seeing the mage, then ran down the alleyway toward a woman.

"Mama ... mama ... a demon ... saw a demon ..."

Cerryl slipped the full light s.h.i.+eld in place, tiring as it was. Relying on his chaos- order senses, he barely managed to keep from stepping into the open sewer, staggering back into the street, and almost careening against yet another hawker, who glanced one way, and then the other, before repeating his call. Cerryl hoped he wouldn't have to continue too far without sight.

"Roasted maize, roasted maize ..."

The woman took several steps toward the main street, holding tightly to her son's hand. "Demons aren't real, Kuriat. We don't have demons in Hydlen, sweet."

Cerryl kept walking, going another block before switching back to the less tiring blur screen. He wished he had been able to enter the city to fetch Leyladin. His task would have been far easier. Already his feet ached, although the walking seemed to help the cramping in his thighs that the more than three days of riding had created.

He'd thought about a disguise, but any stranger would have been marked in Hydolar. Besides, where would he have changed in the midst of the lancers, and how soon before rumors seeped out?