ALYIAKAL
Northpoint, Jakaafra
I
A youth sits in a chair behind a writing desk in the corner of the study. He looks to the vacant white-oak desk, polished and without papers or any objects upon it, then toward the open door to the hallway before returning his attention to the small book he holds, the cover of which is white leather.
Sometime later, he hears steps approaching the study door, but he keeps his eyes on the angular letters on the page he has stopped reading.
“Alyiakal … have you finished your studies?” asks the wiry figure wearing the green-trimmed white uniform of a Mirror Lancer majer.
“Yes, ser.” The youth immediately looks up, his eyes seeming to meet those of his father.
“What have you learned?”
“That chaos must be directed by the least amount of order possible. The greater the order, the more likely it is to weaken the force of chaos.”
“What does that mean?”
“Mean, ser?”
“If you’re going to aspire to the Magi’i, boy, you can’t just parrot the words.” The slightest hint of impatience colors the majer’s words.
“So what do the words mean, ser?” Alyiakal is careful to keep his tone polite. He doesn’t want another beating.
“You tell me.” The majer’s voice is hard. “Magus Triamon says that you can sense order and chaos, if barely. Your mother would have been disappointed by such sophistry.”
Alyiakal holds the wince within himself at the reference to his mother. “Chaos has no order. It will go where it will. Order is necessary to direct chaos, but order reduces chaos. The skill is to direct chaos without reducing the power of that chaos.”
“Alyiakal … you understand. From now on, every stupid question will merit a blow with a switch or lash.”
“Yes, ser.”
“Your supper should have settled. It’s time for your blade exercises and lessons.”
“Yes, ser.”
The majer turns, heading for the rear terrace.
Alyiakal closes the white-leather book, sets it on the writing desk, and stands. While he is now nearly as tall as his father, he is only sixteen, and slender, so far lacking the physical strength of his father. Until the last season, he had dreaded the blade lessons. Although they practiced with wooden wands, he had always ended up with painful bruises. Now, as he walks to the rear terrace of the quarters, he is merely resigned to what may be. He understands all too well that if he fails to satisfy the Magi’i he will follow his father into the Mirror Lancers.
The practice wands—wooden replicas of Mirror Lancer sabres—hang on the rack by the door. As Alyiakal eases his wand from the rack, he considers his lesson. Order must direct chaos, but it also must direct a blade, for an undirected blade cannot be effective. Can he use his slight skills at sensing order to determine where his father’s blade must go? He takes a deep breath. It is worth the effort. He cannot be more badly bruised than he has been in the past. He makes his way to the terrace and waits in the warm air of late Spring.
He does not wait long, for the majer appears in moments, his own wand in hand. “Ready?”
“Yes, ser.” Instead of concentrating on his father’s eyes, Alyiakal tries to sense where his father’s wand will go before it does. For the first few moments, he is scrambling, dancing back, allowing touches—but not hard strikes. Then … slowly, he begins to feel the patterns and to anticipate them.
He slides his father’s wand, and then comes over the top to pin it down, but he cannot hold the wand against Kyal’s greater strength, and he has to jump back.
“Good technique … but you have to finish!” The majer is breathing hard. “Keep at it!”
By the end of half a glass, Alyiakal can slip, parry, or avoid almost every attack his father brings to bear, but he is sweating heavily enough that he can’t see clearly when Kyal abruptly says, “That’s enough for this evening.”
Alyiakal lowers the wand.
“You worked hard, and your defense is much better. Just apply yourself that hard to your studies, and you shouldn’t have that much trouble.”
“I’m still bruised in places, ser.”
“At your age, that’s to be expected.” His father nods. “You’re free to do what you will until dark. Don’t go too far. If you’re going to walk the wall road, don’t forget your sabre.”
“Yes, ser. I won’t.” Alyiakal is sore enough that he isn’t certain he wants to go anywhere. At the same time, being free for a glass or so is a privilege not to be wasted. Still …
After several moments, he decides to at least take a walk, if only to show that he appreciates and will use the privilege. He follows his father inside and carefully racks the wand, then goes to wash up and cool down.
Less than a quarter glass later, he walks out the front door and around the small and narrow privacy screen wall, the ancient Mirror Lancer cupridium blade in the scabbard at his waist. He does not breathe easily until the officers’ quarters at Jakaafra are more than a hundred yards behind him, as is the tall building that holds the northernmost of the chaos towers. Before long he walks southeast along the white sunstone road paralleling the whitestone wall that, along with the wards powered by the chaos towers, confines the Accursed Forest.
Alyiakal glances to his right. Between the wall and road, there is neither vegetation nor grass, only bare salted ground. To the left are fields and orchards, and a few cots and barns, fewer with each kay from Jakaafra … until the next town, kays away.
He keeps walking along the road flanking the white wall, glancing back, but he sees no one, and no lancer patrols, not that he expects any. While his eyes remain alert for any movement, especially near the wall, his thoughts consider what had happened during his blade practice … and how he had not previously thought of using order to help in using a sabre.
How else might I use order? He doesn’t have an answer to that question, but he does not have time to pursue it because, some fifty yards ahead, at the base of the whitestone wall is a black beast, a chaos panther, lowering itself, as if to spring and charge him. He draws the antique lancer sabre, knowing that its usefulness against such a massive beast is limited at best.
Then … the black predator is gone, and a girl—a young woman, he realizes—stands beside the wall. He starts to walk toward her … and as suddenly as she was there, she also has vanished. He looks around, bewildered, but the salted ground between the patrol road and the wall remains empty—for as far as he can see.
Carefully, if unwisely, he knows, he moves toward where both the black cat-like creature and the young woman had been.
Once there, he studies the ground. There are bootprints, but no pawprints, leading to the wall, not away from it, as if someone had walked from the road to the wall. He can find no bootprints leading away.
A concealing illusion? It had to be, but he can sense neither the heavy blackness of order nor the whitish red of chaos. And from a woman, when there are no women Magi’i?
Finally, after waiting and watching for perhaps a fifth of a glass, he turns and begins to walk back home, thinking.
II
On fourday morning, as on most mornings, except sevenday and eightday, Alyiakal sets out early on the three-kay walk to the house of Magus Triamon, carrying only the white leather-bound book, and not wearing the old Mirror Lancer sabre, since his father has made it more than clear that he may not wear it into the town. He makes his way east to the narrow stone road that runs northwest of the lancer compound, taking a last look at the whitestone wall that girdles the Accursed Forest, then turning toward Jakaafra. While he walks swiftly, nearly a glass passes before he steps onto the porch. He knocks three times, then once, before stepping back and waiting, standing between the privacy screen and the door. He is about to sit down on the wooden bench beside the door when it opens, and the gray-haired magus stands there, his angular countenance younger than his hair would indicate.
Triamon says nothing, just steps back and motions for the youth to enter, closing the heavy door behind them.
Alyiakal follows him to the study, which contains a tall and narrow bookcase, a desk and two chairs, an ancient white-oak cabinet that has aged to a golden shade, and a table slightly over waist-high topped with dark gray soapstone, on which rests a single candle in an unornamented bronze holder.
“Today, you’re going to learn a bit more about the dangers of chaos, Alyiakal.” Triamon gestures to the oak cabinet that is beside the stone-topped table. “How old would you say that cabinet is?”
“The wood is aged. It looks to be at least fifty years old.”
“It does look that old. It’s not. It’s but ten years old. That’s what too much chaos too close can do.”
“You said that you always keep chaos under control, ser.”
“I’m careful, but I’ve taught a few other would-be Magi’i besides you.”
“They did that?”
“So will you, after a time, if you’re not careful,” Triamon says, eyes on his student.
For a moment, Alyiakal says nothing, then realizes that the magus expects a response, and blurts, “After a time? Is that because I can’t muster enough chaos to affect the chest until I’m stronger?”
“That’s one reason, but there’s another.”
“Because young mages use more chaos than they should?”
Triamon smiles momentarily, then says, “They often do, but that wouldn’t matter, except for the reason I’m seeking.”
Alyiakal tries to conceal the puzzlement he feels.
“For the present, I’ll not tell you, and we’ll see if you can come up with the answer over the next few eightdays. I will give you a hint. You won’t find it in your text.”
If it’s not in Basics of Magery, where am I supposed to find it? Alyiakal is aware enough not to ask the question.
After a slight pause, Triamon says, “In the meantime, you must sharpen your awareness of order and chaos. Watch the candle, with your senses, not your eyes.”
Alyiakal concentrates on the candle as a point of chaos touches the already blackened wick and as the heat of that chaos creates the usual flame of a lighted candle.
“Is there more chaos in the flame or in the candle?” asks Triamon.
“The flame,” declares Alyiakal.
The magus shakes his head. “What does the book say about forms of chaos?”
“There are two basic forms of chaos, free chaos and order-bound chaos.”
“And what is a candle composed of?”
“Order-bound chaos,” replies Alyiakal, “but I can’t use it or sense it. So it seems to me—”
“The failure is in your senses. What does the book say about the relative power of order-bound chaos and free chaos?”
“Free chaos is the more powerful.”
“That’s not quite what it states, Alyiakal. You need to read more carefully. I’ll expect a better answer tomorrow.”
“Yes, ser.”
“Now, I’m going to gather points of free chaos. You compare the point I’ve gathered to the amount of free chaos in the candle flame, and tell me which contains more free chaos.”
A larger point of chaos appears beside the candle flame.
“Your point contains more chaos.”
Triamon reduces the amount of gathered chaos. “Now which one?”
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