The White Order by Modesitt L. E

Author:Modesitt, L. E.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 1998-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

LV

CERRYL LOOKED DOWN at the map outline lightly penned on the vellum spread across the table before him. He almost felt like jamming the quill into the smooth wood of the table or banging his head against the wall—or better yet, picking up Kesrik or Bealtur and pummeling either into a pulp, or tying them to a log and running it through Dylert’s big saw.

Already one eight-day and two days had passed, and all he had was an outline on vellum. His fingers still ached from his morning with Eliasar, and that hadn’t made copying any easier or quicker. He’d had to develop a real scale of distances, one that fit on the size vellum he’d been able to get from Arkos, and that had taken almost two days because none of the maps in the books or the bigger ones in the mages’ library really agreed, not that well.

Not only were all the sizes and scales different, but often the names weren’t even the same. Some had Fenard spelled as Fenardre—after the ancient lord of Gallos, Cerryl guessed—and Jellico as Jellicor. The Westhorns were the Ouesthorns on some maps. One town in Certis had four names: Yytrel, Rellos, Estalcor, and Rytel. Cerryl figured, from the ages of the various histories and places, that the current name was Rytel—unless it had changed again.

West of the Westhorns was worse, but he didn’t have to worry about that, darkness forbid.

Because one of the places that Jeslek had mentioned—Quessa—wasn’t on any map anywhere, Cerryl had asked the few students he trusted, like Faltar and Lyasa and the diffident Heralt. None of them knew.

While he would have been reluctant to approach any full mage he didn’t study with—effectively Jeslek, Broka, and occasionally Derka—he had to ask himself why Jeslek had forbidden such questions. To force Cerryl to search the library and all the histories? To make the task harder? Another of Jeslek’s endless tests?

He looked at the map, then lifted it and reattached it to the working rack in the corner.

Questions would have to wait.

After washing up, Cerryl found himself marching up the avenue toward Fasse’s shop. Jeslek hadn’t forbidden him to talk to others who might know, and he thought he recalled that Fasse had come from Gallos. He hoped his recollections were correct.

In the midafternoon, a line of wagons rumbled along the white stones of the avenue. A series of bells rang, and Cerryl smiled as he saw, trailing the cooper’s wagon, a white-sided refuse wagon.

Once past the market square, filled mainly with women, he reached the jewelers’ row, where in the cool afternoon most doors were closed, except for one. As he passed the green-lacquered open door, he glanced inside, where a goldsmith held a glittering choker to the light of the door for a woman dressed in pale blue. Cerryl couldn’t have guessed how much gold was in the necklace, only that it was far more than he would likely ever see, even if he did become a full mage. For all of the strangeness in the Halls of the Mages, love of gold did not seem a magely fault.

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