The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [166]
At the same time, I was all too aware that, despite my efforts to learn the knowledge contained in The Basis of Order, all too many sections of the book I had merely learned by rote, without really understanding what lay behind and beneath them.
There was no one to ask, especially about the more cryptic phrases—the ones that seemed so simple, like the one that read, “and no man can truly master the staff of order until he casts it aside.” Or the one about “love no one until you can love yourself, for love of another is merely empty flattery and self-deception for one who cannot accept himself without pretense.” The second one sounded right enough, but how honestly could a man love himself without pandering to his own wishes to see himself as he wished?
Then there was the one that went: “Order and chaos must balance, but as on a see-saw. The power of chaos is for great destruction in a confined area, for order by nature must be diffused over vaster realms. If you would battle chaos, or establish order, you must limit the area and the time in which it must be balanced.” While that one really seemed simple, I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to limit chaos.
Knowing I could not limit chaos did not keep me from walking the streets more often. I finally had let Deirdre sew me a set of clothes suited to holidays and relaxation—still of dark brown, but the fabric was a close-woven cotton. When she refused to let me pay more than the fabric cost, I put the difference in the hidden strongbox that would be her dowry.
“Now you look the craft-master,” Bostric had said, and I wished he had been joking.
I had just shaken my head.
The first real chill dropped on Fenard early, even before the early melon harvest, although it did not frost. I ambled through the market at midday, hoping to pick up some fresh melon for Destrin, the honey-sweet kind that eased the dryness in his thin throat.
White clouds, tinged with gray, floated above the western horizon, as if coming from the Westhorns, but the breeze was light, and the warmth almost summery. I wiped my forehead more than once as I looked for some of the light green melons.
Ahead was Mathilde, the flower lady, who kept casting her eyes at the long wall, as if trying not to. That was where the prefect displayed the results of his justice—the heads of those who displeased him. Usually, the heads were those of common thieves, or a deserter from the prefect’s guards, or a murderer.
I looked up there. This time, there were two heads. I could feel the chill in my guts and the bile in my throat as I saw the woman’s head, seeing the short blond hair—Wrynn? Then I looked again and saw the dark splotch on the short-cut blond hair and the difference in the shape of the face—recognizing the captive I had seen being brought back by the prefect’s soldiers. But it easily could have been Wrynn, and who knew where she was?
Whispers went around the square, and the whispers weren’t for the Kyphran soldier, but for the other head—that of an older man, who had clearly been blinded and tortured first.
“…why…”
“…devil chairs…someone said…”
“…killed the whole household…the prefect did…”
“…why the sub-prefect?…don’t understand…”
I did not run, but stood there, stone-still behind Mathilde. The example of the sub-prefect left my guts churning. Because the man had displayed something of order in his house, or because ordered chairs had burned someone of chaos—that had been his fate?
The golden coach was gone, with Antonin in it, and now I was out of time and out of excuses. No guards had yet moved against Destrin or the shop, and none moved the streets while I stood in the square, but that could change.
My head and then my feet turned toward the avenue. I walked to the shadows by the palace and cast a cloak around myself, letting my feelings sense whether a guard troop might be moving into the city.
First, there were the two guards