The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [180]
I spoke loudly. “If I really meant you harm, don’t you think I would have fried you where you stood?”
Two of them dropped the swords and ran. One shook his head. The biggest charged around the corner waving the blade in a way that showed he had no idea of how to use it.
Thunk.
Clang. The sword banged against the wall and dropped into the dirt.
“Just leave it there,” I said tiredly. “All I wanted was some water.”
“But…you’re a wizard…” He was dark-haired, well-muscled, and wore faded white trousers and a sleeveless shirt. On his feet were sandals, not boots.
“Says who? You made enough noise to warn an army.”
“What are you?” He looked past me to the other man creeping up behind me.
I half-turned in order to watch them both.
The man who had come from the rear did wear boots, the same pale-green uniform, including the green leather vest, that I had seen on the prefect’s captives, and the way he carried the sword was more professional.
“Who are you?” asked the soldier.
“Me? I’m a woodworker at heart, who happened to displease the prefect of Gallos.”
“Likely story.”
He was right, unfortunately. In his position, I wouldn’t have believed me either. I shrugged. “All right. I’m from Recluce, and I created a little too much order in Fenard, partly through woodworking, and now I seem to have every white wizard in Candar after me.”
“That’s not much better.” He waited, however, probably for reinforcements.
So I wove a shield and disappeared. Then I knocked his sword from his hand while he was gaping.
While he was meditating on that, I reappeared, presented the sword back to him with my free hand. “It happens to be true, and I’m getting a little tired of playing games.”
He paled slightly. “What do you want?” He sheathed the weapon.
“I’m trying to see if someone I once knew…” I raised the staff.
For the first time, he actually looked at the staff, realized that it was black. So help me, the man turned even whiter than the wall. He swallowed. “Why…?”
“I need to know.”
“Is she a black-haired blade that can destroy any man?”
I hadn’t thought of Krystal in quite that way. “One of them was black-haired and a master with almost any kind of blade. Black-eyed, pale-skinned—”
“Hell…”
I turned on the other man, who had edged toward his sword, still lying not that far from my feet. “Just hold it right there.”
Footsteps thudded on the ground.
“Do I have to disappear again?” I asked the young soldier.
He shook his head. “No. No, ser. We’re supposed to bring anyone from Recluce in to see the sub-commander. Those are the standing orders. I should have remembered. The sub-commander was—”
“The sub-commander?”
“She’s in charge of training. She does many other things, and she’s also the autarch’s champion. Perhaps all that is not so wondrous to a magician like you, but she is famed and fabled…”
It didn’t surprise me—not after recalling the shy lady who had dismembered the apples so quickly, or the woman who had been pressing Gilberto by the time she left Recluce.
“He’s going to Kyphrien to meet the sub-commander. I will be the one to carry out the standing orders and to convey him there, for has he not found our waystation? The waystation of Pendril and Shervan…”
The others stood back, and that was how I met Shervan.
“You water your horse, and Barrabra will fix you something to eat. Then Pendril and you and I will saddle up, and we will depart for Kyphros,” Shervan announced after ushering off the half-dozen armed and able-bodied citizens of the little crossroads.
“That’s not a problem?”
Shervan shook his head. “I must only apologize that we did not recognize you. It has been so long…”
“So long?”
“We used to receive the pilgrims from Recluce, but seldom do we see them any more.”
I nodded, knowing why—Antonin.
Whuuuffff…interrupted Gairloch, as if to ask about the water I had promised.
“Ser?” called a strong feminine voice from the covered portico. The shade kept me