The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [92]
“Young Lerris,” answered Justen dryly, “you also seem to have forgotten a few other things, such as letting me know that you are magister-born, that you carry the staff of a magister, and that you have not chosen your path.”
My mouth must have dropped open. I could say nothing. Magister-born? Not having chosen a path? The staff didn’t surprise me, for some reason.
Justen shook his head sadly. “Once again your origin burns through.”
“But…”
“Nowhere else do they send out their best, untrained and untested, to find their way in a world that either ignores them or tries to destroy them.”
“Destroy?”
“Yes, destroy. You are from Recluce the beautiful, the isolated, the powerful. The island nation that has humbled every fleet sent against her, destroyed every challenge contemptuously, and refused to take any real responsibility outside her own boundaries.”
“But…”
“No…it’s not your fault, not yet, and I suppose that is why I will help you, young Lerris. Then, at least, I will have someone to blame if Recluce continues to ignore the world. Not that poor Justen can do anything about it.”
“Wait a moment,” I protested. “You’ve been around two centuries, and you let Antonin do all his fancy tricks and you never raised your staff, never said a word. Why not? How can you blame Recluce? Or me?”
He just sighed. “So much potential, and so much ignorance…where, oh where shall I start?” He eased Rosefoot closer to Gairloch.
The road ahead seemed to merge into a much wider, but heavily-rutted highway.
“Is that the main road?”
“It is, but the next decent place to stop is about three kays farther along. So I’ll try to answer your questions…while I can.”
This time I took a swallow from the canteen attached to Gairloch’s saddle, after looking in all directions. The main road was empty, as were most roads in Candar late on a winter afternoon. I tightened my cloak against the slowly rising wind. Most of the snow, small dry flakes, had blown clear even before we had left Howlett. In Eastern Candar, the snow is light and seldom sticks, unlike the high ranges of the Westhorns, where winter means snow upon snow until even the evergreens are buried to half their height.
“Even if you are from Recluce, you know that there is order and there is chaos. Magic is either, or some of both. White magicians follow chaos. Black magicians follow order. And gray magicians try to handle the best of both, and are regarded with great suspicion by both black and white.”
“White is chaos, but why?”
“Lerris, do you practice being obtuse?” Justen sighed. “White is the combination of all colored light. Black is pure because it is absent all light.”
That was something that, strangely, no one had ever mentioned—not that I remembered, anyway. I nodded for him to continue as we finally picked our way off the old road from Fairhaven, or Frven, and back onto the main road. I could once again see dusty hoofprints, a day old or more, in the chalky dirt.
“The problem with both white and black magic is their limitations. Most white magicians are just a little bit gray. No one can handle pure chaos, not anyone born since the Fall of Frven. There are a number of black magicians. I can tell that from their actions, but a truly good black magister cannot ever be discovered unless he or she wishes it.”
I must have frowned.
“That’s because of the limitations. Look…think of it this way. Too much chaos and even the internal order of your body becomes disorganized. That’s what happens, in a way, when you become old. White magicians all die young, and the more powerful die younger, unless they switch bodies like Antonin.”
“Switch bodies? But how?” I kept sounding stupid, and I hated sounding stupid. But Justen was answering some questions, more than old Kerwin had.
“He has worked an arrangement with…several local rulers. He provides certain services, and he can have the body of anyone condemned to die. He’s in his fifth body now, but I doubt he can survive more than one more transfer.” Justen stopped speaking and looked up the road, as if measuring