The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [94]
Using the wadded corner of the horse blanket, I levered up the lid of the kettle and eased the black stuff inside. It didn’t look like tea, but within minutes the hut began to smell like senthow tea.
I rummaged around until I found two tin cups, and poured from the kettle.
Then I looked outside again, but both horses were well within sight, grazing at a patch of grass sheltered by greaseberry bushes. By now it was almost dark.
“The horses?”
“They will be all right now.”
“Now?”
Justen sipped the tea from his cup. His smile seemed lopsided. “That blow you landed on the warimage echoed enough to warn off all but the strongest of white creations.”
“Warimage…? White creations…?” I shook my head. Again, I was sounding stupid.
“After you have something to eat, young Lerris. I could use some sustenance as well.” The pallor was gone from his face now. He merely looked tired.
“What do you suggest?”
“Take one of the green packages and empty it into the pot. You’ll need some water. It makes fair stew.”
After another trip to the stream, some time heating the water, and some time waiting for the gooey mess to cool, I was surprised to find it tasted like stew, and not a bad one.
Then I had to clean up the pot, and repack all the packages. Justen watched with an amused look, almost relaxed in the firelight.
As I finished repacking, I remembered some of my earlier questions.
“You never did finish explaining that bit about why Antonin couldn’t grab another body.”
“There is nothing else to explain. Chaos corrupts the soul. The more corrupt the soul, the faster it ages a body. Each transfer exhausts both body and soul. At some point, the soul cannot recover enough from the last transfer before the next one must be made.”
“Which body are you wearing?”
“My own. It’s really much easier that way, although it does create a number of limitations—as you saw today.”
“You could have been killed.”
“Only if you had been captured. That was one reason why I had to keep shielding you and rending the revenants. You beckoned to all of them, and you have very few defenses against…deep temptations.”
I sipped my cool tea. Justen had long since finished his.
After saying nothing, I finally stood up and added a small log to the fire.
“Did you mean what you said about choosing a path?” I finally asked.
“You are magister-born, a born magician if you will, like it or not, and all magicians must choose a path—black, white, or, for a few, gray.”
“Me? A magician? Hardly. Not a good woodworker, and not a potter. But a magician? My mother’s a potter, and my father…well, I always thought he was just a householder.”
This time Justen shook his head. “Humor me, young Lerris, and you are young…”
—Humor him? Why should I? What did he expect, insisting I was some sort of magician in secret?—
“…but you have to make a choice.”
“Why? I could refuse to choose anything. Even assuming I’m what you think I am.”
“Refusing to choose is a choice. In your case, your choice is more limited because of what you are.”
“Huh?”
Justen squared himself on the bench, looking more and more like Magister Kerwin, though Kerwin was white-haired and frail-looking, and Justen was brown-haired and thin-faced, with smooth skin. “If you choose the white, you can never return to Recluce, for the masters bar anyone associated with the white from your island nation. Second, your soul screams for order and explanation, even though you want to reject it. And your desire for order would keep you from mastering more than the simplest of chaos-manipulations.
“While you are now in effect stumbling through the gray, in the end the conflict of balancing order and chaos would destroy you. So…you either choose the black, or risk destruction in white or gray…or you reject all three…and become a soul for a white master like Antonin to feed upon.”
“Wait a moment! Just like that? Thank you very much, and I should become a black master on your say-so?”
Justen pulled his cloak around himself. “No. You can do whatever you please. You are not my apprentice, only my traveling