The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [143]
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait until the link gets stronger.” Creslin pauses. “In the meantime, we might think about a good stream and a waterwheel.”
“A waterwheel?” The Black Wizard shakes his head. “I don’t think you understand. In a few days, if she has a mind to, Megaera could kill you both. That could be exactly what she’s waiting for.”
The silver-haired man listens, but his hands wield the hammer and order-sharpened wedge, trimming the black stone before him. For an instant, he can sense salt spray and hear the raucous call of a sea gull. Is that an illusion? He thinks not.
“Would she be that desperate?”
Klerris shrugs. “What woman wants her feelings known?”
“Do you think I have exactly enjoyed her knowing every strong emotion I feel?”
The Black Wizard laughs. “Women have always known what men feel, even without magic.”
“You’re talking about eastern women, about those who no longer follow the Legend.”
“Creslin, all women—except the warrior guards of Westwind, and I suspect that they just do not find it convenient to mention their abilities—all women can read men better than most men can read women.”
Clung . . . clung . . .
“Why should that make a difference? It’s probably due as much to practice as to an inborn talent.”
The older man shakes his head. “What will you do?”
“Wait until the link is stronger. Then we’ll see.”
“Lydya’s worried.”
“So am I. So am I.” His hands trim the stones automatically, only his senses pointing the weaknesses and sheer lines in the hard black stone.
XCIV
“NOW WHAT?” ASKS Thoirkel, placing another rock on the field wall.
Locked into the soil and the order lines within and around the small section of field, Creslin does not hear him. The not-quite-stifling heat has begun to create wavering heat lines above the walls and the clay road.
“Now what?” repeats the dark-haired man, who is now as clean-shaven as Creslin.
Creslin returns to himself and wipes his forehead. The plateau gets hot earlier in the day than the town and stays hot longer, but Klerris has noted that the soil is far more fertile here. Creslin doesn’t need the Black Wizard to tell him that, since the town is built on rock, sand, and red clay so hard that even few weeds appear on the hillside or the flat behind the pier.
Creslin has been merely repeating the painstaking process that Klerris has taught him, strengthening the right worms, grubs, and beetles, ignoring those that are not helpful, and infusing order into the shoots that will become dry maize. Between the liberal application of order and the not-so-liberal application of spring water and limited rain, the maize—destined, if it survives the hazards of Recluce, to become flour for bread and pasta—shows healthy growth, far healthier than that in more temperate lands. Creslin wipes his sweating forehead again.
“Ser! Ser!” A figure sprints from the northern edge of the field.
Creslin straightens at the urgency behind the voice and moves toward the running man. “What is it?”
“Raiders! Pirates! Sails, lots of them!”
“Damn . . . damn . . . damn . . .” Creslin sends his senses to the winds, reaching toward the northern sea, where a forest of masts sweeps shoreward. No White-pulsed energies lurk beneath the sails or within the hulls, but the masses of archers and armed men speak loudly enough.
The co-regent of Recluce scoops up his shoulder harness and adjusts it as he strides eastward, already searching the skies, grasping for the winds. His feet carry him toward the road leading to Land’s End. Thoirkel trots beside him.
From the keep, a horn calls—a Westwind trumpet.
Creslin attempts to twist the high winds lower, to call for the cold torrents that sweep toward the Roof of the World.
warships . . . Creslin?. . .
He pauses at the edge of the plateau. A dozen ships creep on partly furled sails toward the