Natural Ordermage (17 page)

Rahl nodded. “Are there good uses of chaos and bad uses of order, then?”

Tamryn pursed his lips. “Yes… but with a condition. Those who use chaos frequently may indeed use it for purposes that are worthy. I understand that the junior mages of Fairhaven often are employed to clean their sewers with chaos-fire. Chaos-mages at times accompany patrollers in both Fairhaven and Hamor and help keep order. However”—Tamryn paused—“the continued use of chaos predisposes a mage toward destruction, rather than building, and very, very few powerful chaos-mages have ever been known whose good works outweighed their evil ones.”

“Do you know of any, magister?”

“It is said that Cerryl the Great of Fairhaven was one of those: Certainly, in his rule, all was peaceful, and few fled to Reduce, and few indeed had harsh words for him, but we do not know what evil he did because he was so powerful that few to whom he might have done evil would have survived.”

“About the evil use of order, magister?”

Tamryn looked at Rahl. “I trust you are not playing at some game, or that you will not long continue it, Rahl.”

“It is not a game, ser. I have feelings about this, but I would say nothing until I understand more.” Rahl wanted to make sure all the mages in Nylan understood how things really were in Land’s End, and questions were always a better way to get older people interested.

“Very well. The evil that can be accomplished with the misuse of order is most different. It is more akin to building a very tight and well-constructed prison. Everything must be so ordered, and follow such rigid rules that nothing is allowed to change.”

That sounded like Land’s End. Puvort certainly hadn’t wanted anything to change, even the way books were produced, not that the prohibition had been bad for Rahl’s father. “I was a scrivener, ser, and I did not know that a machine existed to print books until yesterday. That was when Magister Sebenet showed me the printing press.”

“We’re aware of that, Rahl. Let’s leave it at that for now.”

Rahl could sense Tamryn’s irritation, and he nodded. “Thank you, ser.” He tried to remain calm himself, but he didn’t like being treated like a child or having his questions brushed away when the mage had asked if he had those questions. The engineers and the mages of Nylan had the power to change the north. Why didn’t they?

“Now… for today, Rahl, I’d like you to consider why Creslin was forced to found Reduce.”

How could he talk about that? Rahl paused, then began slowly. “I know some of the legends, and I have read Tales of the Founders. I had to copy it, but I read it as well.”

“You don’t think he was forced to found Reduce, then?”

Rahl hated being put into corners the way Tamryn was doing to him, and he detested the fact that the mage could sense what Rahl was feeling, and yet didn’t understand what was behind those feelings. Nor did he or the others seem to care. “There’s a lot missing from the book. I don’t understand why he fled from Westwind, then ended up consorting the woman he didn’t want to consort.”

“Did you fit in Land’s End?”

“I was doing fine. I mean, I was until those two attacked me, and I never used any order at all.”

“Let’s see. You got a girl with child, and you broke the arms of two men… and you were doing fine?”

“They wouldn’t have attacked if Magister Puvort hadn’t used order on one of them to make him charge me.” Rahl wished he hadn’t said anything the moment the words were out.

Tamryn’s head snapped up. “You didn’t mention that before.”

“I couldn’t say anything before the Council. They were already charging me with misusing order. If they knew I could feel that, they would have exiled me right there.”

“Why didn’t you tell Kadara or Leyla?”

“It would have sounded like I was… well, like I was making something up.”

Tamryn sighed. “Don’t you think we can tell that?”

“The Council knew that I hadn’t done anything really wrong, but that didn’t stop them,” Rahl pointed out.

“Actually, they did you a favor. If you’d have stayed in Land’s End, even if you had taken instruction from the magisters, exactly how long do you think it would have been before you were in real trouble?”

“I made a mistake with Jienela,” Rahl said. “I didn’t mean to…”

Tamryn laughed. “It always happens.”

“What?” Rahl was confused.

“If you use order to make a girl feel better, there’s nothing wrong with that, if it’s just a touch, but more than that, and there’s a Balance there, too. If you use order that way, and you sleep with her, she’s far more likely to end with a child.”

Rahl could sense the absolute truth of what the magister said.

“That’s just another reason why you need instruction and training. You have ability, but you’re going to get yourself in real trouble someday if you don’t stop feeling angry and sorry for yourself and start learning what order is all about.”

Tamryn might be right, Rahl thought, but in his own way, he was as arrogant as Puvort and all the Council. Were all the magisters in Reduce like that?

Still… it wouldn’t hurt to learn what he could.

For the next several days, Rahl managed to meet with the three magisters without upsetting them or himself by carefully reading
The Basis of Order
and asking questions that interested him. He answered their questions honestly, although that took the extra effort of forcing himself to consider himself as someone else and replying factually.

The Hamorian classes were disconcerting at first, but then, as he realized that there was nothing at all hidden, he began to enjoy them, even with the children, just letting himself relax and learn what he could.

The printing was neither as taxing as dealing with the magisters nor as enjoyable as learning Hamorian. Each task, just like copying, had to be perfect. Unlike copying, if Rahl made a mistake, and if Sebenet did not catch it, pages and pages of print could be ruined. That only happened once, when Rahl did not check one of the corner fasteners on a pasteboard page-set on fiveday afternoon.

The page-set tore apart, and ink ended up everywhere, and Rahl missed supper and had to work until almost the lamps-out bell to clean up the mess. Sebenet worked with him, but the printmaster said nothing.

He didn’t have to; Rahl could sense his disapproval. But then, after seeing the mess, Rahl couldn’t blame Sebenet—unlike the magisters, whose questions and instruction continued to grate on Rahl whenever he thought about it. He tried not to think much about it.

Sixday went better, and when he arrived in the mess for supper, Rahl felt vaguely relieved to have survived the print shop without any more mistakes. After serving himself, he saw Meryssa sitting by herself.

“Would you mind company?”

“Oh… no. Please…” She gestured vaguely across the table.

“Do you know when you’ll be leaving or what ship you’ll be on?” asked Rahl, after seating himself and taking a small swallow of the ale in his mug.

‘They say I’ll be on the
Legacy of Westwind
. It’s an older steamer that runs between Nylan and different ports in Candar, and once in a while to Hamor.“

“What does a purser do?”

“I’m going to be the assistant purser. Pursers take care of obtaining supplies and provisions, for obtaining passage fees from passengers and ensuring their billeting, and for overseeing the mess, and for maintaining all the accounts for those. On some ships, the chief purser handles all the ship’s accounts. There are other duties as well.” Meryssa offered a faint smile.

“But… why…” Rahl shook his head.

“Why being a purser instead of an exile? According to Magistra Leyla, that’s because I’m not really angry or chaos-driven, but somehow dissatisfied, and I’ll always be dissatisfied until I see how people live elsewhere, but seeing it should be enough, instead of having to live there.”

Was her underlying sadness because of that dissatisfaction? Rahl wondered. He took a bite of the fish fried in egg batter. He didn’t recognize what he was eating, but it was mild and warm and filling.

“How are you finding Nylan?” asked Meryssa.

“I can’t say I’ve seen much of anything except around here. I’ve been so busy.”

“It’s that way for everyone for the first few days. You’ll have sevenday afternoon and eightday off. Then you can walk around and see more.”

“What should I see?”

“Oh… you should go down to the harbor and the market squares there. It doesn’t matter what day it is, there’s always someone selling something. I like taking the west walk, along the cliffs to the west. You can look down at the beaches below and out at the Gulf, and it’s beautiful, especially near sunset. There aren’t many people there, either.”

“Hello there, you two!” Khalyt’s voice jolted Rahl, pleasant as the greeting was.

“Khalyt… I’d thought you’d be here earlier,” said Meryssa.

“I was working late with Kyltyn. I’ve got an idea, and I think it will really work,” Khalyt announced as he slid into the place at the table beside Meryssa.

“What sort of idea?” asked Rahl.

“Steam engines are reciprocating…”

Rahl had no idea what Khalyt meant. Once more, he had understood every single word the young engineer used— and what he said made no sense.

“The way they work, the steam from the boiler forces a piston back and forth and you have to use a crank or a drive wheel to turn that into a circular motion to drive the screw shaft…”

Abruptly, Khalyt stopped and took out several sheets of paper and a grease marker and began to sketch. When he had finished, he had a crude diagram.

This time Rahl understood, at least in general terms.

“Pushing those heavy shafts back and forth takes a great amount of chaos-energy. To contain that requires masses of black iron. That’s heavy. So the more powerful the steam engine, the more weight the ship has to carry, and the more chaos-energy it takes to move it. I’ve been thinking about how we could use the steam from the boilers directly…”

Once more Khalyt began to sketch, but the diagram looked more like a pole with vanes extending from it. “Now this would fit inside a housing, and if we get the stream pressure high enough and run it through the vanes here, they’ll turn the shaft directly, and we won’t lose as much power with all the conversion machinery. This turbine, even all made out of black iron, weighs much less…”

Rahl frowned.

Khalyt stopped. “You look doubtful.”

“Ah… no. Not… well, I don’t know anything about engines, and I don’t know much about machines, except what Magister Sebenet has taught me about the printing press. Yesterday, I made a mistake. It was a little mistake. One of the fasteners that holds the pasteboard page-set on the press wasn’t set just quite right, and the press only turned a few times before everything ripped apart.” Rahl laughed ruefully. “I was cleaning up the mess until close to lamps-out. Now, if I understand what you’re saying”— he pointed to the sketch of what Khalyt had called a turbine—“this is going to be turning very fast, far faster than the press. How are you going to make sure everything stays tight and in place and balanced?”

Khalyt looked at Rahl, then laughed. “My friend, you should be an engineer! That is the biggest problem. Every one of the turbine vanes will have to be precisely the same as every other one, but I have calculated a way to do that, using order-forging and black iron. Anything that must be strong and thin and deals with great forces must be made out of black iron. Regular iron or steel will break. That is why the inside of the turbine will be made of black iron.”

“Will this make the black ships faster?” asked Meryssa.

“So much faster… you cannot imagine how much faster. That is necessary because the Hamorian warships are getting to be almost as fast as the black ships.”

“Where are the black ships?” Rahl had heard of them all his life, but he’d never seen one. They didn’t port in Land’s End. That he knew.

“In the harbor. When they are in port, they are moored at the western pier. You can’t get on the pier unless you’re crew or an engineer. The main engineering hall is just above there. You can see it from just below the bell tower.”

“And this idea will work?” asked Meryssa.

Khalyt shrugged. “The idea is the simple part.” He turned to Rahl. “Making all the parts so that they fit together is what is hardest.”

Meryssa laughed, and the laugh held sadness as well. “Making anything work is the hardest part. It is so easy to talk and think.”

Rahl held his frown within himself. He’d always found doing things easier than thinking or learning. Copying was far easier than thinking about what he had just copied. Sometimes, like when he’d had to learn truncheon handling, discovering how to use what he’d learned was hard for a while, but just doing things was simply physical work.

“You have a funny look on your face, Rahl,” Meryssa said.

“I was just thinking about what you said.” Meryssa turned, half rose from the table, and gestured. “Aleasya!”

The woman who turned and moved toward Meryssa was broad-shouldered and muscular, possibly a few years older than Rahl, with a squarish chin, green eyes, and neck-length brown hair. Her summer tunic and trousers were a darker gray. “Meryssa.”