Colors of Chaos

CVII

CERRYL LOOKED AT the blank scroll on the corner desk, then at the darkness that lay beyond the shuttered windows. The house he had taken was quiet, and even in the adjoining dwellings he suspected most lancers were sleeping, except for those on guard duty.

SSsss…The oil lamp hissed momentarily, then sputtered and hissed again. He glanced at it, wondering if the reservoir were empty, but the hissing died, and the yellow glow from the mantel continued to fall across the empty dun expanse of the parchment.

The White mage suppressed a yawn. It seemed like he ran from dawn until after dusk…dealing with so many things he’d never thought of, not only supplies and fodder, but tools, smithies for weapons, and even nails or bolts. How did you replace planks without some fasteners, especially when the only substitute was treenails, and they didn’t work that well for barely skilled lancers and peasants?

He rubbed his forehead and looked down again.

For only the second time in almost three seasons, he could send Leyladin a message that would reach her, if he finished it before morning, when a messenger and lancer guards left for Fairhaven. Yet he hadn’t the faintest idea where to begin. Or rather, he had so much to say.

Finally, he began to write, smiling as he scripted the first line.

My dearest Leyladin…

After that, the words got easier, enough so that before long he was reaching for a second sheet. Then the words got slower, and he had to turn and trim the lamp wick twice before he signed the bottom of the second sheet and laid it aside to dry.

After rubbing his forehead, sitting in the quiet of the study, ignoring the changing of the two lancer guards outside the front door, he picked up the first sheet, and his eyes skipped over the lines as he reread what he had written:

…have good quarters here, although I am troubled by how I came by them. It was not my doing, not exactly…so long since we have had a true roof overhead…yet I always thought of you…as you must know from my earlier message and from my glimpses through the glass…tried not to intrude…but I have missed you…more than I ever would have known…

He shook his head. That wasn’t quite true. Even before he had really met her, she had been important to him. What drew you to her…and her to you? Order and chaos? The need for some sort of balance?

After a moment, he continued to reread his words:

…Elparta lies in our hands, and I am supposed to return it to a semblance of prosperity, but there are few masons and few woodworkers among the lancers and almost no crafters at all among the wretched souls who survived the place’s fall…I found one mason’s apprentice with a crushed hand and an old fellow who’d been a carpenter once…little enough that I know, but it is more than many of the men I must direct…

…already we have had some light snow, and the winter promises to be cold indeed. I shudder to think what it must be like along the shores of the Northern Ocean…

…I have no idea when we will be returning to Fairhaven. It could be well into next year, if not longer…

Longer? Momentarily he wanted to pound the desk-or something. Yet nothing had happened exactly as he wished. Even getting to know Leyladin had taken far longer than he had ever thought possible.

…however long that may be, you know what I feel and how strongly, and no words will convey what you have felt, and I would not try to reduce such to letters upon parchment…

Besides, unlike Leyladin, you don’t know who will be reading what you write. She-or Layel-had effectively owned the guard who had delivered her scroll to him, a scroll he still kept with his possessions, a scroll whose green-inked sentences he still read and reread.

After another yawn, he rolled the scroll and, after heating the sealing wax over the top of the oil lamp, sealed it and laid it on the desk to be sent with the next dispatches to Jeslek in Fairhaven. Then he blew out the lamp and turned toward the stairs. Tomorrow would come-cold and all too soon.