Natural Ordermage

LXVI

Blacktop found his hands on cold iron-on a set of iron bars. He looked around. Someone was hurrying away from him, down the stone hallway outside the cell. How had he ended up in a cell? Was he still in Luba?

“So…” The voice was that of a guard who wore black, except for thin and bright blue piping on his tunic sleeves and cuffs. “How is our would-be mage tonight?”

Blacktop said nothing.

“Too bad Kacet can’t help you now. No one can.” The guard laughed. “Maybe the engineers can, but I wouldn’t count on it. No, I wouldn’t.” Then he turned and walked away.

Blacktop’s fingers tightened around the bars, as darkness-hot darkness-rose around him.

Abruptly, he was somewhere else, lying on his back, breathing rapidly. His body was damp with sweat, and heat radiated from him. An involuntary groan escaped him.

“Quiet!” hissed someone.

He closed his mouth. He was in the bunk room. He’d been dreaming, but the guard in the dream had called him a would-be mage, and said that someone couldn’t help him. The name should have been familiar, but it hadn’t been, and it had slipped away as he had awakened.

Had he once been a mage? Or had he tried to be one?

How could that have been?

He lay there for a long time. He’d had more dreams in the eightdays since he’d become a checker, but the one he’d just experienced had been the most vivid-and disturbing. He’d been in a cell. Had he really done something so terrible that he couldn’t remember it? So terrible that his memories and past had been taken away?

He shivered, suddenly cold, although the late-spring night was anything but cool.

After a time, his eyes closed.

Then, something awakened him, and he got out of his bunk, except it was a pallet in a small cubicle, and his feet carried him through the dark toward the front of a building that felt familiar, yet he could not remember ever being there. When he reached the front door, his eyes fixed on the bar that held the door closed. Something whitish was seeping through the thin gap between the door and frame. As it thickened, it tugged, then shoved the bar out of its brackets so that one end clunked to the floor, and the door swung open, and a man stepped inside, falchiona extended.

The man turned and whipped up his blade, but Blacktop was faster, and his truncheon cracked the man’s wrist and the bravo reeled back, out of sight, the falchiona clattering on the floor tiles.

Whhstt! A bolt of whiteness flew toward Blacktop, but it only splattered around him.

“We will have to handle you differently, dear boy,” came the languid words from the chaos-wizard who stepped inside the front door.

The words chilled Blacktop, but he forced himself toward the white-shadowed figure.

The wizard lifted a falchiona of whitish bronze, flicking it toward the truncheon that Blacktop carried, but Blacktop managed a parry and evaded the blade enough so that the truncheon touched the wizard’s forearm. Then Blacktop stepped inside and rammed the truncheon into the wizard’s throat. The wizard shuddered, and light flared, and the wizard began to collapse in upon himself.

Blacktop jerked awake, more sweat streaming down his face.

Had it been just a dream…or had he killed a white wizard?

For a long time, he sat on the edge of the bunk, trying not to think or remember, hoping he could go back to sleep without dreaming.

In time, he did sleep, and if he dreamed, at least, he did not remember those dreams when he dragged himself up at the morning bells. A cool shower helped…a little, but he couldn’t help but wonder if the reason he was in Luba was because he’d killed a mage. He didn’t know if he had, but he wasn’t about to ask anyone.

At breakfast, as he made his way to a table, he nodded to Hasyn, then to Zhulyn.

He’d no more than taken a sip of his beer when someone approached. “Blacktop…do you mind if I sit down?”

Blacktop had seen the checker, one of the few who looked close to his own age, looking at him closely, more than a few times.

“No…please do.” He was getting more than a little tired of being ignored by the other checkers.

“I’m Masayd. I used to be a clerk in Swartheld. Did you work there? Hasyn said that you had a clerk’s hand and that you wrote like a merchanting clerk.”

Blacktop shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything much before Luba. Someone told me I’d been given a potion so that I wouldn’t remember.” He paused. “What kind of clerk were you?”

“I was the junior clerk with Chalyndyr Brothers. They said I burned the ledgers to hide the coins I’d stolen.” Masayd shook his head. “The whole three years I was there, I maybe managed to slip a silver out of the excess that wasn’t covered. I never burned anything, but that lying Ventaryl swore I did, and he was a mage-guard. That was after the other one vanished. Mage-guards were questioning everyone who wasn’t bonded in gold. No outlanders, of course. They still need the trade from places like Nylan and Brysta and Valmurl.” He looked at Blacktop speculatively. “You don’t remember anything?”

Blacktop considered. “I had a dream…the other night. Maybe it was a memory, about a white wizard who followed a bravo into a building. I drove off the bravo, and the wizard said that he’d have to handle me differently.”

Masayd stiffened. “Do you remember how the wizard spoke?”

Blacktop managed to offer an indifferent smile, eager as he was to hear what the former clerk might be able to tell him. “He spoke slowly, but it was lazy-like, and he called me ‘dear boy.’ That was in the dream anyway.”

The clerk paled, and his jaw tightened. “That…that sounds like Asmyd. He was the one who disappeared. He always called all the clerks ‘dear boy.’ He was a slut sow’s ass.” After a moment, he asked, “Don’t you remember anything more?”

“There was a flash of white, and then I woke up.” Blacktop wasn’t about to say that he’d killed the wizard, even in his dreams.

“They…they framed you, too, then.” Masayd shook his head more violently. “They said I had something to do with his disappearing, but I didn’t. I didn’t. That lying bastard Ventaryl…” For a time, Masayd just looked down at the table.

Blacktop forced himself to eat slowly. Had Masayd been sent to Luba because of what Blacktop had done? Or had something more happened? There had to have been more…But what if there hadn’t been? What if he had just killed the mage, and Masayd had been sent to Luba for it?

“Blacktop?”

“Yes?” He paused. “It might only have been a dream. I just don’t remember more.”

Masayd shivered and shook his head. “We’ve been framed. They wouldn’t have blanked you if something hadn’t been all wrong. I just wish you could remember more.”

“So do I.” That was more than true, yet Blacktop had to wonder if he really wanted to know all that he’d done.

Suddenly, Masayd stood. “Thank you. That helped. It really did.”

“I wish I could remember more,” Blacktop said.

“Maybe you will.” With that and a faint smile, Masayd headed for the rinse racks.

Blacktop had to hurry to finish his breakfast and get out front to catch his wagon. Even though the sun was still a low glow behind the perpetual gray haze of the valley, he found he was beginning to sweat just standing and waiting. Once the wagon arrived, he sat beside Hasyn, although neither spoke on the trip to the loading dock.

He had just finished helping the steam mech load the boiler and returned to the checker’s kiosk when another wagon-one of the smaller ones-rolled down the lane and came to a stop at the south end of the dock. The angular and thin-faced older mage-guard-Taryl-hurried up the low steps and made his way toward Blacktop. Blacktop hadn’t seen him since the first day that Taryl had brought him to the plate-loading dock.

Moryn moved forward, then just inclined his head and stepped back.

“I won’t be that long,” Taryl said in passing to the chief supervisor.

“Ser?” asked Blacktop.

“Blacktop…I’ve heard that you’ve been reading during your free time.”

“Yes, ser.”

“What have you read?”

“A World Geography and History…that’s all.”

“A good choice for a man who has no history or memory.” Taryl paused. “Do you remember anything more?”

“I remember a building with a barred door, and I was on the inside. It was a building, not a dwelling, and it was dark.”

“Hmmmm…” The mage-guard frowned. “Turn this way. Close your eyes.”

Much as he did not wish to, Blacktop did. He felt something, the faintest tingling.

“Open them. Did you feel anything?”

“My head tingled…just a little.”

Taryl nodded. “I’m not surprised.”

Blacktop didn’t like that, either.

“Do you recall ever wearing a copper bracelet on your wrist?”

“No, ser. I don’t remember anything that I wore.”

“If you remember that, or anything that you think is important, tell one of the guards that you need to have me see you. Do you understand? Don’t wait.”

“Yes, ser.” Blacktop understood. He also understood he might be in even more trouble if he did remember who he had been and what he had done.

Moryn waited until the mage-guard and the wagon were well away from the loading dock before he approached Blacktop. “What was that all about?”

“I don’t know, ser. He asked me if I had been reading, and if I remembered any more. I told him I’d had dreams, but I didn’t know what they were. He said he’d check with me every so often.”

Moryn frowned. “They want you to remember something. I hope for your sake that it’s good.”

So did Blacktop, but with the dreams he’d had of killing two men, and maybe more, he was less and less certain that he wanted to remember-or that it was to his advantage.

“Here comes the first wagon.” Moryn turned. “Hasyn! Get that hoist ready!”

Blacktop laid out the forms and the pen and inkwell, then blotted his forehead. It was going to be a hot day, and full summer was still eightdays away.