The White Order by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Read Free Book Online Page B

smote them, and the righteousness of the white mages was for naught as their glasses exploded before them, and death rained upon all...
       The very ground heaved, and... the Grass Hills were seared into the Stone Hills, so dry that nothing lives there to this day ...
       The few white mages who remained, they slipped away to the east, far across the Westhorns, and even beyond the Easthorns, fearing that the west of Candar was no place for the goodness of white.
       Indeed, they were sore justified in their fears, for the demon women of Tower Black, the heart of the evil kingdom of Westwind, grasped the Westhorns as a constricting snake seizes its prey. Their metalled roads pinioned the very peaks, and all trade bowed to their black blades.
       The dark forests of Naclos swelled back over their former domain, those lands that the ancient white mages had freed, and the forests once again swallowed the lands in darkness. Therein dwelt the evil druid Nylan and the songmage Ayrlyn, and their offspring made Naclos their own, and the shadows of their power shaded all of Candar from the Westhorns to the Great Western Ocean.
       ... and in the fullness of time came the white mages to Fairhaven, to begin again the struggle to reclaim all of Candar from the grip of darkness...
             Colors of White
             (Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven)
             Preface
     
     

White Order
    X
     
    After stepping out onto the porch, the bean soup that had been dinner filling his stomach comfortably, Cerryl looked out from under the eaves. A line of rain splattered on the stones of the causeway that linked the lumber barns and the mill.
       “Won't be stopping any time soon,” offered Viental, standing by the railing. “Either sit and wait, or run. Me ... I stopped running a long time ago.” The stocky laborer turned, walked to the empty bench against the house wall, and sat down heavily.
       “You get wet about the same if you run or you walk.” Rinfur shook his head. “You walk to your room and hang up your clothes, and they got time to dry.”
       “While you shiver in your blankets,” answered Viental. “Not for me, thank you.”
       Cerryl sat cross-legged on the planks of the porch floor, his eyes on the darker clouds to the southwest, over the mines, over the old house where he had lived as long as he could remember until he'd come to the mill. Was Syodor out in the rain, using it to uncover new gleanings? Or were his aunt and uncle sitting before a warm hearth? He rubbed his forehead, aware of a dull throbbing growing above and behind his eyes.
       “Be raining for a long time,” Rinfur said with a shrug, stepping out from the porch and striding toward his room in the first lumber barn. “Might as well get wet so as I can get dry soonest.”
       “I can always get wet,” answered Viental with a deep laugh. “Better to stay dry, I say.”
       The rain dripped off the edge of the eaves steadily, in a pattern that seemed to pound into Cerryl's skull. Abruptly, he stood.
       “Going to get wet, are you?” asked Viental.
       “It will happen sooner or later,” the youth answered, starting down the stone steps.
       “Not for me,” called Viental.
       Cerryl walked through the rain and the growing twilight back to the barn. Once inside his room, he pulled off the damp canvas jacket and hung it on the peg by the door.
       At least inside his room, the pounding of the rain wasn't quite so pronounced. Still, for a time Cerryl sat on the edge of his pallet, trying to ignore the splatting of the rain and the throbbing in his skull that almost kept rhythm to the patter of the rain on the side of the barn.
       Tap! Tap!
       Cerryl frowned, then went to the narrow door, opening it.
       A broad-shouldered figure stood there, patch over one eye.
       “Unc-”
       “Hush!” Syodor's hand covered Cerryl's mouth. “Not a word. Follow me.”
       “In the