White dust drifted up from the wheels of the cyan wagon as it passed on the left, headed toward Lydiar, Cerryl supposed. Neither the driver, nor the soldier beside him, gave Cerryl or Rinfur more than the briefest glance. Nor did the lancers who trailed the wagon.
“Do you know whose wagon that was?” Cerryl asked.
“Mayhap the duke’s—having his colors and his guards,” answered Rinfur, “a-coming back from Fairhaven. If you can’t get it in Lydiar or Fairhaven, folks say you be not getting it anywhere.” Rinfur gave a low chuckle. “ ’Cept on Recluce, and it not be healthy to say that too loud.”
“Why doesn’t anyone talk about Recluce?” asked Cerryl.
“ ’Cause it be not exactly healthy, especially in Fairhaven. The whites have no love of the blacks. Never have, and never will, not since the days of the ancients when the black demon Nylan overthrew ancient Cyador and brought darkness back to Candar.” Rinfur shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. “Enough said, lad. Dylert says you know your letters, and you be going to apprentice with Tellis, the scrivener. Well . . . I’d be expecting Tellis has books that be saying more than this poor teamster ever knew . . . and reading be safer, too.”
Cerryl glanced back, but the road was clear.
Rinfur flicked the reins. “Now . . . the traders’ square in Fairhaven, that be something the like I never saw before . . . spices, and blades of metals of all colors, and . . .” He shook his head. “That be something you need see . . .”
Cerryl nodded and listened as the wagon rumbled westward.
XXVI
WITH THE RUMBLING of the big wheels on the smooth wizards’ road and the hot afternoon, Cerryl found his eyelids getting heavier and heavier. The late afternoon sun, shining directly at his face, offered another incentive to let his eyes close.
“Darkness!”
At Rinfur’s expletive, the team swerved, and Cerryl found himself grasping for the sideboard with one hand and the wagon seat with the other. His eyes popped open.
“Demon-cursed messenger! Think they own the road,” mumbled Rinfur as he guided the team back from nearly scraping the right-hand wall.
Cerryl glanced over his shoulder, but all he could see was a mist of white road dust.
“Course they do. You don’t give them the road, and the wizards have you whipped.”
“Even if it happens on the part of the road in Lydiar, or Certis?” asked Cerryl, shifting his weight on the hard wagon seat.
“Don’t be wagering on that. The wizards rule their roads. And a lot more besides that.”
Cerryl waited.
“Dylert, he was telling me. Years ago, it was. The old line of dukes, the ones in Lydiar I be meaning, they told their traders not to be paying the road tariffs to the wizards. Three days later, there were two-hundred-score lancers on the road outside Lydiar and a score of white wizards. Never said a word, did they. Just marched into Lydiar and cast fire down on the duke’s palace. He was in it, a course. Ruins stood for nigh-on forty years ’fore anyone dared rebuild it—even the new duke the wizards named.”
“If the white mages are so powerful, why aren’t they the dukes of Lydiar and Certis and . . .”
Rinfur raised his free hand.
“Used to be a Duke of Montgren, once upon a time. He befriended that black demon—Creslin, I think. The whites killed him and all those in the keep. Then they leveled the keep. Montgren still belongs to Fairhaven.”
“But you said they did that to Lydiar. Leveled the duke’s place, I mean, but there’s still a Duke of Lydiar.”
“Got me,” said Rinfur. “All I know be that no duke or viscount or whatever in his mind be crossing the white mages. No teamster not give way to a white messenger.” He shrugged. “That be enough.”
Cerryl glanced ahead. The almost mountainous hills the road had bored through after they had left Hrisbarg had already dwindled into low rolling hills, half topped with trees, half with meadows, and each line of hills seemed lower than the previous set.
“Won’t be long. Hills about to end,” confirmed the driver.
Cerryl nodded and watched.
Fairhaven rested in a gentle valley, and the road descended ever so gradually toward the mixture of white structures, white road, and green grass. The trees were mainly ever-greens barely again as tall as the roofs they shaded. Cerryl saw no leaf-bearing trees, none. Was that why Dylert could send white oak to Fairhaven?
The paving stones of the road, somewhere along the way, had turned from pinkish granite to slightly off-white gray granite, as had the stones of the walls. As the wagon cleared the last low hill, the road walls ended, replaced with a long curb slightly more than a span high. Beyond the curb was green grass, green still despite the nearing of harvest.