Cerryl had trouble seeing the city ahead against all the whiteness, a white that seemed somehow brighter than it should have been even with the clear sky and the glare of the late afternoon sun in his face. The glare seemed to intensify as the lumber wagon rolled closer.
“Ahead be the gates,” explained Rinfur, gesturing almost directly in front of the wagon, down the avenue of white stone wide enough for at least four wagons abreast.
Cerryl tried to see where Rinfur pointed, but the sun hung just above the horizon, and looking westward only left Cerryl with a headache and an image of blinding whiteness from the sun off the white of the road.
Rinfur began to rein in the team, slowing the wagon gradually until it creaked to a stop behind a mule cart piled with pottery. In front of the mule cart was another wagon, a small one drawn by a single bony horse and filled with gourds or squashes. The squash wagon stood just short of a small white stone building outside the gates. The stone gates did not seem that tall to Cerryl, not more than ten or twelve cubits high, not particularly impressive for a city that ruled, in one form or another, much of Candar.
The two white-clad soldiers or guards stepped up to the driver of the squash wagon, inspected the wagon, poked desultorily at the squashes, and motioned the farmer past the gates. The mule wagon creaked up to the gates, and Rinfur eased the lumber wagon forward but had to touch the brake to ensure the wagon stopped completely.
A squealing continued after the lumber wagon slowed. Cerryl turned. A coach and a wagon had lined up behind them. The coach, dark gray with a pair of grays, was driven by a teamster in gray as well. The driver avoided Cerryl’s eyes. Behind the coach was another wagon, but the coach blocked Cerryl’s view, and he looked back toward the gates.
The two guards had stepped up to the driver of the mule cart. One gestured at the medallion. The driver gestured, shrugging as if he did not understand.
Cerryl strained to hear the words.
“. . . your pass is two years old . . .”
“I did not know, ser.” The cart driver shrugged, looking at the soldiers helplessly.
“You knew. Don’t lie to us.” The taller soldier took the driver by the arm and pulled him off the cart.
“Handlers!” called the second guard. At his word, two men jumped from somewhere and unhitched the mule, leading it away down a lane to the east toward a low structure. A stable? Cerryl wondered, still looking at the unattended cart of wood and pottery.
Whhsttt! Whhhstt! Two firebolts flared from the top of the guard tower, enveloping the cart. When Cerryl’s eyes cleared and the flames had died away, all that remained before the gates was a calf-high pile of white dust, sifting back and forth in the light breeze.
Cerryl managed to keep from swallowing as he could half-see, half-feel the currents of red-tinged white energy that swirled around the gates, energies apparently unseen by anyone save the mages who had employed them—and Cerryl.
Two men in chains appeared from the gate, one bearing a broom, the other a scoop and two large buckets. Almost before Cerryl could swallow, the ashes and the men in chains were gone, and the soldier was motioning for Rinfur to pull up the lumber wagon.
Cerryl turned to Rinfur.
“It happens, young fellow. See why you not be crossing the white mages?” Rinfur chucked the reins gently, just enough to get the team to take a dozen steps or so and bring the wagon up to the white guard building.
The two white-clad soldiers stepped away from the white stone curb, just as they had with the wagon and the cart, almost as if nothing had happened. One inspected the medal on the wagon side. The other looked at Rinfur. “Goods? Destination?”
“White oak from Dylert, the millmaster of Hrisbarg. The wood be going to Fasse, the cabinet maker off the artisans’ square.” Rinfur’s words were polite, even, and practiced.
How often had the teamster carried white oak to Fairhaven?
The second soldier’s eyes lingered on Cerryl for a moment, then passed on, dismissing him as scarcely worthy of scrutiny, before lifting the canvas in the rear and studying the stacked woods. Then he nodded to the other soldier in white. “Wood.”
The first soldier stepped back and nodded. “You can go.”
“Thank you,” answered Rinfur politely.
Cerryl managed to keep from swallowing until the wagon was rolling again, past the gates and down the avenue. Shops and dwellings were set back from the avenue, and the avenue itself was divided so that on the side taken by Rinfur, all the carts and wagons and riders traveled toward the center of Fairhaven.
From what Cerryl could see, though, more wagons, empty wagons, were departing, heading for the gates through which he and Rinfur had just passed, their wheels rumbling on the whitened granite paving stones.