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.
Scattered individuals walked briskly along the stone-paved walks flanking the avenue, their steps firm and quick. Only one looked toward the lumber wagon, and that was a young mother in a pale blue tunic and trousers, burping a child on her shoulder.
Cerryl smiled but received no response as she turned and resumed walking in the same direction as the wagon. He watched for several moments, but the wagon slowly extended the distance between the woman and Cerryl, and he looked ahead again. To each side of the avenue were houses, large but low houses of a single story, each surrounded by a low wall with a wooden gate. Trees with dark green leaves rose from the courtyards created by the walls, the dark leaves contrasting with the white roofs and walls.
“It’s quiet,” said Cerryl.
“A lot quieter than Lydiar, I dare say. More peaceable, too.”
“Coins. . too,” ventured Cerryl.
“Coins, aye. Always be coins where you find power. Still, can’t say as I exactly like Fairhaven,” Rinfur said with a lowered voice. “Sort of gets on your nerves after a time.” The teamster shrugged, not taking his eyes off the avenue, although he had kept the wagon to a slow walk. “Safe place. Safest city in all Candar. Say you could leave your purse on a wall and come back a day later and find it. Me. . I wouldn’t be trying that, but it be what they say.”
Cerryl’s eyes, slowly adjusting to the glare, looked westward toward the single white tower that rose out of a square that had to have been more than a kay away down the avenue. He could see-or feel-waves of the unseen red-tinged whiteness emanating from the tower, almost like flames and heat from a fire, except that whatever the tower radiated wasn’t hot, not like a fire, anyway. “What’s that?”
“That’s the wizards’ square-their tower. You not be wanting to go there.” Rinfur shivered. “No, ser.”
Cerryl nodded.
The two halves of the avenue split apart into half-circles around a space of green grass, white stone paths, and low spread-leafed trees. A low fountain gurgled in the center of the circle. The outside of the avenue was dotted with shops-a cooper’s, then a coppersmith’s, several shops whose symbols were unfamiliar to Cerryl, then an inn, and a stable.
“This be the artisans’ square, here. You can go round the circle and drive back the way we came. Down that side way we go.” Rinfur eased the team down a street to the right, a side way almost as wide as the main and only street of Hrisbarg. “Fasse’s be the second shop there. Can’t put a wagon before a shop. Have to use the rear courts.”
Cerryl nodded. After what he’d seen at the gates, he had no doubts that the laws of Fairhaven were followed. He glanced back at the grass of the square, vacant except for two toddlers tended by a girl barely older than Cerryl and a white-haired man sitting on a stone bench. Cerryl felt something was missing, yet he hadn’t any idea what that might have been.
As the wagon turned down an alleyway and then rolled into the back courtyard of a shop, a thin man hurried out. Everything about him was thin, Cerryl decided-the twiglike and wispy mustache above narrow lips, the angular face, the skinny shoulders, and the pointed brown boots.
“Greetings, master Fasse.”
“Greetings, ah. . teamster.” Fasse’s eyes flicked from Rinfur to the wagon and then to Cerryl. “Who’s the young fellow? I don’t need another apprentice, you know? Haven’t needed an apprentice for years, thank you.”
“Cerryl knows the woods right well,” drawled Rinfur, a glint in his eye. As Fasse opened his mouth, the driver added, “He be headed to master Tellis in the mom.”
Fasse closed his mouth and nodded abruptly.
“I shouldn’t be telling master Dylert you be needing an apprentice, should I?” asked Rinfur almost belatedly.
“No apprentices,” confirmed Fasse. “Not now. Not ever.”
Rinfur ensured the wagon brake was locked, then inclined his head to Cerryl, who began to loosen the ties on the canvas covering the wood.
“Careful there, young fellow. Don’t let the canvas cut the oak. Even oak can be scarred.” Fasse hurried to the tailboard and unfastened one side as Rinfur loosened the other.
Cerryl folded the canvas and laid it across the wagon seat, then slipped down to the ground and joined the other two at the rear of the wagon.