The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “No one who’s not there is going to believe him immediately?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But when they do… what do we do?”

  “We dig up something else cowardly,” Nylan said. “Assuming Fornal doesn’t insist on waging war in the traditional-and sure to lose-manner.”

  “Each time we bring in something new, he’ll have more difficulty accepting it,” predicted Ayrlyn.

  “You have that right… and how.” Nylan shifted his weight on the lumpy mattress again, rolling into Ayrlyn.

  “Careful there.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Pleasant dreams.”

  In the darkness, the smith shrugged. “I don’t know. I keep dreaming about trees.”

  “You, too? Still?”

  “I take it that trees also infest your dreams?”

  “They aren’t dreams, exactly,” Ayrlyn said slowly. “They don’t feel like dreams. It’s more like I’m seeing something in a new way.”

  “A new way? That has to mean something.”

  “It has already,” she pointed out, half-yawning. “It’s helped with Nesslek and the healing. Maybe there’s something else about the trees that will help.”

  “Trees are going to solve our problem?” The smith shook his head. “Hardly. I just wish I knew what it meant.” He shifted his weight, more gently, and squeezed her shoulder.

  Her lips brushed his neck. “Good night.”

  LXXVIII

  NYLAN PUSHED BACK the floppy hat he’d taken to wearing when working in the sun-except for drilling or riding on patrol with the squads. Already, it was sweat-soaked, and mid-morning had yet to arrive.

  He stirred the mess in the second crock, quickly replacing the earthenware top, and moved to the third crock, where dampness around the base told him that yet another example of his copper work was failing. He forced himself to take a long, slow, deep breath. Why did he always have to learn through his mistakes?

  Because you don’t learn any other way, stupid. He took another long breath, trying to relax tight muscles that seemed to grip him from neck to toe.

  Sylenia, holding Weryl’s hand, slowly walked with the boy along the line of clay crocks toward the well beyond. The yellow-gray dust puffed around her sandaled feet, and her nose wrinkled as she glanced at Nylan. “It smells terrible. Worse than the beer vats in Niset.” .

  “Smee… tah…” Weryl affirmed, abruptly sitting down in the dust.

  “It won’t get better soon.” Nylan eased the crock’s cover back in place. At least, in the summer heat of southern Lornth, things fermented quickly.

  Sylenia bent and took Weryl’s hand, half-urging, half-dragging him to his feet. “Come on. We need to get the water.”

  “Wadah.”

  “Yes, water,” Sylenia agreed.

  Nylan moved to the next crock. He had two bronze-brass distilling containers ready. One needed repairs-a pinhole leak he hadn’t seen or sensed-and the second had no cover. He’d put off finishing that until he saw whether he could even form enough of the tubing he needed.

  The hot wind swept across the yellowed ground, picking up and carrying grit that, day after day, ground itself into all of their skins. Nylan blinked away more grit as the gust of wind died.

  Lewa wrinkled his nose as he approached. “You cook up a demon’s brew, ser Nylan.”

  “It’s just the beginning, Lewa.” Nylan readjusted the soggy hat. “We’ll need a lot more crocks. Or brass containers. I’m really just testing the fermentation with these.”

  “Begging your pardon, ser… for what reason do you stew the fat grass?”

  “Let’s just say that we’re working on another way to get rid of more Cyadorans, a way that doesn’t involve killing as many of our people.”

  “Ah… hmmmm.”

  Nylan answered the expression, and the question that Lewa had not asked, with a friendly smile. “Don’t you think most of the men would rather face fewer of the Cyadorans and have a better chance to prevail?”

  “Ah… yes, ser.” Lewa nodded.

  As Lewa left, Nylan could sense the purposeful steps were headed straight for the regent, with yet another tale of the strangeness of the angels. He took a deep breath and turned from the crocks. Before long, Fornal would be at his elbow, but Nylan hated explaining anything to Lewa, because the armsman invariably got the explanation scrambled.

  As he crossed the dusty ground toward the former chicken coop where Sias shoveled more coal into the crude forge, Nylan looked back at the line of crocks that Sylenia and Ayrlyn and a half squad of levies had gathered from around Syskar.

  He still needed to create tops with tubes in them and tubing and collection systems-if he could.

  “The white blades, ser?” asked Sias when he saw the smith nearing.

  “Unless someone’s broken a blade. Those come first.”

  “No, ser.”

  Grateful for the shade offered even by the rough and split planks of the former chicken coop roof, Nylan set aside the soggy hat and blotted his forehead. Syskar was so hot that there weren’t even any stray chickens—just sand rats and snakes and scattered goats.

  Nylan wondered about the goats. They weren’t supposed to be good for dry grasslands, from what he recalled. He studied the anvil for a moment, then eased the broken Cyadoran blade onto the coals. The hardened bronze had proven easier to work than iron, but also easier to damage and rip.

  “A little more with the bellows,” he called to Sias.

  The armsman began to pump as Nylan extended his senses to the heating blade. After a time, the angel smith extracted the blade section and began to hammer the softer metal around the thin iron rod he had forged from leftover scraps of metal gathered from both Jirec and Kula. He continued to extend his order senses to ensure there were no holes in the metal as a short length of tubing began to emerge.

  There was probably a better way to form copper, bronze, whatever the copper alloy was. The problem was that he didn’t know what it was. His attempts with molds had been a disaster, and he’d tried cold hammering, and hammering out the metal when it was hot, but not hot enough to be easily malleable-and ended up with an uneven sheet, with things like pinhole leaks.

  He had finished not quite a cubit of bronze tubing when the dark figure of Fornal emerged from the squat dwelling that served as lodging for the command staff-such as it was- and strategy center for the Lornian force.

  “Sias, take a break.”

  “Yes, ser.” Sias glanced toward the oncoming regent and circled away from Fornal in making his way to the well.

  Nylan blotted his forehead and waited.

  “What is that for?” asked Fornal, even before he stopped and looked at the tubing.

  “Tubing for a still.”

  The armsleader and regent waited, as if it were Nylan’s patent duty to explain everything.

  “A still. It should turn that glop in a covered copper kettle into something sort of like wine, except we’ll start heating it after that and trying to get it pure enough to burn.”

  “Burn?” Fornal’s eyebrows lifted. “Why would one burn even bad wine?”

  “Incendiary devices. Do you know if any of our levies know anything about glass-blowing? Ayrlyn’s been working on that, but the containers are crude and heavy. It’s a good thing we’ve got most of the materials here… sand, lime…” Nylan stopped as he caught the glazed look in Fornal’s eyes. Too bad everything new gives him that expression.

  “Ser angel… would you explain?”

  “Oh… we’re going to make it hot for the Cyadorans. Very hot. Especially at night.”

  “Ser Nylan,” Fornal said slowly, “I am most glad we are not near the old holders of Lornth. Some were not pleased when Sillek attacked the Jeranyi at night, but burning… they would find that… less than honorable.”

  “I’m not terribly honorable, Fornal,” Nylan said quietly. “I’m interested in doing what I promised, and that means destroying the Cyadoran troops by what
ever means I can with as few casualties as possible for us.”

  “You sound like Lord Sillek.” Fornal’s fingers touched his beard.

  Nylan understood. Sillek had lost the conflict with the holders over honor. “I only saw Lord Sillek once, across a battlefield. Perhaps we had some similarities, but I don’t know. I think I might have liked him, but that’s not something I’m likely to find out.”

  A ghost of a frown crossed Fornal’s face, then vanished. “As long as you kill the white demons-that is what we must do to reclaim all of Lornth.”

  “We’re working on it.” But not precisely in a way to make you happy. Not in a way to make us happy, either.

  After Fornal had crossed the yard and reentered the dwelling, Nylan lifted the hammer again. Sias resumed pumping the bellows without a word or a question, for which Nylan was glad.

  They managed to extend the tubing to two cubits before the next interruption.

  “Ser?” asked a heavyset armsman whom Nylan did not know. “Ser Ayrlyn asked if you could spare a moment to watch her device.”

  “Tell her I’ll be there in a moment.” Nylan continued to hammer the hot copper around the iron rod.

  “Yes, ser.” The armsman left, but Nylan did not look up, concentrating on the metal before him on the anvil.

  When he finished and racked his hammer in the crude holder, he nodded to Sias. “Add some coal, but don’t use the bellows, and then take a break. Don’t go too far, and watch for me to return.”

  The lanky blond nodded. “Ser.”

  The angel smith turned, grabbed the floppy hat, no longer soggy, not after the time spent in the dry furnace that was Syskar, pulled it on, and walked quickly past the shed barracks.

  In the flat expanse to the north of the corral, well away from where the nearest group of horses-joined on a communal tieline-grazed the sparse and browning grass, Ayrlyn waited beside a spindly contrivance that looked like the wooden framework for a cube with two long poles that joined in a half-basket sticking out behind. In the half-basket rested a roughly cylindrical container that shimmered in the pitiless summer sun.

  “Sorry,” Nylan apologized as he hurried up. “You caught me in the middle of a section of tubing.”

  “I figured that.” Ayrlyn offered a smile. “So I sent off Jinwer before we were quite ready. We just got the stones set on the frame base.”

  “What’s in the… the…”

  “Grenade case? Just brackish water. It’s heavier than the alcohol would be, but not that much for something this size. Juusa’s father was a potter. We gave up on glass-blowing. I think it’s probably too thick-walled, but it’s easier to let him see that.” The flame-haired angel gave Nylan a twisted smile.

  The smith understood all too well. “Experts” always knew better-even when they weren’t the ones who flew the ships or rode the power fluxes-or built the stills and catapults.

  Ayrlyn turned. “Ready?”

  “Yes, ser,” answered the two armsmen by the base of the catapult.

  “Fire it.”

  Sprung! The catapult arm straightened, and the clay container flew perhaps eighty cubits, barely getting as high as Nylan’s head. It dropped onto the dusty ground, then bounced along another twenty cubits before coming to rest against a clump of already-browning grass.

  “It’s back to the drawing board,” Ayrlyn said dryly.

  Nylan turned. The catapult had flung itself forward.

  “I need a better way to anchor the back legs. We can’t carry heavy stones around.”

  “The container didn’t break, either, and it has to. Fornal thought I was crazy when I asked about glassblower. Maybe we are.” The smith shrugged.

  So did Ayrlyn.

  Then, they both grinned at each other.

  LXXIX

  AS THE SQUADS rode southward, following the back trail, the sun poured its heat through the green-blue sky.

  Nylan took another long swallow, finishing the water in the second bottle, then recorked it and replaced the bottle in the holder. The heat just baked the moisture out of him, and he was always facing dehydration. He blotted his forehead with his forearm, then half-stood in the saddle, trying to stretch the muscles in his thighs and legs.

  He turned in the saddle. With no breeze, the yellow-gray dust raised by the single squad they had brought died away quickly, and he could see no signs of other riders, such as white lancers. In fact, he saw little except hills covered with browning grass, grass that got sparser with each key they rode southward.

  Riding to his right, Ayrlyn juggled the crude map, her eyes going from map to trail and back again.

  “How are we doing?”

  “If the map and the scouts are right; we should be reaching a stream before too long.”

  “Hope so.” His eyes dropped to the two empty water bottles. A third-still full-was fastened to his saddlebags.

  Ahead, the trail seemed to wind over and around yet another set of brown-grassed hills. With each hill they passed, another set appeared, almost as. if they stretched to a horizon they would never reach. The last tree had been kays behind them, not all that far from Syskar.

  “Have faith,” Ayrlyn said with a laugh.

  “I have faith. Faith that everything will work out in the most difficult manner possible.”

  “That’s skepticism, not faith.”

  “I have faith in skepticism.”

  Tonsar cleared his throat but said nothing.

  From the riders behind came a low hum of words barely above a mumble, words their speakers did not wish to reach their leaders. Nylan could guess at the general tone and content.

  Nylan had drunk a third of the last water bottle, and the sun hung nearly overhead when the trail suddenly dipped into a depression, not quite a gorge because the slopes remained mostly grass-covered, with some smooth boulders protruding in places where the narrow and winding stream had undercut the ground.

  “See?” Ayrlyn grinned at Nylan.

  “So Siplor, he was right,” said Tonsar.

  “Good.” Nylan glanced south and then west, but nothing moved. There were only the brown-covered hills and the sun-and them.

  “Make sure that all the water bottles are filled-upstream from here-and all the mounts fully watered,” ordered Ayrlyn.

  “It’s going to take awhile,” noted Nylan, with a glance at the stream, not more than a cubit wide. “And we’d better use whatever you call that water ordering.”

  “I’d planned to.”

  Tonsar turned his mount and stood in his stirrups. “Watering time! Take turns! Do not foul the water, and fill your bottles upstream. Keep your mounts’ hoofs out of the stream!”

  A low murmuring rose and faded. The burly armsman eased his mount back toward the two angels.

  “This is the last stream, then?” Nylan dismounted and stood on the dusty bank beside a scrubby gray-leafed bush while the mare drank.

  “That’s what the map says,” Ayrlyn said after dismounting. “It vanishes a few kays south of here, and the trail turns west and intersects the main road from Lornth to someplace called Syadtar. The mines are on the road, and I’d guess it was once a trading road before the Cyadorans closed off free trading.”

  Nylan looked at Tonsar.

  The armsman spread both hands. “I do not know. I am from north of Lornth, closer to Carpa. Siplor, he be from a hamlet east of Clynya, and he says that there are no more streams, but…”

  Nylan unstrapped his three water bottles and glanced toward Ayrlyn. “You want to watch the mounts while I refill ours?”

  “You can carry six?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Three water bottles each?” Tonsar balanced on a thin strip of gravel beside where his gray slurped up the stream.

  “It’s cooler where we come from,” said Nylan. “Remember?”

  “But this… this is not even full summer.”

  “I can’t wait,” said Ayrlyn dryly.

  Nylan carried the bottles southward,
upstream, trying to ignore the commotion behind him. “Stop mucking the water, Ungit…”

  “… keep that beast’s ass away from the water…”

  “… take the reins… get water for us both…”

  Whhheeeeee… eeeee…

  Nylan shut out the noise and concentrated on filling each water bottle and using his control of the order fields to ease the residual chaos-bacteria?-from each.

  When they resumed riding, heading westward, Tonsar began to study the horizon, then the trail behind, then the trail ahead, then to stand in the stirrups and peer ahead again. “Settle down, Tonsar,” Ayrlyn suggested mildly. “South of the mines, that is where we will end up,” predicted Tonsar as the short column continued westward on the trail that might have once been a road. “And there will be white demons everywhere.”

  “We’re already south of the copper mines,” Ayrlyn answered, “and we haven’t seen a single white demon. We won’t, either. Not unless we see a huge cloud of dust, and if they have that many riders, they won’t be able to keep up with us.”

  Tonsar pointed westward, toward a spiral of dust. “The white demons… at least we will perish with honor.”

  Ayrlyn’s eyes semiglazed, and she swayed in the saddle as the mare carried her westward and as Nylan eased closer to her. He always worried when she did that.

  After a time, she straightened and turned to the burly armsman. “Tonsar, that’s just a dust devil. Besides, with what we’re working on, if the Cyadorans aren’t afraid of us yet, they will be.”

  Despite the heat, Nylan almost shivered at the healer’s words, words uncharacteristic of a healer, but getting to be more characteristic of Ayrlyn. Was that what Candar was doing to them-turning them harder and colder? Did they have much choice if they wanted to survive?

  He wondered about Istril’s visions… and her faith that Nylan could provide a better life for Weryl. So far… Weryl probably would have been better off in Westwind-but that hadn’t ever been the question. It was what would have happened as the silver-haired boy grew older. But how often did people sacrifice the present for the future? And how wise was that when there might not be a future?