“That’s pretty grim,” she said.
“I feel pretty grim.” Nylan rubbed his forehead, and found that he didn’t have to, that the residual headache he had scarcely been conscious of had vanished. He found himself frowning.
“Order and chaos… balance…” he murmured.
“There’s something there,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “I think we need to stay here for a time. A little while, anyway. Just to see.”
“Maybe you can sing again?”
“I wouldn’t go that far… yet.” Still, a ghost of a smile crept to the corners of her mouth and eyes.
“Is it safe?” His eyes went back to Weryl.
“Is anywhere safe on this world?” Ayrlyn’s response wasn’t an answer, but it was the best either of them could do.
XCVIII
NYLAN GLANCED BACK over his shoulder, and his eyes wanted to twist away from the grove in the valley. This time, knowing what he knew, he resisted the impulse, and took a long look at the grove and at the trees. “It’s gone…”
“It’s still there,” said Buretek. “We just can’t see it. It’s got a magic shield, like the angels said.”
Sylenia, riding between and slightly behind the two angels, nodded. In his seat behind the nursemaid’s saddle, Weryl waved a hand clutched around a small brown pine cone.
The smith glanced at the redheaded healer, whose preoccupied look indicated her thoughts were far from the dusty road leading southeast to Syskar, the Cyadorans, Fornal, and more battles. He took a deep breath.
After two days in and around the grove, while he and Ayrlyn were certainly more rested, neither had learned much more than they had discovered on the first night. The “dreams” or visions or images repeated themselves, with virtually no variation. The grove held the same balance of order and chaos, yet order-and peacefulness-seemed to predominate.
“That’s the key, you know,” Ayrlyn said. “What?”
“Balance.”
“It has been anywhere,” Nylan half-agreed, “but the problem is that human beings don’t accept balance. We may talk about it, but our actions are something else. Human desires for anything-love, power, coins-seem unbounded, and that doesn’t fit with the idea of balance.” He paused as a pain stab of discomfort flicked through his skull. Where was he deceiving himself? “I’m as bad as anyone,” he added. “We needed to survive. We got that. Then we wanted some shelter and comfort. We got that. Then I didn’t want to always worry about what Ryba had in mind…” He shrugged. “It just goes on and on. Sure… putting things in balance would help. But how do we get the Cyadorans to stop trying to take over the rest of Candar? We can’t just tell them that they’re unbalancing things.”
Ayrlyn glanced at the dying scrub tree just off the shoulder of the road. “I don’t know. Not yet. But it’s clear that everywhere, and here more than most places, in the end things do balance.”
Nylan wondered. Did they? Or was the balance that of equalized power? Or did power triumph? Concentrations of power-like Cyador and Westwind-seemed to endure for a long, long time.
XCIX
IN THE DIMNESS of the hot twilight, with the orange glow at their back, the six-and Weryl-rode over the last hill. In the valley below, to the southeast, glimmered a few points of light-torches on the shed barn and the headquarters dwelling.
Against the purpling of the sky, against the openness and sweep of the dark brown hills, with its few lights the camp in the valley at Syskar appeared small, fragile… insignificant. Then again, was anything particularly significant except to human beings who persisted in the search for significance?
Nylan glanced upward, as the still-unfamiliar stars began to appear. How were he and Ayrlyn any different? Wasn’t everything they were trying insignificant? What difference did it really make? Wasn’t Fornal’s belief in honor, even when the black-bearded regent had to know honor was futile, as significant-and perhaps more understandable-as the angels’ efforts to move Lornth toward a less repressive and oppressive society? Especially since honor had a clear meaning?
“They’re both insignificant,” Ayrlyn pointed out quietly. “In the greater scheme of things, anyway. Being human is the struggle to bring meaning into a universe where order and chaos normally create meaningless patterns that resemble a balance.”
“Cynical…” Nylan laughed. “Of course.”
“Wadah, Enyah? Wadah, pease?” begged Weryl plaintively. Sylenia twisted in the saddle to give the boy a swallow from the water bottle.
They did not speak, nor did the three armsmen, on the rest of the ride back to Syskar. Even the sentries only nodded as the group rode slowly into the yard, and unsaddled and groomed their mounts.
Lewa stepped perhaps twenty paces from the barracks, surveyed them, and turned back into the dimness.
Nylan didn’t like the silence, as ominous as the Cyadoran threat, in a different way, but he shouldered his saddlebags, picked up a sleepy Weryl, and started toward their quarters. Nylan and Ayrlyn walked up onto the stoop-hotter than the open yard. Nylan carried Weryl, and Sylenia followed, several steps back. The strap hinges Nylan had replaced creaked as he pushed open the door.
Fornal sat on the sole stool before the rickety table-alone. On the table were a mug, a bottle, the candle with the glass mantle, and a scroll. “Welcome back, angels.” Fornal glanced down at the half-empty bottle on the rickety table, then at his mug. “You would be pleased to know that my coregents appreciated the copper.”
“We are glad to hear that.”
“Ser?” murmured Sylenia.
Nylan turned and eased Weryl into the nursemaid’s arms. With a quick inclination of her head to Fornal, she slipped around the angels and into their room; saddlebags slapped against the door frame before the door shut with a dull clunk.
The angels stepped toward the regent, then dropped onto the bench on the left side of the table.
A low murmuring came from behind the closed door, a lullaby. Nylan smiled faintly, momentarily.
The candle flickered behind its glass mantle with soot thick enough to block much of the dim light cast. The shadows on the blotched walls of the dwelling’s main rooms wavered in the heat of the summer night.
Nylan wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.
“Even I am hot, angel mage,” admitted Fornal.
“You know how we feel about the heat.” Nylan waited, then asked, “What has happened with the Cyadorans?”
“Nothing. They squat there,” Fornal said. “They do not ride forth save in masses, in scores and scores, and their lances and their shields shimmer. Sometimes, they go far enough to raid. We do little. We have killed nearly half their force, and still they have five times the men I do.”
“Cyador’s bigger than Lornth,” Nylan temporized, wondering, fearing, where Fornal’s words were leading.
Ayrlyn watched, her eyes on the regent.
“What do you suggest I do? You are the dark mages. It nears summer-end, and we do not have the mines back. They have fired a dozen hamlets, and they will keep doing so. You counsel patience. My armsmen fight among themselves unless Lewa or Huruc or I watch them every moment.”
Fornal lifted a scroll and handed it to Ayrlyn. “Read this. Even my patient sire and my practical sister share my worries. Even after the copper, even after we have reduced the forces of the white demons by half, the holders question the levies and the tariffs… because they see no results. We have not reclaimed the mines.” Fornal snorted. “The holders ask if the angels are advising us to bleed Lornth dry in the Grass Hills… so that the dark angels may feast on the corpse of Lornth. Did I not warn you about our holders?”
“You did. Weren’t they the ones who caused Sillek’s death?” asked Nylan.
“And if they are not satisfied, they will cause ours,” suggested the regent.
The redhead unrolled the scroll. As he watched her read, Nylan could see the darkness in her eyes, and the circles beneath them. She finished and handed the scroll to Nylan.
Nylan read the dispatch quickly, his mind catching the seemingly temperate phrases that hinted at more, far more.
… holders have requested that the Regent Fornal seek a speedy return of the mines or another alternative that does not require levies needed for the forthcoming harvest…
… the Lady Ellindyja and the Lady Erenthla have both reported that a number of young women have fled to the Westhorns… and their consorts and holders petition the regency council… feel that such problems cannot be ignored because of one set of mines in distant southern Lornth…
… Suthyan traders, led by Lygon of Bleyans, are increasing the prices of iron stocks…
Nylan rolled the scroll back up and handed it to the regent. Fornal had translated Zeldyan’s-the hand was feminine- seemingly temperate phrases accurately enough, if with his own twists.
“So, angels? Has your magely journey revealed some answer that I may provide to my men? Or my coregents? Or the holders of Lornth?” Fornal finished the last of the bottle and stared at Nylan. “I know that you have done much, yet that is not enough. As harvest nears, the clamor for the return of the levies will grow, and so will the numbers of white lancers. The holders will claim that our fight has been worthless and without honor. Can you offer me any hope?”
“Perhaps,” said Nylan. Did Fornal really think they could just come up with an easy magical solution? Or was he as frustrated as the two angels? “In the morning, we’ll tell you how we’ll destroy all the Cyadorans in Lornth.”
Fornal rose with a sweeping bow. “I look forward to that. You do not know how I look forward to that.” With the precise steps of a man who had drunk too much and knew it, he walked slowly, carefully, to his room, closing the door behind him.
“You were right,” Ayrlyn said tiredly.
“I was?”
“About people not being interested in balance, or ever their long-term self-interest.”
“Fornal can’t find an answer, and he knows it. So he’s shifting all the responsibility to us.”
“Isn’t that human nature?” Ayrlyn looked at the candle and the sooty glass mantle. “I won’t clean it.”
“No one asked you to. I cleaned it the last time.”
“Nylan, we aren’t keeping score.”
“Sorry.” He wiped his forehead once more.
“You said we’d have a plan. What do we do? Burn up more Cyadoran mounts, and get everyone even angrier?”
Nylan shook his head. “We have to get something in the grenades that clings and will burn through timbers.” He paused. “I don’t know. More wax, animal fats? I’m an engineer, not a chemist.”
“It would have to burn hotter,” said Ayrlyn. “Much hotter.”
“More experiments… and we’ll need something that will act as an oxidizer.” Nylan took a deep breath. “Just so the horse-lovers of Candar won’t be too offended.”
“That’s not the only reason, and you know it.”
“No,” he admitted. “We need to upgrade what we’ve got distilled and improve it enough to make a larger mess out of the Cyadoran base, and the barracks and the soldiers. That way, it might just be enough to push them out of Lornth.”
She winced.
“I know.” And he did. They could burn the entire base, and it wouldn’t solve the problem.
“For now. It might buy time. They might retreat back to Syadtar or wherever in Cyador,” the redhead ventured, “but they’ll be back with an army that will make what we faced on the Roof of the World look small.”
“And they’ll gather enough force to burn all of Lornth to a crisp?”
She nodded.
“Well… that would stop all the holders from complaining and believing that they can just negotiate some sort of agreement with Cyador and that life will go on and they can still abuse their women and have their limited honorable battles-”
“Nylan… in a way, they’re right. At least about the honorable battles. So long as they just fought each other, it provided a rough balance…”
He saw where she was going, and nodded. “Except that Cyador has its own ideas about social balance, and so does Ryba.”
“And Sillek and Zeldyan have been caught in the middle. And so are we,” she added.
“Do we really want to make this worse? By blowing up or firing the Cyadoran base?” Nylan blew out the candle. The flickers and the shadows were harder on his eyes than the darkness. He wondered how much dissolving candle wax into the distillate would help… and what else was handy that they could add to that demon’s mix.
“I’d rather run back to the grove and hide,” Ayrlyn confessed. “But that won’t work. Not for long.”
Not for very long at all.
Whose thought was it? Did it matter?
They turned toward their room, steps slow and deliberate in the dark.
C
TRIENDAR CONCENTRATED ON the glass in the middle of the polished white stone table. As droplets of perspiration popped out on his forehead, the white mists swirled across the glass.
Finally, they wreathed an image, and the wizard swallowed. “This is for younger wizards… gets harder these days.”
As the traders had said, a black stone tower reared against the mighty western peaks, and the plumes of smoke from the chimneys bore witness to its inhabitants. So did the stone roads that linked an outbuilding with smoke from its square chimney, and a stone bridge. A line of unfinished low walls on the west side of the black tower testified to the growth of the angel holding.
“It is small,” said Lephi, almost dismissively.
“Small, yes,” Triendar reflected, letting the image fade from the glass. “But it continues to grow. It did not exist three years ago. A year ago, they defeated two armies. And your lancer officers are suffering great losses to the barbarians who could not have touched them a year ago.”
“Barbarian armies, of less than a corps of the Mirror Lancers,” pointed out the Protector of the Steps to Paradise, Seer of the Rational Stars.
“Exactly,” answered the slim, white-haired wizard. “Your lancers, you say, have counted no more than fivescore barbarians-if that. You have lost more than tenscore lancers, and more than that in fine mounts, supply trains, and an entire shipment of copper ingots. What has changed? Have the barbarians changed?”
“How could barbarians change? They never have.” Lephi stood and turned toward the open archway that framed the west balcony. The shipworks lay beyond, out of sight.
“Then they should not be able to defeat the Mirror Lancers.”
“You and Themphi, with your words and logic.”
Triendar lifted his shoulders, then dropped them. “What would you have me say? That Majer Piataphi is handily defeating the Lornians? That the dark angels do not exist? That the Accursed Forest is not threatening to reclaim all of the east of Cyador?”
“Enough. What would you have me do? Throw my hands into the air and cower under the malachite throne and say I can do nothing? Am I to let all Candar pour into Cyad and destroy civilization? No, that will not be!”
Triendar rubbed his smooth-shaven chin.
“Well? You can tell your emperor what not to do. Tell me what actions will best preserve Cyador.”
“Over time, Mightiness, nothing will preserve Cyador.” Triendar smiled ironically. “For now… I would let the Accursed Forest grow as it will, and bring your might against the barbarians and their angel allies. From the days of the Rational Stars have the angels foreshadowed turmoil and trouble. Even the Accursed Forest can grow but a few kays a year, while a barbarian army can take far more than that.”
“That is what I said. You rejected my words.”
“That was as a mage. You asked what I would do were I you.”
“Cyad will return to glory. It will. Have all your mages gather in Syadtar, and I will order all the lancers and the foot and all manner of weapons and supplies to be gathered there, and the barbarians will feel the might of Cyador.”
CI
NYLAN
SAT ON the end of the bench in the shade, finishing the last of the hard bread and cheese. Then he swallowed the last drops of water in his mug and looked toward the well. His forehead was already oozing sweat, although the sun had barely cleared the eastern hills.
He glanced at the smithy area, and at the rough shed farther away from both barracks and smithy, where were racked all too many of the makeshift grenades-with the emulsified mixture that seemed all too close to jellied naphtha-at least in effect. He frowned.
“You wince every time you look there,” Ayrlyn said quietly.
“So do you. Our success… another triumph in bringing total warfare to Candor.” He turned his eyes from the shed and its ceramic grenades to the well, where Sylenia and Weryl drew water. Beyond the two was the corral, with what appeared to be additional mounts milling in the group.
“Our choices are limited,” she pointed out.
“Looks like Fornal got some reinforcements.” His fingers touched the hilt of the blade at his waist, not that he really wanted to use it if Fornal got nasty. But Fornal had been on edge ever since they had returned, ever since the scroll from Lornth, watching as Nylan and Ayrlyn had struggled with mixtures and compounds. That wouldn’t have bothered Nylan, except that when Fornal was uneasy, he seemed to want to rely on personal combat to settle everything. Then, was Nylan overreacting?
Probably, but you’ve been feeling the need for the blade lately. Why?
“Not that many reinforcements.” Sitting beside him on the bench, Ayrlyn sipped the bitter root tea that Nylan had given up on a good season earlier.
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