The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Would we had more such highwaymen.” Gethen snorted.

  “They may yet suffice.”

  “You have faith in the angels, yet we have heard naught.” Gethen stood and walked to the serving table where he filled a goblet, not with the greenjuice, but with a dark wine. “The demons must be nearing, and we hear little. I must leave for Rohrn before long.”

  “How soon, my sire?”

  “No more than a few days.”

  “So soon?”

  “So late.”

  “So late, yet I must have faith.” She set the goblet on the side table, leaned over, and disengaged Nesslek’s busy fingers from where he picked at the ancient green silk border of the chair’s upholstery. “What else is there? We have no coins left. No way to raise more levies beyond that poor handful you take. Our holders are openly grumbling, and the harvest has been poor.”

  “Not so poor as for the mutters we hear.”

  “The Lady Ellindyja?”

  “Some still visit her,” admitted Gethen. “We cannot remove her.”

  Zeldyan lifted Nesslek into her lap. “A poor patrimony for you, my son, and much because your grand-dame was overly concerned about that of your father.”

  “That is cruel, especially to tell your son,” offered Gethen. “It is true. Would you have me lie to him? Even as his grand-dame destroys his own patrimony out of spite and pettiness? Truth may yet be his only weapon.”

  “Truth be never enough. Cold iron-that be the only weapon that a lord can depend on. Wizards and mages and trade-they come and they go. Cold iron remains. To the cold iron we do not have.” The gray-haired regent took a deep swallow.

  Zeldyan hugged Nesslek until he squirmed, then set her son back on the carpet beside his wooden blocks. She looked at the goblet, but did not drink.

  CXXVI

  SYLENIA CARRIED OUT the provisions bag and set it on the rear stoop. She glanced at the mid-afternoon sun that seemed to duck in and out of the puffy gray and white clouds scudding from the northeast. “To begin travel so late in the day… ?”

  “This time we’ll travel more by night, until we get out of Cyador, anyway.” Nylan checked the girths for Sylenia’s saddle, then readjusted Weryl’s seat, stopping to wipe his forehead. While the area in and around the forest was cooler than the Grass Hills, even with the cooling of the trees the harvest season was far hotter than mid-summer on the Roof of the World-or anywhere else in two universes that he could remember offhand, at least outside of Candar. “I’m still not up to any battles.”

  “You could handle them better.” Ayrlyn did not look up from where she loaded the pack mare.

  “Maybe.” Of that, Nylan wasn’t exactly certain. Theoretically, he supposed he could figure out some way to balance things, but the gap between theory and practice was awfully wide, wider in many ways than advanced power system operations and engineering theory had been.

  “I don’t want to leave.” Ayrlyn held the saddlebag in her hands, almost as if she had been halted by an outside force. Nylan understood. For the first time in years, if not ever, they weren’t surrounded by all of the unseen imbalances that had rocked their lives from one side to the other. Already, they had begun to adjust themselves to the forest’s requirement for balance, and when Nylan extended his senses to look at Ayrlyn, he could see the changes, almost, it seemed, on the cellular level. While some changes appeared in Sylenia, Ayrlyn and he-and Weryl-appeared vastly different. Was that because he had been a power engineer? Or Ayrlyn a comm officer? Because the forest had reached out to them? Or they to it? “It’s not paradise.”

  “I still don’t want to leave.” This feels… closer to home…

  They turned to each other and embraced.

  “Stupid…” murmured Ayrlyn in his ear. “How… a forest… feels like home…”

  “Does, doesn’t it?” He squeezed her more tightly for a moment, then slowly released her.

  “In some ways I feel as you, lady,” added Sylenia. “But there is Tonsar-”

  “And there’s still the problem of the Cyadorans. Remember all those burned patches? Sooner or later they’ll be back to deal with the forest.” Especially if we don’t deal with them-if we can…

  “I know,” sighed Ayrlyn, “and we made a promise.” A promise…

  It wasn’t just the words, Nylan understood, all too well, but the chaos created within themselves by failing to keep their commitments. Anyone who had to deal with order fields, he was coming to understand-possibly too late and too slowly-had to live a life somehow in balance. And unkept promises were not good for balance.

  At least, that was how it seemed to him.

  “Me, too,” said Ayrlyn. “We’re in this together.”

  He smiled at her, taking in the warmth that radiated from her, the warmth he’d been blind to for too long on the Roof of the World. Then he walked over and lifted the provisions bag from the stoop.

  Sylenia turned and reentered the Cyadoran dwelling, presumably to reclaim Weryl.

  Nylan stood and surveyed the dwelling, the smooth pale walls, thinking about the ceramic stove, the tile floors, the apparent cleanliness-and the chaos behind its creation.

  CXXVII

  THE STARS WINKED on and off as the clouds slipped across the night sky, covering one unfamiliar point of light and uncovering another, all the time that Nylan and Ayrlyn made their way north along the empty highway. Only the muffled sound of the horses’ hoofs echoed through the night as the four rode closer to the river and the brick bridge.

  The smell of the fields, and the faintly acrid odor of something that had been cut drifted across the road on the light breeze.

  “The beans, they have harvested,” confirmed Sylenia.

  “Wadah… cans?”

  “You just had some.” Sylenia turned in the saddle and, twisting her body, offered Weryl the water bottle. He pushed it away, and the nursemaid recorked it and replaced it in the holder without a word.

  Nylan doubted he would have been that temperate, son or no son.

  When they passed the crossroads where they had confronted the Cyadoran patrol, not even a lingering sign of chaos remained. The engineer glanced around, his ears alert for any noise, but the only sounds were insects, ?. soft bird call, and the breathing and hoofs of the horses.

  As they neared the river, neither Nylan’s eyes nor senses .could distinguish any movements or or beyond the bridge, a dark outline above the darker water and against the starry sky. “Quiet,” murmured the redhead.

  The mounts’ hoofs clacked, if not loudly, not softly on the brick pavement of the arched three-piered structure that spanned the deep and smooth-flowing water that appeared black under the cold stars, a blackness darker than the unlit and silent town on the north side.

  Infrequently scattered points of reflected starlight dotted the smooth dark surface of the river-wider than Nylan recalled. Even centuries after the Old Rationalist planoforming, the chaotic white-red hints of violence seethed beneath the ground and beneath deep and slow-flowing river waters, the unseen line between what had been and what now was as clear and implacable as ever.

  And I… we’re… going to harness that?

  “Yes,” answered Ayrlyn.

  “I’d better start working out the practical details.” Especially since I haven’t the faintest idea how.

  “I have every confidence in you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Riding two by two between the stone walls, they reached the top of the span, where the echo of hoofs seemed to reverberate into the night. Yet no lights appeared in any buildings on the north side of the bridge.

  Downstream, the fractionally darker shadows that were piers loomed above the north side of the water, and a solitary dog barked… and barked. Nylan tried not to stiffen, wondering who would come to investigate, but no lights appeared near the piers and the dog and the clack of hoofs began to echo oft the brick buildings once they entered the town proper.

  “It’s spooky.” Ayrlyn’s voi
ce was low. “Like the world outside their walls doesn’t exist at night.”

  “They have to shut it out,” whispered Nylan, “but that makes it easier for us.”

  The open-columned marketplace was empty-yet unbarred and unguarded, and across the street, the water splashed quietly down the sculpted tree fountain, water holding the faintest glow. Some sort of chaos?

  “The town still doesn’t smell,” Nylan said.

  “You want it to?”

  “No. The only thing I’ve been able to smell is harvested beans, and a dampness around the river. No flowers… no garbage… no… nothing…”

  “It does seem odd.”

  “Better no smell than the smell of Lornth by the old wharfs,” suggested Sylenia dryly.

  Nylan wondered. Cyador was clean and ordered, but how high was the price for such cleanliness-and how much force had been required, and still was?

  Too much…

  But how many people preferred order at any cost?

  CXXVIII

  SO NUMEROUS WERE the horses that the entire countryside rumbled like a massive drum. The white uniforms spread across the mottled brown and green of the grasslands so that the hills looked as though early winter had fallen upon them.

  Behind the lancers and their horses came the foot, rows upon rows, white and well dressed out even for all the kays they had marched. Behind them rolled the legions of wagons-supply wagons, armorers’ wagons, and the glistening wagons of the marshal’s equipage.

  Behind the van rode Marshal Queras, Majer Piataphi, and the white mages. Triendar squinted from beneath a broad and floppy white hat. Themphi’s face was red and blistered, while Fissar bounced in his saddle.

  The van had slowed at the ridge line that overlooked a lower-lying and greener valley.

  “There are the grasslands barbarians!” announced Queras. On the far north side of the valley stood a settlement, flanking a large pond or small lake. To the west, above the grassy swale that connected the two ridges, waited a dark mass of riders under the fir tree banners of Jerans.

  As the Cyadorans watched, the Jeranyi horse wheeled, formed a wedge, and then plunged down through the swale and up onto the west end of the ridge, toward the left flank of the advancing Cyadoran Mirror Lancers, the drum of hoofbeats echoing on the sunbaked grasslands.

  “To the left!” ordered Piataphi, spurring his mount toward the van that had begun to turn.

  The white-bronze trumpet sounded its triplets, and the shields lifted, flashing light spears into the Jeranyi ranks, and the white lances leveled as the massed Cyadoran force slowly swung around. Light spears winked from the polished shields, turning the front ranks of the Jeranyi into a blaze of reflections. Majer Piataphi reached the front rank of the lancers and lifted his sabre again.

  The day filled with the clash of blades and lances, sabres and shortswords, and the dark knot of Jeranyi appeared ever smaller as the lines of white-clad armsmen swelled, as did the clangor.

  Themphi stared as bodies fell from bloodstained saddles; Triendar shook his head ever so slightly, so slightly that the floppy hat barely moved. Fissar, pale white, looked at the small lake, well away from the blood, and swallowed convulsively.

  CXXIX

  FROM HER MOUNT beside Nylan’s, Ayrlyn raised her eyebrows. “You all right?”

  “Sorry.” Nylan flushed at the growling from his stomach. “Sylenia’s culinary inventions have definitely kept us from starving, but the side effects are…” Rather than finish the sentence he never should have begun, he glanced to the west, at a hillside that had rapidly become all too typical, a patchwork of brown and black and gray.

  So far, all the holdings that they had passed since entering southern Lornth were ashes, black lumps in the midst of blackened grass that stretched for kays around even the most humble of hovels. Four days of scattered ashes and cinders, and more scattered ashes and cinders.

  “We’re eating, and we don’t have to stop to forage,” Ayrlyn pointed out.

  Nylan wished he’d said nothing.

  “Might have been better.” Ayrlyn grinned.

  “You would eat ashes were it not-” began the nursemaid.

  “I’m sorry. I know.” Nylan sniffed the air as the mare carried him up the long incline. “Something’s burning.”

  “Grass.”

  “More than grass. More than just a holding.” The engineer glanced at Ayrlyn.

  The redhead’s eyes glazed over, and she half-slumped in the saddle.

  Nylan slowed his marc to match the slower pace of the half-attended chestnut that Ayrlyn rode.

  “Gwasss… wadah, pease?” Weryl coughed after his request.

  “You are not thirsty,” Sylenia informed her charge.

  Nylan suspected that Weryl just wanted to talk, but, precocious as his son appeared to be, his vocabulary was still rather limited. So he asked for water, and more water.

  “There was a town ahead. Clynya, maybe, but it’s hard to tell.” Ayrlyn shivered and straightened in the saddle.

  “Hard to tell?” Although he asked, Nylan had a feeling that he knew what she meant.

  “Exactly. You know.”

  He did-the town had been burned the way the holdings they had ridden past had been.

  They reined up at the top of the hills and looked northward. Nylan glanced across the blackened expanse, kays and kays, on each side of the river. Smoke still swirled up from blackened heaps. Was the smoldering mass on the right side of the river all that was left of the barracks where they had stayed?

  Along with acridness of ashes and cinders came the odor of charred meat. Only the thin plumes of grayish smoke moved in the afternoon heat, rising in thin spirals-except for a single figure that might have been a dog darting along what had been the road through Clynya.

  “Clynya? This be Clynya?” asked Sylenia in a choked voice.

  “We think so.” Nylan studied what had been the barracks and the stable, where even the collapsed sod roof seemed, if his eyes were reliable from the distance, to smolder.

  “They are demons…”

  Nylan nodded, absently wondering again how a people who could build such clean and advanced homes could so consciencelessly destroy whole towns and their inhabitants. Ayrlyn had once said that technology enabled mercy, but the Cyadorans seemed less merciful than their lower-tech neighbors, rather than more.

  “Because they don’t believe outsiders are real people.” Ayrlyn cleared her throat.

  “And because they understand that force is the only true arbiter?”

  “Probably.” Ayrlyn spoke dismissively, and Nylan felt her feelings, both her acceptance that people relied on force and her general but intense disgust that it had to be so.

  “The Cyadorans and Fornal speak the same language in that respect. Iron, cold iron, is the master of all.” He flicked the mare’s reins. Whatever they decided, sitting and watching the remnants of Clynya smolder wasn’t going to further their efforts. “Now what? Keep riding?”

  “Any better ideas?”

  He shook his head. Even the dog-if it had been a dog- had vanished, and only the smoke swirled on the east side of the river. “How long ago, do you think?”

  “A day, maybe two.”

  Why had everything taken so long? Why had he been so dense? And now, even if they caught up with the Cyadoran hordes… what could they do?

  “We couldn’t have gotten here much quicker. Try to remember that,” Ayrlyn said.

  “That’s easy to say.” And I still don’t know how to stop them…

  “Use the imbalance… like you said.” Ayrlyn eased her chestnut closer to his mare as they continued down the road toward the ruins of Clynya.

  “For destruction?” Nylan rubbed his neck, then eased his right hand behind the leather straps of the blade harness and tried to massage his stiff left shoulder.

  “You’re the one who keeps pointing out that people only respect force.”

  “I have trouble with that.”

  “Y
ou don’t want to become like Ryba,” Ayrlyn said.

  “No.”

  “Using force doesn’t mean you have to glory in it or flaunt it.” Ayrlyn reached across the space between mounts, leaning sideways in the saddle for a moment so her fingers could squeeze the wrist of his rein hand. “Anyway, we have to figure out how to use that imbalance first.”

  Nylan nodded. If they didn’t use what they knew to survive, morality would become quickly irrelevant. The problem was that, having opted for survival, most survivors in Candar never seemed to regain their morality.

  “That bothers you.”

  “Absolutely. I know I’m no better than anyone else, maybe not so good. So how can I believe it when I promise myself I won’t change the way Ryba did?”

  “You’re not the same.”

  Nylan would have liked to hope so, but self-justification was a specialty of human beings, and he was more than conscious of being all too human, of seeking self-justification all too easily.

  CXXX

  THE LOW CHIRP of crickets or grasshoppers or cicadas or the Candarian equivalent filled the evening. Nylan burped as he settled onto the grass uphill from their camp. He didn’t know whether his indigestion came from the slimy wasol roots or the filling but heavy squash bread. All he knew was that his guts felt like they contained lead, and he hadn’t eaten all that much. He had the feeling that the orange loaves were endless, that Sylenia had been so enchanted with the ceramic oven that she had baked enough for an entire squad for seasons.

  “Only half a squad.” Ayrlyn slipped through the dimness and sat down beside him by the small stand of scrub oak bushes that shielded the hollow in the ridge where Weryl snored softly and Sylenia lay.

  The scrub oaks were all that passed for cover on the hills flanking the river plain. They’d taken the hill road because Ayrlyn’s wind scouting had indicated the hill road was more direct and because that way they could slip past the slower-moving Cyadoran force that followed the river road. Tomorrow, she’d said.