“Tomorrow.” Ayrlyn shifted her weight, trying to get comfortable on the hard ground.
“What are we going to do if they find us-or some of their scouts do?”
“I was going to ask you that. You are the engineer, and I do trust your feelings.”
“I appreciate the trust, but I haven’t been all that successful in applying engineering-”
“You managed to power and control the laser to build Tower Black, and I don’t think that was just technology or luck.” Ayrlyn patted his shoulder gently.
“This is different.”
“How?”
“There’s no technological basis at all.”
“It still has to be a system. I’m quoting an engineer. A very good engineer.”
“Thanks. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He just thought he did.” Nylan coughed gently and shifted his weight. The ground was hard.
“You mentioned the separation in the ground,” she prompted.
“It’s almost a power differential. And theoretically, if there’s a power or an energy imbalance between two forces, there has to be a way to convert that imbalance into usable power.” He shrugged. “I just haven’t figured out the mechanism for doing it.”
“You sound like an engineer, but maybe this is simpler.”
“Maybe.” Nylan wasn’t convinced. Nothing was ever simpler than it seemed. Not in his experience, and when it was, there was usually an incredible price to pay. Add to that that they’d left the forest before he’d really had time to work things out because they both knew that time was short and hoped that they could puzzle it out while they traveled.
He snorted softly to himself, wondering if their “puzzling” would leave them even more open to white wizards. Then, he had to hope that the wizards were either farther away or concentrating on the battles. Just like him, they couldn’t do everything at once. He hoped.
The insect chirping died away for a moment, and Nylan glanced around, extending his perceptions into the darkness. He smiled as he sensed a foxlike predator creeping after some sort of ground-dwelling rodent.
The rodent bolted for its hole, and the fox pawed at the ground for a time, then slipped downhill and toward the valley.
“It wasn’t a fox,” Ayrlyn said. “It was something like a coyote, except it was fox-sized.”
“Call it a foxote?”
“It probably has a local name that we don’t know.”
“Probably.”
Nylan looked skyward, into the cloudless evening and the unknown stars that glittered as impersonally as ever.
“In the forest, does the order balance the chaos? Or is chaos balanced by order?” Ayrlyn asked into the silence.
“What’s the diff-” He paused. “Oh…” He swallowed. “Well… order provides both a balance and… I’d guess you’d call it an insulator or separator.”
“If that’s so, then isn’t chaos more powerful? Ideally, I mean?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, tugging on a long and dry stem of grass. “My guess is that in larger concentrations that would be so, but as you break down chaos into smaller and smaller fragments, order gets progressively more effective.” The stem broke, and Nylan absently chewed the end, then put it aside as his tongue tingled with a bitter taste.
“What if you tied up all the chaos?”
“You’d end up tying up all the order. But that’s not our problem.” He sighed. “Someday someone may have to deal with that, and I wish them well, but we’re nowhere near that. I’m just trying to figure out-”
“How about experimenting? In little bits?”
Of course, that was what all his talk had been about-trying to avoid, subconsciously, actually plunging in. What all that white energy could do terrified him.
“It is a little awesome.”
Nylan laughed softly. “A little awesome?” He turned and hugged her. “I love your understatements. A little awesome.” He laughed again.
“I’m glad you find me amusing.”
“A little awesome?”
“Nylan.”
He closed his mouth. Did she know? Did she have any idea of the power that lay beneath Candar?
“I guess I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“It scares me.” The smith shook his head. “It scares me a lot.”
“You can do it.” Ayrlyn reached out and squeezed his right hand. “We can do it.” We can.
“I just don’t know.” Still, her warmth and her willingness to share the risk warmed him, and he squeezed her hand in return.
“What if you just used the order lines, like a pipe?”
Nylan frowned for a moment. While it might not work, that sort of experiment wouldn’t be that hard, sort of like the way in which he’d held the laser together at the end.
“You can, you know,” she said, quietly.
He wasn’t sure, but the only way to find out was to try. He reached beneath the ground, his senses extending until they touched the chaos/order boundary.
“I can’t follow you, not very far,” said Ayrlyn.
“Can’t follow you very far on the winds, either,” he grunted. Already his forehead had begun to perspire. With as gentle a touch as possible, he urged, coaxed, encouraged the order lines to turn toward the surface, reforming them in one small area into a tube, except it was more like an open-ended cone.
He swallowed as the tip of the unseen cone touched the top of the ground. “Now what?”
“You have to break the circuit?”
That wasn’t it, not exactly-more like creating a ground in the air, or something like it. He winced as the power sink, or whatever it was he had formed, seemed to glow. He could see his boots with his eyes, and not just his senses.
Whhhhhssstttt!! A jet of fire-was it fire?-exploded out of the ground, turning the night into dawn, and an unheard screaming slashed through Nylan’s skull.
The engineer swallowed, his eyes closing involuntarily against the light, against the energy, against the heat. His mouth was instantly dry, his heart pounding. The line of fire rose higher until it had to have been nearly ten cubits high- a fountain of chaos-fire brighter than the sun.
“There!” Ayrlyn had closed her eyes against the burning light.
The engineer forced his senses back out, grasping for the order cone. He squeezed, prodded, and closed the tip of the cone, letting the boundary layer drop back into place, in effect damping the release of chaos.
“Whewww…” he sighed, his eyes still closed, sparks and flashes still sparking across them, though the darkness of night had fallen again. He rubbed his eyelids and then massaged his temples.
“You could say that,” added Ayrlyn.
“Lightning! Was that lightning?” Sylenia demanded, sitting bolt upright on her bedroll. “How could there be lightning? There is no storm.”
“Don’t worry, Sylenia,” Nylan lied hoarsely. “We’re experimenting. Just experimenting.” He swallowed.
“Experimenting? What is that? You are making lightnings from the ground? That is experimenting?”
In a way the nursemaid’s statement wasn’t a bad analogy, since most lightning did result from a power buildup and disparity between a cloud and the ground, but the engineer didn’t want to get into that. “There won’t be any more strange lights. Not tonight.”
“You are sure?”
“I am sure.” Nylan blotted a forehead that was both hot and cold. Suddenly, he felt like he reeked, reeked of sweat and of sheer terror.
“He won’t do it again,” Ayrlyn added.
“Thank you, healer.” Sylenia lay back on her bedroll, murmuring just loud enough for the angels to hear, “… bad when they fling blades through armor. Now… now they bring fires from the ground… what would Tonsar say? Oh… he would say much…”
“He would, too,” whispered Nylan.
“You,” said Ayrlyn. “You have been known to say more than a few words when-”
“Enough.” The smith touched her chin, t
hen covered her lips with his, holding her tightly, letting her hold him, trying not to shiver too much.
What might happen on the morrow was left unsaid, unthought. So was the possibility that they had alerted every wizard in kays. But they were short of time, knowledge, and experience-and very alone and exposed.
CXXXI
TWO BLACK VULCROWS flapped up from the road ahead, black forms outlined momentarily against the green-blue sky. Nylan leaned forward slightly in the saddle and squinted to see what they had left behind.
For once, a breeze blew across the hills, out of the northeast, rustling the dry grass and the scattered trees and scrub oaks. The wind carried a residual coolness from the Westhorns where Ryba and the guards of Westwind, Nylan supposed, were doubtless forging another link in the chain of destiny that would change all Candar for all time.
The engineer snorted. So did his mare, stepping sideways momentarily on the dusty road to avoid the carcass of some sort of lizard, the form half-picked already, though the residual order and chaos seeping from it indicated that it had not even been dead when the vulcrows started.
Nylan’s forehead felt hot, even though the light wind was enough to keep him from perspiring the way he usually did. He uncorked the water bottle and took a deep swallow, then splashed a little on his face.
“Your face is red, even redder than normal,” Ayrlyn said.
“So is yours.” Nylan glanced back at Sylenia, riding quietly behind the redhead, but the nursemaid’s smooth skin seemed unchanged. “You think that last night… ?”
“Releasing chaos that way is dangerous, I think.”
“I know. Any alternatives?”
“Not offhand.” Ayrlyn followed Nylan’s example and drank from her own water bottle, but did not splash any on her own reddened forehead and cheeks.
No alternatives-that had been the problem since they’d landed on the Roof of the World nearly three years earlier. Had it been less than three years? Nylan took a deep breath. It felt longer, much, much longer.
“Angels, there’s someone behind us,” Sylenia pointed out, gesturing with her left arm.
Nylan turned in the saddle. A wind-flattened line of dust hugged the hilltop beyond the one a kay behind them, dust created by fast-moving mounts ridden by figures in white, still more than three kays back.
Nylan had known it would be a risk… but all the choices they’d had were either bad or worse.
“Let me check.” Ayrlyn’s face blanked, and she half-slumped in the saddle.
The engineer looked around as he drew his mount next to hers, in case she started to slip from the saddle. He couldn’t help worrying when Ayrlyn half-left her body behind.
Beyond the grass-covered ridges to the west, on the low road that flanked the river, marched the main Cyadoran force, with so many bodies that even Nylan could sense them from kays away. According to Ayrlyn, the angels had slipped past that force earlier in the morning, but they weren’t that much farther north than the Cyadorans, not yet.
Behind them was what seemed to be a squad or more of lancers. To the east were the rougher hills and, another five kays or more, a twisted and steep-sided gully carrying a thin trickle of water that eventually joined the main river at Rohrn, still a good three to four days ride ahead. “They ride quickly,” observed Sylenia. “Ooo… orses,” added Weryl from his seat behind the nursemaid’s saddle. “Orses.”
“Yes, horses. I wish they didn’t have so many horses,” Nylan told his son. Alerted by a shift/in Ayrlyn’s posture, he turned back toward the redhead.
“Little problem here.” Ayrlyn coughed and tried to clear her throat.
Nylan flicked the reins to speed the mare into a quicker walk while he waited.
“We can’t go east. We’re not far enough in front of the Cyadoran van, and if we angle that way…” She coughed again.
“They’ll catch up because we’ll be going slower in trying to cross rougher ground.”
The flame-haired angel nodded. “They also have a pretty big group ahead of us.”
“Frig…” muttered Nylan. “We’re surrounded, in effect, and they’ve listened to whoever was at the mines. They’re scouting with forces large enough not to be picked off.”
“They’re not stupid,” said Ayrlyn, “but we knew that.”
“Can we go back and stand off the ones who are chasing us, and then sneak around-”
“I’d guess that there are nearly a score and a half behind us, and they’ve sent some off to the east along that trail we passed awhile back to cut us off from the little river. Up front looks worse. Close to fourscore of those white lancers. They must have one of those wizards. I can feel that off-whiteness. I should have looked farther this morning… but it’s tiring.” Ayrlyn took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.” Sorry… sorry…
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is, but I can’t do much about it now,” she admitted. “It’s what happens when you try to keep stupid promises.”
Except… they weren’t stupid. The last thing we need is Cyador taking over all of Candar. Then where do we go?
“About where we seem to be going now,” suggested Ayrlyn.
“Frig, frig… frig,” muttered Nylan. “Why is it that any time that we make the slightest mistake, it comes back in fluxes… or anvils?”
“Balance,” suggested Ayrlyn dryly.
“Is that because we’re more susceptible or sensitive?”
She shrugged, glancing back to the south.
“I know. Now’s not exactly the time for theoretical speculations.”
“The white ones are closer,” pointed out Sylenia.
“It has to be all or nothing,” Nylan said. “I have this feeling that we won’t be worth much once we disrupt the balance. So we have to do something to take them all out.”
“They’re closing in from just about every direction.”
“Put the chaos in a cakelike shape-one of the fancy ones-with the holes in the middle-we’re in the hole, and-”
“I get the image.” Ayrlyn coughed again. “Sorry… it’s dusty. We’ll have to hurry. We need to get closer to the lancers in front of us.”
“How far are they?”
“Another three or four kays.”
“Frig… we definitely need to speed it up.” Nylan flicked the reins and eased the mare into a faster gait-a slow canter? He’d never been much on riding terms. Then, he’d never even seen a horse up close until finding himself plunked down in a mountain valley in an improbable world and being called upon to do the impossible-continually, it seemed.
Could he create a double order line and channel the forces between the boundaries? He wouldn’t know until he tried, and he couldn’t try yet. Their opponents were too spread out. He tried not to grit his teeth and concentrated on riding, occasionally looking back over his shoulder or to the east, checking the dust plumes in both directions.
By the time they had ridden along another long ridge, dropped through a swale and climbed another hilltop, his legs and thighs ached, and his shoulder and neck had stiffened again. His face burned worse than earlier in the day, and he was sweating despite the light breeze, although the wind was hotter and drier and irritated his face as much as cooled it.
The sun hung at midday, but slightly to the south, and. their pursuers were riding down the ridge into the swale, not less than a kay behind them.
“We aren’t going to reach that next hilltop before the ones behind us catch us,” Ayrlyn shouted.
“Stop here.” Nylan reined up and staggered off the mare. His knees nearly buckled when his boots hit the dusty dirt of the road, and he grasped the saddle to keep his balance.
Sylenia had to turn her mount to avoid running Nylan down, and she glared at the angel.
Nylan ignored the look and handed the mare’s reins to the still-mounted Sylenia. “Hold these.”
“A stable boy I am not.”
“Dead is what we’ll all be if we don’t figure out how to stop the Cyad
orans. You can help most by making sure the mounts don’t run off,” snapped the engineer.
The nursemaid’s head snapped back.
“If you would,” added Ayrlyn, handing her chestnut’s reins to Sylenia after dismounting. “Nylan is right, even if he’s a bit sharp.”
Sharp? Who wouldn’t be with more than fivescore Cyadorans forming up for a charge to obliterate you ? The engineer tried to concentrate on reaching the order-chaos boundary layer beneath the soil, noting as his perceptions extended themselves that the power differential was less than the night before. Did it drop off that rapidly north of the Grass Hills? Or had they depleted it the night before?
“It drops off, I’d bet,” Ayrlyn answered the unspoken question.
“Great.”
“Not that much. There has to be plenty of power there.”
Nylan took a long and slow deep breath, trying to relax a little, trying to shut out the drumming of hoofbeats nearing from all directions. He didn’t have time to relax. He pushed his senses downward, reaching for the chaos/order boundary.
Ayrlyn’s thoughts touched his… can’t go alone, but can follow… And he was aware of her warmth beside him, both physically and perceptually.
His perspiring forehead was coated with rivulets of sweat, yet he forced himself to be as gentle as possible, coaxing, nudging an inner order boundary around the small segment of the hill where the four of them stood.
“They near, angels!”
Trying to ignore Sylenia’s urgency, the engineer attempted to create an outer boundary, not caring if it felt wavery, tenuous. The inner barrier was the important one, and he and Ayrlyn eased dark order currents around them.
“Wadah, pease?” begged Weryl.
“Hush, child. Hush.”
“Wadah.”
Nylan forced himself to ignore Weryl as the sound of horses drummed louder. With a convulsive mental snap, he broke the “insulation” between the lines of order and chaos, holding on to the barrier around them as unseen white lines of fire, ugly red gouts of molten force and stone bubbled upward.
Dust puffed up in patches, and the ground heaved. Nylan went down on one knee, started to rise, then remained there as Ayrlyn knelt beside him and took his hand.
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