The Death of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  One day, when I needed a change of pace, I did the sketches and plans for Antona’s desk, and used the cart to get to Faslik’s to discuss the wood I needed, except Faslik’s sister had died, and the mill was closed.

  The jouncing hurt some, but I wasn’t going to get better doing nothing. If it really hurt, I carved the cedar limb I’d found on my first trip to Hydlen. I still couldn’t make the face emerge from the wood, and ended up working on the figure’s cloak- he or she was wearing a cloak. That I knew.

  That afternoon, my leg was better, and with my leg stretched out, I worked on smoothing the second chair in Hensil’s set-until my hips began to cramp. Then I hobbled over to the desk I had started for Werfel and had kept putting off. I traced out the dovetailing on the inside joints for the second drawer, and then the third.

  With the wood vise and the big clamps and the small sharp saw, that went cleanly. There was only one tiny joint on the back inside edge of the second drawer that wouldn’t match quite as well as I would have liked, but Werfel wouldn’t know, and more important, he wasn’t paying for that level of perfection. It still bothered me, and I finally took a deep breath and went back and looked it over. I couldn’t redo it, but I could recut one side so that I had a clean edge, and fill it with a matching piece. It would be the same strength, but it would look better. I still didn’t like the compromise, but I told myself it was an inside back corner that no one would see.

  I could imagine Uncle Sardit telling me that I would know. I understood that better now. I sighed, wondering if I’d always have to accept the wisdom of others-like Justen, or my father, or Uncle Sardit, or Aunt Elisabet.

  As the sound of horses in the yard seeped through the closed door of the shop, I finished clamping the back of the second drawer together. I forced myself not to hurry, and not to twist the clamps too tightly. Then I walked out in the cold drizzle of late afternoon where Justen and Tamra led their mounts through a cold drizzle and into the stable.

  “Do you have a kettle on?” I glanced at Rissa, who stood under the small overhang that protected the door to the kitchen.

  “In this weather, I always have a kettle on. Even wizards need hot tea or cider. And you certainly will if you stand in that cold rain any longer.”

  “All right. Some warm bread and cheese would be good also.” I walked across the yard to the stable.

  Justen was settling Rosefoot into the stall beside Gairloch. Gairloch whuffed, and Rosefoot whuffed back. The two had always gotten along and had shared a stall more than once.

  “Rissa has a kettle on.”

  “Rissa always has a kettle on, I’m sure.” said Tamra. “Not that it won’t be quite welcome.”

  “These old bones could use the warmth.” Justen’s smile was lopsided.

  “Poor old, tired Uncle Justen…”

  “Just be kind to your elders, Lerris. This one’s been kind to you.”

  Even Tamra laughed, and Justen looked sheepish.

  While Justen had been kind, in many ways he hadn’t been particularly helpful. Kindness is like spice-making life far more palatable-but kindness didn’t go that far when I was the one getting torn up by the white wizards like Gerlis.

  “I am. I asked Rissa to make sure there was warm bread and cheese.”

  “Good. I’m hungry.” The redhead tied her mount in one of the stalls used by Krystal’s guards, certainly not a problem since Krystal was inspecting the harbor defenses in Ruzor and wouldn’t be back for at least an eight-day.

  As we crossed the yard toward the house, Justen gestured toward the shop. “Do you mind if I look in? I’d like to see how you’re progressing.”

  “Suit yourself.” I held open the door as they stepped inside, wondering what exactly Justen had meant about how I was progressing.

  He shook his head as he looked across the room. “… the extravagance of youth…”

  Working hard to make a living was an extravagance of youth?

  “Before we take advantage of your hospitality, I want a last look at that leg,” stated Justen. “We’re headed off to Vergren.”

  “Here?”

  “Why not? Sit down on that stool.”

  I didn’t have an answer. So I sat. “I think the bone’s mostly healed, but the muscle’s weak. You going off to heal the sheep again?” I shifted my weight on the stool. “You can stay for dinner, can’t you?”

  “I didn’t say that we were going to rush across Candar. I leave that for you younger types.”

  Tamra looked at the chairs. The light stain I had applied earlier was their final shading. “These are actually decent, Lerris.”

  “They’re better than decent. Not great, but better than decent.” Tamra still bothered me, still trying to cut down everything I did, or show that it wasn’t all that important.

  “These chairs are better than decent, Lerris.”

  “Thank you. Your staff work is better than decent also.”

  “With most people,” Justen mumbled as his fingers ran along my leg.

  Had Tamra flushed?

  “Are you still helping train the Finest?” I asked her.

  “Yes.”

  Justen grinned, then frowned as his fingers stopped over the healing lower break, and I could feel the flow of order. Rather than follow what he was doing, I concentrated on Justen, trying to see how he had ordered himself.

  He raised an eyebrow. “There are certain dangers to that, you know.”

  “Dangers to what?” interrupted Tamra.

  “Self-healing,” I answered. “I’ve been careful. I haven’t used order to hold anything together.”

  “I noticed. Try to be more elegant. Brute force-even order force-can’t heal by itself, or hold things together. We all need some chaos in our systems. The key is to twist the chaos so that its forces help sustain order.”

  It was my turn to frown.

  “Someday, I’d like a desk like this-if I ever have a place to put it. Would you make me one then?” Tamra’s eyes didn’t leave Werfel’s desk.

  “When you’re ready, I’d be happy to.” That was as close to an apology as I was likely ever to get from Tamra. “I was thinking about taking the splint off. What do you think?” I asked Justen.

  He pursed his lips and frowned. “If it were my leg I’d wait an eight-day, but you are younger. I’d give it a few more days, and take some longer walks and see how it feels.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Justen stood. “You mentioned a kettle?”

  “Coming up.” I closed the shop door behind me, after adding a log to the fire and checking the water in the moisture pot. It’s not the cold or the heat that bothers wood, but the changes in heat and moisture in the air-especially sudden changes.

  Tamra and Justen washed up, and so did I.

  By then, Rissa had set three mugs of steaming mulled cider on the table, followed by a basket with a small but warm loaf of bread.

  “Thank you, Rissa. Your bread always smells so good.” I raised the cider and let the apple-spice aroma wreathe my face.

  “Bread should smell good. Dinner will not be for a while, but it is good for you to have company.”

  “Krystal won’t be here?” asked Tamra.

  “No. She’s inspecting harbor defenses in Ruzor, and there’s a dinner there for the envoy from Southwind.”

  “Why not here?”

  “Something about trade, and Ruzor being the main port.”

  “Ha! The Southwind envoy just doesn’t want to travel an extra eight-day for ceremony.”

  “It could be.” I shrugged and looked at Rissa. “What is dinner?”

  “The good fowl soup with leeks and lentils and even some quilla.”

  “Quilla?”

  “They had some in the market, and it was cheap. So I got it. You may be a hero, Master Lerris, but the winter has been long. With the chills, there is nothing like fowl soup-it helps mend the joints and the bones…”

  Quilla was a crunchy root that tasted like oily sawdus
t. It used to be common on Recluce before the great change, and even the Founders had eaten it frequently. That probably made them better people than I was.

  “Soup does help,” offered Justen.

  “Quilla tastes like sawdust.”

  “Nothing I cook tastes like sawdust. You think that cooking is easy, now, in the winter, when the vegetables are withered and the meat is strong…”

  “You cook wonderfully,” I protested, wondering how the vegetables could be withered when I’d unloaded so many recently.

  “Sawdust, you said-”

  “I said quilla tasted like sawdust, but that wasn’t what I meant about your cooking.”

  “If I cook, it will not taste like sawdust, Master Lerris.” Rissa turned back to the pot on the stove, shaking her head.

  Tamra, her back to Rissa, was grinning. “The same old tactful Lerris.”

  “You’re going to Vergren?” Changing the subject seemed belatedly wise.

  Justen sipped his cider before setting it down and nodding. “As I have told you before, Lerris, even gray wizards must support themselves. I do not have your abilities with wood, so…”

  Tamra broke off a good-sized chunk of the steaming bread and began chewing a healthy mouthful.

  “So you’re going off to make sure next year’s lambs are healthy?”

  “Among other things. We’ll probably go to Certis after that-oil pod seeds, you might recall.”

  “I never got to doing oil pod seeds. That was when I did some unplanned healing-if you recall.”

  “Planning hasn’t been your most notable characteristic,” Tamra added, after swallowing the bread and following it with a sip of hot cider.

  “And you planned that well?”

  “I had some good ideas.” Tamra flushed.

  “So did I.”

  “Children…” said Justen sardonically. “Children…”

  We both glared at him. Then Tamra laughed, and I had to as well.

  “Dinner-it is almost ready,” announced Rissa.

  For Rissa, dinner was simple-the big dish of soup in the brown crockery pot and another loaf of bread in the basket.

  After a mournful of the chicken and the potato slices, I bit into a still-crunchy quilla root. My memories had been correct. Even in leek- and onion-laden soup, it remained crunchy and oily, although the sawdust taste was masked by the onions or something. Still, the soup was good.

  “You see? I do not cook food that tastes like sawdust.”

  “I am sorry I ever made you think that, Rissa. The soup is very good.” The comparatively thinner soup was also welcome relief from the array of thick stews I had been eating recently.

  “Very,” mumbled Tamra.

  Justen just ate methodically, as if food were another necessity.

  “This soup is almost as good as my mother’s.” Rissa beamed.

  “Was she a good cook?” asked Tamra.

  “A good cook? She was a wonderful cook. How else would lever learn?”

  I shrugged. What had I really learned from my parents? Woodworking had come from Uncle Sardit, and my studies had come from tutors like Magister Kerwin.

  “She must have been very good,” said Tamra.

  “Good-that was not the word. From stones she could make soup, and from a few bones a wonderful stew fit for a feast. A cook like my mother there has never been.”

  “That sounds more like wizardry,” offered Justen dryly.

  “And your mother, Lady Wizard?” asked Rissa.

  “I don’t know. She left when I was young,” Tamra admitted.

  “Then who taught you to cook?”

  “No one. I can’t cook-not well.”

  “Oh, that is such a terrible thing. It is bad when a man cannot cook, but for a woman… What are parents for, but to pass on what they have learned?” Rissa sniffed. “Terrible it is, too, when you outlive your children and cannot pass on… what you know…”

  “You’re hardly ancient,” said Justen.

  “Perhaps your wizardry will help me find another man?” Rissa lifted her eyebrows. “What about you, Master Mage? Would you not like someone… ?”

  Justen squirmed in his chair, but I saw the glint in Rissa’s eyes.

  “My lady is far from here, but I doubt she would appreciate-”

  “You wizards are so serious.” Rissa laughed. “One day, Kilbon, he will ask me. Still, it is sad, Lady Wizard, that you did not know your mother. Or that she does not know you are grown and powerful.”

  I didn’t even know who Kilbon was, and wondered if Tamra’s mother had been like Tamra-not willing to be tied to any man unless she had the upper hand. I also wondered exactly where Justen’s lady was.

  “I don’t know that she cared,” said Tamra slowly. “Or even if she is still alive somewhere. Some parents don’t care that much.”

  “That is terrible.”

  I wondered. Had my parents cared that much?

  “Have you ever let your parents know you’re all right?” asked Justen, almost as if he had seen my thoughts.

  “I’m sure they know.”

  Justen nodded.

  “It’s not the same thing,” Tamra objected. “You have parents. There are ships from Ruzor to Nylan, sometimes even to Land’s End. How long has it been-more than three years, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s a decision you have to make.” Justen laughed, a trace of bitterness in the sound. “I’m not one to judge.”

  For a time, the only sounds in the kitchen were those of eating and the faint whistle of the cold wind that had driven off the drizzle.

  After dinner, Tamra and Justen and I sat around the table. Rissa finished cleaning up and slipped out to the front room, with a comment about not wanting to know too much about “wizards’ business.” Of course, she sat there and knitted, listening to every word through the open door.

  “Lerris?” asked Tamra. “Did you ever find out where that wizard found out about those rockets?”

  “Gerlis? No.” I pulled at my chin. “I couldn’t say why, but I don’t think the wizard had much to do with them. He seemed much more involved with handling chaos, and he used that- not the rockets. The Hydlenese troops used the rockets.”

  “Rockets used by regular troops-that is bad,” mused Justen. “They haven’t been used that way since before the fall of Fairhaven.”

  “Fairhaven?” Tamra raised her eyebrows.

  “Frven,” I explained.

  “What’s a name, anyway?” She sniffed. “The old chaos-masters are dead, Fairhaven or Frven.”

  “Why not?” I asked Justen. “They seem simple enough to use. Good steel seems to shield them against chaos.”

  “Now… but chaos and order were both much stronger then.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. If they were stronger in the old days, why were they used then and not now? It seems as though it ought to be the other way around.”

  “Then, only the black mages-the engineers-could forge black iron to make them and use them. No one else knew how. When order and chaos were weakened by the fall of Fairhaven, black iron became harder to forge and depleted total order too much for widespread use.” Justen spread his hands and then took another sip from his mug. “Now, it seems odd.”

  “Odd?”

  “Tamra, why don’t you get the mounts ready? I need a word with Lerris.”

  She raised her left eyebrow, a trick I’d tried and never mastered. “Do you want me to handle Rosefoot?”

  I swallowed. Justen clearly wasn’t going to say any more. Why not was another question, but I had an idea that he knew a whole lot more than he was saying, and that bothered me.

  “If I don’t get there before you finish with your mount.” Justen nodded at his apprentice.

  Tamra left, with a trace of heaviness to her step that suggested anger. I tried not to grin. Again, Justen was restricting knowledge to those he thought could use it or needed it. Was that a habit with all older mages? While I didn’t want Tam
ra knowing everything about me, I also thought Justen was being unfair.

  “You know, Lerris,” began Justen.

  I tried not to wince at his tone, which screamed of the paternal “uncle knows best.” If Tamra had been there, she would have been smirking, and I almost wished she were.

  “Yes.”

  He looked sharply at me and took a deep breath. “That won’t work. It didn’t work with my father, and it won’t work forme.”

  I waited.

  “Once upon a time, there was a young soldier. These days his story is not told much. He was not the heir to the family title and lands, and he left his family to avoid an arranged marriage that would have left him rather comfortable. He had a number of adventures, which are relevant to his life and times, but not to us at the moment. Then he was faced with a decision. Should he undertake a great task-one he believed would save the world? He listened to those around him, who counseled caution, but in the end, he opposed their pleas for caution. He was successful in his great task. He saved the world, and thousands upon thousands died in battles, storms, and fires. He was considered a great man.”

  “Justen, this sounds familiar.”

  “There are two other stories. Do you want to finish them?”

  I shut up.

  “Another young man resolved to build his heart’s desire. He was a metalworker, and those who learned what he wanted to build cast him out. He was exiled to a far land, and, there, he finally built his heart’s desire. One ruler conquered an entire country to try to take the thing he built. But the metalworker took his heart’s desire and cast down both his enemies and triumphed over those who had exiled him. And, again, thousands upon thousands died because of what he built, and the lives of all those in the world were changed.”

  Justen smiled wryly, as if to challenge me to speak, but I nodded for him to tell the third story.

  “The third young man had no idea what he wanted.”

  I must have frowned at that, for Justen smiled. “Not all young men know what they want, or, in your case, what they don’t want. This young man was coerced into a war, but he, like the second young man, was a metalworker and he began to build devices that were terrible. He and his brother, in one great battle, cost the enemy almost two-thirds of their armies-but the enemy prevailed, and he fled into the hottest and driest desert in the world. When he was rescued, he learned what he thought was the truth of the world, and he resolved to bring that truth to his enemies. He was successful-so successful that his name is never spoken by those who knew what he did. He was so successful that he destroyed the mightiest empire known and the most powerful city of his own people.”