The Death of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “B-but…”

  I held up my hand. “I’ve watched you carve. You have a feel for design. You just have to work on showing it on paper, not in the wood. How else will you learn crafting? The knife or chisel doesn’t always lead you there. Sometimes you have to see what you want in your mind, and then you have to put it on paper so that others will know what you are thinking.”

  Half the time, I suspect my sketches had sold the pieces, and I really wasn’t an artist, but most people just can’t visualize what something will look like, whether it’s a chair or a painting.

  Wegel’s brow knitted up, but he didn’t say anything.

  I gestured to the paper again. “Go ahead. It can’t hurt.”

  LXXX

  “QUIET.” JUSTEN EASED Rosefoot along the narrow road, bordering the walls of Jellico. Unable to see with his eyes, he let his perceptions guide him and his pony toward the western road and away from Jellico, away from the Viscount and the coming battle.

  Behind him, Tamra struggled to sense her surroundings, struggled to keep her shields in place and her mount from betraying her location while following the gray mage.

  Click… click…

  “You hear something?” echoed a voice from the wall overhead.

  “What? You think the sundevils are already outside the walls?”

  “Who knows… wish I were out there.”

  “You leave, and the Viscount’ll have your guts for bowstrings. He’s not letting anyone leave.”

  “Tell me… the merchants are screaming…”

  “There’s something down there.”

  “What? A stray dog? Go ahead. Waste a quarrel, but you’ll wish you had it when the sundevils get here. See that dust? That’s them. Won’t be long before the thunderguns are booming.”

  “Shit.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  Justen smiled tightly in his cocoon of darkness.

  Tamra wiped her forehead, struggled with her shields, and tried to keep close to Justen and Rosefoot.

  … click… click…

  “… swear I heard something…”

  “… forget it…”

  As the two mages slipped through their own darkness toward the southwest, the heavy cloud of dust rolled toward Jellico.

  LXXXI

  I PICKED UP the cedar length from the back of the bench, glancing across at the drawing board where Wegel was sweating over the chair designs for Antona. He was beginning to discover the difference between creating what was easy and creating what was necessary.

  I looked at the roughed-out figure. A face existed somewhere inside the old cedar, but I hadn’t found it yet. So I sat on the stool and trimmed away a bit more of the wood, bringing out more of the general shape of the face.

  Grrrrurrr… rrrrr… Setting the cedar down, I stood. Thin shiverings of… something… seemed to echo through the ground and stones beneath Kyphros, almost as if ripples of chaos ran through the ground. Ripples of chaos? From where?

  I set down the knife beside the cedar and steadied myself with a hand on the edge of the workbench.

  “M-m-master L-L-Lerris…”

  “I’m all right. Just a bit hot.” I walked slowly out of the shop and then back through the empty kitchen to the rear porch where I plopped down onto the bench.

  I tried to let my thoughts follow those waves of chaos, focused chaos, back through the ground, but I lost them beyond Kyphrien, somewhere short of the Little Easthorns.

  Somewhere short of the Little Easthorns? Not bad for someone who couldn’t tell what was in the upper air within a few kays. Then again, I wasn’t an air wizard, and it appeared as though I might indeed be an earth wizard of sorts.

  Braaawkkk… brawwkkk…

  “Shoo!”

  The chicken brawwkkked, but just kept scratching at the ground.

  An earth wizard who couldn’t even shoo away a chicken, I decided. I shivered as I recalled the power of chaos in the last tremor I had sensed. Chaos coming from the Easthorns, and seemingly moving westward.

  It had to be linked somehow to Hamor. Hamor was using the mechanical order and the Balance. Logically, it made no sense that chaos was involved, and my father would have told me so. But chaos seemed always to hover around violence and conquest, and Hamor was certainly involved in that. And besides, it felt as if Hamor were involved. And Krystal had told me to trust my feelings. Even the autarch had.

  I wiped my forehead, glancing toward the west and the Westhorns I could not see, but only sense vaguely. The sun, reddish in the late afternoon, hung over the top of the hill.

  Krystal and Kasee had planned the defense of Kyphros on the assumption that Leithrrse would use the Hamorian fleet to reduce Ruzor. But by now Leithrrse had to know about that defense. If he learned about it, wouldn’t he change his plans? I knew I would.

  Were I in Leithrrse’s shoes, I’d use the wizards’ roads through the Little Easthorns and come down through Tellura and Meltosia. Whether Leithrrse knew that most of the northern outliers had been wiped out in the battle for the brimstone spring was another question, but I doubted that the outliers at full strength could have stopped the Hamorians and their rifle-armed troops. Kasee’s troops were loo few and too spread.

  Yet the chaos hadn’t come from the Little Easthorns, but beyond, farther to the east. Also, I doubted that the wizards’ roads were passable farther east. Otherwise, Antonin would have used them.

  I swallowed. Was someone-Leithrrse?-using chaos to restore all the old roads that the white wizards had used to dominate ancient Candar? Or could they just march over the blocked parts? Then Hamor could move armies quickly down the center of Candar, or by sea.

  The wizards’ road left Tellura and Meltosia open to the Hamorian troops… I frowned. The road also left Gallos open, and wouldn’t Leithrrse take Gallos first? But why? He could use Ruzor to reinforce a conquered Kyphros and outflank the Prefect on both sides. Certis would fall, or had it already? There was so much I didn’t know. Still, once the Hamorians had Kyphrien, they could use the river and the river road as a highway right into Ruzor.

  The wizards’ roads were one of the tools that the ancient white wizards had used ‘to bring most of Candar under their rule. So far, the Hamorians hadn’t missed a trick. Why would they now?

  Had Krystal or Kasee thought about that? I took a deep breath. Maybe I was going off on feelings I couldn’t even trust.

  Another rippling shiver of chaos seemed to echo from the . rocks below. That I wasn’t imagining.

  I could run off, or I could take a little time and go to Ruzor. Besides, I wanted to see Krystal, especially before I went off investigating more chaos and the person-or people-who wielded it. I also wanted to think more about it, and to talk to Krystal. Was it all in my imagination? If it weren’t, though, Kyphros was facing an even bigger problem.

  I stood up and looked toward the coming sunset.

  “Rissa!”

  One way or another I couldn’t do anything to help Krystal by staying in Kyphrien, and it would be at least several eight-days before Faslik had anywhere near enough cherry for Antona’s dining set and chairs.

  “Rissa!”

  I walked back to the kitchen to start getting ready for the morning’s trip.

  LXXXII

  GAIRLOCH ALMOST PRANCED as I saddled him and strapped my gear in place. I took my staff and a few tools, including a small saw.

  When I walked Gairloch out into the yard, I didn’t see Guy-see, but Jydee and Myrla sat on the crude bench outside their cot. I had to admit that they kept it clean-even the jakes that Wegel had built, although he’d grumbled about where I’d insisted it be. I wasn’t about to have it too close to the house, even if the water were piped from the hillside spring.

  Jydee gave me the smallest of waves as I led Gairloch over to the house, where I had left the bag of provisions by the kitchen step. Wegel stood outside the shop door, broom in hand. I didn’t even have to ask him to keep the shop clean anymore, and I’d le
ft him with the responsibility for another travel chest and the design for the dining set, plus whatever he could provide to Jahunt. I’d also suggested he think about a window for his room. It probably wasn’t enough, but it was all I could think of, and I didn’t want to commit us to making too much when no one except Antona was buying.

  “G-g-good l-l-luck,‘s-s-ser.”

  “Thank you, Wegel. I’m not sure luck is really the answer. I probably won’t be back in less than an eight-day, and it could be longer, much longer.” After strapping the provisions bag behind the saddle, I glanced at Rissa. “You have enough to keep things going?”

  “Now that we have chickens, and eggs, if I can’t keep this place going for two seasons on ten golds, you should have me hung, Master Lerris.” She gave me a smile. “Some goats or a cow, and I could make my own cheese.”

  I shrugged. “How much for some she-goats?”

  “He’s worried, boy.” Rissa looked at Wegel. “When a crafter doesn’t fight against his housekeeper spending hard-earned coins, he’s worried.”

  “You do have a good sense of when to ask me.”

  “And I’d not be the woman I am if I didn’t.”

  “How much?”

  “She-goats are cheap, and the cheese is the rank stuff.”

  I got the message, dismounted, and tied Gairloch to the post outside the shop. In the end, I gave her ten more golds to see if she could find someone who could spare a heifer that could become a milk cow. Knowing Rissa, I suspected she could. Somehow, things kept getting more complicated. The two girls pretty much watched the chickens and gathered the eggs for Rissa, and Guysee helped clean the house, and she’d even started mucking the mare’s stall. I’d never asked her, but she felt better doing it, and it certainly had left Wegel more time for helping me.

  I finally managed to get back on Gairloch.

  “You be careful, Master Lerris,” Rissa warned.

  “I’ll try.” I wasn’t that confident about my success in being careful, not the way things seemed to be headed in and around Kyphros, nor with the ideas I needed to talk over with Krystal and perhaps the autarch.

  “Try,” snorted Rissa. “That was what Faras said.”

  I didn’t answer, since it was the first time she’d mentioned the name. I wondered if Faras had been her consort, the one murdered by bandits. Instead, I smiled and waved, guiding Gairloch across the yard and toward the road.

  Like all my recent trips in Kyphros, I began by riding into Kyphrien. The marketplace was perhaps half-full, less noisy than usual.

  “… and I said to her, Hezira, how could you expect to keep that high house and all those gowns? She only had her face and a narrow waist and smooth skin, and all of that goes when you eat rich foods and have children. So, I said, Hezira, best you get that figure back, or you’ll be on your back at the Green Isles working for Madame Antona…”

  “… a lady Antona is now…”

  “… such a lady, with a mind like a blade…”

  “… best sweet breads in Kyphrien…”

  “… all she sees is a ready smile and blue eyes… can you expect of a girl… who will bring in the coppers for the bread… and coppers be getting hard to find these days…”

  “… spices… preservatives for your larders… work even in the heat of summer… spices… preservatives…”

  “… old bread, hard bread, but good bread! Half copper a loaf! Just a half copper!…”

  “Steel! Good steel blades…”

  “… said the sundevils hold Jellico now… won’t be long afore they’re looking this way, autarch and her wizards or not…”

  “… mighty wizards they are, though…”

  “… ‘gainst cold steel devices?”

  I didn’t feel like a mighty wizard, and what I did hear in the marketplace didn’t cheer me that much, nor did the sight of the autarch’s palace on the hill with the windows I knew were dark. At least, Liessa hadn’t shuttered them.

  The gate to Ruzor was the south gate, really the southeast gate, that led to the river road. A boat would probably have been faster, at least to Felsa, and the cataracts there, but the Phroan River was too shallow for most of the way for larger boats or barges broad enough to carry cargoes-or mountain ponies. So how would I have gotten back without paying a fortune?

  Most of the river road was metaled, but narrow, with the width of the paving stones barely enough for two wagons to pass side by side. Then, except in the winter, the roads in Kyphros were seldom muddy.

  Dust was another question. I tried to keep Gairloch on the stones, but even in the center of the road, dust rose with each step, and the fine red powder hung in the air and clung to everything.

  Even before we reached the first bridge, less than twenty kays along the road, where the Mildr joins the Phroan River, the old square from a work shirt that I used for a handkerchief was more red mud than the clean gray cloth I had put in my belt that morning.

  Red mud streaked my cheeks, the result of dust and sweat. Even though I washed hands and face, and my kerchief, what seemed every few kays, my reddish muddy sweat clung everywhere, even though we saw almost no one on the road, save for an occasional farm wagon, usually empty, headed away from Kyphrien. Only the olive groves seemed unchanged, with their leaves greened out, but olives seemed to outlast everyone.

  Gairloch snorted and snuffled, but carried me southward.

  The first night found me at a waystation below a town called Hipriver. From what I could tell, few had visited the waystation recently. There were only a scattering of tracks in the dust on the road, and since we hadn’t had any rain in more than a handful of eight-days, the weather hadn’t destroyed the evidence of travelers. More likely, there were few indeed in recent days.

  Sometimes, fear of violence is more deadly than the violence itself.

  After long, steady riding, I reached Felsa around noon on the fourth day. Felsa sits on an arrow-shaped point of hard rock where the Phroan River is joined by the little Sturbal River. Right below Felsa the Phroan plunges through the Gateway Gorge and down onto the delta plains.

  Although Felsa’s walls are not that high, they don’t have to be, not to defend against attacks from the water, since the cliffs are almost twenty cubits high and made of sheer, but crumbling, rock. Supposedly, parts of the walls have to be moved and rebuilt every few years, and the town is said to be nearly two hundred cubits narrower today than when it was ruled from Fenard.

  The north walls, guarding the road from Kyphrien, were higher and thicker, but they wouldn’t stop an army. Then, in more than ten centuries no one had marched an army downriver. That wouldn’t stop Leithrrse, though.

  A single guard nodded as I rode Gairloch through gates that seemed rusted open.

  The market, like the one in Kyphrien, was more than half deserted. Unlike Kyphrien, there was little chatter, just a few murmurs here and there. After stopping in the shade of the public fountain and rinsing my face, I took Gairloch to the watering trough. Then I remounted Gairloch and took the east gate out over the bridge.

  From Felsa, there are two roads to Ruzor-the mountain road, which winds along the north side of the gorge and then the high cliffs, and the water road, which circles the gorge on the south and then follows the twists of the river on the river plain where a strip of fruit orchards separates the river from the grasslands that stretch west and south, getting drier and higher each kay from the river.

  I decided to follow the general rule, even though I had never traveled either road before. Since it was summer, I took the mountain road, a winding strip of paving stones barely wide enough for a single wagon except for a scattering of turnouts.

  Despite the clear sky, mist rose out of the gorge from where the river was threshed by the rocks, seeping up almost like fog. It shrouded parts of the road-a welcome relief from the heat I had encountered all the way from Kyphrien. Kyphrien is actually cooler than Felsa or the grasslands, something I had heard. Finding it out in person was a dubious
pleasure.

  Once I left the gorge behind, the mist vanished. The sun continued to beat down, and the dust rose, but the air was so dry that the dampness from the mist left my clothes before the dust could even reach me.

  Because the High Desert rises right off the cliffs on the east side of the river below the Gateway Gorge, the road got hot- and hotter, and I went through the water in both bottles before long. There was only one waystop that whole afternoon and evening, and to get water there, I had to use a bucket and a rope that must have been nearly fifty cubits long-twice, once for me and once for Gairloch. And I had to orderspell both buckets’ worth.

  I finally stopped in the second waystop, barely before full night. My legs ached, and Gairloch was plodding. He drank two buckets of water, but I didn’t let him gulp them down all at once.

  The next morning we set out again, finally reaching the outskirts of Ruzor around mid-afternoon.

  Ruzor sits on the east side of the river, a city seemingly backed against the cliffs that contain the High Desert and keep its sands and waterless rocky hills from spilling into the Southern Ocean. The road wound down from the cliffs onto a lower plateau, fortified by recently repaired and extended stone walls. A small section of the city was lower still, barely above the waters of the bay.

  The upper gates had a pair of guards, who only nodded at me. What harm could a single dusty traveler on a pony do? From there I found the main square and asked an off-duty trooper where the Finest were quartered. “The Finest?” I nodded.

  “The green devils. Ah, you want the green devils and their commander. The demons help you, fellow. Still, I’d not gainsay a man a choice of his death. Aye, and death it will be when the sundevils bring their iron ships and death cannons to the bay and send their thundershells into poor Ruzor.”

  “The Finest?” I prompted.

  “The east road, by Haras’s place-the Golden Cup-stay on it until it nears the seawalls and look for the iron gate and the mean-looking women with their blades. Yes, mean-looking, and if you tarry too long, I’ll be behind you, little as I like it, for I’m as much a fool as ye.” He laughed, loudly. “For I’m as much a fool as ye.”