The Death of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “That’s not far. We’ll camp somewhere around here. The Hamorians are about a half-day away, and they’ve stopped for the night.”

  “How…?”

  “Dayala-she can touch the trees and the life web better than I.” He looked at Weldein. “Anywhere around here. I’d suggest very small fires.”

  Weldein turned. “Over there, on the higher flat above the stream.”

  He’d picked ground with access to water and overlooking the road, which made sense if we were attacked, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  Justen, Dayala, and I shared a small fire, and I used my single pot to heat some water for an herbal tea. One pot made three small cups, and I sipped mine slowly, trying to make it last.

  “Good,” admitted Justen.

  “Very good,” added Dayala.

  “Tomorrow,” began Justen. “Tomorrow, just try to think about skill, Lerris. Skill is using as little force-order or chaos-as possible to do the job.” His eyes flashed at me. “Do you understand why the minimal use of order, even in dealing with chaos, is better?”

  “Would I have aged less if I’d used less force?”

  “Probably. I wasn’t there. I couldn’t say for sure, but that’s usually the case.”

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  Justen sighed. “Kill a lot of mostly innocent soldiers. For no good reason except that they’ll kill even more people if they’re not killed.”

  “I hate to say this,” I said slowly. “But if we just let them take Kyphros, wouldn’t fewer people die?”

  “No,” said Justen bleakly. “That isn’t the point of any of this. It wouldn’t make sense. If we stepped aside, Kyphros would fall, and at least the autarch and the Finest and the outliers would mostly be killed, because they defied Hamor. Then, more armies and ships would arrive, and Gallos would fall. Then Spidlar. Then Suthya and Sarronnyn. After that, Recluce, and then Naclos. But I don’t think this invasion really is designed to succeed.”

  “What?”

  “Emperor Stesten can’t lose. He’s only got perhaps ten thousand troops here and thirty-odd ships. That sounds like a lot, but Hamor has a fleet of close to five hundred steel warships and almost a hundred thousand trained troops, maybe more. That sort of equipment gives some credence to his claim to be Regent of the Gates of the Oceans.”

  I was lost. Ten thousand troops still sounded like a lot.

  “If this Marshal Dyrsse wins for Emperor Stesten with these forces, then he’s in that much stronger a position. If not, the Emperor can use the defeat to demonstrate the need to destroy Recluce-because only wizardry will have stopped Hamor.”

  “I don’t understand. What has Recluce done to Hamor?”

  “Outside of ensuring its traders don’t monopolize trade in the Eastern Ocean? Outside of exiling the Emperor’s grandfather? Outside of destroying almost a score of warships? Outside of killing two regents and a fleet commander? Outside of humiliating Hamor for over a thousand years?” Justen paused to sip more tea. “I’m sure I could think of a few more reasons, if you need them.”

  “But why does he need a defeat? Isn’t that throwing away troops and ships?”

  Justen looked at me, and his eyes almost glowed. “Is it? There’s no one on Recluce who can match Gunnar and me, except maybe Elisabet, and we’re ancient. That leaves you and Tamra. And we’re all here in Candar. How many more battles like that business in the mountains can you take, Lerris?”

  I swallowed. “You mean, this whole thing is to wear us down?”

  “I wouldn’t say that it’s the whole thing, but this has been well thought out. How much of Candar does Hamor control right now?”

  “Freetown, Sligo, Montgren, Certis, Hydlen-that’s the whole east-and Delapra and half of Southwind, from what I hear.”

  “So… with less than ten percent of his forces, the Emperor already controls over a third of Candar?”

  “I guess so.” I hadn’t thought of it quite that way.

  “Recluce has lost two of its three invisible ships, and only replaced one. Its trade has been blocked…” Justen went on, quietly detailing how bad things were, and I had to believe him. At the same time, I was asking how Recluce had let things get so bad. Was it just because Recluce had turned its back on machines? Or had the nature of the Balance changed? Or had Hamor changed it, and what did that show? I shivered.

  “… most people don’t understand that Recluce has a lot of people who can use order to some degree, but only a relative handful can concentrate it. There might be another ten on Recluce with your skills, but half have probably never discovered their abilities, and the Brotherhood has always been content to leave it that way because it made governing easier. Now, the Council is paying for that ease.”

  “Why?” I was still asking why.

  “Look at how much change you and Tamra and Krystal have created. Change isn’t something that sets well with people, especially people with coins or position. Change is a threat to both, and order-mastery usually leads to change.”

  I pondered his words.

  “And that’s been the appeal of Hamor-or Fairhaven. Everything is predictable. People like that. Hamor doesn’t like change, unless it controls the change, and emperors don’t liked being thwarted.” He paused. “Do you see?” he finally asked.

  I nodded.

  “Good. Because I don’t. All this is still stupid on Emperor Stesten’s part, but that’s what is happening.” He shook his head. “Brew some more of that tea, will you?”

  I got up and walked down to the stream, where I refilled the pot.

  A figure stepped out of the shadows-Berli.

  “Good evening, Master Lerris.”

  “Good evening, Berli.”

  “What will happen tomorrow?” she asked.

  “A lot of sundevils will die-or we will,” I answered. “Or both.”

  She shivered. “That’s not encouraging.”

  “Sorry. I’d rather not do any dying, if that helps.”

  “Early?” she asked.

  “I’d say not before midday, maybe not until mid-afternoon.”

  “That makes for a long day, ser.”

  “Yes.” And a long night, I thought to myself as I walked back up and added the tea to the pot before swinging it over the fire.

  The night wasn’t that long, because I was tired, and I slept, and I wasn’t arguing with Krystal about being a hero or rehashing what I should have said, and the deep growling of chaos only woke me twice.

  We had herbal tea and cheese and travel bread for breakfast, and Dayala shared some dried fruits of a type I’d never had.

  Then Justen, Weldein, Dayala, and I walked down the road, and Justen stopped and studied everything. We walked down almost three kays, and then back.

  Almost every hundred cubits, Justen had me check the closeness and strength of chaos. I wasn’t sure which was more tiring-that or the walking. When we finally got back to where we had camped, I just sat down.

  Dayala sat beside me. I still couldn’t believe that she walked everywhere barefoot and that it didn’t bother her.

  “Krystal thinks I should talk to you.”

  She smiled, just waited, as I guess I expected a druid to do.

  “She thinks I’m getting too tied up in liking to be a hero, but I don’t want to be a hero. At least, I don’t think so.”

  There was more silence, a lot, before she spoke.

  “I do not always understand people, Lerris. That may be because I see the web of life, and it is honest. People deceive themselves rather than face pain, and that deception leads to violence. Violence leads to pain, and pain to more deception and violence.” Then she rose, even before I could say anything. “I need to think, and so do you. Your questions will only have meaning if we are successful.”

  As I was pondering what Dayala had said, Justen called to me. “Lerris? Can you create a small dam down at the point there?” Justen pointed downstream to where the canyon narrowed.

&n
bsp; “Probably. How high?”

  “Only so high as you can get it without drawing on chaos- even channeled through order.”

  I frowned. That would make it harder. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  That meant shifting order bonds in the rocks around the point. Still, if I strengthened some, that would change the force of others…

  Letting my senses roam through the rocks and pathways for a time, I tried to get a feel of the land. I also found some underground streams and caves. After thinking about Justen’s earlier comments about skill, I tried little nudges here and there, little shifts. It took longer, but slowly rocks began to slide into the canyon that was really more of an overgrown gulch. Then larger rocks followed, and some clay, and more rocks.

  Finally, I withdrew my senses from the ground and sat on a stone, sweating.

  “Here.” Dayala handed me my water bottle and some travel bread. “It is almost midday.”

  I didn’t question how she knew. I just drank and ate.

  “You were very gentle,” she said. “Justen was pleased. The water is rising now, and there will be a small lake before they arrive.”

  “There’s not enough water to drown them.”

  Her face turned bleak. “We cannot afford to be that kind.” She shuddered.

  So did I. Then I ate a large chunk of cheese and took a short walk into the woods.

  Justen was waiting when I returned.

  “See if you can get an idea of when they will reach the turn in the road down there.”

  I sat back down on the boulder again. By extending my senses, I could feel out the Hamorians, from the heavy tread of massed feet echoing through the ground to the hoofs of their scouts leading the way. How many score were there? Several hundredscore, it appeared, as the line of troops seemed to stretch back over two kays on the winding road.

  Justen was waiting as I looked up.

  “Before mid-afternoon, or a little later, but they’re stretched out for nearly two kays on the road.”

  “I’d figured that.”

  “Are you going to turn that lake into boiling water?”

  “Something like that,” he admitted, “except worse.” He paused. “Lerris, just let me handle this. Watch-with your senses-but don’t try to do anything unless I fail.”

  “How will I know?”

  “I’ll be dead, and even you can figure that out.”

  I let the words pass, understanding that their bitterness came from his own fears.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier if I helped?”

  He looked at me with cold eyes. “We’ll both be needed later, and your technique is still too rough. You did all right with the dam, but you had time, and you wouldn’t with the sun-devils. So watch and learn. This is something you can’t practice. You’ve already figured that out, I trust.”

  I had, and I shut my open mouth. I didn’t feel better about it, but I had been the one complaining that he hadn’t been around when I’d stuck out my neck. So how could I complain when he told me to stand back, especially when I felt that he was right?

  Dayala touched my arm, just touched me, and I felt the warmth of reassurance-and a touch of fear.

  “I could help,” I whispered to her.

  “Not now. He is right, and how would he explain to Gunnar if anything happened to you? If we need you, you will be rested to help him.”

  I looked at her, and her eyes were dark. She straightened and then followed Justen to a spot under one of the pines, where the needles had made a long soft cushion. They lay there, fully dressed, except Dayala was barefoot, holding each other.

  Grrrurrrr… Chaos rumbled beneath us, enough that small waves licked across my makeshift lake.

  So I watched the road, watched the dust rise and grow ever nearer to where we waited, listened as Weldein checked to make sure his people were hidden, and that all the fires had stayed out.

  And the tramp of feet neared, and chaos rumbled beneath us, and even the ground shook slightly, but enough that I saw Berli stumble.

  Faint steam began to rise from the water, and dust puffs rose off the road below as the ground shook.

  I extended my senses and tried to follow what Justen was doing, as he structured, more than opened, dozens of narrow passages from the mixture of chaos and molten iron beneath toward the stream and my makeshift lake.

  The sound of hoofs neared, followed by heavy feet, and behind, the squealing of supply wagons. Even from more than two kays away I could hear the sundevils, making no particular effort to be still.

  …had a girl and she was mine

  Had a girl and she was fine.

  Took a merchant through design,

  But her bouncing boy is mine…

  …three, four… out the door…

  Just below the pine tree, Justen now stood on a solid wedge of rock far enough back from the lip of the canyon that he could not be seen from the road below. Beside him stood Dayala. With my senses extended, I watched.

  Grrrurrrr…

  The narrow order passages swelled, and through them came heat, steam, and boiling water-below that were ropes of molten iron, twisting upward. Yet Justen was not close to touching that mix of chaos and order. Instead, it was almost as though he were building structures for those fiery elements to follow, letting them follow the easiest courses-those he had constructed.

  Now the ground around us was shaking, and I grabbed a pine limb to steady myself. My hand got sticky from the sap, but I held on, glued by resin and muscle, even as my legs tightened to balance me against the growing tremors rumbling up from beneath us.

  Wheeee… eeee… eeee… Horses whinnied, but I couldn’t tell which horses-those of the sundevils or ours.

  The sundevil column slowed, still almost a kay below my makeshift dam, where small waves rolled back and forth and where steam was rising now almost like a fog.

  My fingers tightened around the tree limb, but it bent as I rocked with the swaying of the ground, then began to crack. I staggered and sat down hard, partly on the rocky ground and partly on a small scrub cedar that jabbed my leg through my trousers. After scrambling off the offending cedar, I sat on a flat boulder uphill of a low pine that I could peer through at the road below.

  Justen and Dayala continued to weave their order webs, and that intertwining conflict between order and chaos that I had sensed and struggled with deep beneath Candar rose closer and closer to us, and to the waters of the lake, where low waves began to form.

  As I watched, trying to keep my eyes fixed through the near continuous swaying of the ground and rumbling, I could sense Dayala building a shield on the uphill side of the stream and lake, even as Justen began closing his order tubes. Closing?

  Grrrurrrrrrr… The ground rocked more violently.

  The Hamorians had bunched up even more, and I could see a sun banner or two, and a few scouts. A heavy haze had appeared, shading the sun so that it shimmered without much heat through a layer of fog above us.

  The lake steamed so much that I could not even see the water, just clouds of mist and vapor. I was sweating, and I wiped my forehead.

  Just out of sight, the Hamorians continued to bunch up, for a time, until two scouts finally rode around the corner and turned uphill, moving at not much more than a walk.

  They seemed to study everything. Then one pointed-right toward me, it seemed, though I was behind a low pine. But his gesture was toward the steaming water. The other pointed down at the steam rising from the stream water.

  They rode up the readjust to where they could see the lake. Both were wiping their foreheads, and they turned back downhill. I tried to extend my senses to pick up what was happening.

  The ground rocked even more violently, and one of the sun-devil scouts grabbed his horse’s mane. The other mount tried to rear, but only went halfway up and staggered coming down.

  EEEEEeeeeeee!!!!!

  A thin line of steam and heat erupted up through the lake, then another, and a third, and the water began to bubble
violently. I could sense an immense bowl of chaos and order beneath die water, so hot that I could almost feel my forehead blistering.

  The ground heaved, then rocked, and the mists and fog had grown so much that it seemed like twilight.

  Whhheeee… eeee… All the horses were screaming, rearing, lashing out with hoofs.

  A tall pine above die road snapped, and began to fall, slowly, toward the boiling lake.

  The chaos and heat beneath the lake grew greater, and then… Justen squeezed off his order tubes.

  The ground beneath the road swelled, and great cracks ran down through the clay, and steam hissed into the air.

  Dayala struggled to hold a shield between us and the lake.

  With the CCCCURRROUMMMMPHHHHhhhhh greater than a falling mountain, steam, boiling mud, red-hot rocks, gouts of molten lava, and boiling water flared upward, some of it toward us and against Dayala’s shield, and then all of it gushed downhill.

  Trees were ripped out of the hillside. Boulders were thrown down through the canyon almost like massive shells from stone bombards. Loose branches and splintered trunks shredded through vegetation and troopers and animals and wagons.

  So fast was the explosion of heat and steam and rocks and molten metal that almost no screams competed with the roiling, rumbling, explosion of destruction.

  A wave of whiteness flared away from the destruction, whiteness filled with death.

  I sat there on the boulder and squeezed my eyes closed for a time before I staggered upright. When I opened my eyes, they stabbed, and I hadn’t even been me one handling order and chaos.

  The ground continued to heave even after I looked at the huge hole where there had been a lake, even as molten rock continued to ooze forward. Steam rose from that hole as the stream dropped into the pit from above.

  I stepped back to keep the heat from blistering my face, and tried to sense the destruction downhill. For more than two kays, there was no road, just a boiling mess of mud, rock, and vegetation. Beyond that the stream boiled, what little of it was left, and the waters would steam for a long time. Higher on the hills, leaves were boiled off limbs, and bark off trees, leaving them like bleached bones rising from mud and sodden vegetation.