The Death of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The second major road to Kyphros was blocked, although, certainly in the Lower Easthorns, an alternative route was possible. What wasn’t possible was the immediate re-creation of the Hamorian army.

  So far as I could tell, no one had walked or run away from Justen’s and Dayala’s wave of destruction. And so far as I could tell, neither had even come that close to touching chaos.

  I swallowed and walked toward them.

  Justen looked haggard, and he swayed where he stood. Dayala, standing beside him, also swayed.

  The whiteness from the mass of sliding clay and steaming water had shivered through me like a hammer on steel, and my head still rang like an anvil, and knives stabbed through my eyes, but I walked up to them. Neither really acknowledged my presence, and I turned and headed toward where I had tied Gairloch, hoping that he was still there.

  Weldein looked at me and swallowed as I passed.

  I only counted seven mounts, and there should have been nine, but Gairloch and Rosefoot were still there, and I patted Gairloch for a moment. “Good fellow…” Then I grabbed the water bottle and the provisions bag from behind the saddle and started back across the steaming hillside.

  Weldein looked at me. “Hersik and Nytri are gone.” His face was red, almost blistered.

  “If they went downhill they’re dead. Otherwise, they’re probably all right.” I kept walking, and he walked with me for a time.

  As we passed, Berli looked at Huber. “See why you don’t want to get one of them really mad at you?”

  Huber gulped. Behind her, Pentryl stared at the boiling and steaming mass that seethed and oozed down the canyon that had held the stream.

  I stepped up to Justen. “Sit down and have a drink.”

  “What is it?” He slumped onto the pine needles. So did Dayala.

  “Just water.”

  “Better than nothing,” he rasped. Deep wrinkles gouged his face, and his neck was old and wattled.

  After he drank, I offered him some of the white cheese from my saddlebags in return for the water bottle.

  “Better.”

  He didn’t look that much better. His hair stayed silver, almost all silver, even if some of the wrinkles faded from his face.

  Dayala didn’t look that much better, once I looked at her, and handed her the water and some cheese. She was wrinkled also, .and while her hair remained silver, it seemed duller, as though some of the life had gone out of it, which it had, I supposed.

  I walked uphill to Rosefoot and pawed through Justen’s saddlebags and found some of the dried fruit. When I got back, I practically thrust it at her.

  Then I could have kicked myself. I touched her arm and offered a touch of order. She didn’t protest, and a little fire appeared in those green eyes.

  I did the same for Justen. Then I sat down next to them.

  For a long time, none of us spoke.

  “See what I meant about technique?” asked Justen. The wattles on his face and neck had disappeared, but his face was still wrinkled and his hair silver.

  “You never even got close to the chaos.”

  “There’s always a link. You try to keep it as far away as possible, but it’s there.”

  Ggrrrurrrrr…

  The ground shook again.

  “We probably need to go. This place isn’t stable, not now, not for a long time,” he muttered as he slowly stood.

  I offered him a hand, and he took it.

  “Chaos will be here for many years,” affirmed Dayala. She too remained wrinkled, although some of the luster had returned to her hair.

  We walked back to the horses, and mounted. Even Dayala rode as we threaded our way uphill, avoiding the crevasses in the road, and the occasional jets of steam.

  Pentryl kept looking backward. Huber just looked at the road. The two I didn’t know rode slowly, while Weldein and Berli brought up the rear.

  Weldein kept looking, I thought, for the two missing troopers, but I didn’t see any new hoof prints in the road.

  Justen and Dayala rode side by side, almost close enough to touch, lost in their own private world.

  I looked at them, suddenly old, and felt very young, but I swallowed and kept riding.

  CIII

  A LIGHT HAZE blurred the hills behind Ruzor, but the sky above the harbor remained a clear blue-green. Only a slight chop marred the harbor waters, and the faintest of whitecaps tipped the waves beyond the breakwater.

  Gunnar and Tamra stood on the northeast corner tower of the old fort that had once been thought adequate to protect Ruzor. Thirty cubits below them, the waters lapped gently at the base of the tower.

  Behind them stood only a handful of troopers. Krystal had marshaled the rest from the fort to the bluff just north of the river, from where they could be dispatched as necessary. While Gunnar could have directed his storms from the bluff, the fort offered better vantage. Should the Hamorian fleet discern from where Gunnar and Tamra directed the storms, there would be less chance of jeopardizing the troops on the bluff, mustered behind solid earthworks concealed with turf. The troops of Kyphros were few enough, indeed.

  Neither mage spoke, their senses extended to the south, riding the winds and the air currents, trying to discern the numbers of steel-hulled warships that steamed toward Ruzor.

  “They’re still a good five kays out,” said Tamra, and her eyes unglazed. “They haven’t turned toward the harbor. How far can those guns reach?”

  “Five kays, maybe farther.”

  “Oh…”

  Gunnar’s eyes glazed over again. Tamra waited, then shrugged, and her eyes blanked as well, her senses following Gunnar.

  After a time, Gunnar touched her shoulder. “It looks as if they’re turning toward the harbor.”

  “How soon before they begin to attack?”

  “When they can be sure the shells will hit something.” Gunnar displayed a crooked grin. “It’s time.”

  “For what?”

  “To raise the great winds, so to speak.” Gunnar squared his shoulders.

  “How is that different from the regular winds?” Tamra asked, trying to catch Gunnar’s eye.

  “Just try to follow me. I can’t explain it in words. I never really could. Not to Lerris or to Marian.”

  Tamra’s face wrinkled, but she nodded.

  “We need to get the storm raised before the ships come too close. Don’t want those cannon firing too much.” Gunnar ran a hand through his mostly blond hair, though the light wind disarranged it before his fingers left his scalp.

  “Can you use a storm against them before they get close enough to use their guns?” asked Tamra.

  “No. The storm would not be violent enough to do what is needful. The bay provides the confinement. Just watch and use your senses. You will have to do this one day soon.”

  The air wizard leaned forward so that his crossed arms rested on the ancient stones of the parapet and sent his thoughts seaward and skyward.

  Tamra settled herself against the parapet, then tried to force her thoughts after those of the older mage. Even the lower winds seemed to buffet her thoughts, to force her down toward the growing whitecaps.

  She struggled to follow Gunnar toward the chill far above the harbor, far above the warm air of Kyphros. The cold of the skies shivered through her like a blade of ice, and her body swallowed twice, once as she first sensed the iron-cold power of the winds and again as she felt Gunnar’s senses slip around the forces of those winds.

  Her thoughts crumpled as she tried to grasp that chill power, her mind numb, as numb as an arm smashed by a staff. Again, she forced herself upward, slowly easing her powers into that frigid torrent of air.

  Under Gunnar’s power, the winds dipped, then bucked skyward, then dipped farther toward the ocean that seemed so far below. Tamra brought her own winds down, down with those of Gunnar.

  The first cooler gusts of winds rippled across the inner harbor, lifting the chop into the slightest of whitecaps. The chop became full-cubit wave
s, then two-cubit waves that fell against the breakwater. The salt mist rose around the silent figures on the tower, but neither moved. Neither spoke, and the wind rose, and rose.

  Beyond the breakwater, the force of the winds whipped the low whitecaps into waves nearly four cubits high. The spray fled across the breakwater toward the harbor, and the waiting troops.

  The first Hamorian cruiser steamed through the heavier waves of the outer bay toward the breakwater still several kays ahead. A gun barrel lifted, and a puff of smoke followed. A second cruiser followed the example, and then a third.

  Crumpt! The first splash landed a half kay short of the fort that stood at the shore end of the breakwater. So did the second, as did the third, and the winds pushed the spray almost to where the mages waited.

  With a grim smile, Gunnar touched the winds again and whipped them out of the south toward the Hamorian ships. In the shallower waters of the outer bay, the first half dozen or so vessels nearing the breakwater pitched more and more from the six-cubit-high following waves. Their guns puffed smoke again.

  The shells raised three columns of water just short of the harbor fort’s gray stone walls. More spray drifted across the fort, mixing with the whitecaps of the waves in the harbor.

  “… shit…” murmured a Kyphran soldier behind Gunnar, but neither mage acknowledged the exclamation, not as they wrestled with the winds.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  One shell from the third volley struck the stones ten cubits above the water, and stone dust and stones cascaded down into the gray water, where the waves foamed around them.

  A low moaning rose, and the skies slowly darkened, and clouds, scudding out of the south, began to cover the sun.

  More stone fragments broke from the center wall of the fort, even as the sky darkened more.

  Another shell sprayed water against the already gaping hole in the center wall of the old fort.

  The moaning of the wind became a howl, and the waves in the harbor rose man-tall, half-white, and fell on the shore and piers with the force of hammers.

  In the outer bay, sledges of water, capped with white, smashed on the anvil of the Hamorian ships, but the ships steamed northward, north toward Ruzor, and their guns loosed their own hammers.

  Under the impact of the shells, the southeast tower swayed in the wind, then split. Stones, dust, and masonry arched into the spray and into the waves that broke against the gray rock slabs of the tower footings.

  Crumpt! Crumpt! Shells fell across the entire shoreline of the bay. A gout of turf and soil erupted from the bluff, and dark dots that had been soldiers scattered and flew into the surf below, their screams lost in the howl of the wind and the thunder of the cannon. The river pushed dark brown water down toward its mouth, toward the whitecapped surf.

  “It’s not enough!” yelled Gunnar, his face set against the wind coming in from the south. He wiped the spray from his face.

  Tamra glanced from the tall mage to the outer bay, where the dark-hulled ships swarmed and fought their way through the waves toward Ruzor. The guns continued to fire, and the shells continued to fall.

  The end of the long pier exploded in a hail of timbers, and the waves ripped through the sagging framework. The shipyard beyond the pier crumbled into rubble and splintered timbers.

  Gunnar’s eyes half glazed, indifferent to the winds that tore around him, as his senses reached even above the high winds, to the great winds, the winds that buffeted the Roof of the World, the winds that determined the rains and the droughts, even life and death, the winds that none had summoned since Creslin wrought the Great Change.

  Like rivers of ice, those torrents that ruled the upper heavens, the great winds, radiated chill that slowed perceptions, slowed senses, and numbed thought. Gunnar plunged his senses into the chill torrents.

  After a moment, Tamra followed, shuddering, but sending her perceptions after Gunnar, though she but observed his efforts.

  As the Hamorian shells dropped across the inner bay, Gunnar tugged, then wrenched at the great winds, only to be struck back. His body shuddered, driven back from the parapet. He lunged forward, wrapped his arms around the stone, and waited for the reaction to subside.

  Another handful of Hamorian ships opened fire, and more shells fell across the harbor, across the waterfront, and shattered timbers from the lumber racks of Aflac the lumber trader speared into the harborside streets like massive javelins. An orange flame flickered from where the waterfront cafe had been and began to grow, despite the rain that the winds had also brought.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  Gunnar again sent his senses into the high winds, and Tamra winced at the shivering power that Gunnar struggled with and against. As she reached out-the older mage slapped her hand and senses back.

  “No!”

  Crumpt!

  More stones fell, and the southeast tower crashed down across the breakwater, leaving nothing except a few water-swept rocks, and a swirling of waves and foam across the stones that filled the bottom of the harbor.

  The sky darkened as Gunnar bent the cold winds from the Roof of the World down, down, downward across the outer bay. Beyond the breakwater, twin towers of darkness loomed in the skies, both squat, both elemental, and both swirled toward the line of steel ships.

  Gunnar kept his awareness focused on the dozen ships just off the breakwater, even as he flung wind and sea against them, as he tried to sweep the steel hulls shoreward, toward the stone breakwater suddenly surf-pounded, toward stones that had become as hard as black iron to the onrushing cruisers.

  The guns turned toward the city, and the bluff, but fewer shells fell, and many struck only waves and foam.

  Tamra reached for the Hamorian warships, almost recoiling from the dead steel order within the dark hulls, and from the chaos bottled inside the steel shells stored within each vessel, but cast the high winds, not so mighty as the great winds, but strong enough to add to the force applied by Gunnar.

  Crumpt!

  The shrieking of metal melded with the shrieking of the winds as steel hulls scraped onto hard stone, but from the outer bay, other guns picked up the rhythm, and their shells arched into the harbor and fell across the waterfront, hitting the old dry-goods warehouse, and igniting another tower of flame, then the produce factor’s sheds.

  Gunnar swallowed and seized his winds more firmly, dragging their chill power to the ocean’s surface beyond the breakwater, where the waves crested over the bridges of the ships, again and again.

  But the shells continued to lash the lower city, and plumes of dust rose against the rain, against the spray from the harbor.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  Gunnar slammed the high winds through the second echelon of ships, but the guns, fewer now, continued to target the city.

  Crumpt!

  Another section of the bluff collapsed, and more soil slid into the Phroan River. On the smaller bluff across the river, the redstone pillars of the mansion just recently completed by the wool factor Kilert bowed out and collapsed, and the red roof tiles cascaded over the rubble.

  The bay raged white, and Tamra held tight to an ancient brace as water, impossibly, cascaded over her, yet flowed around Gunnar. The old mage clasped the winds to himself, and to the bay. Behind them, the three soldiers had no chance to scream as they were swept into the mass of foam and raging water.

  Crumpt! Crumpt!

  At the end of the short pier, the harbor-master’s square structure and short flagpole vanished in an eruption of dust and smoke, and a haze of white agony and dying souls screamed behind the wind.

  With a wrench, Gunnar seized the closest storm, twisted it until it swirled along the line of steel cruisers that had arched shells shoreward. Lightning flashed down from that darkness and sparked on steel, and more unheard screams and a white haze of death bathed the bay.

  Tamra hung onto the brace as another huge wave pounded the tower, and swallowed as she watched a line of waves smash through the harbor piers, flattening the
m and the buildings behind them. Then she regained her grip on the high winds and forced them against the Hamorian cruiser nearest the inner breakwater, pressing it toward the hard stones.

  Another set of lightnings flashed and flashed from the elemental storms, stalking the steel hulls out in the bay, but the guns, fewer still, fired yet.

  The cobbler’s thin shop swayed, then collapsed into rubble, and the surging sea swept away snapped roof timbers while the shattered roof tiles sank into the sand and mud cast inshore.

  Sand and water geysered through the surf, and a blue-clad soldier’s body bobbed between two barrels. Another body clad in the tan of Hamor joined the first in an unrhythmic dance.

  Another volley of shells dropped amid the rubble beyond the shattered long pier.

  Gunnar gripped the stone more tightly as waves poured over the tower. His jaw tightened, and another round of lightning flashed through the scattered snips just beyond the breakwater. One exploded in a roar of flame, louder than a handful of cannon shots, followed by a second.

  The impossibly high waves smashed over the remnants of the Hamorian fleet, pounding them like plate upon the angels’ anvil. Another cruiser split into two halves-both halves dropping beneath the waves.

  The sky lightened slightly, but no more shells dropped, and the harbor waters darkened with the silt from the collapsed bluff.

  Tamra watched as the handful of Hamorian ships struggled through the dying waves that still dwarfed them toward the open sea, as the dark clouds began to lift from the outer bay.

  “Oohhh…”

  The white-haired man slumped forward and started to slip onto the stones and ankle-deep water behind the crenellations of the harbor keep, behind the parapets of the sole remaining tower.

  “No…” The redhead’s mouth dropped open as she bent and saw the whiteness and the wrinkles that enfolded his face.

  The winds lashed the rains against the stone so hard that the impact of the raindrops sounded like hail, so hard that each droplet raised a welt on the faces of the Kyphran troops.