The Death of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  That was all, but, then, we already knew in our hearts what we had to do.

  My mother reached out and squeezed my father’s hand, and Justen’s fingers brushed Dayala’s. Weldein looked at Tamra when he thought she wasn’t looking, and I gave Krystal a brief hug.

  “How long before the ships arrive?” asked Justen.

  “A while longer. We can take our time on the ride up there,” answered my father.

  We rode up the road and out to the end of the cliffs of Nylan-to the western edge where the black rock face rose a hundred cubits from the narrow beach below. We tied our mounts well back from the cliffs, leaving our packs in place. If the Hamorian ships were as fearsome as we’d seen in the past, leaving our things in Nylan wasn’t wise. Then, it might not be any wiser to have the horses near. Who really knew?

  “Is this the right place?” Justen had asked.

  My father and I nodded. So did Aunt Elisabet.

  Uncle Sardit just walked out to the bluff where the wall ended at the sheer drop-off. “Good stonework.” Then he walked back and patted my aunt on the shoulder.

  Dayala sat on the grass and let her fingers touch the blades and the small round blue flowers that hugged the ground between the stems.

  Weldein stood beside Tamra silently, and the three other guards watched him without speaking. Haithen paced out to the end, as Sardit had, and looked westward for a time before walking back to the other guards.

  Even after the sun rose, there was no surf, nor even the sound of the waves lapping on the sand. The knee-deep grasses of the fields between the road and the strip of short-grassed sod that bordered the wall hung damp and limp in the stillness.

  A single sea bird soared down over the water, but did not dive and vanished up the coast.

  “The ocean’s quiet,” whispered Krystal.

  “You don’t have to whisper,” I whispered back, my senses reaching again for the order and chaos beneath Recluce, that reservoir of power that ran along the backbone of the island. I kept working on opening the order channels closer and closer to the bottom of the ocean.

  She jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow, and it hurt, because I wasn’t expecting it, and because my concentration was elsewhere.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

  I could sense her remorse, and realized that the link between us was continuing to grow. She must have felt the pain. I leaned over and kissed her.

  She squeezed my arm, and I could feel the warmth behind and beyond the simple gesture. Behind us loomed the wall, that symbol that had defined Recluce for half a millennium, or longer, its stones still as crisp as when Dorrin had had them shaped, ordered, and laid to separate the engineers from the old mages who had insisted that machines would bring only chaos. Yet, in the end, as happened all too often, I suspected, both were wrong, for Recluce was threatened by the cold order of machines that created free chaos.

  Justen and my father and Tamra turned to me. Dayala remained on the ground, and a pace back were my mother and Aunt Elisabet. Sardit was poking around the wall itself, as if checking the stonework once more. There wasn’t anything made of wood to check. According to legend, Dorrin had insisted that the wall be solid black-ordered stone, and it was, seemingly rooted into the land itself.

  “Are you ready?” asked Justen.

  “I will be.” I hoped I would be, though my senses were half on the cliffs and half deep below. I wiped my forehead with the back of my sleeve, half wondering why I was sweating when it wasn’t even that warm yet.

  “You will be,” Krystal echoed softly, and Dayala smiled.

  The ground trembled, and my mother’s face froze for a moment, before the determined smile returned.

  Weldein led the guards back toward the High Road perhaps a dozen cubits, just beyond the horses. There he paced back and forth on the strip of shorter grass between the sixty-cubit height of the walls and the edge of the cliff, guarding us from anyone who might reach us from the land or the roads from Nylan. I didn’t think there was that much chance of someone climbing the cliffs from below, not quickly, anyway.

  I tried for another light touch of order in the depths.

  As it rose to the east, the sun shimmered like a blazing ball of white-orange that quickly flared into white against the blue-green of the morning sky. Even with the light of the sun, the long grass to the east still hung limply in the still air.

  Nylan was silent, still partly in shadow, almost like an abandoned town, and perhaps it was, since, after our meeting, the Brotherhood had somehow let out the word that everyone leave for higher ground-perhaps citing storms and possible shelling, perhaps giving no reason. After our meeting with the coppersmith, I doubted that anywhere near everyone had left, but many had, and many more might, should shells actually start falling on the harbor and town. By then it might be too late, but there are always those who do not feel disaster will ever strike them. I was one who couldn’t count on luck to avoid it, no matter what I might wish.

  I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the depths beneath Recluce to bring forth chaos guided by and sheathed in order. For a moment, though, the image of the brass dragons flitted into my thoughts. I took a deep breath and refocused my thoughts on chaos.

  The trembling in the ground ran through my boots, and I could sense Krystal’s awareness as well.

  Krystal squeezed my arm. “You can do whatever must be done.”

  Maybe… and maybe I’d just create a colossal mess, but what choice did I have? What choice did anyone have once Hamor had embarked on its efforts to build order into cold steel?

  “They’re just over the horizon,” my father announced, as he and Mother slipped up beside us, so close that their shoulders brushed. She leaned her head against his cheek for a moment. Krystal started to edge away.

  “No, you need to stay, dear,” my mother said. “I hope you don’t mind that I call you dear. I know you are a commander, and very important, but you are dear to Lerris, and dear to me for that reason alone-”

  “Donara…”

  “We have enough time to do this right, Gunnar, and I intend to, for once.” My mother continued speaking to Krystal. “You are also dear to me because you are a special person yourself. It is important that you know this. Too many things aren’t said until it’s too late, and this is a very dangerous battle, or whatever you want to call it, that will happen here.”

  I almost wanted to tell her not to act as if we were all going to die, but it occurred to me that she might be more realistic than the rest of us. After all, in the distance, I could already sense die growing cold order of steel hulls, of so many steel hulls.

  Then my mother looked at me, and I could see the bleakness behind the smile. “Lerris… we have not always done what we should have done, but, remember, as parents we do the best we can, and we have always loved you, even when it may have seemed we did not.” She cleared her throat. “Now… get on with whatever you have to do, and I’ll stay out of the way.” She bent forward, and her lips brushed my cheek, a gesture of love, but not love forced upon a grown child.

  My father just looked at me for a moment, and I knew he felt the same way as my mother, but he could not move toward me. So I hugged him. For a moment, I couldn’t see, but that was all right, because Krystal was there, and the touch of her hand on mine helped.

  The ground trembled.

  “There’s some smoke out there!” called Weldein.

  I let go of my father, and we separated, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve and got back to concentrating on raising order from the depths. Krystal touched her blade, but did not draw it, and instead walked over to Weldein.

  “Once this starts, they’ll all be concentrating on magic, and they’ll need protection.”

  “Yes, ser.” Weldein nodded, and Krystal walked back closer to me.

  The surface of the Eastern Ocean was flat, glassy, in the way that I had seen it only a few times in my life, so flat and glassy that the harbor of Ruzor seem
ed, as I thought back, filled with small waves during its summer calms.

  Out of the south came the ships, black dots almost marching across the Gulf, toward what seemed to be a mist that simmered on the water. My father frowned, and the mist thickened. The ships steamed on eastward, their smoke plumes proud in the morning light, white foam at their bows, and white wakes at their sterns.

  I strained again to build yet more order bonds beneath the land, beneath the Gulf, and that order rippled through the iron backbone of Recluce, from Land’s End back down to beneath where we stood.

  Ggurrrr… rrrrrr…

  The depth below seemed to absorb my efforts, and almost mock them. I wiped my forehead, and Krystal touched my arm, lightly, to reassure me as I struggled, and I could sense her frustration, both her feelings and the tightness in her arm as her hand gripped the hilt of her now-useless blade.

  As I struggled with my order channels, and the chaos locked in the deep iron, the Hamorian fleet began to fill the southern horizon, black hull upon black hull, white smoke puffing from each stack, with order and more order concentrated mechanically within all that steel-and steel tube upon steel tube of powder and chaos lay within each hull. To the rear followed nearly fourscore transports filled with troops wearing the sunburst. I swallowed at the thought of all those thousands of troops-almost innocents in a way-and yet they would have no hesitation about killing should they land on Recluce.

  Somehow… I wished the Emperor Stesten were on one of the ships. Rulers should have to run the same risks as their soldiers and sailors.

  “Darkness…” Haithen stared at the Gulf.

  Jinsa took out her blade and sighted along it.

  “Never seen so many ships…” mumbled Dercas.

  I hadn’t, either, but I wasn’t about to announce it.

  “They’re just ships,” snapped Tamra. She stepped out toward the point where my father was calling the storms, stopping beside him.

  “There are a lot,” pointed out Jinsa.

  A lot of ships meant a lot of cannon, and a lot of shells, and a lot of death. I swallowed. A lot of dead people on both sides.

  Krystal tightened her grip on her blade, then forced her hand to relax as she watched the oncoming fleet.

  Behind us, Sardit studied the wall.

  My father closed his eyes. Lines of order, unseen but real for all their lack of apparent substance, flared from his arms toward the clear blue-green skies. For a time he stood there, immobile. Then he took a deep breath, without relaxing. “It’s begun.”

  For a moment, I could sense the same lines of power radiating from Tamra, and a faint smile crossed her face.

  The mist that lay before the Hamorian fleet seemed to thicken, and the sunlight seemed less intense, the sky less clear. A few high, hazy clouds began to form.

  I reached -farther into the depths, trying to use the iron beneath Candar as a lever to reach the deeper order beneath the Gulf itself.

  Grrrrurrrrrrr… The trembling of the ground was stronger, and a small rock broke from a section of the cliffs beneath where the wall ended and bounced down and then into the waters of the Gulf with a splash.

  The light around us dimmed a shade more.

  “Don’t think the mess in Hydlen was anything…” said Dercas to Jinsa.

  “When the time comes, you can let your blade do the talking,” she answered.

  Haithen shook her head, her eyes traveling from the still-distant black splotches that were ships to the clouds that had begun to mass behind us in the northern sky.

  My father turned to my mother and hugged her. The tears ran down her face, but she said nothing as they held each other for a long moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders and stepped back out to the end of the cliffs, facing into the mists that seemed to well in and enfold him. A separate, but interlinked, set of mists flowed around Tamra.

  Elisabet eased forward, and darkness shrouded her, but she made no move to join either Justen or my father-yet she was joined to Justen, perfectly.

  “Ready?” Justen looked from Weldein and the squad of green-clad troopers who guarded the approach to the point first to Tamra, then to my father, and then to Krystal and me. Dayala held his left hand.

  I began to try to widen the order channels even more, guessing where they should be in the expanse of blue Gulf waters before me.

  A craccckkkk like lightning split the air, though I saw no bolts.

  At the end of the cliffs, where the wall and the cliff and the air and sea all seemed to meet, stood my father-and Tamra. Order bands like black iron stretched from his hands, reaching toward the high winds, the great winds that he had so often wanted me to reach. Similar bands stretched from Tamra’s hands. And I… I had thought it mere laziness or fear when he had said there were reasons not to seek to manipulate those winds. I also remembered Tamra’s statement that she wanted respect, that she had no need to parade her power.

  The sky darkened, and puffy white clouds with dark centers rose higher into the sky to the north and scudded southward, drawing a gray curtain toward the sun. As they rose, their whiteness darkened into deadly gray, almost black.

  The Hamorian fleet drew closer, smoke from the ships’ funnels forming another kind of cloud.

  The echo of a single cannon shot barked over the low howling of the winds.

  I watched for a moment as a column of water geysered into the air nearly a kay seaward of the tip of the breakwater outside Nylan. A kay wasn’t far, I realized, and I tried to hasten my efforts to widen and strengthen my order channels… and to open the way for the chaos we needed, and which could destroy us all as well as the Hamorians, were it not well contained.

  Could I contain so much chaos? Even with order?

  Beside me, Krystal staggered as the ground rumbled and shook.

  Another ranging shot barked across the Gulf, and another column of water exploded, still well short of the breakwater- but closer.

  The Hamorian fleet steamed eastward, now starting to pitch as the warships struck the waves raised by the winds. Their raked bows cut through the foam-crested swells like heavy knives, and smoke billowed from their stacks and their squat gun turrets.

  Crumpt! Crumpt! More water columns rose, within a few hundred cubits of the breakwater, raised by the Hamorian shells.

  I struggled with iron and order, and order and iron.

  The howling of the winds continued to rise… and rise… until there seemed to be no sounds except the wind, and my ears seemed to split with the screaming.

  The sky was black behind and over us, and heavy gray over Nylan, and rain began to pelt down, cold drops that stung, cold drops that did little to cool the heat of my forehead.

  I kept twisting and grasping at order, trying to recall Justen’s efforts, trying to keep away from chaos while twisting order toward the comparatively shallower waters of the Gulf where the Hamorian fleet was headed, trying to let order lead chaos.

  I staggered, and I could sense the rumbling and rocking of the earth even before it reached us.

  Grrrurrrrr…

  Dercas sprawled on the grass, his words lost in the wind and the rain, and Haithen yanked him to his feet. More rocks separated from the cliff and were lost in the surf that now battered the beach and the base of the cliffs below.

  One shell, then another, exploded on Nylan’s breakwater, and the stone beacon at its tip sagged.

  I squinted through the cold rain that slashed at us like quarrels. The sea was a tempest of whitecaps, with waves smashing over the Hamorian ships. Yet I could also sense that while more than a few vessels had plunged beneath that stormy surface, more still survived, and had been rigged and prepared for the possibility of storms raised by the great weather mage of Recluce. By my father, who stood like a giant blond oak amidst the rain and the lashing winds, order bands tying him to the soil and to the sky. A smaller, yet scarcely slighter oak-a red oak-stood beside him, also bound in order, yet nearly as strong.

  All the ships in the Gulf pit
ched in the heavy seas, but their guns still fired, and most of the great fleet still steamed eastward, toward Nylan.

  Shells began to fall along the harbor, with gouts of dust and water rising into the rain-filled air.

  I wiped the water off my face and out of my eyes, conscious of the cold line of dampness that ran down my back from my collar.

  On one side of me rose a pillar of warmth, and I glanced at Krystal, and her fingers brushed my neck. “You can do it.”

  On the other side rose a column of dark order, where my aunt Elisabet seemed to stretch from the bedrock to the skies, yet no order reached from her to either skies or ships, but gathered around her and swelled into a darkness every bit as deep as that raised by my father.

  I touched the iron deep beneath me again, trying to coax, to wrench open order channels to bring forth that elemental chaos that yet resisted me.

  Justen stepped up beside my father, and while the winds did not subside, nor their howling diminish, a bass groaning sound rumbled out of the ground, and the grass and stone beneath my feet shook again… and again. As with my father and Tamra, order bands stretched from Justen, but these sank deep into the earth, somehow intertwined with, yet separate from, those I had forged.

  Ggrrururrrrrrrr… rrrrrr…

  I stumbled, but managed to keep standing as I directed order-tubes filled with chaos to the waters the Hamorian ships were entering. Now those waters seemed to heave, and in spots warm mists seemed to rise out of the waves themselves.

  The heavy explosive shells were falling faster, like ordered lightning through the rain and down upon the unprotected port. The sky was nearly all black, lit by reddish flares from each ship’s gun and from each exploding shell.

  The ships pitched in the heavy waves, and another few took on too much water and halted or began to capsize, but most kept steaming and throwing shells toward Nylan.

  As those shells fell, a whiteness began to grow, from the deaths already occurring in Nylan and from the sailors on the few ships that had gone down. Despite that white knife edge of death, I forced myself to ignore that whiteness and to ease chaos up beneath the fleet, using my order-tubes. Guurrrrrrr…