Magi'i of Cyador (53 page)

"I have changed the Patrol procedures slightly. We do not send a messenger for the Mirror Engineers until after we have been attacked by Forest creatures. We move toward the crown of the tree from the perimeter road, with two squads flanking it at a half-square angle, and we use but short bursts on the firelances."

"Such procedures have worked. Your casualties have been reduced."

Lorn nods. "I have been strongly requested to return to 'traditional' lancer patrol techniques, but I have been also ordered not to allow any wild creatures to escape." A crooked smile follows. "Squad leader Olisenn was most committed to traditional procedures, and I fear that his inability to adapt to the new procedures may have contributed to his ending up in the line of a firelance. I do not know that, but that is all I can surmise."

Shynt nods slowly. "If I might ask, ser... what patrol tactics will you adopt?"

Lorn grins. "I am informing Majer Maran that I am abandoning those procedures about which he and Commander Meylyd had expressed concern and that Second Company intends to do its utmost to stop any wild creatures from escaping the deadland."

Shynt almost smiles. "Ah... I see."

"Then we will see." Lorn looks at the black-eyed squad leader. "So long as no creatures escape and I do not disobey any direct orders, we will doubtless hear little."

Shynt nods. "Thank you, ser."

Lorn stands. "I'm glad you're here. Kusyl will introduce you to First Squad, and I'll ride mostly with you on patrols to begin with, until we're comfortable."

As Kusyl leaves with the junior squad leader, Lorn closes the door, then turns. He looks out the study window at the gray clouds that will become more prevalent as winter nears, recalling the lines from the poem in the silver-covered book.

Provisions must be made.

Lorn has made them.

XC

The evening is cold and overcast as Lorn walks across the damp stones of the courtyard to the stable, and the mist rising from the stones swallows much of the light from the lamps set in their bronze brackets along the walls. The captain wears two sabres-a lancer officer's sabre on his right and the Brystan sabre on his left. He also carries a firelance. His steps are sure, silent, as he slips into the warmth of the stable and the welcoming scent of dry straw.

"Suforis?"

"Coming, ser." Suforis scurries out from the tack room. "You going out tonight, ser?" asks the blond ostler. "It be mighty chill and damp, and with you starting out on another patrol tomorrow...."

"I know. I won't be riding far or hard, and I won't overheat him." Lorn smiles. "I promise. It's just a short ride."

"Be but a moment, ser." The young ostler hurries off.

Lorn glances around the stable as Suforis saddles the gelding. As always, the structure is swept and clean, without a trace of cobwebs or dust, and the wood of the stall boxes gleams in the dim lamplight.

Suforis returns, leading the gelding and looking anxiously at the lancer captain as he hands over the mount's reins. "I'd be going, ser, but if you'd not be long..."

"You like being consorted?"

Suforis flushes. "Ah... yes, ser. Much, ser."

"Good for you." Lorn's laugh is warm and friendly. "I will not be long, but I can groom and stall him, and I would not wish that you keep your consort waiting." Lorn slips the single firelance into its holder.

"I could wait, ser."

"Go." Lorn smiles before leading the gelding out through the stable doors and into the mist of the courtyard. "You've been here late enough."

Outside, in the thickening mist; Lorn mounts and rides slowly to the open gates. The clicking of the gelding's hoofs is preternaturally loud, amplified by the mist and dampness.

"Ser?" asks the gate guard on the right as Lorn reins up in the light of the lamp. "You going out?"

"I won't be too long. I just need a quiet ride to think."

"Ah... yes, ser."

Lorn nods and guides the gelding out into the misty darkness beyond the walls. He hopes that the combination of the mist, the darkness, and the closeness to the ward-wall will preclude anyone using a chaos glass to determine exactly what he does. The sentries' low voices are carried through the dampness to Lorn as he guides the gelding toward the ward-wall.

"...got much to think of..."

"...all do... not be an officer for a guarantee to the Steps of Paradise...."

"...not like as we'd be getting either such, Myttr..."

"...none of them, neither..."

A faint smile appears and disappears, unseen, as Lorn continues to ride along the cross-road that leads to the ward-wall. To his left, he is aware of, but cannot see, the granite structure holding the northpoint chaos towers. Once he reaches the ward-wall, he rides to the southwest for perhaps another kay before he turns the gelding to face the ward-wall and then reins up, roughly midway between two of the wall-ward crystals.

For several long moments, he studies the whiteness of the granite wall and the darkness that looms behind the wall and the chaos-net broadcast by the crystal wards. Among the scents that drift out of the darkness is that of erhenflower. Did it originally come from the Accursed Forest?

Lorn draws the Brystan sabre, then concentrates on the flickering chaos-net, grasping that flow with his chaos senses and turning it aside, to open once more that narrow window or door to the massive intertwining of order and chaos beyond the white granite of the ward-wall.

This time... although a narrow aperture is open-there is no immediate thrust of power toward the lancer captain, not of chaos or of black order.

Lorn waits, the black-iron-cored Brystan sabre in his right hand, his eyes and senses on the Accursed Forest.

As he waits, an image builds, one of bubbling red-white fountains of chaos, of dark pillars of order, and deep ponds of a different kind-or color-of order, more shaded in deep gray, and then vines of golden-white chaos twining around the dark order pillars. That mental image vanishes and is followed by a second image-one of which he has dreamed more than once.

Knives of white fire gouge the very earth, laying down deep trenches that stretch across the land, and from those trenches rise white walls, walls that burn into Lorn's flesh if he is to so much as move toward them. Beyond the trenches is fire, an endless fire that turns the very land and trees into ashes. Rivers are wrenched from their courses, and hills are flattened by other knives of focused chaos.

Lorn finds he is sweating profusely as the images break off, despite the misty chill.

A single beam of chaos-order lances through the aperture that he has created. The sabre flashes up, almost without Lorn's volition, and catches that narrow line of power.

Lorn struggles, both instantly and endlessly, it seems, to re-cast the fire back at the base of the ward-wall where it splays across the granite and fountains upward in a flare of light. Even as he directs that energy, so much vaster than any mage firebolt he has seen, even as he lets the chaos-net flow back into place, cutting off the flow of linked order and chaos, Lorn understands that what the Accursed Forest has cast out is but a fraction of the power it possesses.

Lorn also understands not just within his thoughts, but with every sense and feeling he has, that the Forest's power lies in the melding of all that is within the Forest-and that Cyador and the Forest cannot occupy the same lands. With that feeling comes a sadness, a melancholy, as if it should not be so, and yet cannot be otherwise.

After sheathing the sabre, he turns the gelding, without looking back at the ward-wall or the Forest beyond, wondering, not for the first time, why the Forest has not tried in greater fashion to overwhelm him. Because it cannot, or because it understands that his death would avail it little? He laughs softly. The latter is true enough, for if he died, the chaos net would flow back in place. But does a forest, however filled with order and chaos, have that kind of understanding? Or does it just play the very patterns of order and chaos, without understanding, in the way that a river must follow the lines of the land?

It comes to him, as he nears the gate to the compound, that he will never know that answer, and that, too, casts another kind of melancholy over him.

"Ser?"

"It's me. Captain Lorn."

"Getting worried about you, ser."

Lorn avoids looking surprised. Has he been gone that long? "I appreciate your concern."

"Saw some torches out there...."

"I was trying something with a firelance," Lorn explains. "It must have taken longer than I realized."

"That be no problem, ser."

"Good night." Lorn offers a smile and guides the white gelding through the gate. He can tell now that he has not been gone that long, but he wonders how bright his manipulation of order and chaos was to have been seen through nearly two kays of the misting rain.

Suforis has indeed gone, but left a single lamp lighted, and the stable door slightly ajar.

Opening the door, Lorn smiles and leads the gelding back to the stall to unsaddle and groom him.

When he finally returns to his quarters, the first thing he does is set the unused firelance in the corner. Then he goes to the wardrobe and studies his face in the mirror on its door. His skin is flushed, red, as if sunburned, as it has been when he has manipulated the ward-wall chaos-net before.

He shakes his head, then removes his belt and sabres, followed by the damp tunic that he hangs on one of the wall pegs. His sits on the chair and pulls off both boots before he returns to the second drawer on the side of the wardrobe. From there he removes the chaos glass and carries it to the narrow desk.

With a half-cynical smile, Lorn looks at the glass, then concentrates on Maran.

The silver swirls part slowly, and the image of the dark-haired and mustached Majer Maran appears in the center of those swirls. Maran sits before his own desk, pausing as if thinking, with a scroll below, and a half-empty goblet of an amber wine to his left. The majer's face stiffens, as if he too can sense a chaos glass scrutinizing him.

Lorn smiles coldly and releases the image, quickly replacing the chaos glass between the smallclothes in the wardrobe.

He has barely found Ryalth's volume of ancient poems and stretched out in his trousers and undertunic on his bed, looking at the silver-covered book, before he can feel the chill of someone using a chaos glass to see him. He smiles faintly, but does not reveal that he senses the screeing. Nor does he nod, but merely continues to study the shimmering cover of the volume of poems, knowing that Maran will puzzle over that cover.

As the mental coldness created by the distant user of the glass lifts, Lorn finally opens the book, selecting a page he has read before, the one Ryalth selected for him so many years before, yet one whose feelings seem familiar despite the antique slanting characters and the references and the style used by the ancient writer.

SHOULD I RECALL THE RATIONAL STARS?

There I had a tower for the skies,

where the rooms were clear...

Should I recall the Rational Stars?

Or hold my ruin on this hill

where new-raised walls are still,

Perfect granite set jagged on the dawn,

with striped awnings spread across the lawn...

Lorn thinks about the concluding words, then reads them softly, aloud, in the stillness of his chamber.

Oh... take these new lake isles and green green seas;

take these sylvan ponds and soaring trees;

take these desert dunes and sunswept sands,

and pour them through your empty hands.

Almost... almost... those words bring up feelings like those evoked by the Accursed Forest with its images. Or were the images his-created within his mind by something different from the Forest?

Lorn closes the silver cover of the thin volume, shaking his head slowly. Then he stands and replaces the volume in his wardrobe and begins to complete his disrobing. The words of the ancient writer and the melancholy they hold flows over and through him.

Should I recall the Rational Stars...?

XCI

Although Lorn has expected more treefalls as a reaction to his "practice" sessions along the ward-wall, there have been none for two full round-trip patrols to Eastend and back since Shynt's arrival. The only remnant of Lorn's efforts in the nights along the ward-wall is the occasional sense of melancholy he feels when he looks beyond the white granite of the ward-wall at the towering trunks and high canopied greenery of the Accursed Forest. He has also had one more dream about walls that burn and rivers being wrenched from their beds.

The lancer captain pushes that thought away as he rides with junior squad leader Shynt on the wall road, his eyes scanning the ward-wall, the Accursed Forest, and the granite stones of the road. As always, the Forest retains its greenery, even as winter is arriving beyond the ward-wall, with chill winds and graying winter leaves, even as Lorn and Second Company ride through a gray early morning on the second day of another outbound patrol from Jakaafra. He is reminded once more of the differences outside and within the wall by the zzzzpp of an expiring flowerfly against the chaos-net.

Lorn wonders how long before they will confront another fallen tree, and how long before Majer Maran again appears at Jakaafra and under what pretense. Lorn also ponders how he also must carry out his commitment to Ryalth in a manner that meets the full requirements of consortship, yet in a way which protects her more than it threatens her. And he must continue to improve his control of chaos and order while not letting his lancers know that is what he does. That is one reason why he bears two firelances in a specially adapted holder. He smiles at that thought, for no one, not even Kusyl, has asked about the twin lances.

"Cool and damp, maybe get wetter, ser," offers Shynt.

"Colder, I'd say, but not wetter." Lorn is beginning to sense irregularities in the chaos net and the flow of chaos force along the wall, but says nothing, just keeps watching the wall ahead as the lancers ride southeast.

It is not quite mid-morning when Lorn senses what he has known must be coming, and not much after that when a lancer reports, "Fallen tree ahead, ser!"