Recluce 07 - Chaos Balance (43 page)

NO ONE STEALS the copper of Cyador. No one mocks the Mirror Lancers. Triendar... I want to teach those barbarians a lesson,“ snapped Lephi. ”Turn the white fires on them, make them white dust-you know, unwrap the ancient chaos on them."

   “I fear that I do know, Your Mightiness,” replied the slight and balding figure, brushing short white hair off his left ear.

   “You fear that I know what I want?” Lephi laughed, harshly.

   “What you want will destroy you and Cyador. Not to mention me,” replied Triendar dryly.

   “Explain this,” demanded the Lord of Cyador, Protector of the Steps to Paradise. Silence fell across the hall, and the polished white stone tiles appeared as cold as the ice of the Northern Ocean in midwinter.

   “The ancient mirror towers were based on the powers of chaos. So are our powers. Chaos by its nature must be balanced by order. That is how the firewagons operate. The order of the boilers and chambers and the tubing contains the chaos of water heated into steam. The chaotic force of the moving wheels is balanced by the order of the stone paving blocks.” Triendar paused.

   “You have belabored those points before, Triendar. Why do they mean you cannot turn chaos upon the barbarians?”

   “I did not say that, Your Mightiness. I said that turning chaos upon them would likely destroy Cyador and us. Such chaos would allow the Accursed Forest to surge beyond its boundaries-”

   “One moment, ancient Triendar. You have always claimed that the forest held equal parts of order and chaos. How can your use of chaos allow it to expand?”

   The white mage sighed. “It is not simple to explain, but I will try. If I marshal chaos against the barbarians, that concentrated chaos allows order to be concentrated elsewhere in Candar. The forest will use that order to expand, but once expanded, will balance order and chaos within its boundaries. For us to contain it will require more chaos, which will free order to strengthen it further.”

   “How is Themphi containing it?”

   “Poorly-and with the less concentrated chaos of men with torches. Even so half your foot and lancers labor around Geliendra.”

   “That is why we must use your weapons against the barbarians,” pointed out the Lord of Cyador.

   “Then too, as I have explained before, there is the problem of the fireship, and all the chaos it must carry,” Triendar continued, as if he had not heard Lephi.

   “How does that affect the Accursed Forest? Even the ship-works are stoneworks built up from the water, and water contains order, much order, you have said.” Lephi's voice sharpened. “You do not listen to me.”

   “I do listen, but chaos is never simple. A fireship, with the fire cannons you wish and the bombards and the chaos engines, it creates much chaos. Add that to all that has been stirred up this past year . . .” Triendar looked at the man in silver and white.

   “You tell me that I cannot bring chaos against the barbarians and contain the Accursed Forest? That I must not complete the fireship.”

   “No. The fireship will not be ready. While it embodies much chaos, some is contained by the waters of the harbor and by the ordered iron that binds the engines and fireboxes. Most of the chaos it will create will be when the engine operates, and you cannot bring it to Lornth, can you?”

   “I had thought, if the conflict drags on, to bring the ship around the point of Dellash and to fire that northern port- Rulyarth, I think.” Triendar shivered.

   “Forget the fireship for now. As you say, it is not ready. But I will dare the fates. We must take the risk. To allow one small barbarian clan to seize our copper and destroy white lancers unpunished . . . what will stop the Jeranyi from surging west across the Grass Hills? Or those Kyphran traders . . .”

   “Your Mightiness . . . Cyador, as you have pointed out, is scarcely powerless.”

   “Triendar ... we have few firewagons, and they only operate on the stone roads. We have none of the ancient fireships, and but one under construction to replace them-”

   “The ancient ships were destroyed because they were failing.” Triendar nodded. “As this one will fail in a few years under the pressure of chaos.”

   “We will build others.”

   “And you will build chaos, and the Accursed Forest will use that to grow.”

   “We will face that when we must. For now, the barbarians must go, before they become a greater threat.” The Protector of the Steps to Paradise stopped and surveyed the closed doors to the hall, the wisps of steam that drifted around the fittings. “We have instilled order and obedience into our people, and we cannot turn them into warriors overnight, and if we tried . . .” Lephi shook his head.

   “They would strike first at the Mirror classes, you fear?”

   “No. But the taxes and tariffs would rise, and then, so would disobedience, and that would make the Mirror Lancers and Foot more arrogant. . .”

   Triendar laughed softly. “None would suspect a lord of Cyad to be so considerate and thoughtful of his people.”

   Lephi snorted. “We have no choice but to use chaos.”

   “As you wish, Sire. I have told you the risks.”

   “And I have told you those of not employing it. I have not mentioned the risks to you.” Lephi gestured toward the wide window and the open waters of the Western Ocean. “Do you not understand? You worry about what may happen in the years ahead. If we do not stop the barbarians now, neither of us will need to worry about the future. Already, we have peasants who challenge the white throne. We have eastern traders who would charge our merchants double because they no longer fear Cyad. And now we have barbarians who would seize our copper mines. We have no fireships, no spare firewagons, no fire cannon of generations past. We have lancers and troops . . . and we have the power of chaos that you can muster. And you will muster it against the barbarians. The forest can wait; it must wait.”

   Triendar bowed. “As you wish.”

BURETEK, FUERA, AND Sias sat around the low coals of the fire, a fire ringed with stores used by others, but not in years, if not in centuries, stones so old that the soot was burned deep into their pores and crevices. Sylenia sat slightly apart from the armsmen. Low murmurs drifted southward to where Ayrlyn and Nylan sat on the soft needles between two gnarled roots, their backs propped against the rough bark. Nylan listened for a moment. “. . . peaceful here . . .”

   “They need it... probably we do, too.”

   “Spooky, though . .. ride by and never see it. . .”

   “The angels, they saw it.”

   “They see too much, sometimes ...” With that, Nylan agreed. He looked to his left. There, on the other side of the root, lay Weryl on his blanket, eyes open, but heavy, half-looking into the dark canopy above that blocked the stars.

   “This place is ancient,” the smith murmured, his fingers touching the smooth crests of the deep-rutted black bark, his eyes going up toward the tip of the evergreen-a tree that made even the groves of the Nomads of Sybra seem young by comparison.

   “Older than any other trees we've seen,” agreed the healer. Her hair, still damp from washing in the clean and clear brook, glittered with a light of its own in the dimness. “And it feels like the dreams.”

   “So what do we do?”

   Ayrlyn took his hand. “Lean back and relax. Just open yourself up to your feelings. I know that's hard for you, but it'll be all right. I know it will.”

   With a deep breath,.Nylan shifted his weight on the soft needles piled around the gnarled roots, in a space that seemed as comfortable as a pilot's seat, or more so. The scents of clean pine, the hint of moisture from the brook, the sweetness of crushed redberry-all created a sense of aliveness he had not felt in who knew how many eight-days.

   Smiling, he closed his eyes, following Ayrlyn's example, ignoring the low murmurs from around the fire.

   First came a sense of peace, of comfort, yet there was more.

   Lines of fire flickered, white lines, force fluxes like a chaotic power net, firebolts white-infused and red-shaded like those thrown by the wizards who had tried to storm Westwind....

   . . . and the dark flows of blackness and the white chaos were mixed and twisted-and balanced. The trees grew and grew, and some died and fell, but always for all the changes, the white and darkness turned in and out, but balanced . . . until the heavens shivered, and the ground trembled.

   Then, white lines of fire, fire that reflected light and darkness, burned through the forest, and the gray ashes fell like rain.

   The rivers heaved themselves out of their banks, and the white mirror fires turned their waters into steam. Metal mountains grumbled across the water-polished stone hills and smoothed them, ground them, and suffocated them beneath strange new soil, and grasses that had never been.

   Green shoots struggled through the ashes, and were turned into more ashes, and the ground heaved and trembled.

   Lines of white stone slammed down like walls, pinning the trees behind lines of force that burned ... and burned, burned somehow because the force of the ordered chaos that prisoned the trees was backward, because chaos bound order. . . .

   A sense of eternity followed, inaction behind walls, until the heavens shivered again, and the white walls cracked, and crumbled, and lines of white fire and darkness cascaded from ice-tipped peaks.

   And the balanced flow of light and darkness resumed, with a sense of something like purpose and joy-except it was neither.

   Nylan sat up abruptly, his hand reaching for Ayrlyn.- Yet nothing had changed. The boughs still whispered in the wind; the insects chittered; the brook burbled in the darkness, and the four around the fire still talked in low voices.

   “You know what it was?” asked Ayrlyn.

   “The images reminded me of an early Rationalist colonizing force,” Nylan said. “Bring the native ecology into line.” He shook his head. “All that power-”

   “The grove-the trees remember. That . . . that is hard to believe.” Ayrlyn's voice was hushed. “And do you think this . . . Cyador ... is what's left of the Rat expedition?”

   “I think so, but how would you prove it? Would it matter?” Nylan shrugged. “I don't know. It's an empire, of sorts.” He cleared his throat. “I just wonder if this grove is part of what was a larger, sentient forest-or a colonizing outpost... or-”

   “As you said-does it matter? There's a larger forest to the south, one that's broken its bounds in a way that's connected to our arrival.”

   “Do you think the Cyadorans know that? Is that why they're expanding into Lornth?” asked Nylan.

   “I don't think so. They couldn't know, or feel, what the trees ... or the forest does. If they did, then, they couldn't have destroyed so much of it.”

   “The old problem-cultivation is always better.” The smith shook his head. “Do you think our forests, places like Guljolm on Sybra-?”

   “It could be,” said Ayrlyn, “but since we're not likely to ever return-”

   “Right.” Nylan shifted his weight, turned his head, and looked through the darkness at Weryl.

   “Da,.. reee ...” In the darkness, less than two cubits away, Weryl sat on his blanket, a smile on his face, looking at a pine cone, turning it in his hands. Beyond him, on its hind legs, stood a brown tree rat. The tree rat chittered and was gone.

   “He has the night vision,” Ayrlyn said.

   “Do you think he felt. . . ?”

   She shrugged. "Probably, but feeling and knowing what it means are two different things. The sense of balance was stronger than anything, and that couldn't have hurt too much.

   He seems fine."

   Nylan hoped so. His son was too young to be burdened with the meaning of those images. “What can we do?”

   “I don't know that, either. Except that we're both getting the same message about balancing order and chaos.”

   “And no one else is? Why us?”

   Ayrlyn moistened her lips, but did not speak for several moments. “ 'Why us?' ” she finally repeated. “I don't know. Why can we heal? Or have strange-colored hair?” She laughed, softly, ironically. “Maybe the whole twisting of underspace, the bringing of the Winterlance to this universe ... maybe it was because we were needed to return balance-”

   “An automatic stabilizing mechanism . . . strong enough to cross universes?”

   “Maybe just chance; and now that we're here, this ... balance . . . seeks us out. Does it matter?”

   “I don't like being a player's piece ... or the universe's.” The whole idea bothered Nylan, especially when he saw how much he had changed . . . been changed. Poor Sillek, from everything that he kept learning, had seen and understood. The dead Lord of Lornth had been intelligent, perceptive, skilled, decisive, and a leader-and he'd been swept away by forces of ignorance, sexism, and barbarian tradition. Were he and Ayrlyn in the same position, condemned by some ... force of balance ... to try to right things ... only to be drowned in the usual welter of blind human power lusts?

   “That's pretty grim,” she said.

   “I feel pretty grim.” Nylan rubbed his forehead, and found that he didn't have to, that the residual headache he had scarcely been conscious of had vanished. He found himself frowning.

   “Order and chaos . . . balance . . .” he murmured.

   “There's something there,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “I think we need to stay here for a time. A little while, anyway. Just to see.”

   “Maybe you can sing again?”

   “I wouldn't go that far... yet.” Still, a ghost of a smile crept to the corners of her mouth and eyes.

   “Is it safe?” His eyes went back to Weryl.

   “Is anywhere safe on this world?” Ayrlyn's response wasn't an answer, but it was the best either of them could do.

NYLAN GLANCED BACK over his shoulder, and his eyes wanted to twist away from the grove in the valley. This time, knowing what he knew, he resisted the impulse, and took a long look at the grove and at the trees. “It's gone . . .”

   “It's still there,” said Buretek. “We just can't see it. It's got a magic shield, like the angels said.”

   Sylenia, riding between and slightly behind the two angels, nodded. In his seat behind the nursemaid's saddle, Weryl waved a hand clutched around a small brown pine cone.

   The smith glanced at the redheaded healer, whose preoccupied look indicated her thoughts were far from the dusty road leading southeast to Syskar, the Cyadorans, Fornal, and more battles. He took a deep breath.

   After two days in and around the grove, while he and Ayrlyn were certainly more rested, neither had learned much more than they had discovered on the first night. The “dreams” or visions or images repeated themselves, with virtually no variation. The grove held the same balance of order and chaos, yet order-and peacefulness-seemed to predominate.

   “That's the key, you know,” Ayrlyn said. “What?”

   “Balance.”

   “It has been anywhere,” Nylan half-agreed, “but the problem is that human beings don't accept balance. We may talk about it, but our actions are something else. Human desires for anything-love, power, coins-seem unbounded, and that doesn't fit with the idea of balance.” He paused as a pain stab of discomfort flicked through his skull. Where was he deceiving himself? “I'm as bad as anyone,” he added. “We needed to survive. We got that. Then we wanted some shelter and comfort. We got that. Then I didn't want to always worry about what Ryba had in mind ...” He shrugged. “It just goes on and on. Sure... putting things in balance would help. But how do we get the Cyadorans to stop trying to take over the rest of Candar? We can't just tell them that they're unbalancing things.”

   Ayrlyn glanced at the dying scrub tree just off the shoulder of the road. “I don't know. Not yet. But it's clear that everywhere, and here more than most places, in the end things do balance.”

   Nylan wondered. Did they? Or was the balance that of equalized power? Or did power triumph? Concentrations of power-like Cyador and Westwind-seemed to endure for a long, long time.