The Death of Chaos (14 page)

GAIRLOCH AND I trudged back through Kyphros, another five days in all before Kyphrien spread out from where we rode through the hillside olive groves. Five days of dampness, chilied goat at outliers' barracks, and five more nights reading The Basis of Order. I was sick of all three.

   And five more days of looking at the cedar length that held the face that my mind was too dull to find and my arm too sore to carve more than fitfully.

   In the end, Gairloch and I still had to plod through Kyphrien itself. Should I stop at the barracks and try to find Krystal? I wanted to see her.

   So I stopped, left Gairloch with the ostler, who said nothing, and marched up to her door.

   Herreld wasn't exactly helpful.

   “She didn't say where she was going, ser.”

   I looked at him.

   He backed away. “She really didn't, ser.”

   Next I went down to the barracks, where the smell of oil and metal and leather was almost a military incense, to find Yelena.

   “Yelena's off duty, ser. She said she was going to the marketplace.”

   Tamra? Well, she wasn't there, either.

   “The red... the apprentice? She's gone, not that many'd mind, ser.”

   Tamra was still making friends, I could tell.

   So, much later, I rode into my own yard where the big lantern had been lit, and still flickered with the wind that gusted through the fittings that held the glass around the wick.

   Krystal came out, almost running, and half hugged me, half carried me off Gairloch. I'd forgotten how strong she was.

   “You're back.”

   “Careful of the arm. It's still tender.”

   So she kissed me instead. The kiss alone was almost worth it.

   “... didn't miss each other much... not at all...”

   I ignored Haithen's wry comments to Perron, who had pretty much replaced Yelena as head of Krystal's personal guard.

   Finally, we let go, and I carted in my gear. Haithen offered to stable Gairloch, and I let her. Gairloch seemed agreeable.

   “You could use some food,” my consort observed.

   “I could use cleaning up.”

   Krystal wrinkled her nose with a grin. “I suppose so.”

   “Dinner'll wait a while. It's waited enough already,” added Rissa. “I cook for numbers I do not know. I cook and do not know when people will be here to eat...”

   Krystal and I grinned at each other, but she came with me to the washroom, where I stripped off my close-to-filthy clothes.

   As I washed, she studied my arm. “How did that happen?”

   “Some innkeeper's bully boy, looking for a guest to rob. I didn't dodge quickly enough.”

   “What about your staff?”

   “I wasn't carrying it. People get unhappy when you carry a five-cubit length of wood. They think it's dangerous. Of course, carrying a blade is respectable.”

   Krystal snorted. “Maybe you ought to carry a truncheon.”

   “That's not a bad idea.” I hadn't thought about it, but the idea did make some sense. “There are maybe tenscore troops around the spring, and they've got rockets.”

   “Rockets? Like Recluce used on Fairhaven in the old days?”

   “Not quite. Berfir's got steel casings, I think, or thin iron.” I began to shave away the stubble I hated even worse than shaving itself.

   “You're going to shave before dinner?”

   “You want me to afterward?”

   “You are impossible.”

   “Only sometimes.” I switched the razor to the other cheek and jaw. “That wizard-Gerlis-is stronger than Antonin was.”

   “Let's talk about that later.” Her fingers brushed the faded yellow and green of my wound. “How long ago did this happen?”

   “In Sunta. So, let's see-not quite an eight-day ago.”

   “It looks older.” She frowned.

   “Order-mastery has some advantages.”

   “Don't let it blind you. Some wounds you won't be able to heal.”

   She had a point, and I finished shaving and washing as quickly as I could. But my stomach still growled as I pulled on a clean shirt.

   “Some things haven't changed.” Krystal shook her head.

   “A lot of things haven't changed.”

   We walked past the door to the back porch I hadn't sat on since summer and into the kitchen. No sooner had we stepped inside than Rissa was setting things on wooden holders all around where I sat.

   “Serve it before it gets colder,” suggested the cook.

   Perron and Haithen grinned.

   Everything was steaming, enough that I almost burned my left hand, but I didn't argue. I served one of Rissa's favorites, a chicken thing with dumplings, green noodles, mint leaves, and a pepper sauce nearly as hot as burkha.

   “How was your trip?” asked Haithen.

   I looked at Krystal, then smiled. “After I tell the commander, I'll let you know.”

   Perron shook his head.

 
  “The olive grower-Hensil, he said his name was- stopped by last eight-day,” announced Rissa into the silence. “He started to complain, but I told him-just as you had told me-that you were on business for the autarch. And he said that was fine, but the autarch didn't make good chairs, and you ought to stick to chairs and not the business of ruling.”

   I swallowed a mouthful of too-hot chicken dumpling before I spoke. “What did you say?”

   Rissa shrugged. “I told him that he was right, and that we all would be happier if we did what we did and not what others wanted us to do.”

   “Of course,” pointed out Haithen, her mouth full, “he probably wants the master - crafter to do his chairs.”

   I kept eating. There was no way I was going to win that sort of argument.

   After dinner, Rissa shooed us out, and we didn't protest, not for an instant.

   Krystal closed the bedroom door. “Business or pleasure?” She smiled.

   “Business first. Then we can get to the important part.”

   Except we both knew that the business part never went away, no matter how hard we tried.

   So I told her everything, even the bits about the two girls and my feeling bad about the stable girl.

   She shook her head. “You would think that, but you also have to think about why you were there.”

   She was right. Getting caught or calling attention to the fact that I was a wizard of sorts wouldn't have helped anyone, and I still didn't see how I could have done anything to Jassid except kill him, one way or another.

   “You're worried about Gerlis?” She sat on the edge of the bed, so close I could sense her with every sense I had, without even trying.

   “Yes.”

   “Can you do anything about it tonight?”

   “No.” I had to admit that.

   So... that night we mostly just held each other. Not totally-but the holding was the important part, and I remembered that was how it had begun back on Recluce, even before I knew I loved Krystal, when, facing dangergeld, she had asked me to hold her, and I had.

GUNNAR WALKED UP the stone-paved lane from the road toward the black stone building that covered the crest of the low hill. Several scattered chirps rose from the thin and graying leaves of the trees in the cherry and apple groves on each side of the lane.

   He turned and glanced eastward, in the direction of Wandernaught, noting the single rider on the road from the town to the Institute for Order Studies. Then he turned and continued walking through the fall wind and the rustling of the dry leaves toward the solid black stone archway that defined the entrance to the Temple portion of the Institute. Behind him, a flurry of wings rose above the faint hissing of the breeze as the birds headed for stubbled fields farther downhill from the groves.

   When he could hear the chatter of hooves on the road, he turned.

   The rider was bareheaded-a tall and slender woman with slightly silvered blond hair. As she drew abreast of the tall mage, she reined up and dismounted.

   “Elisabet! I hadn't expected you.” Gunnar offered a quick hug to his sister.

   Whuff!

   A single look from Elisabet quieted the stallion.

   “You should have. Even I can sense the conflict.” The breeze rippled through her short hair. “But I always have to come find you.”

   “Even you could sense it?” Gunnar laughed. “You'd be the first to sense that.”

   “Not always.” In three quick turns, she wrapped the leathers around the iron ring on the hitching post.“And the time will come when you'll have to seek out others.”

   “Perhaps. You may be right.” Gunnar glanced toward the young man and woman who approached from the doorway that led to the smaller meeting hall.

   “Magister Gunnar,” asked the redheaded woman, “have you read the essay?”

   Gunnar nodded. “I'll have to talk to you about it later. You're still having a problem in confusing order with an abstraction of 'good.' Order is not necessarily good. Nor is evil necessarily dependent on chaos. You think about that...”

   “But I did, ser.”

   Gunnar took a deep breath. “I'll talk to you in a bit.”

   “Yes, ser.”

   The man looked hard at Gunnar. Gunnar caught his eyes, and the young man paled, then turned. The two walked quickly back toward the lecture room.

   “You do that so well, Gunnar. You end up terrifying them all.” Elisabet finished her sentence with a gentle laugh.

   “Hardly. Half of them hate me, probably including my own son. That doesn't include the Brotherhood. Talryn thinks I set up the Institute as a rival to the Brotherhood-as if I'd ever wanted to get involved in politics.” He gestured to the stone-paved path to his left. “Let's walk down to the garden. We're less likely to be interrupted.”

   “I don't think Lerris hates you. Not any longer. You were hard on him, but it was better that way. So was Sardit. I think it bothered him to be so strict about the woodworking. But understanding and explanation don't always work. Sometimes, children have to face the hard consequences of their actions. After all, you tried to explain everything with Martan.”

   “And you never had children.”

   “I had you and Justen.”

   “Little sister... that was your choice, Elisabet, and, in some ways, I suspect you're the happier for it. How is Sardit?”

   “Well. He enjoys the order of the wood so much. How is Donara?”

   “Well. She still enjoys creating order with the pottery.”

   They both laughed as they walked toward the black stone bench that overlooked the waist-high hedge maze whose outer border had been grown and trimmed into the outline of Candar. Below the flat area that held the maze, a stretch of short grass perhaps a hundred cubits wide separated the maze from the slope where the orchards resumed. Above the bench, another slope of grass rose gently to the wide windows on the south side of the main Institute building.

   Elisabet settled onto the east end of the bench, tucking one trousered leg crossways under her.

   “I've never been able to understand why you do that,” said Gunnar.

   “Just because. It's comfortable.” She squared her shoulders. “You're busy, and I won't take that much time. But you wouldn't volunteer to tell me.” She grinned at her older brother and cleared her throat. "Neither you nor Justen ever did. So I came to find you.

   “Chaos is welling up everywhere, and I don't sense any great increase in order. Has the Balance stopped functioning? I thought that was impossible.”

   “It's functioning.” Gunnar sat heavily on the other end of the bench and looked at the maze. “I don't know where the additional order is, but it has to be somewhere. There's no sense of imbalance. You already know that.”

   Elisabet nodded. “I worry about Lerris and Justen. Most of the chaos seems to be in Candar.”

   “I worry, too.” Gunnar's eyes flicked toward the clouds rising above the low western hills.

   “What can we do?”

   “What we must.” The tall mage shrugged. “What we must.”

   “Times are finally changing, I think.”

   “They are, especially in Hamor, and things will not be the same. The Council doesn't seem to understand that.” Gunnar stood as three black-clothed figures scrambled down the path toward them. “They and the Brotherhood will be out to blame the Institute or me or Lerris.”

   “Have you talked to them?”

   “Unfortunately. They still seem to think I want to take their positions. As if I couldn't have been on the Council years ago.” He snorted.

   “If you hear from Lerris or Justen...”

   “I'll let you know. You know I'd let you know.” Elisabet rose and gave her brother a quick hug. “Your students seem to have found you.”

   “They always do.”

   The two walked up the path toward the three who had sought out Gunnar.

   Behind them, the wind whispered through the hedge grown into the maze that represented Candar.

THE NEXT MORNING found Krystal and me both in the autarch's private study where Kasee, again, had dark circles underneath her eyes and disheveled hair. The piles of papers and scrolls around her were even deeper than before. The glass on one of the lamps was almost totally black with soot.

   “What did you find out?”

   “Ferrel's dead. I found where it happened...” I explained about the valley of death and then about the terrain of the spring and where the Hydlenese had placed their troops. I couldn't explain, not in any real way, how terrifying that valley had been or how much power Gerlis really had.

   Krystal had heard it all and listened.

   “So... there are really only a comparative handful of troops guarding the brimstone spring.”

   “For Berfir, ten- to fifteenscore might be a comparative handful. That's still more than fifteen squads.”

   “There were a lot more before,” Kasee said.

   Krystal frowned. “Did the Duke move them out?”

   “Some, but I couldn't find out how many there really were to begin with. There are still about fifteen squads in the valley, with another two squads scattered along the roads. That's not the problem.” I cleared my throat, feeling as if I were fighting off both a chill and chaos infections.

   “What about the firebolts? Was it chaos-fire?”

   “No... the Hydlenese are using something from the old days-rockets. They're like self-propelled cannon shells, and the powder is encased in iron. When they hit, they explode in fire. The wizard used firebolts afterward.”

   “Rockets,” mused Kasee. “The old histories mention them. They were used by Recluce before the fall of Frven. The idea is simple enough, but there seems to be a trick to making them.” She brushed a lock of black and silver hair over her forehead.

   From things I had half heard, and recalled, as a child or later, I wasn't sure that the Brotherhood had lost that trick, not after the three black ships I had seen in the harbor at Nylan.

   “People don't like to use powder much because a wizard could touch it off,” mused Krystal. “There aren't that many white wizards. It's a risk, but not that big a risk.”

   “Would you do it again?” asked Kasee.

   I looked blankly at the two of them.

   Krystal looked at me and smiled.“Not if I had any choice.”

   I felt complimented without knowing why, but I went on. “The powder's pretty much inside steel casings. That's close enough to cold iron that you'd have to have a strong wizard to get it to explode from any distance.”

   “There aren't that many chaos wizards any more.”

   I frowned, glancing at the overbalanced desk again. “There's something else that still bothers me.” I went on to explain about all the troops and rockets moving north.

   Kasee pulled at her chin, half nodding. Her hair was tousled, almost as though she had been tugging at it. “It's probably not that big a mystery. We can't afford a big attack on Hydlen. Berfir has to know that. Either a small body of troops can hold or they can't. Either way, we're not about to rampage across southern Hydlen.”

   “But why did he even take the spring?”

   “To get the brimstone for the powder to build the rockets to use against Duke Colaris,” answered Krystal. “Colaris has been recruiting for over a year. A lot of soldiers left Gallos after Antonin died, and I've had some reports that there's a new prefect.”

   “I heard that in Arastia,” I admitted.

   “We don't know if it's true. But Duke Berfir's biggest problem is Colaris, not Kyphros.”

   Something about it all still bothered me. Finally, I spoke up. “All of this makes sense except for one thing. Why did Berfir or the wizard or whoever it was use rockets on Ferrel?”

   “Maybe it was a mistake,” suggested the autarch. “Sometimes, hotheads don't do as they're ordered.” She and Krystal exchanged faint smiles.

   I wondered. Should we just leave the spring alone?

   “No.” Krystal answered my unspoken question. “If we intend to act, it should be now.”

   “I would tend to agree,” said Kasee. “Why do you think so?”

   “Berfir's in no position to block us with much force. If he fails against Colaris, we don't have to worry much. If he's successful with those rockets, he can bring them back south. If we can take the spring and fortify the area, the rockets aren't likely to be nearly as successful against fixed emplacements-if he has any left. They can't be that easy to make.”

   I understood that logic... sort of. There was another problem. “How do we handle Gerlis?”

   “We don't. You do, if you can. If you would.” Kasee paused. “I can't command you, but we have to try, one way or another.”

   I had this feeling I'd been conscripted again. But if she were going to order Krystal into battle against Gerlis, what choice did I have? “And if I can't? He's even more powerful than Antonin.”

   “We try to avoid him. Wizard fire isn't much good against rocks. It works best in the open field, and we aren't going to give him that. His rockets won't be that much good against scattered scouts, or troops trained to take cover using the terrain.”

   The idea was all right for avoiding rockets and firebolts, but how did you command troops scattered all over mountains? I also was worried about Gerlis. They hadn't felt his power. I had, and merely saying he was more powerful than Antonin didn't exactly convey the feeling of that power.

   “Tactics ought to be simple enough,” Krystal noted. “If we hold in emplacements, something like stone shelters or fences-”

   “Caves?” asked the autarch.

   “No,” Krystal and I said simultaneously. I shut my mouth.

   Kasee smiled with a twist to her lips. “When you both talk like that, I have the feeling that I made a real mistake.”

   “Powder and fragments do a lot of damage in confined areas. If this wizard could guide a rocket into a cave, I don't think anyone would survive, not unless it were a very deep cave. Then, how would the troops do us any good?” asked Krystal.

   I just nodded.

   “You need a barrier, almost flat, that the rockets don't penetrate.”

   “What about doing what Lerris did again, with fast squads?” Krystal looked at me. “Would you mind leading them back the short, roundabout way?”

   “Not if you're leading the main body.” I forced a smile.

   So did she.

   Kasee looked at me, then at Krystal. “You're not happy about this.”

   “I have to do what works. Does it matter whether I like it?”

   “No,” answered the autarch. “We have to do something. The last time someone started raiding the borders, we didn't do anything, and look what happened.”

   Krystal looked at me. I shrugged. I couldn't fault the logic, but I thought there was more behind Berfir and his white wizard than I really wanted to know, and I still didn't have an answer, not one that I liked.

   “How do you think we ought to take the spring?” asked Kasee.

   “If we have to take the spring, we should take it from behind, if we can. Yelena can lead a force with Lerris from the east. Berfir just doesn't have that many troops. I don't think, white wizard or not, that he can hold on two fronts.”

   “You question whether retaking the spring is wise?”

   Krystal shrugged. “There's no easy answer. If we let Berfir hold the spring and he does prevail against Colaris, he can use the brimstone against us. If Colaris destroys him, then we may have lost a lot of troops for nothing.”

   “What if we wait?” asked the autarch.

   “Unless we can be assured of knowing what happens in Freetown almost instantly, Berfir can probably reinforce the spring faster than we can get there and take it.”

   Put that way, even I wasn't sure that going ahead wasn't the best way.

   “We'll need to protect the Finest and the outliers we use as much as possible. But we can combine that with taking attention away from Lerris and Yelena. We advance the main body slowly along the direct road, with vanguards way in front of us. That serves two purposes. It makes Berfir, or his wizard, or whoever's in charge, worry about the main body. Lerris, and the others, will take the circular route-not quite so circular as the one he took getting to Hydlen-and hit them from behind.”

   “What if there are too many?”

   “That's for Yelena and Lerris to find out. If there are, then they don't attack. Lerris can see beyond his eyes a little,” Krystal pointed out.

   “A very little,” I confirmed.

   “We get close enough to monitor his attack. If they're distracted, that gives us an advantage. We'll need a lot of archers, though, as many as we can find.”

   Mainly, from that point on, I listened.

   “Lerris...”

   “Huhh?” I sat up. I must have been dozing. Kasee winked at me. “Take him home, Krystal. One day won't destroy our plans, and he needs the rest anyway.”

   “I'm fine.”

   They both looked at me.

   Krystal took my arm and walked me out past the guards. “You need rest. You look like a scarecrow. I'm sorry I dragged you here.”

   “I'm fine.”

   “You will be.” Krystal shook her head. “Do you see how loose your trousers are?”

   “Tamra said I was getting fat and sloppy, anyway.”

   “When did you start listening to Tamra?” I shrugged. I was clearly going to get some rest. As we walked toward the stables, she squeezed my hand. “I'm glad you're back.”

   So was I. I just wished it would be longer before we headed out again.