The Death of Chaos (46 page)

   For a time, I sat alone. Me-a great wizard? Barrabra acted as though I carried the fate of Candar on my shoulders. All I had to do was go out and block the wizards' roads to buy Kasee and Krystal some time to figure out another way to stop Hamor from overrunning the rest of Kyphros. Just that.

   When I did climb onto the hot narrow pallet in the narrow room and lie back, I still could sense the groaning of chaos beneath Candar, and the growing nearness of the chaos wizard. Even the mountains seemed to shift in the darkness. Though I fell asleep quickly, I did not dream, not of silver-haired druids offering advice or chaos boiling from the depths, and for that I was glad.

East of Yryna, Gallos [Candar]

THE QUIET SOUND of soldiers shifting in their places echoes through the chill air of the deep canyon. A huge pile of rock that has collapsed from the cliffs to the left of the old road blocks the canyon. The old paving stones seem to march right up to the rubble.

   Behind the troops stretch perhaps fifty kays of canyon that had once held the great Easthorn Highway. The base of that highway had been formed from the mortared and fitted stones that linked the foundation blocks. Each long section was straight as a quarrel, a segment of the road that had once run from ancient Fairhaven to Sarronnyn, a road that the white wizards had planned would run from Freetown-then called Lydiar-through the Westhorns and Sarronnyn and on to Southwind.

   Now, yet another wall of fallen stone bars any passage, and the Hamorian troops wait once more. Scattered cedar trees and scrub oak dot the rocky mass that blocks the western end of the road. Beyond the piled rocks, the canyon continues westward.

   A single figure in brown-brown sandals, tunic, and trousers-stands well before the Hamorian troops and studies the rock. The watercourse beside the uncovered section of the road holds a long narrow expanse of water, blocked by the fallen rock and the thin soil of centuries from its descent to the plains of Gallos.

   Finally, the wizard turns to the man beside him who wears the tan uniform of Hamor and a heavy pistol on his wide leather belt.“I can do it, but it will be even more dangerous than any of the rock piles I removed earlier. You need to march the troops back a good kay.”

   “Where will you be?”

   “Almost that far back,” Sammel says with a smile. “There's more than enough chaos to work with.”

   Leithrrse shudders.

   “Don't shudder. You're the ones who created it with all those ordered ships and weapons.” Sammel's tone is matter-of-fact.

   The Hamorian envoy turns to the officer with the silver braid upon his vest. “You heard the wizard. Move them back.”

   The troops turn and march back along the paving stones, so recently scoured clean of debris with the lick of chaos flame.

   After a time, they halt and wait, and low voices exchange comments.

   “... bigger than anything he's tried so far...”

   “... looks so kindly...”

   “... kindly, like a hungry mountain cat's kindly...”

   A flash brighter than noonday sun, sharper than the closest of lightnings, flares across the stone mass.

   RRRRRurrrrrr... rurrrr...

   The ground heaves, and the rock mass shifts, and shifts... and a chasm opens where the drainage way had been. Steam flares into the air, bearing brimstone.

   Rocks and stone more than a hundred cubits high splinter, shatter, and slide northward into the maw of chaos.

   In time, the flames and heat subside, and the wizard in brown trudges over to the ancient kaystone. There he sits down, holding his head, ignoring the letters graven on the stone: “Yryna 75 K.”

   “When can we march?” asks Leithrrse.

   “Let it cool a bit.” Sammel does not look up.

   Where the rock had been a flat expanse of smooth stone, melted as smooth as glass, stretches half a kay to where the old road resumes.

   The soldiers mutter and shake their heads.

   Leithrrse drinks from his water bottle and wipes his forehead.

   Deep beneath the rocks, chaos rumbles still, and the ground trembles.

DAYALA STOOD FOR a long time at the single pier at Diehl, just a step away from the plank leading up onto the Eidolon. A thin wisp of smoke trailed from the single green-striped black stack of the old Nordlan half-steamer, though the paddles were stilled.

   The silver-haired and youthful-looking woman turned for a last look toward the valley of the Great Forest of Naclos. She turned back, took a deep breath, picked up her pack, and walked up the plank to where the mate with the short blond beard and muscled arms waited.

   “My name is Dayala.”

   “Yes. You are the druid. Captain Heroulk said you should have the second cabin to yourself, Lady.” He bowed.

   She waited, not knowing where the second cabin might be.

   The mate smiled, then gestured to the sailor behind him. “Jelker, show the lady to the second cabin.”

   A blond-haired and slender youth stopped coiling a line and stepped up with a bow.

   “Thank you.” Dayala inclined her head to the mate.

   “Our pleasure, Lady. Druids bring good luck, or at least, keep away ill fate, and that's the same for any sailor.”

   “Steam up! Plank up! Cast off!” ordered the mate, after turning from Dayala.

   She followed Jelker down the ladder and into the small cabin, where she set the pack on the lower bunk. Her toes wiggled on the hardwood, and she repressed a shiver.

   “Are you really a druid?”

   “lam.”

   The ship swayed, and a dull thumping sound reverberated through the hull.

   “I mean, do you talk to trees... ?”

   She shook her head.“Trees don't listen. Sometimes, we listen to them, or to the rest of life...”

   “Do you... I mean... is it... just trees?”

   With a laugh, she answered. “No. I have a man. A mage who is also a druid.”

   “Oh...”

   “Don't sound so disappointed that an old woman like me-”

   “Old? You can't be more than eighteen.”

   “If you knew how old I really was...” She gestured toward the cabin door. “I'd like to go up on deck.”

   He stared down at her boldly.

 
 Dayala sighed and looked back at the young man for a long moment, feeling the darkness well from her, feeling the age and the power of the Great Forest surge forth.

   The youngster paled. “I'm sorry, Lady.”

   She touched his shoulder lightly. “I did warn you. Let's go.”

   Jelker hurried the three steps to the ladder and scrambled up, leaving Dayala to make her way topside alone. After shaking her head, she took her time.

   Later, standing by the port rail, she watched the shore fall away, her eyes focused beyond Diehl toward the Great Forest.

   Once the Eidolon cleared the bay, the dull thumping stopped, and the ship shivered into full sail before the wind.

   Dayala kept one hand on the poop railing as the Eidolon gently eased over a low wave, and a small spray of white outlined the bow. In the late afternoon light, the ship steadied, quieter than ever.

   The paddles still, the great ancient steam engine cooled. While the wind held, and it would, the captain needed to burn no coal.

   “Always get a good wind coming out of Diehl,” observed the second mate, pausing beside Dayala for a moment, his short brown hair disheveled by the wind. “Most times, anyway.” He glanced at the browns Dayala wore and then at her bare feet. “You a druid and traveling? That doesn't happen much.”

   “Only when it is necessary. Very necessary.”

   “And this is very necessary?” A smile played around his lips.

   “If you do not want the world to belong to Hamor and for chaos to perch on every hilltop.” Her tone was light.

   The man's eyes flicked to hers. Then he looked down at the planks. “I guess it must be important. Druids don't lie.”

   “Sometimes it would be easier.”

   He shivered, and then bowed. “Need to be getting on, Lady.”

   A faint and bitter smile crossed the druid's lips, and she turned her eyes to the northeast, toward Kyphros and Ruzor. Toward where she would meet Justen.

I SLOWED GAIRLOCH to a deliberate walk as the road dipped into another small dry valley in the Little Easthorns. Around us were rocks and more tree-covered rocks. Most of the rocks in the Little Easthorns were red and black, and rough, unlike the heavier and grayer rock of the Easthorns and Westhorns.

   As I studied the flat area in front of me, I wished I had a better memory for details.

   “Is this the one?” asked Weldein for at least the third time, running his fingers through his short blond hair.

   “I don't know yet I was only here once before, and that was almost three years ago.” It felt as if a lot longer than three years had passed.

   Kkhhcheww... “Friggin' dust...” mumbled Fregin.

   “We know,” snapped Berli. “We know.”

   I paused, sensing the aura of chaos. On my left seemed to be a thick and intertwined grove of scrub juniper bushes, while on the right was a large gray-white boulder that blocked the view to the north.

   Slowly, I eased Gairloch toward the apparent boulder, reaching out with my senses. I nodded. “This is the place.”

   “Just a bunch of boulders that way,” mumbled Fregin, reining up behind Weldein.

   Berli had dismounted and brushed at the reddish-white dust of the flattest part of the road.

   “Stop raisin' dust.” Fregin sneezed.

   I concentrated on the illusion, although I could tell it was fraying, tracing back the lines that held it together, half marveling at the fact that even Antonin had had to use order to serve chaos. That use of order was how and why the illusion had lasted, of course.

   Finally, I traced back the webs and slowly separated them, breaking them into smaller and smaller segments of chaos within order, much in the same way as I had finally reordered myself to match the pattern that I had seen in Justen, except this time I was almost working in reverse.

   “Demon-damn! Where'd that road come from?” asked Fregin.

   “It's always been here,” answered Berli, straightening up. “See. Here are the outlines of the paving stones.”

   Weldein shook his head. “I've ridden this road a dozen times and never seen this.”

   “You weren't meant to. The illusion was strong enough to hide it from anyone but a mage. Kry-the commander sent. some people to find this, but they never did, and somehow I never did get out here to find it-something always kept happening.”

   “Imagine that,” said Berli dryly.

   “Anyway, it will stay like this now.”

   “Is that good?” asked Weldein. “You said the Hamorians were using it.”

   “They're starting at the other end. If they get this far...” I shrugged.

   “I see what you mean.”

   Before we left, I studied the dry wash again. The spot had actually been a crossroads of sorts, because a covered drainage way ran under the north-south road that Kyphrans had used for years. The top of the drainage way was part of the other road itself-the road between Gallos and Kyphros and the one we had just ridden up from Tellura.

   I wondered why people hadn't used the wizards' road before Antonin hid it, but maybe that was because it didn't lead anywhere nearby. Still, that didn't make sense. The white wizards had built the road to be the shortest east-west highway across Candar.

   Berli slipped back into her saddle, and I turned Gairloch east and onto the dust- and dirt-covered paving stones. There was a shallow set of ruts where Antonin's carriage had passed. At the bottom of the rut, I could see traces of the paving stones beneath, unmarked, uncracked.

   Whatever else they had done, the white wizards had built well, as I knew from the part of the road still used from northwest Kyphros to Sarronnyn.

   We traveled another ten kays before I found out why the part of the road we traveled hadn't been used before Antonin arrived. The faultless stonework of the old road, concealed as it was by a thin layer of dirt and some scrub brush, ran right up to a huge pile of red and black rocks tumbled together, a pile nearly forty cubits high. The rocks had apparently peeled away from the cliff above the road and buried it, perhaps for centuries.

   Why hadn't anyone tried to reopen the road before Antonin? I frowned, then nodded. It was a military road. It didn't improve travel between Gallos and Kyphros. With the use of steamships, trade was easier by river and the ocean, and, probably most important, it would have taken hundreds of workers a good season to move just the pile of stone in front of me.

   Even Antonin had only created a stone-fused narrow passage through the rock pile. The lingering feel of chaos surrounded the narrow passage.

   Wheee... eee...

   “I know. It feels terrible.” I patted Gairloch on the neck.

   Kkcchew! “Damned dust is white now,” muttered Fregin.

   “The chaos wizard did this?” Weldein pulled up beside me, and we were almost shoulder to shoulder. I could have reached out and touched the fused stone wall. It would have been a tight fit for Antonin's carriage.

   “The second one-Antonin. The feel of chaos is fading, but it's still there.”

   “He burned through this, and you defeated him?” asked Berli, close behind, her words echoing from the stone.

   “Sometimes, luck and order can overcome brute force.”

   “Prefer the brute force, myself,” grumbled Fregin. “Can't always count on luck.”

   I appreciated that sentiment, especially since the growing rumbles of chaos from the depths to the east of us indicated that the chaos wizard ahead had much more brute force than Antonin or Gerlis had possessed. How had Sammel gathered such force? Was it because he knew the basics of order? That would explain a lot.

   “Gettin' right thirsty,” Fregin said to Berli.

   “Who isn't?”

   “Hungry, too.”

   “You're always hungry.”

   We stopped in the shade of a cliff another two or three kays farther east along the road. I offered slices of the white cheese and the bread that Barrabra had pressed on me the morning before when we had left Tellura.

   Food wasn't the problem. Water was. The summer had been so dry that there was no water in the drainage way beside the road, and we'd only passed one spring.

   I wiped my forehead... then paused. If I were such an earth wizard, why couldn't I look for springs and the like?

   Sitting in the shade, I let my senses try to seek out water. I'd , sought and found iron before, deep beneath the earth. Water shouldn't be that hard.

   It probably wouldn't have been, had there been any to find, that is, any that wouldn't have taken a team of miners to get to. Absently, thinking of miners, I wondered how Ginstal was doing in his efforts to rebuild the Hrisbarg iron mines. Not too well, I hoped, since that would only strengthen Hamor's hold on Candar.

   I chewed through the bread and cheese and moistened my mouth with some water from my water bottle. There was less than a quarter left, and Gairloch hadn't drunk since morning, and even in the shade he was hot and panting. After putting the food back in the left saddlebag, I took another deep breath and concentrated on trying to find water.

   “I'm not sure,” I told Weldein, “but there might be a spring another kay or so ahead.”

   He nodded as he mounted, as if my announcement were only to be expected.

   I wasn't quite as accurate as I'd hoped. It was more like three kays, but no one could have missed it, because it was more like a stream that flowed into the drainage way and then slowly vanished into the ground beneath the stones lining the drainage channel.

   Still, everyone got plenty to drink, even Gairloch, although I made him take it in steps, and we refilled our bottles before we set out again.

   “Some advantages to being with a wizard,” conceded Fregin.

   “Tell us that when chaos-fire is flying around our heads,” suggested Weldein.

   That night, I didn't even have to find another spring. We camped in a long-abandoned, stone-walled waystation with a flowing spring. The roof had ages-since turned to dust, but we didn't exactly have to worry about rain or cold.

   I didn't sleep all that well, not with the feel of chaos growing stronger and deeper with each kay we moved eastward, but what good was it to tell the others that I was sensing chaos that they couldn't feel or hear?

   The next day was pretty much like the previous one.

   We found another, smaller rock pile where Antonin had burned a passage, and the carriage tracks pointed eastward. Most of the time, the wizards' road was surprisingly clear, and from the carriage tracks, the dried horse droppings, and the lingering hints of chaos, it was clear that Antonin had indeed used the road frequently.

   Late in the day on the second day on the wizards' road, we came to a grove of scrub junipers, planted right in the middle of the road, and totally blocking it.

   “Where'd that come from?” demanded Fregin.

   “It was probably always here,” answered Berli.

   I shook my head. The grove felt wrong, but I was tired, and it took a moment for me to realize that it was another illusion. After fumbling a bit, I dissolved the illusion as well.

   There was another crossroads, and even a weathered kaystone that announced, “Yryna-10 K.” I'd never heard of Yryna, but the placement of the stone on the northern side of the crossroads seemed to indicate that the town was somewhere in Gallos, and I thought I would have heard of it somewhere had it belonged to Kyphros.

   “Yryna?” asked Fregin.

   The rest of us shrugged.

   As Gairloch carried me eastward along the wizards' road, I realized two things. First, the cliffs around the road were higher, and, second, there were no carriage tracks on the road.

   “Somewhere ahead, the road must be blocked.”

   “No tracks?” asked Weldein.

   “That's good and bad. It means the Hamorians haven't gotten the road unblocked yet, but I don't know if we can get through, either.”

   “What do you want to do, Master Lerris?”

   I shrugged again. “Go on.”

   From my own experiences in the deadlands, I suspected that the road got worse and hadn't been used, even by Antonin, nearer Frven. Otherwise, why would he have used the muddy and boggy roads around Howlett?

   Most of the paving stones had remained generally in place, although a thin layer of soil covered many areas, and there low bushes, brush, and scrub oak had started to take hold, more than in the section of road we, had already traveled.

   We camped at another abandoned waystation that night, with yet another spring that seemed to flow into the ground.

   The rocks and the cliffs beyond the road had turned into a heavier gray, and I hadn't seen the sharp-edged red and black rocks, not since we had left the crossroads five or six kays behind.

   We finished the last of Barrabra's bread and the white cheese, leaving only hard travel bread, some dried mutton, and yellow brick cheese.

   Again, that night, my sleep was fitful at best, and I woke up twice in a hot sweat, feeling as though chaos-formed of snakes of molten iron-were stalking me. The wards I had set didn't help much against nightmares, or against my own fears.

   The second time, I walked out to the spring, where a mountain rat scurried away. Overhead, the stars glittered blue-white and cold, and even my breath seemed to steam. I splashed my face with the cold water, and that helped, but I still woke before dawn.

   The next day, as we moved into the Easthorns, the canyon walls got higher, and, except around noon, the road was generally shaded. That morning, it had been chill enough that Weldein and the two guards rode with their jackets fastened.

   The ground seemed to shake underfoot, but I said nothing, and Gairloch picked up one hoof and then another, placing each carefully. The sense of chaos had grown nearer and nearer, and I uncapped my water bottle and took another swallow, glancing down at the dry drainage canal beside the road.

   As we rode eastward in the early afternoon, in the distance ahead, I could finally see another slumped mass of rock, even larger than the first mass, that turned the road into a dead-end canyon. I kept riding until we reached the tumbled stones that had peeled off a cliff that seemed more than a kay high and cascaded across the old highway.

   “Doesn't look as though we can go too much farther.” Weldein wiped his forehead and unfastened his jacket.

   I fingered my staff.

   Still, I could sense the nearness of chaos, and a whispering sound that suggested troops ahead-a lot of them.

   Whhnnnnn... A mosquito whined past me, presumably toward Weldein, who offered a more tempting target.

   I looked at the pile of rock that had fallen across the old stones of the road. A few had bounced even farther westward, creating a rough dam, and turning the stone-lined drainage channel into a semistagnant pond. The dried algae on the rocks showed the water was lower, much lower, than normal. That was also probably why there was one lonely mosquito whining through die hot shade of the road canyon and not an entire swarm.

   Somehow I was glad that the heat was hard on mosquitoes also.

   The ground shivered underfoot, and Weldein looked at me.

   “Stay there,” I told Weldein, as I dismounted.

   “What are you doing?”

   “Climbing a rock. So I can see them.”

   “See who?” demanded Fregin.

   “The Hamorians on the other side of the rock pile.”

   “Won't their wizard see you?”

   “Not while he's handling that much chaos.” At least I hoped Sammel didn't. So I clambered up the rocks, carefully, slowly, sweating every cubit of the way, trying not to hold my breath, while still grasping my staff. If I needed it, I didn't want to have to climb down and up again.

   I almost laughed when I got to the top and looked eastward.

   Beyond the huge pile was a flat expanse-two hundred cubits or so of untouched road-and then another pile of rock almost like the one where I perched.

   Looking upward, I could see what had happened. An entire cliff had collapsed and fallen down over a slight ridge that had split the rock flow into two avalanches, leaving a section of good road between the two piles of rock.