The Death of Chaos (65 page)

FROM THE OLD stone bench outside the guest quarters, I looked out at the clear blue waters of the Eastern Ocean, at the puffy clouds over the water, and at the single steamer puffing eastward through the afternoon toward Nordla.

   My stomach growled, reminding me that it had been a long time since breakfast. “I'm hungry. Do you want to eat in the Brotherhood halls?”

   “Do you?” countered Krystal.

   “Not really, but we have to eat somewhere.”

   “I'm not hungry...”

   “Like at breakfast? We haven't eaten since then.”

   Eventually we walked back down toward the harbor, and I was glad I'd brought my staff. We passed a store with the name “Brauk Trading” painted on the glass. The doors were bolted, but two men inside were carrying things to a wagon by the side door.

   “Deception, again,” Krystal said. “No one says anything, but those who are favored get the word.”

   “Let's see.”

   We kept walking along the waterfront, the stores on our right, the harbor to the left, past a door with just a crossed candle and a rose on the sign, but it was bolted shut, and no one was there. The next place, a coppersmith's, was open, and a small white-haired man sat in the back at a bench. No one else was in the shop.

   Beyond the coppersmith's was a narrow alley. A handful of traders were loading a line of wagons.

   “... can't take it all, Dergin...”

   “... take what we can... won't be gravel left here tomorrow...”

   “... shut up and load... want to get my ass clear...”

   Anger began to rise, both in me and in Krystal. We exchanged glances and walked on, past more shuttered stores. Then we turned around and walked back to the coppersmith's.

   Inside the doorway were a pair of kettles on an old table, both with curved spouts and green porcelain handles.

   We walked past the kettles toward the coppersmith, except I stopped to look at a pair of hinges on the wall shelf. Each was shaped like a beast I'd never seen, with a long neck, and the hint of scales, furled wings, four claw-tipped legs, and a barbed tail.

   “Fearsome creature,” said Krystal.

   “That be the dragon, Lady Blade, or that is what the fellow who drew it for me claimed.” The smith barely reached Krystal's shoulder. “Everyone looks at them, but”-he shrugged- “no one wants them.”

   “Have you heard about the battle tomorrow?” I asked gently.

   “Some nonsense about a fleet from Hamor. Yes, I've heard it.” The coppersmith shook his head.

   “It's true,” Krystal said. “There may not be much left of Nylan by tomorrow night or the night after. The Hamorians have mighty cannon.”

   “I've heard those sorts of tales for months, Lady Blade.” The coppersmith gave a faint smile. “And if this time, they be true, then they be true. I am too old to cart everything off into the hills, and then back.” He shrugged. “All gone. My son, my daughter, they never came back. Ellyna, she's been gone for years. I have the shop. And if I don't... then what?” I tried not to swallow. So did {Crystal.

   “Please... be not sad, Ser Mage.” His eyes flicked to the staff.

   “I'm also a woodcrafter,” I said almost in protest. For us not to be sad was easy enough for him to say. We'd both seen what a handful of Hamorian ships had done to Ruzor, and there were easily ten times that many likely to be turning their cannon on Nylan.

   “Your kindness... that I appreciate. Many have walked past, and said nothing.” He licked his lips. “I am not without some wit. When traders unload their stores and cart them off, they do so only in times of peril. What can I unload? Two kettles, ingots of copper and tin, and a pair of dragon hinges that have watched buyers for years?”

   “You should leave.” Krystal looked at the smith with the thinning white hair.

   “Had you come twenty years ago, Lady, I would.” He grinned at me, and I had to grin back. “Now... I am content.”

   “Hamor will destroy the city,” I said gently.

   “As times have changed, it may be no great loss, ser.”

   I tried not to wince, even though that thought had crossed my mind at points. Recluce was no paradise, and the Council was certainly less than impressive. But... for most people, it was still better than what Hamor offered. Not much, perhaps, and that bothered me, too. “You could just take a long walk tomorrow,” I suggested.

   “Perhaps I will, ser. Perhaps I will.”

   But I could feel that he wouldn't. I looked back to the dragon hinges. Krystal nodded.

   “How much for the hinges?”

   “You may have them.”

   “I couldn't do that.”

   The old deep green eyes looked into mine. “I will make you a bargain. If the ships do not destroy Nylan, as you feel they will, then you return and pay me five silvers. If they do, then you must keep the hinges and put them on a chest for all to see. You do make chests?”

   “I have made a few,” I admitted.

   He nodded. “You measured them with your eyes, and you saw their use.”

   I reached for my purse.

   His frail hand touched my arm. “No. I trust you, and that trust is not misplaced. It is time for the dragons to fly.” He picked up a packet of cloth and walked to the shelf, carefully winding the soft gray cloth around the dragon hinges. Then he handed the package to Krystal. “On your blade. Lady, and both your spirits.”

   Krystal took the cloth-wrapped dragons, but we just stood there.

   “Now... you must go.”

   The little smith practically pushed us out of the shop, and we let him. Then he said, “Take care of my dragons.” And he closed the door.

   We just stood there for a long moment.

   I swallowed, and my stomach growled, and then I flushed.

   “You're upset,” Krystal said, “and you're embarrassed.”

   “Yes. It just seems like the innocent get hurt, those and the helpless. I couldn't make him leave. If we can't protect Hamor, then he won't have anything left anyway. I don't know. The traders will be fine. So will the Brotherhood, one way or another.” I stopped and just let myself feel. “You're angry, too.”

   “Yes.”

   I took her hand, and my stomach growled again.

   “And you're hungry, still,” she pointed out. “What about there?”

   At the end of the crossroad was a small cafe, one dark oak door open. We walked down a hundred cubits or so, and I peered in the open door.

   “You want dinner?” asked a slender young man, setting down a chair. “All we have is whitefish, and you will have to eat quickly. We are packing up the kitchen, but Mama would not turn away someone hungry.” He grinned, revealing enormous and wide-gapped front teeth. “Or with coins.”

   “We'll eat quickly.”

   “Not too quickly. You must enjoy it, and the fish-it would not keep anyway.” He led us across a half-empty floor to a corner booth. Scuffs in the oak showed where more tables had been. The booth had dark leather upholstered benches. As we sat, he added, “I'll bring you some ale.” Then he glanced at my staff. “Is greenberry all right? The redberry keg is sealed.”

   “Fine.”

   He darted off, scooping up two chairs as he went.

   “I wonder how good it will be. They're certainly packing up.” Krystal stifled a yawn.

   “You're tired.”

   “So are you.”

   “Here you go.” The young fellow had already scurried back with two mugs and two pitchers, and was gone with another pair of chairs.

   I poured mugs for each of us, and we'd barely taken a full swallow when he'd returned with a huge loaf of golden bread. “No spreads or conserves, but it's fresh.”

   Off he went with the last pair of chairs, only to come back with a woman, who smiled as they picked up a table and eased it through the double doors.

   I broke off a corner of the bread. He'd been right. The bread was fresh enough that it still steamed, and both Krystal and I began to eat, trying to ignore the dismantling of the cafe as we munched through about half a loaf.

   “Here's the fish, and there's even some beans. I forgot about them.”

   We looked at two huge platters heaped with whitefish under a cream sauce.

   “Darkness... I... there's so much...”

   “Don't worry. We would have had to throw it out. So you got it all. What you can't eat the dog will.” And he raced off again.

   At that we laughed and began to eat. The fish was good, the sauce even better, better even than at the Founders' Inn.

   “Makes me feel... I don't know...”

   “Because it's something else good that's going to be destroyed?” asked Krystal.

   “I think so.”

   “Me, too.” Krystal pushed the platter back.“I'm full, and I can't eat any more.”

   I couldn't, either. We'd each eaten perhaps half of our platters. I looked around, but I didn't look long because the young fellow came hustling back in. I waved.

   “How did you like it?”

   “It was wonderful, maybe the best I've ever had,” I admitted. “How much do we owe you?”

   “I don't know. Usually, it's about five coppers, but you get more, and there's more of a choice...”

   “Here.” I handed him two silvers. “It's a meal we won't forget.”

   He just looked at the coins.

   “Call it a gift from the dragons,” Krystal added impishly.

   “Thank you. Thank you.”

   “Just get on with saving the place for others,” I said as we left, but he was already carting out some large kettles to the overflowing wagon in the back alley.

   Somehow, with all my traveling, I'd only found two places where hospitality wasn't determined totally by coins- Kyphros, and I thought of Barrabra, and Recluce, where we had just gotten a wonderful meal even while the owners were trying to save their cafe. Maybe that showed that any country that fostered even some of that deserved saving. I hoped so.

   The sun was touching the Gulf of Candar when we walked back up to the guest quarters. Unlike the port section below, the Brotherhood grounds were scarcely deserted, with dangergelders sitting on the walls and benches.

   “... leave at dawn...”

   “... sleep in... no big problem...”

   “... you want to tell that to Cassius?”

   “He's the real black mage-black all over.”

   “There they are... she's the head of the forces of Kyphros... Trehonna says he's one of the great gray mages, built a mountain once...”

   I tried not to pay any attention as eyes turned on us.

   “... feeling a little modest, dear?” whispered Krystal.

   “What about you?”

   We both blushed and kept walking until we were inside our room. I set my staff in the corner, and Krystal unbelted her blade.

   “I ate too much.”

   “It was good, though.”

   We sat on the edge of one of the single beds. Krystal unwrapped the dragons.

   “They are beautiful, if strange,”

   They were beautiful, and I could see them on a dark oak chest, one with no ornamentation except for a bronze latch.

   Thrap!

   “Come in,” I called. “It's unbolted.”

   Tamra opened the door and stepped inside. Weldein followed her and closed the door behind them.

   “I thought I heard you two. What are those?” Tamra stepped up and peered at the hinges.

   “Hinges. Shaped like dragons.”

   “What's a dragon?” asked Weldein.

   “I don't know,” I admitted. “But the crafter who made them called them dragons.”

   “Dragons?” Tamra frowned, then cleared her throat. “One reason I came by was to tell you that your father thinks the Hamorian ships will arrive early tomorrow morning. He thinks we should all be.up at the western end of the black wall just before dawn.”

   “Before dawn. All right.” That was fine with me, since I wasn't sure how I would sleep anyway. Or how well. “Where are they?”

   “How would I know? He said he'd see us in the morning.” Tamra glanced back at the dragons. “What are you going to do with those?”

   “Put them on a chest.”

   “Always thinking about crafting, isn't he?”

   “Not always. Sometimes...” I shook my head. I didn't want to explain anything to Tamra, about old coppersmiths or good people trying to pack up a cafe or traders ignoring their neighbor. Tamra had to make her decisions about Recluce without my explanations.

   “Well...” Tamra said gently. “We'll leave you two. Dawn will come early.”

   “Too early,” added Weldein.

   The door closed, and Krystal and I turned to each other.

   “She sees more than you think, Lerris. She's just afraid people will use it against her.”

   I thought. Krystal was right. Once, on the ship to Freetown, Tamra had admitted to me that she was scared. Of course, she'd accused me of being scared first, and I'd reacted to that, rather than to her admission. “You're right.” Then I put my arms around Krystal. “That's one reason why I love you.”

   “That's one reason why I love you. Beneath that stubborn outside, you do listen.”

   Outside, the leaves rustled as the wind picked up in the early evening.

   After a moment, Krystal added,“We haven't seen Justen or Dayala or your parents. And Tamra said she hadn't, either.”

   “That bothers me.” I could sense that it bothered Krystal, too, but I wasn't about to go around pounding on doors and asking them why I hadn't seen them that afternoon or evening.

   I yawned, then grinned. Krystal was yawning also.

   “I suppose we should try to sleep.”

   “I suppose so.”

   She slowly pulled off her boots, and so did I, and after we undressed, I turned off the lamp.

   Outside, the fall winds rustled the trees, and mixed with the rustling of young voices. Had we ever been that young? I almost snorted, but Krystal elbowed me gently.

   Neither one of us wanted to talk about the morning, and we didn't, but we knew what awaited us. We didn't go to sleep easily or early, just held tightly to each other.

JUST BEFORE DAWN, and after a hurried breakfast of cold bread, cheese, and fruit, we gathered at the half-empty stables of the Brotherhood. The cheese lay like cold iron on my stomach, but I knew I'd need the strength.

   For some reason, just before I mounted I looked toward Dayala. So did Krystal, then Tamra, and since she did, Weldein.

   Justen nodded to her, and my father inclined his head as well.

   Like an ancient oak, she stood there, slender but with a depth of blackness and harmony I envied, though I had seen briefly the price she had paid for that harmony and did not know whether I could pay such a price.

   “We must undo the old wrongs, and we will prevail. Order must not be locked in cold iron.”

   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 seemed, 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.