The Death of Chaos (66 page)

   The Hamorian fleet drew closer, smoke from the ships' funnels forming another kind of cloud.

   The echo of a single cannon shot barked over the low howling of the winds.

   I watched for a moment as a column of water geysered into the air nearly a kay seaward of the tip of the breakwater outside Nylan. A kay wasn't far, I realized, and I tried to hasten my efforts to widen and strengthen my order channels... and to open the way for the chaos we needed, and which could destroy us all as well as the Hamorians, were it not well contained.

   Could I contain so much chaos? Even with order?

   Beside me, Krystal staggered as the ground rumbled and shook.

   Another ranging shot barked across the Gulf, and another column of water exploded, still well short of the breakwater- but closer.

   The Hamorian fleet steamed eastward, now starting to pitch as the warships struck the waves raised by the winds. Their raked bows cut through the foam-crested swells like heavy knives, and smoke billowed from their stacks and their squat gun turrets.

   Crumpt! Crumpt! More water columns rose, within a few hundred cubits of the breakwater, raised by the Hamorian shells.

   I struggled with iron and order, and order and iron.

   The howling of the winds continued to rise... and rise... until there seemed to be no sounds except the wind, and my ears seemed to split with the screaming.

   The sky was black behind and over us, and heavy gray over Nylan, and rain began to pelt down, cold drops that stung, cold drops that did little to cool the heat of my forehead.

   I kept twisting and grasping at order, trying to recall Justen's efforts, trying to keep away from chaos while twisting order toward the comparatively shallower waters of the Gulf where the Hamorian fleet was headed, trying to let order lead chaos.

 
  I staggered, and I could sense the rumbling and rocking of the earth even before it reached us.

   Grrrurrrrr...

   Dercas sprawled on the grass, his words lost in the wind and the rain, and Haithen yanked him to his feet. More rocks separated from the cliff and were lost in the surf that now battered the beach and the base of the cliffs below.

   One shell, then another, exploded on Nylan's breakwater, and the stone beacon at its tip sagged.

   I squinted through the cold rain that slashed at us like quarrels. The sea was a tempest of whitecaps, with waves smashing over the Hamorian ships. Yet I could also sense that while more than a few vessels had plunged beneath that stormy surface, more still survived, and had been rigged and prepared for the possibility of storms raised by the great weather mage of Recluce. By my father, who stood like a giant blond oak amidst the rain and the lashing winds, order bands tying him to the soil and to the sky. A smaller, yet scarcely slighter oak-a red oak-stood beside him, also bound in order, yet nearly as strong.

   All the ships in the Gulf pitched in the heavy seas, but their guns still fired, and most of the great fleet still steamed eastward, toward Nylan.

   Shells began to fall along the harbor, with gouts of dust and water rising into the rain-filled air.

   I wiped the water off my face and out of my eyes, conscious of the cold line of dampness that ran down my back from my collar.

   On one side of me rose a pillar of warmth, and I glanced at Krystal, and her fingers brushed my neck. “You can do it.”

   On the other side rose a column of dark order, where my aunt Elisabet seemed to stretch from the bedrock to the skies, yet no order reached from her to either skies or ships, but gathered around her and swelled into a darkness every bit as deep as that raised by my father.

   I touched the iron deep beneath me again, trying to coax, to wrench open order channels to bring forth that elemental chaos that yet resisted me.

   Justen stepped up beside my father, and while the winds did not subside, nor their howling diminish, a bass groaning sound rumbled out of the ground, and the grass and stone beneath my feet shook again... and again. As with my father and Tamra, order bands stretched from Justen, but these sank deep into the earth, somehow intertwined with, yet separate from, those I had forged.

   Ggrrururrrrrrrr... rrrrrr...

   I stumbled, but managed to keep standing as I directed order-tubes filled with chaos to the waters the Hamorian ships were entering. Now those waters seemed to heave, and in spots warm mists seemed to rise out of the waves themselves.

   The heavy explosive shells were falling faster, like ordered lightning through the rain and down upon the unprotected port. The sky was nearly all black, lit by reddish flares from each ship's gun and from each exploding shell.

   The ships pitched in the heavy waves, and another few took on too much water and halted or began to capsize, but most kept steaming and throwing shells toward Nylan.

   As those shells fell, a whiteness began to grow, from the deaths already occurring in Nylan and from the sailors on the few ships that had gone down. Despite that white knife edge of death, I forced myself to ignore that whiteness and to ease chaos up beneath the fleet, using my order-tubes. Guurrrrrrr...

   The ground rocked, not so hard, and now the waters shivered. In places, wisps of steam vied with the storm-driven whitecaps.

   But the guns kept pounding Nylan, and dust and stone fragments flared into the dark sky, and more orange and red billows dotted the streets of the black city. Dust, dirt, stone, ashes, wood fragments-pieces of everything flew into the air and came down with the rain and the incoming shells. And the whiteness of death grew.

   I could sense a few more ships settling into the water, but the storm was beginning to wane, almost gasping.

   The silver-haired Dayala lifted her right hand, and a whispering slipped through my thoughts, a sound like leaves rustling, like a big mountain cat padding down a forest trail, like a waterfall cascading down a mountainside, and the winds rose again, and the waves smashed against the gray-steel hulls.

   For a time longer, the howl of the winds continued with the shrieking of the mightiest of gales, and the ground roared and rumbled and shook.

   As I struggled to bring more than mere fragments of chaos to the Gulf, another handful of ships tilted-or were tilted-and slipped into the depths of the Eastern Ocean. One ship, jostled by a mighty shape, turned and crashed into another, and, locked together, both oozed toward the depths of the Gulf.

   The ground shuddered, and I took two steps to keep my balance, quickly wiping the water out of my eyes, only to see that all the remaining Hamorian ships were now shelling Nylan. Hundreds of ships had their guns trained on the black city.

   Crumpt! Crumpt! Crumpt! Crumpt! Like drumbeats, the shells fell on the port, and the very ground seemed to echo with the impacts.

   Lines of flickering orange rose into the falling rain and shrouded Nylan, so many that it was difficult to tell where the lines of flame began, lines of flame not damped by the rain and chill wind.

   The white screaming of dead sailors, dead gunners-and now, dying fishermen, townspeople-lashed back at me through the rain and the order bonds I had sunk into the earth. And the screaming was almost as loud as the wind, as deep as the groaning of the earth.

   Yet fully two-thirds of that dark-hulled fleet remained, and the guns fired, and the shells fell in an uneven staccato pattern, ripping through the dark day like knives of pain, slashing at Nylan, crushing black stone buildings into gravel.

   Tamra, Justen, Dayala, Aunt Elisabet, and my father-all were calling the forces of order-and it wasn't enough, and I still could not loose the full power of the elemental chaos I had encircled up through the waters of the Gulf.

   Despite the storms, the steel-hulled ships of the Hamorians endured. Despite the rumblings beneath the earth, the troopships headed toward Nylan. Despite the efforts of the whales and dolphins and who knew what other creatures of the deep called by the silver-haired Dayala, the ships struggled onward. Despite the bolts of nearly pure order wielded like anger by Tamra, the warships and their cannons closed on the Black City.

   The shells kept falling, and the fires rising, even as the winds began to fade, even as I could sense Dayala falling to the grass, and Justen kneeling beside her, somehow bent, gnarled. My father stood swaying on the end of the cliffs, and my mother slipped toward him in crisp, competent steps that began to falter as she reached him.

   Elisabet stepped up beside Justen and Dayala, sheltering them, and darkness welled forth from her, and the winds rose again, if not quite so strongly, and once more, the waves smashed against the iron hulls, and across the waterfront of Nylan, and the Gulf shivered.

   Though a handful more ships shuddered under the waters of the Gulf, the shells kept dropping on the already prostrate city, falling like death, despite the winds and the waves, and the blackness flowing now mostly from Elisabet and Tamra.

   Suddenly, Tamra staggered onto her knees, and the wind gasped, as she tried to rise again. The blackness dropped away from Elisabet, and she, too, staggered and seemed to shrivel into a shadow of herself. The wind was dying, and the waves subsiding.

   I swallowed, thinking about the fires of the depths, but it was my turn... my turn... my turn to bring the great fires from the earth.

   The dark ships steamed more confidently toward the breakwater, and the shells fell like rain, even as the rain slackened.

   I forced myself deep into order, and to the fringe of chaos, for every effort I had made had not been sufficient to loose the power of chaos necessary to stop the Hamorian fleet.

   With that effort, chills shivered through me, and my stomach turned, and white needles flared through my eyes.

   The earth shook; the waters heaved; and the last few cubits of the great black wall of Nylan shivered and cascaded off the cliffs and into the sands and waters of the Gulf of Candar with a dull roar lost in the massive groaning from beneath the waters before me.

   Gouts of steam flared from the ocean around the dark hulls of the Hamorian ships, and the steam thickened.

   Sweat poured down my face, and everyone around me seemed frozen-Justen crouched over Dayala, my mother hanging on to my father's sagging figure, Elisabet slumped in a heap between her brothers, Krystal extending her fingers toward my arm.

   Yet the shells kept falling, and the fires rose out of Nylan, as did the screams, and the whiteness of death and more death, and the orange-white-red of fires raging down rubble-filled streets, and waves smashing into buildings, and more shells falling, grinding the stone walls into black gravel.

The Gulf of Candar

THE WATER FLARES over the bow of the Emperor's Pride, water so hot that it blisters the gray paint off the metal of the superstructure, and the bow plunges into the waves of boiling water that still rise above the bridge.

   As the cruiser slides into that boiling mass, the fleet commander looks at the marshal. Stupelltry's face is red-blotched from where the droplets of boiling water have splashed it. “A handful of wizards? Demon-damn you and your handful of wizards!”

   “I have done my duty as well as I can,” responds Dyrsse, clutching a bridge railing so hot that it blisters his fingers. Despite the burns on his face, his voice is firm and carries. “So have you.”

   “Damn duty! We're all dead!” Stupelltry holds the helm now, as the steersman cradles burned and blistered hands unable to grasp the wheel. The lookouts have been torn off the bridge by the waves, lost kays behind the flagship. The fleet commander fights the helm, trying to hold the cruiser into the lines of the waves.

   “Without duty, there is nothing!” Dyrsse pulls the signal cords to order the guns to continue their bombardment, but there is no response, either from the cords or the guns.

   “Then there's nothing!”

   The ship ahead, the only other one that Dyrsse can see, explodes in a wall of flame, and iron fragments spray into the towering waves. Any screams are lost in the howling of the wind, the explosions of the shells within the other ship's magazines, and the hammering of the waves on iron.

   The Emperor's Pride noses into the boiling water, and the odor of boiled meat rolls across the bridge with the spray, and more bodies are swirled by the turret and below the bridge, bodies either from the cruiser or from one of the other ships that has been destroyed.

   “Aeeeeeiiiii...” The helmsman, unable to hang on with his burned hands, slides and loses his grip, then is swept into the boiling maelstrom.

   “Light to-”

   CRUMMMPPPTTTT!

   The magazines below the front turret explode in a wave of chaos, flame and shrapnel, and boiling water swirls over the sinking, blistered fragments of steel, over the bobbing boiled corpses that dot the Eastern Ocean.

STANDING ON THE headland, knowing that the others-Tamra, Justen, Dayala, my aunt Elisabet, and my father-had given everything they had to give, and I had not, I strained again to weld order and chaos, to twist them through each other. I did, splitting order into smaller and smaller fragments and forcing it to direct chaos, mixing, linking, and tying order and chaos together, and creating heat, fire like the sun, as order and chaos merged under my hammer, under my will.

   The earth groaned in protest, and the waters seemed to draw back in protest, and steam like fog swept among the gray-hulled ships, burning and searing. The Gulf waters exploded with gouts of steam, steam so hot that it peeled paint and instantly charred wooden railings and fittings.

   Yet order and chaos twisted together into smaller and tighter fragments, and those order and chaos fragments exploded like small suns, and the whiteness of screams filled the Gulf, and along with the explosions of shells on shore came the explosions of shells within the ships that had held the sea.

   Gouts of flame raced across the waters. The entire ocean began to steam, and the ships pitched and heaved upon the waters, as if those ships were too hot to remain upon the waters, and the paint on the hulls and their superstructures blistered and vanished in fine ashes as the forces of chaos flowed into the metal and that iron turned as red as the molten iron beneath the waters.

   And the whiteness of death rose like I had never felt before, screaming, flaying me like burning knives.

   Krystal's hand touched me, and I could feel her strength. “You have to do it, Lerris, no matter what the price.” And I could feel her tears, and the pain of that whiteness of death and more death, and I knew there was no choice, that the ships would sear the land bare-even as I was searing the Gulf bare of everything.

   Another line of chaos-steam eruptions flared across the waters of the Gulf, and more ships burned, and more sailors and troopers died in their molten iron coffins.

   Steel ship after steel ship shuddered, then melted or exploded into hot fragments that rained down upon boiling water. And still the waters parted, and fire flowed into the night-dark sky, and even ashes rose from the waters, and steam gouted into the fired air of the Gulf.

   Yet, some ships fought on, and their less frequent shells still continued to grind Nylan into sand and gravel. I staggered, trying to hold onto order and chaos, to twist them together so that none could wield them separately again. My eyes blind to the sea, I struggled and welded.

   I went to one knee, sliding through the damp grass, still fighting to bring ordered chaos against the ships.

   Two arms reached me, one warm, one ordered, and I struggled upright with the infusion of darkness and warmth, of order and strength. As I wrenched more chaos from the ground and somehow flung it into the Gulf, a massive groan issued forth from the iron beneath Recluce. That groan rose into a mighty grinding, and even more massive waves, topped with gouts of steam that resembled small mountains, burst from the waters of the Gulf of Candar.

   Like a huge anvil struck like a gong, the sound of that iron being wrenched apart slammed at me, and my hands covered my ears, as I fell again with the wrenching of the earth beneath me, and the screaming of steam that whistled up through the Gulf waters.

   Another clanging of that iron anvil of the depths shivered through the land and sea, and the violence of the ground's rolling threw me facedown into the grass.

   As I finally struggled up, to the north, behind me, somewhere near the Feyn River, the earth could take no more, and the back of Recluce split and a river of molten iron flared into the sky like a second sun, building a wall on the north side of the new channel between the sundered remnants of Recluce. The gold of the harvest fields turned black, and the river boiled and flared into steam. The whole isle rocked, and roofs collapsed, and stones rained off Dorrin's wall and around us.

   I staggered, but Krystal helped me stand, and I saw my aunt in a heap, almost by my feet, Uncle Sardit cradling her. Anger fueled my last effort, anger at the Hamorians, at their precise gray ships, at their arrogance in using machines to build order, and at their desire to hold all the world. Neither I nor Krystal nor Kyphros nor Candar would be held!

   Masses of water surged from the shallows beneath the cliffs where I stood, gushing southward, and rising into a wall of steam that swept over the remaining dark hulls, bobbing uselessly in the boiling waters of the Gulf.

   Another wall of water lashed across Nylan-quenching fires even as it scalded those few who remained. Hot steam rose from the sundered and flattened tip of Recluce.

   While I had no order strength left, and stood gasping on the grass of the cliff line, the wall behind us swayed, and the waves surged back against the cliffs, and hot spray cascaded up the cliffs and over and around us.

   Another few cubits of the end of the cliff and the wall swayed, and then tumbled into the Gulf below with a dull, booming crash. And more hot sea spray rained across us.

   Krystal somehow held me, almost pressed herself to me, offering warmth, strength, and all I could do was stand there, gasping, panting, with hot sweat pouring down my face.

   The ground kept trembling, as if the earth could not stop itself.

   I took another series of deep breaths. So did Krystal.

   She asked something, and I realized that I could not hear her, and I squinted at her.

   “Is it over?” she repeated, and between her feelings and watching her lips I understood.

   “Most of it.” I tried to peer through the fog and mist to the south. There were no cannon reports, no explosions, just soft hissing and bubbling sounds, the crashing of waves of hot water on the cliffs-and the smell of boiled seaweed, and boiled fish and other less savory odors. I would have retched, but had not even that strength.

   The Gulf was a boiled desert, and the whiteness of death, thousands upon thousands of deaths, lay like a shroud over it.

   Still gasping, I glanced around, then toward the clouded sky, wondering about the source of the flashes of darkness that intermittently blocked my vision.

   Elisabet half sat in Sardit's lap, her face tired and wrinkled, and growing more so as I watched. Justen was old, wrinkled, and his hair was silvering and falling out as he bent to kiss Dayala, as she shriveled in his arms. My parents, out on the point of rock that had crumbled away to almost nothing around them, were motionless, slumping into something beyond death.

   For a moment I just stared, then I began to run, except it was more like a stumble, as my eyes sometimes seemed to work and sometimes not.

   By the time I reached the end of the point, my parents were little more than dust, little more than dull dust in trampled grass, as the last of the order that had sustained them dissipated.

   Krystal held my arm, and I looked.

   Beneath us, the hot sea threw steaming mist at us, and my face burned. So did my eyes.

   My mother's words, somehow, came back to me-“we do the best we can, and we have always loved you, even when it may have seemed we did not...” And in the end, they had given up a long and happy life together, for us, for who else could it have been for? My father had crossed the Eastern Ocean to help us in Kyphros... and I had not understood, not really...

   “But you do now,” Krystal said, standing by my side, and, again, I had to look at her and try to sense her feelings, to understand.

   “I never told them.” I watched her face, squinting through the blackness that came and went, seeing that her hair was mostly silver, and her face had wrinkles it had not had. When I could see, my eyes burned, as though arrows of fire slashed through them.

   “They know. They have to know.”

   I looked back, but there was no sign of Justen or Dayala, except where Tamra crouched, sobbing, her hair nearly snow-white, Weldein behind her, his hair also mostly white, holding his sword like some fearful relic.

   My eyes fell to the vanishing dust. “At least I hugged him. At least I did that.”

   I'd never understood how much strength there had been in my father-or in Justen-and they were gone. I'd been too busy rebelling to understand, and it was too late.

   And my mother, and Aunt Elisabet, and Uncle Sardit-all of them gone, gone... because... because... did I really know? Did it matter?

   My eyes burned, and Krystal stood by me, and we wept, wept for what, again, we, or I, had learned too late.

   Below us, the water swirled and smashed on the rocks, and the hot steam cascaded upward and around us.

   I just kept looking, numb, I think, somehow expecting my parents, my aunt and uncle, Justen and Dayala, to reappear. But it didn't happen.

   The hot surf crashed and boiled, and the ground rumbled, and the earth shook, and I wept, and they were still gone... dead.

   I'd never thought they'd die. Not my father and Justen.

   I shivered.

   With the hot surf and mist came the smell of death, of boiled fish and boiled corpses.

   Why didn't I realize that they weren't ancient angels, that they would die? My mother had as much as told me, and so had Dayala and Sardit-just by coming. How could I have been so blind?

   I looked at the trampled grass, seeing not even dust.

   “Lerris!” Krystal grabbed my arm, turning me, when I didn't respond to her warning.

   I stood stunned at the more than twoscore black-clad figures that were running along the grassy strip from Nylan toward us. Some bore stubby riflelike devices, and others carried blades or staffs.

   Flames from the two small rockets exploded along the black stones of Dorrin's wall.

   I could see that the black-clad marines were yelling something; I thought I could make out something about “the death of chaos!”

   My mouth must have dropped open. What had we done?

   Krystal whirled.

   As I ducked and ran back toward the attackers, I reached for my staff, and I could see Tamra reaching for hers, but she seemed unable to find it, as though she groped for it. The four guards had formed a wedge around her, and their blades blurred in the hot rain that continued to fall.

   Dercas lunged forward, his blade flashing, striking through a shoulder, and then across an arm, parrying two blades, and reaching toward the woman with the rocket gun, who loosed another rocket at him.

   Even as the rocket turned Dercas into a flaming brand, he lifted the sword and flung it straight at the thin-faced woman who had led the Brotherhood squad and who had fired the rocket.

   Whhhssst! Her last rocket veered off into the Gulf, and Heldra's mouth opened, and she looked down at the heavy blade through her chest before sinking to the turf.

   Jinsa and Haithen began to hack their way toward the man with the other gun. Somehow, I tried to shield them. I could feel Tamra doing the same, and the rockets eased aside, splattering across the ordered black stones of the wall.

   In the hissing silence that surrounded me, between the flashes of blackness and of stabbing pain through my eyeballs, I tried to keep the staff moving, although my arms burned, and I had to operate almost on feel. For once it didn't matter, and I didn't worry about who might be hurt. When I struck, it was hard, and some of them didn't get up. Deep inside, I was glad.

   Beside me, Krystal's blade flickered, even more deadly than the staff, and more than a handful of black-clad figures lay strewn before her.

   We backed up, and more ran at us.

   Anger fueled my arms, and my staff, and I didn't even have to force the moves. Soon I was easing forward, keying my moves to Krystal's, following what she was doing, working together, without thought. Slash, parry, strike, slash, slash, parry, STRIKE!

   The ground trembled, and we stopped because the three remaining Brotherhood members were running, screaming, toward the High Road. One stumbled and skidded through the grass and did not rise.

   My arms suddenly felt like lead-or Krystal's did-or they both did.

   I stepped back and leaned the staff against the wall, and my free hand reached for Krystal's. I felt old, and she did, too.

   Tamra stood not half a dozen paces from us, shaking and sobbing, but Weldein had his arms around her, and she held to him, and he held to her. White streaked die once-shining red hair. Even Weldein's blond thatch was heavily streaked with silver.

   Jinsa and Haithen leaned against each other, half gasping, half sobbing, streaks of gray in their short hair as well.

   To the north, the earth still shook. Without looking, I knew that the steam still rose from the cleft that had been the Feyn River valley, from that cleft that was now a strait separating Recluce into two isles.

   The fields there, those that did not lie beneath cubits and cubits of too-hot water, were blackened and burned, like Nylan itself.

   Out in the Gulf, a wedge of black rock had appeared, hissing, steaming as the still-heavy waves crashed against it, welling upward into a larger and larger shape that would be an island, called someday, no doubt, by some name that reflected its origin in the great battle.

   I blinked, trying to blink back the pain of seeing, and, for a moment, more blackness dropped across my eyes, but I struggled against that, and the pain of seeing returned.

   I snorted. Great battle, indeed. The death of chaos, indeed, but not the way Heldra had wanted. So many deaths, so many thousands of deaths... would they all cling to that tiny black chunk of rock?

   The trembling of the ground was less, but another section of the cliffs collapsed, rumbling down into a pile of black stone that formed a cairn shape on the narrow sands of the beach.

   The water swept in and carried a fragment of burned and polished wood that banged in the foam against the dark stones, banged and scraped, and then swirled back into the Gulf. A white fragment of cloth, perhaps a sailor's cap, bobbed in the steaming waters.