The Order War (31 page)

Above Justen, the hills seemed to curve away, as though he stood at the edge of an invisible circle.

They walked up the hillside until they came to a path in the grass, marked only by a slight depression that wound up and around the hillside from the right.

“That’s the way we’ll take to Rybatta tomorrow.” Dayala nodded toward the path.

Justen glanced back toward the west, where the sun almost touched the rolling grassy hills, but he said nothing. It had to be near mid-winter by now, yet the trees were green. Was the great forest this far south?

“It will be slower for the first day, until we can leave the tent and the jugs at Merthe.”

“The horses?”

“Oh, no. It wouldn’t be fair to them, not in the great forest. We’re nearly at the edge of the great forest. Can’t you feel it?” Dragging him by the hand, Dayala almost skipped
up the last few cubits to the top of the hill, dodging around a few saplings and scrub bushes that Justen did not recognize.

They halted by two long, flat boulders—worn smooth by generations of observers, perhaps?

Justen noted a depression in the grass, almost a path, heading at an angle down toward the great forest. “Wouldn’t it be easier to take that path?”

“That path is for later. Right now, it will take you nowhere.”

“It looks like it heads toward Merthe.”

Dayala shrugged. “If you wish, tomorrow we can follow it, but it ends not far into the forest. With each generation, it goes farther.”

“Oh.” Justen looked at the almost-path, then shook his head.

Dayala sat down and studied the great forest, green with a golden tinge cast by the setting sun. Justen surveyed the solid roof of greenery that stretched out below the hill and was almost on a level plane for as far as he could see.

“Sometimes I come here and just watch the great forest for days.”

Justen opened his mouth, then shut it. Days? Yet Dayala didn’t seem the type to exaggerate.

“Not days, perhaps not even a day.” Dayala laughed. “But the forest makes you lose track of time. That’s one of the trials, but it’s perfectly safe to look at.”

Trials? For a moment, Justen stood at the edge of an unseen chasm. He shook his head again.

“We can rest here for a moment. Later, we’ll set up the tent in the meadow back there. It’s below the crest on the grassland side. The horses won’t be here for a while.” Dayala shifted her weight on the rock with a smile. “It’s good to get back. The Stone Hills are fun, and it’s always good to walk the grasslands. The Balance there is so simple.”

Every time he felt that he was about to understand Dayala, she referred to something else that hinted at more he did not know.

Why was the Balance simpler in the grasslands than in the great forest? Justen let his senses pass over the subtle mix
ture of green that began a hundred cubits below the boulder where he sat in the sunset. His feet still ached at the end of the day. From the corner of his eye he saw Dayala’s bare feet dangling over the rock next to his booted ones. He shook his head.

What he didn’t know…So simple? He frowned, letting his perceptions fall toward the golden green of the great forest.

Mixtures of order and chaos, their patterns intertwining, caught his attention, and he dropped into them. There—an upwelling of pure black, somehow brilliant green simultaneously, twisted around a fountain of white tinged with green…and…there…a gentle pulsing of two smaller order-beats against a flatter, rounder kind of chaos, except…how could chaos have any order or form?

Had there ever been such a mixture and intertwining of order and chaos? Justen let himself drift along the lines of power toward a small fountain of blackness that somehow seemed to geyser deep into the rocks below Naclos, almost like a fast-growing tree penetrating all else beneath the forest.

Underneath, a torrent of white boiled around the base of the black fountain.

A cool thread of green beckoned to him, but he felt as though he almost understood the patterns being woven…

A line of white lashed from nowhere, and needles like knives burned through him. Another, thicker band of white began to twine around him, even as the thinner white line slashed at him again. A band of black ripped at him, and he tried to wrench free, but another line of white, tinged with red, slashed, and his soul and his face burned.

The cool thread of green tugged, beckoned…

“Dayala?”

“Justen…”

His thoughts merged with that green, but the lashes continued, black, white, black and white, fading slowly as he and Dayala dragged their perceptions from the great forest.

“Paradise has its thorns,” he gasped. He released his grip on Dayala’s hands, his eyes widening as he saw the burns, the ripped sleeves and trousers, and the blisters crossing
Dayala’s face in a zigzag pattern. His eyes flashed toward the forest, but the green canopy was silent. “What…happened to you?”

“Hush…” She extended the water bottle.

His head ached as if it had been caught in a smith’s iron vise. But his tears were for the blisters and burns on her body. He struggled up and put his hands on her shoulders, where neither shirt nor body suffered. “You…have some first.”

She drank, then said after handing him the bottle, “You’re too strong, too much of a temptation for the forest.”

As he drank, he saw, for the first time, that his sleeves were in tatters and that red burns and weals crisscrossed the flesh beneath. His face and forehead burned, much as they had in the Stone Hills.

“We need to go down.”

He followed her to the hillcrest and down to the clearing where the three horses waited. The stallion pawed the ground. The bay nibbled on a low, green plant, not much higher than the half-cubit-high grass around it.

“I know, Threealla. You had to wait for us slow humans.” Justen walked up to the roan.

Whheeee…eee
. The roan tossed her head.

Justen shook his in response, stopping short as darts of fire shot down his neck and arms. Dayala turned away and leaned against the stallion’s flank for a moment.

He took a deep breath, and silently they unloaded the horses.

“This will help.” Dayala extracted a small, oiled package from one of the bags and stepped up to Justen, a cream on her fingertips.

He stood still as she brushed the cream across the blisters on his face. Almost immediately, the worst of the stinging began to abate into a duller pain.

When she had finished, he took the package and brushed the cream, as gently as he could, across her face.

“Thank you,” she said.

He swallowed. How could she thank him when his care
lessness, his failure to understand her warning, had harmed her?

“I did not explain well.”

Justen shook his head. “I did not listen well.” His stomach growled.

A quick smile crossed her face. “I hear your stomach. We should eat.”

“I’ll get some water. The stream below?” he asked.

“That is safe…even for you.” The faint smile remained for a moment longer.

When Justen returned with one of the large jugs filled with clear and cool water, the horses stood watching as Dayala finished anchoring the tent in place.

He looked at the horses. “They’re waiting.”

“Of course.”

Justen understood, but how did one thank a horse? Finally, he bent his head and concentrated on expressing his appreciation through his perceptions, through a somehow warm pulse of order.

Wheeee…
The roan tossed her head, then lowered it and turned, followed by the bay. The stallion pawed the grassy ground once…and was gone.

“That was gentle. You will make a good druid.” Dayala sat crosslegged on one of the sleeping mats set in front of the tent and motioned for Justen to sit on the other. Two clear cups sat empty between them.

As he sat down, she offered him a half-loaf of the travel bread. He poured water into the cups, noting that the blisters on her face had begun to lose their angry red color. His stomach growled again.

Dayala smiled. “Best you eat. Undergoing a trial makes you hungry.”

“Do all druids have to face that? Will the whole trip through the great forest be like that?”

“Oh, no.” Dayala mumbled the words through a mouthful of crumbs. “If you do not seek order or chaos, nothing will happen. It is the seeking that offers the invitation. If you remain within yourself…”

Justen nodded. Clearly, using order—or chaos—as an
aide to perceiving or traveling would be fraught with great danger. He frowned. “But what if a jungle cat—”

“If it attacks you, then it is a form of chaos, and you may respond accordingly. If you attack it, the forest perceives you as chaos.”

“Not much hunting, huh?”

“No.”

Justen ate several more mouthfuls before speaking. “But cats have to eat? What can they attack?”

“Anything that is smaller or cannot escape. The whistling pigs, or the hares, sometimes a fawn.”

“That seems disorderly. Strength seems to rule, not order.”

Dayala licked her lips and drank from the clear cup.

“I’m still confused,” Justen told her. “What you seem to be saying is that any first action, by order or by chaos, meets a reaction, but that those who are strong enough can get away with it.”

Dayala nodded.

“Why wouldn’t the forest strike back at the cat?”

“It does not use pure order or pure chaos.”

“Oh. But if I respond to a physical attack, you’re saying that my response transforms the purely physical into a question of order and chaos?”

“No. You…any druid transforms the physical into a question of order-chaos Balance.”

Justen swallowed.

“That is why the great forest struck at you. Nature resists any attempt to separate its…Balance…into two levels of being. What you see and feel, and what you feel beyond that…”

Pondering, Justen munched through two more bites of the nutty and filling travel bread.

“So…separating order from the world that creates it is a form of violence?”

Dayala nodded. “Separating chaos, while easier, is also violent…and evil.”

“Wait a moment. You’re saying that separating either order or chaos from the…everyday…world is evil.”

The druid paused to finish another sip of water. “It is hard
to explain. If you strengthen order in a tree, that is not evil, because a tree grows to strengthen order. Nor is it evil to allow chaos to exist, but to create order separate from the tree or to place chaos where it would not occur…”

Justen put his hands to his head, but let them fall away as they brushed his blisters. “Then…why the trial? I mean, if you’re not supposed to—”

“It is not that easy.” Dayala looked toward the faint gray remnants of twilight to the west. “We dug in the desert to find water. That did violence to the ground, but dying when water was there and when the digging created only a little chaos would have created more chaos. That is not quite right…but…”

Justen took a deep breath. “So the trial is to—”

“To show that you are strong enough to use order wisely. If you cannot resist the forest, then…” She shrugged, and Justen received a feeling of sadness and worry.

After a time of staring into the twilight, he asked, “How does one resist the forest? How did you resist it?”

“It was difficult. I bound chaos in order and walked through the fountains of each. Every person has a different way…those who return.” She looked down. “I am tired, and we must carry much tomorrow, as far as Merthe.”

Later, with the silky quilt drawn up to his chest, Justen lay back on the sleeping mat, staring at the tent fabric overhead. “Was that what you meant when you said that magic was dangerous in the great forest?”

“All unbalanced use of order or white force is dangerous. It is much more dangerous in the great forest.” Dayala shifted her weight, and Justen could almost feel the pain in her arms.

“I still don’t understand why you got burned and cut. You said it wasn’t dangerous. Didn’t you already pass your trial?”

Dayala was silent, so silent that Justen sat up, wincing at the pain in his arms as he levered himself about to look at her.

She winced as he did, although she had not moved, and tears streamed down her face, silver to Justen’s night sight, silver in the darkness.

“Oh, darkness.” His eyes burned, and he looked down at the scar on his wrist, the scar that matched the one on hers, and both scars seemed to flame with a matching blackness. “Darkness…” And ever so gently, he placed his fingers against hers.

Their tears continued to flow long after Justen laid his mat beside hers so that their fingers would remain linked, long after the low sounds of the great forest echoed gently over the hilltop.

Eldiren concentrated on the screeing glass, but despite the sweat on his forehead, he could not break through the white, swirling mists that covered the glass.

“One of those places…” he muttered as he released his hold. The glass shimmered with the blankness of a mirror. He cleared his throat.

“It’s all those trees,” Beltar said, gesturing toward the ancient forest in the valley below the White camp. “Isn’t that why no one can ever look into Naclos?”

“That’s what they say.” Eldiren patted his still-damp forehead with a square of folded cloth. “When are we supposed to link up with Zerchas?”

“After we take Berlitos.”

“How are we going to do that?” asked Eldiren. “I can’t even see most of their troops because of the order in the trees. Trying to attack would cost us whatever troops we have left. Can’t you shake it down?”

Beltar shook his head.

“The trees?” Eldiren prompted.

“I don’t know, but I can’t tap enough of the chaos-flows in the ground. All I get are little tremors. There’s a lot of old order here.”

“Still, you’re not doing badly. We hold Clynya and Bornt—only that little place, what’s-its-name, up on the first branch of the Sarron—”

“Rohrn,” supplied Beltar. “Forget it. That one will have to wait. We need to get through without losing any more troops. Clynya wasn’t exactly a pushover. If you hadn’t managed to circle back through the hills and start those fires—”

The herald entered the white-walled tent.

Beltar looked up. “Yes?”

“The Sarronnese refuse any terms, ser.”

“Oh?”

“They were most arrogant, ser.” Sweat streamed down the man’s face, and his blue cap, held at his waist in both hands, was dark with dampness. “They…they said that Berlitos had never surrendered, not even to the greatest Tyrant in history, and that they weren’t about to surrender now.”

“Idiots!” snapped Beltar.

The herald waited.

“No, they won’t surrender. Of course they won’t. Honor and all that crap!” Beltar paced across the tent, then back.

The herald glanced toward Eldiren.

“So now what?” Beltar asked.

Eldiren gestured toward the herald.

“Oh.” Beltar nodded. “You may go.”

“Thank you. Thank you, ser.” The herald fled.

“You seem to have them all terrified, Beltar.”

“I wish the order-damned Sarronnese were terrified instead. But no. It’s like they have to force me to use my powers.”

“You just said you couldn’t do that here,” pointed out Eldiren.

“I said I couldn’t shake down the damned city, and they probably know that.” The White Wizard fingered his chin. “You were saying something, or I was. Fires, that was it. I wonder what Berlitos is built of. There’s not much stone around here.”

“You’d burn it?”

“Why not? It’s better than losing an army. Jera is the only city I
have
to save.” Beltar smiled. “They can use all these damned trees to rebuild it…if there are enough of them left. Besides, the storms won’t hold off that much longer.”

“Burn it?” asked Eldiren again.

“Why not? I seem to be condemned to use force. So I might as well. Right now, Zerchas wants results. I’ll get him his results.” Beltar walked to the entrance to the tent and looked down at the forest city of Berlitos. “I’ll get him his order-damned results.”

Eldiren looked at the blank glass and then at Beltar’s back. He pursed his lips, but did not wipe the sudden return of sweat to his forehead.