The Order War (59 page)

Sssttt…crumppttt…

Against the buckling of order and the tide of white, against the unseen ripping in the fabric of what was, against the white and black knives that seemed to slash through him, Justen closed his eyes and tried to picture himself as a lorken of Naclos, rooted in the soil and order beneath Candar, drawing order from the deep waters, from the iron in the rocks, and from all the growing plants that had struggled against the nibbling of chaos.

The wind whipped past Justen with the force of a waterspout. He felt himself being thrown against the basket of the balloon, and his fingers dug deeper into the fragile wicker as
the balloon, swinging wildly, ripped free of one of the tethers.

Almost unaware of his teeth biting through his tongue, Justen curled the order-blade into a focus, attempting to lock the wizards within order, putting forth a massive effort to chaos-order Balance the White Wizards forever.

“Aaeeaeeii…”

“Ooo…nooo…”

Even locked into himself, Justen could sense the twisting and folding of order and chaos roll across the valley like the heat from that second sun, dragging the remaining White Wizards—those who had tried to unleash the full force of chaos against Justen’s order-chaos blade—down inside the shield they had erected, down…down into some distant place where their souls seemed to call as if from a deep well.

Deliberately, as if he and his thoughts were moving through molasses, Justen twisted the massive forces of order held through the fire-eye, twisted them like a key in a lock to seal the wizards behind their own shield…forever!

Faces flashed before him: swarthy faces, fat faces, and a haunted, thin face almost like that of an Angel, the eyes filled with suffering. But he locked order around that chaos.

Justen, you must…must balance.
Even Dayala’s thoughts were weak, fading away into smoke.

Crackk!
The fire-eye exploded and filled the air with sudden but momentary silence, and weak sunlight replaced the darkness that had descended across the valley of Fairhaven. Clouds of ashes roiled over the valley, and cinders fell like rain.

A heavy roll of thunder rumbled from the high, dark clouds that began to cut off the remaining sunlight.

The balloon bounced wildly and swooped lower and lower, back toward the hill below in a series of pendulum-like swings, jerking to the end of the remaining tether and back.

Justen glanced toward the approaching ground. His eyes burned, blood ran from his mouth, and his arms and legs were bruised, leaden. What could he do? How? His senses seemed almost paralyzed, and he struggled to raise his arms, but the impact with the ground and the blackness that rose
from it crashed into his thoughts, scattering them.

Around him, the land shuddered. Smoke rose into the sky and fell, and white knives seemed to slash his flesh from his bones…while drums rolled across the heavens and each drum-roll pulverized his already smashed bones.

Thrap…thrap…

…thrap…thrappp…

The heavy tapping increased, and cold blows struck Justen across his face. Slowly, he tried to swallow, despite his dry mouth and swollen and bloody tongue. Finally, he opened his eyes.

He lay against the limp silksheen fabric of the balloon, and hail interspersed with fat snowflakes was falling. Already, the hillside was blanketed in a thin layer of white.

Dayala…

The fragile thread of order remained, but so weakly that Justen could barely sense it as he struggled into a sitting position. His left leg throbbed, and white flashes of pain pulsed through his skull. His back and ribs ached each time he took a breath.

As he rolled onto his side to try to stand, his trembling hands slipped on a pile of hailstones that had collected next to the wreckage of the balloon.

Half-propping himself on the crushed wicker of the balloon basket, wicker half-coated with ice, he levered himself upright and began to struggle along the hillside. He half-walked, half-dragged, his injured leg, lacking the order-strength with which to repair the damage.

After less than a dozen steps, Justen stopped, his breath ragged as he saw the young face on the ground, partly hidden by the snow. Dark splotches ran across one cheek, almost touching the sightless eyes.

Martan sprawled beside the heap of charcoal that had been the stolen mount, his left side blackened, a charred arm flung across his chest, the rough blackness of his burns merging with the smooth black of his tunic, the tunic of which he had been so proud.

Justen’s eyes watered. Another loyal person, another death.

Another Yonada, another Dyessa, another Clerve, another
Krytella, even another Iron Guard.
Do the bodies just gather around me?

He took a deep breath and continued dragging himself toward the heap of darkened rocks that were barely visible under the white coating of snow and hail, fearful of what he might find, but chaos and order-blind from the twisting of nature itself, unable to sense whether or not his brother lived.

Gunnar lay on the side of the hill, half inside, half out, of the rock-and-armor-plate shelter. Justen scrambled to the still form, then took another deep breath as he saw his brother’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall. For a moment, he paused, his breath still ragged, his ribs aching with each gasping intake of air.

Dark clouds, darker than any Justen had ever seen, rolled across the sky. Even as he watched, lines of lightning forked and smashed into the churned and melted valley that had been Fairhaven the Mighty.

Despite the thickening snow, Justen could see that the White tower had melted like a wax candle in the hot sun. No structure stood in what had been the White City. Lines of white radiated from where he stood, lines where the light-sword had boiled away all vegetation and cleft the soil down to white rock.

Between those lashes of the second sun lay only ashes, ashes and melted lumps of stone, some of them white, some of them brown, but most of them blackened as if mixed with dark ashes before solidifying.

The snowflakes that fell past Justen were gray, and the mixture of ashes and snow and hail was gray, and his soul was gray.

He looked down at Gunnar, at his brother’s chest rising and falling, rising and falling. Then he began the arduous trek back to the
Demon
, lying just at the edge of the glassy slag that had been a hillside meadow. Gunnar and he needed food, and blankets, and rest.

If someone found them, so be it.

Craccckk!

A long, jagged line of white slashed from the dark clouds, branching and twisting downward into the melted stone and collapsed masonry that had been the White City. The blaze
of the lightning through the snow reminded Justen of just how unlikely it was that anyone would be searching for them at any time soon.

He laughed once, harshly. As if there were anyone who had survived, save he and Gunnar—and perhaps a dozen White Wizards locked in order-chaos beneath the abattoir that had been a proud city.

Justen took a step…and rested…and stepped…and rested. But he kept moving. Gunnar needed warmth. He did not look at the charred heap that had been Martan. Nor at the charred and molten destruction that had been the jewel of Candar.

He put one foot forward, then the other.

Gunnar…Dayala…

Gunnar…Dayala…

Justen kept moving…moving…

The four druids stood before the ancient, watching the sand shift and boil, watching as in places the outlines of the coasts changed.

The youngest druid wept silently, wracked with soundless sobs. In time, another held her as the sands continued to shift and boil, until the sand table showed the rebalancing of Candar and Recluce.

“Fairhaven is no more,” announced the ancient. “The second sun of the Angels has been sheathed.”

“But…the cost?” asked Syodra.

“There is always a cost. None have paid the price in generations, and a price deferred is always greater. Most of the towers in eastern Candar have been toppled. Rivers have changed their paths. Half of the engineers’ city has been swept into the Eastern Ocean.”

“And the steam-chaos engines no longer work,” added Frysa.

“They failed to listen to the songs,” added the sole male. “Or to their souls.”

“It will take much time for the reservoir of order to rise to its past level—if the Blacks choose to follow that course. As they will in time, for little in wisdom passes from one generation to the next.” The ancient nodded to the others and then toward the youngest. “You, and he, have done well.”

“Why…?” Dayala swallowed. “He felt…feels so much of the pain.”

“That is why you are tied.”

“But how can he return here…after what he has done?”

“Child, he will return to you. Trust the Balance.”

“Trust the Balance?” Dayala laughed, and the laugh was hard and brittle.

Neither Justen nor Gunnar had spoken more than monosyllables since pulling themselves from beneath their blankets and brushing away the damp snow.

Justen drank cold juice and chewed the last fragments of crust between bites of hard yellow cheese. His leg remained tender, but the order-chaos balance he had created with Dayala’s help had held, and the leg had begun to knit.

“What did you do to the last Whites—the ones you didn’t burn with that horrible light-knife?” Gunnar took the jug from Justen, not meeting his eyes, and swallowed some of the juice.

“They’re…trapped in chaos, inside order…somewhere under Fairhaven.” Justen shuddered.
Death…had they deserved that? Perhaps. But does anyone deserve to be locked in chaos within a block of order?
He still recalled one face, the one with the slight scar on the forehead and the look of a suffering angel. He had no illusions that all White Wizards were evil or, especially considering himself, that all Blacks—or Grays—were good.

“They’re alive…still?”

“In a way.”

“Could they escape?”

“I don’t know. Not physically.” Justen shuddered again. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. They might possess…an unwary soul.”

Gunnar shivered and drew the blanket around himself, seated on still another blanket insulating him from the patch of browned grass where they sat amid slagged and frozen stone. The Weather Wizard fixed his eyes on a pile of hail yet covered with snow, although the morning sun had already melted much of the unseasonal covering, leaving the ground a whitish gray-and-brown blotchwork. The weather mage’s eyes did not turn to his younger brother. “You folded order and chaos together. No one’s ever done that, not both black and white together but separate. That was true gray magic.” But he still did not look at Justen.

“That was what I learned in Naclos.” Justen finished the bread he had been eating.

“I can barely touch the winds.” Gunnar finally turned toward his brother. “What exactly did you do?”

“Destroyed about half of the order and chaos in the world, maybe more. That’s why those last explosions were so violent.”

“Justen. You knew that’s what would happen, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me? I don’t like being deceived, even for the best of reasons, even by my own brother.” Gunnar swallowed.

“But…” Justen stopped as he felt the anger, and the rejection, from Gunnar. Hadn’t he made it clear?

He looked back across the valley to where the corpse of Fairhaven lay melted under the partial blanket of snow, melted like a wax model under a hot sun—melted so quickly. Under the glasslike melted structures, under the covering of ash, under the ruins that had disintegrated so swiftly that pockets of chaos were trapped in heat-ordered rubble, how many innocents had died? Had it been fair? And yet, what else could have been done?

The people of Fairhaven had accepted the rule of chaos. Did that make it right? Justen shook his head. Who had been there to protest when Sarron had been shaken into rubble?
Or Berlitos burned into ashes? Or the outskirts of Armat boiled alive?

But his mouth still tasted like ashes.

And how long would it be before the destruction was erased, before the white scars that slashed through the soil and into the bones of the earth were covered over? How long before the screams stopped echoing from the rocks and the melted buildings? How long before the trees and plants grew straight and true?

“Justen?” asked Gunnar harshly.

“I thought you knew…”

“None of us knew, really knew, dear brother.” Gunnar slowly stood. “If the rest of the world looks anything like this, it will be a long winter, and then some. Creslin had nothing on you. Blood followed both of you, but at least he used a blade. Oh, I forgot. You did, too. The most violent blade in history.”

“I…” Justen did not finish the sentence. What could he really say? Gunnar was right.

“Not even the demons of light or the Angels could have done better. I must give you that, Justen.” Gunnar fumbled with the pack Justen had brought the night before. “There are so many lost souls screaming that I cannot stay here any longer. Not for one instant.” He slung the pack on his shoulders. “If there are any ships left afloat, I’ll find one in Lydiar. Good-bye, Justen.”

Justen struggled to his feet, his left leg stiff and weak, but Gunnar was already marching downhill, his back straight, his anger visible with each determined step.

The Gray Wizard took a deep breath, looked across the hillside at the iron land engine that would never run again in his lifetime, if ever. He began to gather the extra food, his own pack, and a staff. Somewhere, he suspected, he could buy or find a horse.

Gunnar would need help, the damned fool. Not all the White Wizards had been in Fairhaven, and those left were likely to be more than a little angry at anyone from Recluce. He laughed brittlely, despite the stabbing in his ribs. A little angry?

Then again, almost anyone from Recluce was likely to be
more than a little upset with one Justen. And with more than a little reason. He licked his dry lips, abruptly remembering a clear song sung on a warm night in Sarronyn. Poor Clerve. All he’d wanted to do was to watch a real battle.

And Martan—all he’d wanted was a real battle, and some glory. Some glory!

Justen looked up at the place where Martan still lay, half-covered with snow, and then at the crude shelter Gunnar had used. At least it would make a decent cairn. He could make good cairns—that he could. And light-chaos knives, and ordered black iron arrows.

Justen set the pack aside and trudged toward Martan’s body. All he could give the young marine now was a decent burial. That was all. His eyes burned.

Later…later, he would follow Gunnar.

When he reached the clear young face, the wide, sightless eyes, he bent down and swung Martan into his arms and trudged toward the cairn-to-be. To the north, sunlight glinted off the shimmering melted stone and off the stained, blotchy snow, each as cold as death.