The Towers Of the Sunset (30 page)

THE HEALER STANDS before the
Marshall, her faded-green travel clothes still slightly damp from the melted snow.

“You asked to see me?” The
Marshall’s flint-blue eyes take in the slightly built, dark-haired woman.

“Yes, Dylyss, I did. I’ve come to collect for Creslin.”

“Your name?”

“I’m known as Lydya. Werlynn was… from my family.”

The
Marshall does not reply immediately, nor do her eyes leave the healer. “You’re not just a healer.”

“No. I never said I was.”

The
Marshall’s lips quirk. “What are you collecting?”

“Seeds, cheese, weapons-and the detachment you promised Korweil. The new regents of Reduce would appreciate the aid.”

“Creslin didn’t send you?”

“No.”

“The seeds… we have some in trade from Suthya. They’ll do us little enough good. And there’s always extra cheese. Older weapons? There are some we could spare.” The
Marshall pauses.

“And guards?”

“I’ll ask for volunteers. The other kind wouldn’t do him any good, would they?”

Lydya smiles faintly. “No. And losing those volunteers will help you as well.”

“Tell me, healer… what is she like?”

Lydya shakes her head. “That,
Marshall, I do not know. Only that you and Ryessa will create the greatest good and the greatest evil that Candar will ever know.”

“That’s what Werlynn said.”

“I know.”

“Will you stay a time?”

“Only until all things are gathered. I have to collect from Ryessa.”

“BUT I’M A White.” Megaera glances at the gnarled pearapple tree beyond the tumbled stone wall. A gust of wind whips sandy dust across her boots, for the road they stand on is little more than a trail.

“Names do not matter,” Klerris observes mildly. “You have the ability, although it will be harder for you. Whatever you do, do not try to remove disorder.”

“What? But isn’t that the purpose?”

“It is,” responds the Black Wizard, picking up a stone and absently replacing it on the wall, “but you cannot remove disorder through the power of disorder, at least not until you are very accomplished. How can you stop killing with more killing?”

“You can reduce it,” offers Creslin, scuffing his boots in the hard red clay.

“True.” Klerris smiles in the afternoon sunlight. “If you kill those who kill hundreds, the killing will be reduced, but your potential for destruction is that much greater. That is why Megaera so fears your blade, not because you can kill, but because even without using your powers for order, you become a White force of destruction.”

“I’ve felt that way, but I didn’t know why, exactly,” admits the redhead.

“Now you know.” Klerris points to the pearapple tree. “Look at the tree with your senses…”

Creslin complies, seeing the faint underlying blackness of order and the red-tinged white streaks of chaos.

“But why can’t I just remove the white?” asks Megaera.

Klerris sighs. “Go ahead.”

Creslin holds his breath as Megaera, though not moving from her stance behind the wall, seems to enfold the tree.

She withdraws, and the whiteness is indeed gone, with only the faint blackness remaining. “See? I did it!”

“Yes, you did.” Klenis’s voice is neutral.

Creslin watches the gnarled tree, watches as the remaining blackness stretches as if to cover the space the whiteness has departed, watches as the blackness thins… and vanishes.

Crackkkkk…

The tree splits,, but even before the trunk fully cracks, a sense of dryness emanates from the winter-bare branches.

“It will take a few weeks to fall over,.but this tree is dead,” Klerris says.

“But why?” protests Megaera. “You knew that would happen! You let me kill that tree.”

“Because,” Klerris explains in his patient teaching voice, “both order and chaos are energy. If anything living has too much chaos as part of its being, removal of the chaos lowers the vital force below the minimum for life. A good chaos-healer can cure some sicknesses, but it is always a risky process, especially with the cases of sickness where chaos actually changes the body.”

“Is anything all chaos?” Creslin looks beyond Klerris at the next gnarled tree.

“Darkness, no. Nothing living, anyway. It takes order to hold a body together. That’s why most of the Whites die young, except for the body-stealers.” The Black Wizard straightens and points to the now-dead tree. “Consider that an object lesson. You can usually defeat chaos only by strengthening order. You especially, Megaera, need to keep that in mind.”

But the redhead is looking at the ground, her lips pursed tightly, her hands clasped behind her.

CRESLIN DEMONSTRATES AGAIN, his white-oak wand arcing in slow motion.

Thoirkel, the black-haired soldier with the scraggly beard who had first met Creslin on the pier, follows the maneuver slowly, trying to duplicate the ease displayed by the silver-haired man.

Creslin stops him halfway through. “Your wrist…”

Thoirkel steps back and begins anew.

This time Creslin does not watch the maneuver fully but concentrates on the man himself, looking at the order and chaos warring within Thoirkel. Then he reaches out, and as Klerris has taught him to do with the plants and the mountain sheep, strengthens the order within the soldier.

“Oh…” Thoirkel staggers, shakes his head, and lowers the wand. He brushes his lank black locks off his forehead, then looks down at the white-oak wand in his hand.

“You’ll be all right, but you need more practice.” Creslin nods to the next man. “You are?”

“Narran, ser.” Like Thoirkel, threads of white and black intertwine within the soldier; unlike Thoirkel, the white threads are strong in themselves. Creslin sighs silently, hoping that not many of the men are as chaos-dominated as Narran. He raises his wand again.

CRESLIN SLOWS HIS steps by the orchard that he and Klerris have reclaimed. The pearapples are just beginning to bloom, earlier than in the lands of Candar. And, too, the frosts will be later on Reduce than in Candar.

Megaera’s footsteps scrunch in the sandy clay of the road as she struggles to catch up with him.

He drops into a walk along the low stone wall separating the trail that will one day be a real road from the orchard. Farther south, along the eastern shore, the trail rises to the top of the black cliffs, to the site he and Klerris have picked out for the holding, and where Megaera has cleared the ground to bare rock and he has begun the stonework.

“You do… this… for… pleasure?” the redhead pants, sweat rolling down her face. Her thick hair is twisted into a bun at the back of her head! “With… boots… on?”

“Hardly for pleasure. It’s to make me a more efficient killing machine. You don’t fight when wearing sandals or going barefoot.” He smiles sardonically, setting his hand on the stone, then removing it from the sun-warmed heat. “You ready for the next part?”

“Next part?”

“The rest of the hill?”

“Not… yet…” Her breath is more regular now, but Creslin avoids looking at her, for even when she is disheveled and sweaty, he will find her desirable, and that desire will bring both of them pain.

Instead, his eyes travel across the gnarled trees that have begun to show new life, his senses reaching out to strengthen the flow within them. Beyond the trees, he sees the tan wool of one of the few mountain sheep that he and Klerris have coaxed out of the hills and into the regenerating greenery above
Land’s End.

Some of the green is from the makeshift aqueduct and some from the tougher grasses that Klerris has coaxed into covering the clayey soil.

“What are you looking at?”

“The sheep.”

“Sometimes you’re like two different people. Working with stone and plants and animals, you can be so…”

Creslin takes a deep breath, not wanting to deal with the question she has raised. “Ready?”

“No. But I’ll follow you. Anything you can do… I’ll learn.” She wipes her forehead with her upper arm and takes another deep breath.

Creslin begins to jog along the short flat before the trail turns and heads upward and due south behind the rock jumbles that build to the high, black stone cliffs.

Behind him, Megaera’s lighter boots echo his steps.

On the winds, he can hear her murmurs between her gasping breaths. “Westwind… bitches can… I… can…”

He would smile, except that he has felt the cold fury of that steel will of hers. He forces his pace into regularity, trying instead to think about the other provisions that must be made: provisions for hay, for vegetables, for some sort of cows to provide milk and cheese. And trees. Klerris keeps telling him that trees, rain, and time, plus some order magic, could turn Reduce into a garden.

In the meantime, Klerris is working with Hyel. The guards are also learning stonework and expanding the keep, particularly the guard quarters in process. Except for a few, who would rather garden.

Creslin begins to pant halfway up the slope, and his legs begin to burn.

“Finally… bastard’s hurting…”

The glee in Megaera’s mutterings forces him to pick up his legs, to deny the fatigue, and to push the last hundred cubits uphill.

“Whoooff…”

He slows, looking over his shoulder to see the redhead stumble, then wobble back upright. Quickly he turns his head and drops into a walk. A walk for the last kay will supply enough conditioning. He realizes, as he has for the past eight-day, how much work it will be to regain his former shape, and how much more tiring it is to be active in the moderate heat of Reduce than in the chill of Westwind.

The chill. Whatever happens, he will always miss the clean cold of the Roof of the World.

By the time he is within a half kay of the partly built stone shell of what will be the co-regents’ dwelling, carefully planned with separate bedrooms, Megaera has caught up with him.

Creslin walks straight past the stonework, past the raised-stone cistern that he, Klerris, Joris, and several guards completed even before the foundation stones were laid. At the edge of the cliff where, before too long, there will be a stone-paved terrace and a stone wall, he pauses and looks down at the long swells of the dark green water.

Behind him, Megaera splashes her sweaty, dusty face with cool water. He waits until she is finished, then walks back and follows her example, enjoying the coolness of the water from the stone basin fed by the cistern. Klerris had located the spring, and had shown both Megaera and Creslin the tracing of order lines. Megaera, somewhat surprised, had had no problem at all.

“You’re not necessarily White,” Klerris had said.

But she had pointedly ignored his words. Creslin shakes his head at the recollection, then splashes more water across his brow. The dripping locks over his ears remind him that his hair has again grown too long.

There is so much to do, for he has no doubt that the White Wizards will provide yet another challenge.

After wiping his face on the shoulder of the worn shirt he uses for exercise and stonework, he takes a last swallow of water from cupped hands and straightens. Should he cut stone, or should he mortar?

Megaera is surveying the low line of stones that will become the northern wall of the structure. “For a warrior and a wizard, you do good stonework.” Her voice is light.

“We try to please.” He steps toward the pile of rough-cut stone, each stone carried nearly a quarter kay from the jumble to the south. Soon he will have to carry stone again before either cutting or mortaring further.

Finally he picks up an odd-sized chunk, letting his senses enfold it as he carries it over to the waist-high block dragged nearly a kay by three horses to serve as a cutting table. He searches for the order lines, the places of weakness, the stresses, then tries to visualize what the finished stone might look like.

Like so… or if he strikes it there… He lifts the heavy iron mallet and the order-hardened wedge. Clung… clung…

Megaera has disappeared into the rock jumble, and in time she returns staggering under the weight of a large black stone, which she deposits near the cut pile.

Creslin wipes his forehead and sets another cut stone in the row. While his abilities and strengths are improving, the house still appears like an endless undertaking.

Clung…

More cut stones appear, but as they do, so do more rough stones arrive from Megaera. Creslin pauses, taking a deep breath and setting down the mallet. Megaera looks at him, then plops herself on a low wall that has been mortared and long since order-set.

“Why do you drive yourself so hard?” he asks.

She looks up slowly. “Am I that different from you? How many people insist on running up desert hills in boots to cut stone? How many people work at everything from developing water systems to gardening from dawn until after dusk?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Do I?”

He looks away from the piercing green eyes, away from the reddened but still creamy and freckled skin, and his fingers tighten around the wedge he holds before he sets it next to the mallet. His eyes drift back to her. A stray breeze caresses her forehead.

“Stop that… please,” she says.

“That wasn’t me.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blamed you.” Her tone is soft.

“Sometimes it is me. But not now.”

“Why do you like me?” Her eyes look out on the dull dark green of the sea below the cliffs.

“If I have to explain…”He sighs, knowing that she will persist. “You’re honest, and you hate scheming. When you weren’t so tormented, you could laugh at the absurdity of things. I know you still could, if it weren’t for me.”

“It’s not you. It’s being tied to you.” She shifts her weight, but her green eyes remain fixed on the stillness of the sea.

“If you weren’t tied-”

“Creslin, somewhere inside that driven killer is a sweet man, but you know there’s too much blood and tears tying us. Even the greatest order-master born couldn’t break the tie. Only my death will do that, and I’m too young to consider it.”

In time he sighs and picks up the mallet. She stretches, rises, and heads back for another stone.