L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

Gethen did not unroll the scroll he held as he sat in the green upholstered armchair across the ancient carpet from his daughter and coregent. “The traders-the ones who ported in Rulyarth. They bring disturbing news, daughter and regent.”

“That the white demons ready an attack? We knew that. Do they say when?”

“They bring no news of what we face from the south.” Gethen cleared his throat. “The lord of Cyador builds a fireship like one of the ancients that swept clean the Great Western Ocean. It nears completion.”

“We need not worry of that.” With a quick look at Nesslek, who banged two blocks at each other, not exactly in a coordinated fashion, Zeldyan raised her goblet of greenjuice, taking a small sip. “Not soon, in any instance.”

“Perchance not. Has there been word from Fornal?”

“Except for another plea for coins and levies…no. We sent him all that the sale of the copper raised. It was not enough, he claims. Yet he did not seize the copper, not according to Diwer. The angels did, and Fornal called them highwaymen.”

“Would we had more such highwaymen.” Gethen snorted.

“They may yet suffice.”

“You have faith in the angels, yet we have heard naught.” Gethen stood and walked to the serving table where he filled a goblet, not with the greenjuice, but with a dark wine. “The demons must be nearing, and we hear little. I must leave for Rohrn before long.”

“How soon, my sire?”

“No more than a few days.”

“So soon?”

“So late.”

“So late, yet I must have faith.” She set the goblet on the side table, leaned over, and disengaged Nesslek’s busy fingers from where he picked at the ancient green silk border of the chair’s upholstery. “What else is there? We have no coins left. No way to raise more levies beyond that poor handful you take. Our holders are openly grumbling, and the harvest has been poor.”

“Not so poor as for the mutters we hear.”

“The Lady Ellindyja?”

“Some still visit her,” admitted Gethen. “We cannot remove her.”

Zeldyan lifted Nesslek into her lap. “A poor patrimony for you, my son, and much because your grand-dame was overly concerned about that of your father.”

“That is cruel, especially to tell your son,” offered Gethen.

“It is true. Would you have me lie to him? Even as his grand-dame destroys his own patrimony out of spite and pettiness? Truth may yet be his only weapon.”

“Truth be never enough. Cold iron-that be the only weapon that a lord can depend on. Wizards and mages and trade-they come and they go. Cold iron remains. To the cold iron we do not have.” The gray-haired regent took a deep swallow.

Zeldyan hugged Nesslek until he squirmed, then set her son back on the carpet beside his wooden blocks. She looked at the goblet, but did not drink.

Sylenia carried our the provisions bag and set it on the rear stoop. She glanced at the mid-afternoon sun that seemed to duck in and out of the puffy gray and white clouds scudding from the northeast. “To begin travel so late in the day…?”

“This time we’ll travel more by night, until we get out of Cyador, anyway.” Nylan checked the girths for Sylenia’s saddle, then readjusted Weryl’s seat, stopping to wipe his forehead. While the area in and around the forest was cooler than the Grass Hills, even with the cooling of the trees the harvest season was far hotter than mid-summer on the Roof of the World-or anywhere else in two universes that he could remember offhand, at least outside of Candar. “I’m still not up to any battles.”

“You could handle them better.” Ayrlyn did not look up from where she loaded the pack mare.

“Maybe.” Of that, Nylan wasn’t exactly certain. Theoretically, he supposed he could figure out some way to balance things, but the gap between theory and practice was awfully wide, wider in many ways than advanced power system operations and engineering theory had been.

“I don’t want to leave.” Ayrlyn held the saddlebag in her hands, almost as if she had been halted by an outside force.

Nylan understood. For the first time in years, if not ever, they weren’t surrounded by all of the unseen imbalances that had rocked their lives from one side to the other. Already, they had begun to adjust themselves to the forest’s requirement for balance, and when Nylan extended his senses to look at Ayrlyn, he could see the changes, almost, it seemed, on the cellular level. While some changes appeared in Sylenia, Ayrlyn and he-and Weryl-appeared vastly different. Was that because he had been a power engineer? Or Ayrlyn a comm officer? Because the forest had reached out to them? Or they to it? “It’s not paradise.”

“I still don’t want to leave.” This feels…closer to home…

They turned to each other and embraced.

“Stupid…” murmured Ayrlyn in his ear. “How…a forest…feels like home…”

“Does, doesn’t it?” He squeezed her more tightly for a moment, then slowly released her.

“In some ways I feel as you, lady,” added Sylenia. “But there is Tonsar-”

“And there’s still the problem of the Cyadorans. Remember all those burned patches? Sooner or later they’ll be back to deal with the forest.” Especially if we don’t deal with them-if we can…

“I know,” sighed Ayrlyn, “and we made a promise.” A promise…

It wasn’t just the words, Nylan understood, all too well, but the chaos created within themselves by failing to keep their commitments. Anyone who had to deal with order fields, he was coming to understand-possibly too late and too slowly-had to live a life somehow in balance. And unkept promises were not good for balance.

At least, that was how it seemed to him.

“Me, too,” said Ayrlyn. “We’re in this together.”

He smiled at her, taking in the warmth that radiated from her, the warmth he’d been blind to for too long on the Roof of the World. Then he walked over and lifted the provisions bag from the stoop.

Sylenia turned and reentered the Cyadoran dwelling, presumably to reclaim Weryl.

Nylan stood and surveyed the dwelling, the smooth pale walls, thinking about the ceramic stove, the tile floors, the apparent cleanliness-and the chaos behind its creation.

The stars winked on and off as the clouds slipped across the night sky, covering one unfamiliar point of light and uncovering another, all the time that Nylan and Ayrlyn made their way north along the empty highway. Only the muffled sound of the horses’ hoofs echoed through the night as the four rode closer to the river and the brick bridge.

The smell of the fields, and the faintly acrid odor of something that had been cut drifted across the road on the light breeze.

“The beans, they have harvested,” confirmed Sylenia.

“Wadah…eans?”

“You just had some.” Sylenia turned in the saddle and, twisting her body, offered Weryl the water bottle. He pushed it away, and the nursemaid recorked it and replaced it in the holder without a word.

Nylan doubted he would have been that temperate, son or no son.

When they passed the crossroads where they had confronted the Cyadoran patrol, not even a lingering sign of chaos remained. The engineer glanced around, his ears alert for any noise, but the only sounds were insects, a soft bird call, and the breathing and hoofs of the horses.

As they neared the river, neither Nylan’s eyes nor senses could distinguish any movements on or beyond the bridge, a dark outline above the darker water and against the starry sky.

“Quiet,” murmured the redhead.

The mounts’ hoofs clacked , if not loudly, not softly on the brick pavement of the arched three-piered structure that spanned the deep and smooth-flowing water that appeared black under the cold stars, a blackness darker than the unlit and silent town on the north side.