L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“Probably.” Ayrlyn spoke dismissively, and Nylan felt her feelings, both her acceptance that people relied on force and her general but intense disgust that it had to be so.

“The Cyadorans and Fornal speak the same language in that respect. Iron, cold iron, is the master of all.” He flicked the mare’s reins. Whatever they decided, sitting and watching the remnants of Clynya smolder wasn’t going to further their efforts. “Now what? Keep riding?”

“Any better ideas?”

He shook his head. Even the dog-if it had been a dog-had vanished, and only the smoke swirled on the east side of the river. “How long ago, do you think?”

“A day, maybe two.”

Why had everything taken so long? Why had he been so dense? And now, even if they caught up with the Cyadoran hordes…what could they do?

“We couldn’t have gotten here much quicker. Try to remember that,” Ayrlyn said.

“That’s easy to say.” And I still don’t know how to stop them…

“Use the imbalance…like you said.” Ayrlyn eased her chestnut closer to his mare as they continued down the road toward the ruins of Clynya.

“For destruction?” Nylan rubbed his neck, then eased his right hand behind the leather straps of the blade harness and tried to massage his stiff left shoulder.

“You’re the one who keeps pointing out that people only respect force.”

“I have trouble with that.”

“You don’t want to become like Ryba,” Ayrlyn said.

“No.”

“Using force doesn’t mean you have to glory in it or flaunt it.” Ayrlyn reached across the space between mounts, leaning sideways in the saddle for a moment so her fingers could squeeze the wrist of his rein hand. “Anyway, we have to figure out how to use that imbalance first.”

Nylan nodded. If they didn’t use what they knew to survive, morality would become quickly irrelevant. The problem was that, having opted for survival, most survivors in Candar never seemed to regain their morality.

“That bothers you.”

“Absolutely. I know I’m no better than anyone else, maybe not so good. So how can I believe it when I promise myself I won’t change the way Ryba did?”

“You’re not the same.”

Nylan would have liked to hope so, but self-justification was a specialty of human beings, and he was more than conscious of being all too human, of seeking self-justification all too easily.

The low chirp of crickets or grasshoppers or cicadas or the Candarian equivalent filled the evening. Nylan burped as he settled onto the grass uphill from their camp. He didn’t know whether his indigestion came from the slimy wasol roots or the filling but heavy squash bread. All he knew was that his guts felt like they contained lead, and he hadn’t eaten all that much. He had the feeling that the orange loaves were endless, that Sylenia had been so enchanted with the ceramic oven that she had baked enough for an entire squad for seasons.

“Only half a squad.” Ayrlyn slipped through the dimness and sat down beside him by the small stand of scrub oak bushes that shielded the hollow in the ridge where Weryl snored softly and Sylenia lay.

The scrub oaks were all that passed for cover on the hills flanking the river plain. They’d taken the hill road because Ayrlyn’s wind scouting had indicated the hill road was more direct and because that way they could slip past the slower-moving Cyadoran force that followed the river road. Tomorrow, she’d said.

“Tomorrow.” Ayrlyn shifted her weight, trying to get comfortable on the hard ground.

“What are we going to do if they find us-or some of their scouts do?”

“I was going to ask you that. You are the engineer, and I do trust your feelings.”

“I appreciate the trust, but I haven’t been all that successful in applying engineering-”

“You managed to power and control the laser to build Tower Black, and I don’t think that was just technology or luck.” Ayrlyn patted his shoulder gently.

“This is different.”

“How?”

“There’s no technological basis at all.”

“It still has to be a system. I’m quoting an engineer. A very good engineer.”

“Thanks. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He just thought he did.” Nylan coughed gently and shifted his weight. The ground was hard.

“You mentioned the separation in the ground,” she prompted.

“It’s almost a power differential. And theoretically, if there’s a power or an energy imbalance between two forces, there has to be a way to convert that imbalance into usable power.” He shrugged. “I just haven’t figured out the mechanism for doing it.”

“You sound like an engineer, but maybe this is simpler.”

“Maybe.” Nylan wasn’t convinced. Nothing was ever simpler than it seemed. Not in his experience, and when it was, there was usually an incredible price to pay. Add to that that they’d left the forest before he’d really had time to work things out because they both knew that time was short and hoped that they could puzzle it out while they traveled.

He snorted softly to himself, wondering if their “puzzling” would leave them even more open to white wizards. Then, he had to hope that the wizards were either farther away or concentrating on the battles. Just like him, they couldn’t do everything at once. He hoped.

The insect chirping died away for a moment, and Nylan glanced around, extending his perceptions into the darkness. He smiled as he sensed a foxlike predator creeping after some sort of ground-dwelling rodent.

The rodent bolted for its hole, and the fox pawed at the ground for a time, then slipped downhill and toward the valley.

“It wasn’t a fox,” Ayrlyn said. “It was something like a coyote, except it was fox-sized.”

“Call it a foxote?”

“It probably has a local name that we don’t know.”

“Probably.”

Nylan looked skyward, into the cloudless evening and the unknown stars that glittered as impersonally as ever.

“In the forest, does the order balance the chaos? Or is chaos balanced by order?” Ayrlyn asked into the silence.

“What’s the diff-” He paused. “Oh…” He swallowed. “Well…order provides both a balance and…I’d guess you’d call it an insulator or separator.”

“If that’s so, then isn’t chaos more powerful? Ideally, I mean?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, tugging on a long and dry stem of grass. “My guess is that in larger concentrations that would be so, but as you break down chaos into smaller and smaller fragments, order gets progressively more effective.” The stem broke, and Nylan absently chewed the end, then put it aside as his tongue tingled with a bitter taste.

“What if you tied up all the chaos?”

“You’d end up tying up all the order. But that’s not our problem.” He sighed. “Someday someone may have to deal with that, and I wish them well, but we’re nowhere near that. I’m just trying to figure out-”

“How about experimenting? In little bits?”

Of course, that was what all his talk had been about-trying to avoid, subconsciously, actually plunging in. What all that white energy could do terrified him.

“It is a little awesome.”

Nylan laughed softly. “A little awesome?” He turned and hugged her. “I love your understatements. A little awesome.” He laughed again.

“I’m glad you find me amusing.”

“A little awesome?”

“Nylan.”

He closed his mouth. Did she know? Did she have any idea of the power that lay beneath Candar?

“I guess I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It scares me.” The smith shook his head. “It scares me a lot.”

“You can do it.” Ayrlyn reached out and squeezed his right hand. “We can do it.” We can .