L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“I just don’t know.” Still, her warmth and her willingness to share the risk warmed him, and he squeezed her hand in return.

“What if you just used the order lines, like a pipe?”

Nylan frowned for a moment. While it might not work, that sort of experiment wouldn’t be that hard, sort of like the way in which he’d held the laser together at the end.

“You can, you know,” she said, quietly.

He wasn’t sure, but the only way to find out was to try. He reached beneath the ground, his senses extending until they touched the chaos/order boundary.

“I can’t follow you, not very far,” said Ayrlyn.

“Can’t follow you very far on the winds, either,” he grunted. Already his forehead had begun to perspire. With as gentle a touch as possible, he urged, coaxed, encouraged the order lines to turn toward the surface, reforming them in one small area into a tube, except it was more like an open-ended cone.

He swallowed as the tip of the unseen cone touched the top of the ground. “Now what?”

“You have to break the circuit?”

That wasn’t it, not exactly-more like creating a ground in the air, or something like it. He winced as the power sink, or whatever it was he had formed, seemed to glow. He could see his boots with his eyes, and not just his senses.

Whhhhhssstttt!! A jet of fire-was it fire? — exploded out of the ground, turning the night into dawn, and an unheard screaming slashed through Nylan’s skull.

The engineer swallowed, his eyes closing involuntarily against the light, against the energy, against the heat. His mouth was instantly dry, his heart pounding. The line of fire rose higher until it had to have been nearly ten cubits high-a fountain of chaos-fire brighter than the sun.

“There!” Ayrlyn had closed her eyes against the burning light.

The engineer forced his senses back out, grasping for the order cone. He squeezed, prodded, and closed the tip of the cone, letting the boundary layer drop back into place, in effect damping the release of chaos.

“Whewww…” he sighed, his eyes still closed, sparks and flashes still sparking across them, though the darkness of night had fallen again. He rubbed his eyelids and then massaged his temples.

“You could say that,” added Ayrlyn.

“Lightning! Was that lightning?” Sylenia demanded, sitting bolt upright on her bedroll. “How could there be lightning? There is no storm.”

“Don’t worry, Sylenia,” Nylan lied hoarsely. “We’re experimenting. Just experimenting.” He swallowed.

“Experimenting? What is that? You are making lightnings from the ground? That is experimenting?”

In a way the nursemaid’s statement wasn’t a bad analogy, since most lightning did result from a power buildup and disparity between a cloud and the ground, but the engineer didn’t want to get into that. “There won’t be any more strange lights. Not tonight.”

“You are sure?”

“I am sure.” Nylan blotted a forehead that was both hot and cold. Suddenly, he felt like he reeked, reeked of sweat and of sheer terror.

“He won’t do it again,” Ayrlyn added.

“Thank-you, healer,” Sylenia lay back on her bedroll, murmuring just loud enough for the angels to hear, “…bad when they fling blades through armor. Now…now they bring fires from the ground…what would Tonsar say? Oh…he would say much…”

“He would, too,” whispered Nylan.

“You,” said Ayrlyn. “You have been known to say more than a few words when-”

“Enough.” The smith touched her chin, then covered her lips with his, holding her tightly, letting her hold him, trying not to shiver too much.

What might happen on the morrow was left unsaid, unthought. So was the possibility that they had alerted every wizard in kays. But they were short of time, knowledge, and experience-and very alone and exposed.

Two black vulcrows flapped up from the road ahead, black forms outlined momentarily against the green-blue sky. Nylan leaned forward slightly in the saddle and squinted to see what they had left behind.

For once, a breeze blew across the hills, out of the northeast, rustling the dry grass and the scattered trees and scrub oaks. The wind carried a residual coolness from the Westhorns where Ryba and the guards of Westwind, Nylan supposed, were doubtless forging another link in the chain of destiny that would change all Candar for all time.

The engineer snorted. So did his mare, stepping sideways momentarily on the dusty road to avoid the carcass of some sort of lizard, the form half-picked already, though the residual order and chaos seeping from it indicated that it had not even been dead when the vulcrows started.

Nylan’s forehead felt hot, even though the light wind was enough to keep him from perspiring the way he usually did. He uncorked the water bottle and took a deep swallow, then splashed a little on his face.

“Your face is red, even redder than normal,” Ayrlyn said.

“So is yours.” Nylan glanced back at Sylenia, riding quietly behind the redhead, but the nursemaid’s smooth skin seemed unchanged. “You think that last night…?”

“Releasing chaos that way is dangerous, I think.”

“I know. Any alternatives?”

“Not offhand.” Ayrlyn followed Nylan’s example and drank from her own water bottle, but did not splash any on her own reddened forehead and cheeks.

No alternatives-that had been the problem since they’d landed on the Roof of the World nearly three years earlier. Had it been less than three years? Nylan took a deep breath. It felt longer, much, much longer.

“Angels, there’s someone behind us,” Sylenia pointed out, gesturing with her left arm.

Nylan turned in the saddle. A wind-flattened line of dust hugged the hilltop beyond the one a kay behind them, dust created by fast-moving mounts ridden by figures in white, still more than three kays back.

Nylan had known it would be a risk…but all the choices they’d had were either bad or worse.

“Let me check.” Ayrlyn’s face blanked, and she half-slumped in the saddle.

The engineer looked around as he drew his mount next to hers, in case she started to slip from the saddle. He couldn’t help worrying when Ayrlyn half-left her body behind.

Beyond the grass-covered ridges to the west, on the low road that flanked the river, marched the main Cyadoran force, with so many bodies that even Nylan could sense them from kays away. According to Ayrlyn, the angels had slipped past that force earlier in the morning, but they weren’t that much farther north than the Cyadorans, not yet.

Behind them was what seemed to be a squad or more of lancers. To the east were the rougher hills and, another five kays or more, a twisted and steep-sided gully carrying a thin trickle of water that eventually joined the main river at Rohrn, still a good three to four days ride ahead.

“They ride quickly,” observed Sylenia.

“Ooo…orses,” added Weryl from his seat behind the nursemaid’s saddle. “Orses.”

“Yes, horses. I wish they didn’t have so many horses,” Nylan told his son. Alerted by a shift in Ayrlyn’s posture, he turned back toward the redhead.

“Little problem here.” Ayrlyn coughed and tried to clear her throat.

Nylan flicked the reins to speed the mare into a quicker walk while he waited.

“We can’t go east. We’re not far enough in front of the Cyadoran van, and if we angle that way…” She coughed again.

“They’ll catch up because we’ll be going slower in trying to cross rougher ground.”

The flame-haired angel nodded. “They also have a pretty big group ahead of us.”

“Frig…” muttered Nylan. “We’re surrounded, in effect, and they’ve listened to whoever was at the mines. They’re scouting with forces large enough not to be picked off.”