L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“Sias!”

“Yes, ser.”

“Don’t worry, Sias,” Nylan told the young former apprentice as he handed over the mare’s reins. “You won’t miss a thing.” In fact, you just might see too much .

The engineer let his senses range over the ground, just trying to get a feel, trying to extend his links to the distant forest, and to the order-chaos boundaries that felt all too far away.

“This is going to get nasty,” he said in a low voice. “All that distance…hope we can do it.”

“It already is nasty,” Ayrlyn pointed out.

“So how do you plan to stop them, ser angel?” Gethen, flanked by a pair of hard-faced armsmen, and followed by the square-faced Huruc, reined up beside Tonsar. “You had told us to leave this spot for you. Will you rout them on foot?”

“Do you really want to know?” blurted Nylan. “I apologize, ser Gethen,” he added quickly. “We hope to raise the forces of the forest to stop them before they attack. Or before most of their forces can reach us.”

“Before?”

“Why not? There’s not much doubt about what they intend, not after what they did to Jerans and southern Lornth.” Nylan swallowed, his mouth dry.

“No.” Gethen’s words were cold, colder than his eyes.

A series of horn calls echoed from the south.

“Do what you must do,” said Gethen gruffly. “The white demons are raising their banners. We will hold while we can.” With a stiff nod, the older regent turned his mount toward the armsmen arrayed to the north of where Nylan and Ayrlyn stood. Stood alone amid the mounted host.

Nylan swallowed, or tried to. His throat felt dusty, dry.

Ayrlyn handed him a water bottle.

Another series of horn calls stabbed the day, and a faint rumbling, and trembling of the ground began.

Whhstt! A firebolt arced into the air and exploded.

“We’d better…”

“Just do it!”

Absently, Nylan corked the water bottle, bent and set it on the dusty ground that had been a meadow, and pushed his senses to the south, well behind and beyond the white and red blotches that represented the slow-advancing Cyadoran forces.

Reflected light flashed from the Cyadoran shields, and Nylan closed his eyes, concentrating, feeling, seeking.

The power he sought seemed so distant…so far south.

“We can do it.” Ayrlyn’s words and presence warmed him.

He tried to relax, to extend his tenuous probe, but much as he pressed, that distant link eluded him, flitted from his mental grasp.

The ground vibrated with the impact of hoofs and feet, and the horns echoed toward Rohrn again.

Another blast of fire soared out of the south and splashed across the meadow before the Lornian forces. Little balls of fire rolled toward the mounted armsmen, each leaving a long charred line behind it before dying away. A gust of wind carried the odor of burned grass northward, and Nylan sniffed inadvertently.

The engineer tried to wrench his attention back to that distant and continual barrier struggle between order and chaos, even as yet another fireball hissed toward the Lornian armsmen.

For a moment, less than an instant, Nylan touched the dark bands of order, bands binding the very soil in place over the ancient rocks, slowly infusing those artificial planoformed established boundaries with the mixture of order and chaos that ran through the forest and through much of Cyador and southern Lornth.

Then…the link snapped, and he stepped sideways, off-balance.

“Again…” whispered Ayrlyn.

After another deep breath, the engineer tried once more, this time conceiving of the link as a network, an underspace connection. For a longer instant, his thoughts held the dark bands of order, but the chaos lines eluded him, snapping back so hard that he staggered where he stood, then sat down roughly.

“What the frig…the angel doing?” came a hissed whisper.

“Silence!” ordered Tonsar.

Nylan stood, helped up by Ayrlyn. Somehow he needed to stand.

A huge white fireball arced toward the Lornian forces, shattering in midair and spraying liquid flames among the mounted armsmen of the first square, the one farthest left of the two angels.

“Aeeeeiiii…no…no…” The screams of dying men seemed like whispers against the growing thud of hoofs and the underlying shrieks of chaos lifted by the mages to the south.

Whheeeee…. eeeeee! The shrieks of suffering and dying horses climbed above those of the armsmen.

Another fireball flared, turning the grass before the Lornian forces into a wall of flame, flame so hot that it seared the skin and singed the hair of the men and horses in the front rank.

Sweat ran down Nylan’s forehead, and into his eyes, burning them as the struggle to release the energy in the order-chaos boundaries throughout Candar burned through his skull and soul. His own hair crinkled in the heat.

Beside him, Ayrlyn tweaked the shallower lines of order, and a line of flames, dark flames, rose from the fields before the advancing Shining Foot, turning white uniforms black, charring the flesh under the blackened shells that had marched proudly instants before.

Nylan’s stomach turned-or was he feeling her revulsion?

Somehow, someway, he had to tap some kind of order-chaos energy-before everyone was killed. But he couldn’t reach it!

Whhhhsttt! Another white-red fireball flared across the morning sky, splattering death and flames through the armsmen to the angel’s left.

More screams of mounts and men filled the morning, and the light wind carried cinders, ashes, and the odor of charred meat. Nylan’s guts turned again.

The sun burned more brightly, or so it seemed, upon his back, and the oncoming Cyadorans appeared endless-endless ranks of white, of shimmering shields and clashing reflections.

His shirt was soaked, and his eyes burned from salty sweat, from trying to reach and channel elusive chaos. But if he couldn’t tap that distant force…how could the white mages? He didn’t feel them doing anything like that-and they were certainly using order and chaos.

“If you can’t reach the one you need,” he murmured, “use the one you can reach.”

Are you sure? asked a small voice.

He shook his head, but sent his perceptions down, straight down, to where rock met magma, to where a different sort of order and chaos met. There, there he seized the deeper boundary, the edge between rock and magma.

Do you want to do this? His jaw tightened. What choice did he have? He was too far from the forest and had too little time left. There is always a choice .

Do what we must… Ayrlyn’s calm thought helped.

With a sound between sob and cry, he cleft order and chaos, struggling to hold layers and layers of order between him and the raw white energy, especially between Ayrlyn and that energy.

As they struggled, Ayrlyn adding her order, her force, yet another fireball sprayed the meadow, this time less than a hundred cubits before them. Nylan could feel his own hair crisping more, the heat of chaos fire washing over both him and Ayrlyn, their skin near burning from the chaos fire.

Concentrate on your work… Ayrlyn’s calmness soothed the questions in his soul as he wedged chaos and order farther apart, building a channel up from the depths, a channel to the back side of the Cyadoran forces, even as he tried to create an order wall before their own armsmen.

Not much good if you turn us into cinders .

Ayrlyn coaxed and eased yet more of the black webs, the unseen black patterns, into that barrier.

Whhssttt! Whsstt! Two fireballs in quick succession splashed against the unseen barrier, with the gouts of chaos fire rebounding toward the advancing Shining Foot.