L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

Another set of chaos fireballs splatted against the unseen order barrier.

The engineer’s legs wobbled, and he sat down, still struggling to hold order and focus the deep chaos on the remainder of the Cyadoran forces, forces so numerous, numerous like the grasses of the plains.

But wildfire takes grasses .

With a groan, he/she visualized/coaxed/shaped the raging deep chaos into a wildfire, chevied by order winds, sweeping south and west from Lornth, incinerating all in its path, turning all above the ground into cinders and fine ash.

His/Ayrlyn’s guts turned, and white agony stabbed through them both, and Ayrlyn staggered and dropped onto the dusty grass beside Nylan. He reached for her hand, unseeing, panting, still trying to hold open order channels, as hot chaos bubbled upward all through what had been ancient Cyador, all through what had been the domain of Naclos.

They could sense, could feel, the hills to the south shudder as they shed their unnatural cover of soil. Could feel as the marshes along the ancient riverbeds all the way south to the Great Canal of Cyador, all the way west to mighty Cyad itself, called themselves back into being, twisting neatly tilled fields into sinkholes and pulling cultivated crops under oozing dark waters. As the great river that had been…twisted and churned out of recent banks and into older ones. As lesser rivers reappeared, and finely mortared canal walls dropped beneath earth and mud and water. As the buried shoreline boulders sprang forth again, shattering building foundations and bringing down walls in cities as far distant as Syadtar and Fyrad. As the Great Forest of Naclos rose from the ashes of chaos to balance the steaming mass that had been Cyador.

Had that small cottage where they had learned so much…had it survived? Nylan’s single thought was twisted from its question with an even more violent series of earth tremors.

With all the changes, the shudders deep within the earth, the grinding of magma and congealed stone, the explosions of superheated steam-with all the changes came the darkness that bound order and chaos, chaos and order, the darkness that held balance.

That darkness rose on the plains south of Rohrn, rose and crashed over Nylan, over Ayrlyn, and night surged like a tide across the grasslands, across western Candar, and even up the jagged spires of the Westhorns.

The once blue skies darkened, and the storms rose, spreading southward and westward to touch the shores of the Great Western Ocean with heavy drops of water darkened with soot and dust, and northward to the Northern Ocean.

And Naclos…and all of Candar shuddered with the rebirth…and the relighting of the chaos balance….

A dull rumbling echoed from beneath the ground, and the man in silver-trimmed white robes stood and studied the receiving room. The floor quivered, and dust puffed from between the minuscule cracks in the stone tiles.

Lephi shifted his weight and glanced at the dust, a deep frown forming on his face. “Dust?”

He turned and walked from the smaller malachite and silver throne toward the window. He staggered as the floor stones moved again ever so slightly beneath his feet. When he reached the window, he grasped the white stone sill to steady himself as he surveyed the area to the south of Syadtar.

A hazelike darkness dimmed the sky, and the sun’s light was cold on his face and hands.

As the floors of his command center trembled again, the white walls of Syadtar wavered as well, moving as ships upon a troubled sea. Beyond the white walls, the earth churned, as if by a muddy sea whipped by a massive storm out of the south. Slowly, as slowly as Lephi’s mouth opened in protest, the brown waves rose and then crashed ponderously over those white walls, submerging first the walls, and then the houses that were already little more than heaps of shattered white stucco and stone and crushed roof tiles.

“Triendar…you did not say it would be like this.” His eyes were fixed upon the relentless approach of the ever-rising wave of earth and rock. “You did not say…”

Crackkk…

Lephi glanced from the advancing tsunami of earth back over his shoulder and up at the lacquer-screened balcony. The massive stone blocks of the building’s walls teetered and began to bulge inward.

With a bitter smile upon his face stood His Mightiness Lephi the White, Lord of Cyador, ruler of all lands from the mountains of the skies to the oceans of the west, Protector of the Steps to Paradise, Son and Seer of the Rational Stars. Lephi waited in that moment of time suspended. Waited and watched as the very earth rose around him, as the long-delayed balance was righted, as the white stones of Syadtar fell around him, enfolded him, and then buried him beneath the churning earth.

In the late afternoon on the Roof of the World, the guards stood silent on the practice ground, their eyes fixed on the blackness rising just above the western horizon as Istril stepped out of the main door of Tower Black and crossed the causeway.

Ryba, wooden wand touching the ground, gestured toward the silver-haired guard and healer.

Istril continued her measured pace toward the marshal. The other guards waited.

The silver-haired healer stopped three paces from Ryba and inclined her head. “Marshal.”

“What do you think of that?” Ryba glanced at the pregnant and silver-haired guard, then gestured toward the west, beyond the ice needle that was Freyja. “That has to be the engineer.”

Darkness swirled into the sky, slowly turning the entire western horizon into a curtain of blackness that slowly enfolded the sun, bringing an early twilight to the Roof of the World. For a moment, Freyja shimmered white, then faded into the maroon blackness that covered the high meadows and Tower Black.

“I could already feel the shivering between the black and white,” Istril said slowly. “So did Siret.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” asked the marshal.

“What could we have done? Besides, it’s more than him. More than the healer, too. Something bigger, a lot bigger.”

Ryba shook her head before asking, “Do you still think it was right to send Weryl?”

“He’s all right. I can feel that.” Istril paused. “That means Nylan is, too…but there’s a lot of pain there.” Her eyes glistened even in the dimness.

“When the engineer gets into something…there usually is.” Ryba’s voice was dry.

“He doesn’t do anything unless it’s important.” Istril continued to look past Ryba to the horizon.

“That just makes it worse, doesn’t it?” Ryba’s voice was rough.

“Yes, ser.”

After another period of silence, Istril nodded, then turned and walked swiftly back across the practice ground and the causeway into the tower.

Behind her, Ryba continued to study the growing darkness of a too-early night as the faces of the guards shone bloodred in the fading light.

The faintest of shivers ran through the ground beneath the marshal’s feet, and the meadow grasses swayed in the windless still of unnatural twilight.

Another ground shudder passed, and then another, as the gloom deepened. The marshal waited…watched.