L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

None would stand and state that Cyad had been kind and just, and that her peoples lived in justice and peace. For such truth was struck down by the dark mage Nylan with his black hammer, and also by the dark Ayrlyn and her lute so that none would know the grace of Cyad.

The Mirror Lancers burnished their shields and lifted their lances, and the sound of the hoofs of their steeds echoed through rocks and stones of all Candar. The white mages, powerful in the paths of peace and wary of war, girded their robes and invoked the hopes of peace…but all were doomed.

For Nylan, the dark angel, again lifted his hands, and he unbound the Accursed Forest of Naclos, and the forest rewarded him, and rendered back unto him the fires of Heaven and the rains of death. And Nylan laughed and cast those fires and rain across the west of Candar. And Ayrlyn sang songs that wrenched soul from soul and heart from body.

The Mirror Lancers found their light lances turned upon them, and the very earth rose and smote them, and the righteousness of the white mages was for naught as their glasses exploded before them, and death rained upon all the armsmen of Cyad, until none stood.

The very ground heaved, and belched, and swallowed the great cities of Cyad and Fyrad, and the winds flattened distant Summerdock so that no stone remained upon another.

The Grass Hills were seared into the Stone Hills, so dry that nothing lives there to this day. And Lornth rejoiced…until its time had come….

Nylan’s eyes opened slowly, but he saw nothing, and he closed them against the knives that stabbed through them. He lay silently for a time, smelling fire and smoke and death and destruction, odors that knifed through his nostrils.

“Where is she?” the engineer finally asked, except that he knew. Ayrlyn was standing outside the tent, looking southward at what had once been fields, except that she saw not with her eyes.

How did he know? He shivered.

The link, the link he had opened to the forest…and a sense of welcome, well-being, rushed through him, twining with the chaos of destruction, and the dull knives of death and devastation-life and death, order and chaos, except they were not parallel, not exactly, insisted some forgotten engineer’s corner of his mind.

He sat up, ignoring the pain, the stiffness. After a moment, he tottered upright, out of the tent into the sulfurous air that swirled and swept up the hillside. Although he could not see, what he could sense was more than enough. Churned and blistered earth and rock, the chaos of nearly endless death, and the smells. The screams of men and mages churned under a tidal wave of earth and rock and the shrieks of innocent mounts trapped and buried, never to tread the grasslands again.

What he could sense was indeed more than enough. His head and shoulders bent under that unseen weight, and he would have fallen without a strong arm, and the strong soul of the woman who helped him, and without the sense of balance provided by the distant forest-a Naclos that was already…different…more aware.

He swallowed and straightened slowly.

“You can’t see, either, can you?” Ayrlyn asked.

“No. I can sense things. You?”

Yes. You…the forest…

“Agents of change.”

Agents of balance… She nodded, and he could sense the nod he could not see.

Another figure joined them in the morning that still reeked of the slaughter two days earlier. “You two…you best not be…” Sylenia shook her head. “You raved about going to the forest again. You cannot see.”

“We have to,” explained Ayrlyn.

“Then we will go with you.”

“We?” asked Nylan.

“Tonsar will come. We have talked. It is better. He could not follow any of the lords of Lornth now, except ser Gethen, and ser Gethen, he is old.”

“Fornal?” asked Nylan, hoping in a way that what he recalled of Fornal’s charge had not been so.

“He…he perished amid the fires and thunderbolts.” Sylenia shrugged and glanced around. “That, too, is better. He would not accept what will be.”

Nylan took a deep breath. “Weryl?”

“He slept between you. Otherwise he cried, and wisps of fire or light, they surrounded him. He sleeps now. He is an angel, like you, so young as he may be.” Sylenia shook her head once more and turned back toward the tent, clearly erected over where they had fallen.

Are we so fearsome we couldn’t be moved?

Apparently .

Nylan chuckled, but only momentarily. His body hurt too much to continue. “No laughing matter.” He paused. “Weryl?”

“What else would you expect? He sensed the notes early; he felt the forest.”

Nylan took a deep breath, then slowly walked back into the tent. Every muscle hurt. As Sylenia had said, their son-for he was Ayrlyn’s as much as Istril’s-slept. But Nylan could sense the intertwining of order and chaos, the inherent balance.

He turned to Ayrlyn.

“He needs the forest, and so do we.”

Nylan nodded, then eased away from the sleeping figure and back out into the bitter open air.

“Nylan?” Ayrlyn paused. “Why was it so much greater than before? Just because you pulled a core tap?”

“Just because?” he asked wryly. “Anyway, it wasn’t quite that deep. It just felt that deep. There used to be a natural balance between order and chaos-almost between the crustal layers and the magma beneath. Then the Rats came along and laid an artificial layer of order over another layer of chaos when they planoformed Candar-or the section where the forest was. I don’t know if that was on purpose or just the result. Whatever the reason, the old white mages had used the artificial imbalance between those top two layers as a power source-like an electric current, if you will. That was on a comparatively low level in the past. I think,” the engineer added hastily, looking around with sightless eyes, as he sensed someone else approaching, “when I used the weapons laser to destroy the Cyadoran forces and Gallosian forces, it was like a wake-up call-or the equivalent. Or maybe the forest-I’m still not sure if it’s really conscious in the same way we are-blindly copied the impact.

“The barriers that held back the Accursed Forest in Cyador, except it’s Naclos now-or again-were old, ancient technology. Probably they shouldn’t have lasted as long as they did, but the way I twisted the weapons laser broke the field, and the forest began to try to regain its own territory.”

“And the Cyadorans didn’t have the technology anymore?”

“It’s not just technology.” Nylan coughed, nearly retching before he finally said, “I don’t know. I don’t think it was any one thing, but everything sort of reinforced everything else. And then when I went down to the crustal levels, that acted like a power reinforcement for the forest.”

“It’s more aware now,” she pointed out. Much more aware .

“I know.”

An entourage on horseback approached, and the two turned, still sightless. Nylan half-wondered if he would ever see again properly.

“You have delivered Lornth.” Gethen’s voice was flat. “Some would question the price.”

“Do you, ser?” asked Nylan mildly.

“No.” A sigh followed. “High as it was and will be.”

“Cyador is no more, is it?” asked Zeldyan. Nesslek rode in the seat behind her, half-dozing.

“Some of it is still there,” Nylan said. “The part that wasn’t built on the Great Forest. Some of the western towns and cities are mostly there. Ruins probably. The destruction is…I think it’s worse where there were cities and towns….”

“None of the white armsmen, not a one, survived. Nor did the white mages.” Zeldyan’s words were low. “Were you sent to destroy all the white mages? No matter what the cost to Candar?”