L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“We need to stop again.” The smith wanted to laugh at the look on Ayrlyn’s face. “You were the one who said he traveled well.”

“I shouldn’t have spoken so soon.”

They had to travel almost a kay before they descended enough into the canyon valley and reached a spot where the approach to the stream was both gentle enough and open enough through the tangled willows-with a shelf of coarse sand-for easy access to the water.

Nylan extracted Weryl from the carrypak again, hanging it over a low willow branch, followed by Weryl’s loose trousers. The pants were dry, thank darkness, but the cloth beneath was anything but.

Nylan took a deep breath and stepped toward the stream.

At the first touch of the cold water, Weryl began to howl.

“I’m sorry, little fellow,” Nylan said, “but you don’t like being a mess, and I don’t like smelling it.”

The cries were interspersed with sobs, which drifted into sobs alone by the time Nylan had his son back in dry clothes.

“Can you hold him while I wash out what he was wearing?” Nylan asked Ayrlyn.

“I would have helped, but you seemed to have everything under control. You will attack changing him like an engineering problem, though.”

“I suppose so. It is a waste disposal problem.”

“He’s your son, not a waste disposal problem.”

“He may be my son, but being my son isn’t going to make him less smelly or more comfortable.” Nylan handed Weryl to Ayrlyn, who lifted him to her shoulder and patted his back, rocking as she did so.

Nylan’s hands were red from the cold water of the stream by the time he had the cloth squares clean. “I’ll have to fasten them over the bags or something so that they’ll dry.”

“He’s hungry, I think,” suggested Ayrlyn.

“We’ll try the biscuit things, with water.” After draping the cloth squares over the saddlebags, the engineer opened Weryl’s food pack.

There had been no such things as baby bottles on Westwind, not when all the milk was breast milk, but in the food pack was a crude wooden cup with a carved cover that had a small spout. Nylan had breathed one sigh of relief when he had seen that.

“Let me sense the water,” Ayrlyn offered. After a moment, she added, “It’s safe enough. They don’t have river rodents here-not that we’ve seen. Sometimes, they foul the water.”

Nylan filled the cup and capped it. He still worried about getting the boy to eat enough of whatever was necessary for a proper dietary balance, but Weryl happily gummed his way through a biscuit and half-sucked, half-drank some of the stream water.

After that, the engineer eased him into the carrypak again and remounted. “How long before we have to stop again?”

“We don’t have a timetable, you know,” Ayrlyn pointed out.

“I know. But I feel as though there’s something we’ll have to do and that time’s running out.”

“You always feel that way.”

“Maybe.” But Nylan didn’t think so. His eyes took a last look at Freyja as the track carried them around a wide curve formed by the stream, and the ice needle vanished behind a wall of gray rock covered with scattered evergreens.

“How far to the wards?” asked Themphi.

The headman, who bounced in the saddle of a swaybacked roan that had the look of a carthorse, offered an expression that could be a shrug. “How far, honored wizard? That would be hard to say.”

“Why?” asked the wizard, his tone resigned.

“Because…the wards, they are no more, and the wall has been covered with shoots and creepers.”

The dark-haired wizard wanted to sigh, but did not. “What happened to them?”

“We do not know. The forest covered them. Since before my grandsire’s grandsire’s grandsire the forest has been there, and the walls have been there, and neither has changed. I can remember walking the walls all day and not even reaching the north corner. It is more than fifteen kays from Geliendra, ser wizard. When I was young, I kept a whole kay of the wall myself. I trimmed, and I pruned. Once I even climbed over the wall, but I climbed back-quickly. There was the largest forest cat I ever saw. Now…we cannot even see the white of the walls.”

“And you did not send anyone to check the wards?”

“We did. My sister’s son Byudur. He was the village wizard. He did not return. Nor did the wizard from Forestnorth.” The headman peered toward Themphi. “So we sent our petition to His Mightiness. Surely, the Lord of Cyador would know. And you, the wizard of wizards, are here.”

Behind them, from the mounted lancer officers, came a chuckle. Themphi ignored it. “I am here, and I am sorry to hear of your sister’s son. Did anyone find any trace?”

“The Accursed Forest leaves no traces.”

Themphi did sigh, but under his breath. Worse and worse, and Lephi had no real idea of what went on in Cyador, not with his dreams of rebuilding past glories.

The wizard frowned as he caught sight of the wall of green that stretched across the horizon, above the fields through which the packed clay road passed. Ahead the road ended at a wooden gate in a low wooden fence. The gate to the field was ajar, and there were hoof prints in the damp soil.

“There! You see. Even since yesterday, the Accursed Forest has grown.”

The white wizard eased his mount through the gate into the field and rode another hundred cubits or so before he reined up.

A line of green creepers had covered half the field, and he could almost see the green edging toward him. He blinked, and blinked again. Was the green closer?

“You see, honored wizard?” said the headman of Geliendra.

To the east, beyond the rebuilt dike that held the irrigated rice field, the scene was worse. There…trees had sprouted. Not all that high, perhaps knee-high, but knee-high in a season? Or less than a season?

As the headman had said, Themphi could not see the retaining walls. They could have been a few hundred cubits back behind the advancing greenery-or farther. He studied the forest again, mentally calculating. The taller trees, the older ones, began no more than two hundred cubits back from the creepers and the lower undergrowth. A chest-high line of green, barely visible, stretched from west to east-the wall, covered in vines.

The wizard dismounted and handed the gray’s reins to Jyncka. Then he stepped forward, gathering whiteness around him.

Light flared, as if from the forest, and Themphi staggered on the soft ground that had been turned and sowed, where sprouts of green peered through the dark soil. Themphi forced himself erect, ignoring the dampness on his forehead.

After another glance toward the wall of green nearly a hundred rods north of the long green creepers, his brows furrowed, and a firebolt arced into the green. The vines and knife grass blazed for a moment, and a circle of ashes spread until it was nearly thirty cubits wide before the flames died.

The white wizard wiped his sweating forehead, and he turned.

“Jyncka. We will do this the hard way, the way our forefathers did. Make arrangements for torches and barrels of pitch.”

Jyncka nodded. “Yes, honored wizard.”

The headman smiled nervously.

Themphi studied the forest for a time. Then he turned and took the gray’s reins from Jyncka and remounted. “It will be a large undertaking, but mainly tedious.” Then he swung the gray back toward Geliendra.

Behind him followed the headman, Fissar, and the disgraced lancers.

For a time after they ate, Nylan just lay on the bedroll in the early twilight. His rear was too sore to sit on anything, and the muscles above his knees ached too much to stand. His hands were raw from cold water washing off everything from their few pots to Weryl’s cloth undersquares, and his head ached faintly.