L. Modesitt: The Chaos Balance

“I’d appreciate it if you’d just work on blades until the charcoal goes.”

“More visions?” he asked quietly.

“Such as they are.” Ryba broke off a chunk of bread.

Nylan took a chunk of the dark bread after her and passed the basket to Huldran, then looked across the table, noting the pallor in Ayrlyn’s face. “Dephnay again?” he asked.

“She’s getting better, but Tryssa got burned with hot grease. Cold water helped-except for her eyelids.”

Nylan winced at the thought of grease across the eyes, and the effort it must have cost the flame-haired healer. Healing through the order fields was exhausting, as he knew from experience. He’d collapsed more than once. “How is she?”

“She’ll be fine.”

“How about you?”

“I’ll need a nap after I eat. A long one.” Ayrlyn took a long swallow of the hot tea.

Nylan nodded sympathetically, then took a sip of his own tea while waiting for the huge crockpot filled with stew to reach him.

“You need to eat more,” Hryessa badgered Daryn from the foot of the table.

“You need to be strong to return to Gallos,” suggested Murkassa, a glint in her eye.

“I cannot return,” said Daryn quietly, a flush stealing over his fair-complected face. “You know that. One of the standard-bearers of Gallos? A single survivor? I would be suspected of treachery…or worse.”

“We’ve been through this before,” said Ayrlyn, interrupting the teasing, straight-faced. “You certainly weren’t the only survivor, just the only one daring enough to entice a guard. Some of the wounded in the lower camp made their way back to Lornth and Gallos.”

Daryn flushed again, then replied. “Most died. You know that, healer. Those that did return reached their homes before the winter snows. After a winter on the Roof of the World…” Daryn shrugged.

“You could not have traveled. You almost died,” said Hryessa.

“No.” Daryn laughed, not quite bitterly. “It is difficult for a one-footed man to travel the Westhorns.”

“Almost as difficult as for a single woman to travel Candar unmolested,” added Ryba dryly.

A murmur of assent ran across the tables.

Nylan wanted to shake his head. Candar was a powerflux ready to explode, and just by founding Westwind Ryba had started the energy cascade.

“Daryn?” asked the Marshal.

“Yes, Marshal,” answered the youth warily.

“What do you know about a place called Cyador?”

“Only what the traders tell, ser. It is the ancient home of those who follow the white way, and filled with silver and malachite, and great buildings walled with mirrors that catch and hold the sun. Even the smallest of dwellings are like palaces.”

“Exactly where is this paradise?”

“Somewhere beyond the Westhorns-that is all I know.”

“What brought that up?” Nylan asked Ryba.

“I’ve been studying some of those scrolls Ayrlyn picked up, and there are some disturbing references to Cyador, especially to how the ancient ones channeled the rivers and built the grass hills to turn back travelers. Oh, and about how some daughters of Cyador fled to the barbarians.” Ryba’s voice turned dry. “I wonder about paradise if those daughters fled.”

A murmur of laughter went around the table.

“It must be beyond Lornth, then,” said Ayrlyn. “Relyn never mentioned it. Nor did Nerliat.”

“Relyn’s probably spreading tales about the great new ancient one,” suggested Hryessa.

“That will only cause more trouble,” said Ryba quietly. Her eyes turned on Nylan momentarily, before she took a mouthful of the mint stew.

Not about to get into a discussion about Relyn and his efforts to create a new religion based on what he had learned from Nylan, the smith ate quietly, occasionally glancing at Ayrlyn, pleased to see some of the pallor leaving her face as the healer ate.

“Eating helps, doesn’t it?” he said, knowing it was an inane comment, but wanting to reach out.

“Somewhat. With some rest, I’ll feel better,” answered Ayrlyn.

“If someone needs something that way,” he offered, “send them to me. Or Istril. She’s practicing her skills.”

“I told her to. I’m glad she is.”

“We will need more healers,” Ryba said coolly, and the certainty of her words chilled Nylan. What else was she seeing?

Ayrlyn and Nylan exchanged glances, then continued to eat without speaking.

After the midday meal, Nylan walked up the five flights of the stone steps to the top level, turning right into his quarters, across from Ryba’s. He looked around the bare room-one window, glazed in wavery local glass; a lander couch that made a hard bed, but better than anything of local manufacture; a crude table and stool; and a rocking chair for when he sang Dyliess to sleep.

“Nylan?”

He turned.

The dark-haired Marshal of Westwind stood in the door, carrying a squirming silver-haired child, more than an infant, but not quite a toddler. “Could you take her? I’d like to practice. Or you could practice first-”

“Go ahead. I’ll practice after you.” The smith-engineer extended his hands for his daughter, and she extended hers.

“Gaaaa…”

“Gaaa to you, too.” Nylan lifted Dyliess to his shoulder and hugged her.

“I’ll be down below,” Ryba repeated. “Then…I don’t know.”

“Fine.” Nylan eased himself into the crude rocking chair he’d crafted just so that he could have one in his own quarters to rock Dyliess.

As he rocked, her fingers grasped the edge of the carvings on the back of the chair, and then his silver hair-and his ear.

“Easy there, young lady. Your father’s ears are tender.” He lowered her and sat her in his lap, beginning to sing to her.

“On top of old Freyja, all covered in ice…”

His voice was getting hoarse when there was a rap on the door.

“Yes?”

“Ser…” A thin-faced woman with mahogany hair stood at his door. “The Marshal sent me up-”

“You’re going to take care of Dyliess while I practice, Antyl?”

“If you’d wish it, ser.”

“That’s fine.” Trust Ryba to send someone else to Nylan for Dyliess. Despite the close quarters of the tower, Ryba avoided Nylan as much as possible, asking as little as possible, as though he were the unreasonable one. He’d been tricked into being a stud, manipulated into incinerating thousands, and deceived in who knew how many little ways, but he was unreasonable-even though he’d essentially built and armed Westwind. And Ryba wondered why he didn’t want anything to do with her? If it weren’t for Dyliess and the other children…

But they were his and linked to Westwind, and there was no changing that, none at all.

He stood up from the rocking chair and eased Dyliess to his shoulder for a moment, patting her back. Then he half-lowered her and kissed her cheek before easing her into Antyl’s arms.

“How’s Jakon?”

“He be fine, ser, a strong baby. He sleeps now.” With a broad smile, the brunette turned and headed down the stone steps of the tower.

Nylan stripped off his jacket and headed down the steps to the dimness of the fifth level, where practicing was a contest not only against his partner, but against the gloom and uncertain lighting. Ryba claimed that blades were as much feel as vision, and perhaps she was right. Nylan wasn’t certain he’d even seen half the men he’d killed with a blade over the past two years. He’d certainly felt their deaths, suffused with white agony, but had he really seen them with his eyes?

That was the problem with Ryba. She was almost always right, but he hated her insistence that power-or cold iron-was the only true solution to surviving in Candar.