L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“Gaaa…dah,” added Weryl, thrusting a chubby fist toward Nylan.

“I wasn’t good enough to make the fight look better,” mused Nylan. “I didn’t want to humiliate him, but when his pride is touched, he’s as dense as a stone tower. Relyn was like that to start.”

“All of them are, except the older man,” replied Ayrlyn.

“Huruc seems to have some sense, too,” offered Nylan.

“That’s because he’s no lord.”

Nylan frowned. Now he had to worry about an offended regent, although it didn’t seem as though he’d been given much of a choice. Then again, ever since they’d landed on this impossible world, it didn’t seem like he’d had much in the way of choices, except trying to find the least damaging of a range of bad alternatives.

“There isn’t anything here.” Nylan closed the book and set it on the table, his eyes straying to the window and the white and puffy clouds that dotted the green-blue summer sky. “Nothing but rumors and implications, and none of those are very clear-except that a group of noble women once fled, and there was a lot of power involved once in creating Cyador. And that somehow, there was a magic and evil forest…and may still be.”

“I’ve read a lot in a lot of languages, but I’ve never come across a forest that was treated so much like…an entity.”

“Entity?” asked the smith.

“Wadah, da-da?” asked Weryl, tottering on both legs, while holding on to the side of the big bed’s footboard.

The engineer stood and pushed the straight-backed chair from the writing table, then retrieved Weryl’s cup from the sideboard that served as their meal table when they had not eaten with the regents. “Here you are.”

“You know. The North Forest of Sybra-the poets say it’s desolate…cold…terrible…but the dangers are from the yellowcats or the wind that sucks away life. The rain forests of Svenn-there it’s the same thing. People talk about the knife lizards or the walking snakes or the rhombats. Here…”

Weryl took the covered cup, sat down on the hard stone floor with a plop , and slurped water from the spout, ignoring the stream that dribbled around the edges and out of his mouth.

“It’s as though this Accursed Forest were alive?” asked Nylan after deciding to let Weryl slurp and dribble as he pleased for the moment. “Isn’t that just low-tech superstition?”

“I don’t think so. Besides, why are we both getting repetitive dreams about a forest, a forest filled with both order and chaos?”

Nylan wasn’t sure he wanted to think about it. “So we have to go off and fight an enemy that we don’t know that comes from a land where there’s a magic forest that no one understands that’s sending us dreams?”

“We don’t have much choice,” said Ayrlyn, shaking her head as she watched the silver-haired boy drink. “Do you think so?”

“Probably not, not unless we want to turn into fugitives unwelcome anywhere.”

“So we’ll go with Fornal and see what happens at the mines. Maybe we can figure out more as we travel.”

“The whole business is shaping up as a mess,” said Nylan. “Sillek lost most of the disciplined armsmen on the Roof of the World, and Fornal is one of those types that distrust all strangers. And I’m certainly not one of his favorite people-not now. Yet we’re stuck with him. He isn’t going to want us to go with him.”

“He’s only one of the three regents,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “So we ask one of the other regents.”

“Which one?”

“Gethen,” said Ayrlyn. “Zeldyan has already stuck her neck out for us, and Fornal was ready to kill her when she hustled him out of the courtyard.” Ayrlyn paused and frowned. “She was trying to keep him from making a complete public idiot of himself, and he didn’t even see it.”

“Some of us men don’t.” The engineer, his eyes half on Weryl, stood by the open window, where the hot afternoon breeze-bearing an unfamiliar fragrance, a combination of lemon, mint, and reisera-ruffled his hair.

“Should we approach Gethen right now?” Nylan carted Weryl into the bath chamber.

“There’s something a smith told me about forging while the coals are hot.” The healer grinned as she followed him.

Cleaning Weryl didn’t take that long, and in time they stepped out of their chamber into the stone-walled inner corridor of the keep.

The inside hall was stuffy, and hotter than their chamber by far. Nylan was damp all over within a dozen steps toward the old part of the keep where he hoped to find the oldest regent.

Gethen wasn’t in the old tower, nor in the armory. They did find him in the stable, beside the stall of a roan, talking to a square-faced but spare man with thinning mahogany hair.

Whufff…uuuufff… The big horse thumped against the side of the stall, edging away from the regent as he stepped into the stall, followed by Guisanek.

Nylan and Ayrlyn retreated to the shadows near the front doors, waiting not exactly silently, since Weryl continued to murmur, but far enough away from the two men that Nylan hoped they wouldn’t seem too intrusive.

The odors of horses, straw, clay, and manure drifted up around them as they stood waiting.

A sandy-haired figure appeared and bowed. “Good day, angels. Your mounts are doing well,” said Merthek. “I persuaded Edicat-he’s the farrier-to reshoe the one mare, not the chestnut.” The stable boy grinned. “Told him he could charge the merchant types more by telling them he’d shoed an angel mount. He growled at me, but he did it.”

“Thank you,” Nylan said.

“I did it for her, too, ser angel,” Merthek pointed out. “She is a good mare, and deserves solid shoes.” He paused. “Surely not just concern for your mounts brings you to the depths of our stables?” The boy wrinkled his nose suggestively.

“Your stable is far cleaner than most,” Nylan said.

Merthek gave a short bow. “Master Guisanek insists upon it…but still-”

“We were waiting for ser Gethen,” said Ayrlyn.

“He be talking with Guisanek, about the roan.” Merthek shook his head. “The stallion limps, and they find nothing. Edicat knows it lies in the pastern, but he can do nothing. We have no animal healers here.” His eyes flicked toward the stall where Guisanek and Gethen still studied the stallion’s front leg. Then his voice lowered. “We had three wizards, and not a one could help a mount. Oh, they could cast fire and murder…and when all’s said what good be that?”

“No good,” answered Nylan, “but sometimes necessary.”

“There be nothing…ser Gethen.” Guisanek’s voice drifted toward the angels and Merthek.

The stable boy bowed again to the angels and slipped away.

“He might make a good stable master some day,” said Ayrlyn.

“He’s too practical and caring,” Nylan answered.

“Cynical man.”

They both stepped forward as Gethen strode away from Guisanek. “Good day, Regent Gethen.”

“Good day, angels.” In scarred working leathers that could have passed for those of a stablemaster, Gethen surveyed the three. Then his eyes narrowed, and he focused on the redhead. “They say you are a healer. Can you tell me what ails the roan?”

“I can look,” Ayrlyn responded.

“Come then,” said Gethen.

Nylan followed Ayrlyn, and Gethen frowned but said nothing as he turned back toward the stall.

Ayrlyn stood by the stall for a moment, and Nylan could feel the waves of calmness radiating from her before she slipped up beside the roan stallion.

The redhead ran her fingers across the roan’s pastern. Even Nylan could sense the chaos there, and nodded. She stood and looked at him. “The two of us…”