L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

Still carrying Weryl, Nylan approached the guards, Ayrlyn matching him, step for step.

The black-haired woman halted before the guards. “The angels are healers, and the Lady Zeldyan has need of them.”

The two guards in green-trimmed purple tunics exchanged glances, one looking to the blades at the angels’ waists.

Nylan glanced down. “Oh…sorry. We hadn’t planned to be here.”

Ayrlyn unsheathed her blade and extended it, hilt first, then took Weryl as Nylan followed her example.

The heavy-set guard, now holding two shortswords, looked puzzled.

“Announce them,” ordered the thinner guard.

The heavy guard rapped on the door. Muffled words issued from behind the heavy dark wood.

“The angel healers are here.”

After a moment the three-paneled carved door swung open, and a dark-bearded form stepped out into the corridor. “We have no need of angel healers.”

“Your pardon, ser Fornal,” Nylan said. “We did not wish to intrude, but we were summoned.”

“There is no need-”

Zeldyan slipped out beside Fornal.

“Lady.” Nylan bowed his head.

“I did not summon you, yet…” the regent began, her blond hair disarrayed-the first time Nylan had seen it so. Her eyes went to the black-haired woman. “Sylenia?”

“Your Grace…it be the chaos fever.” Sylenia bent her head. “I know. I know.”

“It be nothing,” snorted Fornal. “The boy has but an unpleasantness. It happens to many young folk. It will pass. These matters do.”

For a long moment, Zeldyan surveyed Fornal, the angels, the hallway, the guards, Sylenia, and finally Weryl.

“Ahhh?” asked the boy.

Zeldyan smiled faintly. “Angels…you may enter. Sylenia, you wait here with their child. If it be chaos fever indeed, he should not enter.”

Nylan slowly eased his son into Sylenia’s arms. “You be good.” He couldn’t dispute the validity of Zeldyan’s point, especially in a culture without any real medical technology-but what was he doing in exposing himself-and Ayrlyn?

“He will be fine.” Sylenia beamed down at Weryl. At her smile, the puzzled look on the boy’s face faded into a wary acceptance.

Fornal scowled at Zeldyan. “Be you sure?”

“Fornal, Nesslek is my son. Angels, if you would follow me.” Zeldyan turned, and the two angels followed the blond regent into the sitting room. Nylan nodded to himself at the quiet luxury-the matching and cushioned armchairs, the carved game or informal dining table, and the heavy purple and green carpet, worn enough, yet still thick, to indicate its age and considerable value. Beside the base of the candelabra was a malachite and silver hair band, lying there as if dropped or tossed carelessly.

“He is in the small bedchamber,” the regent said, crossing the room and easing wide the already ajar door. “All children have their illnesses.” Zeldyan paused. “Healers are for wounds and cuts, not for fevers and the fluxes within. Those healers I have known, they bleed and mix potions, and it matters not.” The regent looked at Ayrlyn. “You would not cut or bleed him?”

“Bleeding? Why do…no. Never,” the redhead added more strongly.

Nylan shook his head as well.

Nesslek lay on his back in the ornately carved bed of dark polished wood, his breathing labored, and his small forehead damp and flushed.

Even from cubits away, both angels could sense the white ugliness of chaos and infection.

Nylan knelt beside the small bed, his fingers going out past the silklike pillowcase with the green and purple embroidered edging to the forehead of the fevered child.

“Definitely some sort of infection-”

“No antibiotics, no anti-inflammatories…” whispered Ayrlyn.

“This is tough…like the stuff that got Ellysia.”

Ayrlyn winced.

“Maybe we can…he’s small,” Nylan said in a low voice, all too conscious of the regent standing behind them.

“We can.”

Nylan wasn’t quite so sure, but could sense Ayrlyn’s determination. So he extended his perceptions, trying to ignore the regent, the ornate carved furniture, the woven carpet under his knees-trying to twist the chaos in the small figure, turn it somehow into order. The sweat beaded on his forehead, his chest, his back, the dampness soaking through his clothes as he struggled.

Ayrlyn’s hand touched his, adding some of the cool black order to their struggle, but the white ugliness seemed to be everywhere within the boy, with the dissonant redness of chaos shimmering dully, unseen.

Nylan wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.

Although Nesslek breathed more easily, Nylan knew that respite was momentary, as it had been with Ellysia. They had done nothing to reach the cause of the infection.

“Rest for a moment,” Ayrlyn suggested.

Zeldyan backed up a step, but continued to watch, her eyes moving from her son to the healers and back again. “He’s better, isn’t he? Isn’t he?”

“For a bit, lady,” Ayrlyn said gently. “We’ve gained some time, but we need to do more.”

That much was true…but what?

For some reason, Nylan thought of trees, trees clustered in an ancient grove, surrounded and infused with an incredible depth of order-and of chaos almost as deep. Why? Why trees, for darkness’s sake? He knew he’d never seen that grove.

Then he shrugged to himself. As seemed to be the case all too often in Candar, he was left with going with his feelings and senses, not his engineering-honed logic.

“What?” asked Ayrlyn.

“Trees,” answered the smith cryptically. “Order. Patterns.” Would it work? Who knew, but what he’d been doing hadn’t worked with Ellysia, and it probably wouldn’t work with poor young Nesslek.

He closed his eyes and tried to replicate the patterns, the flow of dark and light, trying not to eradicate that white chaos within the child, but to twist the flows, to contain the chaos within order, within the dark fields. As he struggled again, he tried to ignore the impossibilities, the feelings that everything was an elaborate illusion, that he might be just a fraud…but he kept ordering…and struggling…and patterning…

And beside him, so did Ayrlyn.

In the end, they locked order over chaos, fragilely, gently. And after that lock, a different darkness rose up and brought them down.

“You bring me a message such as this?” Lephi looked down from the white throne at the aging and balding figure.

“I bring what was written.” The white wizard bowed.

“What use is a white wizard if he cannot contain the Accursed Forest? Why should I cosset and coddle you and your kind if you cannot even retain that monstrosity within its ancient borders? Now…even the wizard you have provided me sends messages, rather than face me.”

The figure in white robes did not respond, but merely waited.

“No one will face me. Am I so terrible? Tell me, ancient Triendar. Am I so terrible?”

“Themphi is not here, Your Mightiness, because he spends all his efforts to contain the Accursed Forest. Should he leave Geliendra, it would spread ever more rapidly.” Triendar bowed again, and a strand of wispy white hair drifted across his forehead, hair almost as white as the shimmering tiles on which he stood.

“He dare not leave? Then why did no one notice the power of the forest rebuilding? That is your task, is it not?”

“It is, and we are sending the young wizards to assist Themphi, those who are not already assigned to the Mirror Lancers, the sea watches…or the fireship. You have laid many tasks on few of us.”

“You did not answer my question.” Lephi glared at the older wizard.

“Until it occurred, Your Mightiness, there was no increase in the power of the forest.”