L. Modesitt: The Chaos Balance

“Another one.” Nylan offered a bright smile. “And Huldran will have another finished late today or tomorrow.”

“Two?” Saryn shrugged, then wiped her steaming forehead. “You two keep this up, and we’ll have enough of those killer blades for a complete U.F.F. legion.”

“Isn’t that the idea?” asked the engineer, ladling out Blynnal’s noodles.

“I haven’t figured out any other way to stop the locals. Have you?” asked Ryba mildly.

Nylan shrugged. That was the problem with Ryba. While her answers to questions were usually right, they all too often involved the maximum application of force necessary before someone else did the same. And the few times when the angels hadn’t been able to apply such force had been near-disastrous. Had he avoided leadership because he didn’t like the preemptive use of force? Or because he knew it was necessary on the violent world where the angels had landed? Or both?

Ayrlyn slipped into her seat across from Nylan. Her eyebrows lifted momentarily, but she said nothing, instead pouring some tea and drinking half a mugful almost immediately.

By the second bite of the noodles, despite the leavening effect of the flat bread, Nylan’s forehead was sweating more than if he were standing before his forge. The cool tea helped, if not enough.

“The food here-it is always good.” That comment came from Daryn.

Nylan looked at the young armsman, wanting to shake his head. Did all the locals like things spiced? Was it a survival ploy to cover the taste of meat or flour that wasn’t quite right?

“We try to make everything good,” offered Ryba.

“And you do, honored Marshal. Westwind is truly amazing.”

The youth had been trained well in Gallos, at least in manners, Nylan reflected, and he was adaptable, more so than Gerlich had been. The former weapons officer had never accepted that Ryba was his better in everything from commanding to armed and unarmed combat. Of course, Gerlich had died in his attempt to storm Westwind. He’d also gotten a lot of guards killed unnecessarily, as well as one of the white wizards of Lornth. That hadn’t bothered Nylan. Those white wizards were innately nasty, although why they were was yet another unanswered mystery.

“We try, Daryn. We try.” Ryba’s tone was light, but carried the edge that never left her voice anymore.

Nylan blotted his forehead.

“Do you think you should start training someone else in smithing?” asked Ryba.

“Cessya was working, but…” Nylan shrugged and glanced toward Huldran.

“Gerlich’s wizard got her,” Huldran finished. “Ydrall’s shown some interest in the past. She liked your fancy pikes.”

“If she is interested, I think it might be a good idea,” Ryba suggested, lifting her mug to her lips. “Otherwise, find someone else.”

“What’s the urgency?” asked the smith.

“You said you wanted to work on building your mill,” Ryba pointed out. “If you do, you can’t smith, not all the time, and we’re going to need a lot of smithwork. So I’d like you and Huldran to start training whoever it is in the next few eight-days, before the snows clear and you’re back building the sawmill.”

Nylan concealed a frown. All of what Ryba said was correct, but the words felt somehow wrong, and that bothered him. His eyes crossed those of Ayrlyn, and he got the faintest of nods in confirmation.

“There’s been more snow this winter, and that means more mud,” the engineer said. “That means it will be longer until we can reach the brickworks and the millpond down there-”

“Good,” answered the black-haired Marshal. “You’ll have more time to do blades and train another smith.”

Her answer felt even more wrong to Nylan, but the quickest of frowns from Ayrlyn warned him not to push Ryba.

“Did you find out any more in those scrolls about Cyador?” he asked easily.

“There wasn’t much,” Ryba admitted. “I get the feeling that it’s some sort of Rationalist leftover, with a heavy dose of chauvinism.” She shrugged. “Right now I don’t have much to go on, but it bothers me.”

The name Cyador chilled Nylan, too, but he had even less reason to be worried than Ryba. After all, he was just a smith and an engineer. Just a hardworking technical stiff and onetime involuntary stud who really didn’t have a mission anymore, now that the tower and the attached facilities were complete and the armies of Lornth and Gallos annihilated. He took another helping of noodles and then blotted his forehead.

“You’re a glutton for punishment, ser,” said Huldran.

“That’s definitely one way of putting it,” the smith agreed as he broke off another chunk of the flat bread. “A true glutton for punishment.”

He ignored the bluelike flash from Ayrlyn’s eyes, even as the tightness in his guts told him he shouldn’t. But he felt as though everyone else were directing him, guiding him, from Istril and Siret arranging which child he saw to Ryba’s efforts to boost Westwind’s armory-almost endlessly, it seemed.

And the worst part was that he had no answers, no direction, except to keep forging destruction.

He swallowed more tea. Maybe he’d feel better if he worked on that foot for Daryn-something besides destruction.

The three-a blond woman, a gray-and-black-haired man, and a younger black-haired man-sat around a small and ancient table in the tower room that had belonged to the Lady Ellindyja before her exile to the Groves in Carpa. All three bore a resemblance to each other.

The older man lifted the scroll. “I told you both about this…”

The blond woman with green eyes glanced toward the window and the dark spring clouds framed by the dark wood, clouds looming over Lornth, and, as lightning flashed, then to the door.

“He’ll be all right, Zeldyan,” said the younger man.

“I do not like to leave him, not after…everything,” said Zeldyan.

“Get young Nesslek, then. He’s certainly not old enough to repeat what we say.” The older man laughed.

“I would feel better.” Zeldyan nodded and rose.

After she stepped through the door, the younger man turned. “Do you think she dotes upon him too much? She trusts no one with him.”

“In this time of uncertainty? Hardly, Fornal. Your sister knows that her doting is limited. It is those women who refuse to understand that-like Lady Ellindyja-who cause trouble. Darkness knows we have more than enough trouble, anyway.” The older man’s index finger touched the scroll. “We could use one of those white wizards that Sillek squandered on the Roof of the World.”

“He did not have much choice.”

“The greater price we pay for such folly.” Gethen shook his head. “And Sillek knew it was folly. We talked of it, but, no, he was young, and the holders would not accept that he had wisdom beyond his years. Nor would his most esteemed mother.”

“You hate the Lady Ellindyja,” said Fornal. “Yet she was only trying to uphold Sillek’s honor with the older holders.”

“I have no problem with honor, Fornal. Honor and trust are a man’s greatest allies, but the Lady Ellindyja used her idea of honor to destroy the holders’ trust in Sillek. He could have been the greatest lord of Lornth, and he loved Zeldyan in a way that the poets claim is common-and seldom happens in life. Yet his own mother incited her friends, and the old holders, to push for the war against Westwind. Where lies honor in that?” Gethen shrugged. “Now…we have a regent’s council, which is always suspect. We have Ildyrom free to nibble at the grasslands, and Karthanos protected by the demon angels and free to wreak his will on eastern Candar.”

Fornal frowned before answering. “He will not cross the Westhorns against the dark angels.”