L. Modesitt - Fall of Angels

“What about the angels?”

Sillek turns from the sunlight and the window. “They lost some. How many I couldn’t say, but there seem to be as many as before. Their leader was wounded, but she was still giving orders. I don’t know about their mage. They were carrying him off the field, but the glass didn’t show any blood. Terek thinks he was only stunned, says that he tied Hissl’s magic in knots at the end.”

“You’re very worried.”

“You know why,” Sillek answers. “They’ll get more women after this. They know how to train them. They have blades that turn wizards’ fire and cut through plate armor. They have bows that send arrows through anything. I have Ildyrom stirring up rumors that I’m a coward, and that I intend to turn Lornth over to the women. I have my own holders who will demand that I destroy this abomination, and what will I get out of it?” Sillek snorts. “If I’m unlucky, I’m dead. If I’m lucky, I’ll win a victory that will destroy me. To win, I’ll need to raise an army-not a force, but an army as big as the one that took Rulyarth-and I can’t pull your father out of Rulyarth, or the forces that support him. So I need more mercenaries and levies, and both are expensive. That means a tax on the holders. Who else has got coins? That will make them mad, and they won’t remember that it’s their bitching that created the mess.”

“It is that bad, isn’t it?”

Nesslek burps again before his father can respond.

“It’s worse. I hate those women. Just by existing, they’re going to destroy me, one way or another.”

“No they won’t. Life is never easy, but you can defeat them. I know you don’t want to, and I don’t, either, but we don’t want a holder revolt, either.” Zeldyan smiles. “When you come back, then you certainly won’t have any trouble with Ildyrom.”

“No. That’s true. One way or another I won’t have to worry about Ildyrom.” He walks over to the chair. “Let me take Nesslek. You haven’t had a bite to eat, and all I’ve done is talk.”

“Careful,” says Zeldyan with a laugh. “You shouldn’t let anyone see you acting like a nursemaid.”

“Bother that,” mutters Sillek, lifting Nesslek up to his shoulder. “I’m a nursemaid to all those holders who are afraid that, if those women survive up on that mountain, they won’t be able to keep beating their own up.”

“I never would have thought you’d say that.”

“I’ve learned a lot from you.” Sillek pats his son on the back and smiles at Zeldyan.

When Nylan woke, he was lying on his lander cot bed. The light from the windows, while dim, burned through his eyes. He turned his head slightly, eyes slit, and a sledge smashed across his temples. Whiteness and blackness washed over him for a time, and he lay motionless, eyes closed, until the hammering and the knives that slashed at his eyes subsided.

Slowly, without moving his head, he eased his eyes open.

The gentle creaking of the cradle seemed more like the rumbling of a mill beside his head, and Dyliess’s breathing like a high wind that whipped through the tower.

Ryba sat in the rocking chair, one arm bound tightly in a sling, the other rocking the cradle. The left side of her face was scraped and blackish blue, with thin red lines running across her cheek.

“You …” rasped Nylan. His eyes still burned.

“I know,” she said. “You look almost as bad. They had to pry your fingers out of your poor mount’s mane.”

Nylan tried to move his fingers. They were stiff, sore. His head throbbed even with the attempted movement.

“You don’t look that wonderful,” he said after a time.

“It’s not too bad. It was only dislocated, but badly. Istril has some of the healing talent. It must go with the silver hair.It’s a good thing, too, because whatever you did to that wizard backfired all over both you and Ayrlyn. Last time I looked she was flattened like you.”

“No …” Nylan tried to moisten his lips. “I got … through the wizard. It was the killing. Killing’s hard on me, hard on healers.”

“The killing was the easy part,” said Ryba, as though she had not even heard Nylan’s last words. “Getting guards trained is the hard thing, and making sure they do what they’re supposed to. These women, half are scared to lift a blade against a man. Got to change that.” She coughed, wincing.

“Sore ribs, too?”

“I don’t notice you doing much moving.”

“If I did, my head would fall off,” Nylan admitted.

“Denize, she froze, just sat there on her mount,” Ryba continued, again almost as though she had not heard Nylan. “They hacked her apart, and I couldn’t reach her in time. Desain, Miergin, and poor Nistayna, they did their best and it wasn’t enough. The wizard got Jaseen and Berlis, too.” Ryba shivered, then stopped rocking the cradle. “Killing’s easy. Too easy for men.”

Nylan closed his eyes. He didn’t feel like arguing. Maybe killing was easy, but feeling the deaths of those you killed wasn’t. Yet what else could they have done? He could feel himself drifting back into darkness, and he let it happen.

THE WARM WIND coming through the open windows raised dust off the floor of the great room, dust that appeared no matter how often the stones were swept or washed.

Nylan rested his elbows on the table and closed his eyes. Finally, he opened them and took a sip of the cold water. Hisbody still felt as if it had been pummeled in a landslide of building stones and sharp-edged bricks.

He couldn’t rest, even though Ryba and Dyliess were, and Ayrlyn was. So were most of the children. He took another sip of the water and glanced through the nearest narrow window slot at the green-blue sky and the scattered clouds of late summer. Then he held his aching head in his hands.

Relyn eased into the room. The former noble wore a handdyed black cloak over equally black trousers and shirt.

“Relyn?”

“I came to thank you.”

“Thank me?” Nylan wanted to laugh. “For what?”

“For making things clear, ser.” Relyn eased onto the bench across the table from Nylan.

Nylan studied the man in black. “My head still hurts, and I guess I’m not thinking too well. Just how did I make things clear?”

Relyn scratched his head, then rubbed his nose. “First, I thought you had magic that you brought from Heaven. When the magic from Heaven died, I thought you had tools from Heaven. Then I watched as you kept building things, and I thought that the greatest magic is in a man’s mind.”

“It helps to have knowledge,” Nylan said wryly. “Sometimes, the biggest hurdle is just knowing that something can be done. Or that it can’t.”

Relyn smiled apologetically, but did not speak.

Nylan took another sip of water. “Now what are you going to do?” he asked after he set down the mug.

“For a time, I will try to learn more of the way of the Legend, and the way of order, so long as you and the singer will teach me. In time, I will leave and teach others.”

“Teach them what?”

“What I have learned. That what a man does must be in harmony with what he thinks. That order is the greatest force of all.” Relyn shrugged. “You know.”

Nylan wasn’t sure what he knew. “That may not make you all that popular, Relyn.”

“I have already decided that. I will have to go east, or circleLornth and go far to the west. I would not be well received in Lornth, especially after Lornth is vanquished.”

“From what the healer has discovered from the traders, Lord Sillek has hired mercenaries, and has more resources than ever before. Yet you think he will be vanquished.” Nylan’s arm swept across the great room. “We have perhaps a score and a half, twoscore at the most, and how many will he bring? Fivescore? Six? Twentyscore? Fortyscore?”