Recluce 07 - Chaos Balance (5 page)

LEPHI GAZED OUT across the polished white tiles of the Great Hall of Cyad and stifled a yawn. Just below the oversized malachite and silver throne, to the Lord of Cyador's right, stood the white wizard Themphi. Farther below and to the left loomed Duhru, the Voice of His Mightiness.

   “We might as well get this facade over with,” muttered the Lord of Cyador. “Announce the receiving of petitions.”

   “His Mightiness Lephi the White, Lord of Cyador, ruler of all lands from the mountains of the skies to the oceans of the west, Protector of the Steps to Paradise, Son of the Rational Stars, stands ready to receive the petitions of his people. Those with worthy petitions, draw near with good conscience.” Duhru's voice boomed across the great hall, and the three-story-high gilded doors in the rear of the hall slid open nearly silently, the hiss of steam merely a whisper lost in the vastness of the chamber.

   Three figures slowly marched across the white tiles and stood on the shimmering and spotless tiles beneath the throne.

   “Declare your petition,” rumbled Duhru, “if you are without darkness and a follower of the way of whiteness.”

   The first petitioner-a mid-aged man wearing the white surplice of a petitioner over heavy work trousers and tunic- bowed. “Most powerful Lord of Cyador, Protector of the Steps to Paradise, hear my petition.”

   “The Lord hears all,” responded Duhru. “State your petition.”

   “The officers of the Eighth Mirror Lancers have dishonored my youngest daughter, and I ask redress. Only you can restore her honor.”

   Lephi glanced toward Themphi.

   “They say they used no force, and that they offered a dozen silvers toward her dowry,” whispered the white wizard.

   “Those officers have honored your daughter,” declared Lephi. “I will also increase that honor by adding two golds to that dowry.”

   The stocky man bowed, his forehead slick with sweat. “I seek no dowry. I seek honor. I humbly ask that you dishonor those officers. No officer of the greatest lord should defile a young girl.”

   “The Lord of Cyador has heard your petition,” boomed Duhru. “You may go and tell all of his generosity.”

   “NO!” The white-clad man charged the steps to the dais. “Your officers are pigs. They are sows, and you slop them.” A flaming arrow flashed from the balcony gratework, the mark of an Archer of the Rational Stars, catching the man in the chest. The other two petitioners watched, mouths partly open as the first petitioner crumpled.

   After a nod from Lephi toward Themphi, a fireball arced toward the dying man, then exploded. Only a handful of scattered ashes sifted through the air.

   “Question the lancer officers. If they dishonored the girl, do what is necessary. If not, have her join her father.”

   “So it is with unworthy petitions and petitioners, and those who reject the generosity of the lord,” intoned Duhru. “Let the next petitioner offer his petition.”

   “Most puissant Lord of Cyador, Protector of the Steps to Paradise, the citizens of Wybar humbly beseech Your Mightiness for a token of his support for the blessing of the new river piers.” The elderly man in the white surplice added in a wavering tone, “Only a token, Your Mightiness.”

   “They are fearful because Wybar is downstream from the Accursed Forest,” Themphi explained.

   Lephi nodded. “You shall have such a token. May your piers bring all prosperity and good trade.”

   “May the next petitioner approach,” rumbled Duhru, “if he is without darkness and a follower of the way of whiteness.”

   “Your Supreme Mightiness . . . the peasants in Geliendra have presented a petition, and the regional governor has endorsed it.” The functionary in gold bowed twice. On the second bow, droplets of perspiration splattered on the polished white tiles of the floor.

   “Lick those up, Husenar. I don't like the floors soiled, especially when my administrators are acting for others.”

   Husenar complied, then straightened, standing stiffly.

   “What about this petition? Why need it be brought to me? Why did they not present it themselves?”

   “The Accursed... Forest... rods and rods of the rice fields and the bean fields-those not already flooded-they are gone.”

   “Gone?”

   “The forest has awakened-”

   “The Forest of the Nameless? Have the wards failed? The wards have never failed.”

   Husenar bowed again. “The wards are no more, and the forest lives.”

   “I have taken their petition under advisement, and I will act accordingly.”

   After the petitioners and Duhru departed and the doors closed, Lephi turned to Themphi. “About that mess with the Eighth Mirror-”

   “They could not so dishonor a peasant.”

 
 “Themphi . . . did you not hear what I said? When a man is so distraught he will die rather than accept two years' wages for a dowry, something is wrong. She is doubtless a spineless wench, but when peasants believe such girls are innocent they do not pay taxes, except under duress, and we do not need that now. I tell you again: you will find the guilty parties. If they are the officers, they can also choose duty to protect the people of Geliendra from the Accursed Forest-for the rest of their lives.” Lephi smiled coldly. “I want every peasant to know that I heard and acted, and every officer to know that girls outside the households of officers or the pleasure class are to be left untouched. I do not care how many paid concubines they have, but they must be sure that the purchases of concubines are well witnessed. Well witnessed.” He paused. “Of course, if it is the girl, and you had best be very sure, then she should be publicly violated by at least a company of Mirror armsmen. Whatever happens, I want both punishment choices made public, so that I receive no more petitions such as this.”

   Themphi swallowed.

   “Send some of the engineers to check the forest, and the wards. How could they possibly have failed?”

   “I do not know.” Themphi shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “The wards are very old, and the ancient accounts record that the forest was cunning and patient before it was restrained.”

   “Then you will go and repair the damage, and restrain the forest once again. After you complete your work on this mess with the girl. Send no engineers from the Second. We need them to re-create the fireships, to reclaim the ocean from the eastern traders.” Lephi stared at the wizard. “Had your predecessors not allowed the ancient fireships to deteriorate, we would have no such problems.”

   “Sire, they had no choice.”

   “There is always a choice.”

   “Not where chaos is concerned.” Themphi ignored the dampness on his forehead.

   “Do you question your Emperor, Themphi?”

   “Emperors have choices, Sire, except where order and chaos meet. The same is true of wizards. I cannot change what was and is, even at your command.”

   “Bah . . . you sound just like Triendar. Do they cast spells over you when you are young so that you all sound alike?”

 
  “Chaos and order do not change because we exist, Sire.” Themphi shifted his weight again.

   “Wizard, your powers must serve Cyad, not the other way around. See that they do, or your nephew's children or his children's children will bow under the yoke of the easterners. Lands either become more powerful or less powerful and then perish. I intend to make sure Cyador becomes more powerful. You may go.”

   “Yes, Sire.”

EVEN BEFORE NYLAN sat at the table and balanced Dyliess on his right knee, his eyes kept ranging to the end of the great room toward the central pedestal and the staircase. He could feel the slight movement of warm air from the furnace ducts set in the central stone pedestal that held the stairs and around which the tower was built. Interspersed with the warmth were gusts of cold dry air from the opening of the main tower door as guards headed up to handle livestock details or wood-carrying.

   Breakfast was the usual-some bread, some cheese, and for the stout-hearted, some thin porridge. Eating one-handed, Nylan suffered through the yellow-green bitter root-and-leaf tea, taking quick sips and keeping the mug out of reach of Dyliess's curious fingers. The bread was dark and cold, but hearty and chewy.

   “Gaaaa ... da ... oooo . ..” His daughter's hands grasped for his bread.

   “Grabby, isn't she, ser?” said Hryessa from farther down the table.

   “They all are at this age, from what I can tell,” Nylan answered. “They want to grab the world and explore.”

   “Don't we all?” mumbled Huldran, finishing a wedge of cheese and some bread.

   Nylan reached out and redirected Dyliess's wandering hand, in time to keep her from grasping the spout of the teapot. “Exploration gets dangerous.”

   “True enough even when you get older.” Saryn frowned, then added after a moment of silence, “Ryba said you were working on more blades.”

   “We've been working on blades on and off all winter. Don't you have enough yet?”

   “For now. She insists we'll have over fourscore guards by fall, maybe more, that we'll have to convert half the fifth level into a barracks room or something.” Saryn turned her head as if Ryba were to appear, and the short, dark brown hair seemed almost black in the great room lit by only the four armaglass windows. “Or start adding to the tower,” Nylan said. “You said it would hold over a hundred.”

   “It will,” the smith answered, his eyes still seeking Ayrlyn, He hadn't seen Istril, either. “How many years will it take to build the addition if each stone has to be chipped out of the canyon with a sledge and chisel?” Somehow, Nylan wasn't thrilled about adding to Westwind, but he wasn't about to voice that lack of enthusiasm.

   “Oh...”

   “Exactly.” Nylan fed Dyliess a morsel of bread, although she'd already eaten. Dyliess promptly gummed it and deposited starchy brown drool on Nylan's hand.

   “I was wondering,” ventured the dark-haired former ship's pilot. “Is there any way you could forge more bows? I mean, you started on the first blades with the laser, but you managed to forge the others.”

   “There's cormclit left,” Nylan acknowledged, “but it's a directional heatshield composite. I had the demon's own time cutting it with a laser. It just fragments into strands when I've tried to cut it with a chisel, and bench shears just jam or chew it into shreds. Then there are the alloys. I can't even soften the lightweight, high-temp ones, and those were what I used for those bows.” He shook his head. “I've tried, but. . .”

   He frowned. Had that flash of flame-red been Ayrlyn headed down to the kitchen?

   “I thought I'd ask. We've only got sixteen of those killer bows.” Saryn coughed. All too many guards coughed through the winter, probably from too much mouth breathing outside in the chill of the Roof of the World. “We only lost one in the battle.”

   “You threatened to dismember any guard who lost one, even if she were dying,” said Huldran. “I remember that.”

   “I was right,” Saryn said. “They're twice as good as anything the locals have, and they're not replaceable.”

 
 “There's still too much up here that's not replaceable,” Nylan offered. “We need a better low-tech base.”

   “Like your sawmill?” Saryn grinned. “What comes after that?”

   “I thought about a flour mill, but we're too high to grow grain-”

   “He never stops thinking, does he?” The number two of the Westwind guards finished her tea with a gulp.

   There was too much to think about, reflected Nylan, from Ryba's coldness to children to Ayrlyn, not to mention smithing. He'd still only rough-formed the prosthetic foot for Daryn-something for a man would certainly be low on Ryba's priority list, he suspected, far below weapons.

   “Got to run,” added Saryn. “We're going to see what it's like down below near that grove of hardwoods off the lower meadow below the brickworks. You remember those ironwood trees? They're lousy for woodworking, but the healer says they'll make good charcoal. You did say you needed charcoal.”

   “I did. We can't do much at the smithy without it.”

   “Daaaa...” injected Dyliess, lurching toward Nylan's mug again.

   By the time he had intercepted her grasping fingers and had his tea under control, Saryn was headed out of the great hall.

   “She's a handful,” said Huldran.

   “Saryn? She's not bad.”

   “I meant your daughter.” Huldran laughed. “Already, she has a mind of her own.”

   Like her mother, Nylan thought, but he only said, “She does.” Then he finished the last of his own tea and a last morsel of cheese before standing and lurching off the bench and toward the stairs to the tower's lower level.

   Still carrying Dyliess, Nylan made his way down the stone stairs into the warmth below. Turning away from the heat of the kitchen, where Blynnal and her crew labored, Nylan found Ayrlyn in the corner of the lowest-level room in the tower- in the corner of the woodworking area, sitting on a stool and practicing chords on her lutar. She was not singing, and her eyes were puffy.

   “I kept looking for you,” he said, shifting Dyliess.

   “Why?” she asked.

   “Because I wanted to talk to you.”

   “Ouuuu,” mimicked Dyliess.

   “There's nothing to talk about.”

   “Yes, there is.”

   “What?” Ayrlyn's voice was flat.

   “What about last night? Why? And why wouldn't you come to breakfast?”

   “Because...” Ayrlyn took a deep breath. “I don't like sharing you, but I can't do what Ryba did. First, there's no technology left, and, second, I wouldn't trick you. It's not easy.” The healer took a deep shuddering breath. “Her daughter will be all Istril really ever has, you know? How could I deny her that? You've saved her life twice, and she worships you, and it ... it has to be more personal . . .” Tears oozed from the corners of the healer's deep brown eyes.

   “What about Weryl?” Nylan shook his head. “I'm missing something. A lot of somethings.” He reached out and took her hand with his left hand, the free one. “That can wait. I've been thinking ...”

   “About time...” Ayrlyn swallowed once, twice, then spoke again. “How long can Istril count on Weryl staying in Westwind with Ryba's distrust of men? Until he's fifteen or twenty and slips off?” Ayrlyn coughed, trying to clear her throat. “He is your son. Do you really think he'll buy all of Ryba's propaganda? Especially with all the legends about you?”

   “You talk as if I won't be there.”

   “You won't. You and Ryba barely tolerate each other. Everyone sees it, but no one says anything. Ryba still needs more blades, and you feel responsible for Dyliess, and Weryl, and Kyalynn. How long can you hang in there for the children before . . .” The flame-haired healer shook her head. “Nylan ... you're sweet, but you're dense about some things.”

   “I know. I know.” Nylan glanced toward the end of the room where Murkassa entered, along with two other new guards-one called Jiess, Nylan thought. “Let's take a walk.”

   “Now?”

   “Now,” the smith insisted. “Or as soon as I can hand Dyliess over to Antyl for a little bit.”

   “Just a moment.” Ayrlyn eased the lutar into the case and then set the case up on one of the empty shelves that had held planks and timber earlier in the winter. “I'll meet you at the end of the causeway. Don't be long, or I'll freeze solid.”

   “It's spring.”

   “I'll freeze half-solid.”

   “I'll hurry.”

   Nylan trudged back up to the nursery and looked around, finally seeing Antyl in the corner nearest the north door that led to the bathhouse and laundry.

   “Be wondering how long afore you'd be here,” said the mahogany-haired woman, extending her arms to Dyliess. “Jakon misses the silver-heads. He be telling when they're not here. So's Dephnay. It's like they reassure the others. Like you do, ser.”

   Part of their heritage? An earlier manifestation of sensitivity to the order fields-the black “magic” of Candar?

   “Me?” asked Nylan involuntarily.

   “You and the flame-healer. And the other silvertops. People settle down round you. Except the Marshal, but she's the Angel, and that's different. Don't know as to what some of us had done, weren't for Westwind. Now, don't ye be minding me. Your little ones be fine.”

 
 Nylan smiled and headed for the main door to the tower- the south door, pausing as Llyselle passed, carrying in an armload of stove wood for Blynnal.

   “How's the hand?” he asked.

   “Almost healed.” The silver-haired guard shook her head. “So stupid. I just took my eyes off the saw an instant. You survive battles, and almost lose a hand to a saw, a frigging handsaw.”

   “It happens.”

   “It's still stupid, but I was lucky you and the healer were near.” With a last smile, Llyselle headed toward the lower level. The engineer-smith closed the tower door behind himself and hurried out to the end of the causeway, his ship-jacket closed only halfway.

   Despite the bright sun, the first green tendrils of the snow lilies rising through the melting whiteness, and the dampness at the ends of the snow piles flanking the road, Ayrlyn's jacket was fastened all the way up, her gloved hands in the pockets of the worn heavy-weather parka that was one of the handful that had come down in the landers from the Winterlance.

   “Cold?” he asked.

   “I'm always cold here, even in summer.” Her brown eyes flashed in that way that conveyed a blueness, even though the smith intellectually knew that the blue flash he saw was more an order field manifestation than anything visual. Order field or not, it meant anger. “I've done pretty well for someone not raised in a freezer like the rest of you. I don't hide in the tower, and I don't crouch by the kitchen stove. Darkness knows, I feel like it. But I don't.”

   “I never said anything about that.”

   “You don't have to. You're not as bad as the others, but all of you are so damned condescending about it. I'd love to get you down in the lowlands in summer, and then smile at you while the sweat pours off your forehead and you feel like you're going to fall over from heatstroke.”

   Nylan pursed his lips. Was he really that bad? “Am I that bad?”

   “No. Not usually, but I'm in a lousy mood. And you ought to know why. That is something you should know.”

   “You've been here for me . . .” he said slowly. “When no one else was . . . not anyone who understood.”

   “There were others? You told me-”

   “There weren't any others. Except... for last night... there never have been ... not since almost a season before the bat-tie last fall. I told you that, and it was true. There weren't any others, because I don't get close to just bodies. I'm not a Gerlich. I never have been. And I can't talk about it.”

   “That's been clear, and I've tried to be understanding.” Ayrlyn shook her head, her eyes glistening.

   “Then . . . why?” he asked helplessly.

   Ayrlyn walked from the causeway out to the road and turned toward the ridge, leaving Nylan standing by himself.

   He turned to follow, repeating his question. “Why?”

   “Don't you understand, Nylan? I won't beg. I won't ask.” The flame-haired healer began to walk more briskly out toward the bridge.

   Nylan hurried after her, then settled into a quick walk beside her. For a time he walked silently, hoping she would say more. She didn't.

   “Did you ever think that I don't like begging, either?” he finally asked.

   “Begging? When all you have to do is lift a finger, and any guard in the tower would crawl to your couch?” Ayrlyn stopped in the middle of the small bridge and turned eastward, looking out across the slow-melting snow, into the glare of the mid-morning sun off the expanse of white. Beyond the drop-off, in the distance rose the dark spires of the high forest, now that the evergreens had shed their cloak of winter white.

   “I didn't notice you crawling,” he said slowly. “And I haven't lifted my finger, as you put it, to beckon anyone else.”

   “I won't crawl. For you. For anyone. And you didn't turn Istril away, not at all.”

   Nylan sighed. “It didn't seem right to have her in my bed, and it didn't seem right to turn her away. Especially when she said she'd talked to you. She doesn't lie,”

   “That's a great line. I bedded her because she doesn't lie.”

   Nylan winced, as though a Lornian arrow had slammed through him. “That isn't what I meant. It wasn't an easy situation.”

   “You think it was easy for me? You ought to know by now how I feel. Yet you stand there and look at me as if I had four heads or spouted chaos and fireballs with every word.”

   Nylan looked down at the cold, cold stones of the bridge underfoot. After a moment, he forced his eyes up and to meet Ayrlyn's. “Would you believe”-he swallowed, trying to force the words out-“that you're so honest that it scares me worse than facing those wizards did?”

   Her eyes did not flicker, just waited.

   “I'm not that honest. And I'm not very brave. I never wanted to be captain. You know that. How could a man who deep inside fears everything . . . how could I ever lead people? How could I ask you . . . ?”

   A faint smile crossed her lips, like the glimmer of sunshine after a storm. “The way you just did ... by being honest with me ... by not trying to be the solid engineer that no one touches. I don't want a hero image. I don't want a male version of Ryba. I have fears, Nylan. Everyone does. You do. I can deal with that. I just can't deal with a man who hides from himself.”

   Hides from himself... yes, you do. The engineer licked his lips, ignoring the chill ice that coated them, then sublimated away. “I have a lot... to learn.”