Recluce 07 - Chaos Balance (46 page)

NYLAN ROLLED UP the bedroll in quick motions. Next came the few clothes that went into the saddlebags. He paused to wipe his forehead-the room that had been too small for the four of them was hot, but it had always been too hot. He lifted the shoulder harness from the pallet bed and strapped it on, though he increasingly hoped he did not have to use the heavy blade.

   “Fornal's out scouting.”

   “Of course,” snapped the smith. “He doesn't believe that the Cyadorans could have left.”

   “Would you?” asked Ayrlyn, tying up her own bedroll.

   “They'll be back, and we'd better have found something with this enchanted forest, or-”

   “Or what? We'll be fugitives again, which is better than staying here and being killed because we'll be too blind to lift a blade after either one of us kills one more Cyadoran. We just can't stay here and hope.”

   “So we're looking for a way out of this mess, another way to develop and use power. Through an enchanted forest?” The silver-haired smith shook his head. “Why does it always come back to power?”

   “It always does,” she answered. “Ryba was right.”

   No matter how often he was reminded by events, the idea that the Marshal of Westwind was right about the use of power still bothered the smith.

   . . . bothers me, too . . .

   Nylan reached out and touched her cheek. “I love you.”

   “You don't say that often. Why now?” Her sunburned nose crinkled.

   Because . . . just because . . . and because you understand . . . The engineer cleared his throat and looked down at the plank floor for a moment. “We'll have to sneak through the western part of Cyador, if the maps are right.”

 
  “Changing the subject, again.”

   Nylan grinned sheepishly.

   “It's all right. I know it's hard for you.” And you're trying.

   “In more ways than one,-” he admitted.

   After a long moment, Ayrlyn offered a gentle laugh. “Back to hard reality in southern Lornth. I can scout out things, enough to avoid any large Cyadoran patrols. It may be slow, but I can't imagine the Cyadorans being concerned about three riders and a child, especially if we avoid the main roads.” Ayrlyn lifted her saddlebags and surveyed the room. “I don't see anything we've left.”

   “We've never had that much. Weryl has more than both of us,” he pointed out, hoisting his own gear, and the larger bags that carried Weryl's.things. “Do you think I'm right to bring him?”

   “Who else would defend him? Tonsar would, but you can't count on his always being here. Besides, you'd worry so much you couldn't even think about why we're going.”

   “There is that.” And your promise to Istril to take care of him, and that didn't mean for someone else to. After a quick look around the room, Nylan stepped out into the empty main room, almost as hot as their quarters, then crossed the dusty plank floors to the half-open front door where he stopped for a moment and watched.

   Sylenia sat on the bench on the shaded side of the stoop, holding Weryl. “We will take a long, long ride, Weryl, longer than the ride here . . .”

   “. . . wide orsee, Enyah?”

   “You have your seat...”

   The smith stepped onto the stoop, with Ayrlyn squeezing out after him.

   The nursemaid looked up. “We be ready. I have changed him, and given him a biscuit.”

   “You don't have to come, Sylenia. This could be a long ride.” Nylan laughed gently and added, “As you told Weryl.”

   The black-haired woman glanced toward the near-empty barracks, then toward the still-blood-darkened dust beside the path to the well. “Better I go. Tonsar must not worry about my safety.”

   “Are you certain?” asked Nylan.

   Sylenia nodded, shifting the squirming Weryl from one knee to the other. “I will be safer with you.”

   Nylan wasn't so sure about that. Safer crossing the Grass Hills and trying to sneak through some part of Cyador to something resembling an enchanted forest or the local equivalent? Based on a disruption in planetary order fields that only he and Ayrlyn and a handful of other interplanetary refugees or local mages could sense?

   “Da?” pleaded Weryl.

   Nylan bent over and kissed him on the cheek. “Hang on. We have to get the mounts and load them.”

   As he and Ayrlyn walked toward the corral, Nylan spoke softly. “She worries about him worrying about her. Does he worry about her worrying about him?”

   “In this case . . . yes. Our boastful subofficer has a softer side.”

   “Unlike Fornal.”

   “He hasn't found the right woman.”

   “It takes that?”

   “It helps to find the right woman. Or man,” she added with a grin.

   Nylan shook his head. “Fornal never will.”

   “You may be right.”

   After carting their saddles out to the corral, Nylan cornered the mounts, one by one, while Ayrlyn saddled them, almost as fast as Nylan could lead them to the shaded roof at the side of the corral.

   As they finished strapping gear onto the pack mare, Tonsar crossed the dusty ground from the barracks area, his boots raising puffs of dust. “You are leaving?”

   “For a time,” temporized Ayrlyn.

   “Tonsar ... we need to take another magely journey,” Nylan began. “I hope we'll be back before too long.” He held up his hand. “You can lead the squads, if you have to. You know enough, and they'll trust you.”

   “It is not the same . ..” protested the burly armsman.

   “It should be now.” Ayrlyn's eyes fixed the brown-bearded and burly Tonsar.

   “Remember,” Nylan added, “there's no great honor in being killed if you have another choice that doesn't hurt others.”

   “Someday, mage ... I will understand.” Tonsar shrugged.

   “We'll be back if we can make it.” He paused. “It may not seem that way, but we wouldn't be much good in a battle the way we are now. We have to see what we can do about that, and there won't be any white demons around for a while. You can tell Fornal that. We left a note, too.”

   “I saw.” Tonsar glanced back toward the barracks. “I saw again with Tregvo. You feel each death as though your blades struck you. Yet you would strike if it must be.” He frowned.

   “To have the strength to suffer death and strike again ... angels are terrible.” A broad smile followed the frown. “Yet you love, and . . . you are good to Sylenia.”

   “We try.”

   “You will take Sylenia.” Tonsar was not asking a question.

   “She has asked to come, although she cares for you.” Nylan frowned. “I don't know that it is fair, but that is her choice. She worries that worrying about her will distract you.”

   “She must go. You will protect her.” Again, the armsman glanced toward the shed barracks, as if he feared one of the levies might hear his words.

   “We will protect her as best we can,” Ayrlyn affirmed.

   A lanky figure stepped from the forge that had been a chicken coop, then dashed toward the group, stopping a pace back of Tonsar, waiting.

   Tonsar turned, almost in surprise.

   “You've got it, Sias. You are now armorer and general repairman.” Nylan inclined his head toward the former apprentice. “And you fix anything that Tonsar needs fixed. Or ser Fornal,” he added as an afterthought.

   The lanky blond stepped forward. “You will be back, and I will show you.”

   “Good.”

   Sias flashed a shy smile. “I could be a smith. In a small hamlet, anyway. Except for the tools.”

   “Until we don't return, the tools are yours. I brought everything except the anvil-so ... no matter what happens, you can keep the smaller hammer and the second tongs-they're yours. You earned them.”

   A broad smile crossed the young armsman/smith's face.

   “Be careful with your blade. You want to live to start that smithy,” Nylan advised.

   Sias looked down sheepishly and scuffed a battered boot in the yellow dust.

   “Best you go.” Tonsar's eyes flicked toward the eastern hills.

   After a moment of silence, Nylan nodded, then turned and walked his mount and the pack mare toward the stoop where Sylenia waited. Ayrlyn led her mount and Sylenia's after the pair Nylan guided.

   The nursemaid walked forward and handed Weryl to Nylan. The smith eased his silver-haired son into the seat behind Sylenia's saddle, while she lugged her bags-and the two bags of hard biscuits and cheese and other assorted provisions Nylan had commandeered-toward the pack mare.

   “Orse. Orse.” Weryl jabbed his hand toward his father.

   “Definitely a horse.” Nylan fastened the straps in place, then stepped back and pulled the floppy hat from his belt. No sense in getting further blistered by the sun that remained far too hot for too much of the year.

   “Ready?”

   “I've been ready,” answered Ayrlyn.

   “I know. I've been talking too much.” He swung up into the saddle. After a last gesture like a salute to Tonsar and Sias, he turned the mare toward the lane and the road southward.

   Tonsar raised his bare blade in return, holding it up for a time. Sias just stood silently by the subofficer as the four horses carried their riders out of the encampment and toward the brown slopes of the hills to the south.

   “Wadah pease, Enyah?” asked Weryl.

   “In a moment... a moment,” choked the woman.

   Nylan glanced back at the valley, more yellowed and dusty than ever under the pitiless sun and the green-blue sky, then toward the long and dusty road ahead.

THEMPHI CHECKED THE saddlebags again, then mounted. The lancer officers behind followed his example. Belatedly, so did Fissar.

   The white mage glanced back at the small house that had been his quarters for more than a season, frowning momentarily as he saw the green wall to the north.

   “I don't understand, ser,” said Fissar, easing his mount up beside Themphi's. “His Mightiness sent us here to hold back the forest, and now that you've pushed it back here on the south, we're supposed to leave it and go to Syadtar? And let it take over everything we've won back?”

   “Yes,” answered Themphi.

   “One questions the lord of Cyad at great risk,” offered Majer Jyncka, from where he rode on Themphi's left. “I know.”

   “You are pleased to leave?” asked Themphi, turning to Jyncka.

   “It is a chance to redeem myself in battle.”

   “Battle?” asked Fissar. “The dispatch ... it did not mention a battle,” he finished lamely.

   “I see you have mastered some of my lessons. The ones about screeing what you could not see.” Themphi laughed. “Would you were so assiduous with all of them.”

   Fissar kept his eyes on his mount's mane.

   “Young magelet,” offered the majer after they had covered another kay westward and toward the Grand Canal, “one must read not only what is written, but what is meant. Sometimes, the most important words are those which are not committed to parchment.”

   Fissar nodded solemnly, waiting, not glancing toward the white mage.

   “Syadtar is the northernmost city in Cyador. If something is pressing enough that His Mightiness must recall your master and a disgraced lancer officer from battling the Accursed Forest, then either a great campaign is planned against the northern barbarians or they threaten us. Either way means a battle-or many battles.”

   “The news is not the best,” added Themphi, “not for Cyador.”

   Fissar turned toward his master.

   “For its size, Cyador has not that many lancers and foot soldiers and mages. Triendar knows that the Accursed Forest will swell in our absence, yet has chosen to summon us.”

   “No, that is not good news,” Jyncka agreed. “Yet Cyador has always prevailed. How could it be otherwise?”

   Themphi frowned, but said nothing as they rode westward.

AFTER ADJUSTING THE floppy hat and drying his forehead, Nylan stood in the stirrups to try to stretch his legs and thighs, and to unkink his knees. When he reseated himself, he glanced out across the rolling hills of sun-browned grass, hills that seemed to extend forever southward. “Two days and the hills still seem endless.”

   “Another day and they'll get flatter, more like steppes or high grasslands,” predicted Ayrlyn. “Just think what it would be like on foot.”

   Nylan winced. His lips and mouth seemed dry all the time, and the water in their bottles was nearly gone. “We don't have that much water left.”

   After the first day, they had turned off the main road and followed a trail that led more to the southeast, back toward the still-distant Westhorns. Nylan thought he recalled that the mountains extended farther westward in the southern half of Candar, but that could have been wishful thinking. Then, anymore, what wasn't wishful thinking?

   A thin stream from an underground spring that dried up as it flowed south had been the only water they had found. He licked his dry lips with a tongue almost as dry.

   “If we keep on this trail, I think there's a small lake ahead.”

   “And probably a town, with a garrison of white lancers or the local equivalent.”

   “I didn't sense that. There might be some holdings.”

   “How far?”

   “A good half day, maybe longer.”

   “We'll need water before that.”

   “We do need water,” said Sylenia. “You are mages.”

   “Waada . . .” added Weryl from his seat behind the nursemaid's saddle.

   “I'm not a mage,” protested Nylan. Even as he spoke the words, his head throbbed. Was his internal lie detector insisting he was? “Anyway, just being a mage doesn't mean we can find water.”

   The sun continued to beat on their backs as they rode to the southeast, along the trail where the dust had gradually shifted from the yellow of Syskar to a grayed brown, mixed with sand.

   Still, underneath the browned grass, Nylan could sense the boulders and stones that were too close to the surface, separated from the sun and light by that same thin line of chaotic order.

   “It's still the same,” Ayrlyn said. “They must have ... I don't know what.”

   Neither did Nylan, but it felt wrong. He tried to lick his lips, but his tongue was dry, and there was no water left in the bottles on the mare. Had he drunk his too quickly?

   By mid-afternoon they had crossed two or three more lines of hills and found no sign of streams, ponds, or springs-or of settlers, just more lines of hills covered with sun-browned grass.

   They reined up at another hill crest, perhaps two more lines of hills later.

   “There's something down there.” Ayrlyn pointed almost due south, where a slightly higher hill cast a shadow over a flat, barely shining surface.

   “I thought there weren't any lakes this close. That's not your lake, is it?”

   “It doesn't feel like a lake,” admitted the redhead.

   “It be a lake,” said Sylenia. “It needs be a lake.”

   With that Nylan could definitely agree.

   As their mounts carried them downhill and closer, he could see that the flat surface was a small lake or a large pond, but it looked almost bright green, even in the late afternoon shadow. Even the shores of the lake were-sere, without vegetation. There were no signs of houses.

   Nylan continued to study the ground around the lake, finally noting several circular arrangements of stone in bare spots between the irregular clumps of brown grass on the higher ground to the south and east of the dried lake bed. “Someone's had a campsite here-not recently.”

   The mare's hoofs crackled as she left the sparse grassy flat around the lake bed and carried Nylan down the gentle barren slope toward the edge of the water. There, he dismounted slowly, and swallowed.

   He bent and scooped up a handful of the water, smelling it, then licking his fingers. He winced. The water was saltier than merely brackish, and the white splotches that laced the barren ground were salt crystals.

   “A salt lake?” asked Ayrlyn.

   He nodded. “Maybe ... maybe I can order-sort enough to keep us going.”

   Whuffff. . . The mare edged toward the water.

   Nylan didn't know if she would attempt drinking it or not; so he handed the reins to Ayrlyn before he walked to the pack mare to unstrap the small bucket.

   He half-filled the bucket with the salty water, and set it on the shore, trying to summon the dark order fields. His forehead began to perspire, though he couldn't imagine that he had enough water within for sweat, and his vision to blur.

   The water in the bucket swirled, and white heaps appeared beside it. The smith took a deep breath, looked at the half bucket of water, then dipped his finger into it and licked. “It tastes all right to me.”

   “Waadah?” pleaded Weryl.

   Nylan carefully poured some of the water into the bottle Sylenia proffered and handed it back to her.

   Weryl slurped, but didn't seem to spill any.

   In turn, the silver-haired angel refilled two more bottles, one for Ayrlyn and one for Sylenia, and drank the small amount in the bottom of the bucket.

   The second bucketful was easier, and Nylan refilled the rest of the water bottles.

   “What about our mounts?” asked Sylenia.

   The smith turned and looked at the horses. With open mouths, all panted in the sun. Nylan wasn't totally certain, but he had the feeling that they wouldn't be panting unless they were in poor condition.

   Nylan groaned under his breath. He hated to think about the effort involved in using order fields to get enough water for the mounts-yet if he didn't. . .

   In fact, even if he did ... He sent his perceptions out to his mare, then shook his head.

   “What be the matter?” asked Sylenia.

   “We'll be camping here tonight-one way or another.”

   “The mounts?” asked Ayrlyn.

   He nodded.

   Sylenia slipped out of her saddle, but left Weryl in his seat as Nylan refilled the bucket with brackish water for a third time, and began to marshal the order fields once more.

   They really didn't have anything else to use but the bucket. So Nylan held it for the mare. Some water splattered over his forearms, but not too much. The smith took away the bucket after the mare had finished half a bucket and offered it to Ayrlyn's chestnut. His eyes blurred.

   “I can do the next batch,” Ayrlyn offered. “I'd better do it. You look like dead flame.”

   Nylan handed her the bucket. His legs were shaking so much that he had to sit down, right on the salt-crusted lake bed.

   “You must eat.” Sylenia pressed a biscuit upon Nylan, that and one of the water bottles he had filled.

   He sat on the dry lake bed in the growing shadow of the hill to the northwest, and ate, slowly. On the grassy area by one of the old campfires, Ayrlyn had set up a tieline and tethered the horses.

   After the shakiness passed, the smith stood and walked slowly up to join her. They both sat down, along with Sylenia, and Weryl, and ate.

   Abruptly, Weryl stood and tottered toward a stone poking out of the gray-brown dirt, a stone that might have been calf-high on the boy. All three adults watched.

   “I wish I had his recuperative powers,” Nylan said.

   “You do. You've just done more.” Ayrlyn smiled and reached out and squeezed his hand.

   More? Too much more? Nylan wondered, but he took another sip of water and watched his son explore the ancient rock.