Recluce 07 - Chaos Balance (61 page)

. . . AND CHAOS BURST into the air, with dark dust, and the odor of brimstone, and the heat of furnaces stoked by the hearts of stars.

   Nylan and Ayrlyn stood. Legs unsteady against the ground that surged beneath them, they stood.

   The earth heaved like a chaos-fevered giant, and dust surged from every crevice. Gouts of fire flared irregularly from the hills and plains. Behind them, in Rohrn, even the lowest and rudest buildings swayed, and roofs sank and crumpled between splayed walls.

   Farther north and east as well, as far east as Henspa, as far north as Carpa, houses, buildings, shuddered, and some fell. Others were etched with cracks across white plaster and stucco.

   Soil flowed like water, in places swallowing grass, in places bursting forth like a muddy tide, slow-splashing across once-cultivated fields and once-grazed meadows.

   The link with Cyador, prompted Ayrlyn. Now! Do it deep.

   Deep? Of course. Nylan almost laughed as he reached deep, then sent his probes deep and south, as he could feel that intertwining of the forest reaching for what he fed, for what he channeled. And the forest swelled, and order-chaos tendrils swept and strengthened themselves beneath all Cyador, beneath the new rivers and the old, beneath the old hills and the new, beneath the towns of order built on chaos. And Cyador trembled ... yet held against the forces Nylan and Ayrlyn raised.

   Whhsttt! Whhstt! Whhstt!

   Three fireballs slammed against the order barrier beyond the Lornian forces, rebounding into the charging white lancers. The tall force leader on the white stallion somehow dodged the firespray, still leading his force toward the outnumbered Lornians.

   To the right of the struggling angels, a black-garbed figure raised a blade, and tenscore armsmen galloped toward the other company of oncoming Mirror Lancers. Lances of reflected light played across the Lornians, and some raised hands to be able to see against the glare.

   “Frig . . .” muttered the engineer, trying to twist the rising gouts of order to separate the two forces, realizing he could not stop the fires that would strike Fornal and his men, not with the forces already unleashed and rising. “Frig . ..”

   Chaos fire burst from the ground, not in a line, but like a forest of fire trees. Like a forest, like a forest. The fire trees lifted the charging Lornians and the lancers on both sides of the black angels, strewing them like harvested grain, like stalks scythed, black-crisped instantly, and cast aside as fast-dispersing dust.

   The tall Mirror Lancer officer raised his blade, even as he was no more, as man and horse crumbled into scattered and powdered charcoal.

   Nylan sensed the death all around, closer, more immediate. Absently, the engineer winced, even as he knew the first two companies of white lancers had been turned into charcoal, and that Fornal was no more. The Lornian regent might have survived, had he waited.

   The tripled notes of the Cyadoran battle orders echoed forth once more, and yet another line of Mirror Lancers heeded the horn calls. The ground vibrated again, as their mounts threw them toward the Lornian lines and the angels who struggled there. The horses charged toward the fire trees of order-bounded chaos. For a moment, but a moment, the white livery and shimmering shields threw back chaos, before the horses and Mirror Lancers flared into blackened figures that rose, and fell, crumbling like towers of finely powdered charcoal.

   Another set of chaos fireballs splatted against the unseen order barrier.

   The engineer's legs wobbled, and he sat down, still struggling to hold order and focus the deep chaos on the remainder of the Cyadoran forces, forces so numerous, numerous like the grasses of the plains.

   But wildfire takes grasses.

   With a groan, he/she visualized/coaxed/shaped the raging deep chaos into a wildfire, chevied by order winds, sweeping south and west from Lornth, incinerating all in its path, turning all above the ground into cinders and fine ash.

   His/Ayrlyn's guts turned, and white agony stabbed through them both, and Ayrlyn staggered and dropped onto the dusty grass beside Nylan. He reached for her hand, unseeing, panting, still trying to hold open order channels, as hot chaos bubbled upward all through what had been ancient Cyador, all through what had been the domain of Naclos.

   They could sense, could feel, the hills to the south shudder as they shed their unnatural cover of soil. Could feel as the marshes along the ancient riverbeds all the way south to the Great Canal of Cyador, all the way west to mighty Cyad itself, called themselves back into being, twisting neatly tilled fields into sinkholes and pulling cultivated crops under oozing dark waters. As the great river that had been . . . twisted and churned out of recent banks and into older ones. As lesser rivers reappeared, and finely mortared canal walls dropped beneath earth and mud and water. As the buried shoreline boulders sprang forth again, shattering building foundations and bringing down walls in cities as far distant as Syadtar and Fyrad. As the Great Forest of Naclos rose from the ashes of chaos to balance the steaming mass that had been Cyador.

   Had that small cottage where they had learned so much ... had it survived? Nylan's single thought was twisted from its question with an even more violent series of earth tremors.

   With all the changes, the shudders deep within the earth, the grinding of magma and congealed stone, the explosions of superheated steam-with all the changes came the darkness that bound order and chaos, chaos and order, the darkness that held balance.

   That darkness rose on the plains south of Rohrn, rose and crashed over Nylan, over Ayrlyn, and night surged like a tide across the grasslands, across western Candar, and even up the jagged spires of the Westhorns.

   The once blue skies darkened, and the storms rose, spreading southward and westward to touch the shores of the Great Western Ocean with heavy drops of water darkened with soot and dust, and northward to the Northern Ocean.

   And Naclos . . . and all of Candar shuddered with the rebirth . . . and the relighting of the chaos balance. . . .

A DULL RUMBLING echoed from beneath the ground, and the man in silver-trimmed white robes stood and studied the receiving room. The floor quivered, and dust puffed from between the minuscule cracks in the stone tiles.

   Lephi shifted his weight and glanced at the dust, a deep frown forming on his face. “Dust?”

   He turned and walked from the smaller malachite and silver throne toward the window. He staggered as the floor stones moved again ever so slightly beneath his feet. When he reached the window, he grasped the white stone sill to steady himself as he surveyed the area to the south of Syadtar.

 
  A hazelike darkness dimmed the sky, and the sun's light was cold on his face and hands.

   As the floors of his command center trembled again, the white walls of Syadtar wavered as well, moving as ships upon a troubled sea. Beyond the white walls, the earth churned, as if by a muddy sea whipped by a massive storm out of the south. Slowly, as slowly as Lephi's mouth opened in protest, the brown waves rose and then crashed ponderously over those white walls, submerging first the walls, and then the houses that were already little more than heaps of shattered white stucco and stone and crushed roof tiles.

   “Triendar . . . you did not say it would be like this.” His eyes were fixed upon the relentless approach of the ever-rising wave of earth and rock. “You did not say . . .”

   Crackkk. . .

   Lephi glanced from the advancing tsunami of earth back over his shoulder and up at the lacquer-screened balcony. The massive stone blocks of the building's walls teetered and began to bulge inward.

   With a bitter smile upon his face stood 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 and Seer of the Rational Stars. Lephi waited in that moment of time suspended. Waited and watched as the very earth rose around him, as the long-delayed balance was righted, as the white stones of Syadtar fell around him, enfolded him, and then buried him beneath the churning earth.

IN THE LATE afternoon on the Roof of the World, the guards stood silent on the practice ground, their eyes fixed on the blackness rising just above the western horizon as Istril stepped out of the main door of Tower Black and crossed the causeway.

   Ryba, wooden wand touching the ground, gestured toward the silver-haired guard and healer.

   Istril continued her measured pace toward the marshal. The other guards waited.

   The silver-haired healer stopped three paces from Ryba and inclined her head. “Marshal.”

   “What do you think of that?” Ryba glanced at the pregnant and silver-haired guard, then gestured toward the west, beyond the ice needle that was Freyja. “That has to be the engineer.”

   Darkness swirled into the sky, slowly turning the entire western horizon into a curtain of blackness that slowly enfolded the sun, bringing an early twilight to the Roof of the World. For a moment, Freyja shimmered white, then faded into the maroon blackness that covered the high meadows and Tower Black.

   “I could already feel the shivering between the black and white,” Istril said slowly. “So did Siret.”

   “And you didn't tell me?” asked the marshal.

   “What could we have done? Besides, it's more than him. More than the healer, too. Something bigger, a lot bigger.”

   Ryba shook her head before asking, “Do you still think it was right to send Weryl?”

   “He's all right. I can feel that.” Istril paused. “That means Nylan is, too... but there's a lot of pain there.” Her eyes glistened even in the dimness.

   “When the engineer gets into something . . . there usually is.” Ryba's voice was dry.

   “He doesn't do anything unless it's important.” Istril continued to look past Ryba to the horizon.

   “That just makes it worse, doesn't it?” Ryba's voice was rough.

   “Yes, ser.”

   After another period of silence, Istril nodded, then turned and walked swiftly back across the practice ground and the causeway into the tower.

   Behind her, Ryba continued to study the growing darkness of a too-early night as the faces of the guards shone bloodred in the fading light.

   The faintest of shivers ran through the ground beneath the marshal's feet, and the meadow grasses swayed in the windless still of unnatural twilight.

   Another ground shudder passed, and then another, as the gloom deepened. The marshal waited . . . watched.

. . . AND WHEN MIGHTY Cyad asked that her lands might remain hers, that her gifts to Lornth be remembered in honor and peace, Nylan spoke quietly, saying that the legions of Cyad would rain destruction upon Lornth, and that the white legions must needs be repulsed.

   “Will you have Cyad take all that for which you and your fathers and forefathers have worked and earned?” asked the dark Nylan. And all of Lornth said that Cyad must be destroyed. From the shimmering cities of order and their peoples to the polished stone roadways smoother than glass and the great firewagons that sped upon them more swiftly than the wind, Cyad should be no more.

   None would stand and state that Cyad had been kind and just, and that her peoples lived in justice and peace. For such truth was struck down by the dark mage Nylan with his black hammer, and also by the dark Ayrlyn and her lute so that none would know the grace of Cyad.

   The Mirror Lancers burnished their shields and lifted their lances, and the sound of the hoofs of their steeds echoed through rocks and stones of all Candar. The white mages, powerful in the paths of peace and wary of war, girded their robes and invoked the hopes of peace.. .but all were doomed.

   For Nylan, the dark angel, again lifted his hands, and he unbound the Accursed Forest of Naclos, and the forest rewarded him, and rendered back unto him the fires of Heaven and the rains of death. And Nylan laughed and cast those fires and rain across the west of Candar. And Ayrlyn sang songs that wrenched soul from soul and heart from body.

   The Mirror Lancers found their light lances turned upon them, and the very earth rose and smote them, and the righteousness of the white mages was for naught as their glasses exploded before them, and death rained upon all the armsmen of Cyad, until none stood.

   The very ground heaved, and belched, and swallowed the great cities of Cyad and Fyrad, and the winds flattened distant Summerdock so that no stone remained upon another.

   The Grass Hills were seared into the Stone Hills, so dry that nothing lives there to this day. And Lornth rejoiced . . . until its time had come. ...

         Colors of White

         (Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven)

 
       Preface

NYLAN'S EYES OPENED slowly, but he saw nothing, and he closed them against the knives that stabbed through them. He lay silently for a time, smelling fire and smoke and death and destruction, odors that knifed through his nostrils.

   “Where is she?” the engineer finally asked, except that he knew. Ayrlyn was standing outside the tent, looking southward at what had once been fields, except that she saw not with her eyes.

   How did he know? He shivered.

   The link, the link he had opened to the forest... and a sense of welcome, well-being, rushed through him, twining with the chaos of destruction, and the dull knives of death and devastation-life and death, order and chaos, except they were not parallel, not exactly, insisted some forgotten engineer's corner of his mind.

   He sat up, ignoring the pain, the stiffness. After a moment, he tottered upright, out of the tent into the sulfurous air that swirled and swept up the hillside. Although he could not see, what he could sense was more than enough. Churned and blistered earth and rock, the chaos of nearly endless death, and the smells. The screams of men and mages churned under a tidal wave of earth and rock and the shrieks of innocent mounts trapped and buried, never to tread the grasslands again.

   What he could sense was indeed more than enough. His head and shoulders bent under that unseen weight, and he would have fallen without a strong arm, and the strong soul of the woman who helped him, and without the sense of balance provided by the distant forest-a Naclos that was already . .. different. . . more aware.

   He swallowed and straightened slowly.

   “You can't see, either, can you?” Ayrlyn asked.

   “No. I can sense things. You?”

   Yes. You . . . the forest...

   “Agents of change.”

   Agents of balance . . . She nodded, and he could sense the nod he could not see.

   Another figure joined them in the morning that still reeked of the slaughter two days earlier. “You two . . . you best not be . . .” Sylenia shook her head. “You raved about going to the forest again. You cannot see.”

   “We have to,” explained Ayrlyn.

   “Then we will go with you.”

   “We?” asked Nylan.

   “Tonsar will come. We have talked. It is better. He could not follow any of the lords of Lornth now, except ser Gethen, and ser Gethen, he is old.”

   “Fornal?” asked Nylan, hoping in a way that what he recalled of Fornal's charge had not been so.

   “He... he perished amid the fires and thunderbolts.” Sylenia shrugged and glanced around. “That, too, is better. He would not accept what will be.”

   Nylan took a deep breath. “Weryl?”

   “He slept between you. Otherwise he cried, and wisps of fire or light, they surrounded him. He sleeps now. He is an angel, like you, so young as he may be.” Sylenia shook her head once more and turned back toward the tent, clearly erected over where they had fallen.

   Are we so fearsome we couldn't be moved?

   Apparently.

   Nylan chuckled, but only momentarily. His body hurt too much to continue. “No laughing matter.” He paused. “Weryl?”

   “What else would you expect? He sensed the notes early; he felt the forest.”

   Nylan took a deep breath, then slowly walked back into the tent. Every muscle hurt. As Sylenia had said, their son-for he was Ayrlyn's as much as Istril's-slept. But Nylan could sense the intertwining of order and chaos, the inherent balance.

   He turned to Ayrlyn.

   “He needs the forest, and so do we.”

   Nylan nodded, then eased away from the sleeping figure and back out into the bitter open air.

   “Nylan?” Ayrlyn paused. “Why was it so much greater than before? Just because you pulled a core tap?”

   “Just because?” he asked wryly. “Anyway, it wasn't quite that deep. It just felt that deep. There used to be a natural balance between order and chaos-almost between the crustal layers and the magma beneath. Then the Rats came along and laid an artificial layer of order over another layer of chaos when they planoformed Candar-or the section where the forest was. I don't know if that was on purpose or just the result. Whatever the reason, the old white mages had used the artificial imbalance between those top two layers as a power source-like an electric current, if you will. That was on a comparatively low level in the past. I think,” the engineer added hastily, looking around with sightless eyes, as he sensed someone else approaching, "when I used the weapons laser to destroy the Cyadoran forces and Gallosian forces, it was like a wake-up call-or the equivalent. Or maybe the forest- I'm still not sure if it's really conscious in the same way we are-blindly copied the impact.

   “The barriers that held back the Accursed Forest in Cyador, except it's Naclos now-or again-were old, ancient technology. Probably they shouldn't have lasted as long as they did, but the way I twisted the weapons laser broke the field, and the forest began to try to regain its own territory.”

   “And the Cyadorans didn't have the technology anymore?”

   “It's not just technology.” Nylan coughed, nearly retching before he finally said, “I don't know. I don't think it was any one thing, but everything sort of reinforced everything else. And then when I went down to the crustal levels, that acted like a power reinforcement for the forest.”

   “It's more aware now,” she pointed out. Much more aware.

   “I know.”

   An entourage on horseback approached, and the two turned, still sightless. Nylan half-wondered if he would ever see again properly.

   “You have delivered Lornth.” Gethen's voice was flat. “Some would question the price.”

   “Do you, ser?” asked Nylan mildly.

   “No.” A sigh followed. “High as it was and will be.”

   “Cyador is no more, is it?” asked Zeldyan. Nesslek rode in the seat behind her, half-dozing.

   “Some of it is still there,” Nylan said. “The part that wasn't built on the Great Forest. Some of the western towns and cities are mostly there. Ruins probably. The destruction is ... I think it's worse where there were cities and towns. . . .”

   “None of the white armsmen, not a one, survived. Nor did the white mages.” Zeldyan's words were low. “Were you sent to destroy all the white mages? No matter what the cost to Candar?”

   “No. We were not sent to destroy anyone,” Nylan answered.

   “That does not matter,” said Zeldyan. “In that, Fornal was right. You have changed Lornth, and all of Candar. You have won the battle, but my brother and regent was lost. You have saved my son's birthright, yet that right is not what it once was. You have raised dark forces, and shown in doing so that an outlander or even a peasant can bring down the mighty.”

   “You have brought down the mightiest empire in Candar,” added Gethen, “and while none should fault you, I have lost both my sons.” His head bowed.

   Nylan understood where the regent's words had to lead, but he waited. Ayrlyn squeezed his hand.

   “Lornth would not be grateful if we did not thank you for deliverance,” said Zeldyan. “Yet no regent, nor my son, will rest easy should you stay in Lornth. Against your powers, I cannot prevail. Yet I must insist, though it mean my death, that when you are well . . . when you are well . . . you leave Lornth.”

   “We will supply all that you wish to ease that journey,” added Gethen. “And some golds for your future needs. Though I wonder whether you should need such.”

   Another silence settled, and the south wind raised the odor of sulfur and death again.

   “We will need some supplies, and a little time to recover.” For the land to recover enough to let us travel. . .

   “It's better that way,” added Ayrlyn. What she said was absolutely true, and misleading, but the balance was sufficient.

   “You cannot see. Will you be able soon to manage?” asked Zeldyan, anger, confusion, and compassion mixed in her voice.

   “We managed this.” Nylan's arm gestured toward the smoke- and dust-filled skies, across the charred grasslands. “We'll manage. Naclos . . . the Great Forest will take us in. And there will be a place for those who prefer balance to force.” Like us.

   Ayrlyn's hand took his, and they stood, the unseen distant forest of Naclos behind them, with them, with the sense of balance that infused them-and Weryl-the balance that they needed, the balance that Sylenia and Tonsar, and others would come to accept and appreciate.

   Sightless eyes turned south; the two angels stood, heads unbowed.

   After a moment, both regents inclined their heads.

   “Better you leave when you are ready,” said Gethen. “Few will remember the good you did, and many the evil. Though the good be far greater, it has cost us dearly,”

   “It always does,” said Nylan quietly.

   Always, affirmed Ayrlyn..

   “May you always be kind to Lornth,” Zeldyan finally said.

   “So long as Lornth is kind to Naclos,” Ayrlyn answered.

   The regents rode silently from the tent and the angels.

   “Where does it end?” Nylan finally asked.

   “Never. The balance doesn't.”

   “You're awfully philosophical.”

   “No. Practical.”

   Arms linked, unseeing, but with sure steps, they went to greet the waking Weryl. Behind them, thin lines of white and black smoke swirled into plumes of gray. Before them- across the changed lands-waited the Great Forest . . . and the Balance.

   And the Balance.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., lives in Cedar City, Utah.

TOR BOOKS BY L. E. MODESITT, JR.

THE SAGA OF RECLUCE

1  The Magic of Recluce

2  The Towers of the Sunset

3  The Magic Engineer

4  The Order War

5  The Death of Chaos

6  Fall of Angels

7  The Chaos Balance

8  The White Order

9  Colors of Chaos

10 Magi'i of Cyandor

11 Scion of Cyandor

THE SPELLSONG CYCLE

The Soprano Sorceress

The Spellsong War

Darksong Rising

THE ECOLITAN MATTER

The Ecologic Envoy

The Ecolitan Operation

The Ecologic Secession

The Ecolitan Enigma

THE FOREVER HERO

Dawn for a Distant Earth

The Silent Warrior

In Endless Twilight

Of Tangible Ghosts

The Ghost of the Revelator

The Timegod

Timediver's Dawn

The Hammer of Darkness

The Parafaith War

Adiamante

The Green Progression (with Bruce Scott Levinson)

   “Fascinating! A big, exciting novel of the battle between good and evil, and the path between.”

-Gordon R. Dickson on The Magic of Recluce

   “This is a very special fantasy, original ... in its slow and thoughtful use of familiar fantastic elements and its skillful development of character.”

-Asimov's SF Magazine on The Magic of Recluce

   “I could not put it down. This is an outstanding fantasy tale.”

-Andre Norton on The Towers of Sunset

   “This is a writer who cares about his characters and his world. This is disciplined fantasy, not fluff. L. E. Modesitt, Jr., is uncompromising when it comes to the effects of magic, both on the natural world and on the human heart. There are no cheap solutions to the problems of Reluce. Because of that, it is a world worth returning to.”

-Megan Lindholm on The Magic Engineer

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-Robert J. Sawyer on The Order War