The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  As Ryba and Saryn reined up, then Nylan and Ayrlyn and the armed guard squad following, led by Llyselle, for a long moment, the sole sounds were those of the wind and the breathing of the angels’ mounts.

  Skiodra, still the biggest man among the traders and wearing in his shoulder harness the huge broadsword he had always carried, stepped forward and offered a lopsided smile. “I am Skiodra, and I have again returned.” While the trader continued to speak in old Anglorat, the local language seemed almost second nature to Nylan now. Across the back of Skiodra’s hand was a scab, and Nylan could almost sense the pus and pain beneath, the white chaos of infection.

  He looked at Ayrlyn, and she nodded.

  “Greetings, trader.” Ryba’s voice was polite, indifferent. She was no longer worried about having things to trade, not with the plunder of nearly two thousand armsmen stored in Westwind.

  Skiodra bowed deeply. “Your fame has carried far, honored angel, and all of Candar bows to your might. We bring more supplies. I had hoped you might have blades to trade.”

  “We do have a few,” said Ryba.

  Skiodra looked at the mounted riders. Nylan got the picture, and, handing the mare’s reins to Ayrlyn, dismounted and walked forward.

  “You still do not let many others do the speaking, O mage?”

  Mage? Even after his successes in mastering certain of the “magical” order fields of the world, Nylan certainly had no illusions about his being a mage. Or an armsman, he thought, despite all the hardware he carried.

  “They are warriors, Skiodra.” He shrugged.

  “Aye,” offered the big trader. “Warriors indeed. But now is the time to trade.”

  The first cart-as had always been the case-not only bore Skiodra’s banner, but was filled with barrels.

  “l.have the lord of flours, not just from the fertile plains of Gallos, but from those heads grown on the flattest and darkest bottomland in Candar.”

  “You have grown more eloquent, Skiodra,” Nylan said, ignoring Ryba for the moment. “I hope we do not pay for such eloquence.”

  “It is good flour. The very best.” Skiodra offered Nylan a bow nearly as deep as the one accorded Ryba. “You as a mage should know good flour.”

  “We all appreciate good flour,” agreed Nylan. “But the softer flour does not always store as well as that from harder grains.” That was a point he’d picked up from listening to Blynnal.

  “I forget, O honored mage, that you came from a long and distinguished line of usurers,” responded Skiodra. “A line that must extend across the heavens back into the days of the « most ancient. Still, I must insist that this is good flour, the best flour. You can store it longer, far, far longer. At a silver and a copper a barrel, I am offering you angels my very best price.”

  “Last year, your very best price was nine coppers a barrel, and the harvests in the lowlands were good.”

  “O mage, your memory extends as far as your ancestry. But it is harder and longer to travel the Westhorns in the spring, when mud clings to hoofs and heels and wheels.” Skiodra bowed. “Take pity on an honest merchant.”

  Nylan wanted to laugh, for Skiodra was known for almost everything but honesty-unless he knew his customer was as willing to slaughter as to trade. At the same time, the smith tried not to sigh. After seasons, even, the trading sessions never seemed to change, and the haggling seemed almost routine, a ritual that was required.

  “Can’t we get on with this?” said Ryba quietly, shifting her weight on the big roan, her fingers touching the hilt of the Westwind blade.

  “Pity is fine for charity,” Nylan offered, “but bad for trading. Six coppers a barrel.”

  “Six coppers! That is not trading; it is robbery. No, it is murder, for we would all die of hunger ere we returned to our ruined homes.” Skiodra touched the tip of his broad mustache. “You have mighty black blades, but can you eat that cold metal until your harvests come in? Or your guards, will they not grow thin on cold iron? A fair man am I, and for a silver a barrel I will prove that fairness.”

  “Aye,” said Nylan. “A fair profit that would be. Fair and fine enough to bring you smoked fowl on gold and chains of silver round the necks of all the women around you.” Nylan offered a broad and amused smile.

  “I trade in good faith, mage. In true good faith.” The big trader rolled his eyes.

  “I scarcely question your faith,” answered Nylan. “Only your price.”

  “You are a mage. Oh, I have said that, and said that, and the whole of Candar knows how mighty you are, but your father could not have been a mere usurer, but a usurer to usurers. You would have my horses grub chaff from the poorest miller’s leavings.”

  “At eight coppers a barrel, because I would reward your efforts to climb here, you would still have golden bridles for your mounts.”

  “Not a single barrel at nine coppers. Not one,” protested Skiodra. “The harvests were good, as you say. But the traders from Cyad had already cleaned the granaries in Ruzor.”

  “Someone is always trading,” Nylan offered.

  “There were floods in Cyador, they said. Nine coppers a barrel-that will break me with what I paid because flour was short. But I, the noble Skiodra, knew that you could use flour.”

  “How about ten barrels for a gold?” Nylan offered, sensing the growing chaos and tension in Skiodra.

  “Done, even though you will ruin me, mage.”

  “If all were so successful at being ruined, noble Skiodra, all the world would be traders.”

  Skiodra frowned momentarily.

  Ryba’s face was cool as she watched Nylan haggle.

  Ayrlyn’s eyes took in both the traders and the Marshal, and her eyes went to Skiodra’s hand again. Quietly, she dismounted and passed the two sets of reins to Saryn.

  Skiodra frowned as the healer stepped up, and he paused in his description of the anvil in the cart.

  “A token of good faith,” Ayrlyn said, and her fingers brushed his wrist, settling there-lightly.

  Perspiration beaded on the trader’s forehead.

  Nylan wanted to laugh at the man’s fear, but instead he only let his own senses follow Ayrlyn as she eased the forces of order around the infected hand and pressed out the chaos and infection.

  “Now,” she said. “It will heal properly.”

  Skiodra swallowed, and began to sweat even more as the healer remounted, sending a faint smile to the big trader. The faintest of frowns crossed Ryba’s countenance, then vanished.

  In the end, a half-dozen blades paid for not quite two dozen barrels of wheat flour, a barrel of maize flour, two barrels of kerneled corn for the chickens, the second true anvil that Nylan had wanted, two large wedges of cheese, and a keg of nails.

  “Do you have to go through all those charades?” Ryba asked as the guards rode back up the ridge, the cart creaking behind them, while Skiodra and his entourage headed slowly westward along the road that wound toward Lornth.

  “They seem to expect it,” Saryn said, looking back over her shoulder at both the departing traders, and at the darkening clouds that foretold a possible late afternoon storm. “Ayrlyn’s little effort knocked something off the prices, too, I’d bet.” Ayrlyn brushed her hair off her forehead, but said nothing. “What do you think, Ayrlyn?” asked Ryba.

  “Skiodra’s heart wasn’t in it. He’s afraid of us.”

  “You certainly added to that,” pointed out Ryba.

  “If he died from that infection, and with the lack of medical knowledge here, he could have, then we’d have to break in another traveling trader.”

  “I’d rather not,” said Nylan, recalling how long it had taken to convince Skiodra.

  “So why is he here now?” asked Saryn. “Westwind isn’t exactly the crossroads of Candar, and he’s afraid of us.”

  “Business is bad elsewhere,” hazarded Nylan.

  “The war… it couldn’t have bankrupted Gallos or Lornth-not over a few thousand armsmen.”

  “Something else
, then,” said Nylan. “The floods in Cyador.”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t inventing that?” asked Ryba.

  “I don’t think so.” Nylan shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll have to keep our ears open.”

  “With all the travelers flocking through the Westhorns?” Ryba snorted.

  Behind her, Nylan and Ayrlyn exchanged glances.

  “This is the first time Skiodra hasn’t tried something,” Saryn pointed out.

  “It’s also the first time since we wiped out two armies,” replied Ryba, unsheathing one of her blades and running through an exercise with it.

  Behind them, Effama flicked the leads to the cart horse, and the cart creaked slowly through the damp ground uphill toward the top of the ridge and the stone road that would make the descent easier.

  “I’d like to have gotten more flour,” Nylan said to Ayrlyn. “But he didn’t have any, and he knows we’ll buy it. That’s why I think he was telling the truth about the floods.”

  “Cyador again. Why haven’t we heard about this place before?”

  “They could be isolationists, like the Rats.”

  “In a low-tech culture?” asked Saryn from in front of them, turning in her saddle for a moment.

  “It’s easier in a low-tech culture,” the engineer pointed out.

  Ayrlyn shivered and fastened her jacket as they reached the top of the ridge where the wind was stronger.

  Nylan rode the mare all the way back past the tower and up to the stables, unlike Ryba, who dismounted at the causeway and let one of the guards in Llyselle’s squad guide her roan up past the smithy and into the canyon that held the stable.

  Ayrlyn rode beside Nylan, a pensive look on her face.

  After unsaddling and grooming their mounts, they walked back down toward the tower, alone on the stones of the road, since Nylan was among the slowest in grooming and handling mounts.

  “What do you think?” Nylan asked.

  “What do you think?” the healer replied. “Trust your own feelings. If I disagree, I’ll tell you, but don’t look to me to interpret what you feel.”

  Nylan flushed slightly, then coughed. “All right. When I’m uncertain, I try to feel out others before saying anything.”

  “I know. What do you feel?”

  “Ryba’s angry. She’s looking for things to get angry at me for. We’ve always had to haggle with Skiodra. Didn’t you have to haggle on all those trading runs you made last year?”

  “Everyone in Candar likes to haggle, I think.”

  “She didn’t even want me to come, and then she said something about remembering my blades-as if I hadn’t dealt with Skiodra before or that ambush they set up with the herder. She’s suddenly treating me like a child.”

  The healer nodded, hunched into her jacket against the late afternoon wind.

  “I don’t like it. It’s like the way she treated Gerlich, except she hasn’t drawn steel against me.”

  “She can’t do that. You may be a pain in her Marshal’s ass, dear, but all her guards love you, and they’d like to do it from closer than they do.” Ayrlyn paused. “Don’t let them.”

  “I’ve gotten that word.” He grinned, but only momentarily. “That’s going to be more of a problem.”

  “I know. What do you think you should do?”

  The smith shook his head. “I don’t like it. I’ve darkness near killed myself making a safe haven here, and it’s not going to be pleasant any longer. It may not even be safe for me much longer. I’m not a Gerlich, and trying a coup would only destroy Westwind, even if I could do it. And that would only make things worse for the children… for everyone but us, probably.”

  “You’re right there.” Ayrlyn paused by the practice yard, well up the road from the end of the causeway. Her eyes drifted toward a last drooping snow lily that arched out of one of the few remaining patches of snow on the north side of the loose-stacked stones of the practice yard wall. “Can’t you just avoid Ryba?”

  “How? Westwind isn’t that big. If I do what she says, she’ll push for me to do more and more-or make me less and less useful-like with this smith training bit. She’s good at maneuvering, and pretty soon I’ll look either as obstinate as Gerlich or as useless as Nerliat was. At least, I think so. What do you think?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. I can just be a meek healer and stay in the background. You’ve got a lot of support from Siret, Istril, even Huldran and Llyselle, though,” mused Ayrlyn.

  “Right,” Nylan snorted. “Saryn sides with Ryba, and she trains most of the new guards-or Ryba does. Maybe… what? Seven of forty guards think I’m good for something. Most of the new guards dislike or distrust men, and they accept me because I’m not like the men they knew-but I’m a man. Just how long will it be before there are a hundred guards, and half don’t even know me?”

  “That would take a while.”

  “Like being buried in a slow avalanche or being tied down and consumed by ants over the years.” Nylan winced at his own image.

  “You don’t sound happy. What do you want to do?”

  “It’s not a question of wanting. It’s a question of seeing the storm on the horizon and finding cover.” He laughed, once, harshly. “Why is it so hard? I could see the need for a tower before anyone else, and I built it. I can see the need to leave, and I avoid facing it. What’s the difference?”

  “Three children?”

  “That… and, I told you before, deep inside…” He swallowed. “It’s not exactly… easy… to face an unknown world alone. I don’t like it. I don’t know where to go, and it feels like everything I’ve done is almost wasted.”

  “Is it?”

  Nylan shook his head. “Dyliess, Kyalynn, Weryl-they’ll be safe.”

  Ayrlyn frowned at the last name, but did not speak.

  “They’ll be safe,” Nylan repeated. “It isn’t easy to admit that. I don’t know about us, though.”

  “I’m glad you said us… but… you never asked me.”

  “That’s where you’ve been guiding me, dear. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  “You could have asked…” A glimmer of a smile flitted around the corners of her mouth.

  “All right. I am planning to descend into the hot depths of the demon’s hell to avoid jeopardizing everyone else and my children. Would you like to accompany me on this foolhardy expedition?”

  “I thought you’d never get around to inviting me.”

  Nylan put his right arm around Ayrlyn as they walked.

  “You’re cold.”

  “I’m always cold up here. Why do you think I agreed?”

  “Not for my charm?”

  “Not just for your charm.”

  A wry smile settled on Nylan’s face for a moment, then vanished as his eyes took in the upper level of Tower Black, and the window to the Marshal’s quarters.

  XV

  ZELDYAN HANDED THE scroll to Fornal with her free hand. The dark-haired regent slowly read through it, occasionally stopping and puzzling out an unfamiliar word. As he read, the blond woman rocked Nesslek on her knee, steering his fingers away from the goblet on the table before her.

  The gray-haired Gethen looked toward the window, then rose and walked to it, sliding it wide open. The cool breeze carried the damp scent of recent spring rain into the tower room. For a moment, Gethen looked across Lornth to the orange ball of the sun that hung over the river to the west of the hold. Then he walked back to the table, where he refilled his goblet before reseating himself.

  “This is one of your best,” Zeldyan offered, taking a sip of the dark red wine, before setting her goblet down more toward the center of the table, out of Nesslek’s reach.

  “It is good. Even the Suthyans paid extra for it.”

  Fornal squinted, as though he wanted to shut out the conversation and concentrate on the scroll. His frown became more pronounced as his eyes traveled down the scribed lines.

  “Lygon of Bleyans? I hope you made him pay triple
.”

  “Only double,” Gethen said. “Lady Ellindyja found him useful.”

  “I know.”

  “The lord of Cyador… how… to suggest that the copper mines of south Cerlyn have always belonged to Cyador… to ask for tribute and immediate return…” stuttered Fornal, letting the scroll roll up with a snap. “This is an insult!”

  “Yes,” agreed Zeldyan. “It is. Yet they gave up the mines, ages back.”

  “That was when they found the copper in Delapra. It was closer to the surface,” said Gethen, “and closer to Cyad, much closer.”

  “They use the white bronze the way we do iron.”

  “They have to,” pointed out the older man. “Iron and chaos do not mix.”

  “Mix or not, it remains an insult,” snapped Fornal. “Aaaahhhh…” added Nesslek, lunging for the goblet. Zeldyan restrained him just short of the crystal.

  “To our way of thinking, it is an insult,” commented Gethen, pausing to take a sip of his wine. “We must remember that Cyador is an old land. The legends say that it dates to the time of the true white demons, that they tamed the ancient forest and molded the paths of the rivers. Then, Lornth did not exist, and the copper mines may well have been part of Cyador.”

  “Not in generations,” said Fornal. “I cannot claim Middlevale because Mother’s grandsire lived there.”

  “No,” admitted Gethen. “I was but noting how they think.”

  “It remains an insult.” Fornal turned to his sister. “What would you do about it?”

  “Since we’re in no position to fight, I suggest we send back a message which notes that the scroll could have been interpreted as insulting by some, but that we trust our reading somehow did not find the courtesy for which the lord of Cyador is so justly known-”

  “He’s a butcher. We know that already.” Fornal lifted his goblet and downed the half remaining in a single gulp. “Why would flattery help?”

  “Fornal,” said Gethen, drawing out his words, “if you insist on treating good wine like inn swill, I will bring you a pitcher of the Crab’s finest, and save this for those who appreciate it.” The gray-haired man smiled.

  “I am sorry. It is good wine, but… I cannot believe…” Fornal turned to his sister. “You were about to say?”