The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “If we flatter him, Fornal, while we make ready, what harm can we do?” asked Gethen.

  “None, I suppose, so long as we do make ready.”

  “Is it wise to fight?” asked Zeldyan. “No,” conceded the older man. “But it is more foolish not to. If we fight, and fight well, then the lord of Cyador will only take what he needs. If we surrender the mines, he will take them and ask for more, and then we will have to fight anyway.”

  Zeldyan nodded, shifting Nesslek from one knee to the other. “Most respect only force. Cold iron, if you will.”

  “Can you think of anything that deserves more respect?” asked Fornal, pouring more wine. “Cold iron is the shield of honor.”

  Zeldyan smoothed away a frown. “After I put Nesslek down, I will draft a response and then read it to you both.”

  “You always did have the better hand, sister. For writing.” Fornal raised his goblet.

  Gethen turned his head to the window and the setting sun.

  XVI

  IN THE DEEP twilight after the evening meal, Nylan sat in the chair by the north window in his room, rocking Dyliess, singing softly.

  “… hush little girl, and don’t you sigh, Daddy’s forging toys by and by, and if those toys should fail to please, Daddy’s going to sing and put you at ease…”

  “Toys?” asked Ryba from the door to his quarters. “You have time to forge toys?”

  “Not at the moment, but I can sing about them.” He shifted Dyliess on his shoulder and kept rocking, patting her back. She lifted her head, seeking her mother.

  As Dyliess looked at her mother, Ryba’s voice softened, and she smiled. “Hello, there, silvertop.” After a moment, she added, “She is beautiful.”

  “She is,” Nylan admitted.

  “I came to get her for bed, but I wanted to talk to you for a moment. It’s been half a year, and you really never did deal with the questions I had.”

  “That’s possible,” the smith said. “I try to avoid those kinds of questions.” He kept rocking slowly, and Dyliess put her head down on his shoulder again.

  “We’ve only got four children, a couple on the way, and we don’t know how our genes mix with the locals-or if they will.”

  “They will,” the smith affirmed. “I can feel how things mesh. This world is H-norm, or planoformed thoroughly to be that way. Things will work out.”

  “We don’t have time just to let them work out.”

  “Oh… what did you have in mind?” Nylan wanted to take back the words even as they slipped out.

  “Ydrall likes you,” Ryba said. “And we do need to find out how the genes mix. Feeling it isn’t enough.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “You were interested enough in Istril that night an eight-day or so ago.”

  Nylan contained a wince. “That was a moment of weakness. I’m not the Gerlich type.”

  “When it comes to women who.take their fancy, all men are Gerlich types. There just aren’t as many who appeal to you. I thought Ydrall might be your type.” Ryba shrugged. “Find someone else, but find them.”

  “What do I tell Ayrlyn?” Nylan asked. Why was she so diffident, so uncaring? Had she always been that way, or was it another push? Another shove to tell him to leave?

  “Whatever you want. You’re good with words when you choose to be. I really don’t care. You’re the only stud around here, except for Daryn, and that’s a match between locals.”

  “You could certainly entice him.” Nylan wanted to wince as the words burst out. She’s trying to provoke you. Don’t drop to her level.

  “Be serious. Only Nylan the mighty smith can stand up to the Angel of Westwind.” Ryba laughed harshly.

  “That wasn’t fair,” he admitted. Dyliess shivered, and Nylan patted her back again. Then she hiccupped and raised her head again.

  “You actually considered whether it was fair. I’m amazed.”

  Dyliess hiccupped again.

  “Take it easy.” Nylan slipped to his feet and began to walk around the room, patting his daughter’s back and humming. “I try,” he answered Ryba.

  “Sometimes.” The Marshal’s eyes turned to her daughter. “Is she hungry?”

  “I don’t think so,” Nylan answered softly. “Just sleepy, and a little gassy.” He kept walking, for a time, then slipped past Ryba and across to her quarters, where he slipped Dyliess into her small bed in the inside corner away from the drafts.

  Ryba waited until he returned, then said, “We need more children-or we will.”

  “That takes men-or technology-or both, and I don’t see much of either around here. You didn’t have to chase Relyn off, you know?” Nylan walked toward the window, but stopped by the former lander couch that was his bed.

  “I didn’t. You warned him off, and he was local anyway.”

  The smith took a long, slow breath. He didn’t want to get into a discussion of Relyn. It wouldn’t do any good, not when Ryba would start pointing out that Relyn’s religious view of the world’s order fields would eventually hurt Westwind. What did she mean by eventually, anyway? Five hundred years later?

  “What do you want?” he finally asked.

  “I told you. Find a local to bed. Or another guard.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t think too long,” Ryba said. “I’ve given you the chance to think all winter.”

  “I won’t take that long,” he promised.

  With a curt nod, Ryba turned toward the door, then stopped. “Will you be here?”

  “I have some notes to do-on the mill.”

  “Will you listen for Dyliess, then, until I get back?”

  “Of course.”

  Another nod, and the Marshal was gone.

  Nylan walked to the window and looked out, up toward the ridge and the watchtower. He couldn’t see the ice-needle Freyja from his single window.

  After he studied the mountains for a time, and his muscles began to relax, he went back to the work table, where he used the striker to light the single candle. Although his night vision was nearly as good as his day vision for most matters, the candle did help in writing and reading. As the flame lengthened, and cast light from the polished bronze reflector onto the table, he sat down on the stool and looked at the papers weighted down under the ornate hilt of a blade that had broken at the tang. He had found it in the plunder from the great battle, long since separated from the actual blade. The hilt was heavy, overdone, and had doubtless added a poor balance that had contributed to the blade’s breaking, along with a tang that had been too narrow, but the hilt itself made a decorative paperweight.

  In the dim candlelight, Nylan squinted at the crude paper on the table, then dipped the quill into the ink and began to draw-slowly and carefully. Each section of the mill had to be laid out so that there would be no mistakes. The purple outside the open window turned velvet black, and the chirp and whistle of unnamed insects rose and fell.

  At the tap on the door, he looked up. Ayrlyn’s face peered in.

  He motioned, and the healer entered, easing the door shut behind her.

  “Ryba and Saryn are still down in the great room, talking over something obscure, like whether caltrops are really that effective except in defending fixed emplacements and whether two-handed blades are useful in mounted attacks. Saryn was advocating lances and beefed-up stirrups…”

  Nylan smiled wryly.

  The healer shook her head and pointed at the stack of papers before Nylan. “What are you working on there?”

  “The plans for the sawmill.”

  “You didn’t do that for the tower, or the bathhouse, or the smithy,” she pointed out, then leaned over him and kissed the back of his neck.

  “I didn’t have to. I was here.”

  “You are serious, aren’t you?”

  “Ryba practically ordered me to bed Ydrall. She wants to see the gene mix with locals.”

  “I take it you were reluctant.”

  “That w
asn’t the real point. She was giving me another shove. I told her I’d think about it. I have no intention of thinking about it.” He rubbed his forehead.

  “You got ink on your forehead,” Ayrlyn said.

  He tried to blot it away with the back of his hand. “Then, when I said I wasn’t the Gerlich type, she said I was, except that fewer women appealed to me, and if Ydrall didn’t appeal to find a local who did so that she could confirm that the genes mixed.”

  “Did she put it that way?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Ayrlyn pursed her lips. “That makes you angry.”

  “That, and basically being told my prime value is as a stud.”

  “She’s angry at you for choosing me.”

  “I’m glad I did,” Nylan said. “I wish I’d seen who you were earlier.”

  “I wasn’t who I am now back then, if that makes sense. I was a mousy comm officer.”

  “Neither was I. I was a withdrawn engineer. I still am.”

  Ayrlyn’s eyes dropped to the papers. “Are you going to tell Ryba about all these plans?”

  “Not until we’re on our way out of here.”

  “She may not let us have mounts.”

  “That’s why we need to make it quick,” Nylan said. “Right now, there’s sympathy for me, for you. If we let her drag it out, it will get so unpleasant that people will just want us gone. She’s proved she’s good at that.”

  “For someone who wasn’t sure about leaving, you’ve reached a big decision quickly.”

  The engineer-smith-healer shook his head. “To see something I should have seen two years ago? Hardly. Hardly.” He took a deep breath.

  Ayrlyn bent over and blew out the candle, then kissed the back of his neck again. “You were almost finished for tonight, weren’t you?”

  “If you say so…” Nylan eased out of the chair.

  XVII

  THE WHITE WIZARD and the senior lancer officer rode side by side, the hoofs of their mounts clacking on the time-polished stones of the Lord’s East Road.

  They passed a kaystone with sculpted and fluted edges, mounted on a tan stone platform that bore the inscription “GELIENDRA-3 K.” The lancer glanced at Themphi. “Ser wizard?”

  “Yes, Jyncka?”

  “One should not question His Mightiness, or white brethren, but could you hazard a thought as to why our punishment was so harsh?”

  “Harsh?” Themphi raised his eyebrows. “Harsh,” repeated Jyncka. “We are allowed to buy any peasant girl for a concubine, if we offer double her dowry. We can slay any peasant who raises a hand against us, yet for taking liberties with a peasant girl-and we did not hurt her- we have been destroyed: either executed, allowed to suicide, or condemned to spend the rest of a short life battling the accursed forest. How did this happen? Is our world slowly unraveling, and I cannot see it? Or have I been blind all my years?”

  Themphi frowned. “I can tell you what happened. The girl’s father refused two golds and said that you were worse than sows. Then he ran toward His Mightiness. The peasant died. After that, our Lord turned to me and made his judgment. He said that when peasants defied his presence, matters needed attending to. And he sent me, his wizard of wizards, with the injunction that I should not return until the forest was contained.” The wizard smiled coldly.

  “So you are exiled as well?”

  “In effect.” Themphi shrugged. “Unless we can vanquish the forest.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “I do not know. I do know that it took all the might and skill of the ancients to contain it.”

  “And you must combat it alone?” asked Jyncka.

  “With your help and that of those living nearby-that is His Mightiness’s command.”

  Jyncka raised his eyebrows. “I would not term that any great reward for service.”

  “Rulers do not reward for service, Majer, nor for realistic assessments. They reward for results.”

  “Times change,” murmured Jyncka. “A great ship rises in the works at Cyad, a ship like the ancient fireships. They say. the lancers ride north to bring the Grass Hills within the Walls of Cyad. Yet we are accorded less honor than before, and those who speak what they believe to be truth are dishonored.”

  “They do change,” agreed Themphi dryly. “That is because His Mightiness works to restore what once was Cyad’s, and he has little patience for those who caution against such efforts.”

  “… for all that… unraveling from the great skein…” murmured a voice from the lancers somewhere behind. “Fewer steamwagons, fewer wizards…”

  Themphi hoped the voice was not Fissar’s, but he did not turn in the saddle. His eyes flicked northward toward the smudge of green on the horizon, and he shifted his weight in the hard saddle.

  “Is the world of Cyador unraveling, ser wizard?” asked Jyncka. “Would you enlighten me?”

  Themphi shrugged. “You have seen more than I, Majer. Do you think so?”

  “I have not seen everything, but what I have seen disturbs me.”

  “It disturbs me as well,” said Themphi. His eyes went back to the horizon, and he did not speak for a long time.

  XVIII

  Nylan studied the room again-lander couch, rocking chair, table, stool, bed-that was all. Stone walls… he’d laid almost every stone. Window casements-his design. The entire tower had been his dream, his way of making the Roof of the World safe for the angels, for the children he had known would come, if not as he had expected.

  He glanced at the pair of blades on the couch, the single composite bow and quiver, and the two saddlebags-one filled with his few clothes and a spare pair of boots, the other with hard bread and cheese, and some dried venison.

  His jacket was rolled inside the makeshift bedroll that lay on the saddlebags. In the bags were those few items he owned-after two lives, really. Two lives, and those few items were all. And-once again-he had no idea where he was going or what he was doing-not beyond escaping.

  He took a deep breath and swallowed, hoping Ayrlyn was ready, knowing she’d been ready long before he had. Then, she’d never really been at home on the Roof of the World, and he’d been the one to build Tower Black. His eyes went to the open window, through which he could see puffy clouds marching out of the northeast across the green-blue sky.

  The smith took another deep breath, squared his shoulders, crossed the landing, and stepped into the Marshal’s quarters.

  Ryba-the Marshal of Westwind-sat in the rocking chair. Dyliess in her lap. Her pale green eyes fixed on Nylan, “You’ve finally decided to leave, haven’t you?”

  Nylan nodded. “You knew all along. Your visions told you that I’d have to leave. You knew seasons ago, but you wouldn’t share them. You never have shared those visions, and you never will. You wouldn’t change anything because it might jeopardize Westwind. And you’d never jeopardize Westwind.”

  Ryba’s arms tightened ever so slightly around her daughter. “I wouldn’t do anything to threaten Dyliess.”

  The silver-haired girl wriggled as if Ryba were holding her too tightly. “Ah… wah! Wah!”

  “I know.” Nylan’s voice was flat. “Nothing can be allowed to threaten her-or your dreams.”

  “What about your dreams? Your mighty tower? What about your plans for the sawmill?”

  “I’ve written them out, with sketches, and I’ve discussed them all with Huldran-even the gearing. She can finish building the mill. She’ll do what you want, just like all the others.”

  “The smith and the singer… off into the sunset, leaving the hard work for everyone else.” Ryba’s lips twisted. Her eyes seemed bright, brighter than usual, and she looked down at the plank floor, then out the window. Her left hand stroked Dyliess’s hair.

  “You have a strange definition of hard work, Ryba.” Nylan snorted. “I did the building, and you and everyone else thought I was obsessed, crazy. But this past winter, no one complained when they were warm and cozy, when they had running warm and cold water.r />
  “You schemed behind my back. You used me to get Siret and Istril pregnant. Who knows who else you tried with? And I didn’t even see it. I should have, but I didn’t. In my own clumsy way, I trusted you.” He looked toward the empty trundle bed in the corner. The cradle he had made was down on the fourth level with the guards. He swallowed. Should he even try to say more? “You don’t trust anyone.”

  “You’ve decided, haven’t you?” she asked again. “The words don’t matter. You’ve decided. You and Ayrlyn. Just go. Take what you need. I know you. You’re so guilt-ridden you’ll be more than fair. Just go. Let us get on with life.”

  “Leave me some time with Dyliess.”

  “Why? You’re leaving.”

  “You owe me more than that. I’m only asking for a little time with my daughter. She won’t remember it-but I will.”

  “You don’t have to leave.” Ryba’s voice was even, almost emotionless. “You’ve built Westwind. As you keep telling me.”

  “No. I don’t have to leave. I can have every guard here pity me. I can live here for the rest of my life, wondering whether I can trust you. I can risk everything and then wonder if you care, or if it’s just for another monument or legacy for the future. Because I’ve come to care for someone else, what would happen to her? Would you drive her out or dispose of her?” Nylan’s voice remained level. “After all, nothing can be allowed to get in the way of your dream.”

  “It’s not like that. I did what had to be done. Do you think that I liked killing Mran? Or seeing two-thirds of my crew wiped out? I relive that a lot. Do you think that I like seeing you leave, no matter what I’ve done? Do you think that I’ll enjoy looking at all those cairns at the end of the meadow for the rest of my life? It’s easy to criticize and to leave, Nylan.

  It’s a lot harder to build something and live with the pain.“

  “How you build is important, too,” the engineer answered.

  “I built you and the guards an honest tower. An honest bath house. An honest smithy. Honest stables. Even the beginning of an honest metaled road to the rest of the world. You built with deception. You deceived me. You deceived Istril, Ayrlyn, and Siret. And, in the end, however long Westwind lasts, that deception will bring down your work.”