The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Piataphi waited.

  “That in itself is no matter, Majer. No matter.” Lephi stood and stepped from behind the white-lacquered table desk that dated through at least eight generations of Lords of Cyador. The Emperor walked toward the tinted glass windows, then paused before the oiled wooden frames as his eyes ranged over Cyad, down from the hillside site of the White Palace, toward the harbor, toward the piers that once housed the White Fleet of the ancients, before his grandsire had decided that the barbarians around the Western Ocean had nothing to offer. He smiled faintly as he took in the cranes and the timbers at the shipworks to the west of the white stone piers.

  The white-paved streets glistened, glistened from the hiss of brooms as the sweepers continued their endless work to ensure that the White City remained shimmering white. Those who walked the streets were well clad, clean, and scented with oils and spices, as they should have been.

  Without turning back to face Piataphi, Lephi continued. “You will teach the barbarians the meaning of discourtesy. They have forgotten that all that they possess came from the ancients of Cyador. Since they have no gratitude, we must use fear. They have existed on the sufferance of Cyador, and we will not suffer that misapprehension to continue.”

  “Yes, Sire.” Piataphi remained nearly motionless on the edge of the stool.

  “Would that we had the fire cannons. Or the lances of light, but those will be with us again before long.”

  “We cannot duplicate the fittings yet, Lord. Nor fill the reservoirs.”

  “We cannot duplicate them now,” mused Lephi. “But that is changing. Already, we build a fireship. Then we will recreate the fire cannons. You will not need them now. Cyador is larger, more prosperous than in the time of my grandsire.” He turned back toward Piataphi. “We must have the copper mines of the north; those in Delapra will not last. Take all the even-numbered Mirror Lancers and the Shield Foot-”

  “All, Your Mightiness?”

  “I am not aware of any other challenges to Cyador. Are you?”

  “No, Sire.”

  “I wish the barbarians annihilated-those within fifty kays of the mines. The others you may handle as you see fit. If they will not respect us out of gratitude, they will respect the forces you command.”

  “There are doubtless many more-they breed like lizards, Sire-than in years previous.”

  “You may also take the Shining Foot.”

  “Thank you, Sire.”

  “Begin your preparations tomorrow. You may use half the steamwagons on the North Highway.”

  “As you command, Sire.”

  “As I command… yes, as I command, Majer. And I command you to leave a swath of destruction around any that oppose the might of Cyador. Or forget what we have bestowed upon them.”

  The majer nodded.

  “You may go.”

  Piataphi stood and stiffened to attention. “All honor to Your Mightiness and to the glory of Cyador.”

  “Go…” Lephi gestured, as if to wave away a fly.

  The majer saluted, turned, and marched from the small receiving room.

  Lephi’s brown eyes went to the ancient painting on the inside wall-the etched-metal depiction of a wheeled steam wagon with a fire cannon turning a section of trees and animals into ashes. Even a giant stun lizard was shown flaring into flame.

  “Cyador will become yet more mighty,” he whispered. “We will have more steamwagons and fire cannon. We will. As I will it to be. As it was in the beginning, and will be evermore.”

  XX

  THE STREAM GURGLED and splashed, not quite overflowing its banks, if well below the clay track that was something more than a trail and less than a road.

  The gray leaves on the willowlike trees had spread but not turned to the fuller green of summer, and the new leaves were but half-open. A few starflowers bloomed in patches on the far side of the water, nestled in sun-warmed patches of green between the piles of weathered rock that had peeled off the canyon walls over the years. A steel-blue bird chittered from the top of a scrawny pine as the two horses carried their riders downhill and generally westward.

  Nylan patted Weryl gently, trying to encourage the boy to keep sleeping. For whatever reason, carrying his son seemed to make him saddlesore more quickly, yet a year-old child didn’t weigh that much. Or was it the weight of two blades- or all of it together? He lifted his weight off the saddle a moment, and his knees protested.

  “Do we have any ideas where we ought to be going- besides west?” Ayrlyn asked.

  “No. I wish I did, but…” Nylan turned in the saddle and looked back over his shoulder toward the ice needle that was Freyja-now barely visible above the gray rock walls of the canyon that the road followed, downward and usually westward. He took a deep breath. “In a way, I feel lost. I always let someone else decide. The service needed engineers, and so I became one. Ryba and the marines needed a safe haven, and I built it. Now…” He shrugged as he looked toward Ayrlyn. “Now, I have to figure out where we’re going and what I want from life, and I can’t-or I haven’t so far.”

  Ayrlyn nodded. “You’re getting more honest with yourself, and that’s a start.”

  “Great. I now know that everyone else has been determining my destiny. It doesn’t make finding it any easier-on me or you.”

  “We share that, Nylan.” She offered a soft smile. “We’ll work it out.”

  “Even with Weryl?”

  “In some ways, it’s easier. He’s so young.”

  The smith moistened his lips, then asked, “How long will it take to get out of the Westhorns? You’ve traveled these roads more than I have.”

  “Four or five trips don’t make me an expert. We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to learn about this place, and I was more worried about trading for the things we needed and avoiding the local armsmen.”

  “This isn’t the most popular route.” So far as Nylan could tell, the only tracks on the narrow winding road were those of Skiodra’s traders, and those had been nearly weathered away. In places, the tracks of deer, and in one section, a bear, were superimposed over the traces of the traders’ carts. Clearly, not too many locals traveled the Westhorns-not in spring, anyway.

  “It will get more popular. Ryba has made sure most of the brigands are dead, or they’ve gone elsewhere.”

  “We hope. I’m not exactly convinced they’re all gone.” Nylan glanced ahead, at the narrow valley sloping away, and at the thick green canopy on the left side of the road, probably growing out of marshy ground beside the stream. The greenery was enough to hide anything, including bandits.

  “Ryba will take care of any that are left,” Ayrlyn offered.

  “In the same way she takes care of everything else,” Nylan added sardonically. “With a sharper blade applied more quickly.” He squinted at the road ahead. The mention of brigands bothered him, though he couldn’t say why.

  “You’re bothered.”

  The engineer nodded.

  “We’ll just have to be careful.”

  “I hope that will help.” After a moment, he added, “It would help if Ryba improved some of the stream fords, put in bridges.” Nylan wiped his forehead.

  “Still the engineer, I see.” Ayrlyn laughed. “I probably always will be.” He tried to loosen his jacket all the way, but stopped as Weryl, who had been sleeping, gave a lurch. Ayrlyn still wore her jacket mostly closed. He hoped the lowlands wouldn’t be too hot-there was a difference between being able to survive and surviving in something other than total misery.

  “Waaa…” Weryl squirmed in the carrypak, and Nylan could sense his son’s discomfort-again! The odor confirmed Nylan’s senses.

  “We need to stop again,” The smith wanted to laugh at the look on Ayrlyn’s face. “You were the one who said he traveled well.”

  “I shouldn’t have spoken so soon.” They had to travel almost a kay before they descended enough into the canyon valley and reached a spot where the approach to the stream was both gentle enough and
open enough through the tangled willows-with a shelf of coarse sand-for easy access to the water.

  Nylan extracted Weryl from the carrypak again, hanging it over a low willow branch, followed by Weryl’s loose trousers. The pants were dry, thank darkness, but the cloth beneath was anything but.

  Nylan took a deep breath and stepped toward the stream.

  At the first touch of the cold water, Weryl began to howl.

  “I’m sorry, little fellow,” Nylan said, “but you don’t like being a mess, and I don’t like smelling it.”

  The cries were interspersed with sobs, which drifted into sobs alone by the time Nylan had his son back in dry clothes.

  “Can you hold him while I wash out what he was wearing?” Nylan asked Ayrlyn.

  “I would have helped, but you seemed to have everything under control. You will attack changing him like an engineering problem, though.”

  “I suppose so. It is a waste disposal problem.”

  “He’s your son, not a waste disposal problem.”

  “He may be my son, but being my son isn’t going to make him less smelly or more comfortable.” Nylan handed Weryl to Ayrlyn, who lifted him to her shoulder and patted his back, rocking as she did so.

  Nylan’s hands were red from the cold water of the stream by the time he had the cloth squares clean. “I’ll have to fasten them over the bags or something so that they’ll dry.”

  “He’s hungry, I think,” suggested Ayrlyn.

  “We’ll try the biscuit things, with water.” After draping the cloth squares over the saddlebags, the engineer opened Weryl’s food pack.

  There had been no such things as baby bottles on Westwind, not when all the milk was breast milk, but in the food pack was a crude wooden cup with a carved cover that had a small spout. Nylan had breathed one sigh of relief when he had seen that.

  “Let me sense the water,” Ayrlyn offered. After a moment, she added, “It’s safe enough. They don’t have river rodents here-not that we’ve seen. Sometimes, they foul the water.”

  Nylan filled the cup and capped it. He still worried about getting the boy to eat enough of whatever was necessary for a proper dietary balance, but Weryl happily gummed his way through a biscuit and half-sucked, half-drank some of the stream water.

  After that, the engineer eased him into the carrypak again and remounted. “How long before we have to stop again?”

  “We don’t have a timetable, you know,” Ayrlyn pointed out.

  “I know. But I feel as though there’s something we’ll have to do and that time’s running out.”

  “You always feel that way.”

  “Maybe.” But Nylan didn’t think so. His eyes took a last look at Freyja as the track carried them around a wide curve formed by the stream, and the ice needle vanished behind a wall of gray rock covered with scattered evergreens.

  XXI

  HOW FAR TO the wards?“ asked Themphi.

  The headman, who bounced in the saddle of a swaybacked roan that had the look of a cart horse, offered an expression that could be a shrug. “How far, honored wizard? That would be hard to say.”

  “Why?” asked the wizard, his tone resigned. “Because… the wards, they are no more, and the wall has been covered with shoots and creepers.”

  The dark-haired wizard wanted to sigh, but did not. “What happened to them?”

  “We do not know. The forest covered them. Since before my grandsire’s grandsire’s grandsire the forest has been there, and the walls have been there, and neither has changed. I can remember walking the walls all day and not even reaching the north corner. It is more than fifteen kays from Geliendra, ser wizard. When I was young, I kept a whole kay of the wall myself. I trimmed, and I pruned. Once I even climbed over the wall, but I climbed back-quickly. There was the largest forest cat I ever saw. Now… we cannot even see the white of the walls.”

  “And you did not send anyone to check the wards?”

  “We did. My sister’s son Byudur. He was the village wizard. He did not return. Nor did the wizard from Forestnorth.” The headman peered toward Themphi. “So we sent our petition to His Mightiness. Surely, the Lord of Cyador would know. And you, the wizard of wizards, are here.”

  Behind them, from the mounted lancer officers, came a chuckle. Themphi ignored it. “I am here, and I am sorry to hear of your sister’s son. Did anyone find any trace?”

  “The Accursed Forest leaves no traces.” Themphi did sigh, but under his breath. Worse and worse, and Lephi had no real idea of what went on in Cyador, not with his dreams of rebuilding past glories.

  The wizard frowned as he caught sight of the wall of green that stretched across the horizon, above the fields through which the packed clay road passed. Ahead the road ended at a wooden gate in a low wooden fence. The gate to the field was ajar, and there were hoof prints in the damp soil.

  “There! You see. Even since yesterday, the Accursed Forest has grown.”

  The white wizard eased his mount through the gate into the field and rode another hundred cubits or so before he reined up.

  A line of green creepers had covered half the field, and he could almost see the green edging toward him. He blinked, and blinked again. Was the green closer?

  “You see, honored wizard?” said the headman of Geliendra.

  To the east, beyond the rebuilt dike that held the irrigated rice field, the scene was worse. There… trees had sprouted. Not all that high, perhaps knee-high, but knee-high in a season? Or less than a season?

  As the headman had said, Themphi could not see the retaining walls. They could have been a few hundred cubits back behind the advancing greenery-or farther. He studied the forest again, mentally calculating. The taller trees, the older ones, began no more than two hundred cubits back from the creepers and the lower undergrowth. A chest-high line of green, barely visible, stretched from west to east-the wall, covered in vines.

  The wizard dismounted and handed the gray’s reins to Jyncka. Then he stepped forward, gathering whiteness around him.

  Light flared, as if from the forest, and Themphi staggered on the soft ground that had been turned and sowed, where sprouts of green peered through the dark soil. Themphi forced himself erect, ignoring the dampness on his forehead.

  After another glance toward the wall of green nearly a hundred rods north of the long green creepers, his brows furrowed, and a firebolt arced into the green. The vines and knife grass blazed for a moment, and a circle of ashes spread until it was nearly thirty cubits wide before the flames died.

  The white wizard wiped his sweating forehead, and he turned.

  “Jyncka. We will do this the hard way, the way our forefathers did. Make arrangements tor torches and barrels of pitch.”

  Jyncka nodded. “Yes, honored wizard.”

  The headman smiled nervously.

  Themphi studied the forest for a time. Then he turned and took the gray’s reins from Jyncka and remounted. “It will be a large undertaking, but mainly tedious.” Then he swung the gray back toward Geliendra.

  Behind him followed the headman, Fissar, and the disgraced lancers.

  XXII

  FOR A TIME after they ate, Nylan just lay on the bedroll in the early twilight. His rear was too sore to sit on anything, and the muscles above his knees ached too much to stand. His hands were raw from cold water washing off everything from their few pots to Weryl’s cloth undersquares, and his head ached faintly.

  So, facing Weryl, he lay on his stomach, wearing his shirt and a tunic, but no jacket. Down the needle-strewn slope, the stream rushed and gurgled. The faint hum of insects rose as the light dimmed. A faint and chill breeze swept across their campsite from the higher and ice-covered peaks to the east. Ayrlyn sat sideways on the blanket behind the silver-haired infant. She wore her jacket, but had not fastened it.

  “You know, it took just moments when I brought the lander across what it’s taken us three days to cover by horse.”

  “… ooo…” Pudgy fingers grasping for the
wood, Weryl crawled across the blanket toward the smooth stick Nylan had shaved clean and rounded with his dagger.

  Ayrlyn pulled off her boots and massaged her calves. “I’d forgotten how many muscles riding affects. The skiing helped, though. It isn’t as bad this year as it was last.”

  “Hmmm…” said Nylan as he held the stick.

  “We’re lucky it’s early in the year. The mosquitoes aren’t out yet. None of the big flies, either. That will change when we get lower.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Gaaaa!” Weryl’s fingers grasped the stick.

  “He’s strong.”

  Nylan nodded. “He’ll be walking before summer’s end- sooner, perhaps. If we travel too far, I’ll have to make some sort of seat for him. He already gets heavy.”

  “I’ve noticed when I’ve carried him. He also squirms.”

  The engineer rolled on his side, containing a wince as various muscles protested. Weryl began to climb over his shoulder.

  “Not so fast, young man.” Nylan set the boy back in the middle of the blanket, and Weryl charged across it on hands and knees, again climbing across Nylan.

  “Like his father, he doesn’t give up.”

  “I’m tired, and he’s just getting started.”

  “Well… he sleeps most of the day,” the healer pointed out.

  “The motion of riding and the carrypak must be soothing.” Nylan let the silver-haired boy climb almost all the way over him before he picked his son up and set him back in the middle of the blanket again.

  Weryl laughed.

  “He thinks it’s a game,” Ayrlyn said with a chuckle.

  “I’ll really be worn out by the time he’s tired.”

  “You, the untiring iron smith? The tower builder who never stopped? Tired by a child?” Ayrlyn’s smile got broader. “You could just go to sleep.”

  “Just sleep? Not a chance.” Nylan grinned back, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder as he set Weryl back on the center of the blanket once more.

  Weryl charged toward Nylan’s knees, instead of his chest. “It sounds like a triumph of lust over common sense. Do you think I’m interested? You didn’t ask.”