The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Still that way?” asked Nylan, inclining his head in the general direction of the road ahead.

  “There’s a hint of order. It’s stronger that way,” suggested Ayrlyn.

  Nylan let his own order senses follow hers, feeling a thread of order, and something more, still to the northwest.

  “It’s stronger now.”

  He nodded, restowing the water bottle and wondering if they would reach the order grove, if that was what it was, before sunset.

  Perhaps ten kays and three lines of hills later, the group reined up at the top of another low hill, looking out over the patchwork of continuing meadows and scattered flocks of sheep.

  “We’re close,” Ayrlyn said.

  Nylan glanced downhill, and his eyes wandered back to the opposite hill crest. He frowned. He’d meant to look downhill.

  Rather than look, he listened in the stillness broken only by the hint of a breeze. Was that the gurgling of a brook or stream?

  He started to look downhill again, and his eyes blurred.

  “There’s something there.” The redheaded healer frowned.

  “I know. It’s shielded somehow.”

  “There are trees, pines of a sort, and they’re tall.”

  Out of the corner his eyes, Nylan could sense Sylenia’s puzzlement as she squinted out into the glare of the low sun, trying to make out whatever the two angels discussed.

  “Just a hillside…”

  “Why are we sitting here?” asked Fuera.

  “The smith and healer see something,” answered Sias.

  “Don’t see anything,” added Buretek.

  “They see a lot we don’t. He sees inside metal. She sees inside people.” The apprentice smith and armsman paused. “I’m not sure it be good to see everything they see.”

  “We’ll see,” said Buretek cheerfully. “They see something, or they don’t.”

  Except it wasn’t that simple, thought Nylan. Nothing that involved the order and chaos fields was-that he’d already discovered, unfortunately.

  “There’s nothing there,” said Ayrlyn. “I mean, no animals, no big ones. There are the trees, and the stream.”

  “Let’s see.” Nylan turned his mount to the left and off the road, heading downhill.

  “… not even a road…”

  “… knows where he’s going…”

  “… so does she…”

  As they rode downhill toward the well-sensed but unseen valley, if a place that tried to fool human vision could be claimed to be unseen, Nylan noted a growing sense of calm, of balance before him, and a growing consternation in the saddles behind.

  “… something there… but my eyes…”

  “… told you…”

  Finally, he turned. “It’s just a grove of trees. There’s some sort of magic shield around it to protect it from being logged or destroyed. That’s all.” Not quite.all, by a long shot, but nothing to harm them. Whether it might harm Ayrlyn or him was another question. And it isn’t really a shield, either. He took a deep breath.

  “Not quite all,” murmured Ayrlyn as she eased her mount closer.

  “I know. I can feel it, but it’s not harmful.”

  Abruptly, when the ground flattened near the base of the hill, they no longer had to use their order senses to force their eyes to see the grove.

  “Oh…”

  “Where… the trees come from?”

  Even Weryl added an “oooo.”

  Less than a dozen huge and spreading pines formed a circle, shielding the needle-carpeted center area with a canopy of green. The area under and immediately around the trees was open, covered only with a deep carpet of pine needles.

  A narrow and fast-moving brook bordered the grove, appearing out of the tangled thorn bushes and redberry bushes to the southeast. Was it from some sort of underground spring? There wasn’t a stream south of the valley. Of that Nylan was certain.

  Downstream, on the northwest side of the grove, the same stream vanished into another tangle of bushes, except far enough away to leave a clearing in the open.

  The cool and shadow of trees and the hills were more than welcome to the smith. He took a deep breath, a breath free from dust for what seemed the first time since they had left the Westhorns a long season earlier, a breath filled with the clean scent of pine.

  The smith turned in the saddle. “We’ll camp in the open space at the end. We can sleep on the needles around the trees, but keep the fire clear of them.”

  Sias glanced up at the towering evergreens, and then at Buretek. “Did you see these up on the hillside?”

  Fuera reached out, leaning sideways in the saddle, and thumped the ridged and age-darkened bark. “Solid… most solid.” He shook his head.

  Nylan smiled slowly. Maybe there was something to the trees… and to the dreams… maybe. He hoped so.

  “There is,” Ayrlyn affirmed as she dismounted and led the chestnut to the downstream area just before the brook vanished into the thicket again. After a moment, as the mare drank, she added, “The redberries are ripe, and there are plenty here. But watch the thorns.”

  Watch the thorns-wasn’t that the general prescription for life? What other surprises might there be?

  After a moment, he dismounted and followed Ayrlyn, as did the others.

  Overhead, the pine boughs whispered ever so faintly in the late afternoon breeze, a breeze that only the trees showed.

  XCVI

  NO ONE STEALS the copper of Cyador. No one mocks the Mirror Lancers. Triendar… I want to teach those barbarians a lesson,“ snapped Lephi. ”Turn the white fires on them, make them white dust-you know, unwrap the ancient chaos on them.“

  “I fear that I do know, Your Mightiness,” replied the slight and balding figure, brushing short white hair off his left ear.

  “You fear that I know what I want?” Lephi laughed, harshly.

  “What you want will destroy you and Cyador. Not to mention me,” replied Triendar dryly.

  “Explain this,” demanded the Lord of Cyador, Protector of the Steps to Paradise. Silence fell across the hall, and the polished white stone tiles appeared as cold as the ice of the Northern Ocean in midwinter.

  “The ancient mirror towers were based on the powers of chaos. So are our powers. Chaos by its nature must be balanced by order. That is how the firewagons operate. The order of the boilers and chambers and the tubing contains the chaos of water heated into steam. The chaotic force of the moving wheels is balanced by the order of the stone paving blocks.” Triendar paused.

  “You have belabored those points before, Triendar. Why do they mean you cannot turn chaos upon the barbarians?”

  “I did not say that, Your Mightiness. I said that turning chaos upon them would likely destroy Cyador and us. Such chaos would allow the Accursed Forest to surge beyond its boundaries-”

  “One moment, ancient Triendar. You have always claimed that the forest held equal parts of order and chaos. How can your use of chaos allow it to expand?”

  The white mage sighed. “It is not simple to explain, but I will try. If I marshal chaos against the barbarians, that concentrated chaos allows order to be concentrated elsewhere in Candar. The forest will use that order to expand, but once expanded, will balance order and chaos within its boundaries. For us to contain it will require more chaos, which will free order to strengthen it further.”

  “How is Themphi containing it?”

  “Poorly-and with the less concentrated chaos of men with torches. Even so half your foot and lancers labor around Geliendra.”

  “That is why we must use your weapons against the barbarians,” pointed out the Lord of Cyador.

  “Then too, as I have explained before, there is the problem of the fireship, and all the chaos it must carry,” Triendar continued, as if he had not heard Lephi.

  “How does that affect the Accursed Forest? Even the ship-works are stoneworks built up from the water, and water contains order, much order, you have said.” Lephi’s voice sharp
ened. “You do not listen to me.”

  “I do listen, but chaos is never simple. A fireship, with the fire cannons you wish and the bombards and the chaos engines, it creates much chaos. Add that to all that has been stirred up this past year…” Triendar looked at the man in silver and white.

  “You tell me that I cannot bring chaos against the barbarians and contain the Accursed Forest? That I must not complete the fireship.”

  “No. The fireship will not be ready. While it embodies much chaos, some is contained by the waters of the harbor and by the ordered iron that binds the engines and fireboxes. Most of the chaos it will create will be when the engine operates, and you cannot bring it to Lornth, can you?”

  “I had thought, if the conflict drags on, to bring the ship around the point of Dellash and to fire that northern port- Rulyarth, I think.” Triendar shivered.

  “Forget the fireship for now. As you say, it is not ready. But I will dare the fates. We must take the risk. To allow one small barbarian clan to seize our copper and destroy white lancers unpunished… what will stop the Jeranyi from surging west across the Grass Hills? Or those Kyphran traders…”

  “Your Mightiness… Cyador, as you have pointed out, is scarcely powerless.”

  “Triendar… we have few firewagons, and they only operate on the stone roads. We have none of the ancient fireships, and but one under construction to replace them-”

  “The ancient ships were destroyed because they were failing.” Triendar nodded. “As this one will fail in a few years under the pressure of chaos.”

  “We will build others.”

  “And you will build chaos, and the Accursed Forest will use that to grow.”

  “We will face that when we must. For now, the barbarians must go, before they become a greater threat.” The Protector of the Steps to Paradise stopped and surveyed the closed doors to the hall, the wisps of steam that drifted around the fittings. “We have instilled order and obedience into our people, and we cannot turn them into warriors overnight, and if we tried…” Lephi shook his head.

  “They would strike first at the Mirror classes, you fear?”

  “No. But the taxes and tariffs would rise, and then, so would disobedience, and that would make the Mirror Lancers and Foot more arrogant…”

  Triendar laughed softly. “None would suspect a lord of Cyad to be so considerate and thoughtful of his people.”

  Lephi snorted. “We have no choice but to use chaos.”

  “As you wish, Sire. I have told you the risks.”

  “And I have told you those of not employing it. I have not mentioned the risks to you.” Lephi gestured toward the wide window and the open waters of the Western Ocean. “Do you not understand? You worry about what may happen in the years ahead. If we do not stop the barbarians now, neither of us will need to worry about the future. Already, we have peasants who challenge the white throne. We have eastern traders who would charge our merchants double because they no longer fear Cyad. And now we have barbarians who would seize our copper mines. We have no fireships, no spare firewagons, no fire cannon of generations past. We have lancers and troops… and we have the power of chaos that you can muster. And you will muster it against the barbarians. The forest can wait; it must wait.”

  Triendar bowed. “As you wish.”

  XCVII

  BURETEK, FUERA, AND Sias sat around the low coals of the fire, a fire ringed with stores used by others, but not in years, if not in centuries, stones so old that the soot was burned deep into their pores and crevices. Sylenia sat slightly apart from the armsmen. Low murmurs drifted southward to where Ayrlyn and Nylan sat on the soft needles between two gnarled roots, their backs propped against the rough bark. Nylan listened for a moment. “… peaceful here…”

  “They need it… probably we do, too.”

  “Spooky, though… ride by and never see it…”

  “The angels, they saw it.”

  “They see too much, sometimes…” With that, Nylan agreed. He looked to his left. There, on the other side of the root, lay Weryl on his blanket, eyes open, but heavy, half-looking into the dark canopy above that blocked the stars.

  “This place is ancient,” the smith murmured, his fingers touching the smooth crests of the deep-rutted black bark, his eyes going up toward the tip of the evergreen-a tree that made even the groves of the Nomads of Sybra seem young by comparison.

  “Older than any other trees we’ve seen,” agreed the healer. Her hair, still damp from washing in the clean and clear brook, glittered with a light of its own in the dimness. “And it feels like the dreams.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Ayrlyn took his hand. “Lean back and relax. Just open yourself up to your feelings. I know that’s hard for you, but it’ll be all right. I know it will.”

  With a deep breath,.Nylan shifted his weight on the soft needles piled around the gnarled roots, in a space that seemed as comfortable as a pilot’s seat, or more so. The scents of clean pine, the hint of moisture from the brook, the sweetness of crushed redberry-all created a sense of aliveness he had not felt in who knew how many eight-days.

  Smiling, he closed his eyes, following Ayrlyn’s example, ignoring the low murmurs from around the fire.

  First came a sense of peace, of comfort, yet there was more.

  Lines of fire flickered, white lines, force fluxes like a chaotic power net, firebolts white-infused and red-shaded like those thrown by the wizards who had tried to storm Westwind…

  … and the dark flows of blackness and the white chaos were mixed and twisted-and balanced. The trees grew and grew, and some died and fell, but always for all the changes, the white and darkness turned in and out, but balanced… until the heavens shivered, and the ground trembled.

  Then, white lines of fire, fire that reflected light and darkness, burned through the forest, and the gray ashes fell like rain.

  The rivers heaved themselves out of their banks, and the white mirror fires turned their waters into steam. Metal mountains grumbled across the water-polished stone hills and smoothed them, ground them, and suffocated them beneath strange new soil, and grasses that had never been.

  Green shoots struggled through the ashes, and were turned into more ashes, and the ground heaved and trembled.

  Lines of white stone slammed down like walls, pinning the trees behind lines of force that burned… and burned, burned somehow because the force of the ordered chaos that prisoned the trees was backward, because chaos bound order…

  A sense of eternity followed, inaction behind walls, until the heavens shivered again, and the white walls cracked, and crumbled, and lines of white fire and darkness cascaded from ice-tipped peaks.

  And the balanced flow of light and darkness resumed, with a sense of something like purpose and joy-except it was neither.

  Nylan sat up abruptly, his hand reaching for Ayrlyn.- Yet nothing had changed. The boughs still whispered in the wind; the insects chittered; the brook burbled in the darkness, and the four around the fire still talked in low voices.

  “You know what it was?” asked Ayrlyn.

  “The images reminded me of an early Rationalist colonizing force,” Nylan said. “Bring the native ecology into line.” He shook his head. “All that power-”

  “The grove-the trees remember. That… that is hard to believe.” Ayrlyn’s voice was hushed. “And do you think this… Cyador… is what’s left of the Rat expedition?”

  “I think so, but how would you prove it? Would it matter?” Nylan shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s an empire, of sorts.” He cleared his throat. “I just wonder if this grove is part of what was a larger, sentient forest-or a colonizing outpost… or-”

  “As you said-does it matter? There’s a larger forest to the south, one that’s broken its bounds in a way that’s connected to our arrival.”

  “Do you think the Cyadorans know that? Is that why they’re expanding into Lornth?” asked Nylan.

  “I don’t think so. They couldn’t kn
ow, or feel, what the trees… or the forest does. If they did, then, they couldn’t have destroyed so much of it.”

  “The old problem-cultivation is always better.” The smith shook his head. “Do you think our forests, places like Guljolm on Sybra-?”

  “It could be,” said Ayrlyn, “but since we’re not likely to ever return-”

  “Right.” Nylan shifted his weight, turned his head, and looked through the darkness at Weryl.

  “Da… reee…” In the darkness, less than two cubits away, Weryl sat on his blanket, a smile on his face, looking at a pine cone, turning it in his hands. Beyond him, on its hind legs, stood a brown tree rat. The tree rat chittered and was gone.

  “He has the night vision,” Ayrlyn said.

  “Do you think he felt… ?”

  She shrugged. “Probably, but feeling and knowing what it means are two different things. The sense of balance was stronger than anything, and that couldn’t have hurt too much.

  He seems fine.“

  Nylan hoped so. His son was too young to be burdened with the meaning of those images. “What can we do?”

  “I don’t know that, either. Except that we’re both getting the same message about balancing order and chaos.”

  “And no one else is? Why us?”

  Ayrlyn moistened her lips, but did not speak for several moments. “ ‘Why us?’ ” she finally repeated. “I don’t know. Why can we heal? Or have strange-colored hair?” She laughed, softly, ironically. “Maybe the whole twisting of underspace, the bringing of the Winterlance to this universe… maybe it was because we were needed to return balance-”

  “An automatic stabilizing mechanism… strong enough to cross universes?”

  “Maybe just chance; and now that we’re here, this… balance… seeks us out. Does it matter?”

  “I don’t like being a player’s piece… or the universe’s.” The whole idea bothered Nylan, especially when he saw how much he had changed… been changed. Poor Sillek, from everything that he kept learning, had seen and understood. The dead Lord of Lornth had been intelligent, perceptive, skilled, decisive, and a leader-and he’d been swept away by forces of ignorance, sexism, and barbarian tradition. Were he and Ayrlyn in the same position, condemned by some… force of balance… to try to right things… only to be drowned in the usual welter of blind human power lusts?