The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “You would do as well as any,” Ayrlyn said softly.

  Sylenia watched as they rode down the gentle incline and toward the older section of the forest. The young shoots in the flat that had been fields were now closer to head high, and some of the trunks were as thick as the smith’s wrists.

  “The forest isn’t wasting much time,” he noted as he guided the mare around a more spreading bush and into what would be a forest lane before long.

  “Either way, it wins.”

  Nylan understood. If the Cyadoran mages succeeded in subduing Lornth, by the time they returned the forest would have consolidated enough of its expansion that it could never be pushed back without the high technology that the Rat descendants no longer possessed. “Even here, they underestimate nature.”

  “That doesn’t mean they won’t defeat Fornal,” Ayrlyn pointed out.

  Nylan took a deep breath.

  “You don’t want to go back, do you?”

  “No. But I don’t see any choice. I don’t want to live alone as a savage here in the new boundaries that the Rats will impose when they win. And-”

  “We gave our word.”

  “Are we so different from Fornal?” he asked with a laugh.

  “In some ways, no…” Ayrlyn reined up in the small clearing that remained near the former white stone wall.

  The smith and engineer studied the area, then dismounted, and unfastened Weryl, lifting him out of his seat. “I don’t feel anything.”

  “It’s quiet.”

  They slipped over the nearly flat green creepers that still worked to reduce the former wall and past the outer guardian trees. Nylan felt like he should be holding his breath. Even Weryl was silent.

  “There’s a big cat ahead.”

  In a way he could not describe, Nylan could feel Ayrlyn’s perception of the big tawny cat, but the cat seemed almost disinterested in the humans, and was following a large-tailed rodent of some sort.

  The angels slowed, letting the predator move away from them.

  Nylan stood by the trumpet flowers, holding Weryl, trying to sense… something. The flows of dark order and white chaotic power swirled around them. The smith looked absently at his son as he did at the forest-and his mouth opened. For like the forest, Weryl was order and chaos, less balanced, with faster and stronger swirls of the competing forces. Nylan turned toward Ayrlyn.

  She too held both forces, but with more deliberateness, more… majesty.

  Balance-did it allow greater use of power? How could he find out? He moved forward, just trying to soak in the feel of the underlying energies.

  Several hundred cubits beyond the cleared expanse where they had stopped on their last trip, past another line of guardian trees, was a pond, almost oval, more than two hundred cubits long.

  Nylan shifted Weryl from his still-sore left shoulder to his right.

  They stood above the eastern end of the pool, at the top of a short grassy slope that led down to the clear green water. A fish of some sort, with orange fins and a brownish and orange-spotted body, glided up to the top of the water and took an insect-a water spider perhaps-with only the slightest of ripples.

  “Wadah!” Weryl smiled and jabbed his right hand toward the silver-shimmered and tree-shadowed green surface.

  At the far end of the pond, beside a bush with narrow silver-green leaves, a gray loglike object, at least ten cubits long, slipped under the surface, and a line of ripples moved toward the three.

  “We’d better-” began Ayrlyn.

  “Yes.” Nylan felt the menace of the big lizard. Although the balance constraints would certainly allow him to use the blades against the monster lizard, he had some doubts whether blades would be enough. At the moment, the lizard was merely investigating. That he could feel. With Weryl in his arms, prudence was definitely better. Nylan turned. “Wadah…” Weryl lurched back toward the pond. “Some other day. We’d rather not be lizard food.”

  “That’s a big lizard, and it’s got some sort of order-chaos storage, like a weapon.” Ayrlyn began to walk quickly to catch up with the other two. “But it’s balanced, like everything in the forest.”

  “Outside… all of Candar is unbalanced.” With his senses, somehow extended but passive, on the lizard, Nylan walked quickly back the way they had come, Weryl on his shoulder. They passed another stand of the purple trumpet flowers, one that he did not recall. He could catch the hint of the reiseralike fragrance that drifted into the green canopied amphitheater from somewhere. “That’s what the forest tries to right, except that it’s blind.”

  “How will this help us-or Lornth-against Cyador?” Ayrlyn took a deep breath without slowing. “It smells good.”

  “Where’s the lizard?”

  “Oh… it stopped at the water’s edge. There are two cats prowling around there. One might have been the one we saw earlier. They can feel the order changes, too, I think.”

  “Why aren’t they following us?”

  “Nylan… whether you recognize it or not, you’ve balanced a tremendous amount of order and chaos in yourself. It makes that lizard look puny. If I were a big cat, I’d be a lot more interested in the lizard.”

  “Great… I don’t even know how to use it… not really.” A thought struck him, and he turned and looked at Ayrlyn, seeing what she had described in him in her. He swallowed. “You…”

  She shook her head.

  He laughed. “You! You’re just the same as me or that lizard.”

  “It’s scary,” Ayrlyn admitted, her eyes going back over her shoulder, even though nothing seemed to move in the green-lit forest. “I never thought of myself as powerful.”

  “The forest would.”

  “Wadah!” interrupted Weryl with a lurch.

  Nylan reached up and steadied his son. “When we get to the horses.” His eyes narrowed. “Look… at Weryl.”

  “He’s got it, too, that balance.”

  “Do you think… ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Neither did Nylan, but his scarcely more than infant son was somehow instinctively balancing order and chaos. Their ordeal? The forest? He didn’t know.

  They kept walking, the only audible sounds those of insects, the rustle of the high canopy, their own breathing, and scattered bird calls.

  Once beyond the guardian trees of the old growth, Ayrlyn paused by the chestnut, reins in her hand. “Nylan… what did we learn today?”

  “We learned something. It’s like powerfluxes-the greater the potential difference and the better the balance… that’s the key.” He eased Weryl into the seat behind the saddle. “And that it’s easier for children. Or Weryl.”

  “It’s still unsettling. We walk in there, and we walk out, and each time we’re a little different, and I can’t quite remember how it happened, but I can sense that it did, and that we’re different.”

  “Are we different in a bad way?” Nylan strapped Weryl in place.

  “No… I don’t think so. But how would we know, if that’s what the forest wants?”

  “That’s why we have to leave.”

  “Oh… if we feel that way when we’re beyond its power?”

  He nodded. “And if it lets us go-”

  “Then it leaves the choice to us.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Will it?”

  “Somehow, I feel it will.” Nylan mounted the mare. “The forest even gives the animals limited free will. The lizard didn’t have to chase us. Nor the cats.”

  “It wants something.” Ayrlyn swung into her saddle.

  “Of course. Somehow…we’re going to help the forest.” A grim laugh followed his words. “And it will help us.”

  “That far from here?” she asked, drawing the chestnut beside his mare.

  “The Old Rats took their planoforming equipment and used it to resculpt this part of western Candar, but they sort of overlaid the old topography, and some of it wasn’t necessary. They probably didn’t have enough power to do it right- and they
sort of stretched out the marshes and the water and created grasslands over what was almost a desert, and moved streams. It wouldn’t last forever, and maybe it shouldn’t have lasted this long-but there’s a lot of energy there.” He shrugged. “Any time there’s an imbalance…”

  Ayrlyn nodded. “But some of this still doesn’t make sense, ecologically. A larger forest would have maintained the grasslands because it would have cooled the whole region.”

  “I thought rain forests grew-”

  “That’s it! This isn’t a rain forest.”

  Nylan waited.

  “Rain forests usually develop in areas of thin soil and high moisture. The soil here is comparatively rich, and the normal rainfall would be more temperate.”

  “So, healer and ecologist, what’s the jump point?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know… exactly. The Rats didn’t have to slash the forest back into a relatively small square. They could have adopted some form of large alternating bloc agriculture-there aren’t that many towns here, and from what we’ve seen, they’re not overcrowded. That would show that the population pressure was never that great.”

  Nylan rubbed his forehead. “You’re assuming that the forest would let them. Look at how fast things are overgrowing the old boundaries.”

  “The Old Rationalists weren’t stupid,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “They planoformed scores of planets successfully. This place didn’t even need planoforming, not if the forest were already here.”

  “This isn’t just a different place,” Nylan pointed out. “It’s a different universe. Fusactors don’t work here-”

  “How did they get the power to transform the land, then?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “They use more of a laser-based technology… always have. Maybe some forms of laser fusion work-or they did.”

  “Wadah, pease,” interrupted Weryl. “I know. I promised.” The smith eased out the water bottle and uncorked it, lurching in the saddle as the mare crossed one of the former irrigation ditches. He held the bottle as his son drank.

  “Let’s get back to your point,” said Ayrlyn. “There’s a basic instability surrounding the forest, but not in the forest itself. Why would the Old Rats do that? They knew better. They had to.”

  “Power, maybe. We’ve seen the power the forest has, and it’s only a fraction of its former size.” Nylan reclaimed the water bottle and recorked it.

  “That means… do you think that the Old Rats actually set up a power imbalance as a power/energy source for the white mages?”

  Nylan nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. They’re experienced planoformers, but their conventional power sources failed-or were failing.”

  “Surely… they had to know it couldn’t last forever.”

  “They probably did-but what’s better? Something that works for centuries-or longer-with the hope that their descendants can work out something? Or condemning themselves and their immediate children to true barbarian or low-tech lives?” He gestured toward the south. “Cyador is the most advantaged and cultured civilization we’ve seen.”

  “Advantaged… that I’ll accept. Given the way they treat women-”

  “Wouldn’t it have been worse if they’d lapsed into low-tech?”

  “That’s too theoretical, worse than engineering speculations.” Ayrlyn cleared her throat. “You’re going to use that force?”

  “If I can.”

  “If we can,” corrected Ayrlyn.

  The smith laughed, less harshly. “I stand corrected… as always. If we can… and we can. I just don’t know how yet.”

  “Harnessing that power won’t be as hard as surviving it,” predicted Ayrlyn. “Especially in one piece.”

  Nylan feared her assessments were all too correct.

  Ayrlyn reined up beside the shed and glanced toward the rear door of the house. As she looked, Sylenia appeared.

  “You were not gone that long.”

  “You didn’t want us to go at all,” Nylan said.

  “If one must do something…”

  The smith glanced helplessly at Ayrlyn. While a glimmer of a smile flitted around her lips, she remained silent.

  “We probably need to get moving tomorrow,” Nylan said as he dismounted and turned to Weryl.

  Ayrlyn pursed her lips.

  “Will we learn any more by staying?”

  “Probably.” The redhead slipped lightly from the saddle.

  “Will we learn it fast enough?”

  The redhead frowned. “Probably not… but…”

  “I know. It’s risky… everything’s risky.” But do we have a choice? And we did give our word, and…

  Ayrlyn nodded sadly… and there’s a tie between keeping a promise and order…

  “Unfortunately.”

  Sylenia cleared her throat, loudly. Both angels turned to her.

  “I have made all the bread we can dairy, and dried beans, and even some wasol roots. They were in the garden.” Sylenia beamed. “Much better than cheese and biscuits.”

  Nylan would have been surer about their travel fare before she mentioned wasol roots, whatever they were.

  CXXIV

  IN THE DARKNESS, Nylan slipped out past the bushes and downhill, stopping only after he crossed the first dry irrigation ditch.

  What did he have in mind?

  Did he really know, except that he somehow needed to raise and channel the power of or in or from the forest? Ayrlyn’s comments about not knowing enough had worried at him, and worried. Yet he knew that the Cyadoran hordes were about to descend on Lornth-if they hadn’t already, and there was a time to act whether they had enough knowledge or not. Somehow, someway, they had to raise the power of the forest, or a power like that of the forest, in Lornth, against the Cyadoran hordes. And he didn’t have any ideas, except in a general sense. Too general.

  He took a deep breath, drawing the mixed fragrances that held the hint of reisera and others he could not have named.

  Slowly, slowly, he opened himself to the pulse of the forest, of the order and chaos, of the flows, so similar to those between the poles of a fusactor, except the flows were a construct of the power differentials…

  No.‘ Get back to the basics.

  Power… order to hold chaos.

  Not to hold… to guide… always in balance…

  The sweat popped out on his forehead, despite the cool breeze out of the east.

  Guide… balance…

  Rather than reach, he tried to open himself to that power, visualizing himself as a conduit, a circuit, insulated by order.

  He staggered under the impact of the twin flows-darkness and the crushing might of chaos welling from the hot magma far beneath Candar, chaos hot enough to melt even ship alloys, with enough free electrons, unstable quarks, leptons… the terms swirled through his thoughts, but the energy was real.

  Around him light grew-from a glow to a glare, so much of a glare that he closed his eyes, and yet the not-quite-cold light turned the area around the house into nearly day.

  … heat… but not too much…

  Despite his efforts to hold off the heat, he could feel it building, feeling the surges of power.

  … careful…

  The ground beneath him trembled, ever so slightly, but insistently, as though the chaos beneath wished to obliterate that thin barrier laid between the surface and the depths so many generations earlier by the Old Rats.

  … not now… later… when we get to Lornth…

  Slowly, he eased the flows away, letting them subside.

  His breath was ragged, and his heart pounded so hard that he felt the sleepers inside the house could have heard it.

  For a time he stood, gasping, just trying to get his body back under control.

  Then he turned toward the house.

  “Very impressive.” Ayrlyn sat on the patch of grass remaining in front of the bushes. “I’m glad I understand you. Someone else might not have taken it well. They might have thought you were
out to get the power for yourself.”

  “I never-”

  “I know. You were afraid it wouldn’t work. Or that I’d get hurt. Like all good engineers, you wanted to test your idea with no one around in case it went wrong, and, as usual, you didn’t want to worry me. So… all I knew is that you were worried, and I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You are so dense… sometimes. Don’t you understand?” Nylan… don’t shut me out… please…

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure how it would work.” He put his arms around her. Didn’t want you hurt… if it didn’t. .

  “It will work. You could have asked me.”

  “It’s such a change. I forget, still.” He shivered, feeling weak. He released Ayrlyn and sat on the grass.

  “Try not to.” Or I’ll do… something dreadful! Long before we ever get back to Lornth! She sat beside him.

  The engineer blushed at her unspoken comment.

  “In fact…” I’m going to do something dreadful right now. Her lips were upon his before he could speak again, and she pushed him back on the grass. While you’re too weak to resist… Her hands were at his waistband. And if anyone hears… you get to explain…

  CXXV

  GETHEN DID NOT unroll the scroll he held as he sat in the green upholstered armchair across the ancient carpet from his daughter and coregent. “The traders-the ones who ported in Rulyarth. They bring disturbing news, daughter and regent.”

  “That the white demons ready an attack? We knew that. Do they say when?”

  “They bring no news of what we face from the south.” Gethen cleared his throat. “The lord of Cyador builds a fire-ship like one of the ancients that swept clean the Great Western Ocean. It nears completion.”

  “We need not worry of that.” With a quick look at Nesslek, who banged two blocks at each other, not exactly in a coordinated fashion, Zeldyan raised her goblet of greenjuice, taking a small sip. “Not soon, in any instance.”

  “Perchance not. Has there been word from Fornal?”

  “Except for another plea for coins and levies… no. We sent him all that the sale of the copper raised. It was not enough, he claims. Yet he did not seize the copper, not according to Diwer. The angels did, and Fornal called them highwaymen.”