“What about the goddaughter?”
“I found her a good-looking and talented husband who loved her, and provided a dowry, and we both cried like hell.”
That shut them up, but I felt petty about it as we packed the horses for the coming day’s ride. Finally, I stepped over to Yelena. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
She smiled, as softly as I had seen her smile, and touched my arm briefly. “Don’t be. It’s good to see that great order-masters are human, that they love, and make mistakes.”
I shook my head. “I’m not a great order-master.”
Yelena swung onto her brown gelding. “Then there are none.”
I pondered that as I climbed onto Gairloch. Perhaps that was the problem, that there simply were no great order-masters to combat the great chaos-masters like Antonin. Then I frowned. A simple solution, too simple. And simple and easy answers were almost always wrong.
By mid-morning, the feeling of impending chaos was stronger, much stronger, and not receding.
The road had not been used in some time, except for a single rider whose prints appeared now and again in the sheltered spots in the clay. How long since the prints had been made, I could not tell. Nor could Yelena.
“We have not had a great rain since summer.” She pursed her lips.
I could feel the energy ahead, perhaps as near as over the next hill-crest.
Overhead, heavy gray clouds rolled.
Thurummmm…
No rain fell as we rode up the especially-steep hill.
“Stop,” I said, feeling the chaos pressure. “There’s something ahead.”
“Armed men?”
“No.” I sent my perceptions forward, but could only detect a small hump in the road, somehow tied down with chaos. Nothing else. “I think it’s all right for now.”
The hump was a body, or what was left of it.
Yelena rode almost up to the figure, then dismounted, standing back from face-down remains. “Outlier’s belt.”
“Careful… there’s chaos there.”
The sub-officer nodded. “I know. We’ve seen this before.” She drew her sword and touched the body. A bright blue spark flashed against the steel. She glanced at me. “That’s another trick of the white wizards.”
Even from where Gairloch and I had stopped, the heat from the spark momentarily warmed the chill noontime air.
She used the sword to lever the body over onto its back. The Kyphran soldier’s face was a charred and shattered mass-the target of a fireball thrown by Antonin or Sephya or some other chaos-wizard.
I could guess what happened. The outlier had been lured or charmed this far out and then destroyed.
“Chaos fed on him. Too bad we can’t feed on chaos. We’d never go hungry any more.” She motioned to Weldein. “Let’s take care of this. Not much time, but there are stones there.”
In the end, all of us created a cairn by the side of the deserted road.
As we remounted, Yelena’s remark got me thinking. In a way, chaos fed on chaos. The stronger Antonin became, the more he could destroy, which increased the amount of chaos in Candar. In the whole world, really. If the old masters were right, increased chaos had to be balanced somewhere with increased order.
I swallowed hard. If what I thought was true was in fact true, Talryn and the Brotherhood had a lot to answer for, one hell of a lot.
That didn’t resolve my particular problem. While I was getting stronger, Justen had been right. It was a slow process. Antonin could literally tear holes in mountains and buildings and infect whole cavalry troops with chaos. It would be years, if ever, before I could confront Antonin directly-and that wouldn’t help Krystal or the autarch, or the people of either Gallos or Kyphros.
Justen’s method was clear. He kept reinforcing low-level order everywhere around Antonin, from healing in Jellico to sheep-ranching in Montgren. That order limited the indirect spillover of chaos and protected most of the innocents. Just as clear was the fact that Antonin was willing to let all of that low-level order build up, because it allowed him to increase his powers. Which, in turn, let Justen exercise his powers…
I rubbed my temples with my fingertips. Was the whole thing an exercise in circles? Was any wizard, white or black, really being honest about it? Was this the reason why no one had answered the questions behind my questions?
“What now, order-master?”
I understood. Now she had the reason to be dismissed- and Krystal needed them in the Northeast more than I needed them here.
“This is as far as you go, sub-officer. This is where chaos starts.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded, wanting to ensure that all of them carried the same message back. “I can’t protect you and search for the white wizard, not without endangering us all. I thank you for the escort, for the company, and for your understanding.”
“Thank you, ser.”
“Thank you…”
Yelena held back a moment when the other two turned their mounts. “We’d like to see you again, ser.” Then, the hardness returned to her face, as the discipline reasserted itself.
I watched the three until they were out of sight, checking to make sure no chaos waited for them, but I could detect none-not in that direction.
Toward the Westhorns-that was another question. Supposedly, the old road should cross the wizards’ road before too long. Supposedly… but things never quite turned out as they were supposed to. And when they did, I was finding that I wished they hadn’t.
A cold wind blew from nowhere, almost more in my mind than across that high slope where I began the last, solitary part of my quest-if quest were what it was. Why was I traveling a near-abandoned road toward a wizard who had swatted me aside like a fly the last time we had met? What did I think that I could possibly accomplish when Talryn or Justen had been able to do nothing?
Then again, had they really tried? Who was telling the truth? Or was anyone?
I shivered, but Gairloch lifted his head, as if to say we should get on with it.
LXIV
ANOTHER FIVE KAYS beyond the hill where I had helped bury the unnamed and unknown Kyphran outlier and where I had separated from my escort, barely into the edge of the foothills, the old road crossed the wizards’ road.
I didn’t even have to look for illusions. I did cast my perceptions around and found traces of older chaos, indicating that, at one time, some magic had been cast to cloak the road. That had been seasons, if not years, earlier. I shivered. That Antonin saw no reason to hide his road was chilling in itself.
The unnatural valley ran straight east and west, and the trace of coach wheels ran straight and true down the center of the road. Hoofprints, recent ones, flanked the wheel traces.
I took a deep breath. Suddenly, I had to ask myself what I was doing in the middle of a wilderness looking for a chaos-master. I didn’t have an answer.
Instead, still damning myself for a fool, I turned Gairloch onto that clay-covered and white-paved road and threw my senses ahead of me. Then, remembering what I had done earlier, I used the shield that reduced the ability of a chaos-master to discern the order I represented. That shield left us fully visible, but the greater danger was from white magicians, not from ordinary or even chaos-touched soldiers.
In the distance, actually into the Westhorns themselves, there was another lurking mass of chaos energy, but nothing nearby. Nothing-not wild pigs, not goats, and definitely not people. About what one would expect around an isolated wizards’ road. For now, that was fine with me.
Even on Gairloch, as opposed to a coach, riding on the even surface was considerably speedier than on the old road from Kyphrien. Despite what I recalled from my conversations with Justen, I found it hard to believe that the wizards’ road could have lasted so long. Then again, only the road and the heavy stone bridges had really endured, and Justen had said that the construction had been done by honest stonemasons reinforced with black order-masters, before… something h
ad happened.
Once again, I hadn’t quite gotten the whole story.
By twilight, we had traveled nearly into the lower reaches of the Westhorns themselves, and those lower mountains loomed so high into the western sky that we had ridden the entire late afternoon in shadow. Their distant pinnacles glittered with reflected light, a cruel white that made the peaks a fitting home for chaos.
Not that I had wanted to ride poor Gairloch as long as I had, but it was twilight before there was a canyon away from the road that had water, and was passable enough for us to get well clear of the wizards’ way itself.
We struggled up a rock-and-grass slope, around a bend, and behind another boulder before I felt we were removed enough from casual scrutiny.
Whheeee… eeee… Gairloch was nuzzling at the saddlebags even before I had them off. His nose was wet-and cold from the brook water that felt like liquid ice.
“Don’t drink any more,” I snapped. A lot of really cold water wouldn’t do him much good.
I even touched him and let my feelings run through his system. He either hadn’t drunk that much or could handle it. Still, I worried; but then, I was worrying about everything.
He took the grain cake as soon as it appeared, almost including my fingers in the first greedy bite.
“Gairloch!”
He didn’t pay much attention, but I hadn’t really expected that he would.
After dried fruit, travel bread, and the last of the white cheese, I laid out the bedroll under an overhang. The sky was clear, the stars sparkling like faraway lanterns in the blackness; a chill wind whistled down the canyon. I slept inside the bedroll.
The stream gurgled, and I slept-in a way. I dreamed that I was refereeing a fencing match between Krystal and a white knight, except that the white knight was Antonin, and he kept throwing fireballs at me, and laughing. Every time he threw a fireball, Krystal looked at me and stopped fencing, and he would slash her on her blade arm, until her arm was dripping red. The dream seemed to last all night, and I woke in cold sweats, although the dawn was filled with ice. Frost covered the grass, and a thin layer of rime ice covered even the fast-moving waters of the brook.
The season wasn’t quite winter, and in the low Westhorns it was colder than the coldest of days in Recluce, or most days in Kyphrien, I suspected.
Wheeee… Gairloch’s breath was a white cloud.
“I’m getting up.”
When I started moving, I was warm enough, though.
After giving Gairloch a little grain and letting him graze on the sparse grass, I did my own munching on the remaining dried apples from Brettel. My supplies were low, probably less than an eight-day of trail food, but one way or another, I wouldn’t need more than that.
The apples weren’t enough, and I opened the wax on the last package of cheese, a brick yellow cheese harder and less tasty than the white. The trail bread helped, but I limited what I ate and repacked the rest.
Then-carefully-I reached out with my senses to the wizards’ road. It was as deserted as the night before, with no sign of use.
Long before the sun cleared the hills behind us, -Gairloch and I were riding deeper into the Westhorns, deeper along the narrow and artificial valley.
In time, having seen nothing unusual, and having sensed nothing beyond the traces of chaos on the road, we began to near the mass of chaos-energies I had first sensed the afternoon before, somewhere on the other side of an even narrower gap in the huge rock wall that,, except for the path of the wizards’ road, seemed to block any westward passage.
Wheeee. Gairloch tossed his head, as if in warning.
Ahead, the pass opened wide in the morning sun, the sun that warmed my back, grassy slopes rising gently, then ending abruptly on both sides against the rock and crags that distinguished the Westhorns from the lesser mountains of Candar. The pass was avoided by almost everyone-that much was clear from the gravel and clay that held only the traces of Antonin’s passage. A few low thornberries and scrub ash bushes grew alongside the road, with its unvarying width of more than fifteen cubits.
In casting my perceptions ahead, I could sense nothing. Nothing. Not even rock, or trees.
“Hellfire…” I muttered, realizing what that meant.
Antonin couldn’t distort what I saw, but he could prevent my sensing anything at all, except for the feel of chaos itself. That meant there was something to sense.
Just for the hell of it, I would have liked to create a good .solid thunderstorm, but with chaos ahead, using the energy wasn’t a good idea. Besides, while I still resented Justen’s comments about frivolity becoming chaos, I had listened. And I couldn’t think of an orderly reason for the rain. Had there been an artificially-caused drought, use of my talents to create rain might enhance order. Maybe.
Wheeee… uhhhh… wheeee…
Gairloch’s protest jerked my head back toward the road that slowly rose before us for perhaps another kay. Studying the few trees, scraggly conifers and pines growing at helter-skelter intervals from out of the knee-high mountain grass, I could see nothing lurking around or behind them. Nor was anything visible on the upslope before us.
Right-handed, I flicked the reins. “Come on. We really don’t have anywhere else to go, old fellow.”
Whheee.
“No, we don’t.” I extended my left hand toward the staff, still safe and waiting in the saddle holder. “Oooo…” The subjective heat flashed to my fingers even before they reached the black lorken of my staff.
Something was definitely waiting over the crest of the road.
I wiped my forehead, suddenly sweating in the cold glare of the winter sun.
Wheeee… eee…
“I know. There are evil types in front of us.”
Again, I tried to sense what lay over the hill-crest before me, whatever it was that Gairloch disliked. All I could feel was a sense of heat, of the fire that was Antonin’s trademark.
I glanced at the hillside to the left and right of the road. Did I really have to keep to it?
A quick survey answered that question. All those short and gently-sloping meadows ended in piles of jumbled rock at the base of rocky slopes that would have taxed a mountain sheep.
I looked again, realizing belatedly what had happened, shaking my head as I did. Once the pass had been a standard narrow gap-or just a solid wall of rock. Then, someone, something, a long time ago, perhaps as far back as when Candar had been united under the Wizards of Fairhaven, had .blasted through. Not only had they built the wizards’ road, but they had rearranged the entire geography.
Maybe, just maybe, Magistra Trehonna had been right. I definitely didn’t like that thought.
With the help of the weather and time, the sheer facings had crumbled, leaving what seemed a narrow natural ravine running into the Westhorns. But any crumbled rock had been periodically removed from the road surface. Under Gairloch’s hooves was the same white road surface-the same wizard-stone-that paved the streets of Frven.
Not that any of that exactly helpeo“ as Gairloch and I proceeded toward the crest of the pass, toward that narrow gap in the sheer stone wall that towered hundreds of cubits upward.
Wheeee…
On the edge of the hard surface lay a brownish square, the tattered remains of a pack or something, and, in the higher grass behind… fragments of white. I swallowed.
Wheeeee… eeeee… Gairloch’s steps skittered.
“I know.” I chucked the reins again and looked up.
Ahead, arrayed a half-kay ahead, blocking the entrance to the narrow pass, was a troop. A white-clad, white-faced wizard troop of warriors… soldiers… at least they all had weapons that glinted in the near-noon sun.
I wiped my forehead again with the back of my sleeve.
In front of the silent, ghost-white apparitions rode a knight on-what else-a white horse. The horse, over four cubits at the shoulder, stood there in the sunlight. Neither the horse’s metal breastplate nor the knight’s unburnished plate armor re
flected the sunlight. Knights had never enjoyed much success, except in service of chaos, because that much plate was a wonderful place in which to concentrate fire. Of course, this knight had probably served chaos far longer than he had ever wanted to.
A damned knight. In more ways than one, I knew. Behind him waited a pack of armed figures, not exactly men. Unhappily, each of those figures carried a sword which glinted and looked razor-sharp.
The knight’s helmet visor was down, and he carried a lance pointed in my direction. The lance looked to be a solid pole with a glistening white tip-chaos-tipped, if you will.
Ml of the predictability of Antonin’s tactics did not make them less effective.
The white horse lifted one hoof, then another, carrying the silent knight toward me at an even pace, no spring in his steps, and no wavering. The knight said nothing.
“Easy…”
The white-haired, white-faced, white-clothed figures began to walk also, their armor creaking like unoiled doors, without rhythm, without order, their swords almost flapping to an unseen and unheard breeze.
Wheee… Gairloch kept moving, if slowly.
“I know. It wasn’t exactly my idea, either.”
Farther ahead in the grass to the right of the road were some more white fragments. I glanced from the ghosts to the bones and the tattered leathers. My eyes scanned the rest of the high grass, glimpsing a few other remnants of other travelers.
The bones were real. So not all of the figures could be illusions; but were they all real? My senses didn’t say, because the blankness that enclosed the pass ahead foiled that. Still… I grinned, half-scared, half-elated, and flicked the reins, then dropped them on the saddle, grabbing the staff with both hands as Gairloch trotted toward the knight and I bounced along with him.
The knight’s lance came up slowly, almost as if drawn toward the staff, the white tip glinting in the light, red behind the white of chaos.
Whhhhsttt… A line of fire flew toward me, spattering off my staff.
Thumpedy, thump… Gairloch carried me toward the lance.
Whhhhsssttt… The second fire-line curved toward us, again spraying around me.
The Magic of Recluce Page 48
