Nylan closed his eyes. He didn’t feel like arguing. Maybe killing was easy, but feeling the deaths of those you killed wasn’t. Yet what else could they have done? He could feel himself drifting back into darkness, and he let it happen.
CXIII
THE WARM WIND coming through the open windows raised dust off the floor of the great room, dust that appeared no matter how often the stones were swept or washed.
Nylan rested his elbows on the table and closed his eyes. Finally, he opened them and took a sip of the cold water. His body still felt as if it had been pummeled in a landslide of building stones and sharp-edged bricks.
He couldn’t rest, even though Ryba and Dyliess were, and Ayrlyn was. So were most of the children. He took another sip of the water and glanced through the nearest narrow window slot at the green-blue sky and the scattered clouds of late summer. Then he held his aching head in his hands.
Relyn eased into the room. The former noble wore a hand-dyed black cloak over equally black trousers and shirt.
“Relyn?”
“I came to thank you.”
“Thank me?” Nylan wanted to laugh. “For what?”
“For making things clear, ser.” Relyn eased onto the bench across the table from Nylan.
Nylan studied the man in black. “My head still hurts, and I guess I’m not thinking too well. Just how did I make things clear?”
Relyn scratched his head, then rubbed his nose. “First, I thought you had magic that you brought from Heaven. When the magic from Heaven died, I thought you had tools from Heaven. Then I watched as you kept building things, and I thought that the greatest magic is in a man’s mind.”
“It helps to have knowledge,” Nylan said wryly. “Sometimes, the biggest hurdle is just knowing that something can be done. Or that it can’t.”
Relyn smiled apologetically, but did not speak.
Nylan took another sip of water. “Now what are you going to do?” he asked after he set down the mug.
“For a time, I will try to learn more of the way of the Leg-end, and the way of order, so long as you and the singer will teach me. In time, I will leave and teach others.”
“Teach them what?”
“What I have learned. That what a man does must be in harmony with what he thinks. That order is the greatest force of all.” Relyn shrugged. “You know.”
Nylan wasn’t sure what he knew. “That may not make you all that popular, Relyn.”
“I have already decided that. I will have to go east, or circle Lornth and go far to the west. I would not be well received in Lornth, especially after Lornth is vanquished.”
“From what the healer has discovered from the traders, Lord Sillek has hired mercenaries, and has more resources than ever before. Yet you think he will be vanquished.” Nylan’s arm swept across the great room. “We have perhaps a score and a half, twoscore at the most, and how many will he bring? Fivescore? Six? Twentyscore? Fortyscore?”
“They will not be enough.” Relyn smiled. “Three more women arrived at Tower Black today. There was one yesterday, and two the day before. They brought blades, and some brought coins. One rode up bringing her own packhorse loaded with goods. She was willing to give them to the angel even if she could not stay.”
Nylan took a deep breath. “The women of this world are fed up.”
“If I understand you, that is true.” Relyn’s smile vanished. “The longer Lord Sillek waits, the more guards and goods Westwind will have. Two of those who rode up today already had their own blades and could use them.”
“I’m afraid that is why your Lord Sillek will not wait.”
“He is not my Lord Sillek. A disowned man has no lord. That is one of the few benefits.” Relyn laughed. “And few would attack a one-armed man, for there is no honor in that. So, when the time comes, I will depart.”
“Why don’t you leave now?”
“I would see the destruction of Lornth. Then I can tell the world of the power of the Legend.”
“You have a great deal of faith.” Far more than I do, thought Nylan. Far more.
“No. This is something I know.” Relyn slipped off the bench. “You are tired, and I would not weary you more.”
For a time, Nylan sat, eyes closed, but his head ached, and he did not feel sleepy. Relyn was talking as though Ayrlyn and Nylan were the prophets of some new faith, and that bothered the smith, as if his head didn’t hurt enough already.
Finally, he stood and walked to the open south door and crossed the causeway. The large cairn was now twice its former length, and Nylan could no longer distinguish the separate smaller cairns that dotted the southeast section of the meadow, almost opposite the mouth of the second canyon from which Gerlich’s men had poured.
A crew of new guards, led by Saryn, had already blocked the narrow passage at the upper end of the canyon and erected a small and hidden watchtower that overlooked the trail leading there.
How much did you let happen, Ryba, wondered Nylan, because you dared not risk going against your visions? Maybe… maybe there are worse things than feeling deaths. Is feeling the deaths of those I killed so difficult compared to your causing deaths that may have been unnecessary-and knowing that those deaths may have been unnecessary… and living with those deaths forever?
A small figure sat on the end of the causeway wall, looking toward the cairns. Suddenly, she turned and asked, “Why didn’t you save Mother?”
Nylan tried not to recoil from the directness of the question.
After a moment, he said slowly, “I tried to save as many as I could.” By killing as many of the invaders as I could, he added to himself.
“They weren’t Mother.” Niera’s dark eyes bored into Nylan. “They weren’t Mother. The angel let the other mothers stay in the tower.”
“Did your mother wish to stay in the tower?”
“No. You and the angel should have made her stay!”
Nylan had no ready answer for that, not a totally honest one, but he continued to meet the girl’s eyes. Then he said, “Perhaps we should have, but I cannot change what should have been.”
At that, Niera turned and looked at the cairns, and her thin frame shook. Nylan stepped up beside her, and lightly touched her shoulder. Without looking, she pushed his hand away. So he just stood there while she silently sobbed.
CXIV
A STIFF AND cool breeze, foreshadowing fall, swept from the sunlit meadows and fields through the open and newly hung doors of the smithy. With the air came the scent of cut grass, of dust raised by the passing horses, and of recently sawn fir timbers. Inside, the air smelled of hot metal, forge coals, and sweat-of burned impurities, scalded quench steam, and oil.
Nylan brought the hammer down on the faintly red alloy, scattering sparklets of oxides. The anvil-a real anvil, heavy as ice two on a gas giant, if battered around the edges-and the hammer rang. Nylan couldn’t help smiling.
“Is it good?” asked Ayrlyn. “I’ve been looking for one all summer. I got this from a widow not far from Gnotos.”
“It’s good. Very good. It feels good.”
“You look happy when you work here, when you build or make things, and I can almost feel the order you put in them.”
“You two,” said Huldran, easing more charcoal into the forge. “You talk about feeling. It’s as though you feel what you do more than you see it.”
“He does,” said Ayrlyn. “He can sense the grain of the metal.”
Nylan grinned at the healer. “She can sense sickness in the body.”
Huldran shook her head, and the short blond hair flared away from her face. “I’ve always thought that. I don’t think I really wanted to know. With the laser, I figured that was because it was like the engineer’s powernet… Is all the magic in this place like that, something that has to be felt, that can’t really be seen?”
“In a way you can see it,” responded Ayrlyn, brushing the flame-red hair back over her ear. “It’s a flow. If it’s good, it’s smooth, like
a dark current in a river.”
“I don’t know that it’s really magic,” mused Nylan, looking at the cooling metal and then taking the tongs to slip it back into the forge. As the lander alloy reheated, his eyes flicked to the iron that had come from a broken blade. It waited by the forge for the next step of his blade-making when he would have to flatten the two and then start hammer-folding them together and drawing them out-only to refold and draw, refold and draw. If only the smithing weren’t for blades… He licked his lips and then he continued. “You can feel-”
“You can. I can’t,” pointed out Huldran.
“You may be better off that you can’t in some ways,” replied Ayrlyn.
“You can feel,” Nylan repeated, “flows of two kinds of energies. Apparently, the ones I can use are the black ones, or at least they say I’m a black wizard, and you can build and heal, or they help build and heal. The stuff the wizard that came with Gerlich had, and Relyn thinks he was the same one that was in the first attack, is white, and it feels ugly, and tinged with red. It’s almost like the chaotic element in a powernet, the fluxes that aren’t that can still tear a net apart. Well, that’s what the firebolts he was throwing felt like.”
“Like a powernet chaos flux?” asked Ayrlyn with a slight wince.
“Worse, in some ways.” Nylan looked at the alloy on the coals, barely red, but that was as hot as it was going to get. Initially, working with it was a cross between hot and cold forging, and slow as a glacier on Heaven. “I’ve got to get back to this. With all these recruits showing up, the marshal wants more blades, and Saryn wants more arrowheads.”
“You know, ser,” pointed out Huldran. “I could use the old anvil to make arrowheads or whatever, and we could bring in some help with the tongs and bellows.”
Nylan nodded, ruefully. “I should have thought of that.”
“Does this mean we really need another anvil?” asked Ayrlyn.
“Well…” began Nylan. “Since you asked…”
“I search and search and finally get you an anvil, and now you want two.” Ayrlyn gave an overdramatic sigh. “Nothing’s ever enough, is it?”
“No. But no one pays any attention when I say it. We make hundreds of arrowheads, arrowheads that really ought to be cast, and Saryn and Fierral just want more. Ryba wants more blades.” Nylan gave back an equally overdramatic sigh and pulled the metal from the coals and eased it onto the anvil. “And it’s time to work on this blade.” He looked at Huldran. “I can handle this alone. You go find an assistant. One, to begin with.”
“I thought…” began the blond guard.
“Rule three hundred of obscure leadership. If it’s your idea, you get to implement it.”
Ayrlyn laughed. After a moment, so did Huldran.
Nylan lifted the hammer.
The cooling wind swept into the smithy, bringing with it the sound of the sheep on the hillside, the shouted instructions, and the clatter of wooden wands from the space outside the tower. The hammer fell on the alloy that would be the heart of yet another blade for the guards of Westwind.
Ayrlyn looked at the hammer, the anvil, and the face of the engineer-smith and shivered. Neither Nylan nor Huldran saw the shiver or the darkness behind her eyes.
CXV
SILLEK STEPS INTO the small upper tower room after a preemptory knock.
The mists in the glass vanish, and Terek stands. Despite the heat in the room and the lack of wind from the two open and narrow windows, the white wizard appears cool.
Sillek blots the dampness from his forehead, but remains standing.
“I have but a few moments, Ser Wizard, but since we last talked,” asks Sillek, “what have you discovered about the angel women on the Roof of the World?”
“Discovering matters through a glass is slow and difficult. One sees but dimly.”
“Dimly or not, you must have discovered something.”
“Hissl was correct in one particular,” Terek admits slowly. “The angel women have no thunder-throwers remaining.”
“What else have you discovered?” asks Sillek.
“He underestimated the talents of the black mage.”
“We knew that. Anything else?”
“The black mage is a smith, and even without his fires from Heaven he can forge those devil blades that seem able to slice through plate and chain mail. He and his assistant are also forging arrowheads.”
“Forging? That is odd.”
Terek shrugs. “It is slow, but the arrowheads are like the blades, much stronger, and they can cut some mail.”
“Can you tell how many of these angels there are?”
“There are more than twoscore, perhaps threescore, women on the Roof of the World. A dozen or so remain of the original angels, and only the one man.”
Sillek nods. “Then we should have less trouble than my sire.”
“I would not be that certain,” offers Terek. “Those who remain seem very good, and they are spending much time training the newcomers. I am not an armsman, but it seems to me that they are very good at teaching our women, or those who were our women before they fled Lornth. Some of the women who fled to the angels killed quite a few of Hissl’s armsmen.”
Sillek purses his lips. “That would mean that the longer we wait, the better the forces they will have?”
“You would know that better than I, ser.” Terek shrugs. “I can tell that the mage is also getting stronger. He is also building something else, it appears to be a mill of some sort. Their smithy is largely complete, and they seem to have more livestock.”
“Demons!” Sillek looks at the blank glass and then at Terek. His voice softens slightly. “I am not angry at you, Terek.”
“I understand, ser. This situation is not… what it might be.”
“No. It’s not.” Sillek offers a head bow. “Thank you.”
After he. leaves the tower room, Sillek adjusts the heavy green ceremonial tunic and heads for the Great Hall.
By the side entrance, Genglois waits for him. “You have a moment, ser?”
“I suppose so. Do we know what this envoy of Karthanos wants?”
Genglois shrugs, and his jowls wobble as his shoulders fall. “It is said he has brought a heavy chest with him.”
“That’s not good. It’s either a veiled threat or a bribe. Or both, which would be even worse.” The Lord of Lornth stands for a moment, motionless, then opens the door and steps into the hall, where he walks to the dais and sits on the green cushion-the only soft part of the dark wooden high-backed chair that dates nearly to the founding of Lornth. He gestures.
A trumpet sounds, and the end doors open.
“Ser Viendros of Gallos, envoy from Lord Karthanos, Liege Lord of Gallos and Protector of the Plains.” The voice of the young armsman - in - training almost cracks.
As Viendros marches in followed by two husky and weaponless armsmen carrying a small but heavy chest, Sillek stands and waits for the swarthy envoy to reach the dais.
Viendros offers a deep bow, not shallow enough to be insulting nor deep enough to be mocking, then straightens. “Your Lordship.”
“Welcome, Ser Viendros. Welcome.” Sillek gestures to the chair beside his. As he does, the armsman behind him turns his heavy chair. “Please be seated. You have had a long journey.”
Viendros offers a head bow. “My thanks, Lord Sillek.” He sits without further ceremony, as does Sillek.
“What brings you to Lornth?”
“My lord Karthanos would wish to ensure that you do not misunderstand the events of earlier this summer. I was sent to convey both his deepest apologies, and his regrets, and his tokens of apology.”
Sillek forces his face to remain polite, his voice even. “Misunderstandings do occur, and we are more than willing to help resolve them.”
Viendros glances around the Great Hall, then lowers his voice slightly. “I am not an envoy by choice, My Lord. I do not know the fancy words. I was sent because I am an armsman from a long family of t
hose who have served Gallos.”
“Gallos has been well served by those who bear its blades,” Sillek agrees.
“Lord Karthanos was-how can I say it?-surprised by the unfortunate occurrence which befell your sire on the Roof of the World. He was further… upset, if I might be frank, that you chose to do nothing about that occurrence, especially when it became clear that the evil angels were luring women from Lornth to the Roof of the World. With the best of intentions, that of assisting you in regaining control of that portion of your realm, he dispatched a small force, well armed.” Viendros takes a deep breath. “My brother was the chief armsman of that force. He did not return.”
“I understand few returned,” Sillek says quietly.
“Lord Karthanos also understands that a force led by one of your wizards recently traveled to the Roof of the World and failed to return.”
“That is true,” Sillek admits. “Although I must point out that while that effort had my blessing, it was not backed by my coin or men.”
Viendros swallows. “This is difficult, you understand. I know that your sire and Lord Karthanos had other… misunderstandings in the past, but such… misunderstandings should be put aside, if possible.”
“What does your lord have in mind?” asks Sillek.
Viendros holds up his right hand. “A few words more, first, if you please.” He clears his throat. “Lord Karthanos was fortunate to have a wizard, not so powerful as yours, but one skilled with the glass, and thus Lord Karthanos saw a portion of the battle. I would call it a slaughter myself,” added Viendros. “Now, after seeing that fight, he understands the cruel position in which fate has placed you. He also understands the reasons for your ignoring the Roof of the World while reclaiming the ancient right to the river to the Northern Ocean.”
Sillek nods and waits.
“Lornth is respected, most respected, and Lord Karthanos has been most impressed with the manner in which you have conducted your armsmen. Yet you have refrained from attacking the Roof of the World until your borders were more secure to the west and the north. Again, this appears most wise, especially considering the might of arms of the angels. Yet my lord Karthanos is greatly concerned-”
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