The Death of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  By mid-morning, the high gray clouds began to break, but the wind remained light, although it had changed direction, coming from the north, and seemed more chill than in Kyphrien.

  Riding past the olive trees, I wondered how many of the groves belonged to Hensil, the trader who had commissioned the chair set. Somehow, I liked Antona better than Hensil, although I couldn’t say I liked her occupation better. They both catered to human appetites, but I have never liked the idea of any trade in human beings. Then again, just because he was richer, was Hensil any better than Fusion, who had wanted me to punish a starving boy? Food traders withheld food for those who had more coins, and traders in women effectively withheld sex for those who had more coins. Except-I shook my head- women could think, and olives presumably didn’t.

  “You look worried, Order-master,” commented Yelena.

  “Comparing olives and women,” I mumbled.

  Jylla and Freyda grinned at each other.

  Weldein brushed back his longish blond hair and said softly, “You have to think about that?”

  Even I had to smile.

  The olive groves diminished to scattered stands, and eventually gave way to sparser hillsides covered with low and gnarled cedars. The villages grew less frequent, as did travelers. We stopped to water the horses around midday at a narrow stream running between two hills. To our right, downstream, a small flock of sheep had churned the grass around a damp area into a long streak of brown on brown.

  “Good thing they’re downstream,” offered Yelena.

  About to scoop up a mouthful of water, I stopped, deciding a little orderspelling on the water wouldn’t hurt. Yelena drank from her canteen. So did Weldein, but I wanted to save the redberry in mine. So I orderspelled some water. I could almost feel the grit and some chaos spill out.

  “How can you drink that?” asked Jylla. “Won’t you get the flux?”

  “Very carefully,” I told her. “I wouldn’t drink it if you don’t have to.”

  “But you are.”

  “I orderspelled it.”

  Freyda and Jylla looked at each other and shook their heads. After that, I stood beside Gab-loch and took out the cheese and hard biscuits.

  “Would you like some?” I offered a small wedge of the white cheese to each of them. Even the Finest aren’t exactly that well off.

  “Thank you,” said Weldein and Yelena.

  Freyda and Jylla nodded thanks.

  “How long will it take to get to Lythga?” According to Krystal, the trip was four days hard riding to Jikoya, and then another two to Lythga and that part of the Lower Easthorns.

  “A little over six days,” answered Yelena after swallowing half the wedge of cheese in a single bite. “The way you’re going to Hydlen is almost an eight-day longer.”

  “I really don’t want to ride up the direct route to Arastia. That’s like announcing my arrival with a large trumpet and saying, ‘Hello, Gerlis, here I am.’ It’s not that healthy.”

  Yelena frowned. “You went up against the first chaos wizard alone.”

  “Then I was even younger and stupider. Actually, that was my second. Antonin didn’t have an army camped next to him. The first one did, and I ran like hell, and was very lucky to escape.” I didn’t point out that being able to shield myself from the troops’ seeing me had helped a lot, and they still almost got me shooting off arrows blind. That shielding hadn’t worked against the wizard, only the troops, and it wouldn’t work against Gerlis himself. “Also, the point is to get back to Kyphrien with enough information to let the autarch know what is happening.”

  That got a snort from Jylla, and I looked over at her, standing beside her mount. She turned pale.

  “You made your point, Lerris.” Yelena’s tone was dry.

  “What point?” I really wasn’t that angry, but I had been irritated.

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll still be lucky to get back in one piece.”

  “I have great confidence in you, Order-master.”

  I was glad someone did.

  I packed up the cheese, orderspelled more water, and used some of it to wash my face. Below us, the sheep milled around more, and then drifted farther away from the road.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly to Yelena as we rode onward and away from the sheep.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.” She paused. “You know what makes you dangerous, Lerris?”

  “Me, dangerous?”

  “You,” she affirmed, glancing back toward the three who followed several lengths back and lowering her voice. “You just do whatever needs to be done. You do it with as much force as you can.”

  “That’s practical. You do it the best way you can. If you have to do it, then do it. And if you don’t, then don’t.” I was embarrassed and started looking at the road ahead, for sheep, for kaystones, for anything.

  The hills got flatter on the road to Dasir, and the sun got hotter, and the light breeze died down.

  Kaaa… cchwwww! I rubbed my nose and tried not to sneeze again.

  Jylla’s sneeze wasn’t much more delicate than mine.

  With the lower hills, the packed dark clay of the road had turned drier, redder, and dustier.

  Kaaachewwww!!!

  “You have an impressive sneeze,” offered Yelena.

  “Thank you.” My nose was running, reddish from the dust that seemed everywhere.

  “It’s been a dry year, this side of Kyphrien,” she went on. “That causes the dust. But it’s better than the mud.”

  Between coughing and sneezing, I wasn’t sure that dust was preferable to mud. Being an order-master is helpful for keeping away flies and bugs, but it doesn’t do much for dust. I itched everywhere and wondered if The Basis of Order dealt with itches. That was the problem, though. When you need to learn something it’s late, often too late. I sighed and resolved to read through the book that evening.

  With each step, the dust rose. And the dust rose and fell, and poor Gairloch’s legs looked like he wore boots made of red dust. I just wore a cloak of the stuff.

  Khhaaa… cheww!

  Overhead, the late fall sky had turned a cheerful blue-green, and bright, and the wind had died, making the day seem warmer, warm enough that by mid-afternoon I was sweating, and thin lines of mud ran down my cheeks.

  My backside was sore by the time the sun hung on the edge of the low hills behind us. Kyphrien already seemed impossibly far behind. I was still sneezing, and my nose was running red mud. My eyes itched, and I wanted to club Gerlis to death with my staff, just to get things over with sooner.

  “We’ll stay there.” Yelena pointed to a kaystone on the left side of the road that said “Matisir.”

  I squinted down the road toward a clump of buildings that seemed slumped between two low hills.

  “The barracks is right off the square, if you can call it a square.”

  Jylla sighed. Weldein flicked his reins.

  Matisir contained perhaps ten buildings. One was the barracks for outliers and transient members of the Finest, and one was a long stable. Both were of mud brick covered with a thin layer of white plaster that the red dust and rain had turned an uneven pink. They had red-tiled roofs.

  Across the flat grassless expanse that was a square, by the virtue of a large stone tablet commemorating something, was a two-story structure, also of mud bricks, but without the plaster, with a peeling signboard bearing a crude picture of a fireplace.

  “That’s the Old Hearth,” explained Yelena. “Local herders go there. New recruits… once.”

  We rode straight to one end of the stables. I took the smallest stall, and unsaddled Gairloch.

  Kaaachew…

  “Still sneezing, Order-master?” asked Yelena.

  “Damned dust…” I kept brushing Gairloch until he looked clean, and until I had a second coat of dust. Then I found some feed for him and a bucket of water. About that time a bell rang. The others-except for Yelena-had left.

  “Our rooms
are there,” she explained. “You rate an officer’s space.”

  The room was narrow-less than five cubits deep and only about ten wide, with a single shuttered window-no glass, no hearth. I set everything on the floor. There was no table, only a single narrow canvas cot. If I had an officer’s space, I felt sorry for Weldein, Jylla, and Freyda.

  “Dinner won’t be long, when the second bell rings.” Yelena left, carrying a bedroll and her knapsack.

  First, I beat the dust out of my clothes, standing outside my room.

  “You’ll just get dusty tomorrow,” observed Weldein from a good dozen cubits upwind.

  “That’s tomorrow.”

  I found the washroom and a pump, and used almost two buckets of water-cold water-to get the dust and mud off me. I blew red mud from my nose, dug red clots from my hair, and washed red mud from between my toes, from dust that had sifted down my boots. Finally, I got clean enough that the world didn’t smell like red grit. Then I shaved. As I was drying, the second bell rang, and I had to scramble back into my clothes.

  The three trestle tables were mostly filled, although the majority of those eating seemed to be outliers, both from their pale green leathers and shirts and the talk.

  “… Oyster… he says he’s desperate enough for the Old Hearth…”

  “… anyone that desperate?”

  “… swings a sword like a meat chopper…”

  “… know anything about the new wizard in Hydlen?”

  “Berfir is an overgrown herder with a big sword…”

  “… which kind…”

  “… bread, demon-damn it…”

  Yelena gestured to me, and I found a seat on the long bench near the end where an outlier wearing a gold-braided vest sat in a chair.

  “This is local leader Ustrello. Order-master Lerris.”

  “I appreciate the hospitality.” I inclined my head.

  “You are the one who bested the white wizard and discovered the secrets of the wizards’ roads, are you not? The ones no one else has been able to ride?” Ustrello appeared short, but broad, with white mustaches and shoulders that many oxen could have wished for.

  “I was fortunate enough to do so.” I felt embarrassed about having told Yelena about the roads, and then discovering that no one else could find them. That was another unfinished project, although it had lost its urgency when I had killed Antonin.

  Yelena smiled.

  Ustrello inclined his head to the woman between us, with hair in which blond and silver intertwined in a long braid piled on top of her head. “This is my consort-Tasyel.”

  “Is this the famous wizard, the one who did all the marvelous things, and the one with the strongest pony in the world?” She looked from Ustrello to me, as if in confirmation.

  “Gairloch will be pleased to know that he is the strongest pony in the world, and I am pleased to meet you, Tasyel.”

  “Is it true that you have an invisible sack that can never be emptied?”

  I groaned, shaking my head. “You have met Shervan?”

  “Shervan?” Both Ustrello and Tasyel looked puzzled. Yelena smothered a grin.

  “I stopped in Tellura when I first came to Kyphros. I had… cast a spell over some of my possessions… so that I would look like a less tempting target for bandits. When I took something out of a spelled saddlebag, one of the outliers-his name was Shervan-said I had an invisible sack.” I shrugged. “I tried to explain, but he was telling everyone about my miraculous sack.”

  Ustrello laughed. “I have not met Shervan, but I have met his story. All the outliers tell it. I am almost sorry to learn the truth.”

  “There is certainly more that the wizard is not telling, or he would not be a wizard.” The leader’s consort winked at me.

  “Alas… the truth is sometimes discouraging.”

  “Yes… but you have not eaten, and we would not let anyone, especially a famous wizard, go away hungry.” She picked up the huge serving dish and thrust it at me. From the smell it was some form of curried goat stew.

  “Thank you.” Curried, peppered goat or not, I was hungry and took a helping almost as big as those of the outliers.

  Yelena handed me a long basket, and I broke off a suitably impressive chunk of dark moist bread that was still steaming.

  “And the olives, they are also special.” Tasyel pressed a small bucket of olives on me.

  As I took a handful, absently, I wondered about the little thief that Fuston had wanted me to catch and punish. “They look special.” I dipped the bread in the goat-it was even hotter than Rissa’s burkha. My forehead broke out in sweat, and I noticed that Yelena had taken a small bite, and a much smaller serving than I had. Her eyes twinkled.

  “We’re famous for our goat!” Ustrello almost had to yell over the voices from around us. “Nowhere in Candar is it as hot! Tasyel makes the very best.”

  Tasyel beamed, and I swallowed, reaching for whatever was in the pitcher in front of Yelena. Bread without the goat and the fruity fermented teekla helped. I only felt as though I had swallowed half a chaos wizard’s fireball.

  “You like it?”

  “I’ve never tasted anything like it anywhere.”

  Ustrello beamed in turn. Yelena covered her mouth. I ate some more of the bread before I took a much smaller second mouthful of the goat. My forehead still beaded in sweat.

  “The wizard, he eats pretty good, better than you fancy soldiers.” Ustrello jabbed at Yelena.

  “He’s a wizard. I’m not,” countered Yelena, chewing another mouthful of the good bread-without spiced goat. “He’s used to dealing with fire.”

  I was also hungry. I hadn’t eaten that much for breakfast, not as early as I’d gotten up to see Krystal off, and not that much cheese and biscuits at midday. So I kept eating, but had to take another large chunk of the bread.

  “He ate it all.” Tasyel gestured for the casserole dish and dumped it back in front of me.

  I took a second, smaller serving-and more bread.

  “After all, he is a wizard.” Yelena rolled her eyes.

  “Where are you going?” Ustrello asked.

  In between mouthfuls, I answered, “To do some wizardly things.”

  “That is what one would expect from a wizard,” affirmed Tasyel.“Wizards must do those things which the rest of us cannot, and that is why they are wizards.”

  It made sense in a way. Ustrello nodded at her wisdom, and I kept a straight face, glad to keep what I was really up to not too obvious.

  “What do wizards do when they are not being wizards?” asked Ustrello when I had finished the second, smaller helping.

  “Different things. I am a woodworker.”

  “Do you carve things?”

  “I make furniture, mostly, chairs, tables, desks, wardrobes…”

  “Amazing, he is a wizard who does useful things, too.”

  I tried not to choke, and nodded, then took a sip of the pungent teekla.

  Eventually, I struggled out of the cheerful chaos and wandered through the twilight back to my narrow quarters, wondering how Krystal was doing.

  I got a candle from my pack and, yawning, used my striker to bring it into flame. I began to flip through The Basis of Order. As I suspected, there wasn’t anything on dust, although there was a passage on itching that wasn’t much help, since it pointed out that most itches felt worse with an “unordered” mind. Great! Itching disordered the mind, which made the itching feel worse. But there was nothing on remedying the causes of itches, at least not from what I could see with a quick flipping through the pages.

  For lack of quick results, I decided to go back to the introductory sections, the ones that had bored me so often I’d never really grasped them. The first few pages were still boring, but I did find something more interesting partway into the introduction.

  “Pure order cannot nourish life, for living requires growth, and the process of growth is the constant struggle to bring order out of chaos.” I wasn’t sure what it had
to do with Gerlis, but it had to do with boredom. I’d always seen order as boring, but what if I substituted pure order in my equation? I couldn’t make the connection, exactly, but I wanted to think about it.

  I didn’t get too much farther, ending at a paragraph which concluded:

  “… order must embody chaos, and chaos order.”

  That was too arcane for me, almost a boring truism. After blowing out the candle, I curled up to sleep, ignoring the voices outside.

  “… excuse for a horse…”

  “… not knock-kneed like yours…”

  “… what do wizards do? You know, Sergel?”

  Thankfully, it was quiet when I woke, quiet and gray, with the hint of a chill drizzle from flat clouds.

  Breakfast was not quite so noisy as dinner, but with enough of a din that I was glad for the quiet of the road.

  On the way out of Matisir, Yelena asked, “How is your stomach?”

  I considered. “Fine. How about yours?”

  “Too much curried goat.”

  “You didn’t eat that much.”

  “You,” she said wryly, “don’t have to eat it in dozens of different ways at every outliers’ barracks in Kyphros.”

  The mist kept the red road dust down. Gairloch only had a red coating for half a cubit up from his hoofs, but it clung to him more because he was hairier than the sleeker troopers’ mounts.

  That was the way the trip went. Lots of riding on long roads with few travelers. Lots of quiet, with some words between.

  Yelena brought us into Dasir late the next night, where we stayed in yet another barracks with talkative outliers. Dasir was a town, unlike Matisir, and like most Kyphran towns I’d traveled through recently, it had the same roads covered with red dust that clung to everything, even in winter, which was hotter than summer in Recluce. The mist hadn’t lasted; the dust had begun to rise again. The white-plastered houses roofed in red tile were generally squarish with few outside windows and centered on garden courtyards, and their white plaster was pink also.