The Death of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Oppose or hide?”

  “It’s the same thing,” she pointed out. “There’s another problem with knowledge. When you write out a way for using powder, like Sammel did for Berfir, it doesn’t tell you what happens to people.”

  “But it could mean good things as well as bad,” protested Krystal.

  “The results could be good or bad.” I nodded in agreement, then added, “But the idea is bad, like chaos, because when you give someone written knowledge-words or diagrams on a scroll-you separate the knowledge from its effect on people.”

  “How is that different from a blade?” Krystal looked toward the window. “There’s still no sign of rain.”

  “There won’t be for a while,” I said, adding, “When you use a blade, you know, after the first time at least, that someone will get hurt if you use it.”

  “But you can threaten with a blade.”

  “That’s why it appears more effective than knowledge. How can you threaten someone with knowledge? You can’t, not without using it.”

  “Oh. And if you use it, then anyone can-so the use of black steel to confine powder went from rockets to cannon shells to rifles.”

  I frowned. “Not exactly.”

  There was a rap on the door. Krystal opened it, and the autarch stood there, a scroll in hand. Krystal stepped back, and Kasee stepped inside and shut the door in Herreld’s surprised face. Then she slumped into the empty chair beside Krystal.

  “What is it?” Krystal toot out a spare mug and poured some of the ale into it, extending it to the autarch. “You look like you need this.”

  Kasee straightened up. “Thank you.” She took a swallow from the mug. “I need to talk to both of you.” We sat and waited. Kasee took another sip. “Hamor has Worrak, and their forces are massing to march up the Fakla River.” She glanced around. “I wanted to talk to you two, and if I summoned you, then everyone would be there before I had a chance to think.”

  That made sense. Everyone always watched the autarch. “Apparently, Recluce took on the Hamorian ships, and destroyed several, including the flagship, the Frentensea. Leithrrse was on board, and there were no survivors. Someone called Marshal Dyrsse has taken over command. He has a reputation as a rather bloody but effective commander. The remainder of the Hamorian fleet is resupplying, and will be headed here within an eight-day.”

  “They want to hit us before harvest,” said Krystal. “Dyrsse has requested more ships and troops, but is proceeding.” Kasee looked at me. “Things have become more clear.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I’m off to the Lower Easthorns again.”

  Krystal paled, but she said nothing.

  “I don’t want a decision this afternoon.” Kasee looked from Krystal to me and back to Krystal. “I want you to consider the best course.”

  “We can’t wait too long.” Why I pointed that out I had no idea, since I certainly wasn’t enthused about wielding chaos to destroy another army and myself in the process. Maybe it had something to do with knowing that I couldn’t do anything about a fleet and feeling I had to do something.

  “Let me know what you think tomorrow.” Kasee stood and took the scroll with her as she left.

  “Could you and Justen and Tamra talk this over?” asked Krystal.

  If he doesn’t decide to disappear, I thought. “You definitely ought to be here, too.”

  “And Dayala.”

  So she sent poor Herreld off to round up everyone, and we straightened up the room and dragged out two more mugs and some more redberry and ale.

  Tamra arrived first. “What’s this all about?”

  “Hamor.”

  Then came Justen and Dayala, looking slightly disheveled. I had to repress a grin. At his advanced age, yet. Then I thought again-at their advanced ages, yet.

  “You requested us?” Justen asked.

  “Hamor holds all of Hydlen. The new marshal is sending ships and troops to take Ruzor, though probably not for an eight-day, perhaps two. Another army will be marching up the Fakla River and through the Lower Easthorns. We don’t have the forces to send to Lythga, not and still hold Ruzor.” Krystal sat down in the corner chair.

  For a moment, there was silence.

  “I suppose Lerris wants to go out and save Kyphros again?” Tamra leaned back so her chair was on two legs.

  “He had mentioned something like that,” Krystal said. “It’s something he feels compelled to do periodically.”

  “Do you want to die that badly, Lerris?” asked Justen.

  I glared at them both. “You both make me ill. All you can do is tell other people what not to do. Fine. Are you suggesting that the autarch surrender Kyphros to Hamor? After all, probably fewer people-or at least fewer troopers-will die, and who cares about anyone else, anyway?”

  “No one died in Montgren,” said Justen.

  “Montgren didn’t have any army at all and no wizards,” pointed out Krystal. “That meant the Countess had no choice. We do have a choice.”

  “The machines should not prevail,” said Dayala softly.

  Justen looked at her, clearly surprised that she had spoken.

  “Order should not be embodied in cold iron. It is against life and against the Legend.”

  “That seems to settle that,” said Tamra, looking at Justen, then at me.

  The way Dayala said it… I had to agree, but I looked at Krystal, and she nodded.

  “So we can’t allow order to be embodied in iron,” I began, “but the problem is that pure chaos can be concentrated and developed without being attached to anything.” That seemed clear enough to me.

  “Of course.” Justen sounded exasperated. “That’s the way the world is. Order has to be able to order something. You can’t have pure order because order means the organized arrangement of something. Chaos is disorganization.”

  “But it has to disorganize something,” said Tamra.

  “But even chaos has some organization when it’s used by the white wizards.” I knew I was on to something.“When they throw firebolts, what are they doing?”

  Dayala nodded.

  “Throwing firebolts organized with a minimum of order,” answered Tamra. “That doesn’t change the fact that you need to duck if you don’t want to get fried. Unless you have a better practical solution.”

  I knew I was right about this one. “When I destroyed Gerlis, what I did was let chaos build inside channels of ordered rock holding lots of little bits of iron-”

  “Iron ore. It generally works that way,” Justen agreed. “And if you can go deep enough, you can find it in most places.” He took the last of the ale Krystal had left and swallowed it. Then he poured more from the second pitcher. “Warm, but good.”

  “But…” I pointed out. “The molten rock was still rock. That means that-”

  “That’s right.” Justen nodded as if he’d known that all along, and I wanted to brain him with my staff. “Pure chaos isn’t usable. I suppose you could create it, but it has to be tied to something because you need some way to control it.”

  “This is simple stuff,” protested Tamra. “That’s why Sammel was so dangerous. He knew some of the basics of order. What’s your point, Lerris?” She grinned, and I wanted to brain her.

  “A sword is simple.” Krystal paused and smiled. “In the right hands, it kills people very quickly.”

  “What did you do to defeat chaos?” I had a good idea, but I wanted Justen to tell me.

  “Concentrated order through a fire-eye lens. It took most of the sun’s light. Putting that much order in a small place created too much order, and that order tore apart anything it touched.”

  “That’s what melted Fairhaven?” asked Krystal.

  Justen nodded. “Mostly.”

  “Couldn’t we use that on the Hamorians?” I asked.

  “No. It took a year to build the device, and a lot of free order that doesn’t exist. Even if it did, or you could free it, which I wouldn’t be surprised if you could, we don’t have the time.
”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I don’t know.” Justen shrugged.

  We talked a lot more than that, until dinner, but never came to a resolution clearer than the four of us would have to go to the Lower Easthorns and do something. What that might be, none of us would say, probably because we all feared it meant using order to raise chaos to destroy an order based on machines. And that would make a light-fired mess.

  Then, after everyone else left, things got worse.

  Krystal bolted the door and sat down at the table. She didn’t look at me, and it didn’t take much imagination to figure that she was angry.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, just kept looking out the narrow window. I folded the shirt I’d left there to dry and put it in the wardrobe..

  “You don’t want me to go?”

  Still no answer.

  I straightened a stack of papers in the corner and looked back at Krystal. She hadn’t moved.

  I waited for a while, looking out the window at the stars above the sea. Despite the warmth of the night, they looked cold and distant. After a while, I touched her shoulder, and she pushed my hand away.

  “Please don’t touch me.”

  “I can’t fix whatever’s wrong if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “Fix things? You fix things? You are the most arrogant, self-centered- Sometimes, I hate you!”

  “Hate me? What did I do?”

  Krystal finally stood, almost crackling with power of some sort, and I backed away as she walked to the window.

  “Do I have to spell everything out one letter at a time? You could tell I wasn’t happy about your… exploit with Sammel, but you seemed to understand. I thought you did. But you didn’t. That’s clear enough.”

  “But-”

  Krystal didn’t even listen to my objection and went right on. “First, you go off and defeat one white wizard and rescue Tamra. That wasn’t too bad. Then you set up a house and woodworking shop, and you condescend to maintain the house, and the quarters for my guards, and feed them. Then you charge off and defeat this Gerlis, and almost get killed in the process. After that, you can’t wait to go out and get aged ten years! I thought that might have taught you something, but, no, here we go again. Lerris, the hero, off to save Kyphros and Krystal once more!”

  “I don’t understand.” And I didn’t. It seemed simple enough. Krystal didn’t have enough forces to hold Ruzor and fight off the sundevils coming through the Lower Easthorns. There was a lot of chaos under Candar, and a lot of rocks and stones in the mountains, and three wizards and a druid at least had a chance of stopping that army.

  “Lerris, your body may have aged ten years, but your mind has a lot of catching up to do.” She turned to look at me, and her face was stone-cold in the light from the single wall lamp.

  “It might help if you’d give me some idea of why you’re so upset.” I bent down and smoothed the coverlet on the bed.

  “It might help if you tried to understand instead of- Oh, what’s the use?”

  “Understand what? That you can’t do it all? That I don’t want to see you run over and destroyed by various wizards-”

  “What you want to do is smother me! If there’s any danger, let Lerris try to reduce it. If there’s a problem, let Lerris try to fix it. Being a blade is dangerous. You can’t protect me from everything, and I’m so tired of your guilty, hang-dog look when you feel you haven’t been able to save me or do as well as you think you should. Darkness! You muttered all the way back from Hydlen about how sorry you were. Death is part of life. People die. I may die. But stop taking on the weight of the world. Stop jumping in and throwing yourself in the fire- sometimes to save people who could care less. Who will care in a hundred years if you get ground to powder in the Lower Easthorns?”

  “I care now. I care because you don’t have enough troops to fight two battles at the same time. I can’t help you here, because anything I tried to do near a city would destroy the city and kill a lot of people-maybe you.”

  “Why don’t you say it that way… instead of just pretending to be high and noble?”

  “I wasn’t pretending anything.”

  “Oh.Lerris.”

  We didn’t fall into each other’s arms, but at least she didn’t yell at me anymore, and the room wasn’t quite as cold as the Roof of the World in winter, but I didn’t sleep that well, and I don’t think Krystal did, either.

  XCIX

  “WHEN DO WE talk to Kasee?” I asked Krystal.

  Even right after dawn, even with fall approaching, the morning was hot enough that I had been sweating as soon as I had climbed out of bed.

  “Dayala told her to wait.” Krystal’s voice was still cool- not as icy as two nights earlier, but cool.

  “Fine.” We’d been waiting for two days. I straightened my shirt and peered out the window at the calm waters of the harbor. A ship lay berthed at the main pier, the only one in days, bearing a Nordlan ensign. “There’s a ship in the harbor.”

  “Maybe he’s got a cargo of flour.”

  “We wish.”

  “We can wish.”

  I winced.

  Krystal belted her blade in place, getting ready to leave. I hadn’t seep that much of her for the last few days, as though she were not quite avoiding me, but almost.

  At that point there was a rap on the door, and Krystal opened it to find both Herreld and Fregin standing there, Fregin with a staff he was using to hobble around while his leg healed.

  “Master Lerris,” stammered Fregin, “begging your pardon, but there’s a tall mage, I mean, he’s wearing black, and he’s asking for you, and he came off the Nordlan steamer.”

  “A tall mage?” I didn’t know what mage might be looking for me, especially one from Recluce. So I took my staff and turned to Krystal. “I’d like you to come.”

  She looked at me for a moment. “All right.”

  I had the feeling she thought I was trying not to be condescending, but what was I supposed to do?

  “Where is he?”

  “In the dining hall, ser. Eating.”

  We left Fregin behind as we hurried along the narrow corridor and down the twisting steps. Even that early, the corridors were not-quite-stifling. The dining hall was empty except for a single figure in black sitting near one end of a long trestle table. A half loaf of bread, some cheese, and a mug were on the wood before him.

  Almost as we entered, he stopped eating and swallowed.

  “Greetings, Lerris.” My father stood up from the table and bowed. He looked impressive, with the hard darkness of order laid over the twisted mix of chaos and order that Justen-and I, now-had. He also looked pale and tired.

  “Greetings.” I bowed slightly and gestured to Krystal. “This is Krystal. She’s the autarch’s commander. Krystal, this is my father.”

  “I am pleased to meet you, Krystal, both as commander and as a person.” He bowed to her, and I wished I had his charm.

  “It is my pleasure. I have heard much of you, both from Lerris and Justen.” She returned his greeting with a bow every bit as formal and deep as his.

  My father frowned, then said to Krystal, “I fear I bring ill tidings, although you may already know them.”

  “We have heard that Hamor intends to attack.”

  “A fleet of some twoscore ships is being assembled at Worrak, and they will sail-or steam,” he added with a bleak smile, “within the eight-day.”

  “Do you know whether there will be an attack through the Easthorns?”

  He pursed his lips. “An army is assembling, but my ability to see much beyond the waters is limited.”

  Krystal nodded. “I should notify the autarch. Perhaps you and your father would like some time together, Lerris.”

  With that, and a brief smile, she was gone.

  “She seems quite able,” offered my father.

  “Let’s sit down.” I set my staff on the floor and slipped onto the be
nch. “She is more than able.”

  “She seems… a trace… formal.”

  “Right now, she’s… concerned.” I didn’t really want to blurt out that my consort was still more than a little angry at me, especially not right after he’d arrived.

  He nodded and picked up a corner of the loaf of bread.

  “Why did you come here?” I asked.

  “You are my son, Lerris. Hamor is out to destroy Kyphros and you two as well.”

  I swallowed. It didn’t make sense. My father had sent me away without answering my simplest questions, yet he had come to Ruzor. I understood him even less than Krystal, and I still didn’t understand her. “I still don’t understand.”

  He drank some water from the mug and cleared his throat. “You understand the Balance now, I trust. You also understand why Recluce has opposed the spread of knowledge or machines, even since the time of Dorrin.”

  “Because more order leads to more chaos, and, I guess, the more of each, the more the chance for even greater destruction.”

  “That was the idea. It was even my idea, and Justen’s as well. He was one of the finest black engineers, you know, and even he thought that ordered machines couldn’t be made without black iron. We were wrong. Better metalworking techniques changed that, and Hamor has created more order, and more chaos. Recluce has weeded out, over the generations, wizards drawn to chaos, and chaos has found it harder-that’s not precisely correct-to create chaos foci. There never were very many wizards in the rest of the world, besides Candar, probably because most wizards come from demon or angel stock, and those few were easy enough to find through their… modifications of order.” He sipped more water. “It’s dry here.”

  “Demon or angel stock?” That was something I hadn’t heard before.

  “It’s not widely spread for a number of obvious reasons. There’s no record of flame-red hair or silver hair like Creslin’s before the fall of angels and the beginning of the Legend. That’s all buried in the Brotherhood archives.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “You’d have been hard to find in Nordla, and you wouldn’t have lasted a week in Swartheld-that’s where dangergelders go it they go to Hamor.”