Magi'i of Cyador

LXXIV

IN THE LATE afternoon, Lorn leans forward in the saddle. He rubs his forehead, ignoring the burning in his eyes, and the itching of salty sweat on the two-day old stubble on his neck. Then he straightens, forcing himself erect as Second Company nears the locked and sealed granite structure that is the northeast midpoint chaos tower.

“ … too bad didn’t put a waystation here …” murmurs a lancer riding behind Lorn.

“ … make too much sense …”

Lorn motions, and the second squad turns out from the ward-wall and follows the road that loops around the midpoint chaos tower and the low wall that connects it to the ward-wall.

In the fading afternoon light, as he rides within fifty cubits of the solid granite walls, Lorn studies the bulk of the midpoint chaos tower. Is it his imagination, or does the granite of the tower somehow seem less solid than the tower at Jakaafra? He frowns, concentrating on the tower with both sight and fatigued chaos-senses.

He shakes his head.

“Ser? You all right?” asks Kusyl.

“I’m fine.” He offers a laugh. “As fine as any of us are, anyway.”

As Kusyl nods and looks away, Lorn’s lips tighten. From what he can tell, the midpoint chaos tower has failed. There are no pulses of chaos energy flowing in the cupridium conduits from the building to the ward-wall, although the wards along the wall proper still hold and flare their chaos net.

The flow of chaos must be traveling all the way from Eastend and Jakaafra. Is that why the Accursed Forest is now attacking along the northeast ward-wall? Or had the tower failed years earlier and the failure been kept silent?

Again … what he does not know would fill endless scrolls. He rubs his forehead once more, knowing that they still have another sixteen kays to cover before they reach the waystation.