The Chaos Balance

CXX

The silver-haired angel plopped on the ground in front of the bushes, setting Weryl down between his legs, and glancing out across the kays of lower lands filled with tree shoots that separated the house from the older growth of the forest.

He ran his hand across his chin, clean-shaven, and with a few cuts. His hand-forged equivalent of a straight razor wasn’t especially forgiving, especially when there was no equivalent of soap around. Water oozed down his neck from his damp hair.

The grass that had covered the hillside was turning blotchy brown in some places, and not others, and he wondered what pattern the forest had in mind, if it had a mind, for where there would be grass and where there would not.

Weryl levered himself up by grabbing Nylan’s right knee, then stiff-legged his way to the nearest bush, where his fingers closed on a branch, gently.

Ayrlyn sat down beside Nylan, her short hair damp from her efforts to wash it. “What are you thinking this cloudy morning?”

He glanced at the low gray clouds, then at her. “The forest is the key to it all.” Nylan felt stupid-again-for stating the obvious, but the obvious was all he had.

“Do you know why?”

“No. Not exactly. The whole planet is like a ship’s flux system-enormous power, constrained by order, with a continual swirl of lesser fluxes.” Nylan swallowed, then rubbed an itching nose. “The white stuff-what we call chaos-that’s where most of the power lies. Order-the dark flows-they’re more like boundaries than real flows, and they maintain the system. You need both.”

“You’ve made progress.”

“It’s all taxonomy, just reclassifying the stuff we’ve known already.”

Weryl released the first branch, glanced back at his father, then walked perhaps ten cubits before sitting down with a plop to study a green shoot growing in a crack between two stones of the front walk. His fingers stroked the green, gently.

“If there’s no chaos, there’s no energy to run the system,” observed Ayrlyn. “Without your order, then you’d have uncontrolled energy that would swirl out and dissipate in entropic heat?”

“I don’t know. That’s my guess. There’s got to be a balance, and somehow the Old Rats maintained that balance. Something happened-”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to act as system engineers, I guess.”

“I’m no engineer.”

“This isn’t a ship’s system, either. It takes feel. That’s where you come in.”

“Oh?”

“I’m going to try to feel out the system.”

“After what’s already happened?”

“We’ll try it just inside the old growth.”

“We’re going to walk into that?” Ayrlyn frowned.

“Why not? As we found out, it can hit hard even from a distance. What’s the difference between being in the middle of a flux or standing at the edge if it goes chaos?”

Ayrlyn grinned wryly. “Only the size of the particles that you’re reduced to, but I don’t know that I’m in the mood to be reduced.”

“Before you do battle with the forest,” suggested Sylenia, standing by the edge of the bushes, “best you eat.”

“She has a point.” Nylan lurched to his feet and toward Weryl, scooping his son up and carting him back into the small house. The smith’s shoulder brushed the green-glazed ceramic screen. Such artistry-all abandoned so quickly. Then he supposed he’d have abandoned it too, especially if there were a lot of those big cats prowling around. The locals, Ayrlyn had pointed out, didn’t carry much in the way of weapons.

Several loaves of bread were spread on wide leaves, along with some nuts and what looked to be yellow apples.

“Those are pearapples,” Sylenia explained. “Yusek brought me one, once. These are better. They are fresher.”

Nylan sliced off a chunk of the loaf and chewed the moist and tangy bread. “What…is this…?”

“It be squash loaf. I can bake. With but one pot…” The dark-haired woman shrugged. “Weryl, he is good at finding the healthy fruits and things. I follow him.”

Ayrlyn looked at Weryl. So did Nylan. Was Weryl sensing the forest the way he did the notes from the lutar?

“Da! Ahwen!”

“Does this bread keep? For travel?” asked Ayrlyn. “We’ll need something on the way back.”

If we get that far.

Ayrlyn frowned. “Pessimist.”

“I could wrap it in leaves.” Sylenia shrugged. “Do you plan to leave soon?”

“Not that soon,” Ayrlyn said after taking a swallow of water. “The nuts are good.”

“They must be cooked, or they are bitter.”

Nylan was glad Sylenia knew about the local vegetation. He probably would have starved. Then, those of them in Westwind nearly had in the first year, at least partly out of ignorance. He tried the nuts, and they were tasty. He kept eating until he realized that he was no longer hungry, but that he was almost stuffing food into his mouth.

“Nervous?”

Nylan nodded. “You?”

“Of course.”

He wiped his mouth and took another low swallow of water, then stood.

“Da! Ahwen!”

Nylan bent and lifted Weryl, hugging him tightly for a moment. Weryl hugged him back, then turned his head.

“He wants to give you a hug.” Nylan eased Weryl toward the redhead.

Ayrlyn embraced the silver-haired boy, and Nylan could sense her tears. “Be good, Weryl. Be good.” She set him on the glazed tile floor, and Sylenia immediately took his hand.

Nylan swallowed. Am I doing the right thing? Have I any choice?

No, came the thought from Ayrlyn.

They walked quickly out the rear door to where the mounts they had saddled earlier waited.

“This is scary,” he admitted after climbing into the saddle.

She nodded, pursing her lips.

They rode into the growing outer forest without speaking, letting the mares pick their way toward the unseen wall and the boundary between the ancient domain of the forest and its recent acquisition.

“We can do this. We just have to think about balance.”

“Thinking about it is easy, but trying to make ourselves part of it isn’t going to be easy.”

“Nothing important ever is.”

Nylan nodded. She was right about that.

After tying both mares to trunks that were noticeably thicker than the day before, the two walked slowly toward the creeper-covered wall that was measurably lower than the day before.

“For something that doesn’t think, it’s certainly removing its past boundaries quickly enough,” Ayrlyn noted.

“Thought and intelligence are just illusions that primates glory in.” Nylan’s voice was dry. So was his mouth. The narrow gray-green leaves on the new trees seemed to rustle, though he could sense no breeze, and a mist drifted out from the older growth, carrying the unfamiliar mixed floral scent that was neither too cloying nor too astringent.

Nylan swallowed and stepped across the creepered and vanishing wall. He swallowed again, and tried to relax.

Ayrlyn touched his arm. “We’re doing this together, remember.”

What were they doing?

Nylan finally let his thoughts drift outward, as though he were still on the powernet of the Winterlance, letting his mind follow his senses through the mist, through the green shoots, through the intertwining of the hot reddish white of chaos, and the cool black bands of order. Beside him, he could sense the order-rooted solidity of Ayrlyn, and even the distant presence of Weryl, though his son seemed a more innocent balance between darkness and chaos.

Their progress seemed nearly effortless, as they stood there, yet moved through the swirls of darkness, jets of chaos, and unseen and intertwined webs where the two forces merged. Yet there was no gray, only black and white, a blackness deeper than night, a whiteness tinged with sullen red, like the hot coals of a smithy.

Beneath the surface flows was a deeper, more intricate intertwining of order and chaos. Why was the pseudonet flux more simple in the open air? Was it the earth? Or was everything more complex the deeper one went?

Nylan took another breath, then tried to let his senses take in the subtle mixtures of ordered red and white iron and white-red chaos that seemed pure fiery destruction. Mixtures of order and chaos, patterns intertwining, tugged at him, drawing him toward them.

There-amid a grove that seemed to grow as he watched-was an upwelling of pure black, somehow power-surged, white-red simultaneously, that wrapped itself around a fountain of white tinged with red. Beyond the fountain was a rhythmic pulsing of smaller order-beats against a squarer kind of chaos, like a powerboard balance.

Nylan cleared his throat, and Ayrlyn’s hand touched his elbow, a tinge of dark and comforting order in the fluxes that swirled and rose around them. He relaxed, as he could, and tried to take in, without judgment, the intertwining of order and chaos, trying to let himself drift along the lines of order, along the forces that made the Winterlance’s powernet seem insignificant, toward a small fountain of blackness that somehow seemed to geyser deep out of the roots of the forest, deep out of the melting rocks far below Candar, far below Cyador.

Even as his senses neared the fountain, it shifted, toward chaos, and a torrent of white boiled around the blackness, and red chaos oozed, then spurted forth. A cool thread of black beckoned, and for an instant, Nylan felt as though he understood the interweavings of the patterns, like the webs of perfectly matched ships’ nets holding and focusing against the Mirror Towers of the Rats.

A line of molten chaos, red with dull white, lashed from nowhere, and needles like precisely focused lasers burned through him. Another thicker band of white began to twine around the engineer’s senses, wrapping itself around his knees and oozing ever upward, tightening around his waist.

Nylan started, realizing that he could not just stand and let himself be enfolded, and tried to wrench free-even as another thinner white line slashed at him again, moving impossibly quickly for something rooted in a slow-growing forest.

A band of black, ordered steel slammed at him, and his knees buckled, and another line of white, tinged with red, slashed, and he lifted his arms and turned, trying to protect Ayrlyn from the assault of chaos and who knew what else. His soul and face burned.

“I’m fine.” Her words were more felt than heard.

Nylan held to himself, trying to stand above the fluxes, as must any engineer, struggling to pattern what could be patterned, letting flow free the chaos that must flow, and forcing himself, his senses, into a ball of ego.

Nylan! Nylan, the engineer, who holds the fluxes, rides the chaos-that is me. That is who I am! I am Nylan…NYLAN!!!!

The lashes of chaos and order continued, but Nylan permitted himself a grim smile as he felt the attacks pause. With another deep breath, with sweat oozing off his forehead, and stinging into his eyes, he could feel the powers of the forest weakening, or backing off, and he increased his efforts, trying to master both the flows and himself before chaotic fluxes rebounded-and he knew they would, for chaos always rebounded.

Ride the flows! Hold the patterns!

He sent that thought to Ayrlyn, pressing order upon her, and received a similar feeling in return, except Ayrlyn was not Ayrlyn, but an intertwined pillar of order and chaos, warm, yet cool.

An image formed-one that Nylan knew was not real-and yet it appeared alive and immediately before him.

A figure in the undress olive blacks of a U.F.A. marine stepped across the turned and settled soil between the lines of knee-high trees. She lifted a black blade shortsword, a blade of Westwind, a blade Nylan knew he had forged.

Nylan strained to see her face, but a shadow cast by no sun remained across the face of the marine who carried no shield, no sidearm, only the short blade. Then, out of the shadows, two dark eyes slashed the engineer.

I rode against the first chaos wizard you fought, face-to-face, and I died. I died, and you live. I understood that we must fight, and I died. You still fight against the need to fight, yet you live on. You are the great engineer, the one who rides the chaos fields, and you abandoned me to the depths of chaos. Great engineer, you sought order where there was none, and built a mighty tower because of me, because of those like me. Yet we are forgotten, and all will remember your name. You are a self-deceiving hypocrite. You claim you want peace, yet wherever you turn, death follows. You establish order, and chaos reigns.

Nylan could not move, and though he could feel Weryl squirm in the distance, he could not reassure the boy-or Ayrlyn. The words pounded through him: “self-deceiving hypocrite…self-deceiving hypocrite…self-deceiving…”

Then the figure of Cessya raised the shortsword, the blade he had forged, and turning it slightly, slammed it across the side of his face. His entire cheek burned, and he staggered, before catching himself, the words still ringing: “self-deceiving…self-deceiving…”

He swallowed as the chaos and order swirled around him again, as another figure shimmered into being on the mist-damp soil between the towering trees that seemed to ring him as he watched.

A woman in a brown tunic, dark-haired, barefooted, stood there, her head downcast. Then her face lifted, and she beckoned, as if for Nylan to listen. He looked and saw that her shoulder slumped, almost cut away from her body, and dark, dark red stained the tunic. Blood drooled from the corner of her mouth.

…oh, great mage, you saved me, and you saved my daughter, and then you cast me against your enemies so that you would not have to fight. I died, and my daughter wept, and you had no answers. I died, and you could not tell her why. I died, and you lived. How many others died so you might live, a great mage?

“No!” insisted Nylan. “It wasn’t that way.” Except that the words remained in his mind, and his mouth did not move.

…but it was. Niera is alone, cold on the heights you have left, with no one to comfort her. You lived, and you built, and you promised. Then you left, and there is no one to explain, no one to comfort….

“You left Gallos without my urging. I didn’t even know you.”

Nistayna lifted her face and spat, and a gobbet of blood left those dead lips and splattered across Nylan’s neck, searing like acid on bare skin.

…I took the blade you forged, and I died, and my daughter is alone, without mother, without father…and you left Westwind, left my poor Niera…

Even as Nylan pushed away the image of Nistayna, another swirled into place from the endless mists of the Accursed Forest-endless mists that oozed from the depth of ancient trees and greens. A redheaded marine officer in patched leathers pulled over olive blacks urged her mount toward Nylan, then reined up, her blue eyes leveled like lasers at the engineer. One of the twin shortswords jabbed at his chest.

…great engineer, great smith…the greatest in all Candar…

Great smith? Nylan wanted to snort.

Who else forged the black blades of death that shear through the toughest plate armor? Who else forged the bows of night and the shafts that penetrate all? Who else built the tower that dared the Roof of the World? Who else? You have abandoned all you forged. Tell me I did not die for nothing. Tell me that the cairns of Westwind will not wither into meaninglessness. Tell me…

Each question raised by Fierral ripped into Nylan. Each one. Had the marine officer died for nothing? Had Nistayna been right? No!

Nylan refused to accept that. Order did not require that a tower or a patch of ground be defended forever, to and beyond death. Neither did chaos. There was a time to defend, and a time not to defend, a time to fight and a time to flee, a time to build and a time to tear down, a time to accept the past, and a time to reject it.

He stood unmoving, thrusting away the image of the dead marine and guard. Yet, before she faded, the blade he had forged spun toward the smith, turning end over end, so slowly. The razor edge nicked his left shoulder, barely missing Ayrlyn, and a gout of flame puffed from the wound, his own blood flaming as it oozed from his skin, burning, aching.

Come…great forger of destruction…welder of chaos…receive your just reward….

Another figure rose from the swirling fog of order and chaos-a black-haired, black-bearded man cloaked in purple, who wore maroon leather trousers, and a tunic of purple that matched the cloak. In his shoulder harness was a two-hand broadsword. He smiled, and his entire body was consumed in flames, yet he was untouched.

Behind the black-bearded man, Nylan felt the rising hordes of the dead, felt the purple-clad soldiers that marched toward an unseen black tower, felt the shadowy presence of white-cloaked chaos wizards.

You mean well, great smith and destroyer…and so did I…join me, for we are alike.

Nylan looked down, beyond Ayrlyn, almost unnaturally silent beside him, to the shoulder where blood, flame, and red-whitened ashes flowed, feeling more blood and ashes weeping from his injured face, wounds that ached with the pain beyond pain.

…join me…for did you not destroy thousands with the best of intentions…did you not forge death and more death to save but a handful of ungrateful women?

The smith forced his eyes back to the Lornian leader. What couldn’t he see? Why had every figure he had dismissed brought up another with more disturbing questions?

…join us…join us, for you deceive yourself as you believe the world deceives itself. While you talk of balance, you believe in forging an order, your order. Like us, you are a believer in self-order, a believer in deception…deception…

The big sword swung toward Nylan, and he ducked, but his skull jolted, and fire seared across his eyes. Smoke rose, and he smelled burning hair. His own hair?

You cannot escape yourself. You would be a hero…and heroes never escape. They deceive themselves so they may always create more destruction to save yet another lost soul, another poor victim…until they lose themselves to their deceptions. You are the great smith, the great hero of Candar and the Westwind…and you will be lost to your heroism, great mage…join us…for you cannot escape…you cannot relinquish the need to save all who need saving.

…cannot relinquish…cannot relinquish-the thought reverberated through Nylan. Why couldn’t he relinquish the need to save? Why not?

As the burns seared his arms, and his skull hammered, he swallowed, and ignoring the burns, the smoke, the pain, lowered his head, accepting that he could not save the world. Accepting that he tried to save so many because of his own unworthiness, because he had to prove that he was…was always…had always been…worthy.

Above him, impossibly distant, the trees rustled, and the ground trembled, and a huge tawny cat padded toward Nylan, blue eyes burning.

Nylan waited.

Grrrurrrr…rrrrrrurrr…

Order and chaos swirled around and through him, and he understood, not just with his head, but with his heart, his feelings, that they were not separate, but two sides of the same coin, understood that one could fight neither chaos nor order, but only those who misused one side of that coin. He understood, too, that the evils fostered by Cyador and by Westwind would be countered by equal evils.

And the great smith’s eyes burned, and, standing motionless before the great cat and the Great Forest, he shuddered.

Beside him, nearly simultaneously, Ayrlyn shuddered, and Nylan knew she had fought her own demons, and they shivered together, in a cold beyond cold, and a heat beyond heat.

So did the soil, and the trees, and even the grasses that surged along the new-forged lines of balance, seeking the old patterns sundered by the mighty planoforming engines of the Rationalists, engines that had ignored the balance that had been and would be.

The fluxfires of the Great Forest, of the depths, and of all that struggled slashed through Nylan, and through Ayrlyn, and their pain intertwined and redoubled, and they shuddered again, in the agony of discovering the balance of order and chaos within.

Nylan staggered, and glanced toward Ayrlyn, standing on the firm damp soil between mighty trees. Her fair face was crisscrossed with burns, and blisters sprouted on her forehead.

“Darkness…” he murmured.

“You, too,” she choked back.

His head throbbed, as though it had been squeezed between his tongs or flattened by his own hammer and anvil. Small sharp lances stabbed through his eyelids. A heavy dark welt was turning into an ugly bruise on his left arm, as was another across his neck.

“You still think this…was a good idea?” Ayrlyn’s words seemed to waver in and out of Nylan’s ears.

“No, except I didn’t have any better ideas.” After several swallows, the smith finally was able to moisten his dry lips.

“Some day…some day…do you think we’ll learn not to meddle?” she asked.

“I doubt it.”

“Darkness help us.” Ayrlyn staggered, then caught her balance.

RRRrrrrrrr…

They both suddenly looked at the big cat, sitting on its haunches no more than a dozen cubits away, blue eyes still fixed on them. Then, the cat yawned, showing long white teeth, long pointed teeth, and stretched. After another yawn, it padded back and was lost in the ancient trees.

“Whewww…” said Nylan.

“Frig…”

“That’s another way of putting it.” The smith swallowed, still trying to sort out what the whole experience had meant. He glanced toward the taller trees, realizing as he did that, even without trying, he saw, and almost understood, the ebb and flow of order and chaos, chaos and order. He sensed those flows, effortlessly, and he saw the wrongness that underlay it all.

He swallowed and looked back at Ayrlyn. “What did you see?”

“The worst of myself.” Ayrlyn shuddered for a moment. “How all of Candar is slanted.”

“Slanted?” As he asked the question, Nylan shuddered, involuntarily thinking about the worst of himself-the endless twists toward self-deception and trying to avoid facing what was.

“It feels…slanted…from way down.”

The smith nodded. She was right. It did, and when he and she had rested some, then they’d look into it. But they needed rest.

He looked upward.

The featureless gray clouds were beginning to separate into still indistinct but separate, darker, and more ominous chunks of gray, and the mist had stopped falling. It appeared near midday.

Midday?

“It took awhile,” Ayrlyn said. “That sort of self-examination usually does.”

“And the cat was sitting there all the time?”

“Probably. We would have been dinner if we’d failed.”

Nylan shuddered again, as he turned back toward the mares.

Overhead, the clouds roiled, and the deep roll of thunder rumbled across the forest.