The Chaos Balance

V

Nylan stepped from the smithy, even before Blynnal rang the chimes for the midday meal, squinting as the snow-reflected glare cascaded around him.

“Frigging bright,” mumbled Huldran as she stumbled out into the light after the smith.

“Sun and snow.” The smith nodded and began to walk downhill. Despite the comparative warmth and the disappearance of the snow and ice cover from the south side of the rocky cairns and some sections around the canyon mouths, he hadn’t seen any signs of snow lilies. Did that mean they’d have more spring snows? Or had the guards done something in their cultivation to kill off the lilies?

Nylan didn’t know. There was so much that they had yet to learn about this world. The similarities to Heaven-type worlds helped, but there were certainly differences, like the semideciduous trees that looked H-norm, but had green leaves that turned gray and curled up around the branchlets that held them. Only about half the leaves fell every year.

And the reference to Cyador had surprised Nylan. Ryba had intimated that the place was almost a throwback to the white demons of Rationalism, but again, in almost two years no traders or locals had mentioned Cyador. He’d never even heard the name before, and that kind of surprise bothered him. Had Ryba gotten another vision? He had begun to wish long before that her visions were not so devastatingly accurate.

“Did you ever hear the name Cyador?” he asked Huldran.

“Before the Marshal mentioned it the other day? No. Maybe the healer had, but no one else had, either, except for Ydrall, but she came from coins.”

“What did Ydrall know?”

“Not much more than Daryn, except that they don’t let traders in and that they keep their women locked up. They have trading stations at the borders-or they used to. Lornth had problems with Cyador years ago, and there hasn’t been much trading since. Ydrall didn’t know what kind of problems, though.”

A culture even harder on women than Lornth and those of the lands bordering Westwind? He shook his head, then rubbed his chin. He really needed a shave. He didn’t care for the local bearded look at all, but shaving with a blade, a real dagger-edge blade, had taken some learning, and not a few cuts along the way. Of course, some of the local recruits had wondered if he was actually a man, since he didn’t have a beard-as if hair made the man. He snorted.

As they reached the outer end of the causeway to the tower, Blynnal appeared and used the wooden mallet to hammer out a rough melody on the chimes that had replaced the old triangle. She wore a burlaplike apron over her gray trousers and tunic, and a jacket thrown over everything. The brunette smiled shyly at Nylan. “I do not have the touch of the healer, not with the songs, but I try.”

“You have the touch with the food,” the smith-engineer responded. “And we’re all very thankful for that.”

“It is good to have so many people who like what I cook. Dyemeni-he never liked anything.” Her eyes went to Nylan. “Would that all men were like you.” Then she smiled again. “Today, we have the noodles with the hot sauce, and the flat bread.”

“Good.” Nylan inadvertently licked his lips. When Blynnal said food was hot-it was spiced hot and then some.

“The tea is cold-for you.” Blynnal laughed, then struck the chimes again.

Huldran grinned and glanced at the smith.

“You’ll need that tea, too,” Nylan predicted.

“Probably, but it’s a lot better than the slop poor Kadran fixed.”

As Nylan walked into the entryway, Siret stood by the nursery with Kyalynn, waiting. Smiling at the tall silver-haired guard and mother of his other daughter, the smith wondered if the two silver-haired guards had an informal arrangement as to which child he would see before the noon meal. Still, he had to admit he looked forward to seeing the children, more than a little.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Sleepy. She was restless last night. Teeth, I think. Ayrlyn touched her, but there is no chaos, just a trace of white around her teeth. I felt it, but I wasn’t sure.”

Nylan cradled Kyalynn in his left arm, and she looked up with a yawn, the dark green eyes mirrors of her mother’s, her hands slowly reaching toward Nylan’s face. “Waaaa…dah!”

“Somehow, I don’t think she’s asking for water,” Nylan observed. “I’ll probably wake her up, and she’ll be cranky all night.”

“That won’t be any change from last night.”

“So you were a grumpy girl, and you kept your mother up all night, all the time. That wasn’t a nice thing to do…”

“Waaaa-daa-da…ooo…”

“No, it wasn’t. It really wasn’t.”

Kyalynn yawned again, as Nylan rocked her, then once more, and shut her eyes. Shortly, a snort and a soft snore followed.

“You can always get her to sleep,” said Siret.

“That’s true,” the smith said. “When I talk, I can put anyone to sleep, especially if I talk about building something.” But the building was done, mostly, and now he was a weapons smith, forging more destruction. Did it always take force and more force?

He walked slowly toward the nursery and the corner bed that was Kyalynn’s. There he eased her down, and patted her back gently for a moment, murmuring softly, until he was certain she would sleep.

Nylan glanced at the bed beside Kyalynn’s, and patted a sleeping Dyliess on the back for a moment. Half the time in the nursery he still felt amazed.

Antyl smiled from the inside corner where she nursed her own son Jakon, rocking slightly in the plain wooden rocker that all the guards had helped craft early in the long winter.

Istril was burping Weryl, but she studiously avoided looking at Siret or Nylan, confirming the smith’s suspicions about the oh-so-casual prearrangements.

Nylan and Siret eased out of the nursery and toward the great room.

“She still looks like you,” the engineer said quietly.

“She takes things in like you do. She sees them, and she doesn’t make a fuss, but she knows-I swore she could feel you healers when you worked on Llyselle’s hand. Her eyes got wide, and she just watched.”

“Could be,” mused Nylan, stopping at the end of the lowest table. The aromas of mint and spice and bread filled the room. “We both have the talent. You’ll have to be careful when she gets older.”

“She might be too sensitive? I’ve thought of that.” Siret nodded, then gestured. “I can see the Marshal’s waiting for you.” Her voice cooled.

Nylan smiled wryly, then wiped the smile away before turning and continuing toward the hearth and head table.

“How are the blades coming?” asked Ryba.

“I’m starting another. The one we finished yesterday is ready to sharpen.” Nylan stepped around Ryba’s chair and slid into his place on the bench next to Huldran.

“Another one?” groaned Saryn from across the table.

“Another one.” Nylan offered a bright smile. “And Huldran will have another finished late today or tomorrow.”

“Two?” Saryn shrugged, then wiped her steaming forehead. “You two keep this up, and we’ll have enough of those killer blades for a complete U.F.F. legion.”

“Isn’t that the idea?” asked the engineer, ladling out Blynnal’s noodles.

“I haven’t figured out any other way to stop the locals. Have you?” asked Ryba mildly.

Nylan shrugged. That was the problem with Ryba. While her answers to questions were usually right, they all too often involved the maximum application of force necessary before someone else did the same. And the few times when the angels hadn’t been able to apply such force had been near-disastrous. Had he avoided leadership because he didn’t like the preemptive use of force? Or because he knew it was necessary on the violent world where the angels had landed? Or both?

Ayrlyn slipped into her seat across from Nylan. Her eyebrows lifted momentarily, but she said nothing, instead pouring some tea and drinking half a mugful almost immediately.

By the second bite of the noodles, despite the leavening effect of the flat bread, Nylan’s forehead was sweating more than if he were standing before his forge. The cool tea helped, if not enough.

“The food here-it is always good.” That comment came from Daryn.

Nylan looked at the young armsman, wanting to shake his head. Did all the locals like things spiced? Was it a survival ploy to cover the taste of meat or flour that wasn’t quite right?

“We try to make everything good,” offered Ryba.

“And you do, honored Marshal. Westwind is truly amazing.”

The youth had been trained well in Gallos, at least in manners, Nylan reflected, and he was adaptable, more so than Gerlich had been. The former weapons officer had never accepted that Ryba was his better in everything from commanding to armed and unarmed combat. Of course, Gerlich had died in his attempt to storm Westwind. He’d also gotten a lot of guards killed unnecessarily, as well as one of the white wizards of Lornth. That hadn’t bothered Nylan. Those white wizards were innately nasty, although why they were was yet another unanswered mystery.

“We try, Daryn. We try.” Ryba’s tone was light, but carried the edge that never left her voice anymore.

Nylan blotted his forehead.

“Do you think you should start training someone else in smithing?” asked Ryba.

“Cessya was working, but…” Nylan shrugged and glanced toward Huldran.

“Gerlich’s wizard got her,” Huldran finished. “Ydrall’s shown some interest in the past. She liked your fancy pikes.”

“If she is interested, I think it might be a good idea,” Ryba suggested, lifting her mug to her lips. “Otherwise, find someone else.”

“What’s the urgency?” asked the smith.

“You said you wanted to work on building your mill,” Ryba pointed out. “If you do, you can’t smith, not all the time, and we’re going to need a lot of smithwork. So I’d like you and Huldran to start training whoever it is in the next few eight-days, before the snows clear and you’re back building the sawmill.”

Nylan concealed a frown. All of what Ryba said was correct, but the words felt somehow wrong, and that bothered him. His eyes crossed those of Ayrlyn, and he got the faintest of nods in confirmation.

“There’s been more snow this winter, and that means more mud,” the engineer said. “That means it will be longer until we can reach the brickworks and the millpond down there-”

“Good,” answered the black-haired Marshal. “You’ll have more time to do blades and train another smith.”

Her answer felt even more wrong to Nylan, but the quickest of frowns from Ayrlyn warned him not to push Ryba.

“Did you find out any more in those scrolls about Cyador?” he asked easily.

“There wasn’t much,” Ryba admitted. “I get the feeling that it’s some sort of Rationalist leftover, with a heavy dose of chauvinism.” She shrugged. “Right now I don’t have much to go on, but it bothers me.”

The name Cyador chilled Nylan, too, but he had even less reason to be worried than Ryba. After all, he was just a smith and an engineer. Just a hardworking technical stiff and onetime involuntary stud who really didn’t have a mission anymore, now that the tower and the attached facilities were complete and the armies of Lornth and Gallos annihilated. He took another helping of noodles and then blotted his forehead.

“You’re a glutton for punishment, ser,” said Huldran.

“That’s definitely one way of putting it,” the smith agreed as he broke off another chunk of the flat bread. “A true glutton for punishment.”

He ignored the bluelike flash from Ayrlyn’s eyes, even as the tightness in his guts told him he shouldn’t. But he felt as though everyone else were directing him, guiding him, from Istril and Siret arranging which child he saw to Ryba’s efforts to boost Westwind’s armory-almost endlessly, it seemed.

And the worst part was that he had no answers, no direction, except to keep forging destruction.

He swallowed more tea. Maybe he’d feel better if he worked on that foot for Daryn-something besides destruction.