Arms-Commander

XXX

Ryba did not return from the heights until late afternoon, and then she sent Aemra to fetch Saryn from the armory. Saryn set aside the blade she was sharpening and hurried up the stone steps that seemed to get longer as the day progressed.

Ryba was seated, waiting. The table was bare. She gestured to the chair across from her.

Saryn seated herself, and since Ryba did not speak, asked, “How are you finding the ice fields?”

“That suggests you want to know why I’ve been riding to the heights. Do you really think that knowing that would be useful to you as arms-commander, Saryn?”

“I couldn’t say without knowing what you’re accomplishing up there…besides returning with ice to preserve various foods.”

Ryba smiled, a distant expression. “Do you know why I need to ride up there?”

Wasn’t that what I just asked, if more politely? “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me, ser.”

“Don’t humor me, Saryn.”

“I already asked, politely…Ryba.”

The iron in Ryba’s voice began to soften as she spoke. “The more bodies that are crammed into Westwind, the harder it is for me to sort out what I truly see from what I worry about. I find that in the quiet and the cold amid the ice, matters become clearer.”

Are matters ever really that clear? Or are they just clear for you?

“You will find, in your own time, Saryn, that clarity of vision and purpose are everything. You cannot be distracted by what might be, or what might have been. There is only what was, is, and will be. All the rest are either wistful thoughts or useless nightmares.” Ryba smiled, an expression filled with a mix of emotions that Saryn wasn’t certain she wanted to know. “That doesn’t mean you won’t have both, in great measure. You just have to learn to know what they are and set them aside. One of the great weaknesses of most men is that they fail to recognize early enough which dreams are possible and will become real, and which are vain hopes.”

“Was the engineer that way?” Saryn kept her voice low.

Ryba looked hard at Saryn before her expression changed to one more amused and enigmatic. “The engineer was the kind of man who is the most dangerous. Upon occasion, he could turn unreality of the most impossible kind into hard accomplished fact, but he never understood the longer-term implications of each of those transformations.”

“The longer-term implications?” prodded Saryn gently. “Doesn’t every action have a consequence? Why would there be greater implications from a set of acts that appear at first sight to be less probable to result in success?”

Ryba laughed. “You’ve seen it, and you don’t understand? How likely was it that a single engineer who barely understood the natural laws that enable magery on this world and a singer could destroy the mightiest power on the continent of Candar?”

“Rather unlikely, but they did,” Saryn pointed out.

“Precisely. And what has happened as a result?”

“Lornth is weaker, but it remains independent.”

Ryba smiled coldly. “Had Cyador taken even the southern half of Lornth and held it, Lornth would have been forced to accept a position as a vassal state to Cyador, and Suthya would not even be attempting designs on Lornth. In turn, Arthanos would not even be considering moving a force into the Westhorns. By accomplishing the improbable and what was considered impossible, the engineer created a set of circumstances that actually weakened Westwind.”

“Weakened us? We would have had Cyador as a neighbor.”

“Had Cyador taken Lornth, that would have returned the empire to its largest historical territorial borders. Cyador could not have afforded to expand any more, certainly not in the next century. Westwind would not have been seen as a danger, but as a buffer, a small land that neither Gallos nor Cyador would have wished the other to have, but which neither really would have wanted. In turn, that stability would have blocked the Suthyan expansion into Rulyarth and kept the Suthyans at bay, and we would have been free to trade with all three. Cyador would not have cared if women fled to us because it would have made Lornth more stable. Karthanos and his son would not have been able to complain if discontented women left their land for Westwind.”

“So you’re saying, by destroying Cyador, Nylan threatened the survival of Westwind?”

“He increased the level of that threat. That much is certain.” After a pause, Ryba added, “That is why I struggle to see what will be, because the ripples in reality created by his acts distort what will now occur.”

Saryn certainly hadn’t thought in those terms, but she’d seen enough of what Ryba had foreseen to know that the Marshal was no mystic and, in some way Saryn did not pretend to understand, could see pieces of a future that was unknowable to anyone else, at least so far as Saryn could determine. “What do we do now, then?”

“What we must, you and I together, and you and I separately.” Ryba cleared her throat. “We have at most four eightdays…”

Saryn listened intently, trying not to be distracted by all the implications of what Ryba had said earlier.