Scion of Cyador

XL

In the quiet of the twilight, two days after returning to Biehl and after writing scores of letters to families, drafting and dispatching battle reports, and persuading Neabyl and Comyr to authenticate the numbers and sources of captured weapons, Lorn sits at the desk in his personal quarters, sipping a glass of Alafraan and studying the chaos-glass. He finds no other raiders along the trails and tracks, but there is yet another Hamorian ship in the harbor at Jera.

Will all his efforts and all the deaths just fuel more hatred and allow the traders to sell more blades in Jera? Will the Majer-Commander have to establish outposts east of Biehl, or near Nhais, to protect the town and Escadr and the cuprite mines?

Releasing a deep breath, he lets that image of the harbor at Jera fade, for there is little he could do now, even were he to find another group of raiders riding through the Grass Hills or toward Nhais. There are none, he knows…not yet.

After another sip of Alafraan, and with a smile, he uses the glass to take a brief look at a lady trader, who dines on the upper portico of his parents’ dwelling-alone except for Jerial. The two are laughing, but the laughs die away, as he realizes they-both of them-sense the chaos-glass.

Abruptly, Jerial smiles, and murmurs something, and Ryalth touches her fingers to her lips.

Hundreds of kays away, Lorn smiles, then releases the image, wondering again at his consort’s sensitivity to the glass. His eyes stare, unfocused, into the twilight, as the momentary warmth the image of Ryalth has given him fades, and he considers again the past eightdays.

Perhaps fivescore Cyadoran men, women, and children have died. Nearly eighteenscore Jeranyi warrior raiders died because Lorn acted, and more than threescore Mirror Lancers and District Guards.

Why? Lorn can offer reasons, but the reasons make little sense. The Jeranyi feel that lands they have not lived upon for more than ten generations-if not longer-belong to them, and they wish to kill all those who now live there. Lorn has killed those Jeranyi, for they died because of his planning and tactics, to try to stop them from killing even greater numbers of Cyadorans innocent of anything but living where their ancestors lived.

After having seen the people who live east of Biehl, Lorn suspects many are of pure Jeranyi blood, yet they are considered white demons as much as he is, for all the years they and their families have been there.

Will those deaths change anything? Anything at all?

Without an answer, he picks up the silver-covered book and pages through it, slowly, scanning the lines. His lips curl ruefully as his eyes light on one of the verses that suddenly makes a great deal more sense to him. He reads the words, softly, but aloud.

I wish that

in this twisted land

there existed a prayer

as solid as my disbelief,

or failing that,

as solid as my

uncertainty.

Is that the job of a lancer or a magus of Cyad-to create certainty in an uncertain world? In a world where reasons seem distant, and insubstantial? Was that the purpose laid out by the refugees from the Rational Stars for the City of Eternal Light?

Lorn slowly closes the book and looks out into the darkness.