The Chaos Balance

CXVI

Plick…plick…plick…

Nylan slowly opened his eyes, wondering what the strange sound might be for a moment before he recognized the impact of rain dripping off the tile eaves of the house. Rain…how long had it been since he’d heard rain?

He sat up on the bedroll. Ayrlyn, Sylenia, and Weryl still slept. They had decided to all sleep in the main room, at least the first night.

Rather than wake them, he surveyed the house again, trying to learn more about Cyador from the house itself. Although it contained only three rooms, all the floors were glazed tile, with a design of interlocking triangles, and the interior walls were a clean and pale yellow plaster. All furnishings, and any furniture there might have been, were gone, which argued that the inhabitants had not fled willy-nilly, since the floors bore only a relatively thin layer of dust.

Set in the floor two cubits back from the door, and curving to shield all view of the interior of the house, was a floor-to-ceiling screen of fired ceramic lace, glazed green. A brick stove was built into the west wall of the main room, with not only an oven, but a copper cooking surface bordered by ceramic tile. The oven door was a burnished copper, decorated with intertwined roses hammered out in a raised design.

Wufff…uffff…Through the half-open shutters came the sound of the horses from the shed barely big enough for them. Nylan had been reluctant to leave them out, not knowing what might come prowling from the forest.

“How long have you been awake?” asked Ayrlyn sleepily, hushing her voice as she realized that Sylenia and Weryl still slept.

“Awhile,” he whispered back, reaching over and hugging her.

“Oooo…” Weryl’s chubby fists pumped the air.

Sylenia sat bolt upright, then looked around.

“It’s all right,” Nylan said.

Ayrlyn eased herself away from Nylan and looked around. “I never would have guessed. It’s so plain outside.”

“This is just a common house,” Nylan said. “You can tell that by its size.”

“But…stoves, and…” Ayrlyn frowned, then stretched.

The smith pulled on his boots and stood, slowly, stiffly. The roof had been welcome, but the floor had been hard, even with his bedroll.

Nylan did not attempt to explain again, though he suspected his explanation of the night before had not been exactly coherent. “It’s in working order, but we’d need something to cook-which we don’t have at the moment-and some wood.”

“Wadah? Piscut?” Weryl marched almost stiff-legged toward his father.

“We still have a biscuit or two, young man, and water.” Nylan swept his son into his arms and hugged him.

“Wadah?”

“All right.” Nylan set Weryl down.

The boy marched to Ayrlyn, offering a hug, and asking, “Wadah, pease?”

“I’m going.” The smith unbarred the rear door, twice as thick as the front, and with double brackets for bars, although Nylan had only used one on the rear door the night before, since there had only been two bars left in the vacant dwelling-one for each door.

The well had a long-handled pump. Although the handle itself was a dark polished wood, the links and rods were of the white bronze that seemed the most predominant metal in Cyador.

After filling the sole bucket, handleless and leaky, which might have been why it had been left, Nylan washed up as best he could, then refilled the bucket with clean water before pumping more water and letting it flow into the trough below the pump. Ayrlyn stumbled out into the cloudy morning, opened the shed and led the horses out for water.

As he pumped, Nylan glanced to the wall of green to the south and the abandoned fields. The green shoots that had invaded the fields seemed taller. His eyes dropped to the lower damp places in the hard ground of the yard where the water from the night’s rain had collected. There were several specks of green, and cracks in the brown clay-the kind of circular cracks made just before growing plants broke the surface.

“Nylan?”

“Huhh?”

“You’ve pumped enough,” Ayrlyn said, gesturing toward the overflowing trough. “What were you thinking about?”

Whufff…The chestnut edged Nylan’s mare before dropping her head to drink.

“The forest. I’d swear it’s grown since last night-not the central part, but all the shoots in the fields.”

“It probably has, but your son is still asking for water, and my stomach is growling.” The redhead picked up the bucket and held it under the curved greenish bronze spout.

By the time they were back in the main room, Sylenia had opened the food pack and laid out half a dozen biscuits and the small slab of cheese remaining. Weryl was already half-chewing, half-gumming his biscuit.

“I could use tea, or something.” Ayrlyn eased herself into a cross-legged position on the tile floor.

Nylan set down the bucket, then picked it up. “I’ll have to fill water bottles. This leaks too much.” Taking one bottle in his free hand, he walked back out to the pump. After setting the bucket on the trough, he filled the water bottle from the pump and walked back inside. He handed the water bottle to Ayrlyn, then sat down, hacked off a chunk of the ever-harder cheese with his knife, and extended it to Sylenia. He cut a smaller chunk for Weryl.

“Eese…eese!” The cheese went straight into the silver-haired boy’s mouth.

“He knows what he wants. Like his father.” Ayrlyn grinned momentarily.

“You know what you want, too, woman.”

“Of course.”

Nylan had to wipe off the bottle after Weryl slurped his fill, but then he was getting resigned to the fact that children equaled constant cleanup.

The biscuit and cheese took the edge off the gnawing in his stomach, but not much more.

“You must…explore this forest?” asked Sylenia.

“Some way or another,” Nylan admitted.

“While you…I could find some food. There are bean plants and some yams, I think. We have a pot. But this…stove…”

Ayrlyn glanced at Nylan. “You’re the engineer.”

“I can show you how to use the stove. It’s easier, much easier than a fire. Believe me. It’s a lot harder to burn food. You can if you work at it, but…”

The redhead stepped toward the rear door. “I’ll take care of the horses.”

Ayrlyn had groomed and saddled the two mares by the time Nylan had explained everything he could about the stove, checked the chimney and the flue, and thoroughly reassured Sylenia. Belatedly, he remembered to hand her his striker.

After he mounted the mare, he glanced toward the rear door of the house, where Sylenia stood with Weryl.

“Best you be careful.” The nursemaid’s eyes dropped.

“We will.” The silver-haired angel turned the mare, following Ayrlyn, and they rode slowly southward, across a neatly banked and empty irrigation ditch, and into the bean field.

Nylan glanced down at the bean plants, and the leaves that seemed to be wilting despite the night’s rain, then started to extend his perceptions.

“Don’t!” hissed Ayrlyn from her chestnut.

Even as she spoke, Nylan could sense that same coiling of dark order force and white chaos, as if poised to strike, and he pulled back into himself.

Whufff…Nylan’s mare sidestepped.

“Even she can feel it.”

Almost as if an echo, the chestnut shuffled her feet as well.

“I get the image,” Nylan answered.

“They were pretty well organized.” Ayrlyn’s eyes traversed the fields and the well-maintained ditching.

“Probably still are, away from the forest.” He had to wonder what they could find in an enchanted forest that would help them defeat or at least stop a land that could provide high-class ceramics, stoves, and large-scale irrigation works, not to mention firewagons, fireballs, and who knew what else.

Silently, Nylan rode through the green shoots that reached nearly to the mare’s withers, trying to guide her through the more open areas. The flatness of the ground was deceiving, so deceiving that when he looked back toward the house, he realized that they had covered several kays, and still had not reached the taller growth, although the ground they crossed held black cinders, cinders and ashes.

“Someone tried to burn this back, with that chaos flame, I think,” said Ayrlyn.

Once Ayrlyn had called it to his attention, he also could feel the faint residue of chaos laid across the balance that the shoots embodied.

“Didn’t do them a lot of good.”

“I wonder. There’s more here that we don’t know.”

Despite his curiosity, Nylan did not try to extend his perceptions, but left them open to pick up images, hoping that would give him enough warning.

“Careful…”

“I’m just listening.” Even without straining he could sense the order/chaos pulse of the forest, so strong that he felt like some sort of insect creeping around a giant.

“It makes you feel that way,” Ayrlyn noted.

“You’re doing it again.”

“So? You could tell I feel that way, if you wanted. We’ve been through this before.”

He did not answer, instead trying to sense not only the forest, but Ayrlyn.

Ayrlyn-flame, banked, who felt what? Awe, fear, and yet who knew that the forest held the key.

Nylan wished he had her faith.

The shoots got thicker and thicker, but not any closer together, and grew in a pattern of sorts that seemed more defined the closer they rode up toward the older growth that towered into the gray sky.

Abruptly, the mare sidestepped again, turning away from the dark line of the older trees. Nylan reined up.

“Mine won’t either,” announced Ayrlyn.

“Hmmmm…” Nylan dismounted, and handed the mare’s reins up to Ayrlyn. “I don’t see anything. There’s not that much undergrowth here.” He took several steps toward the older trees of the forest, then paused, looking back at Ayrlyn and the mounts.

The redhead shrugged.

He walked another ten cubits and paused, looking down at a knee-high growth of creepers that extended both east and west as far as he could make out. Between the leaves he could see scattered traces of white-some form of stone.

“There was a wall here,” he called back softly.

“I can feel it.”

Slowly, Nylan stepped over the low barrier, scanning the area around, listening with ears and senses. While the sense of looming dark order and pulsing white chaos was fractionally stronger, nothing changed. In a way, that bothered him as much as if something had changed.

Abruptly, he turned and walked back to Ayrlyn.

“Let’s head back and think about this.”

She nodded.

They both understood. Merely looking and physically searching wasn’t going to yield what they sought.