The Chaos Balance

CXXVI

Sylenia carried our the provisions bag and set it on the rear stoop. She glanced at the mid-afternoon sun that seemed to duck in and out of the puffy gray and white clouds scudding from the northeast. “To begin travel so late in the day…?”

“This time we’ll travel more by night, until we get out of Cyador, anyway.” Nylan checked the girths for Sylenia’s saddle, then readjusted Weryl’s seat, stopping to wipe his forehead. While the area in and around the forest was cooler than the Grass Hills, even with the cooling of the trees the harvest season was far hotter than mid-summer on the Roof of the World-or anywhere else in two universes that he could remember offhand, at least outside of Candar. “I’m still not up to any battles.”

“You could handle them better.” Ayrlyn did not look up from where she loaded the pack mare.

“Maybe.” Of that, Nylan wasn’t exactly certain. Theoretically, he supposed he could figure out some way to balance things, but the gap between theory and practice was awfully wide, wider in many ways than advanced power system operations and engineering theory had been.

“I don’t want to leave.” Ayrlyn held the saddlebag in her hands, almost as if she had been halted by an outside force.

Nylan understood. For the first time in years, if not ever, they weren’t surrounded by all of the unseen imbalances that had rocked their lives from one side to the other. Already, they had begun to adjust themselves to the forest’s requirement for balance, and when Nylan extended his senses to look at Ayrlyn, he could see the changes, almost, it seemed, on the cellular level. While some changes appeared in Sylenia, Ayrlyn and he-and Weryl-appeared vastly different. Was that because he had been a power engineer? Or Ayrlyn a comm officer? Because the forest had reached out to them? Or they to it? “It’s not paradise.”

“I still don’t want to leave.” This feels…closer to home…

They turned to each other and embraced.

“Stupid…” murmured Ayrlyn in his ear. “How…a forest…feels like home…”

“Does, doesn’t it?” He squeezed her more tightly for a moment, then slowly released her.

“In some ways I feel as you, lady,” added Sylenia. “But there is Tonsar-”

“And there’s still the problem of the Cyadorans. Remember all those burned patches? Sooner or later they’ll be back to deal with the forest.” Especially if we don’t deal with them-if we can…

“I know,” sighed Ayrlyn, “and we made a promise.” A promise…

It wasn’t just the words, Nylan understood, all too well, but the chaos created within themselves by failing to keep their commitments. Anyone who had to deal with order fields, he was coming to understand-possibly too late and too slowly-had to live a life somehow in balance. And unkept promises were not good for balance.

At least, that was how it seemed to him.

“Me, too,” said Ayrlyn. “We’re in this together.”

He smiled at her, taking in the warmth that radiated from her, the warmth he’d been blind to for too long on the Roof of the World. Then he walked over and lifted the provisions bag from the stoop.

Sylenia turned and reentered the Cyadoran dwelling, presumably to reclaim Weryl.

Nylan stood and surveyed the dwelling, the smooth pale walls, thinking about the ceramic stove, the tile floors, the apparent cleanliness-and the chaos behind its creation.