The Chaos Balance

CXXX

The low chirp of crickets or grasshoppers or cicadas or the Candarian equivalent filled the evening. Nylan burped as he settled onto the grass uphill from their camp. He didn’t know whether his indigestion came from the slimy wasol roots or the filling but heavy squash bread. All he knew was that his guts felt like they contained lead, and he hadn’t eaten all that much. He had the feeling that the orange loaves were endless, that Sylenia had been so enchanted with the ceramic oven that she had baked enough for an entire squad for seasons.

“Only half a squad.” Ayrlyn slipped through the dimness and sat down beside him by the small stand of scrub oak bushes that shielded the hollow in the ridge where Weryl snored softly and Sylenia lay.

The scrub oaks were all that passed for cover on the hills flanking the river plain. They’d taken the hill road because Ayrlyn’s wind scouting had indicated the hill road was more direct and because that way they could slip past the slower-moving Cyadoran force that followed the river road. Tomorrow, she’d said.

“Tomorrow.” Ayrlyn shifted her weight, trying to get comfortable on the hard ground.

“What are we going to do if they find us-or some of their scouts do?”

“I was going to ask you that. You are the engineer, and I do trust your feelings.”

“I appreciate the trust, but I haven’t been all that successful in applying engineering-”

“You managed to power and control the laser to build Tower Black, and I don’t think that was just technology or luck.” Ayrlyn patted his shoulder gently.

“This is different.”

“How?”

“There’s no technological basis at all.”

“It still has to be a system. I’m quoting an engineer. A very good engineer.”

“Thanks. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He just thought he did.” Nylan coughed gently and shifted his weight. The ground was hard.

“You mentioned the separation in the ground,” she prompted.

“It’s almost a power differential. And theoretically, if there’s a power or an energy imbalance between two forces, there has to be a way to convert that imbalance into usable power.” He shrugged. “I just haven’t figured out the mechanism for doing it.”

“You sound like an engineer, but maybe this is simpler.”

“Maybe.” Nylan wasn’t convinced. Nothing was ever simpler than it seemed. Not in his experience, and when it was, there was usually an incredible price to pay. Add to that that they’d left the forest before he’d really had time to work things out because they both knew that time was short and hoped that they could puzzle it out while they traveled.

He snorted softly to himself, wondering if their “puzzling” would leave them even more open to white wizards. Then, he had to hope that the wizards were either farther away or concentrating on the battles. Just like him, they couldn’t do everything at once. He hoped.

The insect chirping died away for a moment, and Nylan glanced around, extending his perceptions into the darkness. He smiled as he sensed a foxlike predator creeping after some sort of ground-dwelling rodent.

The rodent bolted for its hole, and the fox pawed at the ground for a time, then slipped downhill and toward the valley.

“It wasn’t a fox,” Ayrlyn said. “It was something like a coyote, except it was fox-sized.”

“Call it a foxote?”

“It probably has a local name that we don’t know.”

“Probably.”

Nylan looked skyward, into the cloudless evening and the unknown stars that glittered as impersonally as ever.

“In the forest, does the order balance the chaos? Or is chaos balanced by order?” Ayrlyn asked into the silence.

“What’s the diff-” He paused. “Oh…” He swallowed. “Well…order provides both a balance and…I’d guess you’d call it an insulator or separator.”

“If that’s so, then isn’t chaos more powerful? Ideally, I mean?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, tugging on a long and dry stem of grass. “My guess is that in larger concentrations that would be so, but as you break down chaos into smaller and smaller fragments, order gets progressively more effective.” The stem broke, and Nylan absently chewed the end, then put it aside as his tongue tingled with a bitter taste.

“What if you tied up all the chaos?”

“You’d end up tying up all the order. But that’s not our problem.” He sighed. “Someday someone may have to deal with that, and I wish them well, but we’re nowhere near that. I’m just trying to figure out-”

“How about experimenting? In little bits?”

Of course, that was what all his talk had been about-trying to avoid, subconsciously, actually plunging in. What all that white energy could do terrified him.

“It is a little awesome.”

Nylan laughed softly. “A little awesome?” He turned and hugged her. “I love your understatements. A little awesome.” He laughed again.

“I’m glad you find me amusing.”

“A little awesome?”

“Nylan.”

He closed his mouth. Did she know? Did she have any idea of the power that lay beneath Candar?

“I guess I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It scares me.” The smith shook his head. “It scares me a lot.”

“You can do it.” Ayrlyn reached out and squeezed his right hand. “We can do it.” We can.

“I just don’t know.” Still, her warmth and her willingness to share the risk warmed him, and he squeezed her hand in return.

“What if you just used the order lines, like a pipe?”

Nylan frowned for a moment. While it might not work, that sort of experiment wouldn’t be that hard, sort of like the way in which he’d held the laser together at the end.

“You can, you know,” she said, quietly.

He wasn’t sure, but the only way to find out was to try. He reached beneath the ground, his senses extending until they touched the chaos/order boundary.

“I can’t follow you, not very far,” said Ayrlyn.

“Can’t follow you very far on the winds, either,” he grunted. Already his forehead had begun to perspire. With as gentle a touch as possible, he urged, coaxed, encouraged the order lines to turn toward the surface, reforming them in one small area into a tube, except it was more like an open-ended cone.

He swallowed as the tip of the unseen cone touched the top of the ground. “Now what?”

“You have to break the circuit?”

That wasn’t it, not exactly-more like creating a ground in the air, or something like it. He winced as the power sink, or whatever it was he had formed, seemed to glow. He could see his boots with his eyes, and not just his senses.

Whhhhhssstttt!! A jet of fire-was it fire? — exploded out of the ground, turning the night into dawn, and an unheard screaming slashed through Nylan’s skull.

The engineer swallowed, his eyes closing involuntarily against the light, against the energy, against the heat. His mouth was instantly dry, his heart pounding. The line of fire rose higher until it had to have been nearly ten cubits high-a fountain of chaos-fire brighter than the sun.

“There!” Ayrlyn had closed her eyes against the burning light.

The engineer forced his senses back out, grasping for the order cone. He squeezed, prodded, and closed the tip of the cone, letting the boundary layer drop back into place, in effect damping the release of chaos.

“Whewww…” he sighed, his eyes still closed, sparks and flashes still sparking across them, though the darkness of night had fallen again. He rubbed his eyelids and then massaged his temples.

“You could say that,” added Ayrlyn.

“Lightning! Was that lightning?” Sylenia demanded, sitting bolt upright on her bedroll. “How could there be lightning? There is no storm.”

“Don’t worry, Sylenia,” Nylan lied hoarsely. “We’re experimenting. Just experimenting.” He swallowed.

“Experimenting? What is that? You are making lightnings from the ground? That is experimenting?”

In a way the nursemaid’s statement wasn’t a bad analogy, since most lightning did result from a power buildup and disparity between a cloud and the ground, but the engineer didn’t want to get into that. “There won’t be any more strange lights. Not tonight.”

“You are sure?”

“I am sure.” Nylan blotted a forehead that was both hot and cold. Suddenly, he felt like he reeked, reeked of sweat and of sheer terror.

“He won’t do it again,” Ayrlyn added.

“Thank-you, healer,” Sylenia lay back on her bedroll, murmuring just loud enough for the angels to hear, “…bad when they fling blades through armor. Now…now they bring fires from the ground…what would Tonsar say? Oh…he would say much…”

“He would, too,” whispered Nylan.

“You,” said Ayrlyn. “You have been known to say more than a few words when-”

“Enough.” The smith touched her chin, then covered her lips with his, holding her tightly, letting her hold him, trying not to shiver too much.

What might happen on the morrow was left unsaid, unthought. So was the possibility that they had alerted every wizard in kays. But they were short of time, knowledge, and experience-and very alone and exposed.