The Chaos Balance

CXXXI

Two black vulcrows flapped up from the road ahead, black forms outlined momentarily against the green-blue sky. Nylan leaned forward slightly in the saddle and squinted to see what they had left behind.

For once, a breeze blew across the hills, out of the northeast, rustling the dry grass and the scattered trees and scrub oaks. The wind carried a residual coolness from the Westhorns where Ryba and the guards of Westwind, Nylan supposed, were doubtless forging another link in the chain of destiny that would change all Candar for all time.

The engineer snorted. So did his mare, stepping sideways momentarily on the dusty road to avoid the carcass of some sort of lizard, the form half-picked already, though the residual order and chaos seeping from it indicated that it had not even been dead when the vulcrows started.

Nylan’s forehead felt hot, even though the light wind was enough to keep him from perspiring the way he usually did. He uncorked the water bottle and took a deep swallow, then splashed a little on his face.

“Your face is red, even redder than normal,” Ayrlyn said.

“So is yours.” Nylan glanced back at Sylenia, riding quietly behind the redhead, but the nursemaid’s smooth skin seemed unchanged. “You think that last night…?”

“Releasing chaos that way is dangerous, I think.”

“I know. Any alternatives?”

“Not offhand.” Ayrlyn followed Nylan’s example and drank from her own water bottle, but did not splash any on her own reddened forehead and cheeks.

No alternatives-that had been the problem since they’d landed on the Roof of the World nearly three years earlier. Had it been less than three years? Nylan took a deep breath. It felt longer, much, much longer.

“Angels, there’s someone behind us,” Sylenia pointed out, gesturing with her left arm.

Nylan turned in the saddle. A wind-flattened line of dust hugged the hilltop beyond the one a kay behind them, dust created by fast-moving mounts ridden by figures in white, still more than three kays back.

Nylan had known it would be a risk…but all the choices they’d had were either bad or worse.

“Let me check.” Ayrlyn’s face blanked, and she half-slumped in the saddle.

The engineer looked around as he drew his mount next to hers, in case she started to slip from the saddle. He couldn’t help worrying when Ayrlyn half-left her body behind.

Beyond the grass-covered ridges to the west, on the low road that flanked the river, marched the main Cyadoran force, with so many bodies that even Nylan could sense them from kays away. According to Ayrlyn, the angels had slipped past that force earlier in the morning, but they weren’t that much farther north than the Cyadorans, not yet.

Behind them was what seemed to be a squad or more of lancers. To the east were the rougher hills and, another five kays or more, a twisted and steep-sided gully carrying a thin trickle of water that eventually joined the main river at Rohrn, still a good three to four days ride ahead.

“They ride quickly,” observed Sylenia.

“Ooo…orses,” added Weryl from his seat behind the nursemaid’s saddle. “Orses.”

“Yes, horses. I wish they didn’t have so many horses,” Nylan told his son. Alerted by a shift in Ayrlyn’s posture, he turned back toward the redhead.

“Little problem here.” Ayrlyn coughed and tried to clear her throat.

Nylan flicked the reins to speed the mare into a quicker walk while he waited.

“We can’t go east. We’re not far enough in front of the Cyadoran van, and if we angle that way…” She coughed again.

“They’ll catch up because we’ll be going slower in trying to cross rougher ground.”

The flame-haired angel nodded. “They also have a pretty big group ahead of us.”

“Frig…” muttered Nylan. “We’re surrounded, in effect, and they’ve listened to whoever was at the mines. They’re scouting with forces large enough not to be picked off.”

“They’re not stupid,” said Ayrlyn, “but we knew that.”

“Can we go back and stand off the ones who are chasing us, and then sneak around-”

“I’d guess that there are nearly a score and a half behind us, and they’ve sent some off to the east along that trail we passed awhile back to cut us off from the little river. Up front looks worse. Close to fourscore of those white lancers. They must have one of those wizards. I can feel that off-whiteness. I should have looked farther this morning…but it’s tiring.” Ayrlyn took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.” Sorry…sorry…

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is, but I can’t do much about it now,” she admitted. “It’s what happens when you try to keep stupid promises.”

Except…they weren’t stupid. The last thing we need is Cyador taking over all of Candor. Then where do we go?

“About where we seem to be going now,” suggested Ayrlyn.

“Frig, frig…frig,” muttered Nylan. “Why is it that any time that we make the slightest mistake, it comes back in fluxes…or anvils?”

“Balance,” suggested Ayrlyn dryly.

“Is that because we’re more susceptible or sensitive?”

She shrugged, glancing back to the south.

“I know. Now’s not exactly the time for theoretical speculations.”

“The white ones are closer,” pointed out Sylenia.

“It has to be all or nothing,” Nylan said. “I have this feeling that we won’t be worth much once we disrupt the balance. So we have to do something to take them all out.”

“They’re closing in from just about every direction.”

“Put the chaos in a cakelike shape-one of the fancy ones-with the holes in the middle-we’re in the hole, and-”

“I get the image.” Ayrlyn coughed again. “Sorry…it’s dusty. We’ll have to hurry. We need to get closer to the lancers in front of us.”

“How far are they?”

“Another three or four kays.”

“Frig…we definitely need to speed it up.” Nylan flicked the reins and eased the mare into a faster gait-a slow canter? He’d never been much on riding terms. Then, he’d never even seen a horse up close until finding himself plunked down in a mountain valley in an improbable world and being called upon to do the impossible-continually, it seemed.

Could he create a double order line and channel the forces between the boundaries? He wouldn’t know until he tried, and he couldn’t try yet. Their opponents were too spread out. He tried not to grit his teeth and concentrated on riding, occasionally looking back over his shoulder or to the east, checking the dust plumes in both directions.

By the time they had ridden along another long ridge, dropped through a swale and climbed another hilltop, his legs and thighs ached, and his shoulder and neck had stiffened again. His face burned worse than earlier in the day, and he was sweating despite the light breeze, although the wind was hotter and drier and irritated his face as much as cooled it.

The sun hung at midday, but slightly to the south, and their pursuers were riding down the ridge into the swale, not less than a kay behind them.

“We aren’t going to reach that next hilltop before the ones behind us catch us,” Ayrlyn shouted.

“Stop here.” Nylan reined up and staggered off the mare. His knees nearly buckled when his boots hit the dusty dirt of the road, and he grasped the saddle to keep his balance.

Sylenia had to turn her mount to avoid running Nylan down, and she glared at the angel.

Nylan ignored the look and handed the mare’s reins to the still-mounted Sylenia. “Hold these.”

“A stable boy I am not.”

“Dead is what we’ll all be if we don’t figure out how to stop the Cyadorans. You can help most by making sure the mounts don’t run off,” snapped the engineer.

The nursemaid’s head snapped back.

“If you would,” added Ayrlyn, handing her chestnut’s reins to Sylenia after dismounting. “Nylan is right, even if he’s a bit sharp.”

Sharp? Who wouldn’t be with more than fivescore Cyadorans forming up for a charge to obliterate you? The engineer tried to concentrate on reaching the order-chaos boundary layer beneath the soil, noting as his perceptions extended themselves that the power differential was less than the night before. Did it drop off that rapidly north of the Grass Hills? Or had they depleted it the night before?

“It drops off, I’d bet,” Ayrlyn answered the unspoken question.

“Great.”

“Not that much. There has to be plenty of power there.”

Nylan took a long and slow deep breath, trying to relax a little, trying to shut out the drumming of hoofbeats nearing from all directions. He didn’t have time to relax. He pushed his senses downward, reaching for the chaos/order boundary.

Ayrlyn’s thoughts touched his…. can’t go alone, but can follow…And he was aware of her warmth beside him, both physically and perceptually.

His perspiring forehead was coated with rivulets of sweat, yet he forced himself to be as gentle as possible, coaxing, nudging an inner order boundary around the small segment of the hill where the four of them stood.

“They near, angels!”

Trying to ignore Sylenia’s urgency, the engineer attempted to create an outer boundary, not caring if it felt wavery, tenuous. The inner barrier was the important one, and he and Ayrlyn eased dark order currents around them.

“Wadah, pease?” begged Weryl.

“Hush, child. Hush.”

“Wadah.”

Nylan forced himself to ignore Weryl as the sound of horses drummed louder. With a convulsive mental snap, he broke the “insulation” between the lines of order and chaos, holding on to the barrier around them as unseen white lines of fire, ugly red gouts of molten force and stone bubbled upward.

Dust puffed up in patches, and the ground heaved. Nylan went down on one knee, started to rise, then remained there as Ayrlyn knelt beside him and took his hand.

Whhhhssstttt!! EEEEEeeeee…Not only did fire flare from the ground, as a curtain of chaos flame rose around the four and their mounts, but a sulfurous mist/haze burned through his nostrils, and he almost gagged, dry mouth and all.

Whheee…eeeee…eeee…Horses screamed.

Nylan hoped Sylenia could control their mounts. He wished she’d dismounted, but forced his concentration back on the barriers that held back primal chaos from them, trying not to think about Weryl, continuing to focus on that insubstantial line of order between them and disaster.

Wheeeee…eeee…Another set of horse screams-more distant-rose above the rumbling and shrieking of released chaos.

A thin line of white force probed toward them, and Nylan could sense Ayrlyn bat it away as though it were an insect-once, and then a second time.

The ground lurched again…and again…and the fires that had exploded out of the ground screamed and slashed through Nylan’s skull. He swallowed, his eyes tightly closed, his mouth and throat dry, his chest tight, and his heart racing.

The engineer, despite both knees on the ground, felt as though he rode both the powerfluxes of a translating subspace ship and a horse of chaos simultaneously-all while being skewered by a surgically thin, high-grade weapons laser that was trying to flay every nerve he had.

Blackness-and angry whitened red-swirled around the engineer and around the healer, jolting them, fusing them, then yanking them apart. Heat welled up and past the order barrier, and Nylan’s face felt flayed by lines of fire, by dust that ground itself against his skin.

Whhheeeeee…eeee…The screaming of chaos rubbing against order barriers went on…and on…and on…

Almost instinctively, the two angels struggled to close off the rupture Nylan had created, pushing, pressing order lines back toward a smooth flow.

Balanced-they were balanced…all the way…Those were Nylan’s last thoughts as one hand grasped Ayrlyn’s and the other tried to keep himself from toppling forward onto ground heaving so much that dust rose everywhere.

Then he did pitch forward as the order/chaos rupture sealed, the barrier collapsed, and the backlash of both balanced forces swept over them.