The Chaos Balance

II

The wiry and silver-haired man paused at the end of the causeway from Tower Black, his breath white in the sunlit chill. His eyes lifted from the cleared stones that led from Tower Black-the tower whose stones he had wrested from the mountains, the tower he had raised to shelter the angel crew of the Winterlance.

Another dozen steps before him, the causeway melded into the metaled road. Beyond the road was the expanse of softening snow that stretched in every direction-eastward to the kay-plus-deep drop-off that overhung the high forest, and to the mountains that bordered Westwind on the south and west. Softening or not, the snow was still well over Nylan’s head just about everywhere and twice that in spots. That depth explained the ski traces and trails that paralleled the road, though many were just there as remnants of training exercises for the newer guards.

From the mountains to the south rose Freyja, that impossibly ice-needled peak that dominated the Roof of the World, glittering through the cold green-blue skies.

Nylan, wearing only a light jacket over his smithing clothes, walked slowly out to the road, nodding at the barely raised patterns in the snow to his right that marked the walls outlining the outdoor weapons practice yard.

Beyond the practice yard the stones of the road rose slowly to the west, past the smithy he had built, to the canyon that held the stables carved out of the stone of the mountainside itself. A thin plume of white smoke rose from the forge chimney. To his left, the road ran eastward for a hundred paces or so, then curved northward over the stone bridge that marked the channel for the tower drains and outfalls. Beyond the bridge, the metaled road began to climb the slope to the top of the ridge, and the watchtower.

Nylan shivered as his eyes traversed the snow-covered slope to the north, east of the road. Beneath the melting snow lay the ashes that were all that remained of the armies of Gallos and Lornth-and of a third of the guards of Westwind. Once the snow melted, in the eight-days ahead, he hoped that the spring grasses would cover that desolate grayness quickly.

From the east his eyes turned south, toward the hummocks where dark stones had begun to protrude from beneath the snow. Three large cairns-and twenty-two individual cairns-bore witness to the harshness of two years of struggle against the lords of Candar and the Roof of the World itself.

Yet Tower Black held more than the nine survivors of the thirty-one from the Winterlance who had made planetfall. More than two score filled the six levels of the black stone tower-most of them women and refugees who had sought a new life on the Roof of the World. Of the seven ship’s officers, there remained four-Ryba, Nylan, Saryn, and Ayrlyn. Of the twenty-four elite marines, five remained-Huldran, Llyselle, Istril, Siret, and Weindre.

Outside of Daryn, the blond young standard-bearer from Gallos who had been wounded on the north side of the ridge and protected by Hryessa-no one wanted to cross the spitfire from Lornth-Nylan was the only adult male remaining in Westwind, scarcely surprising given Ryba’s distrust of most men.

He began to walk uphill between the heaps of snow and ice that flanked the road toward the smithy. Until an eight-day earlier, the road itself had been covered with that ice and snow, packed into a thick crust, but with midday temperatures slightly above freezing, Saryn had had the guards clear the sections near the tower, extending the cleared areas daily-as much to begin physically conditioning the upper bodies of refugees as for the need to return the road to the condition necessary for the timber carts that would begin to roll once the way to the high forests below Westwind was clear.

The smith frowned as he turned off the road and crossed the packed snow to the door of the smithy. This winter there had been enough wood for the furnaces, and for hot water in the bathhouse, unlike the first winter on the Roof of the World. They’d still had to slaughter some of the sheep for lack of fodder, but only a few.

Nylan eased open the smithy door, closing it behind him, before he spoke to Huldran. “You were up here early.”

“It was noisy this morning. Dephnay was howling, and neither Siret nor Istril could quiet her. So,” the stocky blond guard beside the forge shrugged, “all three were awake. Yours, thank darkness, don’t howl. They just babble. But I don’t sleep that well with babbling.”

“I’m sorry, Huldran.”

“It isn’t your fault. Istril keeps telling me that, as if every guard doesn’t know it.”

“She didn’t have-”

“Ser…you’re not perfect and neither is the Marshal, but between the two of you, you’ve saved us, and a lot of women on this forsaken planet. No one else could have designed and built Tower Black.”

Nylan reached for the leather apron.

“Not much left in the way of charcoal.” The stocky Huldran fed another set of short logs to the forge fire. “We’re back to starting with wood coals.”

“Saryn said the wood crews could do a charcoal burn early this spring. She’s got enough bodies.”

“Warm bodies we’ve got,” Huldran snorted. “Trained guards we don’t, and two of the best are Siret and Istril.” She broke off.

“I know. I know.” And Nylan did. Both the silver-haired guards had children less than a year old, and both children were his-through Ryba’s manipulation of the last residue of angel high-technology. He tightened his lips. While he loved both Kyalynn and Weryl-and Dyliess, his daughter by Ryba-having been an involuntary and ignorant stud still grated on his nerves.

Yet what could he do? He had to admit Ryba had been right about the cultures that surrounded them, and angels weren’t exactly welcomed anywhere. Nor did he feel right even thinking about leaving his children, whether he’d been an involuntary stud or not.

Yet Ryba was getting harder and harder to take, and each day felt like a balancing act. Ryba, former captain of the U.F.F. Winterlance, was now Marshal of Westwind, and undisputed ruler of that chunk of the Westhorns known as the Roof of the World-a land so high and cold that very few of the locals could survive more than short stretches outside in full winter. Then, Ryba and all of the surviving ship’s marines-now the guards of Westwind-were full-blooded Sybran, born to an even colder heritage than the Roof of the World, unlike Nylan and Ayrlyn.

Nylan shook his head and removed his jacket, hanging it on one of the wooden pegs beside the front double doors. Reminiscing and mentally complaining wouldn’t forge blades-and Ryba wanted more of the deadly weapons he had developed. For her all-too-accurate visions indicated that, in the seasons and years ahead, scores of women would seek out the refuge that Westwind had become. Was that his destiny-armorer of the angels, forger of weapons of death and destruction? And involuntary stud? So far he’d avoided repeating that-since the great battle-but he could feel the pressure building.

The smith took the flat and crude shovel formed from lander alloys and eased the scarce charcoal from the basket across the forge coals. He nodded to Huldran, and the blond guard pumped the great bellows while Nylan took out his hammers and a strip of lander alloy-not that there was much left, but he would use it while he could. Then he’d have to figure out another way to make high-quality blades-if he could.

On the forge shelf rested a local blade-broken and melted around the edges from the devastation Nylan had created by merging one dying weapons laser with the “order fields” of this unknown world, so like and yet so unlike the powernets he had ridden as the engineer of the Winterlance. More than a thousand such local blades were stacked, like cords of wood, behind the smithy. Some were whole, some partly melted, and some broken.

A wry smile crossed the smith’s lips. And a year ago he’d worried about metal stocks?

“Ready, ser?” asked Huldran.

“Ready as ever.” He laid the alloy on the coals. From bitter experience he’d learned that, in the initial stages of forging blades, the softer local iron had to be forge-welded into the alloy, not the other way around.

By the time the midday chimes rang from the tower, they had managed to flatten the iron of the local blade into the strip of alloy, flatten the mixed metals, fold them and flatten them once, twice, and three times, then yet again. A dozen or more such fold-weld-flattenings, and Nylan would have metal ready to forge into a blade itself. He knew that even more of the pattern-welding would have been better, but time was short, and Ryba less than perfectly patient. In any case, the later forge steps would go more quickly.

All winter long he and Huldran had forged blades, spurred on by Ryba’s insistence that every guard-every recruit-should have at least two of the shortswords that were equally deadly as blades or missiles. All of the blades were essentially modified copies of the pair that Ryba had brought down from the Winterlance-the Sybran nomad blades the Marshal and former captain of the angel ship had carried and practiced with throughout her service career.

“I’ll bank the coals, ser, not that we’ve much to bank.”

“You up to starting one of your own this afternoon?”

“Why not?”

“Then dump some logs on the fire.”

Huldran grinned. “You going to practice after you eat? That’s dangerous.”

“I’ll be careful.” Either Saryn or Istril or Siret would single him out. He and Ryba avoided practicing skills against each other-there was too much resentment there for it to be safe for either of them.

Nylan racked the hammers and checked the metal blank that would soon be another deadly shortsword, then eased on his jacket before heading out of the smithy and down toward the tower.

A handful of newer guards, led by Murkassa, one of the first locals to seek out Westwind, walked swiftly down from the canyon that held livestock and mounts, but they were several hundred paces up the road from the smithy. The round-faced and brown-haired guard lifted a hand in greeting, and Nylan returned it before turning onto the road.

Nylan had barely cooled off before he stepped through the main door to Tower Black. He squinted in the far dimmer light of the tower, but took a deep breath of the fresh-baked dark bread that Blynnal did so well and the aroma of something else-the mint-spiced stew, he thought, probably created around the remnants of the deer that Ayrlyn had brought in two days earlier, after the light dusting of snow from a spring storm.

“Nylan?” Istril, carrying her son Weryl in her arms, motioned from the de facto nursery on the left side of the tower entry area.

He turned and crossed the stones of the entry hall.

Her face was slightly flushed, as though she had been outside in the cold. Weryl’s face was also red.

“You were outside?” Nylan asked.

“We walked up to the stables with Siret and Kyalynn. Ydrall went with us, but she was cold the whole way. Kyalynn and Weryl just babbled the whole time.” Istril grinned down at her son. “The cold like this doesn’t bother him at all.”

“With what you wrapped him in, I imagine not.”

“I am glad you got another snow cat. Once I have it tanned, it will make a good parka.”

“For a year or two.” Nylan laughed.

“Da!” offered Weryl, thrusting a chubby hand toward his father.

“Da to you, too,” returned Nylan, taking his son, and still half wondering at the circumstances that had resulted in three of the four infants in Westwind being his-when he’d only slept with Ryba at that time.

“We’ll have five more lambs,” the silver-haired Istril announced quietly.

“Practicing your healing, again?”

Weryl tugged at Nylan’s index finger, his grip firm. Nylan smiled at his son.

“The more healers the better. You and Ayrlyn can’t do it all, and what happens if you’re hurt, like in the big battle with the Lornians and the Gallosians?” asked Istril.

“I was glad you’d practiced.”

“So was the Marshal. Her arm was a mess.”

“You wouldn’t know it now.”

“She used to get tired faster when she practiced blades, but she’s almost over that now,” noted Istril.

“Slow, she’s faster than anyone else.”

“Except you and Saryn. You’re as fast as she is, but you don’t like to go for the kill. Saryn’s even more of a killer than the Marshal.” Istril held out her arms for Weryl. “You need to eat. He’s eaten.”

“What about you?” asked Nylan as he handed his son back to Istril, disengaging Weryl’s fingers from his own index finger.

“Antyl will watch him while I eat.” Istril smiled warmly and carried their silver-haired son back to the nursery.

Nylan turned, then stopped to avoid running into one of the cooks.

“Greetings, ser.” Blynnal bowed her head, about all she dared bow, as pregnant as she was and carrying the large baskets of fresh-baked bread up from the kitchen on the lower level of the tower.

Nylan had no doubts about the father. Blynnal had worshiped Relyn before the one-armed man had slipped out of Westwind one step ahead of a vengeful Ryba. And Relyn had worried a lot about the cook-pretty, but timid, and one of the few women in Westwind with no desire to lift a blade against the majority of men in Candar.

After following Blynnal past the lower tables, Nylan slipped around her and into the space at the end of the bench at the first table, the position that had always been his. The hearth to his right was dark-but between the warmth that drifted up from the kitchen on the level below and the residual heat from the wood-fired furnace, the high-ceilinged room was warm enough.

Saryn sat across from Nylan, while Huldran eased onto the bench on Nylan’s left. Ayrlyn, her flame-red hair seemingly glinting with its own light, slipped onto the bench across from the smith-engineer.

Even before Nylan poured the steaming tea in his mug, Ryba sat down at the end of the table in the only chair in the great hall.

“How is the forging coming?” she asked politely.

“We’re working on two more blades,” he answered. “From what I figure, that will bring us to nearly a hundred of them-about a score more than two per guard. We’ve had to go back to starting the forge with wood, and we’ll be out of charcoal in another eight-day.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d just work on blades until the charcoal goes.”

“More visions?” he asked quietly.

“Such as they are.” Ryba broke off a chunk of bread.

Nylan took a chunk of the dark bread after her and passed the basket to Huldran, then looked across the table, noting the pallor in Ayrlyn’s face. “Dephnay again?” he asked.

“She’s getting better, but Tryssa got burned with hot grease. Cold water helped-except for her eyelids.”

Nylan winced at the thought of grease across the eyes, and the effort it must have cost the flame-haired healer. Healing through the order fields was exhausting, as he knew from experience. He’d collapsed more than once. “How is she?”

“She’ll be fine.”

“How about you?”

“I’ll need a nap after I eat. A long one.” Ayrlyn took a long swallow of the hot tea.

Nylan nodded sympathetically, then took a sip of his own tea while waiting for the huge crockpot filled with stew to reach him.

“You need to eat more,” Hryessa badgered Daryn from the foot of the table.

“You need to be strong to return to Gallos,” suggested Murkassa, a glint in her eye.

“I cannot return,” said Daryn quietly, a flush stealing over his fair-complected face. “You know that. One of the standard-bearers of Gallos? A single survivor? I would be suspected of treachery…or worse.”

“We’ve been through this before,” said Ayrlyn, interrupting the teasing, straight-faced. “You certainly weren’t the only survivor, just the only one daring enough to entice a guard. Some of the wounded in the lower camp made their way back to Lornth and Gallos.”

Daryn flushed again, then replied. “Most died. You know that, healer. Those that did return reached their homes before the winter snows. After a winter on the Roof of the World…” Daryn shrugged.

“You could not have traveled. You almost died,” said Hryessa.

“No.” Daryn laughed, not quite bitterly. “It is difficult for a one-footed man to travel the Westhorns.”

“Almost as difficult as for a single woman to travel Candar unmolested,” added Ryba dryly.

A murmur of assent ran across the tables.

Nylan wanted to shake his head. Candar was a powerflux ready to explode, and just by founding Westwind Ryba had started the energy cascade.

“Daryn?” asked the Marshal.

“Yes, Marshal,” answered the youth warily.

“What do you know about a place called Cyador?”

“Only what the traders tell, ser. It is the ancient home of those who follow the white way, and filled with silver and malachite, and great buildings walled with mirrors that catch and hold the sun. Even the smallest of dwellings are like palaces.”

“Exactly where is this paradise?”

“Somewhere beyond the Westhorns-that is all I know.”

“What brought that up?” Nylan asked Ryba.

“I’ve been studying some of those scrolls Ayrlyn picked up, and there are some disturbing references to Cyador, especially to how the ancient ones channeled the rivers and built the grass hills to turn back travelers. Oh, and about how some daughters of Cyador fled to the barbarians.” Ryba’s voice turned dry. “I wonder about paradise if those daughters fled.”

A murmur of laughter went around the table.

“It must be beyond Lornth, then,” said Ayrlyn. “Relyn never mentioned it. Nor did Nerliat.”

“Relyn’s probably spreading tales about the great new ancient one,” suggested Hryessa.

“That will only cause more trouble,” said Ryba quietly. Her eyes turned on Nylan momentarily, before she took a mouthful of the mint stew.

Not about to get into a discussion about Relyn and his efforts to create a new religion based on what he had learned from Nylan, the smith ate quietly, occasionally glancing at Ayrlyn, pleased to see some of the pallor leaving her face as the healer ate.

“Eating helps, doesn’t it?” he said, knowing it was an inane comment, but wanting to reach out.

“Somewhat. With some rest, I’ll feel better,” answered Ayrlyn.

“If someone needs something that way,” he offered, “send them to me. Or Istril. She’s practicing her skills.”

“I told her to. I’m glad she is.”

“We will need more healers,” Ryba said coolly, and the certainty of her words chilled Nylan. What else was she seeing?

Ayrlyn and Nylan exchanged glances, then continued to eat without speaking.

After the midday meal, Nylan walked up the five flights of the stone steps to the top level, turning right into his quarters, across from Ryba’s. He looked around the bare room-one window, glazed in wavery local glass; a lander couch that made a hard bed, but better than anything of local manufacture; a crude table and stool; and a rocking chair for when he sang Dyliess to sleep.

“Nylan?”

He turned.

The dark-haired Marshal of Westwind stood in the door, carrying a squirming silver-haired child, more than an infant, but not quite a toddler. “Could you take her? I’d like to practice. Or you could practice first-”

“Go ahead. I’ll practice after you.” The smith-engineer extended his hands for his daughter, and she extended hers.

“Gaaaa…”

“Gaaa to you, too.” Nylan lifted Dyliess to his shoulder and hugged her.

“I’ll be down below,” Ryba repeated. “Then…I don’t know.”

“Fine.” Nylan eased himself into the crude rocking chair he’d crafted just so that he could have one in his own quarters to rock Dyliess.

As he rocked, her fingers grasped the edge of the carvings on the back of the chair, and then his silver hair-and his ear.

“Easy there, young lady. Your father’s ears are tender.” He lowered her and sat her in his lap, beginning to sing to her.

“On top of old Freyja, all covered in ice…”

His voice was getting hoarse when there was a rap on the door.

“Yes?”

“Ser…” A thin-faced woman with mahogany hair stood at his door. “The Marshal sent me up-”

“You’re going to take care of Dyliess while I practice, Antyl?”

“If you’d wish it, ser.”

“That’s fine.” Trust Ryba to send someone else to Nylan for Dyliess. Despite the close quarters of the tower, Ryba avoided Nylan as much as possible, asking as little as possible, as though he were the unreasonable one. He’d been tricked into being a stud, manipulated into incinerating thousands, and deceived in who knew how many little ways, but he was unreasonable-even though he’d essentially built and armed Westwind. And Ryba wondered why he didn’t want anything to do with her? If it weren’t for Dyliess and the other children…

But they were his and linked to Westwind, and there was no changing that, none at all.

He stood up from the rocking chair and eased Dyliess to his shoulder for a moment, patting her back. Then he half-lowered her and kissed her cheek before easing her into Antyl’s arms.

“How’s Jakon?”

“He be fine, ser, a strong baby. He sleeps now.” With a broad smile, the brunette turned and headed down the stone steps of the tower.

Nylan stripped off his jacket and headed down the steps to the dimness of the fifth level, where practicing was a contest not only against his partner, but against the gloom and uncertain lighting. Ryba claimed that blades were as much feel as vision, and perhaps she was right. Nylan wasn’t certain he’d even seen half the men he’d killed with a blade over the past two years. He’d certainly felt their deaths, suffused with white agony, but had he really seen them with his eyes?

That was the problem with Ryba. She was almost always right, but he hated her insistence that power-or cold iron-was the only true solution to surviving in Candar.

“Here’s the engineer,” called Istril, holding Weryl and watching the sparring floor.

“Catch!” called Saryn.

Nylan’s hand reached out almost automatically and caught the hardwood wand, flipping it again and catching the hilt end. As he did, he absently wondered how he had gotten so proficient in handling antique weapons of destruction-except he wasn’t. He could defend himself against most, and he had killed more than a few raiders and attackers-one at a time, since, after the first or second killing, the white-infused waves of pain that flowed through him left him virtually incapacitated.

He wasn’t unique. All those who showed the innate ability to manipulate the order fields to heal-all the silver-haired ones and Ayrlyn-had the same problem. Ryba couldn’t heal, but she could certainly kill.

Interestingly, Nylan reflected as he flexed the wand, trying to warm up briefly, all of those who showed those healing traits had survived, even despite the battles they had been forced to fight.

“Watch this,” Saryn told the handful of recruits lining the chalked-off practice floor.

Nylan knew only about half the faces by name, and he wished they wouldn’t watch. He glanced to the corner where Daryn sat on a stool. The smith probably needed to craft some sort of prosthetic device for the youth’s foot, as he had for Relyn’s lost hand.

“Ready, Nylan?”

“Not really.” The smith lifted the hardwood wand, trying to let the feeling of unseen darkness and order flow around him and through him.

Saryn lifted her wand, a shimmering laserlike force that probed and slashed through the gloom of the fifth-level practice area.

As usual, Nylan felt awkward, barely parrying Saryn’s initial attacks, giving ground and retreating, trying to capture the sense of order that was his only salvation from bruises or, in actual combat, death.

As he melded with the hardwood wand that mirrored a blade, he finally surrendered to the flow of order and let the wand take its own course.

“…engineer’s so good…bet not even the Marshal could touch him…”

“…notice, though…he never strikes…all defense…”

But how long could he only defend? How long?