The Chaos Balance

XLVIII

Nylan glanced out from the tower to the west. The thin clouds obscured the sun just enough that it was a golden ball hanging low over the green fields beyond the river. “We haven’t heard anything.”

“Matters of great import,” replied Ayrlyn ironically, “take time to settle, usually over wine or strong spirits late in the evening.”

“Ooooo…” offered Weryl from a sitting position by Nylan’s feet, where he pawed at the sandy dust that had drifted up in the angled space where the stone blocks of the tower floor met those of the parapet.

“I hadn’t thought that letting us fight their battles for them-or volunteer to help train or whatever-would be a matter of great import,” responded Nylan. “It’s not as though Lornth is exactly overflowing with trained blades.”

“Ooo, da,” concurred Weryl.

“Lornth is not exactly filled with love for angels, either, and it’s pretty clear that the holders have some considerable influence over the regents.”

Nylan nodded, recalling that those holders had apparently forced the late Lord Sillek into his ill-fated expedition against Westwind.

The sound of hurried feet on the stones of the tower steps rose from a murmur to a whisper-slapping rhythm. Then a young woman, black hair bound into a loose braid, burst out into the orangish afternoon light. Her eyes darted from Nylan to Ayrlyn.

“Healer! Please, it be young Nesslek.”

Ayrlyn looked to Nylan, then back to the black-haired young woman. “Nesslek? The regent’s son…what?”

“They say it be a fever.” She shook her head. “It be more-chaos fever-like as killed my Acora. Please…go to her. Go to the Lady Zeldyan afore it be too late.”

“She sent you?”

“I did not wait to be sent.”

Ayrlyn gave Nylan a wry smile. “It’s nice to be needed for something.”

Nylan scooped up Weryl and hoisted the boy up to his shoulder. “Lead on.”

Despite the woman’s urgency, the smith forced himself to take the narrow stairs carefully. The illness might only be a fever, but even if it weren’t, there was no benefit to anyone if the would-be healers crashed down the treacherous and narrow stone steps.

Then, too, what exactly could they do? Localized infections caused by wounds were one thing, but Nylan wondered about a systemic infection. He’d been less than spectacularly successful in his one attempt-Ellysia had died, and he hadn’t been in the best of shape for days afterward.

“This way,” urged the woman, turning and scurrying down the dim hallway toward the end of the keep that held the apartments of the regents.

Still carrying Weryl, Nylan approached the guards, Ayrlyn matching him, step for step.

The black-haired woman halted before the guards. “The angels are healers, and the Lady Zeldyan has need of them.”

The two guards in green-trimmed purple tunics exchanged glances, one looking to the blades at the angels’ waists.

Nylan glanced down. “Oh…sorry. We hadn’t planned to be here.”

Ayrlyn unsheathed her blade and extended it, hilt first, then took Weryl as Nylan followed her example.

The heavy-set guard, now holding two shortswords, looked puzzled.

“Announce them,” ordered the thinner guard.

The heavy guard rapped on the door. Muffled words issued from behind the heavy dark wood.

“The angel healers are here.”

After a moment the three-paneled carved door swung open, and a dark-bearded form stepped out into the corridor. “We have no need of angel healers.”

“Your pardon, ser Fornal,” Nylan said. “We did not wish to intrude, but we were summoned.”

“There is no need-”

Zeldyan slipped out beside Fornal.

“Lady.” Nylan bowed his head.

“I did not summon you, yet…” the regent began, her blond hair disarrayed-the first time Nylan had seen it so. Her eyes went to the black-haired woman. “Sylenia?”

“Your Grace…it be the chaos fever.” Sylenia bent her head. “I know. I know.”

“It be nothing,” snorted Fornal. “The boy has but an unpleasantness. It happens to many young folk. It will pass. These matters do.”

For a long moment, Zeldyan surveyed Fornal, the angels, the hallway, the guards, Sylenia, and finally Weryl.

“Ahhh?” asked the boy.

Zeldyan smiled faintly. “Angels…you may enter. Sylenia, you wait here with their child. If it be chaos fever indeed, he should not enter.”

Nylan slowly eased his son into Sylenia’s arms. “You be good.” He couldn’t dispute the validity of Zeldyan’s point, especially in a culture without any real medical technology-but what was he doing in exposing himself-and Ayrlyn?

“He will be fine.” Sylenia beamed down at Weryl. At her smile, the puzzled look on the boy’s face faded into a wary acceptance.

Fornal scowled at Zeldyan. “Be you sure?”

“Fornal, Nesslek is my son. Angels, if you would follow me.” Zeldyan turned, and the two angels followed the blond regent into the sitting room. Nylan nodded to himself at the quiet luxury-the matching and cushioned armchairs, the carved game or informal dining table, and the heavy purple and green carpet, worn enough, yet still thick, to indicate its age and considerable value. Beside the base of the candelabra was a malachite and silver hair band, lying there as if dropped or tossed carelessly.

“He is in the small bedchamber,” the regent said, crossing the room and easing wide the already ajar door. “All children have their illnesses.” Zeldyan paused. “Healers are for wounds and cuts, not for fevers and the fluxes within. Those healers I have known, they bleed and mix potions, and it matters not.” The regent looked at Ayrlyn. “You would not cut or bleed him?”

“Bleeding? Why do…no. Never,” the redhead added more strongly.

Nylan shook his head as well.

Nesslek lay on his back in the ornately carved bed of dark polished wood, his breathing labored, and his small forehead damp and flushed.

Even from cubits away, both angels could sense the white ugliness of chaos and infection.

Nylan knelt beside the small bed, his fingers going out past the silklike pillowcase with the green and purple embroidered edging to the forehead of the fevered child.

“Definitely some sort of infection-”

“No antibiotics, no anti-inflammatories…” whispered Ayrlyn.

“This is tough…like the stuff that got Ellysia.”

Ayrlyn winced.

“Maybe we can…he’s small,” Nylan said in a low voice, all too conscious of the regent standing behind them.

“We can.”

Nylan wasn’t quite so sure, but could sense Ayrlyn’s determination. So he extended his perceptions, trying to ignore the regent, the ornate carved furniture, the woven carpet under his knees-trying to twist the chaos in the small figure, turn it somehow into order. The sweat beaded on his forehead, his chest, his back, the dampness soaking through his clothes as he struggled.

Ayrlyn’s hand touched his, adding some of the cool black order to their struggle, but the white ugliness seemed to be everywhere within the boy, with the dissonant redness of chaos shimmering dully, unseen.

Nylan wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.

Although Nesslek breathed more easily, Nylan knew that respite was momentary, as it had been with Ellysia. They had done nothing to reach the cause of the infection.

“Rest for a moment,” Ayrlyn suggested.

Zeldyan backed up a step, but continued to watch, her eyes moving from her son to the healers and back again. “He’s better, isn’t he? Isn’t he?”

“For a bit, lady,” Ayrlyn said gently. “We’ve gained some time, but we need to do more.”

That much was true…but what?

For some reason, Nylan thought of trees, trees clustered in an ancient grove, surrounded and infused with an incredible depth of order-and of chaos almost as deep. Why? Why trees, for darkness’s sake? He knew he’d never seen that grove.

Then he shrugged to himself. As seemed to be the case all too often in Candar, he was left with going with his feelings and senses, not his engineering-honed logic.

“What?” asked Ayrlyn.

“Trees,” answered the smith cryptically. “Order. Patterns.” Would it work? Who knew, but what he’d been doing hadn’t worked with Ellysia, and it probably wouldn’t work with poor young Nesslek.

He closed his eyes and tried to replicate the patterns, the flow of dark and light, trying not to eradicate that white chaos within the child, but to twist the flows, to contain the chaos within order, within the dark fields. As he struggled again, he tried to ignore the impossibilities, the feelings that everything was an elaborate illusion, that he might be just a fraud…but he kept ordering…and struggling…and patterning…

And beside him, so did Ayrlyn.

In the end, they locked order over chaos, fragilely, gently. And after that lock, a different darkness rose up and brought them down.