The Chaos Balance

XCV

The angels reined up at the crest of the low hill, where Nylan unfastened his water bottle and took a deep swallow. Sylenia twisted in the saddle and offered water to Weryl, who swallowed, splashed water across his tanned legs, and then thrust the bottle back before Sylenia was ready. The bottle slid off the saddlebags and bounced into the dust of the road.

Even before Nylan could put down his own water bottle, Fuera had vaulted from his saddle and recovered the water bottle, handing it up to Sylenia. A dark splotch remained in the road.

“Thank you.” The black-haired nursemaid smiled.

“Just tell Tonsar that we looked out for you.” Fuera flashed an openly charming grin.

Sylenia shook her head, but the smile remained as Fuera remounted with the same dash.

Ayrlyn offered the faintest of ironic smiles. Nylan smothered his own smile, then looked at the vista before them.

Under the mid-afternoon sun, and a green-blue sky with a few scattered and puffy white clouds, the road wound down the hill to the right, and then angled up yet another grass-covered hill, topped by a small grove of low trees. A flock of sheep grazed on the mostly green meadow west of the road, and beyond the animals were several low buildings and a sod-roofed dwelling.

“Still that way?” asked Nylan, inclining his head in the general direction of the road ahead.

“There’s a hint of order. It’s stronger that way,” suggested Ayrlyn.

Nylan let his own order senses follow hers, feeling a thread of order, and something more, still to the northwest.

“It’s stronger now.”

He nodded, restowing the water bottle and wondering if they would reach the order grove, if that was what it was, before sunset.

Perhaps ten kays and three lines of hills later, the group reined up at the top of another low hill, looking out óver the patchwork of continuing meadows and scattered flocks of sheep.

“We’re close,” Ayrlyn said.

Nylan glanced downhill, and his eyes wandered back to the opposite hill crest. He frowned. He’d meant to look downhill.

Rather than look, he listened in the stillness broken only by the hint of a breeze. Was that the gurgling of a brook or stream?

He started to look downhill again, and his eyes blurred.

“There’s something there.” The redheaded healer frowned.

“I know. It’s shielded somehow.”

“There are trees, pines of a sort, and they’re tall.”

Out of the corner his eyes, Nylan could sense Sylenia’s puzzlement as she squinted out into the glare of the low sun, trying to make out whatever the two angels discussed.

“Just a hillside…”

“Why are we sitting here?” asked Fuera.

“The smith and healer see something,” answered Sias.

“Don’t see anything,” added Buretek.

“They see a lot we don’t. He sees inside metal. She sees inside people.” The apprentice smith and armsman paused. “I’m not sure it be good to see everything they see.”

“We’ll see,” said Buretek cheerfully. “They see something, or they don’t.”

Except it wasn’t that simple, thought Nylan. Nothing that involved the order and chaos fields was-that he’d already discovered, unfortunately.

“There’s nothing there,” said Ayrlyn. “I mean, no animals, no big ones. There are the trees, and the stream.”

“Let’s see.” Nylan turned his mount to the left and off the road, heading downhill.

“…not even a road…”

“…knows where he’s going…”

“…so does she…”

As they rode downhill toward the well-sensed but unseen valley, if a place that tried to fool human vision could be claimed to be unseen, Nylan noted a growing sense of calm, of balance before him, and a growing consternation in the saddles behind.

“…something there…but my eyes…”

“…told you…”

Finally, he turned. “It’s just a grove of trees. There’s some sort of magic shield around it to protect it from being logged or destroyed. That’s all.” Not quite all, by a long shot, but nothing to harm them. Whether it might harm Ayrlyn or him was another question. And it isn’t really a shield, either. He took a deep breath.

“Not quite all,” murmured Ayrlyn as she eased her mount closer.

“I know. I can feel it, but it’s not harmful.”

Abruptly, when the ground flattened near the base of the hill, they no longer had to use their order senses to force their eyes to see the grove.

“Oh…”

“Where…the trees come from?”

Even Weryl added an “oooo.”

Less than a dozen huge and spreading pines formed a circle, shielding the needle-carpeted center area with a canopy of green. The area under and immediately around the trees was open, covered only with a deep carpet of pine needles.

A narrow and fast-moving brook bordered the grove, appearing out of the tangled thorn bushes and redberry bushes to the southeast. Was it from some sort of underground spring? There wasn’t a stream south of the valley. Of that Nylan was certain.

Downstream, on the northwest side of the grove, the same stream vanished into another tangle of bushes, except far enough away to leave a clearing in the open.

The cool and shadow of trees and the hills were more than welcome to the smith. He took a deep breath, a breath free from dust for what seemed the first time since they had left the Westhorns a long season earlier, a breath filled with the clean scent of pine.

The smith turned in the saddle. “We’ll camp in the open space at the end. We can sleep on the needles around the trees, but keep the fire clear of them.”

Sias glanced up at the towering evergreens, and then at Buretek. “Did you see these up on the hillside?”

Fuera reached out, leaning sideways in the saddle, and thumped the ridged and age-darkened bark. “Solid…most solid.” He shook his head.

Nylan smiled slowly. Maybe there was something to the trees…and to the dreams…maybe. He hoped so.

“There is,” Ayrlyn affirmed as she dismounted and led the chestnut to the downstream area just before the brook vanished into the thicket again. After a moment, as the mare drank, she added, “The redberries are ripe, and there are plenty here. But watch the thorns.”

Watch the thorns-wasn’t that the general prescription for life? What other surprises might there be?

After a moment, he dismounted and followed Ayrlyn, as did the others.

Overhead, the pine boughs whispered ever so faintly in the late afternoon breeze, a breeze that only the trees showed.