The Chaos Balance

XCVII

Buretek, Fuera, and Sias sat around the low coals of the fire, a fire ringed with stores used by others, but not in years, if not in centuries, stones so old that the soot was burned deep into their pores and crevices. Sylenia sat slightly apart from the armsmen. Low murmurs drifted southward to where Ayrlyn and Nylan sat on the soft needles between two gnarled roots, their backs propped against the rough bark. Nylan listened for a moment.

“…peaceful here…”

“They need it…probably we do, too.”

“Spooky, though…ride by and never see it…”

“The angels, they saw it.”

“They see too much, sometimes…”

With that, Nylan agreed. He looked to his left. There, on the other side of the root, lay Weryl on his blanket, eyes open, but heavy, half-looking into the dark canopy above that blocked the stars.

“This place is ancient,” the smith murmured, his fingers touching the smooth crests of the deep-rutted black bark, his eyes going up toward the tip of the evergreen-a tree that made even the groves of the Nomads of Sybra seem young by comparison.

“Older than any other trees we’ve seen,” agreed the healer. Her hair, still damp from washing in the clean and clear brook, glittered with a light of its own in the dimness. “And it feels like the dreams.”

“So what do we do?”

Ayrlyn took his hand. “Lean back and relax. Just open yourself up to your feelings. I know that’s hard for you, but it’ll be all right. I know it will.”

With a deep breath, Nylan shifted his weight on the soft needles piled around the gnarled roots, in a space that seemed as comfortable as a pilot’s seat, or more so. The scents of clean pine, the hint of moisture from the brook, the sweetness of crushed redberry-all created a sense of aliveness he had not felt in who knew how many eight-days.

Smiling, he closed his eyes, following Ayrlyn’s example, ignoring the low murmurs from around the fire.

First came a sense of peace, of comfort, yet there was more.

Lines of fire flickered, white lines, force fluxes like a chaotic power net, firebolts white-infused and red-shaded like those thrown by the wizards who had tried to storm Westwind….

…and the dark flows of blackness and the white chaos were mixed and twisted-and balanced. The trees grew and grew, and some died and fell, but always for all the changes, the white and darkness turned in and out, but balanced…until the heavens shivered, and the ground trembled.

Then, white lines of fire, fire that reflected light and darkness, burned through the forest, and the gray ashes fell like rain.

The rivers heaved themselves out of their banks, and the white mirror fires turned their waters into steam. Metal mountains grumbled across the water-polished stone hills and smoothed them, ground them, and suffocated them beneath strange new soil, and grasses that had never been.

Green shoots struggled through the ashes, and were turned into more ashes, and the ground heaved and trembled.

Lines of white stone slammed down like walls, pinning the trees behind lines of force that burned…and burned, burned somehow because the force of the ordered chaos that prisoned the trees was backward, because chaos bound order….

A sense of eternity followed, inaction behind walls, until the heavens shivered again, and the white walls cracked, and crumbled, and lines of white fire and darkness cascaded from ice-tipped peaks.

And the balanced flow of light and darkness resumed, with a sense of something like purpose and joy-except it was neither.

Nylan sat up abruptly, his hand reaching for Ayrlyn. Yet nothing had changed. The boughs still whispered in the wind; the insects chittered; the brook burbled in the darkness, and the four around the fire still talked in low voices.

“You know what it was?” asked Ayrlyn.

“The images reminded me of an early Rationalist colonizing force,” Nylan said. “Bring the native ecology into line.” He shook his head. “All that power-”

“The grove-the trees remember. That…that is hard to believe.” Ayrlyn’s voice was hushed. “And do you think this…Cyador…is what’s left of the Rat expedition?”

“I think so, but how would you prove it? Would it matter?” Nylan shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s an empire, of sorts.” He cleared his throat. “I just wonder if this grove is part of what was a larger, sentient forest-or a colonizing outpost…or-”

“As you said-does it matter? There’s a larger forest to the south, one that’s broken its bounds in a way that’s connected to our arrival.”

“Do you think the Cyadorans know that? Is that why they’re expanding into Lornth?” asked Nylan.

“I don’t think so. They couldn’t know, or feel, what the trees…or the forest does. If they did, then, they couldn’t have destroyed so much of it.”

“The old problem-cultivation is always better.” The smith shook his head. “Do you think our forests, places like Guljolm on Sybra-?”

“It could be,” said Ayrlyn, “but since we’re not likely to ever return-”

“Right.” Nylan shifted his weight, turned his head, and looked through the darkness at Weryl.

“Da…reee…” In the darkness, less than two cubits away, Weryl sat on his blanket, a smile on his face, looking at a pine cone, turning it in his hands. Beyond him, on its hind legs, stood a brown tree rat. The tree rat chittered and was gone.

“He has the night vision,” Ayrlyn said.

“Do you think he felt…?”

She shrugged. “Probably, but feeling and knowing what it means are two different things. The sense of balance was stronger than anything, and that couldn’t have hurt too much. He seems fine.”

Nylan hoped so. His son was too young to be burdened with the meaning of those images. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know that, either. Except that we’re both getting the same message about balancing order and chaos.”

“And no one else is? Why us?”

Ayrlyn moistened her lips, but did not speak for several moments. “‘Why us?’” she finally repeated. “I don’t know. Why can we heal? Or have strange-colored hair?” She laughed, softly, ironically. “Maybe the whole twisting of underspace, the bringing of the Winterlance to this universe…maybe it was because we were needed to return balance-”

“An automatic stabilizing mechanism…strong enough to cross universes?”

“Maybe just chance, and now that we’re here, this…balance…seeks us out. Does it matter?”

“I don’t like being a player’s piece…or the universe’s.” The whole idea bothered Nylan, especially when he saw how much he had changed…been changed. Poor Sillek, from everything that he kept learning, had seen and understood. The dead Lord of Lornth had been intelligent, perceptive, skilled, decisive, and a leader-and he’d been swept away by forces of ignorance, sexism, and barbarian tradition. Were he and Ayrlyn in the same position, condemned by some…force of balance…to try to right things…only to be drowned in the usual welter of blind human power lusts?

“That’s pretty grim,” she said.

“I feel pretty grim.” Nylan rubbed his forehead, and found that he didn’t have to, that the residual headache he had scarcely been conscious of had vanished. He found himself frowning.

“Order and chaos…balance…” he murmured.

“There’s something there,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “I think we need to stay here for a time. A little while, anyway. Just to see.”

“Maybe you can sing again?”

“I wouldn’t go that far…yet.” Still, a ghost of a smile crept to the corners of her mouth and eyes.

“Is it safe?” His eyes went back to Weryl.

“Is anywhere safe on this world?” Ayrlyn’s response wasn’t an answer, but it was the best either of them could do.