The Chaos Balance

XCIX

In the dimness of the hot twilight, with the orange glow at their back, the six-and Weryl-rode over the last hill. In the valley below, to the southeast, glimmered a few points of light-torches on the shed barn and the headquarters dwelling.

Against the purpling of the sky, against the openness and sweep of the dark brown hills, with its few lights the camp in the valley at Syskar appeared small, fragile…insignificant. Then again, was anything particularly significant except to human beings who persisted in the search for significance?

Nylan glanced upward, as the still-unfamiliar stars began to appear. How were he and Ayrlyn any different? Wasn’t everything they were trying insignificant? What difference did it really make? Wasn’t Fornal’s belief in honor, even when the black-bearded regent had to know honor was futile, as significant-and perhaps more understandable-as the angels’ efforts to move Lornth toward a less repressive and oppressive society? Especially since honor had a clear meaning?

“They’re both insignificant,” Ayrlyn pointed out quietly. “In the greater scheme of things, anyway. Being human is the struggle to bring meaning into a universe where order and chaos normally create meaningless patterns that resemble a balance.”

“Cynical…” Nylan laughed.

“Of course.”

“Wadah, Enyah? Wadah, pease?” begged Weryl plaintively.

Sylenia twisted in the saddle to give the boy a swallow from the water bottle.

They did not speak, nor did the three armsmen, on the rest of the ride back to Syskar. Even the sentries only nodded as the group rode slowly into the yard, and unsaddled and groomed their mounts.

Lewa stepped perhaps twenty paces from the barracks, surveyed them, and turned back into the dimness.

Nylan didn’t like the silence, as ominous as the Cyadoran threat, in a different way, but he shouldered his saddlebags, picked up a sleepy Weryl, and started toward their quarters.

Nylan and Ayrlyn walked up onto the stoop-hotter than the open yard. Nylan carried Weryl, and Sylenia followed, several steps back. The strap hinges Nylan had replaced creaked as he pushed open the door.

Fornal sat on the sole stool before the rickety table-alone. On the table were a mug, a bottle, the candle with the glass mantle, and a scroll. “Welcome back, angels.” Fornal glanced down at the half-empty bottle on the rickety table, then at his mug. “You would be pleased to know that my coregents appreciated the copper.”

“We are glad to hear that.”

“Ser?” murmured Sylenia.

Nylan turned and eased Weryl into the nursemaid’s arms. With a quick inclination of her head to Fornal, she slipped around the angels and into their room; saddlebags slapped against the door frame before the door shut with a dull clunk.

The angels stepped toward the regent, then dropped onto the bench on the left side of the table.

A low murmuring came from behind the closed door, a lullaby. Nylan smiled faintly, momentarily.

The candle flickered behind its glass mantle with soot thick enough to block much of the dim light cast. The shadows on the blotched walls of the dwelling’s main rooms wavered in the heat of the summer night.

Nylan wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.

“Even I am hot, angel mage,” admitted Fornal.

“You know how we feel about the heat.” Nylan waited, then asked, “What has happened with the Cyadorans?”

“Nothing. They squat there,” Fornal said. “They do not ride forth save in masses, in scores and scores, and their lances and their shields shimmer. Sometimes, they go far enough to raid. We do little. We have killed nearly half their force, and still they have five times the men I do.”

“Cyador’s bigger than Lornth,” Nylan temporized, wondering, fearing, where Fornal’s words were leading.

Ayrlyn watched, her eyes on the regent.

“What do you suggest I do? You are the dark mages. It nears summer-end, and we do not have the mines back. They have fired a dozen hamlets, and they will keep doing so. You counsel patience. My armsmen fight among themselves unless Lewa or Huruc or I watch them every moment.”

Fornal lifted a scroll and handed it to Ayrlyn. “Read this. Even my patient sire and my practical sister share my worries. Even after the copper, even after we have reduced the forces of the white demons by half, the holders question the levies and the tariffs…because they see no results. We have not reclaimed the mines.” Fornal snorted. “The holders ask if the angels are advising us to bleed Lornth dry in the Grass Hills…so that the dark angels may feast on the corpse of Lornth. Did I not warn you about our holders?”

“You did. Weren’t they the ones who caused Sillek’s death?” asked Nylan.

“And if they are not satisfied, they will cause ours,” suggested the regent.

The redhead unrolled the scroll. As he watched her read, Nylan could see the darkness in her eyes, and the circles beneath them. She finished and handed the scroll to Nylan.

Nylan read the dispatch quickly, his mind catching the seemingly temperate phrases that hinted at more, far more.

…holders have requested that the Regent Fornal seek a speedy return of the mines or another alternative that does not require levies needed for the forthcoming harvest…

…the Lady Ellindyja and the Lady Erenthla have both reported that a number of young women have fled to the Westhorns…and their consorts and holders petition the regency council…feel that such problems cannot be ignored because of one set of mines in distant southern Lornth…

…Suthyan traders, led by Lygon of Bleyans, are increasing the prices of iron stocks….

Nylan rolled the scroll back up and handed it to the regent. Fornal had translated Zeldyan’s-the hand was feminine-seemingly temperate phrases accurately enough, if with his own twists.

“So, angels? Has your magely journey revealed some answer that I may provide to my men? Or my coregents? Or the holders of Lornth?” Fornal finished the last of the bottle and stared at Nylan. “I know that you have done much, yet that is not enough. As harvest nears, the clamor for the return of the levies will grow, and so will the numbers of white lancers. The holders will claim that our fight has been worthless and without honor. Can you offer me any hope?”

“Perhaps,” said Nylan. Did Fornal really think they could just come up with an easy magical solution? Or was he as frustrated as the two angels? “In the morning, we’ll tell you how we’ll destroy all the Cyadorans in Lornth.”

Fornal rose with a sweeping bow. “I look forward to that. You do not know how I look forward to that.” With the precise steps of a man who had drunk too much and knew it, he walked slowly, carefully, to his room, closing the door behind him.

“You were right,” Ayrlyn said tiredly.

“I was?”

“About people not being interested in balance, or even their long-term self-interest.”

“Fornal can’t find an answer, and he knows it. So he’s shifting all the responsibility to us.”

“Isn’t that human nature?” Ayrlyn looked at the candle and the sooty glass mantle. “I won’t clean it.”

“No one asked you to. I cleaned it the last time.”

“Nylan, we aren’t keeping score.”

“Sorry.” He wiped his forehead once more.

“You said we’d have a plan. What do we do? Burn up more Cyadoran mounts, and get everyone even angrier?”

Nylan shook his head. “We have to get something in the grenades that clings and will burn through timbers.” He paused. “I don’t know. More wax, animal fats? I’m an engineer, not a chemist.”

“It would have to burn hotter,” said Ayrlyn. “Much hotter.”

“More experiments…and we’ll need something that will act as an oxidizer.” Nylan took a deep breath. “Just so the horse-lovers of Candar won’t be too offended.”

“That’s not the only reason, and you know it.”

“No,” he admitted. “We need to upgrade what we’ve got distilled and improve it enough to make a larger mess out of the Cyadoran base, and the barracks and the soldiers. That way, it might just be enough to push them out of Lornth.”

She winced.

“I know.” And he did. They could burn the entire base, and it wouldn’t solve the problem.

“For now. It might buy time. They might retreat back to Syadtar or wherever in Cyador,” the redhead ventured, “but they’ll be back with an army that will make what we faced on the Roof of the World look small.”

“And they’ll gather enough force to burn all of Lornth to a crisp?”

She nodded.

“Well…that would stop all the holders from complaining and believing that they can just negotiate some sort of agreement with Cyador and that life will go on and they can still abuse their women and have their limited honorable battles-”

“Nylan…in a way, they’re right. At least about the honorable battles. So long as they just fought each other, it provided a rough balance…”

He saw where she was going, and nodded. “Except that Cyador has its own ideas about social balance, and so does Ryba.”

“And Sillek and Zeldyan have been caught in the middle. And so are we,” she added.

“Do we really want to make this worse? By blowing up or firing the Cyadoran base?” Nylan blew out the candle. The flickers and the shadows were harder on his eyes than the darkness. He wondered how much dissolving candle wax into the distillate would help…and what else was handy that they could add to that demon’s mix.

“I’d rather run back to the grove and hide,” Ayrlyn confessed. “But that won’t work. Not for long.”

Not for very long at all.

Whose thought was it? Did it matter?

They turned toward their room, steps slow and deliberate in the dark.