“The Cyadorans don’t leave those lying around,” mumbled Ayrlyn, trying to swallow her own dry biscuit crumbs.
“The white wizards use a glass to see,” pointed out Sylenia. “Could you not do that? I have a small flat glass.”
Nylan shivered. The thought of using that twisted white energy for anything-anything at all…he just couldn’t do it.
“That might be difficult,” Ayrlyn said.
“Can you not do something?”
The engineer frowned. Lasers…lasers had a parallel in the order forces, and he’d used that parallel in smithing. The glass was parallel to electronics. Nagging thoughts chased through his mind…piezoelectrics…glass, what was glass? Silicon, and what was silicon? Sand? Order out of chaos? Sand was chaotic enough, but you could make glass, mirrors, lasers, mirrors, mirror shields…
“Frig…I should have seen it!”
“What?” asked Ayrlyn.
“So obvious…”
“What?” Ayrlyn’s voice carried an exasperated edge.
“The mirror shields. You don’t keep traditions unless they serve a purpose. I assumed-maybe you did, too-that those reflective shields were half practical, half traditional.”
“Oh…” Ayrlyn nodded. “They’re protection against lasers-and white wizards’ firebolts. They don’t have any lasers left, but-”
“Right. What else do they have?”
“There was a mention of fire cannon in the scrolls. Lasers?”
“Could be. Or it could be something like a flamethrower.”
Nylan frowned.
“Antique weapon. You shoot jets of flammable liquids at people and things and light it. If you keep the pressure up, it doesn’t come back and burn you…something like that.” Ayrlyn took a sip of water, then stood and stretched. “Sitting on the ground isn’t my idea of comfort.”
“Flamethrowers…we can deal with. White magic lasers would be another thing,” Nylan said.
Weryl climbed up Sylenia’s shoulder to a standing position, then tottered toward Ayrlyn, flinging his arms around her trousered leg. “Ahwen…ahwen.”
“You are an imp.” Ayrlyn smiled, but lifted the silver-haired child and hugged him.
Nylan corked the water bottle and stood. Despite the wind that blew out of the north, he could still smell the brackish salty water below. Salt and sand and grass hills and enchanted forests and white empires…
“What are you thinking about?”
“Maps, glasses, forests…you name it.” The smith rubbed his temples. That was the problem with thinking. The more he thought, the more problems and ramifications he discovered-and each had more complexities than the last.
He pursed his lips. Could he create a map, an image? Well…if he tried and failed, it cost nothing, unlike tampering with white chaos energy. Sands, granules of sand-he walked slowly toward the burned-out fires of the salt-collectors.
“No…Weryl, let your father think for a moment.”
Ayrlyn’s words almost drifted around him as he reached the nearest of the old stone fire rings. He scuffed the ground with his boot. Was it sandy enough?
After a moment, he walked back down along the dried-out section of the lakeshore. At the north end, where a stream had once flowed into the brine lake, or still did seasonally, perhaps, he found a depression less than three cubits across filled with sand.
A map, he thought, a map.
Nothing happened, except that he had the faintest twinge in his skull.
Piezoelectric crystals, order flows, how do you get a map from that? Flows…chaos flows, patterns?
The second time he abandoned the idea of maps, instead concentrating on the flows of order and chaos.
The sands swirled, darker grains appearing until a pattern appeared.
“Well…it’s something…” The silver-haired angel squinted at the sandy pattern, then sat down abruptly beside it. His heart was racing again, and his knees were weak.
Ayrlyn and Weryl appeared behind him at the edge of the dry stream.
“Are you all right?”
“Takes…energy.”
Her eyes went to the sands. “You did it!”
“Sort of. It doesn’t look like much to me.”
Ayrlyn pointed. “Could that be Westwind, and the river and Lornth here, and that border there, the reddish sands-isn’t that the outline of Candar itself?”
“Maybe.” There weren’t any large-scale maps of Candar, not that the engineer had seen, and his view of the continent had been limited to the brief time when he’d been jockeying an unstable and overloaded lander through a turbulent atmosphere. There was a definite resemblance between his sand map and what he thought he’d seen-but did that really mean anything?
He hauled himself to his feet.
“And this dark splotch here-that has to be the forest, and we’re here…it’s not all that far.”
Nylan hoped not, even as he followed Ayrlyn’s explanation. Now they were reduced to real faith in the unprovable-magic, sorcery, or whatever-following their instincts, the sun, and a map created by subconscious manipulation of sand. And he’d thought the U.F.F. High Command had been screwy!
CVIII
A smaller version of the silver and malachite throne no more than four cubits high rested on the white marble dais. The white marble wall behind the throne rose to a balcony covered with open grillwork that concealed the Archers of the Rational Stars.
Lephi studied the throne, then turned to Triendar. “Be still, old friend, and just listen.”
He gestured to the two tall Mirror Lancers who stood by the double doors, and they opened the doors. A tall man entered the hall, wearing the uniform of the Mirror Lancers, a uniform without the green sash and no longer white, but smeared with charcoal and blood, and with yellow and red dust ground into the fabric. The doors closed. The majer bowed. “Your Mightiness.” His voice was even, resigned, calm.
“I have been told that you commanded the force that took the mines, and lost them, and that you returned with less than a third of your command.” Lephi’s voice was cold. “Is that accurate?”
“Yes, Your Mightiness.”
“Is it also true that you failed to mine the copper and sent none back to Cyad?”
“We mined the copper, Your Mightiness, and sent the wagons to Syadtar. I do not know what happened after that. During the entire campaign, I received no dispatches and no supplies.”
“I will not have it!” Lephi glanced around the room, less than a tenth the size of the receiving hall in Cyad.
Majer Piataphi stood below the dais, resigned, waiting.
“Why did you return? Why did you bother? The Archers of the Rational Stars have terminated many for far less. So have the white mages.” Lephi’s head inclined fractionally, in the direction of Triendar, who stood to his left, a pace back from the rearmost part of the throne.
“I saw no point in having the rest of the foot and lancers slaughtered.” Piataphi shrugged. “We received no supplies. We lacked enough horse to attack, and there was no forage. The barbarians would not stand and fight, except when they could find smaller detachments and outnumbered them.”
“You left with more than enough mounts.”
“In the middle of the night, the barbarians cast fireballs over the walls and into the barracks and stables and corrals. They were not like the fireballs of the white mages, for they left no trails in the sky. We drove them off, but not before we lost nearly sevenscore mounts.”
Triendar’s hands, hidden in his flowing sleeves, tightened into near fists, but his face remained impassive.
“I need no more catalogues of failure.” Lephi smiled. “You almost hope I will turn the Archers of the Rational Stars on you, Majer. I won’t. You will lead the van against the grasslands barbarians, and you will lead from the front of the very first squad.”
“Yes, ser.”
“Go!”
The majer turned, rather than backed away, and walked toward the double doors, which the lancers opened as he approached.