…great engineer, great smith…the greatest in all Candar…
Great smith? Nylan wanted to snort.
Who else forged the black blades of death that shear through the toughest plate armor? Who else forged the bows of night and the shafts that penetrate all? Who else built the tower that dared the Roof of the World? Who else? You have abandoned all you forged. Tell me I did not die for nothing. Tell me that the cairns of Westwind will not wither into meaninglessness. Tell me…
Each question raised by Fierral ripped into Nylan. Each one. Had the marine officer died for nothing? Had Nistayna been right? No!
Nylan refused to accept that. Order did not require that a tower or a patch of ground be defended forever, to and beyond death. Neither did chaos. There was a time to defend, and a time not to defend, a time to fight and a time to flee, a time to build and a time to tear down, a time to accept the past, and a time to reject it.
He stood unmoving, thrusting away the image of the dead marine and guard. Yet, before she faded, the blade he had forged spun toward the smith, turning end over end, so slowly. The razor edge nicked his left shoulder, barely missing Ayrlyn, and a gout of flame puffed from the wound, his own blood flaming as it oozed from his skin, burning, aching.
Come…great forger of destruction…welder of chaos…receive your just reward….
Another figure rose from the swirling fog of order and chaos-a black-haired, black-bearded man cloaked in purple, who wore maroon leather trousers, and a tunic of purple that matched the cloak. In his shoulder harness was a two-hand broadsword. He smiled, and his entire body was consumed in flames, yet he was untouched.
Behind the black-bearded man, Nylan felt the rising hordes of the dead, felt the purple-clad soldiers that marched toward an unseen black tower, felt the shadowy presence of white-cloaked chaos wizards.
You mean well, great smith and destroyer…and so did I…join me, for we are alike.
Nylan looked down, beyond Ayrlyn, almost unnaturally silent beside him, to the shoulder where blood, flame, and red-whitened ashes flowed, feeling more blood and ashes weeping from his injured face, wounds that ached with the pain beyond pain.
…join me…for did you not destroy thousands with the best of intentions…did you not forge death and more death to save but a handful of ungrateful women?
The smith forced his eyes back to the Lornian leader. What couldn’t he see? Why had every figure he had dismissed brought up another with more disturbing questions?
…join us…join us, for you deceive yourself as you believe the world deceives itself. While you talk of balance, you believe in forging an order, your order. Like us, you are a believer in self-order, a believer in deception…deception…
The big sword swung toward Nylan, and he ducked, but his skull jolted, and fire seared across his eyes. Smoke rose, and he smelled burning hair. His own hair?
You cannot escape yourself. You would be a hero…and heroes never escape. They deceive themselves so they may always create more destruction to save yet another lost soul, another poor victim…until they lose themselves to their deceptions. You are the great smith, the great hero of Candar and the Westwind…and you will be lost to your heroism, great mage…join us…for you cannot escape…you cannot relinquish the need to save all who need saving.
…cannot relinquish…cannot relinquish-the thought reverberated through Nylan. Why couldn’t he relinquish the need to save? Why not?
As the burns seared his arms, and his skull hammered, he swallowed, and ignoring the burns, the smoke, the pain, lowered his head, accepting that he could not save the world. Accepting that he tried to save so many because of his own unworthiness, because he had to prove that he was…was always…had always been…worthy.
Above him, impossibly distant, the trees rustled, and the ground trembled, and a huge tawny cat padded toward Nylan, blue eyes burning.
Nylan waited.
Grrrurrrr…rrrrrrurrr…
Order and chaos swirled around and through him, and he understood, not just with his head, but with his heart, his feelings, that they were not separate, but two sides of the same coin, understood that one could fight neither chaos nor order, but only those who misused one side of that coin. He understood, too, that the evils fostered by Cyador and by Westwind would be countered by equal evils.
And the great smith’s eyes burned, and, standing motionless before the great cat and the Great Forest, he shuddered.
Beside him, nearly simultaneously, Ayrlyn shuddered, and Nylan knew she had fought her own demons, and they shivered together, in a cold beyond cold, and a heat beyond heat.
So did the soil, and the trees, and even the grasses that surged along the new-forged lines of balance, seeking the old patterns sundered by the mighty planoforming engines of the Rationalists, engines that had ignored the balance that had been and would be.
The fluxfires of the Great Forest, of the depths, and of all that struggled slashed through Nylan, and through Ayrlyn, and their pain intertwined and redoubled, and they shuddered again, in the agony of discovering the balance of order and chaos within.
Nylan staggered, and glanced toward Ayrlyn, standing on the firm damp soil between mighty trees. Her fair face was crisscrossed with burns, and blisters sprouted on her forehead.
“Darkness…” he murmured.
“You, too,” she choked back.
His head throbbed, as though it had been squeezed between his tongs or flattened by his own hammer and anvil. Small sharp lances stabbed through his eyelids. A heavy dark welt was turning into an ugly bruise on his left arm, as was another across his neck.
“You still think this…was a good idea?” Ayrlyn’s words seemed to waver in and out of Nylan’s ears.
“No, except I didn’t have any better ideas.” After several swallows, the smith finally was able to moisten his dry lips.
“Some day…some day…do you think we’ll learn not to meddle?” she asked.
“I doubt it.”
“Darkness help us.” Ayrlyn staggered, then caught her balance.
RRRrrrrrrr…
They both suddenly looked at the big cat, sitting on its haunches no more than a dozen cubits away, blue eyes still fixed on them. Then, the cat yawned, showing long white teeth, long pointed teeth, and stretched. After another yawn, it padded back and was lost in the ancient trees.
“Whewww…” said Nylan.
“Frig…”
“That’s another way of putting it.” The smith swallowed, still trying to sort out what the whole experience had meant. He glanced toward the taller trees, realizing as he did that, even without trying, he saw, and almost understood, the ebb and flow of order and chaos, chaos and order. He sensed those flows, effortlessly, and he saw the wrongness that underlay it all.
He swallowed and looked back at Ayrlyn. “What did you see?”
“The worst of myself.” Ayrlyn shuddered for a moment. “How all of Candar is slanted.”
“Slanted?” As he asked the question, Nylan shuddered, involuntarily thinking about the worst of himself-the endless twists toward self-deception and trying to avoid facing what was.
“It feels…slanted…from way down.”
The smith nodded. She was right. It did, and when he and she had rested some, then they’d look into it. But they needed rest.
He looked upward.
The featureless gray clouds were beginning to separate into still indistinct but separate, darker, and more ominous chunks of gray, and the mist had stopped falling. It appeared near midday.
Midday?
“It took awhile,” Ayrlyn said. “That sort of self-examination usually does.”
“And the cat was sitting there all the time?”
“Probably. We would have been dinner if we’d failed.”
Nylan shuddered again, as he turned back toward the mares.
Overhead, the clouds roiled, and the deep roll of thunder rumbled across the forest.