CXXII
“Is everything ready, Queras?” asked Lephi, sitting back in the malachite throne.
“I had planned to begin by sending the van companies the day after tomorrow, Your Mightiness.” The marshal stood on the green carpet and bowed.
“Why so late?”
“The Tenth Mirror Lancers arrived yesterday. The Grass Hills are hot, even at harvesttime. There is little water at this time of year. Their mounts need watering and rest to be most effective.”
“I had heard that you added local district forces…” Lephi smiled.
“Yes, Sire.”
“Does that not betray your lack of confidence in the finest of Cyador?” Lephi’s white teeth flashed.
A thin sheen of perspiration coated Queras’s forehead. “I do not believe so. The barbarians have proven surprising in the past, and I would prefer to be overprudent. If the additional armsmen are unnecessary, then they will have gained experience that will be useful in your future efforts.”
“You are humble, Queras. It befits you. How will you proceed?”
“We will first go to the northwest, to the South Branch of the Jernya River.”
“The mines are to the north. So are the barbarians.”
“The water is to the northwest, and the grass is better. Also the other barbarians are there as well, and best we vanquish them so that none remain behind us.”
“Hmmmm…”
Queras did not wipe his damp brow.
“You may go.”
The marshal bowed.
“And I hope there are no more delays.”
“No, Sire.”
CXXIII
Nylan glanced at the two horses grazing in the morning light beyond the shed, cropping one of the few flourishing patches of grass. Not a hundred cubits to the west, the same grass had turned brown.
“Do you think it would be safe enough to take Weryl?” he asked.
“To the forest? If we’re careful. You think it’s important?”
Nylan offered a forced and wry smile. “Who’s knows what’s important? It feels right, but I couldn’t say why. Again.”
“Has unaided logic helped you reach an understanding of the forest?”
“I’m still not sure I understand it.”
“Too logical.” The redhead grinned at Nylan. “You have to trust your feelings more.”
“That’s hard when I’ve spent a lifetime repressing them.”
“You’re getting there.” Her grin widened.
“Slowly. Too slowly, it seems.”
“We do what we can do.”
He couldn’t exactly argue with either the words or the sentiment.
Rather than change the brackets from Sylenia’s saddle to his, Nylan put the nursemaid’s saddle on his mare and adjusted the seat for Weryl. For the relatively short ride to the forest, he could handle the smaller saddle.
“You would not take your son to a place like that?” Sylenia asked from the rear door of the dwelling. She lifted Weryl away from the mud puddle beside the rear stoop stone. “No one needs be cleaning you again, young fellow.”
“It’s safe enough, now. As safe as anywhere,” Nylan added as a twinge of light across his eyes reminded him that overstatement was a form of imbalance. Half absently, he wondered if a human society would be possible under the balance constraints of the forest, since most accepted forms of manners involved some degree of deception.
“You are not listening,” Sylenia pointed out.
“Where are you?” asked Ayrlyn softly, and with a smile.
“Thinking about the future of manners if lying isn’t possible.” He bent to tighten the girths.
“That’s getting a little ahead.” Ayrlyn adjusted the chestnut’s bridle, squinting as the mare dropped her head and the morning sun struck the redhead’s face.
“It is not wise to take the boy into that-”
“Probably not, but it’s something I feel.” Besides, as Nylan reflected to himself, if the forest did destroy both him and Ayrlyn, it wasn’t that likely that the Cyadorans would be terribly charitable to Weryl and Sylenia, although, he was forced to add, Sylenia was resourceful and might be able to escape. He frowned. Self-deception continued to get harder.
“Much harder,” observed Ayrlyn.
“You angels. You talk and yet there are no words.”
Nylan took Weryl from Sylenia and hoisted the boy into his seat.
“Oh orsee.”
“Yes, you’re going on the horse.” The engineer fastened the seat straps around Weryl, then checked the blades in the waist scabbard and the shoulder harness. “Ready?”
“As ready as I’ll be.”
“You two.” Sylenia half-lifted the makeshift broom. “You will poke and prod where none should too many times, and then-”
“Probably,” admitted Nylan. “But do you want to live under the Cyadorans?” He eased the mare around and flicked the reins.
“They be even worse than Tregvo.” Sylenia shivered. “Be you wary in the forest.”
“We will,” answered Ayrlyn. “You can come next time.”
“I should think no. Enchanted forests be for angels.”
“You would do as well as any,” Ayrlyn said softly.
Sylenia watched as they rode down the gentle incline and toward the older section of the forest. The young shoots in the flat that had been fields were now closer to head high, and some of the trunks were as thick as the smith’s wrists.
“The forest isn’t wasting much time,” he noted as he guided the mare around a more spreading bush and into what would be a forest lane before long.
“Either way, it wins.”
Nylan understood. If the Cyadoran mages succeeded in subduing Lornth, by the time they returned the forest would have consolidated enough of its expansion that it could never be pushed back without the high technology that the Rat descendants no longer possessed. “Even here, they underestimate nature.”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t defeat Fornal,” Ayrlyn pointed out.
Nylan took a deep breath.
“You don’t want to go back, do you?”
“No. But I don’t see any choice. I don’t want to live alone as a savage here in the new boundaries that the Rats will impose when they win. And-”
“We gave our word.”
“Are we so different from Fornal?” he asked with a laugh.
“In some ways, no…” Ayrlyn reined up in the small clearing that remained near the former white stone wall.
The smith and engineer studied the area, then dismounted, and unfastened Weryl, lifting him out of his seat. “I don’t feel anything.”
“It’s quiet.”
They slipped over the nearly flat green creepers that still worked to reduce the former wall and past the outer guardian trees. Nylan felt like he should be holding his breath. Even Weryl was silent.
“There’s a big cat ahead.”
In a way he could not describe, Nylan could feel Ayrlyn’s perception of the big tawny cat, but the cat seemed almost disinterested in the humans, and was following a large-tailed rodent of some sort.
The angels slowed, letting the predator move away from them.
Nylan stood by the trumpet flowers, holding Weryl, trying to sense…something. The flows of dark order and white chaotic power swirled around them. The smith looked absently at his son as he did at the forest-and his mouth opened. For like the forest, Weryl was order and chaos, less balanced, with faster and stronger swirls of the competing forces. Nylan turned toward Ayrlyn.
She too held both forces, but with more deliberateness, more…majesty.
Balance-did it allow greater use of power? How could he find out? He moved forward, just trying to soak in the feel of the underlying energies.
Several hundred cubits beyond the cleared expanse where they had stopped on their last trip, past another line of guardian trees, was a pond, almost oval, more than two hundred cubits long.
Nylan shifted Weryl from his still-sore left shoulder to his right.
They stood above the eastern end of the pool, at the top of a short grassy slope that led down to the clear green water. A fish of some sort, with orange fins and a brownish and orange-spotted body, glided up to the top of the water and took an insect-a water spider perhaps-with only the slightest of ripples.