“Wadah!” Weryl smiled and jabbed his right hand toward the silver-shimmered and tree-shadowed green surface.
At the far end of the pond, beside a bush with narrow silver-green leaves, a gray loglike object, at least ten cubits long, slipped under the surface, and a line of ripples moved toward the three.
“We’d better-” began Ayrlyn.
“Yes.” Nylan felt the menace of the big lizard. Although the balance constraints would certainly allow him to use the blades against the monster lizard, he had some doubts whether blades would be enough. At the moment, the lizard was merely investigating. That he could feel. With Weryl in his arms, prudence was definitely better. Nylan turned.
“Wadah…” Weryl lurched back toward the pond.
“Some other day. We’d rather not be lizard food.”
“That’s a big lizard, and it’s got some sort of order-chaos storage, like a weapon.” Ayrlyn began to walk quickly to catch up with the other two. “But it’s balanced, like everything in the forest.”
“Outside…all of Candar is unbalanced.” With his senses, somehow extended but passive, on the lizard, Nylan walked quickly back the way they had come, Weryl on his shoulder. They passed another stand of the purple trumpet flowers, one that he did not recall. He could catch the hint of the reiseralike fragrance that drifted into the green canopied amphitheater from somewhere. “That’s what the forest tries to right, except that it’s blind.”
“How will this help us-or Lornth-against Cyador?” Ayrlyn took a deep breath without slowing. “It smells good.”
“Where’s the lizard?”
“Oh…it stopped at the water’s edge. There are two cats prowling around there. One might have been the one we saw earlier. They can feel the order changes, too, I think.”
“Why aren’t they following us?”
“Nylan…whether you recognize it or not, you’ve balanced a tremendous amount of order and chaos in yourself. It makes that lizard look puny. If I were a big cat, I’d be a lot more interested in the lizard.”
“Great…I don’t even know how to use it…not really.” A thought struck him, and he turned and looked at Ayrlyn, seeing what she had described in him in her. He swallowed. “You…”
She shook her head.
He laughed. “You! You’re just the same as me or that lizard.”
“It’s scary,” Ayrlyn admitted, her eyes going back over her shoulder, even though nothing seemed to move in the greenlit forest. “I never thought of myself as powerful.”
“The forest would.”
“Wadah!” interrupted Weryl with a lurch.
Nylan reached up and steadied his son. “When we get to the horses.” His eyes narrowed. “Look…at Weryl.”
“He’s got it, too, that balance.”
“Do you think…?”
“I don’t know.”
Neither did Nylan, but his scarcely more than infant son was somehow instinctively balancing order and chaos. Their ordeal? The forest? He didn’t know.
They kept walking, the only audible sounds those of insects, the rustle of the high canopy, their own breathing, and scattered bird calls.
Once beyond the guardian trees of the old growth, Ayrlyn paused by the chestnut, reins in her hand. “Nylan…what did we learn today?”
“We learned something. It’s like powerfluxes-the greater the potential difference and the better the balance…that’s the key.” He eased Weryl into the seat behind the saddle. “And that it’s easier for children. Or Weryl.”
“It’s still unsettling. We walk in there, and we walk out, and each time we’re a little different, and I can’t quite remember how it happened, but I can sense that it did, and that we’re different.”
“Are we different in a bad way?” Nylan strapped Weryl in place.
“No…I don’t think so. But how would we know, if that’s what the forest wants?”
“That’s why we have to leave.”
“Oh…if we feel that way when we’re beyond its power?”
He nodded. “And if it lets us go-”
“Then it leaves the choice to us.”
“Exactly.”
“Will it?”
“Somehow, I feel it will.” Nylan mounted the mare. “The forest even gives the animals limited free will. The lizard didn’t have to chase us. Nor the cats.”
“It wants something.” Ayrlyn swung into her saddle.
“Of course. Somehow…we’re going to help the forest.” A grim laugh followed his words. “And it will help us.”
“That far from here?” she asked, drawing the chestnut beside his mare.
“The Old Rats took their planoforming equipment and used it to resculpt this part of western Candar, but they sort of overlaid the old topography, and some of it wasn’t necessary. They probably didn’t have enough power to do it right-and they sort of stretched out the marshes and the water and created grasslands over what was almost a desert, and moved streams. It wouldn’t last forever, and maybe it shouldn’t have lasted this long-but there’s a lot of energy there.” He shrugged. “Any time there’s an imbalance…”
Ayrlyn nodded. “But some of this still doesn’t make sense, ecologically. A larger forest would have maintained the grasslands because it would have cooled the whole region.”
“I thought rain forests grew-”
“That’s it! This isn’t a rain forest.”
Nylan waited.
“Rain forests usually develop in areas of thin soil and high moisture. The soil here is comparatively rich, and the normal rainfall would be more temperate.”
“So, healer and ecologist, what’s the jump point?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know…exactly. The Rats didn’t have to slash the forest back into a relatively small square. They could have adopted some form of large alternating bloc agriculture-there aren’t that many towns here, and from what we’ve seen, they’re not overcrowded. That would show that the population pressure was never that great.”
Nylan rubbed his forehead. “You’re assuming that the forest would let them. Look at how fast things are overgrowing the old boundaries.”
“The Old Rationalists weren’t stupid,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “They planoformed scores of planets successfully. This place didn’t even need planoforming, not if the forest were already here.”
“This isn’t just a different place,” Nylan pointed out. “It’s a different universe. Fusactors don’t work here-”
“How did they get the power to transform the land, then?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They use more of a laser-based technology…always have. Maybe some forms of laser fusion work-or they did.”
“Wadah, pease,” interrupted Weryl.
“I know. I promised.” The smith eased out the water bottle and uncorked it, lurching in the saddle as the mare crossed one of the former irrigation ditches. He held the bottle as his son drank.
“Let’s get back to your point,” said Ayrlyn. “There’s a basic instability surrounding the forest, but not in the forest itself. Why would the Old Rats do that? They knew better. They had to.”
“Power, maybe. We’ve seen the power the forest has, and it’s only a fraction of its former size.” Nylan reclaimed the water bottle and recorked it.
“That means…do you think that the Old Rats actually set up a power imbalance as a power/energy source for the white mages?”
Nylan nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. They’re experienced planoformers, but their conventional power sources failed-or were failing.”
“Surely…they had to know it couldn’t last forever.”
“They probably did-but what’s better? Something that works for centuries-or longer-with the hope that their descendants can work out something? Or condemning themselves and their immediate children to true barbarian or low-tech lives?” He gestured toward the south. “Cyador is the most advantaged and cultured civilization we’ve seen.”
“Advantaged…that I’ll accept. Given the way they treat women-”
“Wouldn’t it have been worse if they’d lapsed into low-tech?”
“That’s too theoretical, worse than engineering speculations.” Ayrlyn cleared her throat. “You’re going to use that force?”