“Not so poor as for the mutters we hear.”
“The Lady Ellindyja?”
“Some still visit her,” admitted Gethen. “We cannot remove her.”
Zeldyan lifted Nesslek into her lap. “A poor patrimony for you, my son, and much because your grand-dame was overly concerned about that of your father.”
“That is cruel, especially to tell your son,” offered Gethen.
“It is true. Would you have me lie to him? Even as his grand-dame destroys his own patrimony out of spite and pettiness? Truth may yet be his only weapon.”
“Truth be never enough. Cold iron-that be the only weapon that a lord can depend on. Wizards and mages and trade-they come and they go. Cold iron remains. To the cold iron we do not have.” The gray-haired regent took a deep swallow.
Zeldyan hugged Nesslek until he squirmed, then set her son back on the carpet beside his wooden blocks. She looked at the goblet, but did not drink.
CXXVI
Sylenia carried our the provisions bag and set it on the rear stoop. She glanced at the mid-afternoon sun that seemed to duck in and out of the puffy gray and white clouds scudding from the northeast. “To begin travel so late in the day…?”
“This time we’ll travel more by night, until we get out of Cyador, anyway.” Nylan checked the girths for Sylenia’s saddle, then readjusted Weryl’s seat, stopping to wipe his forehead. While the area in and around the forest was cooler than the Grass Hills, even with the cooling of the trees the harvest season was far hotter than mid-summer on the Roof of the World-or anywhere else in two universes that he could remember offhand, at least outside of Candar. “I’m still not up to any battles.”
“You could handle them better.” Ayrlyn did not look up from where she loaded the pack mare.
“Maybe.” Of that, Nylan wasn’t exactly certain. Theoretically, he supposed he could figure out some way to balance things, but the gap between theory and practice was awfully wide, wider in many ways than advanced power system operations and engineering theory had been.
“I don’t want to leave.” Ayrlyn held the saddlebag in her hands, almost as if she had been halted by an outside force.
Nylan understood. For the first time in years, if not ever, they weren’t surrounded by all of the unseen imbalances that had rocked their lives from one side to the other. Already, they had begun to adjust themselves to the forest’s requirement for balance, and when Nylan extended his senses to look at Ayrlyn, he could see the changes, almost, it seemed, on the cellular level. While some changes appeared in Sylenia, Ayrlyn and he-and Weryl-appeared vastly different. Was that because he had been a power engineer? Or Ayrlyn a comm officer? Because the forest had reached out to them? Or they to it? “It’s not paradise.”
“I still don’t want to leave.” This feels…closer to home…
They turned to each other and embraced.
“Stupid…” murmured Ayrlyn in his ear. “How…a forest…feels like home…”
“Does, doesn’t it?” He squeezed her more tightly for a moment, then slowly released her.
“In some ways I feel as you, lady,” added Sylenia. “But there is Tonsar-”
“And there’s still the problem of the Cyadorans. Remember all those burned patches? Sooner or later they’ll be back to deal with the forest.” Especially if we don’t deal with them-if we can…
“I know,” sighed Ayrlyn, “and we made a promise.” A promise…
It wasn’t just the words, Nylan understood, all too well, but the chaos created within themselves by failing to keep their commitments. Anyone who had to deal with order fields, he was coming to understand-possibly too late and too slowly-had to live a life somehow in balance. And unkept promises were not good for balance.
At least, that was how it seemed to him.
“Me, too,” said Ayrlyn. “We’re in this together.”
He smiled at her, taking in the warmth that radiated from her, the warmth he’d been blind to for too long on the Roof of the World. Then he walked over and lifted the provisions bag from the stoop.
Sylenia turned and reentered the Cyadoran dwelling, presumably to reclaim Weryl.
Nylan stood and surveyed the dwelling, the smooth pale walls, thinking about the ceramic stove, the tile floors, the apparent cleanliness-and the chaos behind its creation.
CXXVII
The stars winked on and off as the clouds slipped across the night sky, covering one unfamiliar point of light and uncovering another, all the time that Nylan and Ayrlyn made their way north along the empty highway. Only the muffled sound of the horses’ hoofs echoed through the night as the four rode closer to the river and the brick bridge.
The smell of the fields, and the faintly acrid odor of something that had been cut drifted across the road on the light breeze.
“The beans, they have harvested,” confirmed Sylenia.
“Wadah…eans?”
“You just had some.” Sylenia turned in the saddle and, twisting her body, offered Weryl the water bottle. He pushed it away, and the nursemaid recorked it and replaced it in the holder without a word.
Nylan doubted he would have been that temperate, son or no son.
When they passed the crossroads where they had confronted the Cyadoran patrol, not even a lingering sign of chaos remained. The engineer glanced around, his ears alert for any noise, but the only sounds were insects, a soft bird call, and the breathing and hoofs of the horses.
As they neared the river, neither Nylan’s eyes nor senses could distinguish any movements on or beyond the bridge, a dark outline above the darker water and against the starry sky.
“Quiet,” murmured the redhead.
The mounts’ hoofs clacked, if not loudly, not softly on the brick pavement of the arched three-piered structure that spanned the deep and smooth-flowing water that appeared black under the cold stars, a blackness darker than the unlit and silent town on the north side.
Infrequently scattered points of reflected starlight dotted the smooth dark surface of the river-wider than Nylan recalled. Even centuries after the Old Rationalist planoforming, the chaotic white-red hints of violence seethed beneath the ground and beneath deep and slow-flowing river waters, the unseenline between what had been and what now was as clear and implacable as ever.
And I…we’re…going to harness that?
“Yes,” answered Ayrlyn.
“I’d better start working out the practical details.” Especially since I haven’t the faintest idea how.
“I have every confidence in you.”
“Thanks.”
Riding two by two between the stone walls, they reached the top of the span, where the echo of hoofs seemed to reverberate into the night. Yet no lights appeared in any buildings on the north side of the bridge.
Downstream, the fractionally darker shadows that were piers loomed above the north side of the water, and a solitary dog barked…and barked. Nylan tried not to stiffen, wondering who would come to investigate, but no lights appeared near the piers and the dog and the clack of hoofs began to echo off the brick buildings once they entered the town proper.
“It’s spooky.” Ayrlyn’s voice was low. “Like the world outside their walls doesn’t exist at night.”
“They have to shut it out,” whispered Nylan, “but that makes it easier for us.”
The open-columned marketplace was empty-yet unbarred and unguarded, and across the street, the water splashed quietly down the sculpted tree fountain, water holding the faintest glow. Some sort of chaos?
“The town still doesn’t smell,” Nylan said.
“You want it to?”
“No. The only thing I’ve been able to smell is harvested beans, and a dampness around the river. No flowers…no garbage…no…nothing…”
“It does seem odd.”
“Better no smell than the smell of Lornth by the old wharfs,” suggested Sylenia dryly.