With a bitter smile upon his face stood His Mightiness Lephi the White, Lord of Cyador, ruler of all lands from the mountains of the skies to the oceans of the west, Protector of the Steps to Paradise, Son and Seer of the Rational Stars. Lephi waited in that moment of time suspended. Waited and watched as the very earth rose around him, as the long-delayed balance was righted, as the white stones of Syadtar fell around him, enfolded him, and then buried him beneath the churning earth.
CXLV
In the late afternoon on the Roof of the World, the guards stood silent on the practice ground, their eyes fixed on the blackness rising just above the western horizon as Istril stepped out of the main door of Tower Black and crossed the causeway.
Ryba, wooden wand touching the ground, gestured toward the silver-haired guard and healer.
Istril continued her measured pace toward the marshal. The other guards waited.
The silver-haired healer stopped three paces from Ryba and inclined her head. “Marshal.”
“What do you think of that?” Ryba glanced at the pregnant and silver-haired guard, then gestured toward the west, beyond the ice needle that was Freyja. “That has to be the engineer.”
Darkness swirled into the sky, slowly turning the entire western horizon into a curtain of blackness that slowly enfolded the sun, bringing an early twilight to the Roof of the World. For a moment, Freyja shimmered white, then faded into the maroon blackness that covered the high meadows and Tower Black.
“I could already feel the shivering between the black and white,” Istril said slowly. “So did Siret.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” asked the marshal.
“What could we have done? Besides, it’s more than him. More than the healer, too. Something bigger, a lot bigger.”
Ryba shook her head before asking, “Do you still think it was right to send Weryl?”
“He’s all right. I can feel that.” Istril paused. “That means Nylan is, too…but there’s a lot of pain there.” Her eyes glistened even in the dimness.
“When the engineer gets into something…there usually is.” Ryba’s voice was dry.
“He doesn’t do anything unless it’s important.” Istril continued to look past Ryba to the horizon.
“That just makes it worse, doesn’t it?” Ryba’s voice was rough.
“Yes, ser.”
After another period of silence, Istril nodded, then turned and walked swiftly back across the practice ground and the causeway into the tower.
Behind her, Ryba continued to study the growing darkness of a too-early night as the faces of the guards shone bloodred in the fading light.
The faintest of shivers ran through the ground beneath the marshal’s feet, and the meadow grasses swayed in the windless still of unnatural twilight.
Another ground shudder passed, and then another, as the gloom deepened. The marshal waited…watched.
CXLVI
…And when mighty Cyad asked that her lands might remain hers, that her gifts to Lornth be remembered in honor and peace, Nylan spoke quietly, saying that the legions of Cyad would rain destruction upon Lornth, and that the white legions must needs be repulsed.
“Will you have Cyad take all that for which you and your fathers and forefathers have worked and earned?” asked the dark Nylan. And all of Lornth said that Cyad must be destroyed. From the shimmering cities of order and their peoples to the polished stone roadways smoother than glass and the great firewagons that sped upon them more swiftly than the wind, Cyad should be no more.
None would stand and state that Cyad had been kind and just, and that her peoples lived in justice and peace. For such truth was struck down by the dark mage Nylan with his black hammer, and also by the dark Ayrlyn and her lute so that none would know the grace of Cyad.
The Mirror Lancers burnished their shields and lifted their lances, and the sound of the hoofs of their steeds echoed through rocks and stones of all Candar. The white mages, powerful in the paths of peace and wary of war, girded their robes and invoked the hopes of peace…but all were doomed.
For Nylan, the dark angel, again lifted his hands, and he unbound the Accursed Forest of Naclos, and the forest rewarded him, and rendered back unto him the fires of Heaven and the rains of death. And Nylan laughed and cast those fires and rain across the west of Candar. And Ayrlyn sang songs that wrenched soul from soul and heart from body.
The Mirror Lancers found their light lances turned upon them, and the very earth rose and smote them, and the righteousness of the white mages was for naught as their glasses exploded before them, and death rained upon all the armsmen of Cyad, until none stood.
The very ground heaved, and belched, and swallowed the great cities of Cyad and Fyrad, and the winds flattened distant Summerdock so that no stone remained upon another.
The Grass Hills were seared into the Stone Hills, so dry that nothing lives there to this day. And Lornth rejoiced…until its time had come….
CXLVII
Nylan’s eyes opened slowly, but he saw nothing, and he closed them against the knives that stabbed through them. He lay silently for a time, smelling fire and smoke and death and destruction, odors that knifed through his nostrils.
“Where is she?” the engineer finally asked, except that he knew. Ayrlyn was standing outside the tent, looking southward at what had once been fields, except that she saw not with her eyes.
How did he know? He shivered.
The link, the link he had opened to the forest…and a sense of welcome, well-being, rushed through him, twining with the chaos of destruction, and the dull knives of death and devastation-life and death, order and chaos, except they were not parallel, not exactly, insisted some forgotten engineer’s corner of his mind.
He sat up, ignoring the pain, the stiffness. After a moment, he tottered upright, out of the tent into the sulfurous air that swirled and swept up the hillside. Although he could not see, what he could sense was more than enough. Churned and blistered earth and rock, the chaos of nearly endless death, and the smells. The screams of men and mages churned under a tidal wave of earth and rock and the shrieks of innocent mounts trapped and buried, never to tread the grasslands again.
What he could sense was indeed more than enough. His head and shoulders bent under that unseen weight, and he would have fallen without a strong arm, and the strong soul of the woman who helped him, and without the sense of balance provided by the distant forest-a Naclos that was already…different…more aware.
He swallowed and straightened slowly.
“You can’t see, either, can you?” Ayrlyn asked.
“No. I can sense things. You?”
Yes. You…the forest…
“Agents of change.”
Agents of balance…She nodded, and he could sense the nod he could not see.
Another figure joined them in the morning that still reeked of the slaughter two days earlier. “You two…you best not be…” Sylenia shook her head. “You raved about going to the forest again. You cannot see.”
“We have to,” explained Ayrlyn.
“Then we will go with you.”
“We?” asked Nylan.
“Tonsar will come. We have talked. It is better. He could not follow any of the lords of Lornth now, except ser Gethen, and ser Gethen, he is old.”
“Fornal?” asked Nylan, hoping in a way that what he recalled of Fornal’s charge had not been so.
“He…he perished amid the fires and thunderbolts.” Sylenia shrugged and glanced around. “That, too, is better. He would not accept what will be.”