Despite the heat, Nylan almost shivered at the healer’s words, words uncharacteristic of a healer, but getting to be more characteristic of Ayrlyn. Was that what Candar was doing to them-turning them harder and colder? Did they have much choice if they wanted to survive?
He wondered about Istril’s visions…and her faith that Nylan could provide a better life for Weryl. So far…Weryl probably would have been better off in Westwind-but that hadn’t ever been the question. It was what would have happened as the silver-haired boy grew older. But how often did people sacrifice the present for the future? And how wise was that when there might not be a future?
Forcing his thoughts back to the road and what they needed to find, he glanced at Ayrlyn. “There’s scarcely any wind. Why…”
“A dust devil?”
He nodded.
“You get swirls out of the air above, because of the heating and some of the colder winds out of the Westhorns. I’m guessing, but it’s sometimes like an inversion, and the colder air presses through…or something. I’d guess that the winter winds here are something. Probably not too cold, but strong, and then there are drenching thunderstorms in the spring. That’s what supports the grass. Then it dries, and”-Ayrlyn smiled brightly-“it starts all over again.”
“The horse nomads left because of the winds. That was what my grandmother said,” Tonsar volunteered.
Almost as suddenly as it had appeared, the distant dust devil vanished.
“I have a question, Tonsar,” Nylan said quietly.
“Ser?”
“About Sylenia. How do you feel about her?”
Tonsar swallowed again. After a moment, he coughed, then shrugged. “I like her. I like her very much. Is that wrong?”
“She seems like a good young woman.”
“Her man was Yusek. He died on the Roof of the World. Her little girl died of the chaos fever. That is why she can be a nursemaid.” Tonsar wiped his forehead, something Nylan hadn’t seen from the burly armsman before. “She was close to Enyka.”
“Enyka?” asked Ayrlyn.
“My sister. She went to Rulyarth with Gidser when ser Gethen and Lord Sillek opened the port to our traders.” Tonsar swallowed. “Gidser says that trading is easier there.”
“Do you have a consort?” Nylan asked bluntly.
“Me? No, ser. It is a long tale, and once I almost did, but she left me for a merchant, like Enyka took Gidser. Armsmen, they do not find consorts easily.” Tonsar offered a wary smile.
Nylan could sense the other’s apprehension, but not the chaos that seemed to go with deceit. His eyes crossed Ayrlyn’s, and she nodded.
“Are you interested in asking Sylenia to be your consort?”
Tonsar looked down at the mane of his mount. “I would…but I do not know…she has lost one who was…an armsman.”
Nylan wanted to laugh. The outgoing, almost boastful, armsman was timid, or worried, or self-conscious.
“I think she would have you, Tonsar,” Ayrlyn said. “If you do not wait too long to ask her.”
“And you, angels?”
“We have no problems with her being your consort, if that’s her wish,” answered the healer.
“If you treat her well,” Nylan added.
After a long look at Nylan, Tonsar finally grinned. “I worried. I worried many nights, and she said all would be well. But I worried.”
“Trust her.” Ayrlyn’s tone was both dry and prophetic.
Tonsar’s grin got wider.
In the silence that followed, Nylan studied the browned hills, and he could almost sense the rockiness beneath, as though the soil had been laid over rocks without the depth that natural processes would have created. He frowned. There was also something else, an orderliness, a thin line of order that separated the topsoil and the topmost subsoil from the underlying stones, stones that his order senses registered as preternaturally smooth.
“There’s a funny line of order under the soil,” he finally said.
“I do better with clouds,” Ayrlyn said. “Unless I’m lying on it, the ground is just ground. Even then it’s hard to sense much.”
Nylan felt just the opposite-sensing order in metals and earth was far easier than in the swirling currents of the atmosphere.
“It has to be sloppy planoforming,” Ayrlyn added. “Even without your senses, I can tell it’s not going to hold that much longer. The rocks are beginning to show through. If there were a lot of rain, the erosion would be fierce. As it is, there’s some grassland stability, but it won’t last much longer.”
“Grassland stability?” asked the engineer.
“There’s a thin line between grasslands of this type and desert. Grasslands can actually create rain that wouldn’t be there otherwise.” Ayrlyn shook her head, still surveying the area ahead.
“So can trees.” Nylan lowered his voice. “I’m still dreaming about them. Is that because we never see any?”
“Could be. Except…what are you dreaming? Is it the same stuff about dark and white flows?”
“It’s never been anything else.”
“Not for me, either, and that’s beginning to bother me.”
Just beginning? Nylan questioned silently.
Surprisingly, it was not that long after midday when the trail turned along a ridge line and began to parallel a wider track just to the west.
“Is that the road you want?” asked Ayrlyn.
“That’s it. We need to find some ambush spots, places where they couldn’t see if the road were blocked, and where they couldn’t drive a wagon around the barricade. We’ll also need stones-big ones-nearby.”
“You don’t want much, do you?”
Nylan shrugged. “If we can’t find everything, we’ll work out something else.” In some ways, that was exactly what he feared.
LXXX
The Cyadoran mage walked slowly toward the ash-covered wall. His once-white boots were gray and matched trousers that were so ash-encrusted that they would never be white again.
Behind him walked Fissar, trimming his longer steps to remain behind the mage.
Themphi stopped a good hundred cubits short of the line of white stone and turned to the lanky apprentice. “You have the case?”
“Yes, mage Themphi.” Fissar extended the whitened leather container. His eyes flickered from the gaunt visage of the mage to the knee-high green shoots that rose from the ashes. Those ashes stretched nearly a half kay away from the white stone wall that once had marked the definitive south border of the Accursed Forest. The latest set of shoots remained confined to a space one hundred cubits from the wall.
Themphi eased the glass from the soft leather, careful to touch only the edges as he slowly lifted the glass and turned it to catch the sun. Covered with soot, his hands shook. His brows furrowed, but his eyes flashed.
The air around the white mage seemed to twist, and scattered shadows flickered through the cloudless sky.
From the glass poured a line of fire that struck the greenery. Ashes exploded like water striking cherry-red iron from a forge, sparking and spraying away from the sunflame that Themphi played across the ground.
In time, he lowered the glass.
Fissar took it from his shaking hands, and offered him a silver flagon.
The mage drank, deeply, then relinquished it to his apprentice.
Beyond the haze, Themphi could see the line of white stone, fissured and cracked. He also sensed fresh shoots of green ready to edge upward through the ashes, as they did in all places along the southern walls when the mages were not present. He tried not to think of the kay-wide stretch of new forest, more than waist high, sometimes man tall, that had grown along the north wall. All that despite the redoubled efforts provided by two journeymen and two apprentices, and three more companies of Mirror Foot. Despite his efforts and theirs, the Accursed Forest continued to threaten. If not for his efforts, would it reclaim all of eastern Cyador?