“That’s pretty grim,” she said.
“I feel pretty grim.” Nylan rubbed his forehead, and found that he didn’t have to, that the residual headache he had scarcely been conscious of had vanished. He found himself frowning.
“Order and chaos…balance…” he murmured.
“There’s something there,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “I think we need to stay here for a time. A little while, anyway. Just to see.”
“Maybe you can sing again?”
“I wouldn’t go that far…yet.” Still, a ghost of a smile crept to the corners of her mouth and eyes.
“Is it safe?” His eyes went back to Weryl.
“Is anywhere safe on this world?” Ayrlyn’s response wasn’t an answer, but it was the best either of them could do.
XCVIII
Nylan glanced back over his shoulder, and his eyes wanted to twist away from the grove in the valley. This time, knowing what he knew, he resisted the impulse, and took a long look at the grove and at the trees.
“It’s gone…”
“It’s still there,” said Buretek. “We just can’t see it. It’s got a magic shield, like the angels said.”
Sylenia, riding between and slightly behind the two angels, nodded. In his seat behind the nursemaid’s saddle, Weryl waved a hand clutched around a small brown pine cone.
The smith glanced at the redheaded healer, whose preoccupied look indicated her thoughts were far from the dusty road leading southeast to Syskar, the Cyadorans, Fornal, and more battles. He took a deep breath.
After two days in and around the grove, while he and Ayrlyn were certainly more rested, neither had learned much more than they had discovered on the first night. The “dreams” or visions or images repeated themselves, with virtually no variation. The grove held the same balance of order and chaos, yet order-and peacefulness-seemed to predominate.
“That’s the key, you know,” Ayrlyn said.
“What?”
“Balance.”
“It has been anywhere,” Nylan half-agreed, “but the problem is that human beings don’t accept balance. We may talk about it, but our actions are something else. Human desires for anything-love, power, coins-seem unbounded, and that doesn’t fit with the idea of balance.” He paused as a pain stab of discomfort flicked through his skull. Where was he deceiving himself? “I’m as bad as anyone,” he added. “We needed to survive. We got that. Then we wanted some shelter and comfort. We got that. Then I didn’t want to always worry about what Ryba had in mind…” He shrugged. “It just goes on and on. Sure…putting things in balance would help. But how do we get the Cyadorans to stop trying to take over the rest of Candar? We can’t just tell them that they’re unbalancing things.”
Ayrlyn glanced at the dying scrub tree just off the shoulder of the road. “I don’t know. Not yet. But it’s clear that everywhere, and here more than most places, in the end things do balance.”
Nylan wondered. Did they? Or was the balance that of equalized power? Or did power triumph? Concentrations of power-like Cyador and Westwind-seemed to endure for a long, long time.
XCIX
In the dimness of the hot twilight, with the orange glow at their back, the six-and Weryl-rode over the last hill. In the valley below, to the southeast, glimmered a few points of light-torches on the shed barn and the headquarters dwelling.
Against the purpling of the sky, against the openness and sweep of the dark brown hills, with its few lights the camp in the valley at Syskar appeared small, fragile…insignificant. Then again, was anything particularly significant except to human beings who persisted in the search for significance?
Nylan glanced upward, as the still-unfamiliar stars began to appear. How were he and Ayrlyn any different? Wasn’t everything they were trying insignificant? What difference did it really make? Wasn’t Fornal’s belief in honor, even when the black-bearded regent had to know honor was futile, as significant-and perhaps more understandable-as the angels’ efforts to move Lornth toward a less repressive and oppressive society? Especially since honor had a clear meaning?
“They’re both insignificant,” Ayrlyn pointed out quietly. “In the greater scheme of things, anyway. Being human is the struggle to bring meaning into a universe where order and chaos normally create meaningless patterns that resemble a balance.”
“Cynical…” Nylan laughed.
“Of course.”
“Wadah, Enyah? Wadah, pease?” begged Weryl plaintively.
Sylenia twisted in the saddle to give the boy a swallow from the water bottle.
They did not speak, nor did the three armsmen, on the rest of the ride back to Syskar. Even the sentries only nodded as the group rode slowly into the yard, and unsaddled and groomed their mounts.
Lewa stepped perhaps twenty paces from the barracks, surveyed them, and turned back into the dimness.
Nylan didn’t like the silence, as ominous as the Cyadoran threat, in a different way, but he shouldered his saddlebags, picked up a sleepy Weryl, and started toward their quarters.
Nylan and Ayrlyn walked up onto the stoop-hotter than the open yard. Nylan carried Weryl, and Sylenia followed, several steps back. The strap hinges Nylan had replaced creaked as he pushed open the door.
Fornal sat on the sole stool before the rickety table-alone. On the table were a mug, a bottle, the candle with the glass mantle, and a scroll. “Welcome back, angels.” Fornal glanced down at the half-empty bottle on the rickety table, then at his mug. “You would be pleased to know that my coregents appreciated the copper.”
“We are glad to hear that.”
“Ser?” murmured Sylenia.
Nylan turned and eased Weryl into the nursemaid’s arms. With a quick inclination of her head to Fornal, she slipped around the angels and into their room; saddlebags slapped against the door frame before the door shut with a dull clunk.
The angels stepped toward the regent, then dropped onto the bench on the left side of the table.
A low murmuring came from behind the closed door, a lullaby. Nylan smiled faintly, momentarily.
The candle flickered behind its glass mantle with soot thick enough to block much of the dim light cast. The shadows on the blotched walls of the dwelling’s main rooms wavered in the heat of the summer night.
Nylan wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.
“Even I am hot, angel mage,” admitted Fornal.
“You know how we feel about the heat.” Nylan waited, then asked, “What has happened with the Cyadorans?”
“Nothing. They squat there,” Fornal said. “They do not ride forth save in masses, in scores and scores, and their lances and their shields shimmer. Sometimes, they go far enough to raid. We do little. We have killed nearly half their force, and still they have five times the men I do.”
“Cyador’s bigger than Lornth,” Nylan temporized, wondering, fearing, where Fornal’s words were leading.
Ayrlyn watched, her eyes on the regent.
“What do you suggest I do? You are the dark mages. It nears summer-end, and we do not have the mines back. They have fired a dozen hamlets, and they will keep doing so. You counsel patience. My armsmen fight among themselves unless Lewa or Huruc or I watch them every moment.”
Fornal lifted a scroll and handed it to Ayrlyn. “Read this. Even my patient sire and my practical sister share my worries. Even after the copper, even after we have reduced the forces of the white demons by half, the holders question the levies and the tariffs…because they see no results. We have not reclaimed the mines.” Fornal snorted. “The holders ask if the angels are advising us to bleed Lornth dry in the Grass Hills…so that the dark angels may feast on the corpse of Lornth. Did I not warn you about our holders?”