The Order War (37 page)

“Zerchas was right, you know.” Beltar sipped a glass of wine and glanced at the surf beyond the breakwater. “Jera is too pretty a place to destroy.”

Eldiren silently lifted his goblet in assent.

“We’ll probably have to head back to Rulyarth soon, if this mud ever clears from the roads. It’s hard to believe we’ve been here all summer, nearly half a year.”

“Sometimes…until we lose more troops taking some forsaken crossroads that decides the war’s not over. You don’t see that here in Jera.”

“War is ugly, Eldiren. Enjoy the benefits while you can. At least you don’t have to worry about Jehan slinking around and reporting to Zerchas every time you take a piss.” Beltar took a healthy swallow from his goblet.

“Jehan’s not that bad. He probably doesn’t have much choice.”

“With Zerchas, probably not. But I still have to worry about him. Once we get on the road, it won’t be so bad.” He lifted the goblet again. “They say the roads will freeze several eight-days before the snows fall, if they fall at all.”

“Snows? It’s barely harvest time.”

“The winter comes earlier here. We’ll have to start preparations for the attack on Suthya…if we want to begin right after the spring thaw.”

“They won’t surrender?”

“Zerchas says not. The Suthyans want to haggle over everything. I think they’ll knuckle under once the armies begin to chew up their countryside.”

“Like Sarronnyn? The Sarronnese still haven’t knuckled under. They never will. They hate us.”

“Never say never, Eldiren.”

Eldiren toyed with the empty wine glass, holding it up and catching the light of one of the wall lamps in the clear crystal.

“They say you can scree in a good crystal goblet.” Beltar laughed. “Ever tried it?”

“No, I cannot say that I have.” Eldiren glanced toward the half-empty bottle of red wine.

“See if you can look into Naclos. Maybe it would be easier with the goblet.”

“Naclos?”

“Try to find out what happened to that engineer.”

“He died.”

“Eldiren. Someone who twists order into chaos isn’t going to get fried by one of your firebolts. Zerchas may think so…but we know better. Don’t we?” Beltar smiled. “Why don’t you try to find him in Naclos? For me…rather than for Zerchas.”

“Beltar…”

“You don’t have to explain. No one wants to commit suicide to make Zerchas happy. Light knows, I wouldn’t. But try to scree for that engineer. I feel uneasy, like he just might be up to something.”

Eldiren set the goblet on the table before him, took a deep breath, concentrated, and looked at the mists forming in the space between the thin layers of crystal. The center of the goblet momentarily reflected the dark circles beneath his sunken and deep-set eyes.

The serving girl—daughter of the villa’s former owner—turned and looked openmouthed at the twisting pillars of white and black that writhed in the mists of the goblet.

A soundless shriek split the twilight, and the goblet shattered, strewing glass fragments over the table. Eldiren pitched forward onto the table, and blood oozed across the linen. The serving girl sank into a heap in the doorway.

Beltar shook his head groggily before picking a glass splinter out of his cheek. “Darkness…” He lifted Eldiren’s face off the table linen, picked out the glass fragments, and then blotted the cuts with a cloth soaked in the wine.

After that, the White Wizard struggled to lay the younger
man on the couch against the wall, where Eldiren breathed slowly, as if stunned by a blow to the head.

Beltar looked at his empty wine glass, then at the still half-full bottle. He shook his head and instead, reached for the last chunk of the now-stale bread left in the basket.

He did not have to wait long before the hooves clattered on the stones outside.

“Where is that mangy, lying excuse of a wizard?” Zerchas stepped over the still-prostrate body lying in the doorway. His eyes flicked from the glass and blood on the table to the unconscious man on the couch.

“Dead? That engineer’s so dead that his latest feat has shattered every screeing glass in Candar. Engineer? He’s no more an engineer than…Eldiren is a White Wizard.” Zerchas turned toward Eldiren. “Too bad he’s stunned, but it’s easier this way. Lie to me, would he?”

Beltar stood. “You didn’t give him much choice, Zerchas. You really wanted me to protest, didn’t you? So you could have an excuse to be rid of both of us.”

The serving girl shook her head, her eyes widening as she watched the two wizards.

“Words. All you do is talk.” Zerchas lifted his hands, and a line of white stars flashed toward Beltar.

White flame gouted from Beltar, meeting the crackling, sparkling line of reddish-white stars in front of Zerchas. White ashes began to drop from nowhere onto the floor as the white flames pressed the stars closer and closer to Zerchas.

The walls shivered, and the rest of the goblets shattered.

The serving girl’s mouth opened to scream, but her cry was soundless as she pressed her body against the wall.

For a moment, the white flame curled away from Zerchas, and the white star-points arrowed toward Beltar, but again, they shriveled into ashes as a wall of flame filled the doorway. Then only two piles of ashes remained in the doorway. One had been a White Wizard, the other a girl.

Beltar grinned widely, before his legs buckled under him.

The tall blond man stood on the black cliffs overlooking the Gulf of Candar, just inside the black walls that marched across the grass to mark the separation between Nylan and the rest of Candar.

He stood as he had often stood over the course of the past year, eyes closed, senses spread to the wind, searching. The knee-high tips of the browning grass brushed against his black trousers. He stood in the darkness of mid-evening, responding to a sense of…? What he had felt he did not know, only that he had sensed something and that he needed to respond.

From the west, the steel torrents of the high winds that scoured the Roof of the World rushed across southern Candar and dipped low across the waters between the island continent and the White-dominated bulk of Candar.

A thin shaft of twisted black and white seemed to lance into the heavens, and a roll of unseen thunder buffeted his skull.

The scream of agony—twisted black and white—staggered Gunnar, and unprepared for the violence of the sensation, he stumbled, tripping over a small boulder. His arms waved in an attempt to catch his balance, but his leg scraped the boulder and he plunged forward.

Slowly, he picked himself up, wiping away the blood from the cut on his forehead and wincing at the stinging in his leg. He could feel the bruise forming on his calf. But he smiled. “Justen…”

Justen was alive, of that he was certain. That scream had been of agony and triumph. Justen was alive. But where? That was another question.

He limped along the path beside the dark stone wall. Perhaps Turmin had felt the twisting and turning of order and chaos and would know from whence it had come. Perhaps not. But Justen was alive.

Justen watched as Dayala walked back from her trees toward the front of the house. He smiled.
Lovely druid…

She lifted her head and returned the smile.
Handsome druid…

“I am a druid?”

“Anyone who undergoes your kind of trial is a druid.” Her eyes flickered to the white lines on her forearms. A gust of wind ruffled her hair, and she shivered, not entirely from the chill.

“Sorry,” he murmured, leaning forward and brushing her cheek with his lips. “I never meant…”

“I know. And the great forest helps one heal.”

“No. You helped us heal.”

She shook her head. “I knew how, but you had the strength for us both.”

Justen shrugged. “Then show me.” He grinned.

Dayala touched his hands. “You should know, but I will show you what you already know.”

“I’m waiting.” He grinned again.

“Look at yourself,” instructed Dayala.

Justen looked down, seeing brown cloth and the soft brown boots that were not leather.

“With your mind, your senses.” Dayala laughed softly.

Justen followed her instructions, somehow scanning his own body, seeing the linkages between muscle and bone, the tiniest bits of white-flecked chaos within himself, as within all living things, and the flow of order holding chaos at bay for now…until he was old and gray.

“See how you are. Now, watch this.”

Her senses enfolded his left arm, and he watched as the tiny flecks of chaos somehow
twisted
. They remained, but instead of being free-flowing, they were locked into order.

“You try on your other arm. You do not destroy chaos, but lock it into order so that it cannot escape.”

Justen struggled to replicate what Dayala had shown him.
For all the ease with which she had locked the chaos behind order, he failed.

He tried again, scanning his body, seeing the small changes in the cascading order that flowed from point to point, from fingernails to fingers to arms. He shook his head.

She watched as he tried again…and again. The fourth time, he managed the
twist
, but not the lock. He looked at the patterns on his left arm, and tried once more.

By the time he matched her efforts, he was soaked with sweat. “…think you’re in better shape than I am.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You haven’t finished.” Then she grinned.

Justen swallowed and tried extending the effect across the rest of his body. The sun had set by the time he finished.

“It is harder to do on yourself, but that is what is important.”
Especially for me…and for you.

Justen nodded, understanding why, knowing that druids had only one consort—ever—for how could one go through the agony of merging souls more than once?

“Now you can meet the Ancient One, for she will not meet with anyone who has not faced the great forest and become a true druid.”

Justen studied himself again. On the outside, he looked no different…did he?

“People may say you look younger. Then again, they may not. You are younger than most who find the way from outside.”

Justen’s thoughts were still on the ancient. “Who is this Ancient One?”

“The one who can help you understand what you must do.”

Justen could not help but sense the sadness behind her words, and he turned and held her in the twilight, not wanting to question, only wanting to grasp the moment as her lips fell upon his.

Dayala pointed. “There is the grove.”

“Why now?”
Just as we have truly found each other…

“When the Ancient One knows, she knows. And because it is already late.”

Justen glanced toward the sky, unseen above the high forest canopy, reflecting that it was not even mid-morning.
Late for Candar; late for you; late for me. Gunnar always claimed that I was always late
. The sometime-engineer, sometime-druid, took a deep breath and squeezed Dayala’s hand before letting go.

“I will be waiting,” she told him.

Although he had sensed that she would be waiting, her words were welcome reassurance, and he smiled.

In the middle of the grove, a single black lorken grew, twisted with age, yet no higher than Justen, and a silver-haired woman, garbed in pure silver, stood beside the tree.

At first glance, she looked scarcely older than Dayala, but Justen could sense the age behind the smooth skin, and he understood that youthfulness was a product of the lesson he had just learned from Dayala.

He inclined his head. “I am here, Ancient One.”

“You have questions, young druid.”

“I would ask how the great evil done by the Masters of Chaos may be righted.”

“Why do you say that the actions of the Masters of Chaos are evil? Chaos is chaos, and order is order. Can you ask chaos to be order, and order to be chaos?” The woman’s words were calm, measured, as if she stated the most obvious of facts.

“But…” protested Justen “…is there no meaning to order? Is there no purpose to life? Why do so many struggle to put order in their lives? Even under your Legend, the ancient Angels fled Heaven.”

“Your questions ask for the meaning of life, as if the ancient Angels had written the answers in stone as a riddle for
those who came after to find and unravel. Neither the world nor the Angels have a purpose. The world exists. It needs no meaning. Men and women need purposes.”

“But what about order and chaos? They exist,” said Justen.

“Indeed they exist, as does the world. But thinking beings are the ones who ascribe values to order and chaos. Why does a person do anything?”

“Because he, or she, wants to.” Justen frowned. “Or has to.”

“And if that person refuses?”

“Someone could use force.”

“Can that person move the muscles of his or her body?”

“You’re saying that every person chooses to act. That’s cruel. What if children, or a family, will starve or be tortured?”

“That is still a choice.”

“Are there are no higher values? Is there is no difference between a person who serves good and one who serves evil? Or between a person who is coerced into unwise acts and one who does them willingly?”

“Of course there is a difference. But not to the world—only to thinking beings.”

Justen paused. “Then if the world does not care, why should not a person do whatever is pleasing? For what purpose should anyone try to do good deeds? The world does not care.”

“Either selfishness or selflessness will destroy a person. If a soul is too selfish, thinking only of personal ends and desires, and should she live long enough, none will support her and many will try to tear her down. To survive, one must become so strong and so heartless that neither love nor affection could or would desire to reach such a person. And in the end, such a being is no longer a person, but a soulless machine like the engines on your black ships.

“A person who is too selfless is blown hither and yon in the gusts of others’ needs, for there are always more needs than even the most charitable of humans can address. Should a person be strong enough to address the most worthy and pressing of needs, then she will either bleed to death from
the demands upon her or lose all warmth in a mechanical quest to fulfill the world’s needs. Then she becomes so selfless that she, too, is no more than a selfish soul in the quest of selflessness.

“Thus, a person who would live a meaningful life must always struggle between selfishness and selflessness, always questioning. When she gives up the struggle, she allows others to determine the meaning of her life. She may not even be aware that she has relinquished the struggle, for those others may indeed represent a belief in something she finds better and higher, and she will follow their simple rules with great relief. They may be the rules of the Angels, the Demons of Light, the Black Brotherhood, or the White Council. Yet we have observed that most humans who give up that struggle question why life has no meaning, especially when troubles befall them.” The thin lips turned slightly at the corners.

“You’re not terribly cheerful. Your philosophy doesn’t offer a great deal of comfort.”

“You did not ask for comfort. You asked for wisdom. Wisdom is seldom comforting, because much of what humans find comforting is nothing more than illusion.”

For a time, Justen looked past the ancient but unlined face. Finally, he swallowed. “Is it good for the Chaos Masters to control all Candar?”

“You are placing values on such actions. When you ask such a question, you have already decided that for the Chaos Masters to absolutely control Candar is bad. But do you ask whether it is good for the Order Masters to control absolutely Recluce and the oceans around Recluce?”

“Then are you saying that such control is an illusion? When I have seen cities fall and soldiers die?”

The woman shook her head. “The illusion is that control by either is good. Under the Balance, total domination by order or by chaos can only lead to death of one kind or death of another.”

“You mean that we should allow chaos into our lives?”

“That, too, is an illusion. Chaos exists in all lives. So does order.”

Justen sighed. “What are you telling me? That what I seek is an illusion? That it is meaningless to seek order?”

“I said no such thing, young druid.”

“I’m not a druid.”

“You are a druid. Whether you accept that remains to be seen.” She smiled. “You wish to halt what you see as evil in the spread of chaos from Fairhaven. So do we. Such a great deed is not possible unless the Balance is considered. Have you asked what makes such chaos possible?”

“Often.” Justen shrugged.

“And?”

Justen shrugged again.

“Can chaos be created?” asked the ancient Angel.

“I don’t think so.”

“You are correct. In some places, order must spring from chaos. Here, chaos must spring from order.”

“So what must be done to reduce the power of chaos?”

“That is up to you. You know how, but you must find the will and the way.” The ancient Angel smiled. “That began with the trial.”

“How?”

“You could have left Naclos as a child, remembering nothing, or you can leave as a adult, remembering all, and possessing the knowledge and commitment to do what must be done.”

“Why couldn’t I have just left?”

“You are still barely beyond being a child. You have difficulty accepting faith…so I will use the tool necessary for children. Try to leave. Go! Walk away from me.”

Justen started to turn, but his legs would not move. Concentrating his will within himself, he lifted one leg…but he could not turn and set it down heavily.

His eyes saw the darkness, and the chaos, within the ancient orbs of the Angel, but even as the realization of that antique madness clawed at his thoughts, he stood rooted, unmoving.

“That is why you will leave as a knowing adult. That is why you faced the trial of the forest…and risked losing all memories of Naclos. And Dayala risked losing her life for
you. You might remember that as well.”

The pressure around him relaxed, and Justen held back a shudder.

“You know what must be done.”

Justen nodded slowly.

“Dayala will help you prepare. There is no other way.”

Justen looked into the power of the Angel’s eyes and saw again the deep wells, one of white, one of black, each tinged with green. The depth of that power made Gunnar’s control of the storms look like a child’s game, his own recent understandings like a fumbler’s beginnings at Capture.

“Do you understand?”

“Not everything, but enough, I hope.”

“So do we.”

“Why me?”

“We cannot save you, nor can one people save another. Salvation must always come from the soul and the self; it can never be forced…as you will discover.

“You must find the way and the will, and your journey began with the trial. That was only the first. There will be more and greater ones, in Recluce and beyond. Tomorrow, or the next day, you and Dayala will begin the trip to Diehl. That is the next step on your journey. Remember, too, that there are always two ways—the safe and the glorious, and for the glorious, there is a far higher price.”

Justen glanced away from the deep eyes, suddenly unable to focus on the brilliance of that combination of order and chaos. He studied the dark tree by her shoulder, and when his eyes refocused, she was gone.

He walked slowly from the grove, his feet heavy, feeling that somehow they were already on the road to Diehl.