5.Death of Chaos
CXXIX
STANDING ON THE headland, knowing that the others-Tamra, Justen, Dayala, my aunt Elisabet, and my father-had given everything they had to give, and I had not, I strained again to weld order and chaos, to twist them through each other. I did, splitting order into smaller and smaller fragments and forcing it to direct chaos, mixing, linking, and tying order and chaos together, and creating heat, fire like the sun, as order and chaos merged under my hammer, under my will.
The earth groaned in protest, and the waters seemed to draw back in protest, and steam like fog swept among the gray-hulled ships, burning and searing. The Gulf waters exploded with gouts of steam, steam so hot that it peeled paint and instantly charred wooden railings and fittings.
Yet order and chaos twisted together into smaller and tighter fragments, and those order and chaos fragments exploded like small suns, and the whiteness of screams filled the Gulf, and along with the explosions of shells on shore came the explosions of shells within the ships that had held the sea.
Gouts of flame raced across the waters. The entire ocean began to steam, and the ships pitched and heaved upon the waters, as if those ships were too hot to remain upon the waters, and the paint on the hulls and their superstructures blistered and vanished in fine ashes as the forces of chaos flowed into the metal and that iron turned as red as the molten iron beneath the waters.
And the whiteness of death rose like I had never felt before, screaming, flaying me like burning knives.
Krystal's hand touched me, and I could feel her strength. “You have to do it, Lerris, no matter what the price.” And I could feel her tears, and the pain of that whiteness of death and more death, and I knew there was no choice, that the ships would sear the land bare-even as I was searing the Gulf bare of everything.
Another line of chaos-steam eruptions flared across the waters of the Gulf, and more ships burned, and more sailors and troopers died in their molten iron coffins.
Steel ship after steel ship shuddered, then melted or exploded into hot fragments that rained down upon boiling water. And still the waters parted, and fire flowed into the night-dark sky, and even ashes rose from the waters, and steam gouted into the fired air of the Gulf.
Yet, some ships fought on, and their less frequent shells still continued to grind Nylan into sand and gravel. I staggered, trying to hold onto order and chaos, to twist them together so that none could wield them separately again. My eyes blind to the sea, I struggled and welded.
I went to one knee, sliding through the damp grass, still fighting to bring ordered chaos against the ships.
Two arms reached me, one warm, one ordered, and I struggled upright with the infusion of darkness and warmth, of order and strength. As I wrenched more chaos from the ground and somehow flung it into the Gulf, a massive groan issued forth from the iron beneath Recluce. That groan rose into a mighty grinding, and even more massive waves, topped with gouts of steam that resembled small mountains, burst from the waters of the Gulf of Candar.
Like a huge anvil struck like a gong, the sound of that iron being wrenched apart slammed at me, and my hands covered my ears, as I fell again with the wrenching of the earth beneath me, and the screaming of steam that whistled up through the Gulf waters.
Another clanging of that iron anvil of the depths shivered through the land and sea, and the violence of the ground's rolling threw me facedown into the grass.
As I finally struggled up, to the north, behind me, somewhere near the Feyn River, the earth could take no more, and the back of Recluce split and a river of molten iron flared into the sky like a second sun, building a wall on the north side of the new channel between the sundered remnants of Recluce. The gold of the harvest fields turned black, and the river boiled and flared into steam. The whole isle rocked, and roofs collapsed, and stones rained off Dorrin's wall and around us.
I staggered, but Krystal helped me stand, and I saw my aunt in a heap, almost by my feet, Uncle Sardit cradling her. Anger fueled my last effort, anger at the Hamorians, at their precise gray ships, at their arrogance in using machines to build order, and at their desire to hold all the world. Neither I nor Krystal nor Kyphros nor Candar would be held!
Masses of water surged from the shallows beneath the cliffs where I stood, gushing southward, and rising into a wall of steam that swept over the remaining dark hulls, bobbing uselessly in the boiling waters of the Gulf.
Another wall of water lashed across Nylan-quenching fires even as it scalded those few who remained. Hot steam rose from the sundered and flattened tip of Recluce.
While I had no order strength left, and stood gasping on the grass of the cliff line, the wall behind us swayed, and the waves surged back against the cliffs, and hot spray cascaded up the cliffs and over and around us.
Another few cubits of the end of the cliff and the wall swayed, and then tumbled into the Gulf below with a dull, booming crash. And more hot sea spray rained across us.
Krystal somehow held me, almost pressed herself to me, offering warmth, strength, and all I could do was stand there, gasping, panting, with hot sweat pouring down my face.
The ground kept trembling, as if the earth could not stop itself.
I took another series of deep breaths. So did Krystal.
She asked something, and I realized that I could not hear her, and I squinted at her.
“Is it over?” she repeated, and between her feelings and watching her lips I understood.
“Most of it.” I tried to peer through the fog and mist to the south. There were no cannon reports, no explosions, just soft hissing and bubbling sounds, the crashing of waves of hot water on the cliffs-and the smell of boiled seaweed, and boiled fish and other less savory odors. I would have retched, but had not even that strength.
The Gulf was a boiled desert, and the whiteness of death, thousands upon thousands of deaths, lay like a shroud over it.
Still gasping, I glanced around, then toward the clouded sky, wondering about the source of the flashes of darkness that intermittently blocked my vision.
Elisabet half sat in Sardit's lap, her face tired and wrinkled, and growing more so as I watched. Justen was old, wrinkled, and his hair was silvering and falling out as he bent to kiss Dayala, as she shriveled in his arms. My parents, out on the point of rock that had crumbled away to almost nothing around them, were motionless, slumping into something beyond death.
For a moment I just stared, then I began to run, except it was more like a stumble, as my eyes sometimes seemed to work and sometimes not.
By the time I reached the end of the point, my parents were little more than dust, little more than dull dust in trampled grass, as the last of the order that had sustained them dissipated.
Krystal held my arm, and I looked.
Beneath us, the hot sea threw steaming mist at us, and my face burned. So did my eyes.
My mother's words, somehow, came back to me-“we do the best we can, and we have always loved you, even when it may have seemed we did not...” And in the end, they had given up a long and happy life together, for us, for who else could it have been for? My father had crossed the Eastern Ocean to help us in Kyphros... and I had not understood, not really...
“But you do now,” Krystal said, standing by my side, and, again, I had to look at her and try to sense her feelings, to understand.
“I never told them.” I watched her face, squinting through the blackness that came and went, seeing that her hair was mostly silver, and her face had wrinkles it had not had. When I could see, my eyes burned, as though arrows of fire slashed through them.
“They know. They have to know.”
I looked back, but there was no sign of Justen or Dayala, except where Tamra crouched, sobbing, her hair nearly snow-white, Weldein behind her, his hair also mostly white, holding his sword like some fearful relic.
My eyes fell to the vanishing dust. “At least I hugged him. At least I did that.”
I'd never understood how much strength there had been in my father-or in Justen-and they were gone. I'd been too busy rebelling to understand, and it was too late.
And my mother, and Aunt Elisabet, and Uncle Sardit-all of them gone, gone... because... because... did I really know? Did it matter?
My eyes burned, and Krystal stood by me, and we wept, wept for what, again, we, or I, had learned too late.
Below us, the water swirled and smashed on the rocks, and the hot steam cascaded upward and around us.
I just kept looking, numb, I think, somehow expecting my parents, my aunt and uncle, Justen and Dayala, to reappear. But it didn't happen.
The hot surf crashed and boiled, and the ground rumbled, and the earth shook, and I wept, and they were still gone... dead.
I'd never thought they'd die. Not my father and Justen.
I shivered.
With the hot surf and mist came the smell of death, of boiled fish and boiled corpses.
Why didn't I realize that they weren't ancient angels, that they would die? My mother had as much as told me, and so had Dayala and Sardit-just by coming. How could I have been so blind?
I looked at the trampled grass, seeing not even dust.
“Lerris!” Krystal grabbed my arm, turning me, when I didn't respond to her warning.
I stood stunned at the more than twoscore black-clad figures that were running along the grassy strip from Nylan toward us. Some bore stubby riflelike devices, and others carried blades or staffs.
Flames from the two small rockets exploded along the black stones of Dorrin's wall.
I could see that the black-clad marines were yelling something; I thought I could make out something about “the death of chaos!”
My mouth must have dropped open. What had we done?
Krystal whirled.
As I ducked and ran back toward the attackers, I reached for my staff, and I could see Tamra reaching for hers, but she seemed unable to find it, as though she groped for it. The four guards had formed a wedge around her, and their blades blurred in the hot rain that continued to fall.
Dercas lunged forward, his blade flashing, striking through a shoulder, and then across an arm, parrying two blades, and reaching toward the woman with the rocket gun, who loosed another rocket at him.
Even as the rocket turned Dercas into a flaming brand, he lifted the sword and flung it straight at the thin-faced woman who had led the Brotherhood squad and who had fired the rocket.
Whhhssst! Her last rocket veered off into the Gulf, and Heldra's mouth opened, and she looked down at the heavy blade through her chest before sinking to the turf.
Jinsa and Haithen began to hack their way toward the man with the other gun. Somehow, I tried to shield them. I could feel Tamra doing the same, and the rockets eased aside, splattering across the ordered black stones of the wall.
In the hissing silence that surrounded me, between the flashes of blackness and of stabbing pain through my eyeballs, I tried to keep the staff moving, although my arms burned, and I had to operate almost on feel. For once it didn't matter, and I didn't worry about who might be hurt. When I struck, it was hard, and some of them didn't get up. Deep inside, I was glad.
Beside me, Krystal's blade flickered, even more deadly than the staff, and more than a handful of black-clad figures lay strewn before her.
We backed up, and more ran at us.
Anger fueled my arms, and my staff, and I didn't even have to force the moves. Soon I was easing forward, keying my moves to Krystal's, following what she was doing, working together, without thought. Slash, parry, strike, slash, slash, parry, STRIKE!
The ground trembled, and we stopped because the three remaining Brotherhood members were running, screaming, toward the High Road. One stumbled and skidded through the grass and did not rise.
My arms suddenly felt like lead-or Krystal's did-or they both did.
I stepped back and leaned the staff against the wall, and my free hand reached for Krystal's. I felt old, and she did, too.
Tamra stood not half a dozen paces from us, shaking and sobbing, but Weldein had his arms around her, and she held to him, and he held to her. White streaked die once-shining red hair. Even Weldein's blond thatch was heavily streaked with silver.
Jinsa and Haithen leaned against each other, half gasping, half sobbing, streaks of gray in their short hair as well.
To the north, the earth still shook. Without looking, I knew that the steam still rose from the cleft that had been the Feyn River valley, from that cleft that was now a strait separating Recluce into two isles.
The fields there, those that did not lie beneath cubits and cubits of too-hot water, were blackened and burned, like Nylan itself.
Out in the Gulf, a wedge of black rock had appeared, hissing, steaming as the still-heavy waves crashed against it, welling upward into a larger and larger shape that would be an island, called someday, no doubt, by some name that reflected its origin in the great battle.
I blinked, trying to blink back the pain of seeing, and, for a moment, more blackness dropped across my eyes, but I struggled against that, and the pain of seeing returned.
I snorted. Great battle, indeed. The death of chaos, indeed, but not the way Heldra had wanted. So many deaths, so many thousands of deaths... would they all cling to that tiny black chunk of rock?
The trembling of the ground was less, but another section of the cliffs collapsed, rumbling down into a pile of black stone that formed a cairn shape on the narrow sands of the beach.
The water swept in and carried a fragment of burned and polished wood that banged in the foam against the dark stones, banged and scraped, and then swirled back into the Gulf. A white fragment of cloth, perhaps a sailor's cap, bobbed in the steaming waters.
I tried not to choke on the bile in my throat and looked toward Krystal.
She had sheathed her sword, and we looked inside each other, at the darkness in our eyes. Her hair was silver-white, and so, I knew, was mine.
“I never even got to say good-bye...” Not to my father, my mother, Justen, or Dayala. Not to my aunt, or to Uncle Sardit who had made me a crafter. My mother had known, and so had they all, even Tamra, and I alone had not. I alone had failed to understand.
“It's all right,” Krystal said. But it wasn't, except for her being there. She put her arms around me, and I sobbed, because there was too much I had learned too late.
I couldn't see for a long time, and neither, I think, could Krystal, but I needed her, and she was there for me.
The whole world had changed in a day. How could we deal with that? I'm not sure any of us did really, almost moving in a daze.
As I had known, Tamra was order-blind.
“Blind? I don't want to be blind. I suppose Lerris can see?” she asked.
I squinted, and winced with the pain of trying to make out her words.
Finally, Krystal answered for me.
“He can't hear, and sometimes he can't see. When he does, it hurts-a lot.”
“Oh, Krystal...”
That I did make out.
Finally, later, in the warm drizzle that followed the cold rain raised by Tamra and my father, by all of us, really, I picked up my staff.
Even with the remaining mounts, it would be a long trip north to Land's End, but that was where we had to go, now. Nylan was still the Black City, but black with ashes, black with death, and shelled into a black and gray mass of ashes and gravel, and all I had of Nylan were two dragon hinges.
And all I really had of Recluce were memories-and the two dragon hinges.
“You have your crafting,” Krystal said. “Sardit and your parents gave you that, and nothing can take that gift from you.”
I could mostly understand her. That helped, and so did her thoughts. Not enough, not near enough, but they helped.
Tamra said something, and she shuddered. I looked at Krystal, and she repeated the words. “To the death of chaos?”
I looked dumbly downhill at the remains of Nylan. Had it been worth it to raise order and chaos to strike down machined order?
“The death of chaos?” echoed Weldein as dumbly as I felt.
Krystal touched my arm.
I sighed. “In a way. In a way. There's not much free order or chaos left.” I didn't want to talk about it.
Instead, I looked back along the narrow grassy strip, and slowly walked through the warm drizzle out toward the slumped end of the wall that overlooked the Gulf. Not a sign remained-not clothes, not ashes, not flesh, not bone. I'd looked before, but I had to look again. I didn't find anything, and I knew I wouldn't, but I had to look, and those arrows of pain slashed at my eyes. Would I be like Creslin, in a different way, with each vision filling me with pain? For how long?
I looked again, ignoring the stabbing into my skull, although I wanted to double over.
I owed them all my life, in different ways, and they were gone, giving what they had to help me... and Krystal, and even she had given her youth.
For what? For the death of chaos?
I stood and watched and listened-and remembered-and Krystal stood by me... and I realized that she, too, would feel the pain of each vision.
I closed my eyes for a time, not just for my own surcease.