5.Death of Chaos
XIII
ON MY RIDE through the hills of Hydlen on the road beside what I later discovered was the Fakla River, I was reminded once again that everything took longer than I planned-whether it was a desk or a trip.
The road, despite the intermittent sleet and freezing drizzle, was passable, and with his heavy coat, Gairloch plodded on in stride. I brushed the ice off my cap and jacket, sniffled through the cold, and tried to keep the dampness away.
The scattered trees turned into forests, with clearings, first for grazing, and then for fields, though they were but turned stubbie in the winter drizzle. The huts I passed were snug enough looking, with thin lines of smoke from stone and clay-caulked chimneys, but small.
In the air the faint smell of burning wood mixed with the underlying hint of rotten leaves, and, occasionally, the resin of evergreen needles. I rode past one stolid soul, pulling a cart, and nodded. His eyes fixed firmly on the road, he trudged by me, his face blank, his beard tangled, and his boots squushing through the rain-softened clay that was not quite mud. On the cart were two lopsided gourds, one gashed.
Whuffff...
I patted Gairloch, glad I was riding and not walking, as we continued eastward.
Faklaar stood at the first wide bend in the river, where the hills and most of the woods ended, and the high river plains began. In the late afternoon's winter drizzle, the clump of houses and the inn and store recalled a damper version of Howlett, the town where I had first met Justen. The inn at Faklaar stood in a swamp of churned earth, with muddy planks leading from its main door to the store next door and to the stables behind.
I wasn't thrilled about the place, but I wasn't going to learn much by skulking around, and, besides, people get suspicious of those who avoid other people. So I rode Gairloch past the newly painted sign that displayed a platter heaped with a brown steaming mass and back to the stables.
The stable girl looked at me. “Pony's same as horses. Two coppers, three if you want a cup of grain.” Her ragged hair barely covered her ears, and her bony knees protruded from holes in overlarge trousers cut raggedly over wooden clogs.
“All right.”
“Before you stable him.”
“I'm supposed to trust you?”
She shrugged. “I steal from Jassid, and he beats me. Don't take beatings for three coppers.”
I dismounted, trying to avoid the worst of the mud and horse droppings and dug in my purse for the coppers. I gave her four.
She looked at me.
“End stall?” I asked.
“Nope. You can take the corner one there, though. Small enough that Jassid won't double-stall.”
“I'm Lerris.”
“Daria. I'll get you the grain. Good stuff.”
While she walked toward a set of large barrels, I led Gairloch into the low-ceilinged corner stall. Daria was right. The stall was narrow enough for Gairloch, but it was dry, and relatively clean. I racked the saddle and began to brush him, after setting my bags and staff in the corner.
Daria returned with a large measure of grain.
“He bite?”
“He never has.” I paused. “Except once. He kicked and bit a liveryman who whipped him. That was before I got him.”
“Don't like whips.” She shivered as she poured the grain into the manger.
Gairloch whuffed and began to eat.
“Stableboy! Where's the stableboy?”
Daria scuttled out into the yard.
After brushing Gairloch, and recalling Justen's handling of our stay in Howlett, I checked the hayloft. It was dry, and looked halfway clean.
“What you doing?” demanded Daria as I dropped from the stall half-wall to the ground.
“Checking the hayloft.”
“You've been around.”
“Some.”
“Better than the inn,” she said.
“You sleep there?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don't sleep with nobody.”
I shook my head. “I didn't mean that.”
“No. Live out at the edge of town. Ma cooks for Ystral. The stew's better than the chops.” She left almost before she finished speaking.
I threw an ordered light shield around my staff and supplies. What people couldn't see, they were less likely to steal. Then I walked across the muddy splattered planks to the inn. The door was pine, not evenly planed and not varnished. I knocked the mud off my boots, and used the boot brush no one else had.
A bulky man with a short gray beard and a stained leather apron looked like he owned the place.
“Are you the innkeeper?”
“None other. Ystral, at your service. You don't want a job, do you, young fellow?”
“No. I wanted a meal and a place to sleep.”
He smiled the innkeeper's smile.
“Bed is half silver, and the fare's simple but good. Four coppers for the stew, five for the chops, and good chops they are, too.”
“How about the stable?”
“Three for a horse.”
I smiled. “How about for me, sharing the stall.”
“Three if you go for that sort of thing.”
I handed him three coppers. “My horse gets lonely.”
“Takes all kinds.” He took the coins, still smiling, and moved toward two soldiers in crimson-trimmed grays.
I eased away. The public room at the Overflowing Platter was none too large, less than twenty cubits on a side, and the air was greasy, smoky, and reeked faintly of horse and sheep droppings carried in with the mud and duly boots.
There was a small table on the wall where I could watch the door, and I took it. The table, pine-finished with years of grease, wobbled, and one of the back braces on the chair was cracked.
“Beer or berry?” The woman rubbed a damp hand across a grease splotch on her gray shirt.
“Berry. Stew. How much?”
“Two for the berry. Stew's four, and you get half a loaf.”
“Stew.” I showed a silver, but held it.
“Pay when you get the berry.”
“All right.”
She was gone, back to the kitchen, and I studied the others in the room, trying to extend my hearing to pick up what I could.
“... beef pies... better than fowl...”
“... Berfir never hold Hydlen... only a herder with a long sword from Asula...”
“... tell him I want real chops... come back and spit him over his own fire...”
“... pretty face and waggles those lace-covered titties in front of 'em and they think she's a lady...”
I tried not to blush or to react too strongly to what I heard, but little had to do with other than the commonplace.
“Here's your berry.”
The mug came down on the grease-polished wood with a slight thump, and I handed over the silver. I did get four coppers back.
“Stew coming up. Next trip.”
As I watched, the two soldiers came in and sat three tables away. I tried to listen, but the serving woman was back.
“Here's your stew and bread, fellow!” She waited and scratched her stomach.
I forced a smile and offered her a copper, getting a smile in return.
“You're all right.”
Daria had been right. The stew was good, and the bread wasn't half bad. The redberry had been badly watered, and I orderspelled it, which made it blander, but safer.
I concentrated on listening, extending my senses toward the two troopers.
“... stay away from the chops... dog meat from what I hear...”
“... better than the goat those Kyphrans eat...”
“... say Berfir's wizard is like the great old ones...”
“... Colaris couldn't fight his way out of a Temple... still wants the valley...”
“... take the Ohyde over our knives...”
I frowned and took another mouthful of stew. People were talking, just talking, and there wasn't much to most of it. I kept listening and eating, slowly.
“... Stenafta... daughter's something, I'd bet, get beneath those stable clothes...”
Was Daria Stenafta's daughter? I sipped another mouthful of the redberry and tried to hear what the troopers said, but they just ate.
“... these aren't chops! Sliced mutton no matter how you cut it!” The muscular man in a stained blue shirt stood up and flung the platter at the serving woman, spraying her with grease and mutton.
She cringed, and the muscular figure turned without looking at her. Ystral scuttled into the public room.
“Innkeeper! When I order chops, I want chops! Not sliced mutton!” The man in the blue shirt stood half a head taller than Ystral.
“You have the best we have, ser,” Ystral offered evenly.
“Charging for chops! Theft! It's theft!” His hands reached for the innkeeper, shaking the smaller man. He grabbed for Ystral's neck with a lurch.
As I watched, the big man's hands waved, and his mouth opened with almost a gurgle. Then he sank to the floor, red welling across the blue of his shirt.
Ystral stepped back and wiped the knife on the fallen figure's shirt.
Ystral turned to the cringing serving woman. “It's your fault. Clean up the mess. Get this carrion out of here.”
Neither soldier said a word. The gray-haired one lifted his mug and shook his head. The younger one chewed on a corner of bread.
Ystral walked out toward the front of the inn, and the buzz of conversation resumed, even while the serving woman tugged at the body of the man who had complained about the chops.
I didn't feel like eating more, but I forced myself to finish the stew, taking one slow bite at a time.
“... don't argue with Ystral... kill you as anything...”
“... and I told her we'd go to Sunta, and she could get her finery sewed by the tailor there... but, no, she said that it had to be Worrak or Hydolar itself...”
“... say he used to be a trooper...”
After finishing the stew, I eased back to the stable, having heard nothing useful, at least directly. I was bothered, somehow, that the soldiers had just watched and done nothing. And that Ystral had neither smiled nor frowned.
It was still half light when I pulled my bedroll and The Basis of Order up into the hayloft. I could hear the rain falling, again, and I had to shift my bedroll once to avoid the drops from the big rafter.
I used the striker to light the candle and tried to read a few pages.
“... the world works to buffer order and chaos, for seldom does it allow unalloyed order to meet the spirit of chaos unfettered by any material. Such a buffer is the basis of life. When the angels and the demons of light fought, their spears were pure, and the very stars in the skies were rent and torn. So is it always when unalloyed and opposing forces meet...”
That wasn't terribly interesting. So I closed the book and took out the length of cedar and carved for a time, but it was slow, and I couldn't quite see the face beneath the wood.
Besides, my eyes started to feel heavy after that, and I finally put the knife and cedar away, blew out the candle and put it into my pack. Belatedly, I set wards and went to sleep with the sound of the rain-trying not to sneeze from the hay.
My dreams were strange, something about traveling down roads I didn't know, with a silver-haired woman offering advice I didn't want and couldn't understand.
I woke with a start, the wards tingling in my skull, my fingers grasping for my staff.
Outside, the sky was barely gray.
“Easy!” Daria backed away.
“You surprised me.” I lowered the staff and shook my head.
“Didn't mean to start you up.” Daria eased into a crosslegged position on the planks of the hayloft floor. Her breath steamed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Come early. Ma has to get here. Jassid pays me half copper an eight-day if'n I'm here 'fore breakfast.”
I extracted myself from my bedroll and set aside the staff. After pulling on trousers and boots, I shook out my jacket and put it on. My breath steamed, and I wasn't shivering, not quite.
“You sleep outta your clothes. That safe?”
“Probably not. But it's more comfortable, and my boots last longer if they and my feet get to breathe.”
“Feet don't breathe.”
“Your whole body breathes.”
“You some kind a teacher? You use that staff like they say the black ones do.”
“No.” My stomach twisted at the statement, and I frowned. I wasn't a teacher, but I didn't want to get into explaining about myself. Because I'd carried the black ordered staff of Recluce, I had been a blackstaffer when I'd started my exile, technically a dangergeld where I could return to Recluce if I satisfied the Brotherhood, but I didn't see myself ever doing that. Anyway, blackstaffers weren't exactly popular in Candar. “I'm a woodworker. Sometimes, I have taught apprentices.” That was certainly true enough.
“You from Kyphros?”
“I just came from there, but I was born a long ways away.” My system didn't protest too much at that evasion. “Why do you want to know?”
“Ma says women run Kyphros. That true?”
“The autarch-”
“What's an autarch?”
“She's the woman who rules Kyphros. The head of their... army is a woman, too. So are most of the officers.” I began to roll my bedroll up.
“Yeah. The black blade. What Jassid calls one of 'em. He was a trooper for the old Duke on the coast. Said she killed couple score. Wish I could do that.”
“Do you want to tell me why?”
She looked at the planks.
“Jassid-or someone else?”
“... kill... the bastard... 'cept Ma have no coins. Khali'd starve. Pa died long time ago. Drowned in a fight.”
“He was a soldier?”
“... used to tell us stories 'fore the crops went bad. Signed for the bounty-the rebel Duke on the coast. That was 'fore the new Duke in Hydolar. One duke, another, same thing.”
“Jassid...” I mused.
“Don't say nothing. He'll beat me. Ma can't do nothing.”
I thought as I strapped my bedroll tight. “I promise. I'll say nothing.” But I might not have to say anything.
“Shouldn't said nothing...”
I touched her shoulder, briefly, realized that she was older than she looked, and offered a touch of order and reassurance.
“You're one those teacher fellows. I knew it.”
“I keep your secret. You keep mine.”
She nodded, and was gone down through the opening to the stable below.
I carried my things below, shaved quickly at the water pump, quickly enough to cut myself, and was checking Gairloch when a thin black-haired man, his face scarred from old bums on the left side, appeared by the stall. “You the one who slept here last night?”
“Yes.”
“I didn't see you. I'm Jassid. This is my stable here.”
“I paid Ystral, and I was here. There's my bedroll.” I offered a smile, extending my senses to the man. I tried not to recoil at the amount of chaos in his system. I even reached out with my senses, then drew back. He was so touched with chaos that any attempt to change him wouldn't work... unless it killed him.
He just stood there, as if expecting something.
I nodded and put the blanket on Gairloch, then the saddle. When I looked up from cinching the girth, Jassid was gone.
I didn't want to enter the Overflowing Platter again. So I fed Gairloch, and we rode out into the drizzle, leaving Faklaar behind.
Should I have killed Jassid by removing the chaos from his system? Could I have done it? I frowned. Had I done so, would the next stable-master have been any better?
Did I have any right to kill a man because I thought a stable girl had been abused? Did I have any right not to do something?
I wiped the dampness off my face and turned Gairloch toward the muddy track north toward Sunta. The air was still, and the acrid mustiness of graying leaves grew even stronger as the drizzle continued.
Gairloch tossed his head, and I patted his neck.
That I hadn't done anything for Daria bothered me. She'd asked me not to do anything, but it still bothered me. Yet the thought of acting like an ancient angel bothered me. Who was to say my vision of the angel might not be someone else's demon of light?
I watched the road, and Gairloch plodded along, and I continued to think about Daria and Jassid, and Ystral, wondering why some people enjoyed hurting others so much, and having no real answers. I'd already discovered that order and chaos had little enough to do with morality, but more with the mechanics of the world.
Wheeee... eeee...
I patted Gairloch again. What he'd said made as much sense as anything.