5.Death of Chaos
XVII
AFTER THE SPLIT in the road, the route to Arastia turned almost due west generally toward the brimstone spring and Kyphros. Heavy wagons had left deep tracks, deep enough to remain after days of traffic.
Less than two kays after leaving Alasia on her way to Telsen, I reined Gairloch over as a pair of Hydlenese couriers rode past, their crimson vests flapping, heading east, probably toward Telsen and then to Hydolar itself. They barely glanced at me, although one checked the hilt of his blade as he rode past.
The hillside farms were more scattered, with larger wooded stands between them. The fields were either cut stubble or turned under for the winter.
I rode on, and wood smoke drifted over the road as Gairloch carried me westward. The road led me to a field filled with stumps with a huge mound of earth, from which the smoke seeped. Beside the mound was a tiny hut, and a man sat on a stool, whittling and watching while the contained heat turned the felled trees into charcoal for the smiths of Hydlen.
I reached back and felt in one saddlebag for the piece of cedar I had started carving and almost forgotten, trying to ignore the twinge in my arm. As I looked at it again, I could sense there was still a face buried beneath the wood and my first rough attempts, but not whose face. I replaced the cedar in the bag as Gairloch carried me away from the charcoal burner's camp.
Occasionally, the meadows scattered between the trees and stubbled fields held sheep, but the small holdings were infrequent, consisting of a hut, an animal barn, and perhaps a shed.
I got another five kays or so before the sun dropped behind the trees. My arm throbbed; my head ached; and my stomach growled. Gairloch was barely plodding along, and occasionally he tossed his head. The road was entirely covered with shadows by the time I found a stream and a sheltered grove that didn't seem to belong to anyone-at least not anyone too close by.
I didn't bother with a fire. After eating another few wedges of cheese and more of the rock-solid biscuits, my headache subsided, and my stomach stopped growling. Then I unsaddled Gairloch, and brushed him, not as thoroughly as I should have, and gave him a handful of the grain.
Wheeee... eeee...
He tossed his head, as if to tell me it was about time.
“I know, old fellow.”
He settled down to grazing and tasting various leaves, and I sat on a stone by the rocky bank of the narrow stream and tried carving the cedar in the dimness. That was not one of my brighter ideas. I had to stop almost immediately as the knife slipped toward my fingers and as the tightening in my wounded arm turned to throbbing. So, after putting the cedar away, I infused the wound with a shade more order, set wards, checked Gairloch, and climbed into my bedroll.
Although I recalled looking at the sky, wondering as the clouds crossed the stars where the angels had come from and what had happened to them, I didn't remember falling asleep. Nor did I dream, unless I didn't remember what I had dreamed. I woke with the gray dawn, and a strong wind out of the west, strong enough to rustle the leaves on the lowest branches and bend the treetops-and a chirping that drilled through my ears.
For a time, I lay there, quiet, but still tired.
Twirrrppp... twirrrppp...
I didn't recognize the annoyingly cheerful birdcall, and only saw a flash of yellow-banded black wings. I pried my eyes open. Gairloch chomped on some leaves from a shrub, some of the clumped grass by the stream. Then he drank.
The yellow and black bird perched on a shrub on the other side of the stream, it's head cocked in one of those perky attitudes. People like Tamra who want to talk and sing first thing in the morning look like that damned bird. I got up early enough, but even I didn't feel like singing, especially after suffering through an attempted murder, attempted theft, and gross ingratitude.
“Shut up!”
Twirrrppp... twirrrppp...
Still, it helped get me out of my bedroll and staggering to the stream. The cold water helped more. By the time I could function, after drinking and eating a biscuit, the bird was gone.
I washed up and shaved in the stream, mostly by feel, and only cut myself once, despite the chill of the water. Mist began rising off the trees when the early sun struck them.
I washed out my underclothes and draped them over a bush, something I should have done the night before, but I could spread them across the saddlebags if the day turned out clear and they wouldn't take that long to dry. After dressing, I took out the brush and curried Gairloch again, and he sort of wiggled as I did so.
“I know. You deserve more of this.” With another pat, I put away the brush and began to saddle him and pack up. I had a few more biscuits, but still was in the saddle before the sun cleared the trees and struck the road.
The woods were hushed, and so were the first holdings we passed, although I saw one herder leading sheep to a lower meadow. Mist rose off the grass, indeed off any surface the sunlight touched.
Some of the winter-gray leaves glistened silver in the morning light, and I watched a hare nervously nibbling in a shadowed opening in the trees, his whiskers twitching, head flicking between each bite. Gairloch's hoof crunched on a stone or something, and, with a muffled single thump, the hare was gone.
Faint traces of wood smoke, and the odor of sheep, drifted across the road as Gairloch continued to carry me westward.
Sometime near mid-morning two men in tattered brown coats drove an empty rickety wagon pulled by a bony horse past me. The driver held the whip as we passed, but I could hear it crack in the distance.
I sensed the oncoming forces even before I could hear them, and I edged Gairloch into the trees, far enough in that we wouldn't be seen, but close enough for me to peer from behind a bushy scrub oak whose fall-yellow leaves had faded to winter-gray. My boots slipped and crunched acorns from the taller oaks that surrounded me every time I moved. I also stuffed my underclothes, mostly dry, into the top of my pack.
Three scouts rode over the low rise of the road first. After that came two or three squads of lancers behind a red banner with a gold crown. The lancers talked in voices so low I couldn't pick up what they said. One made some form of gesture, and the two beside him laughed, but the woman blade on the mount behind him unsheathed her blade and thwacked his mount on the rump. He yelled back, but they all laughed.
Nearly half a kay separated the lancers from the draft horses that followed, towing two-wheeled carts that looked like strange cannon, with two squarish barrels side by side. From the woods, I studied the cannon-carts for a long time. They were mostly made of oak, and beside the barrels were long thin boxes. More of the thin boxes were stacked on the wagons that followed.
I tried not to scratch my head, and to keep projecting reassurance to Gairloch, all the while extending my order senses toward the carts. The square-barreled cannon weren't even quite that. They were open at each end.
I reached for the boxes, and my senses touched cold iron. That gave me a jolt, and I almost said something, not that I probably would have been heard, not from more than fifty cubits away.
After trying again, I realized that the cold iron was shaped into cylinders pointed at one end, and blunt at the other, and filled with something that felt like chaos, or stored fire. But it wasn't chaos. There was no iron covering at the blunt end of the cylinder.
I frowned. Cold iron over chaos? Why would a chaos wizard use cold iron? Gerlis probably couldn't touch it, certainly not for long.
The wagons and carts creaked, and the wheels sank into the road, showing how heavy they were. Whatever they happened to be, the deep ruts I had noted earlier had come from something similar.
Twirrrppp... twirrrppp...
The black-winged bird I had seen earlier began to call.
Twirrrppp... twirrrppp...
An officer riding beside one of the carts heard the birdcall and began to look in my direction, then edged his mount toward the trees.
Twirrrppp... twirrrppp...
Muttering, just for good measure, I created a shield- around both Gairloch and me.
The birdcall stopped, and I waited in darkness, my senses extended to see what the Hydlenese officer did.
Someone called to him as he rode closer, until he was at the edge of the trees, not more than thirty cubits away from where I stood behind the scrub oak, holding Gairloch.
Whoever it was called again.
“... heard a traitor bird, but it's gone now. Thought someone might be out here...”
He swung at the leaves of the front row of scrub with the flat of his blade for a bit as he rode along, before turning his mount and returning to the road.
I took a deep breath and relaxed the shields.
Twirrrppp... twirrrppp...
Traitor bird, indeed. I put the shields back up, and the calls stopped.
The officer turned his mount back toward the side of the road, but more to the east of where Gairloch and I hid.
This time I left the shields up until after most of the carts had passed, thinking nasty thoughts about the aptly named traitor bird.
When I released the shields the last of the heavy wagons had passed, and there was an open space of another half kay between them and a detachment of foot, followed by a rearguard of two squads of lancers, again bearing the crimson banner with the crown.
Twirrrppp... twirrrppp...
Before the Hydlenese got too close, I found a pine cone, the heavy green kind that didn't mature, and threw it at the traitor bird.
Twirrrppp... twirrrppp... twirrrppp... twirrrppp...
I could see that force would only make the situation worse. I sighed, and put up the shields again, and the last of the Hydlenese forces passed without so much as a glance into the woods.
When I finally dropped the shields, and the road was clear in both directions, I listened for the sounds of the traitor bird, but apparently he had done his duties for the day-or knew I was ready to commit some form of violence.
After I climbed back into the saddle, Gairloch and I continued toward Arastia. Why were the strange carts and forces headed away from Kyphros? If Duke Berfir intended to take Kyphran territory, why were the soldiers headed the other way? Had I gotten turned around?
I looked at the sun, then at the hills. Was there a hint of higher ground, of the Lower Easthorns ahead? Once again, things weren't making much sense. First, the strange cannon devices... devices I knew I should recognize, knew I knew, but couldn't quite figure out. There was something about the contained chaos and the iron... something somewhere I had read... but I couldn't remember.
I patted Gairloch, and my arm twinged. Most of the time, I just felt a dull ache. Once we were back on the road, I laid out the slightly damp clothes across the packs.
Close to midday, I saw the gray kaystone proclaiming that Arastia was three kays ahead and confirming that I had been going in the right direction. The road wound slightly uphill to Arastia, where the houses and buildings were all of dressed logs or planks, not plaster or brick.
The central square had a dry-goods store, a harnessmaker's, and the equivalent of a chandlery, plus an inn, bearing a sign of a huge white bull with fire coming from his nostrils.
I decided against eating in the White Bull, since my luck in inns hadn't been exactly wonderful, and tied Gairloch outside the chandlery.
Inside the red-painted double doors were the usual arrays of saddle-carried gear, which I walked past, glancing from one side to the counter along the other. A woman with brown hair piled on top of her head stood behind the counter, while a girl closed the door to the iron stove in the middle of the store. A faint heat radiated from the stove. The heat reminded me that the day had not been that warm, but the wind and chill hadn't bothered me that much.
“Travel rations?” I asked.
“Stranger, aren't you?”
I nodded.
“Thought so. Know most folks round here. Where you be from?”
“Out Montgren way.”
She frowned. “You have much trouble on the roads that way?”
“I didn't come direct, but I saw a lot of lancers and carts on my way into town. I heard there was trouble.” I wandered over to the table that had cheese sealed in wax, and dried meat, stuff tougher than leather that had to be boiled to avoid breaking teeth, and a barrel of dried apple flakes. I almost drooled over the dried fruit. I'd gone through mine too quickly, and brought too little.
“Aye, the new Duke has his troubles.” She laughed. “Old or new, there's always someone to fight.”
I shrugged. “Why now?”
“There's those that say Duke Colaris must prove he is strong and take the mines in the hills south of the accursed ancient city. And there be those who say that Duke Berfir must slake the blood lust of them that gave him the gold circlet.” She snorted, and gestured toward the girl. “Makes no difference to us. Our menfolk and the young girls who like the blade-they die no matter whose tale be right.”
“I haven't seen many dukes die in battle.”
“Aye, and ye never will.”
The brown-haired girl sat down in the corner next to a graying dog, which licked her face.
I grinned at her and the dog, but she didn't notice. I picked up a package of waxed white cheese. “How much?”
“Two.”
“And the dried apples?”
“Penny a scoop, and a penny for a waxed bag.”
I took three scoops of the apples, as much as would fit in one of the bags, a bag of hard biscuits, the cheese, and four large grain cakes for Gairloch-bound in twine-and laid everything on the counter.
“Have any redberry or something like that?”
“I don't run an inn, young fellow.”
“I could hope.”
She reached behind her and produced a pitcher and a mug. “Water's good, and it's free... leastwise for customers.”
I laughed. “My thanks.” It was cool and good, and I drank it all. “How much for this?”
“That'll be nine.”
After fumbling through my purse I came up with a silver. Most of the golds were in hidden slots in my belt. It doesn't pay to carry a heavy purse that clanks.
She took the coin and slipped it into her own purse, and handed me a single penny back. “You traveled a long way, have you not?”
“Longer than I'd like,” I admitted.
“Be longer than that if you're a-heading to Kyphros.”
“Trouble there?”
“Aye. They closed the road to the brimstone spring. I used to take Varsi, there, for baths when she was a child. A sickly little thing she was, and the spring helped. The Temple ladies, they helped, too.” She shrugged. “I'd guess they're all gone or killed. I hope Varsi doesn't need no baths this winter.”
I glanced toward the corner, but the dog and the girl had left.
“The older I get, the stranger things get.” She frowned. “The new Duke, he's got his men, and ours, in the north and here in the west. Here, it makes no sense. That woman in Kyphros-she never started anything, but there's a new prefect, they say, in Fenard. That's because the old one lost the war he started with her. And this Duke Berfir, he's going to fight her and the fellow in Freetown together. Makes no sense, but what do I know?”
“When you put it that way, I can't give an answer. Dukes and folks like that don't think like us.” I had to shrug and smile. I picked up my purchases and turned.
“They don't think.” She paused. “Well... take care, young fellow.”
“I hope to.” I closed the red-painted door carefully. After folding up the dry clothes, probably somewhat dusty, I packed my added supplies into one of the saddlebags-all but one grain cake and a handful of the apple flakes. Gairloch got the grain cake, and I ate the flakes on the spot. I dug out the older biscuits and gnawed through one and pocketed another before I mounted Gairloch.
On the way out of Arastia, I let him stop at what seemed to be a town watering trough and let him drink. As I stood there, I saw Varsi throwing a stick for the old dog, who didn't look quite so old. I watched, and Gairloch drank. Then we headed west.
That Gerlis or the Duke had closed the road to the spring didn't exactly surprise me. The next problem was getting around the guards.
Still, I rode nearly five kays without seeing any soldiers or guards. I passed homesteads, a handful of women walking toward Arastia, a youth leading a cart and horse-but no troops.
As the end of the valley began to narrow, I passed a crossroads that led south-presumably the alternate and rougher route that Ferrel had started out on.
I got halfway up the next hill before I ran into trouble. Three lancers stood under the tree. Another was mounted by the road.
“You can't go this way, fellow. The road's closed.”
“How am I supposed to get to Kyphros?” I asked.
The lancer smiled and shrugged. “I'm sure I don't know. Not this way.”
The three under the tree laughed.
“So be a good fellow and just turn around.”
I didn't even argue. Instead, I rode Gairloch back down the road until it curved enough and I was out of sight. Then we went into the woods and stumbled uphill and around thickets. We even rode across some poor holder's fields, but at the edge, and no one came out, although I could see wisps of smoke from the chimney.
It took three times as long to cover the distance off the road, but eventually I got back on it beyond the sentries. I also had sap on my shoulder and a scratch on my cheek. I brushed leaves out of Gairloch's mane, and picked off the burrs I could reach as he carried me upward along the road toward the spring.
My ears and senses were alert, since there had to be more sentries, and if I ran into them I certainly couldn't play dumb again, not without running the risk of incurring some form of grave bodily harm.
At that point, I realized that, effectively, I was now a spy, and could be treated like a trooper-or worse. As a woodcrafter or even an order-master, I hadn't really thought about that. I should have, but I hadn't wanted Krystal to get fried like Ferrel, and I'd been able to handle the white wizards, hadn't I?
This was different. I had to find out something, not just escape or avoid the Hydlenese troops, and what I found out would affect a lot of people. I wished Justen were around. Instead, I took a deep breath and patted Gairloch. He whuffed, which wasn't that much reassurance.
It was late afternoon before I neared the valley that held the spring, and the odor of brimstone from the Yellow River had become particularly obvious in the near windless conditions.
The road began to climb steeply and bore right as it neared the opening to the valley holding the brimstone springs. I didn't wait to get too close to any sentries guarding the valley. Gairloch and I went into the woods on the left side of the road. My perceptions told me that the rise wasn't that steep, and that the underbrush wasn't especially thick.
Still, the sun had dropped behind the hills, or low mountains, when I peered through the last of the scrub oaks at the valley itself.
Under the rocky outcroppings at the west end of the valley, where the road from Kyphros-and Jikoya-entered the spring valley, was the spring itself. Beside the spring were the two stone buildings. One of them had probably housed the Temple sisters. I could sense tents and bodies there, but not well, because another low rise separated the grassy meadow just in front of me from the other end of the valley. Low cedar trees, no more than ten cubits high, covered the rocky ground.
I glanced around, then decided to wait until twilight arrived. So I tied Gairloch to a tree and dragged out some of the apple flakes, biscuits, cheese, and my canteen. The canteen held only orderspelled water, unfortunately. I sat on a rock and ate. I did give Gairloch some apple flakes, and he licked them from my hand, greedily.
When it had gotten darker, a soft almost purple darkness, filled with scattered insects, rustling leaves, and the ubiquitous smell of brimstone, I untied Gairloch. After drawing my shields around us while we crossed the meadow, I dropped them as soon as we reached the cedar trees, not wanting the white wizard to sense my use of order, especially after we reached the top of the low rise.
I stopped partway down the western side of the rocky rise, easing Gairloch behind a wide cedar. Almost a kay from us, still to the east of the spring, was a level space filled with tents. In the middle of the tents was a larger pavilion tent, one that radiated chaos and that ugly whiteness I could sense but not see, although it almost glowed in the darkness.
A low growling rumbled through the valley, and the tents swayed, and the ground under Gairloch trembled. I grabbed Gairloch's saddle, and he whuffed, though not loudly.
The rumble contained and radiated from chaos. What exactly was Gerlis doing?
Despite the growing coolness of the evening, I had to wipe the sweat from my forehead. I could feel the power welling from the white tent, and I was more than a kay away. So much power there was that I doubt he even could have sensed me, my poor abilities lost in that wave of chaos. I swallowed.
What could I do against that kind of power? Antonin had swatted me aside at first. Even in the end, I hadn't faced his awesome power, not really, only cut him off from its sources, and hung on until he died. And, in a way, I'd done the same thing with Sephya.
Gerlis had enough power in himself to fry me, even if I could contain him in an order bound. What could I do?
I kept thinking, but as the evening deepened I got no answers. Overhead, a patch of stars brightened as the clouds thinned. Cold and distant, they offered no solutions, and they almost seemed to say that they had no interest in me, or in Gerlis.
Looking back toward the camp, I began to probe around. There were still almost a dozen of the square muzzled cannon tubes, with the thin boxes of cylinders, and there was a space near the stone buildings, well away from everything else, where long flat pans, partly filled with brimstone water, lay on the ground.
I could also sense a huge stack of charcoal, and something else. All that confirmed that Gerlis, or the Duke, was using the brimstone to make powder. But what was the powder being used for?
Sensing around more, I could sort of trace the powder-and from what I could tell, it was mixed, then wet, and ground, then placed in the thin steel cylinders.
“Oh...” I felt like kicking myself. The cylinders were rockets, the kind used to destroy the white fleets centuries before. Or something like them. What had happened that Recluce no longer had mighty fleets? That was just another of the questions that hadn't been answered by either my father or the Brotherhood.
Did the Brotherhood still have rockets? Why were they showing up in Hydlen now?
Firebolts? No... Ferrel had been killed by rockets. I couldn't prove it, but it seemed all too likely. Rockets would be deadly in a confined space, like a mountain road or pass. With enough of them, the Hydlenese wouldn't have had to be particularly accurate.
As I considered the rockets, the valley floor groaned, and another trembling wave rumbled underfoot.
I didn't like it, but I sent my own perceptions beneath the valley, not that I could go very deep-just deep enough to sense the webs and flow of chaos that seemed to surround both the springs and the Yellow River itself.
Between whatever Gerlis was doing with chaos beneath the valley and the whole idea of scores of fire rockets, I just wanted to run, to ride like the demons of light were after me, but that wasn't likely to do all that much good.
I tried again to sense what the white wizard was doing, but could only gain the impression of shifting rocks and heat and more and more chaos, mostly natural.
In time, I rubbed my forehead, aching in rhythm with the throbbing in my arm. Gently, I turned Gairloch back the way we had come, back across the meadow and over the next wooded hill and down the road toward Arastia, and around the guards near the crossroads, although they weren't good guards. All of them were sleeping when we eased past sometime near midnight.
Then we took the side road, along the way Ferrel had probably intended to come. In that sense, I felt safer. The cause of her death wasn't unknown. It was just terrible. But with the wizard in his valley, and night all around me, I didn't fear the rockets.
I still didn't understand why the Duke of Hydlen was sending troops away from his border with Kyphros or what Gerlis was doing in the brimstone valley, but staying around might not answer the question, and might well lead to him noticing me.
So I rode slowly and quietly through the hills, trying to put distance between me and Gerlis. Overhead, the cold stars and their indifferent light began to vanish behind the growing clouds.