5.Death of Chaos
XXXIII
THE CRACCCCKKKK OF lightning snapped through my ears.
With a deep roaring, the earth seemed to move under me, and the rain poured down, but I could not move.
My left leg seemed snapped, and I could not lift my right arm. I smelled singed hair, and flesh, and feared that it was mostly mine. My breath came in little gasps, and each gasp seared fire into my lungs.
I opened my eyes, at least for a moment, and screamed, because the white fire of chaos burned them, and that awful white darkness reached out of the earth and seized me, and dragged me back into the depths where the earth roiled and churned around me.
Later, someone in green leathers stood over me, and looked for a long time, or so it seemed. It wasn't Krystal. My eyes burned, and I still couldn't see. The air was damp, and I could hear rain.
I didn't recall anything after that until I woke, lying or riding on a cart of some sort, and every sway and creak of the wheels hurt.
I could hear the rain on a canvas over me, and some of it slipped under the cart's awning and cooled my face. The canvas flapped and cracked like a whip, and the sound slashed my ears.
“You awake?” asked someone.
I tried to open my eyes, but that blinding whiteness threatened to creep in. Then I tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak. I tried again. “Yes.”
“Tell the commander he's awake.”
I think I dozed for a moment.
“Lerris... Lerris...”
“Mmmmm...” I tried to swallow. “Water...”
I got a trickle of greenberry or something, but it was enough.
“Can you hear me?”
Krystal's voice seemed to echo and come through layers of blankets wrapped around me, but she was there.
“Yes.” I nodded, too, but the effort was too much, and I dropped under the white blackness.
When I woke again, I was still on the damned cart, but it wasn't raining, and the cold wind felt good on my face. I felt as if I were burning up, and I knew I ought to be doing something with order to heal myself, but I couldn't. I opened my eyes, and they only burned.
Krystal was there. Maybe she hadn't left, but she was riding beside the cart.
“Sorry...” I mumbled.
“Oh, Lerris... you're sorry?” She bent down in the saddle, and her fingertips brushed my forehead. They felt cool and good.
“What...happened?”
“Yelena cut down half the lancers on the road. Their own rockets got most of the rest. You... the white wizard... there wasn't much left. Maybe two score of the Hydlenese survived.”
“Shervan... saved me,” I mumbled. “Threw his sword...”
The cart bounced again, and the knives shot through me for a moment.
“... good for something,” mumbled Jylla from beyond Krystal. Her arm was strapped tight to her body, and her face was a mass of red lines and bruises. The upper tip of her ear was missing.
I didn't see Freyda.
“... the spring...” I still was having trouble talking and seeing.
“Don't talk. Please don't talk. I'm right here.”
I thought that was funny, and I wanted to laugh. The commander riding beside the wounded wizard. Commanders should be in charge, I thought.
“... spring...” I gasped.
“We took it back. There's more brimstone than ever, and some of it keeps spouting into the sky...”
I must have slipped off because I didn't hear anything more.
After that, I kept waking up on the cart, and not being able to say anything.
Krystal was there, and she was crying, and I had never seen her cry, and then I couldn't say anything anyway because it hurt so much just to breathe.
I did wake up again, and I was in a bed in a big room, and there was light everywhere, and I felt like I was burning alive.
Justen was looking down at me.
“... how... ?” I croaked.
“When you do something, you make enough of a dent in the order-chaos fabric to ring the whole world like a bell. I was already on my way back. Now... let me work.”
“... wrong...” It still hurt to breathe and talk, but not so much.
“Outside of a leg with two snapped bones,, chaos infections, bruises on every muscle in your body, a broken rib that almost got your lungs-not much.”
He seemed to age, even as he looked and worked on me.
“Demon-hell time to have to do order-chaos balances... idiot nephew...”
I thought about thanking him, but even my thanks wouldn't have been pleasant to his ears. Where had he been when I was taking on Gerlis? I never got the words out, though, but passed out or slept or both.
When I finally did wake up, Rissa was sitting there, and she had deep circles under her eyes.
“Rissa...” I managed to croak.
“It's about time, Master Lerris.” She leaned over me holding a cup, and her words seemed to come from a long ways away. “The old mage says that you have to drink this stuff if you wish to live.” I drank. Whatever it was tasted vile and smelled worse. But I drank. I lay there for a time, I think, but apparently drinking had exhausted me, because I went back to sleep.
The next time I woke Krystal was there. She looked as if she had .been facing the demons of light.
“... love... you...” I managed, not wanting to waste words, wondering if I had many left.
She put both hands on the sides of my face, gently, and kissed my forehead. “I know, and I love you.” Then she had the damned cup in her hand.“You need to drink as much of this as you can.”
So I did, and I didn't fall asleep. I just looked at her. She wore the green shirt and leathers, but not the vest, and the shirt was wrinkled, and her eyes were tired.
She looked at me, and finally she smiled. “Do you want some more to drink?”
“No. Will... though...”
She held the cup steady with one hand, and my good hand with her other, and I drank, and I thought it helped. Then she sat beside me and held my hand until I fell asleep again.