5.Death of Chaos
XC
I SLOWED GAIRLOCH to a deliberate walk as the road dipped into another small dry valley in the Little Easthorns. Around us were rocks and more tree-covered rocks. Most of the rocks in the Little Easthorns were red and black, and rough, unlike the heavier and grayer rock of the Easthorns and Westhorns.
As I studied the flat area in front of me, I wished I had a better memory for details.
“Is this the one?” asked Weldein for at least the third time, running his fingers through his short blond hair.
“I don't know yet I was only here once before, and that was almost three years ago.” It felt as if a lot longer than three years had passed.
Kkhhcheww... “Friggin' dust...” mumbled Fregin.
“We know,” snapped Berli. “We know.”
I paused, sensing the aura of chaos. On my left seemed to be a thick and intertwined grove of scrub juniper bushes, while on the right was a large gray-white boulder that blocked the view to the north.
Slowly, I eased Gairloch toward the apparent boulder, reaching out with my senses. I nodded. “This is the place.”
“Just a bunch of boulders that way,” mumbled Fregin, reining up behind Weldein.
Berli had dismounted and brushed at the reddish-white dust of the flattest part of the road.
“Stop raisin' dust.” Fregin sneezed.
I concentrated on the illusion, although I could tell it was fraying, tracing back the lines that held it together, half marveling at the fact that even Antonin had had to use order to serve chaos. That use of order was how and why the illusion had lasted, of course.
Finally, I traced back the webs and slowly separated them, breaking them into smaller and smaller segments of chaos within order, much in the same way as I had finally reordered myself to match the pattern that I had seen in Justen, except this time I was almost working in reverse.
“Demon-damn! Where'd that road come from?” asked Fregin.
“It's always been here,” answered Berli, straightening up. “See. Here are the outlines of the paving stones.”
Weldein shook his head. “I've ridden this road a dozen times and never seen this.”
“You weren't meant to. The illusion was strong enough to hide it from anyone but a mage. Kry-the commander sent. some people to find this, but they never did, and somehow I never did get out here to find it-something always kept happening.”
“Imagine that,” said Berli dryly.
“Anyway, it will stay like this now.”
“Is that good?” asked Weldein. “You said the Hamorians were using it.”
“They're starting at the other end. If they get this far...” I shrugged.
“I see what you mean.”
Before we left, I studied the dry wash again. The spot had actually been a crossroads of sorts, because a covered drainage way ran under the north-south road that Kyphrans had used for years. The top of the drainage way was part of the other road itself-the road between Gallos and Kyphros and the one we had just ridden up from Tellura.
I wondered why people hadn't used the wizards' road before Antonin hid it, but maybe that was because it didn't lead anywhere nearby. Still, that didn't make sense. The white wizards had built the road to be the shortest east-west highway across Candar.
Berli slipped back into her saddle, and I turned Gairloch east and onto the dust- and dirt-covered paving stones. There was a shallow set of ruts where Antonin's carriage had passed. At the bottom of the rut, I could see traces of the paving stones beneath, unmarked, uncracked.
Whatever else they had done, the white wizards had built well, as I knew from the part of the road still used from northwest Kyphros to Sarronnyn.
We traveled another ten kays before I found out why the part of the road we traveled hadn't been used before Antonin arrived. The faultless stonework of the old road, concealed as it was by a thin layer of dirt and some scrub brush, ran right up to a huge pile of red and black rocks tumbled together, a pile nearly forty cubits high. The rocks had apparently peeled away from the cliff above the road and buried it, perhaps for centuries.
Why hadn't anyone tried to reopen the road before Antonin? I frowned, then nodded. It was a military road. It didn't improve travel between Gallos and Kyphros. With the use of steamships, trade was easier by river and the ocean, and, probably most important, it would have taken hundreds of workers a good season to move just the pile of stone in front of me.
Even Antonin had only created a stone-fused narrow passage through the rock pile. The lingering feel of chaos surrounded the narrow passage.
Wheee... eee...
“I know. It feels terrible.” I patted Gairloch on the neck.
Kkcchew! “Damned dust is white now,” muttered Fregin.
“The chaos wizard did this?” Weldein pulled up beside me, and we were almost shoulder to shoulder. I could have reached out and touched the fused stone wall. It would have been a tight fit for Antonin's carriage.
“The second one-Antonin. The feel of chaos is fading, but it's still there.”
“He burned through this, and you defeated him?” asked Berli, close behind, her words echoing from the stone.
“Sometimes, luck and order can overcome brute force.”
“Prefer the brute force, myself,” grumbled Fregin. “Can't always count on luck.”
I appreciated that sentiment, especially since the growing rumbles of chaos from the depths to the east of us indicated that the chaos wizard ahead had much more brute force than Antonin or Gerlis had possessed. How had Sammel gathered such force? Was it because he knew the basics of order? That would explain a lot.
“Gettin' right thirsty,” Fregin said to Berli.
“Who isn't?”
“Hungry, too.”
“You're always hungry.”
We stopped in the shade of a cliff another two or three kays farther east along the road. I offered slices of the white cheese and the bread that Barrabra had pressed on me the morning before when we had left Tellura.
Food wasn't the problem. Water was. The summer had been so dry that there was no water in the drainage way beside the road, and we'd only passed one spring.
I wiped my forehead... then paused. If I were such an earth wizard, why couldn't I look for springs and the like?
Sitting in the shade, I let my senses try to seek out water. I'd , sought and found iron before, deep beneath the earth. Water shouldn't be that hard.
It probably wouldn't have been, had there been any to find, that is, any that wouldn't have taken a team of miners to get to. Absently, thinking of miners, I wondered how Ginstal was doing in his efforts to rebuild the Hrisbarg iron mines. Not too well, I hoped, since that would only strengthen Hamor's hold on Candar.
I chewed through the bread and cheese and moistened my mouth with some water from my water bottle. There was less than a quarter left, and Gairloch hadn't drunk since morning, and even in the shade he was hot and panting. After putting the food back in the left saddlebag, I took another deep breath and concentrated on trying to find water.
“I'm not sure,” I told Weldein, “but there might be a spring another kay or so ahead.”
He nodded as he mounted, as if my announcement were only to be expected.
I wasn't quite as accurate as I'd hoped. It was more like three kays, but no one could have missed it, because it was more like a stream that flowed into the drainage way and then slowly vanished into the ground beneath the stones lining the drainage channel.
Still, everyone got plenty to drink, even Gairloch, although I made him take it in steps, and we refilled our bottles before we set out again.
“Some advantages to being with a wizard,” conceded Fregin.
“Tell us that when chaos-fire is flying around our heads,” suggested Weldein.
That night, I didn't even have to find another spring. We camped in a long-abandoned, stone-walled waystation with a flowing spring. The roof had ages-since turned to dust, but we didn't exactly have to worry about rain or cold.
I didn't sleep all that well, not with the feel of chaos growing stronger and deeper with each kay we moved eastward, but what good was it to tell the others that I was sensing chaos that they couldn't feel or hear?
The next day was pretty much like the previous one.
We found another, smaller rock pile where Antonin had burned a passage, and the carriage tracks pointed eastward. Most of the time, the wizards' road was surprisingly clear, and from the carriage tracks, the dried horse droppings, and the lingering hints of chaos, it was clear that Antonin had indeed used the road frequently.
Late in the day on the second day on the wizards' road, we came to a grove of scrub junipers, planted right in the middle of the road, and totally blocking it.
“Where'd that come from?” demanded Fregin.
“It was probably always here,” answered Berli.
I shook my head. The grove felt wrong, but I was tired, and it took a moment for me to realize that it was another illusion. After fumbling a bit, I dissolved the illusion as well.
There was another crossroads, and even a weathered kaystone that announced, “Yryna-10 K.” I'd never heard of Yryna, but the placement of the stone on the northern side of the crossroads seemed to indicate that the town was somewhere in Gallos, and I thought I would have heard of it somewhere had it belonged to Kyphros.
“Yryna?” asked Fregin.
The rest of us shrugged.
As Gairloch carried me eastward along the wizards' road, I realized two things. First, the cliffs around the road were higher, and, second, there were no carriage tracks on the road.
“Somewhere ahead, the road must be blocked.”
“No tracks?” asked Weldein.
“That's good and bad. It means the Hamorians haven't gotten the road unblocked yet, but I don't know if we can get through, either.”
“What do you want to do, Master Lerris?”
I shrugged again. “Go on.”
From my own experiences in the deadlands, I suspected that the road got worse and hadn't been used, even by Antonin, nearer Frven. Otherwise, why would he have used the muddy and boggy roads around Howlett?
Most of the paving stones had remained generally in place, although a thin layer of soil covered many areas, and there low bushes, brush, and scrub oak had started to take hold, more than in the section of road we, had already traveled.
We camped at another abandoned waystation that night, with yet another spring that seemed to flow into the ground.
The rocks and the cliffs beyond the road had turned into a heavier gray, and I hadn't seen the sharp-edged red and black rocks, not since we had left the crossroads five or six kays behind.
We finished the last of Barrabra's bread and the white cheese, leaving only hard travel bread, some dried mutton, and yellow brick cheese.
Again, that night, my sleep was fitful at best, and I woke up twice in a hot sweat, feeling as though chaos-formed of snakes of molten iron-were stalking me. The wards I had set didn't help much against nightmares, or against my own fears.
The second time, I walked out to the spring, where a mountain rat scurried away. Overhead, the stars glittered blue-white and cold, and even my breath seemed to steam. I splashed my face with the cold water, and that helped, but I still woke before dawn.
The next day, as we moved into the Easthorns, the canyon walls got higher, and, except around noon, the road was generally shaded. That morning, it had been chill enough that Weldein and the two guards rode with their jackets fastened.
The ground seemed to shake underfoot, but I said nothing, and Gairloch picked up one hoof and then another, placing each carefully. The sense of chaos had grown nearer and nearer, and I uncapped my water bottle and took another swallow, glancing down at the dry drainage canal beside the road.
As we rode eastward in the early afternoon, in the distance ahead, I could finally see another slumped mass of rock, even larger than the first mass, that turned the road into a dead-end canyon. I kept riding until we reached the tumbled stones that had peeled off a cliff that seemed more than a kay high and cascaded across the old highway.
“Doesn't look as though we can go too much farther.” Weldein wiped his forehead and unfastened his jacket.
I fingered my staff.
Still, I could sense the nearness of chaos, and a whispering sound that suggested troops ahead-a lot of them.
Whhnnnnn... A mosquito whined past me, presumably toward Weldein, who offered a more tempting target.
I looked at the pile of rock that had fallen across the old stones of the road. A few had bounced even farther westward, creating a rough dam, and turning the stone-lined drainage channel into a semistagnant pond. The dried algae on the rocks showed the water was lower, much lower, than normal. That was also probably why there was one lonely mosquito whining through die hot shade of the road canyon and not an entire swarm.
Somehow I was glad that the heat was hard on mosquitoes also.
The ground shivered underfoot, and Weldein looked at me.
“Stay there,” I told Weldein, as I dismounted.
“What are you doing?”
“Climbing a rock. So I can see them.”
“See who?” demanded Fregin.
“The Hamorians on the other side of the rock pile.”
“Won't their wizard see you?”
“Not while he's handling that much chaos.” At least I hoped Sammel didn't. So I clambered up the rocks, carefully, slowly, sweating every cubit of the way, trying not to hold my breath, while still grasping my staff. If I needed it, I didn't want to have to climb down and up again.
I almost laughed when I got to the top and looked eastward.
Beyond the huge pile was a flat expanse-two hundred cubits or so of untouched road-and then another pile of rock almost like the one where I perched.
Looking upward, I could see what had happened. An entire cliff had collapsed and fallen down over a slight ridge that had split the rock flow into two avalanches, leaving a section of good road between the two piles of rock.
Then I frowned, and concentrated, trying to trace the chaos ahead.
Rurrrr... Crackkk!!!!
The ground shivered underfoot, and several smaller stones bounced downhill, away from Weldein, thank the darkness.
Beyond the second rock pile, chaos was working and building.
Dust flared into the sky, and I could see the pile begin to move, almost to shrink. Stones, some larger than a hut or a hovel, tumbled downhill, northward into a caldron of what seemed to be molten chaos, a seething lake of fire.
The heat made noonday Kyphros, even in recent days, seem cool.
White lines of chaos lashed at the rocky rubble. The few small cedar and scrub junipers that had clung to the rocks flashed into ashes that fluttered skyward with the smoke and white dust.
“What is it?” called Weldein, his voice barely audible above the roaring and the whistling of the wind.
“More demon dust!” screamed Fregin.
“Is it the chaos wizard?” yelled Weldein.
I gave him an exaggerated nod, then waved him away from the rock pile on which I perched before turning back toward the slowly shrinking pile of rock.
GGRRRRurrr... More rocks bounded down away from me.
I glanced up toward the cliffs up to my right, grayed and weathered rock that looked none too steady. Even as I watched a small fragment of the cliff cascaded away and downward.
The falling stones flared into white powder, and began to pelt down like fine stone mist.
The blue-green of the sky was disappearing behind a mist of stone dust, chaos-fire, ashes, and who knew what else. I wiped my forehead, and the back of my hand came away gritty.
What could I do?
I shook my head and began to climb across the flat section of the rubble, and then down toward the short piece of the old highway.
Let Sammel spend his time and energy on removing the first pile of stone. I'd certainly have a better chance if he were tired, but I had to hang on to the top of a large boulder as the ground rumbled, and more stones shifted around me.
The day seemed dimmer, almost like twilight, as I struggled downward, trying to make sure I was never in a crevice between two stones.
I climbed across rocks and down, and the ground rumbled, and the stones on the once-enormous pile melted or flared away.
By the time I stood on the old highway and looked eastward, the last fragments of stone were melting away. I took one deep breath and then another, and carrying my staff, began to walk toward the smooth expanse of cooling flat rock that had replaced the old road.
Through the fog of dust and fine white ashes, I could see, well back, a few sunburst banners, and sense several thousand troops.
Before them was a pillar of white-Sammel. Now I could see him.
I stopped just short of stones hot enough to burn through my boots.
Sammel stood on the other side, still in his brown robes, almost looking like the kindly hermit I had once thought him. Although I couldn't see his face clearly through the chaos fog, I imagined that his eyes were still sad and the top of his skull bald.
Even from nearly two hundred cubits away, what I did see was the total power of chaos surrounding the man. He flared with power, and his whole body radiated the white of chaos so deep that it was that ugly reddish-white.
What should I do? Even if the order-encircling technique would work-even if I did cut him off from the outside chaos forces, there was enough force within him to fry me into burned bacon or the human crisped equivalent.
Yet I had succeeded in wrestling the Balance, and survived. So how could I use what I had learned against Sammel?
“So! You would challenge the power of knowledge?” His voice rang like a trumpet.
Challenge the power of knowledge? I really hadn't thought of it that way. My fingers felt slippery on the staff, and I laid it down on the road, knowing that it could not help me.
“Come! Join me! Spread knowledge to the starving world.”
Why was it that all the chaos wizards wanted me to join them? Or did they think I was stupid enough to believe that anyone possessed by chaos could share anything? I waited, building my own shields, quietly.
“Can you not see, young Lerris, that Recluce has tried to destroy Candar by denying the people knowledge?”
I could see that, certainly. That had been my own complaint. My father and the Brotherhood had denied us all knowledge. I found myself nodding.
“And can you not see that nothing will change Recluce? Recluce will not save Candar, or your beloved Kyphros.”
How did he know I had made my home in Kyphros? He was with the Hamorians. Did that mean their envoy-Leithrrse- had told him?
“The Black Brotherhood preaches order, but to keep Recluce ordered, they create disorder in Candar, and cast out anyone who would question them.”
All of what Sammel said was true, but it didn't matter.
“Only through knowledge can people advance. And only Hamor will allow knowledge to be used to help people.”
“Like your rockets helped people? Or your rifles. Or your-” I couldn't finish the sentence because I really didn't know what other devices he had turned over to Hamor.
“It is too bad you do not understand.”
I extended my senses toward Sammel and the figure in tan behind him.
“Be done with him... he's only a young wizard, and not that powerful-”
“I will do as I choose.”
A long silence followed, while I struggled. I did not want to unleash chaos, nor did I want Sammel unblocking the road and opening Candar to the well-armed and effective soldiers of Hamor.
Crack!
As I had struggled with my own thoughts, the firebolt flared past me and flattened around the shoulder-high boulder to my left. The rock flamed, and just slumped like a candle set next to the hearth might ooze into a lump.
Another firebolt whistled by me, and although my shields deflected it, I still staggered under the force thrown at me-and that was after Sammel had reduced half a mountain to nothing.
Two more firebolts seared toward me, and flared around my shields.
I took two steps backward, while I sent my senses downward, down to the depths, seeking iron. Iron was the key-or copper-or some rocks like that-anything that could contain the power of chaos.
Whhhsssttt! Whsssttt! Crack! Crack!
Then, even as I danced aside, trying to deflect another wave of those already endless-seeming firebolts, I sweated, struggling to open up an order channel from the depths and through the ground. With the first effort, my thoughts bounced back as though they had struck a metal shield, and my mind went numb, just like my arm did when Tamra hit my staff at the wrong angle.
For a moment, I just stood there on the ancient highway, looking blankly into space, sweat pouring down my face.
Another firebolt jolted me back, and I tried to ease my thoughts into the depths, sideways, trying to reach that deeper level, as I had in Hydlen, and as I had that night when I had wrestled the Balance.
“Mere rote order cannot prevail against knowledge!” trumpeted Sammel. He followed his florid words with two additional flashes of chaos-flame.
More rocks in the pile behind me turned into stone replicas of melted wax, and I could feel the heat building around me, as the stone dust and chaos fog rose even more thickly around me.
Stone splintered around me, fragments flying like the bullets from the new Hamorian rifles.
Crack! More stone splinters flew from the impact of another firebolt, and I ducked in spite of myself, knowing that ducking wasn't going to help-only my control of order and chaos would really help.
I staggered again as chaos and stone slammed against me, and reeled from the smell of burning leather, burning cloth, and singed hair-all mine.
Finally, struggling deep beneath Candar, while fending off firebolts, and feeling torn into pieces, I wrapped my senses around that mass of near molten iron, that reservoir of order that created the Balance and made chaos in Candar possible, trying to guide it upward, toward the channels that Sammel had already used.
As the next fireball arched overhead, slower than the last, I continued to struggle to free the deep and ancient iron from its bounds.
Through the smoke fog and stone haze and the flickering energies of order and chaos, I could sense the Hamorian troops backing toward the east and toward Certis, but I knew that direction would change if I failed.
The next fireball seemed smaller, slower, showing that Sammel was tired. So was I, but I kept struggling to ease open, force open those channels, to let that upflowing well of molten order, imbued with the fire of chaos, seethe toward the twilight, toward the ancient road where we struggled.
Whsst!
I pushed the small mass of flamed chaos aside.
The road trembled underfoot in the momentary silence while Sammel wiped his face beyond the haze of smoke and stone dust that separated us. As I tried to guide, to order the chaos I had freed from its iron bonds, I could hear the rumbling... and I had to shift my weight as the ground trembled again, and the trembling was my creation.
Another firebolt, larger, slammed into my shields, and I danced aside, trying to keep my senses wrapped around the rising column of order-circled and chaos-fired iron, trying to keep channeling more and more of the deep chaos into that column.
The ancient road stones creaked, and at least one cracked like one of the Hamorian rifles. The trembling grew, and the whole road shook.
Even without throwing another firebolt at me, Sammel abruptly turned and began to run, back toward the Hamorian troops.
The ground rumbled, again, almost belching, as a column of molten ironstone burst up from the road, literally beneath Sammel. Even before the molten iron reached him, a web of chaos interlocked with order formed around him, shielding him from the heat and chaos.
The iron-based lava fountained into the afternoon shadows, filling the canyon with a reddish glare, and the odor of brimstone slashed at me.
Yet Sammel remained untouched within his web of order and chaos.
I turned the fountain toward him, surrounded him, but his shields held. Unfair as it might be, I knew I must destroy him, or within days the road to Kyphros would be open. And I could see the bodies strewn across Kyphros, bodies like Shervan's and Tendril's, bodies like Krystal's. Wincing at the heat and the pain, I forced more fountaining iron into the twilight sky, until heat and molten stone rained down on Sammel and the Hamorians.
Yet, as I did so, I was aware that the sundevils were fleeing pell-mell eastward, out of the range of the heavy iron. Not all of them made it-that I could tell from the wave of whiteness that whispered back toward me, whispered of deaths that beat against my shields.
Despite the growing heat and the pile of already cooling iron lava, Sammel still persisted, and his shields held off the chaos and the heat that surrounded him.
So I reached out with my senses into the mountain walls sheered smooth by the ancient white wizards, and somehow undid the bonds holding the canyon wall above, almost like pulling out ancient pegs from a tall, tall dresser created by a mastercrafter.
With a whispering that crescendoed into an earth-shaking roar, gray stone crumbled, then cascaded downward, some of it hitting the old ridge line and bouncing toward me, and I cast up yet another shield, throwing what seemed to be every bit of energy I had around me.
Despite the shields a wave of gray stone surrounded me, and I felt as if I had been thrown against the canyon wall and bounced back and forth between the gray slabs of stone that flanked the road. Then I staggered and half fell, half sat, as chaos rained around me, holding tight to my shield until I no longer could and until blackness fell across me.
I woke up to raindrops falling on my face. When I looked back east, the small sharp knives I thought I was through with jabbed at the back of my eyes, but I could see steam hissing off hot rock. I couldn't hear the hissing, or much of anything, except intermittently. My face was wet and cold, and rain was splashing into puddles. Trying to move reminded me that I'd been bounced against something, or many things, that were hard.
“Uhhhmmm...” I rolled over onto my knees and finally worked myself into a sitting position.
Rain splashed down from gray clouds, not low thick ones, but clouds high enough that I could see the tops of the cliffs. The rain was letting up because, I suspected, there just hadn't been that much water in the air-assuming the explanations in The Basis of Order were correct.
My legs felt stiff, and so was my back.
Before trying to stand, I looked to the east-and shivered. A steaming mass of black and gray rock blocked the canyon, reaching almost to the bottom of the ridge that had split the original rock fall. The darker gray of the south wall showed where the rock had sheared away.
Clouds of steam still billowed off the black and gray-and I could feel the heat, not surprisingly, since I was less than two hundred cubits from the western edge of the hot rock.
Scattered smaller boulders lay on the expanse of old road where I sat. I used a nearby one, more than a cubit high, to lever myself to my feet. Then I looked for my staff. For once I felt I needed it, just like an old man might, to help me along.
It took a while, but I found it, partly buried beneath dust and smaller rocks. After that, I stood and surveyed the mess, closing my eyes occasionally to relieve the pain of seeing.
I had no strength left for order sensing, but I was already sure that Sammel hadn't survived, and there was no way that the Hamorians were going to use the wizards' road anytime soon-not with the mass I had created and the older and smaller-but still large-rockfall behind me.
More importantly, they wouldn't know how many other rockfalls remained to be cleared, or whether I might be able to destroy an army with another rockfall.
The raindrops' steaming continued, although the rain was tapering off, and I could see gaps in the clouds to the north.
With that, I turned back toward the older rock pile and hobbled toward it, then slowly eased my way upward. I'd gotten perhaps halfway to the top when I saw a bedraggled figure in greens waving.
Weldein was saying something, but I couldn't make out the words, as he clambered down toward me.
“Weldein?”
He answered, but I couldn't hear the words.
“Don't worry about it. I'll be there in a moment.”
I was wrong. Climbing the rest of the rock pile took longer than a moment. In fact, it was almost dark by the time we struggled back down to the other side.
Berli had a small fire burning, and Fregin lay on his bedroll beside it, his left leg at an angle.
“It hurts...”
“... boulders... hit him,” explained Berli. “Can't... heal him?” Her words were far away, and I had to squint and look at her face to make out what she said. Of course, that meant my eyes hurt even more.
I just looked at her through the darkness.“Not now. We can straighten the leg. He won't die, and when I've got some strength back, I'll set it, and then heal him enough so it won't fill with chaos.”
Weldein said something, I thought, about what I had done. “How much did you see?” I asked, watching him closely. He shrugged, and I saw for the first time the cuts and scrapes, and the shredded leathers over his left arm. “Let me see that.”
“It's nothing.”
Weldein's injuries weren't that bad, surface cuts and deep bruises, but some of those bruises, especially the big ugly one across his arm and shoulder, had to hurt. Grrrrrrrr... rrrrr...
I found myself swaying in the aftershock of the chaos-order quake.
Berli put an arm out to steady me. She and the staff helped me get over to the stone coping on the side of the road, where I eased myself down.
Weldein studied me for a long moment, then shook his head, and muttered a few words. “What?” I concentrated on him. “You look older.”
“I feel older. I feel like an old man. Everything aches.” Fregin snapped something from beside the fire, and Berli answered.
I turned to catch Fregin's response, then realized he was talking to me.
“... leg... fire... like... you... do something?” Weldein glared at him. “He knows... last battle... wizard... snapped bones... burned... body... you... good... die... heal you...” Once more I could only catch some of the words and guess at the others, and squinting and concentrating hurt.
“... hurts...”
The ground shivered, more gently.
Fregin closed his eyes and moaned.
Berli shook her head and grinned wryly. I found myself grinning without really knowing why. After a moment, Weldein shook his head also, and offered a grin.
I sat on the stone coping of the old road and slowly ate cheese and travel bread, interspersed with water. Water hadn't tasted that good in a long, long time.
“What happened?” Berli asked more than that but I missed it. Weldein explained something with both words and gestures. I thought he was saying that I dropped a mountain on Sammel, but he could have been talking about anything. “... never... stand... your way,” said Berli. “It wasn't like that,” I protested. “I figured out how to turn his chaos against him, and to bring up more order and chaos from the earth. But it wasn't enough, and I was afraid he'd escape and open the road.” I shrugged and wished I hadn't. “So I managed to unbind some of the stones up there. It wasn't anywhere close to a mountainside.”
“It looked like it.” Weldein sipped from his water bottle. “...rock and...mountain...huge hill...” He gestured again and looked at Berli, and I had no idea what he said.
I tried to raise order senses, but I couldn't. “I can't do anything tonight.” My eyes seemed hard to focus, and Berli seemed very close and then very far away, and I started to topple over.
Someone caught me, and laid me out on my bedroll, and I slept.