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grasping that flow with his chaos senses and turning it aside, to open once
more that narrow window or door to the massive intertwining of order and chaos
beyond the white granite of the ward-wall.
This time& although a narrow aperture is open-there is no immediate thrust of
power toward the lancer captain, not of chaos or of black order.
Lorn waits, the black-iron-cored Brystan sabre in his right hand, his eyes and
senses on the Accursed Forest.
As he waits, an image builds, one of bubbling red-white fountains of chaos, of
dark pillars of order, and deep ponds of a different kind-or color-of order,
more shaded in deep gray, and then vines of golden-white chaos twining around
the dark order pillars. That mental image vanishes and is followed by a second
image-one of which he has dreamed more than once.
Knives of white fire gouge the very earth, laying down deep trenches that
stretch across the land, and from those trenches rise white walls, walls that
burn into Lorn s flesh if he is to so much as move toward them. Beyond the
trenches is fire, an endless fire that turns the very land and trees into
ashes. Rivers are wrenched from their courses, and hills are flattened by
other knives of focused chaos.
Lorn finds he is sweating profusely as the images break off, despite the misty
chill.
A single beam of chaos-order lances through the aperture that he has created.
The sabre flashes up, almost without Lorn s volition, and catches that narrow
line of power.
Lorn struggles, both instantly and endlessly, it seems, to re-cast the fire
back at the base of the ward-wall where it splays across the granite and
fountains upward in a flare of light. Even as he directs that energy, so much
vaster than any mage firebolt he has seen, even as he lets the chaos-net flow
back into place, cutting off the flow of linked order and chaos, Lorn
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understands that what the Accursed Forest has cast out is but a fraction of
the power it possesses.
Lorn also understands not just within his thoughts, but with every sense and
feeling he has, that the Forest s power lies in the melding of all that is
within the Forest-and that Cyador and the Forest cannot occupy the same lands.
With that feeling comes a sadness, a melancholy, as if it should not be so,
and yet cannot be otherwise.
After sheathing the sabre, he turns the gelding, without looking back at the
ward-wall or the Forest beyond, wondering, not for the first time, why the
Forest has not tried in greater fashion to overwhelm him. Because it cannot,
or because it understands that his death would avail it little? He laughs
softly. The latter is true enough, for if he died, the chaos net would flow
back in place. But does a forest, however filled with order and chaos, have
that kind of understanding? Or does it just play the very patterns of order
and chaos, without understanding, in the way that a river must follow the
lines of the land?
It comes to him, as he nears the gate to the compound, that he will never know
that answer, and that, too, casts another kind of melancholy over him.
 Ser?
 It s me. Captain Lorn.
 Getting worried about you, ser.
Lorn avoids looking surprised. Has he been gone that long?  I appreciate your
concern.
 Saw some torches out there& 
 I was trying something with a firelance, Lorn explains.  It must have taken
longer than I realized.
 That be no problem, ser.
 Good night. Lorn offers a smile and guides the white gelding through the
gate. He can tell now that he has not been gone that long, but he wonders how
bright his manipulation of order and chaos was to have been seen through
nearly two kays of the misting rain.
Suforis has indeed gone, but left a single lamp lighted, and the stable door
slightly ajar.
Opening the door, Lorn smiles and leads the gelding back to the stall to
unsaddle and groom him.
When he finally returns to his quarters, the first thing he does is set the
unused firelance in the corner. Then he goes to the wardrobe and studies his
face in the mirror on its door. His skin is flushed, red, as if sunburned, as
it has been when he has manipulated the ward-wall chaos-net before.
He shakes his head, then removes his belt and sabres, followed by the damp
tunic that he hangs on one of the wall pegs. His sits on the chair and pulls
off both boots before he returns to the second drawer on the side of the
wardrobe. From there he removes the chaos glass and carries it to the narrow
desk.
With a half-cynical smile, Lorn looks at the glass, then concentrates on
Maran.
The silver swirls part slowly, and the image of the dark-haired and mustached
Majer Maran appears in the center of those swirls. Maran sits before his own [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]