Finally, he is rewarded with an image. Four wagons flank a trunk that appears half what it had been. A score of men labor with shimmering long saws. Lorn tries to shift the image to see beyond the wall, but nothing appears except a black-silver curtain. He tries again.
His head feels light, and tiny stars flash before his eyes. He sits on the edge of his narrow bed until the flashing and dizziness subside. Then he stands and replaces the glass in the wardrobe.
He needs to find something to eat. He reclaims the opened brandy bottle and steps out into the corridor, turning and locking his door. Then he starts for the dining area, where he knows he can find bread and cheese, at least. Perhaps Juist has returned and will like some of the brandy.
Lorn shrugs, smiling. The day has not gone that badly, and he does not have to think of the morrow’s patrol. Not yet.
LXXIX
THE SPRING-LIKE breeze gusts past Lorn as the lancer captain rides along the perimeter road just north of the white granite structure that holds the northeast midpoint chaos tower-the tower that Lorn is convinced has not operated perhaps in several years. The gelding’s hoofs barely tap on the smooth granite of the road, and the faint chirping of insects in the fields to his left occasionally lifts above the sighing of the wind in the meadow grass that is already knee-high there.
With the breeze, Lorn feels cooler, and the perspiration he has blotted from his forehead does not return, not until the breeze dies down. To his right, the second squad continues riding forward in their line abreast formation, looking for signs of any Forest incursions, but in the three patrols sincethe last fallen tree, there have been no shoots or any additional fallen trees.
Behind Lorn’s saddle is fastened a second sabre in a battered sheath. All the men know it is there, and none remark upon it, not after seeing that their captain had lost his first sabre battling a stun lizard. Yet that is not why Lorn carries it. He can sense the dark order within the cupridium forgedexterior of the blade, and he knows that, in some instances, it will have greater effect against the order-backed attacks and creatures of the Accursed Forest, for it has become all too clear that the Forest employs linked order and chaos, and that such is far more effective than either order or chaos alone. Where and how-of the exact circumstances-he is less certain.
He readjusts his garrison cap.
“Going to be a hot summer, ser,” Kusyl says, raising his voice to cross the stretch of road that separates the two men. “All the signs point to it, every one. Vytly says the grapes are coming in early, and not a late frost to nip’em, either. Melons, too, and even the redberries are fruiting early.”
“I hope it’s not as hot as the Grass Hills,” Lorn answers with a laugh. “I could do without that.”
“No, ser. Nothing that hot. Maybe feels hotter here, though,’cause the air’s damper, you know.” Kusyl gestures to his left, toward the silent bulk of the Accursed Forest. “Always rains more around the Forest. Be why folk live here, even worrying’bout the creatures.” The junior squad leader pauses, then asks, “Heard any more about the big cats?”
“Every so often, I get a scroll complaining that a bullock or a sheep’s been killed. I try to explain.”
“They should be out here, looking at one of them trunks after it falls. Give’em a real different look at things. Wager none of them be pensioned lancers.”
A murmur rises from the lancer fifty cubits to Kusyl’s left, one that Lorn barely hears, and Kusyl does not. “ … such a man as a pensioned lancer … not Paradise likely!”
“I’m sure they’re not,” Lorn answers across the ten cubitsbetween them. “I doubt a pensioned lancer would stay too close to the ward-wall.”
Kusyl laughs. “Not me. Be going back to Kynstaar, I am, when that day comes. Open a tavern there, and take golds from lancer officers.”
Lorn smiles.
Ahead is the place where the last tree had fallen, but, as Majer Weylt had told him eightdays before, there is no sign that a Forest tree had ever toppled across the ward-wall. The wind has filled in the depressions in the deadland with loose salty soil and carried away the sawdust. Poorer peasants have crept out into the deadland at dawn and at twilight and carried off the remaining branches for firewood. And the wind and the insects have removed the leaves. To the south, Lorn can discern no noticeable gap in the huge trunks that comprise a second wall behind the ward-wall itself.
It is almost as though no tree had ever fallen across the ward-wall.
Except … Lorn recalls that there are dead lancers, strange animals roaming the northern lands of Cyad, and farm animals killed and dragged off into the dark. And he knows that other trees will fall, as falls the rain, as blows the wind.
LXXX
IN THE BRIGHT light supplied by the wall lamps and their polished cupridium reflectors that are unnecessary for those within the chamber, First Magus Chyenfel moves deliberately, almost cautiously, to the armchair beside the desk in the austere study on the uppermost level of the tower that crowns the Quarter of the Magi’i. It is a tower in name only, for it rises but five levels, far less imposing than the Palace of Light-except to the Senior Lectors of the Magi’i and those who know what transpires within the Quarter. Silently, Chyenfel’elth seats himself, then waits for the Second Magus to take the chair before the desk.
“Ser?” asks Kharl’elth. “You do not summon often in the evening.”
“When I am tired, and less on guard? You are right. I do not.” A smile appears and vanishes. “I wish to know why you discourage Captain-Commander Luss from voicing his support of the sleep-ward project to the Majer-Commander, and why you have likewise discouraged the Emperor’s Merchanter Advisor.”
Kharl smiles warmly, his green eyes dancing. “I have said not one word against this effort. Not one word against it to anyone, ser.”
Chyenfel offers a dramatic sigh. “That is the same as discouraging it, and we both know it. I have held my counsel, believing that we had time, and that in the fullness of that time, the need would become obvious without having to raise one’s voice or the power of the Magi’i.”
“That was wise, ser, for the replenishment towers here in the Quarter may fail soon, if one by one, and the barbarian attacks are increasing, requiring more firelances, and more charges for those lances.” Kharl’s words are bland. “As you know, I fear the barbarians more than the Accursed Forest.”
“Failing to deal with the Accursed Forest may be wise for a season or so, perchance, even a year, but not longer.” The sungold eyes of the First Magus lock upon the green eyes of the Second Magus, which carry but a shade of the sungold sheen. “Yet you know as do I that the ward-wall on the northeast side of the Accursed Forest is barely holding, and that we have lost yet another chaos-tower there.”
“I have read the reports from the Mirror Engineers that have suggested such.” Kharl shrugs offhandedly. “We both understand the dangers. Yet we do not wish to incur the Emperor’s displeasure-or that of the Majer-Commander of Lancers-by limiting further the chaos charges we supply to the Mirror Lancers. Or by reducing the number of firewagons that travel the Highways of Cyador. We have already limited the use of tow-wagons on the Great Canal.”
The First Magus waits.
“That is why we … intimated that Captain Lorn-orshould I say, Lorn’eith? — be assigned such patrols on the northeast ward-wall border.” Kharl brushes back a stray reddish hair, almost absently, yet affectedly. “He is likely to be … more effective.”
Chyenfel’elth’s mouth smiles, but his sungold eyes are politely intent, never leaving the Second Magus. “That was indeed wise, Kharl, if not precisely for the reasons you discussed with Captain-Commander Luss.”
“We also need the time to ensure your project works,” Kharl continues, “and that is another reason why I have not yet pressed for its implementation. All the while, the ward-wall must seem as strong as ever until we are most certain we can complete your project.”