Ordermaster (26 page)

   
Kharl ignored it, concentrating on the wizard, feeling, using all his order-senses, as the other drew upon chaos, seemingly from deep within

the earth, formed it, and hurled it toward Kharl, now less than ten rods from the white wizard.

   
Kharl caught the chaos-tie between that ball of chaos and the wizard who had cast it, but lost the tie before he could fully sense it, when he had to throw up another order shield. If only he had a moment more, but the closer he got the less time he had, and yet, from a distance, he could do nothing.

   
Ahead, he could sense another huge wave of chaos bursting across the hillside-and this time, the redness of Austran deaths flashed across him. He could also sense more Hamorian lancers turning, raising lances, but Kharl forced his concentration back to the nearer wizard, watching the man in white. As Kharl rode ever nearer, this time, he caught the tie and link, but, again, he was too slow, and had to release that link-barely in time-to throw up another order shield. He was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, and he had not even lifted a cudgel or a staff-or anything.

   
He forged his attention into a narrow line, ignoring the oncoming Hamorian lancers, waiting. As the white wizard drew upon the chaos of the earth deep beneath, Kharl seized the linkage and created an order shield within the channel, throwing the chaos back upon the white wizard, within the wizard's own shields.

Whhhsst!

   
Kharl flung up his own shields, around him and the squad, as an expanding blast of chaos radiating from where the lesser white wizard had stood.

  
The impact of that force against his shields jerked him back in the saddle, braced as he was. The reddish white voids of scores of deaths washed across Kharl, and tears streamed down his face from the pain and the brightness of that explosion.

   
Kharl shook his head, blotted the dampness from his eyes with the rough fabric of his uniformed sleeve. Everything around him was faint, washed out, but he immediately began to look for the other white wizard, both with eyes and order-senses. The lancers who had been charging Kharl were gone, seared into ashes or less, and perhaps half the Hamorian forces had already died. That didn't matter, not so long as a single white wizard remained.

   
Kharl could feel another massive wave of chaos rising, and it was not directed at the hillside, where Hagen and his forces held out, crouched and

hiding behind the sandstone ridge-those that had survived thus far. It was directed toward Kharl and no other.

    
Find the link .. . don't think of shields . .. Find the link, Kharl kept telling himself. Let the chaos flow back along that link . . . and return to me. Let it flow. He kept concentrating on the wizard facing him.

   
For a long moment, he could see-as if they were less than a rod apart-the smooth-skinned wizard with the angular face, and the deep black eyes that had seen more than Kharl ever wanted to see.

   
Then .. . that vision was gone, and reddish-tinged white chaos foun-tained from beneath the ground, rising skyward in a plume, unseen except by the two mages and the white wizard. The earth trembled, then rocked beneath the gelding's hoofs. Somewhere, another mount screamed.

   
Kharl kept concentrating, reaching for the link between wizard and chaos, between power and the depths from which it came beneath the earth. He had eyes and senses only for that link, even as he rode forward, ever closer to the figure that glowed eerily in more chaos than Kharl could ever have imagined, could ever have wanted to imagine.

   
Time seemed frozen, with chaos towering over him, ready to fall and crush him.

   
Kharl struck, twisting through that undefended back linkage, opening it and letting all the chaos that had been gathered from the depths rush to and through the white wizard.

   
As the whiteness of that chaos burned more brightly than the sun for that instant, Kharl threw up an order shield, one that held all the strength and will that remained in him, one to block out the fires that seemed hotter than any forge, any boiler, any sun.

NO!!!!

   
Kharl shuddered under the assault of will and chaos, under a wave of heat that stopped somewhere short of him, but still burned. The very earth groaned, twisted, and heaved. Sheets of flame flared skyward from the ground.

   
As fire flared everywhere, as Kharl could feel himself toppling in the saddle, and someone grabbing for him, he also realized something else. The greater white wizard had been a woman. How he knew that... he did not know, but the thought flashed through his mind, just before the blackness slammed across him.

   
Somewhere in that hot blackness, ashes and death sifted down across him, and distant voices he could not make out called out in languages he

could not understand. Then, there was a silence, and he could feel that he was on his back.

"Eyes moving ..."

   
The first thing Kharl felt was water, warmish water, across his forehead and face, as he lay on his back on a hard surface-the road, he thought.

"Ser Kharl?"

   
He opened his eyes, but the light seared them, and he closed them immediately. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a growl, followed by a paroxysm of coughing. After a moment, he coughed out matter, perhaps fine ashes. Then, as the coughing subsided, he managed to sit up, assisted by someone he could not see.

   
Slowly, he tried to open his eyes again, slitting them and squinting against the light. The all-too-familiar daggers stabbed into his skull.

"Ser .. . best you drink some water."

   
Kharl didn't argue, either about the water or about eating the bread and cheese that a lancer handed him in small morsels. Everything tasted like ashes-again-but he put the food in his mouth and chewed, methodically. He swallowed the water in between mouthfuls. Finally, he slowly rose to his feet on legs that felt as weak as water.

   
"You think you should be standing, ser?" asked Undercaptain Demyst from his mount.

   
"No. I probably ought to get mounted and let the horse do the standing."

  
 
A lancer laughed, quietly, but the laugh died away as Demyst turned his head and glared to his right.

   
Kharl closed his eyes for a moment. That helped relieve the pain and the glare, although he knew that the sun wasn't that bright.

"Just a moment, ser," said another voice. "Janos is bringing your mount."

"Thank you."

   
Kharl stood there, waiting, his eyes still closed, with the odors of ashes and death swirling around him. There was no sense of chaos. He still could not quite take in what had happened, or the stillness around him.

   
"The lord-chancellor's on his way down, ser. Had to go around the back side of the hill, a long way. That's what Stevras said. Sent him as a messenger."

   
"I'd better get mounted." Kharl slit his eyes again. The pain daggers were still there, but he tried not to wince as he turned and took two steps toward the gelding. Mounting was easier than seeing what he was doing.

   
Once in the saddle, he had to cough again, and, for a moment, he thought he might not be able to hold down what he had eaten, but he closed his eyes, and the coughing subsided. As he sat in the saddle, waiting for Hagen, he realized that he could sense no chaos. None. That was good, he supposed.

   
After a time, he slit his eyes again to look around him, first uphill to the southwest, then along the road to the south. Everywhere he saw gray- ashes, smoke and ashes, and with the faint breeze came even more strongly the stench of burned flesh, both of men and mounts. The entire front of the hill beyond the northeast road and the flat below were smoldering charnel heaps, and the gray of ashes as fine as dust had settled over everything.

   
Farther west, the top of the hill shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, shimmered like a mirror, a glassy surface of red and black, a surface created by the chaos blasts of the dead white wizard-or should she have been termed a sorceress?

   
Kharl had heard of the Legend, and the tales of Megaera, but... those had always just been stories. Who could have believed that such a mighty sorceress had existed in his own time? Or that she had been sent to Austra?

   
Slowly, he eased the mount along the road toward the ragged column coming from the west along the river road.

   
When he caught sight of Kharl, the lord-chancellor motioned for the other lancers to halt, then rode alone toward Kharl.

"I'll meet the lord-chancellor alone," Kharl said to Demyst.

"Lancers halt! The mage and the lord-chancellor will meet alone."

   
Kharl forced himself to take another swallow from the water bottle. The water still tasted like liquid ashes, but he swallowed with a gulp, then put it back in the looped holder above his knee.

   
Hagen reined up, letting Kharl come the last few rods to him. The mage eased the gelding to a halt a rod or so from the lord-chancellor.

   
"Ser Kharl... What.. . what did ... ?" Hagen could not finish the question.

   
"What was necessary." Kharl's voice was flat. "Both the white wizards are dead. From their own chaos." He closed his eyes. Talking intensified the sight-daggers jabbing into his skull.

   
"That last... it seared everything below the hillcrest-except your squad. We lost a third of ours then. It's all glass-a hillside of glass."

   
"And ashes." Kharl paused. "We lost more than that. We lost all of the lancers in Lord Fergyn's forces."

"I see ... why few would wish a war with either Hamor or Recluse."

   
Kharl offered a weary smile, except the expression was more grimace than smile. "No. That is clear. I am certainly not as great a mage as those of Reduce, and the white wizard could not have been the greatest in Hamor."

"No. The emperor would not send his greatest," Hagen agreed.

"Will this end the rebellion?" asked Kharl.

   
"I would judge so." Hagen glanced to his right, out across the grayness and devastation. "One can never tell, but all those who led it or were in the councils of the rebels are dead. The lancers and armsmen who followed them are dead."

   
Kharl just nodded. Then, a wave of weakness and dizziness swept over him, and he lowered his head until his forehead was almost resting against the gelding's mane.

"Kharl... are you all right?"

   
"Be ... a while ... before ... I get my strength ... back." Even those few words seemed to exhaust him, and he sat in the saddle, his eyes closed, trying just to hang on. After several moments, the worst of the dizziness passed, and he gradually straightened.

"Are you sure?" asked Hagen.

"I'll... be riding . .. slowly." Kharl managed a faint smile.

XXVIII

Ihere is a Balance, too, among those who can master order or chaos. There are few who have the talent and the discipline to claim even minor skills in handling such forces. There are even fewer who can boast of some limited degree of mastery, and fewer still who attain great mastery, especially of order, for mastery of chaos is far easier than the same level of mastery of order ...

   
The balance is this: A mage may have a wide range of skills, but his breadth of skills will limit great skill in one area of mastery. Conversely, a mage may have great mastery in one area, but most limited abilities in others, where lesser mages may in fact show greater skill.

This Balance of mastery, then, must be considered in all things. A great

weather mage may not be able to spur the slightest growth in plants nor heal the simplest cut. A mighty metal mage may not be capable of even sensing when the weather will change.

   
Yet a possessor of minor order abilities may be able to heal a cut, strengthen the wool of sheep, find the bad pearapples from among the good without touching a one, and always know when the weather will change. But he can do no great mageries, though he can accomplish some magery in all areas where order may be fruitfully used.

   
That often is the weakness of those of great single magely skills, that they fail to understand that they cannot be great in all areas, and that they may make great errors if they fail to recognize that the Balance applies to them as well as to the relation between order and chaos.

   
As in all matters of order, chaos, and the affairs of men and women, there is a Balance, and a price to be paid for greatness and great accomplishments.