"04 - The Chaos Balance.palmdoc.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

"Ser ..." A thin-faced woman with mahogany hair stood at his door. "The Marshal sent me up-"
"You're going to take care of Dyliess while I practice, Antyl?"
"If you'd wish it, ser."
"That's fine." Trust Ryba to send someone else to Nylan for Dyliess. Despite the close quarters of the tower, Ryba avoided Nylan as much as possible, asking as little as possible, as though he were the unreasonable one. He'd been tricked into being a stud, manipulated into incinerating thousands, and deceived in who knew how many little ways, but he was unreasonable-even though he'd essentially built and armed Westwind. And Ryba wondered why he didn't want anything to do with her? If it weren't for Dyliess and the other children . . .
But they were his and linked to Westwind, and there was no changing that, none at all.
He stood up from the rocking chair and eased Dyliess to his shoulder for a moment, patting her back. Then he half-lowered her and kissed her cheek before easing her into Antyl's arms.
"How's Jakon?"
"He be fine, ser, a strong baby. He sleeps now." With a broad smile, the brunette turned and headed down the stone steps of the tower.
Nylan stripped off his jacket and headed down the steps to the dimness of the fifth level, where practicing was a contest not only against his partner, but against the gloom and uncertain lighting. Ryba claimed that blades were as much feel as vision, and perhaps she was right. Nylan wasn't certain he'd even seen half the men he'd killed with a blade over the past two years. He'd certainly felt their deaths, suffused with white agony, but had he really seen them with his eyes?
That was the problem with Ryba. She was almost always right, but he hated her insistence that power-or cold iron- was the only true solution to surviving in Candar.
"Here's the engineer," called Istril, holding Weryl and watching the sparring floor.
"Catch!" called Saryn.
Nylan's hand reached out almost automatically and caught the hardwood wand, flipping it again and catching the hilt end. As he did, he absently wondered how he had gotten so proficient in handling antique weapons of destruction-except he wasn't. He could defend himself against most, and he had killed more than a few raiders and attackers-one at a time, since, after the first or second killing, the white-infused waves of pain that flowed through him left him virtually incapacitated.
He wasn't unique. All those who showed the innate ability to manipulate the order fields to heal-all the silver-haired ones and Ayrlyn-had the same problem. Ryba couldn't heal, but she could certainly kill.
Interestingly, Nylan reflected as he flexed the wand, trying to warm up briefly, all of those who showed those healing traits had survived, even despite the battles they had been forced to fight.
"Watch this," Saryn told the handful of recruits lining the chalked-off practice floor.
Nylan knew only about half the faces by name, and he wished they wouldn't watch. He glanced to the corner where Daryn sat on a stool. The smith probably needed to craft some sort of prosthetic device for the youth's foot, as he had for Relyn's lost hand.
"Ready, Nylan?"
"Not really." The smith lifted the hardwood wand, trying to let the feeling of unseen darkness and order flow around him and through him.
Saryn lifted her wand, a shimmering laserlike force that probed and slashed through the gloom of the fifth-level practice area.
As usual, Nylan felt awkward, barely parrying Saryn's initial attacks, giving ground and retreating, trying to capture the sense of order that was his only salvation from bruises or, in actual combat, death.
As he melded with the hardwood wand that mirrored a blade, he finally surrendered to the flow of order and let the wand take its own course.
"... engineer's so good ... bet not even the Marshal could touch him . . ."
"... notice, though ... he never strikes ... all defense .. ."
But how long could he only defend? How long?


III

THUS CONTINUED THE conflict between order and chaos, between those who would force order and those who would not, and between those who followed the blade and those who followed the spirit.
On the Roof of the World, those first angels raised crops amid the eternal ice, and builded walls, and made bricks, and all manner of devisings of the most miraculous, from the black blades that never dulled to the water that flowed amidst the ice of winter and the tower that remained yet warm from a single fire.
Of the great ones in those times were, first, Ryba of the twin blades, Nylan of the forge of order, Gerlich the hunter, Saryn the mighty, and Ayrlyn, of the songs that forged the guards of Westwind.
For as the skilled and terrible smith Nylan forged the terrible black blades of Westwind, and wrenched the very stones from the mountains for the tower called Black, so did Ryba guide the guards of Westwind, letting no man triumph upon the Roof of the World.
For as each lord of the demons said, 'I will not suffer those angel women to survive,' and as each angel fell, Ryba created yet another from those who fled the demons, until there were none that could stand against Tower Black.
So too, as did each of the forges of Heaven fail, did the mighty smith Nylan bend the fires of the world to his will and forge yet anew the black blades of Westwind.
Yet, despite Nylan's efforts in smiting the legions of the demons into dust, Ryba the mighty was not satisfied, and she asked for more black blades than the snowflakes that fell upon Tower Black, and for arrows that no armor could stop. And Nylan bent the forges to his will, and it was so, and still was Ryba displeased. . . .
.. . and so it came to pass that Ryba was the last of the angels to rule the heavens and the angel who set forth the Legend for all to heed. ...
Book of Ayrlyn
Section I
(Restricted Text)


IV

MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD, Protector of the Steps to Paradise, and-"
"Enough, Themphi. Enough," answered the silver-robed figure who sat easily in the sculpted malachite and silver chair on the dais. "What is the problem? This time?"
The man in white bowed. "My lord Lephi ... the snows were mighty, and the Great East River rises."
"And all the rice fields in Geliendra will be washed away?"
"Yes, Sire. And those in Jakaafra." The white wizard bowed again, more deeply.
"What of the northern dams, and the diversions?"