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Waves of white-red destruction, of lost and sundered souls, poured back
toward Justen, and in desperation, he turned the light-knife on that misty
white, slashing through it as if to shield himself, to shield Gunnar, even to
shield distant Dayala.
The grinding sound of stonework collapsing and the distant, almost hissing,
screams of survivors, of innocents dying under flame, stone, and churned
earth, were all but lost behind the searing heat and boiling edge of the
order-chaos blade that Justen turned back down across the handful of White
lancers who had followed the Iron Guard uphill and had nearly reached a spot
almost directly below the balloon.
Sssssstttt& No screams followed the.wave of light. Only a blast of white
pain rocked through Justen with the deaths so close below, and the slope on
the Fairhaven side of the hill glistened like glass. Lumps-like the remnants
of the shepherd s hut-protruded from the shimmering surface.
Justen, nearly blind with the white agony, tried to rebalance his forces,
to turn them and the order-chaos blade back toward the remaining White
Wizards.
Hhhsssttt&
With the continuing barrage of firebolts, most of them held at bay by
Gunnar s efforts in pulsing order-shields and holding the clouds away, the
balloon and basket bounced again. The hissing overhead grew louder, and the
basket swayed, sinking even closer to the ground. Justen squinted, trying to
concentrate, trying to remain ordered and calm even as the order-chaos blade
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bounced around the chaos-shield of the High Wizard.
The blade shivered and slashed across the center of Fairhaven, somehow held
together by a web of white. With the collision of the light-blade and the
white web, stonework melted. Ancient trees exploded into flames before falling
like charcoaled logs against nibble and melted stone. Stone avenues flowed
like white-lava rivers.
Even in the balloon the air was hotter than midday in the Stone Hills,
filled with the odor of scorched vegetation, charred flesh, and ash and
cinders and more ash. Like an oven, the valley baked in the light-blade-forged
twilight, where those few buildings that remained became ovens that baked
their inhabitants.
The only sun in the sky was the light from the order-chaos knife wielded by
Justen, and yet that light gave no cheer, only heat and agony.
Another pulse of chaos flared into the sky and arced toward Justen-a
massive firebolt propelled by the will of desperate White Wizards, held
tightly by the High Wizard himself, whose broad shoulders and sweating face
seemed to fill Justen s mind.
Hsssstttt&
Again Justen wrestled the order-chaos blade and the energy gathered from
the skies of Candar back toward the High Wizard, focusing it not only on the
shield, but around the shield. Another land wave shivered the ground, rocking
the balloon through the tethers, and Justen was forced to grab onto the basket
to avoid being pitched out.
The ground around the shielded wizards bubbled as though it boiled, and
steam gouted up in pillars, even through the stones of the wizard-protected
section of the road.
Another firebolt flared past Justen and into the balloon, burning through
one cable holding the balloon to the basket The balloon slewed wildly, and
Justen tightened his grasp on the basket, trying still to force the
order-chaos blade back upon the White Wizards.
Sssstttt&
The trees across the road and behind the wizards flared like black rockets
before collapsing into charcoal, which in turn was covered by molten rock
oozing down from the melted stone of the road.
Hsssttt!
Lashing back against the firebolts, Justen forced the order-chaos blade
toward the White Wizards, where he again played it against the High Wizard s
shield.
That s& it. Keep it centered& he grunted, trying to force ordered-light
squarely against the lines of focused chaos wielded by the High Wizard.
Sssstttt! Cruummppttt!
The ground seemed to buckle and explode simultaneously, spewing order and
chaos into the skies and deep into the earth. Lines of dark fire and rays of
flame heat arced across the glowering sky that abruptly flared sun-white in
brilliance.
On the southwestern side of the White Wizards shield, the light-blade
gouged a pit so deep that what had been a raised stone road melted into a
glass-lined pit. Hhhssttt!
Justen mentally walked the order-chaos beam back toward the High Wizard.
Yet that tight shield held& and held& even though it pulsed against the
violence Justen directed against it, each pulse throwing Justen s light-sword
back across the valley.
With each flash across the valley that had held the White City, more
stonework slumped into waxlike heaps until the entire valley seemed to be in
ashes-black, gray, and white- out of which reared shiny, once-molten stone, as
though the bones of the burned corpses showed through more clearly with each
pass of the fire-sword of the skies.
Hanging on to the wicker, Justen made a last effort to swing the wildly
spinning order-chaos light-sword back onto the shield of the High Wizard.
Sssttt& crumppttt&
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Against the buckling of order and the tide of white, against the unseen
ripping in the fabric of what was, against the white and black knives that
seemed to slash through him, Justen closed his eyes and tried to picture
himself as a lorken of Naclos, rooted in the soil and order beneath Candar,
drawing order from the deep waters, from the iron in the rocks, and from all
the growing plants that had struggled against the nibbling of chaos.
The wind whipped past Justen with the force of a waterspout. He felt
himself being thrown against the basket of the balloon, and his fingers dug
deeper into the fragile wicker as the balloon, swinging wildly, ripped free of
one of the tethers.
Almost unaware of his teeth biting through his tongue, Justen curled the
order-blade into a focus, attempting to lock the wizards within order, putting
forth a massive effort to chaos-order Balance the White Wizards forever.
Aaeeaeeü&
Ooo& nooo&
Even locked into himself, Justen could sense the twisting and folding of
order and chaos roll across the valley like the heat from that second sun,
dragging the remaining White Wizards-those who had tried to unleash the full
force of chaos against Justen s order-chaos blade-down inside the shield they
had erected, down& down into some distant place where their souls seemed to
call as if from a deep well.
Deliberately, as if he and his thoughts were moving through molasses,
Justen twisted the massive forces of order held through the fire-eye, twisted
them like a key in a lock to seal the wizards behind their own shield&
forever!
Faces flashed before him: swarthy faces, fat faces, and a haunted, thin
face almost like that of an Angel, the eyes filled with suffering. But he
locked order around that chaos.
*Justen, you must& must balance.* Even Dayala s thoughts were weak, fading
away into smoke.
Crackk! The fire-eye exploded and filled the air with sudden but momentary
silence, and weak sunlight replaced the darkness that had descended across the
valley of Fairhaven. Clouds of ashes roiled over the valley, and cinders fell
like rain.
A heavy roll of thunder rumbled from the high, dark clouds that began to
cut off the remaining sunlight.
The balloon bounced wildly and swooped lower and lower, back toward the
hill below in a series of pendulum-like swings, jerking to the end of the
remaining tether and back.
Justen glanced toward the approaching ground. His eyes burned, blood ran
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