The Death of Chaos by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

last, as always, to remount for the ride to the Lower Easthorns, now looming reddish-brown and close enough to touch. It still was mid-afternoon before Yelena reined up-perhaps half a kay from the beginning of the road across the lower pass. The sunlight filtered through thin, hazy clouds above the plains to the west and south behind us, the plains that rose higher to the south until they became the High Desert of southeast Kyphros.
       “I hope your task is easier than the last time we parted so.” Yelena inclined her head.
       “So do I, Leader Yelena.”
       Weldein gave me a salute as they turned away, and I nudged Gairloch toward the entry to the lower pass road. I only looked back once, and they were already dots on the road.
       The road at the beginning of the pass was narrow, not much more than a dozen cubits wide before it dropped down into the narrow stream that had so little water that I could have stepped across it. The streambed was a good four cubits below the road surface, and the smoothed and curved surfaces of the boulders and stones around which the stream flowed showed that it often was wild and deep. The road itself bore hoof prints, even an oxen track, and recent droppings.
       Gairloch stutter-stepped through the natural rock gates, but the steep rock walls curved away from the road and stream within a dozen rods, and the road began to climb.
       Wheee... eeee...
       “I know. It's no fun carrying all those tools, and you don't have any company, either.” I patted him on the neck.
       On the way, when we got to a straight section of the road, with no one around, I practiced setting up my shields, the kind that shuttled light around me. While no one could see Gairloch or me, I couldn't see anyone else either, and had to use my very rudimentary order senses to feel my way along.
       Gairloch couldn't see anything, and he shortened his steps. I patted him again, offering him a little sense of order, but I wanted him to get used to it again before we had to use it for real. The shields only worked for light, and that meant if he whinnied, anyone could hear us. They could also see hoof prints. Magic doesn't solve all problems. It would be nice if it did, but it doesn't.
       After a while, Gairloch's stride lengthened a little, and he stopped being quite so skittish. I released my hold on the shields and took a deep breath. We'd covered less than a kay. It was a slow way to travel.
       “Good fellow.”
       As we climbed and as the sun dropped, the road got colder. Both my breath and Gairloch's began to steam in the late afternoon. Higher in the low mountains, I could see patches of snow. I stopped and pulled on my heavy jacket, although I didn't close it.
       After about another ten kays, the road stopped climbing quite so steeply in a long flat valley filled with a mixture of brown grass, short cedars, boulders, and heaps of snow on the north side of the boulders and cedars. The road was dampened clay, and most tracks had faded with the melting of the earlier snowfall. Some of the grass had been cropped short, but in the dimness, I could see no sign of sheep or goats.
       Yelena had said there was a waystation, and there was, although the ancient door had rotted off the heavy old iron hinges, and the sod-grass roof clearly leaked when it snowed or rained-at least I assumed the damp spots and depressions in the dirt floor were from natural moisture.
       Door or no door, I wasn't that cold. Even a little order-mastery solved that, but cold food was another thing. Cheese was all right cold, and so was the bread, but after nearly an eight-day, I was missing Rissa's cooking. I even missed my own cooking.
       I let Gairloch graze for a while, then fed him some grain and led him to the spring behind the waystation. I looked at the road to the east, which continued to climb into the Lower Easthorns, then dragged him back to near the waystation where I unrolled my bedroll in a