by Glenda Larke
They walked forward to retrieve them.
‘You’re Piers Kaylen’s daughter,’ he said, a flat statement of fact. ‘Piers wouldn’t have taught any shop assistant how to use a bow like that.’ He gestured at the arrows. They were buried several inches into the hard-packed ground, each several inches apart, evidence of the strength and accuracy of her draw. ‘Why did you say your name was Kereven?’ He bent to retrieve her arrows.
She said, ‘My father died. My mother was dying. My brother wanted to marry me off to one of his beer-swilling friends. He was going to turn the shop into a tavern. I didn’t want to be married and I didn’t want to be a tavern wench, fending off drunken hands up my skirt. And so I ran away. I didn’t want my brother finding me, so I lied about my name.’ She took back her arrows and he pulled his knife out of the soil and brushed it clean.
‘Why Kereven?’ he asked, standing up and looking straight at her.
She blinked. For a moment she could not think why, then remembered. The name of the trompleri mapmaker. Kereven Deverli. Stupid. Why in all Creation had she chosen that name? ‘It was the first name that popped into my head,’ she said truthfully.
His black eyes branded her with his disbelief and her heart turned over in fear. She made as if to go, but he caught her arm in an iron hand. ‘What do you know of me? Of us?’ he asked, pulling her across to him, so that she was close enough to have been in an embrace. Blinding terror swept through her, although he uttered no threat. The same feeling she had known in that gully with its bilee trap, the same feeling the Wild had given her as it leapt—she knew it again. And knew beyond any possibility of doubt that Davron Storre, guide, was tainted with the touch of the Unmaker. Not tainted physically, like poor Scow, but tainted nonetheless, in some subtle, more terrible and much more dangerous way.
He released her arm and then repeated, ‘What do you know of me, Keris Kaylen?’ There was no menace in his voice; just a sense of urgency, of strain, of shame.
It was because of the name. Kereven. Something to do with the map. It had to be.
She found her voice at last, was able to breathe again. ‘Nothing. I know nothing. What—what is there to know?’ He’s just a man. There’s nothing there to fear. He is just a man, an ordinary man. Corrian was right. He despises himself. Because he has done something awful, and he can’t forget it. And then she remembered the cat. The churning fear of the animal… He isn’t ordinary, damn it!
She turned to walk away from him up the slope towards the camp. Her heart was beating faster now than it had when she was facing the Wild and her emotions were as teased out as hackled flax. Perhaps the worst thing of all was her memory of something she’d seen in those black eyes. Desire. The desire of a man for a woman... For the first time in her life she had seen something in a man that spoke of a need for her—a need beyond just passing lust—and she had seen it in the eyes of a man whose presence could stultify her with fear.
‘Hey, Kaylen,’ he called suddenly from behind her. ‘Are you ley-lit?’
She turned, still walking, astonished at the joyousness of his tone—and stopped dead. He was standing where she’d left him, waving a hand to indicate the plain below. The mist had retreated fully, and the ley line was revealed.
She choked, overwhelmed.
She had heard so much about ley lines, how terrible they were, how dangerous. Why had no one told her they were so gloriously beautiful? Not even the trompleri map had prepared her for such magnificence, such wonder.
‘Why yes,’ she said. ‘It seems I am.’
~~~~~~~
Chapter Ten
Fear not Lord Carasma when you walk the paths of stability, for he is less than the Maker and your devotions will be as a wall around you. Fear Lord Carasma only when you walk the land that he has made his, for the earth trembles beneath his feet and the Maker cannot hear you.
—Knights IV: 8: 9-10 (Kte Fessa)
Davron ducked into Scow’s tent. The tainted man lay propped up on his bedroll with Meldor unwrapping his bandages and giving him a lecture at the same time. ‘Of course it’s going to hurt if you will rush around the place waving pikes at slashers—’
Scow corrected him politely. ‘It was a battle axe, actually. And stone fyrcats. And thanks to Keris Kereven, I didn’t have to do much rushing.’
‘Well, I can’t get everything right; I am blind, you know. Davron, how does this look to you?’
He eyed the healing leg with distaste. ‘Disgusting?’
Meldor appeared to take this to mean it was healing nicely, because he looked satisfied and began spreading ointment over the scabbing skin.
Davron watched, but his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘You were right. She is Piers Kaylen’s daughter.’
‘Of course,’ Meldor said complacently. ‘You had only to listen to her to know she wasn’t some shop assistant who’d stolen a couple of crossings-horses when her master died.’
‘Chaosdamn, I’d like to know just how you see so much when you can’t see at all.’
Meldor straightened up and regarded him. His eyes may have been sightless, but the look was somehow penetrating. ‘Perhaps it’s not I who see so much, but you who see so little. You’ve been so caught up in your own misery you no longer know how to look. There are other people out there with their own troubles, their own miseries. Judge people by what they are, not by first encompassing them with your own experiences. Not every woman is Alyss of Tower-and-Fleury, not every mapmaker is Kereven Deverli, not every Chantor carries the same Holy Book.’
‘You would have me trust everybody, Keris Kaylen included?’
‘I would have you think more with your brains and less with your bile. But enough of this; I don’t wish to argue with you, my friend. We have enough problems without adding to them. Tell me about Keris.’
‘She admitted her identity. The problem is—why is she here? Why is she bound for Pickle’s Halt?’
‘Her father did die there,’ Scow pointed out.
‘So she risks life and limb to take a look at his grave? Which won’t exist anymore anyhow. She’s got more sense. No, she has a reason, but what? And that’s not bile talking, Meldor.’
‘You think she knows about the trompleri map,’ Meldor said. It was a statement, not a question.
‘It seems likely.’
‘We don’t know Piers Kaylen had it,’ Scow said.
‘Now that’s stretching coincidence too far,’ Davron replied. ‘Of course he had it. Who has it now, that’s the problem.’
‘She doesn’t, surely. Ouch—that hurts!’
‘Sorry,’ said Meldor. ‘No, she can’t have it, that’s why she’s bound for the halt. She knows about it and wants to get her hands on it. But what do we make of the name she chose as her own: Kereven?’
‘There’s a lot more to that young woman than is first visible,’ Davron agreed. ‘Something tells me she knows more than she should. About us, I mean. She—well, she could be a danger.’
‘She mentioned Havenstar to me,’ Scow said.
That interested him. ‘Did she now?’
‘Oh, come on,’ Meldor protested. ‘She’s a mapmaker’s daughter. Of course she’s heard of Havenstar. That doesn’t mean she knows anything about it that approximates to the truth.’ He rewrapped the last of the bandage and tied it with deft fingers. ‘However, keep an eye on her, Davron. We don’t want any more complications.’ He turned away from Scow to face him. His eyes remained unfocussed and unseeing, yet he still gave the impression of perception. ‘Use her if need be; if she knows more than we do about the map, we must have that information.’
He nodded. ‘Of course.’ He looked down at Scow. ‘Are you all right now? We have to get started.’
Scow nodded and stood. Davron went to the tent flap to go out, but turned back in the opening. ‘She’s ley-lit, by the way.’
‘Naturally,’ Meldor said placidly. ‘I never thought otherwise.’
~~~~~~~
When Davron had gone, Meldor
said in soft tones, ‘There’s a brew stirred up there, Scow; the girl’s a catalyst. It won’t go unnoticed by Lord Carasma. Keep a watch on things.’
He did not specify what things he referred to, but Scow knew what was meant. ‘You were hard on him,’ he said.
‘Not as hard as he is on himself. There never was a chance for exoneration. He has always known that, so he seeks to atone, to expiate. But expiation will not help unless he learns first to forgive himself. And for the overly proud man Davron once was, that is the hardest thing of all.’
~~~~~~~
Keris, Chantor Portron and Baraine stood together on the hill slope, watching the ley line. She had ached to be ley-lit, but she was no longer so sanguine about its advantages, not now as she stood there on the slope of the hill near the camp and watched the ley line move below her.
When she finally dragged her gaze away to glance behind, it was to see Graval and Corrian and Quirk striking camp, utterly unaware of that glorious corridor of colour and light and movement below. ‘They can’t be ley-lit,’ Portron said sadly. He’d seen a ley line before, but the sight had obviously not lost its power to impress him because he’d been standing next to her bemusedly muttering at intervals, ‘And to think such beauty is the work of the forces of evil, lass,’ and ‘Hard to believe the Maker didn’t have a hand in the making of it, to be sure!’
She looked back to the line. ‘Why can’t they see it?’ she asked. The question was a rhetorical one; no one knew why some people were ley-lit and others were not, except to say that the tendency ran in families.
‘It’s the Maker’s will,’ Portron replied.
Beyond him, Baraine stood transfixed, arms hanging loosely by his sides in the way the Kibbleberry village simpleton stood when his mind was blank. His only comment had been an amazed, ‘The power... Holy creation—the power of it!’
A moment later Quirk came to stand beside Keris. His colour was bad; she was reminded, absurdly, of uncooked chicken-skin. ‘Ah—I guess it’s the ley line you’re looking at, isn’t it?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘I—I can’t see anything. Just a line of whitish mist, as if there is cool damp air lingering along the banks of a river down there.’ He ran through a string of nervous gestures. A tug at the hair in front of his ear was followed by a clearing of his throat, then he chewed his lip and tugged his hair again, all before he could bring himself to ask miserably, ‘Keris—er—could you tell me what you see? If it’s not too much trouble?’
It was a more difficult question to answer than he realised. She found it hard to describe something that was so alien, hard to find the right similes. ‘It’s a little like a ribbon,’ she said at last, ‘lying across the land. In some places it is twisted; in others crumpled; in others smooth. It is about two hundred paces across, I would guess, and it extends as far as I can see in both directions. There’s no way around it.’
‘Yes, but what is it like?’ he persisted. ‘That is, if you don’t mind telling me...’
She wondered what to say. The ribbon itself did not move, or rather it did not appear to do so. She assumed that if it travelled sideways, then the movement was imperceptible. However, inside, in the fabric of the ribbon, it moved all the time. Blues and purples and reds shimmered and changed and flowed. In some places the hues rose above the ribbon in solid waves, only to splash down in a backwash of foam or disappear into whirlpools of colour; other areas seemed calmer.
Above the ribbon the air was coloured too, tinted. A tunnel of translucent mist, pinks, mauves, copper... The hues swirled and twisted and skeined; they plunged down, then fountained upwards as if a capricious wind played along the tunnel to move mist-veils through the air. Balls of light shot past and vanished full speed into nothing, showers of coloured sparks tumbled and then winked out.
No words could do it justice. Finally all she could say was, ‘It’s a band of moving colours. Beautiful. And rather...strange. Alien.’
She paused, acknowledging to herself the truth of what she saw. None of it was real. There was no wind, no waves, no ribbon of colour. She would have known that much, even if she’d known nothing about ley lines. What they were looking at were forces, not realities. Wild energies, fields of magic power. Those sparks would not burn, those balls of lightning would not blast anyone to pieces. They were dangerous nonetheless because they represented the forces of ley, and those forces could indeed kill. They could kill ley-lit and ley-unlit, without distinction, in ways that were unpredictable.
She said, ‘I see magic, Quirk, and it frightens me even as it seduces with its beauty.’
‘It frightens me,’ he said unhappily, ‘and I can’t see a flippety thing. Sometime this morning I’m going to have to ride into that, and I keep thinking that I’m not going to ride out of the other side looking the way I did when I went in...’ He turned and plodded back towards his dismantled tent.
Baraine watched him go and then turned to Keris, saying just loud enough for Quirk to hear, ‘What a whey-faced scaremonger! What was he thinking of, joining this fellowship? Does he even know we’re heading all the way down to the Eighth, or is he so witless he mistook our destination?’
Meldor, who had approached them on silent feet, also heard and turned on Baraine with unexpected ferocity. ‘The bravest men are those who feel fear yet still perform the deed. Remember this: that man elected to join this pilgrimage, knowing he was ley-unlit. Knowing he had tens of ley lines to cross and any one of them could taint him. Is that not bravery? I wonder if such a man is not worthier of your birth than you are, Baraine of Valmair.’ He strode off, with all the assurance of a sighted person, leaving both Baraine and Keris gaping after him. It was the first time Meldor had shown the least sign of anger towards anyone, and the words were spoken with the cutting edge of a well-honed axe.
Baraine’s expression showed he was ruffled up, but he said nothing. He turned his back on the line and headed into the camp to strike his tent. Keris looked at Scow limping by, leading Davron’s pack horse. ‘Would I be wrong,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘if I suggested that Meldor gets a little peevish to see one of the highborn act without honour, because Meldor is himself a Trician?’
Scow grinned at her, but would not confirm her suspicions. ‘I haven’t told you how much I admired what you did this morning,’ he said, ‘with that creature of the Wild. You acted with courage and good sense. Davron tells me you’re Piers Kaylen’s daughter, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Your father was one of the best in the Unstable, and undoubtedly the greatest of all mapmakers, with the possible exception of Deverli. He’ll be sorely missed.’
‘Thank you. And you can tell Master Storre that he talks too much. I don’t want the whole world knowing who I am.’
‘Why not? Piers was a fine man.’
‘Maybe because I want to be me, not just Piers the Mapmaker’s daughter.’ Perhaps because I don’t want the whole world to know I’m the daughter who left her mother when she was dying...
He nodded. ‘I think I can understand that, a little. Back home I was always young Sammy, Tomal Scowbridge’s son. My father was larger than life, you know, and I was just a kid who could never match up. No one remembered me when my Dad was around. That’s one thing getting tainted put an end to, I guess,’ he added with a wry grin. ‘Everyone remembers me now. But I don’t suppose Davron will spread your identity around. As you may have noticed, he’s hardly a gossip. More the taciturn type.’ His eyes continued to twinkle at her, overly large, but full of good humour.
I like him, she thought, and wondered what in the world he saw in Davron Storre.
As they rode out towards the Dancer, she considered the oddities of this fellowship she’d joined. All those years as a child hanging around the map shop, with her ears flapping as she listened to adult talk, had taught her much about human foibles and how to judge people, but this group had her baffled.
Why was Meldor or Davron—or Scow?—addressed by one of the other two as Margr
af? What had Davron meant when he’d asked, ‘What do you know about us?’ How had they used ley to free Scow from the bilee? If one of them was a Trician, why was he travelling like this, without servants, in the company of commoners? How was Meldor able to ‘see’ so much when he had no eyesight? His abilities were too uncanny to be explained away by any glib reference to the senses of smell and hearing and touch. And why did Davron and Meldor and Scow spend so much of their time together in serious discussion? It did not take a particularly perceptive person to see that something was worrying them, and worrying them badly.
Baraine she thought she understood. He was the sort of fool who had decided he’d enjoy playing at being an ordinary fellow with common folk and was finding it not nearly as enjoyable as he had anticipated. He’d stick it out though, and then go home and make fun of them all. In any story he ended up telling, he would be the hero and the rest of them would be figures of fun.
Portron, Quirk and Corrian were all probably exactly what they said they were, but how did Graval fit in? A trader who thought he was bad luck? He seemed so ineffectual; ludicrous even, riding a horse he couldn’t control, bumping into people, dropping things, tripping up—it should have been clownish, but it was somehow not funny. Whenever he came near her, she tensed as if he was somehow going to spill something all over her or step on her toes. She was not the only one who felt that way either, all of them were making an effort to dodge Graval, even Portron, although she could see that the Chantor felt guilty about it. She felt sorry for Graval, but wanted to feel compassion from a distance.
As they rode parallel to the Dancer, searching for a suitable place to cross, she looked over to where Davron rode, mounted on that magnificent crossings-horse of his, all hidden emotion and guilt. What was the matter with him, that his presence alerted her senses to the Unmaker? What was it that had made a man like that—obviously competent, physically personable, who had the assurance of a Trician—into a man who despised himself? He was the biggest mystery of all, but she wasn’t sure she wanted it solved. Sometimes solutions brought their own problems.
