Havenstar

by Glenda Larke

  Nine months, and a child they’d never seen, to last them a lifetime. It had not been enough. It would never be enough. Ah, Keris, please be all right. Please be all right. Maker grant that you have the courage to withstand.

  ~~~~~~~

  To cross the ley line the next morning took all the courage Keris had, and what she did have was not enough to stop the dryness rising in her throat and nausea permeating her gut once more. She’d declined Davron’s offer to take Quirk first and come back for her. ‘We can all go together. If anything goes wrong I’ll look after myself,’ she told him, ‘while you attend to Quirk.’

  Quirk took the crossing in his stride, calmly following the guide as if he was off for an evening stroll. ‘Sure, I’m afraid,’ he said to her as they started out, ‘but I’m done with being scared witless. Master Storre is right: the worst thing that could possibly happen has happened already, so what more do I have to lose?’

  She was not so indifferent. By the time she arrived safely on the other side of the ley line, she was sweating like a steamed-up window in a crowded tavern. Her knees were so weak she had to cling to the saddle when she dismounted. Scow greeted her with a grin and an amused, ‘Arthritic joints at your age, Keris?’ He held out a water skin.

  ‘Shut up,’ she growled, straightening up and attempting to look nonchalant. She took the skin and drank, glad to wet the dryness of her throat.

  She looked across to where Davron was confronting Meldor, and it was a confrontation, she felt sure, although Davron’s words were mild enough. ‘I could have done with some help,’ he said as he dismounted. ‘You must have known Carasma was there.’

  Meldor nodded. ‘Yes, I knew. I just didn’t think that it was the right time to draw attention to myself.’

  ‘And what of us? One tainted, Meldor, and one subverted to be a Minion. That’s a high price. We could have lost Keris as well as Baraine, if she hadn’t been strong enough to resist. You weren’t to know what else he wanted.’

  ‘I knew it wasn’t you,’ Meldor said calmly. ‘This is neither the time, nor the place. It was just a warning. A way of weakening you, if you let it.’

  Davron gave him a dark look. ‘By the Maker, Meldor—I hope that when I really need you, you don’t decide that it’s “not the right time” and turn your back.’ He walked away, leading his horses, and his shoulders were knotted with tension.

  ‘Hey,’ Scow said to Keris who was still trembling, ‘it’s all right. You did just fine. If the Unmaker appeared to you and you withstood, you should feel proud.’

  ‘Sure. Proud and petrified, that’s me. The Unmaker didn’t take my refusal kindly. The day of reckoning has just been postponed, that’s all.’ She grimaced at him. ‘How’s your leg?’

  ‘Much better, thanks.’

  ‘Keris, lass.’ Portron, his face a picture of fatherly concern, came hurrying over from where he had been comforting Quirk. ‘Are you all right? Meldor said the Unmaker appeared—’

  She cut him off short. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Davron called. ‘We don’t want to hang around a ley line any longer than necessary.’

  As she hauled herself back into the saddle, she happened to catch sight of Graval’s face. He and Corrian were watching Quirk, where the tainted man was attempting to mount Baraine’s horse and making a mess of the procedure. The animal had not yet quite come to terms with his new rider’s peculiarities and was shying away in panic. When Quirk accidentally touched the horse’s hide with his bare hand, the touch stung, which did not help matters.

  Graval was amused by the unequal struggle between the slightly built man and the determined animal, especially as Quirk and his clothes faded in and out from one set of colours to another as his background changed. ‘Chaosdamn, Quirk,’ Graval crowed, ‘you’re like a child’s kaleidoscope. Turn the handle, and goodness me! You’re a new man!’

  You bastard, she thought and went to help Quirk.

  ~~~~~~~

  During the next few days she gradually began to accept the bizarre as normal. The rocks that twisted into impossible shapes, the sudden shifts of wind and weather, the weird coloration of the landscape, the beast with three heads that attacked them and was killed with a single knife throw from Davron, the streaming ribbons of cloud that appeared suddenly out of nowhere and drifted among them long enough to spook the horses and assail them with strange smells.

  They crossed three more narrow ley lines which were exactly where Piers’ maps said they would be, and a fourth that was not. It had shifted sideways, leaving the grey swathe of a burn mark behind. It took them half a day to cross that blighted landscape.

  They passed a number of wooded gullies heavy with ley, yet which did not contain ley lines. Called ley-mires, as Scow had told Keris, they were always dark places, deep in muck and smells and strange creatures, overhung with twisted growths, saturated with coloured miasmas that hurt if inhaled. The ley-lit had no problem seeing and avoiding such foul holes, but she was struck by how different they were from the ley lines. The lines were dangerous, thick with power; mires were just downright evil. Corrupt.

  ‘I don’t see much difference,’ Portron said when she asked if he felt any distinction between the two types of ley. ‘Both sorts are anathema to anyone who serves the Maker.’

  Davron, though, disagreed. ‘Of course there’s a difference. ‘Mires are places Minions and their Pets have made their own. Such holes are thick with misused ley, and are often the den of very old Minions, people whose humanity has been well and truly lost across centuries in the Unmaker’s service.’

  ‘And the ley of ley lines?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s just different.’ She had an idea that there was much more he could have said, but did not.

  Sometimes they saw other people. They passed a courier going in the opposite direction, and he stopped for a cup of Scow’s char while Davron questioned him in detail about the way ahead. Once they passed a trader and a train of mules carrying goods from the Fifth Stability to the First; he had three of the Unbound in his employ as well, each mounted on tainted beasts with hides like armour and horns like sabres. Another time they found a whole encampment of the Unbound, perhaps four or five families of about thirty people, including children born in the Unstable to tainted parents.

  This group operated a ferry across the Flow and charged for their services. Davron paid them partially in Baraine’s dried meat, as that was one thing not available in the Unstable and those who lived there were always desperate for it. Portron was shocked by Davron’s casual appropriation of Baraine’s things, but when the chantor protested, Davron gave him one of his branding iron looks and Portron did not pursue the matter.

  As she helped to load the horses onto the ferry, Keris eyed the children playing at the water’s edge, aimlessly throwing sods of earth into the water, and then at the ferry itself when it began to pull away from the bank. ‘I didn’t know the tainted could have children,’ she blurted out to Scow. She was fighting her revulsion; the children seemed more twisted than their parents. One girl had a hump of loose flesh on her back and some deformity of the spine that doubled her over to such an extent she scrabbled about on all fours. The other children, seeing the ferry was now out of range, threw earthen clods at her instead. Keris winced as one particularly large lump caught her on the ear and she gave an animal yelp.

  Scow turned saddened eyes towards the youngsters. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s possible for us to bear children. But they always seem to lack the intelligence of their parents. They ... degenerate, generation to generation, until the family finally dies out because those born don’t have the intelligence to look after their own young. The Unstable is a hostile world to children. Without care they quickly fall victim to ley, or to predators. Did you know the Minions hunt humans for food? The younger the better.’ He turned his regard from the children to her. ‘I would father no children in this place.’

  She nodded dumbly, unable to spe
ak in the face of his tragedy.

  ~~~~~~~

  Davron Storre used the Kaylen maps well; he was an expert at finding the best route through a trackless environment; and his foresight meant that many problems were avoided rather than confronted. Like Piers, Keris thought. I wonder if they knew one another well? She had not asked him that.

  He was not so skilled at dealing with people. He had little patience at the best of times, and none at all with stupidity. He treated Quirk no differently now the man had been tainted, which might have been wise, but he was rarely polite to Graval anymore, evidently finding the man’s constant carelessness and effusive apologies too irritating to bear. He ignored Portron to the point of insult, and although he sometimes seemed amused by Corrian, he was less tolerant when she deliberately needled Graval or Portron. Most of the time, however, he just seemed self-contained and remote. If there was pity for Quirk within him, he never showed it. If there was real concern for his friends, it was impossible to read it in his face or words. If there was any anger at Baraine’s acceptance of evil and the man’s subsequent abandonment of the fellowship, he never let it be seen. If he still desired her, he hid it well. He performed a job, and did it with skill, but he gave the impression that if he had lost the lot of them in some cataclysmic upheaval, he would have just shrugged and ridden on.

  She knew now that his indifference was a façade. Davron cared. He cared deeply. He cared enough to take meticulous care of their safety even at the risk of his own. He cared enough to take the trouble to make them as comfortable as possible in arduous circumstances. He’d done his best to save Quirk from tainting and to divert Baraine from the Unmaker. She remembered his heaving shoulders after they’d emerged from the ley of the Dancer when he’d known he had failed in both those endeavours. And she knew he was deeply shamed by the bargain he’d made with Carasma—she had seen that in his face, in his eyes, in his blush. Was it shame that kept him so self-contained and remote from most of the rest of the fellowship? It may have been. She didn’t know whether to despise him, or pity him.

  To her surprise, he did spend more time talking to her than he had done in the past. She was not sure why, because he made no special effort to encourage her to like him, or even to trust him. In fact, sometimes she thought the reverse was true and he actually wanted her to see him in as bad a light as possible. ‘Don’t turn your back on me, Kaylen,’ he’d say when they were alone. ‘Never forget that one day I will serve the Unmaker.’ Or, after he’d explained something about the Unstable to her, ‘Arm yourself with knowledge, Keris. You never know when it may be necessary. I’ll teach you all I can, and who knows, one day you may be able to use it against me.’ And he would give his lopsided ironic smile.

  At least he now saw her, acknowledged her as a person in her own right, and was prepared to listen to what she had to say. She’d proved herself, but the thought brought her no satisfaction. Worried by her knowledge of his bondage to the Unmaker, unsettled by the nature of her own attraction to him, she remained uneasy in his company.

  She made no attempt to talk to Scow or Meldor about Davron’s bonding to the Unmaker. They knew about it, they had done nothing, and Meldor had used ley to release Scow from the bilee. It all pointed to the two of them being committed to Lord Carasma, or at least to the dangerous use of ley. She wanted nothing to do with any of them. It even made her uneasy to see Scow spending much of his time with Quirk, helping him to come to terms with his tainted nature and teaching him the survival skills needed in the Unstable.

  Day by day Quirk grew in confidence. He began to delight in his camouflage abilities, and practised stalking through the camp, challenging them all to see him. He’d decided to add to his name, as many of the Unbound did, and had chosen to be known as the Chameleon. Keris was glad to see his renewed joy in living, but feared that along with his proffered aid, Scow would involve Quirk in Davron Storre’s affairs.

  Just thinking about it made Keris irritable. The trouble was she liked Scow, respected Meldor and found Davron physically attractive, even as her instincts screamed at her to have nothing to do with any of them. Morose, she tried to avoid them all, which meant she’d a choice between Portron’s loquacity, Corrian’s vulgarity or Graval Hurg’s ingratiating flattery and disastrous clumsiness.

  Chantor Portron questioned her on every aspect of her encounter with Lord Carasma, only to be thwarted by her noncommittal answers; she did not want to talk about it. She hadn’t come to terms with her guilt yet, and there was hardly an hour went by that she did not wonder if Sheyli had died... Perhaps she is taking her last breath right now and I’m not with her. Perhaps she died last night, alone. Thirl wouldn’t stay home just because she’s dying...

  Fortunately it was easy to side-track Portron on to some other topic, so that he was the one who ended up talking.

  ~~~~~~~

  One night Davron told her to mount guard duty with Meldor, which surprised her. Up until then she had always been paired with Portron. Meldor, as far as she knew, had previously always taken his watch alone. When it was over she went to wake Corrian and Graval, who had the pre-dawn stretch. She poked her head into Corrian’s tent, to find her sprawled out on her bedroll with her mouth open. Her pipe had fallen out of her mouth and was lying on her blankets with all the pipeweed spilled out of it in a black dottle. There were several old burn marks on the covers and Keris made a mental note not to pitch her tent so close to Corrian’s another time. Once the woman was awake, she went on to Graval’s tent only to find he was already up, roused by Meldor.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ Meldor said quietly and led her off to his tent, with his usual unerring sense of direction, deftly stepping over tent-pegs he could not see on the way.

  It was the first time she’d been inside his tent and she was not surprised to find it more luxurious than her own. It was tall enough for Meldor to stand up inside and the central pole was made of sturdy but lightweight whipwood. The undersheet of his bedroll was well padded and his blankets were woven of fenet wool, the finest and warmest yarn in all the stabilities. A warmth-stove that burnt chips of compressed mata leaf was an indication of wealth, as was a cake of fine-grained soap lying in a tortoiseshell dish, and a soft towel of bedraggle cotton from the Fifth.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t use a lamp,’ he said. ‘Do you mind sitting in the dark?’

  She refrained from telling him the stove gave off sufficient glow for her to see by, and even took comfort from the thought that he didn’t know everything about his environs after all. ‘Not if all you have in mind is talk,’ she said bluntly.

  He laughed softly. ‘You have no need to worry. Sit here on the bedroll. I wish to discuss Davron’s situation with you. Tomorrow we reach Pickle’s Halt, and it disturbs us that you may be considering passing on what you know to other people.’

  ‘Can you give me one reason why I should not?’ she asked as she seated herself. Even as she spoke she wondered if he would say, Because we’ll kill you if you do.

  He was more circumspect. ‘Davron is not an evil man, merely a tormented one. Scow and I are with him all the time he is in the Unstable, every trip. When the time comes, we hope to sabotage the Unmaker’s plans for him. If we can’t, then Davron will die. Scow and I are pledged to kill him.’

  ‘He knows this?’

  ‘He suggested it.’

  ‘You’re all mad. Snatching at dreams, hoping Davron will be able to escape the final reckoning. Do you think the Unmaker will let any of you ruin his plans? You can’t watch Davron all the time! One day you’ll wake up and find him gone, and the horror will have begun before you’ve even worked out that he’s left your guardianship.’ She paused, then added, ‘If you are still alive.’

  ‘The Unmaker is not all-powerful. He can be thwarted.’

  ‘I thwarted him,’ she said, ‘but believe me, I did not have the impression he would let me get away with it for long.’

  ‘You intend to betray Davron.’

  ‘Betra
y is an emotive word, Master Meldor. Let’s just say I haven’t made up my mind what to do.’

  ‘You leave me no choice, Keris. I did not want to do this, but you have forced it upon me.’

  Her hand flew to the knife at her side and she began to move, to flee. She never even reached an upright stance.

  Light—a tendril of colour—seeped out of Meldor and spiralled itself around her arm. It stung like nettle rash. She released the knife she held; she no longer had the strength to hold it. Worse was what he did to her will. She felt her determination drain away like water pouring from a jug.

  ‘You will neither speak of nor write of Davron’s bondage to anyone but the three of us, Scow, Davron and myself,’ he said. His deep voice was beautiful and caressed her as it bound her to his will. It seduced, even as it wove its bonds. ‘Within the hearing of others, you will keep your counsel on this matter. You will not mention to anyone who does not already know it, that Davron and I use ley. You will not talk of our affairs to others.’

  The light faded away and she rubbed her arm. ‘You bastard,’ she said in outrage. It was the first time she had ever used such a word aloud, and it felt good on her tongue. He’d taken away her freedom of choice; she would not be able to betray Davron’s secret. She felt violated. And furious. She picked up her knife and stood, shaking with rage. ‘Keep your filthy ley practices to yourself! I want no part of them.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Too much rides on what we do to allow you to blunt our blade with your interference.’

  It was only when she was outside the tent that her anger subsided enough to allow her to feel real fear. Who were these people? Who was this Meldor that he could sap the will away from someone and make them into a reluctant accomplice? She wanted to throw back her head and shout to the world, Davron is bond-servant to the Unmaker! But the words would not come. Nothing would come. When she tried even to think about betraying Davron her mind seemed woolly—vague—as if she could not quite remember...