by Glenda Larke
Keris swallowed. Crooked fingers, scarred face… It was as if she had been warned. As if the thief had been sent to her as a sign that she shouldn’t put herself beyond the law. Don’t be ridiculous. It was just a coincidence, nothing more. Aloud she said, knowing she was right, ‘Thirl will follow me to get the money back.’
‘As long as he doesn’t catch up with you before you reach the Unstable, you will be safe. Believe me, he’s not going to follow you across the kinesis chain. He’s made it quite clear how much he fears instability. And I don’t think he’d turn you in to a Chantry Court or the Defenders anyway. He is your brother.’
‘Mother—’
‘Please, Keri. Please, so I can die happy. Creation, child, you always were the hard-headed one, clinging to an idea and never giving up, arguing and kicking every inch of the way, but now’s not the time to be stubborn. I’m asking you to do this for me. Do you understand? For me.’
‘I don’t know Uncle Fergrand and—’
‘—and I haven’t seen him for twenty years. Yes, I know. But he was always a good man. And your father met him from time to time in Salient. He was still alive in autumn of last year, and in good health. I’m sure he’ll give you a home and help you to find a husband.’
She opened her mouth to protest that she didn’t know why everyone thought it was so necessary for her to have a husband, but thought better of the remark. Her mother needed to be reassured, not upset.
Sheyli continued, ‘Thirl is going to Middle Kt Beogor tomorrow morning, in Harin’s cart. Something about deliveries of mead or beer. He won’t be back until after dark. You leave while he’s away.’
She was horrified. ‘I can’t do that! Not before—’ She stopped, flustered.
Sheyli gave the faintest of smiles. ‘Not before I die? Keri, dearest, if you are gone I can die in peace. Please do as I ask. This is not the time to be contrary, not now.’
Her mother was tempting her with a way out and she lacked the will to resist. She began to cry, not in noisy sobs, but with silent tears. She knew she was saying goodbye, not only to her mother but to the last remnants of her childhood and innocence, and the grief she felt for an impending loss was mingled with fear for her future, with guilt at the knowledge that she would leave while her mother still lived, with despair that Sheyli must die without her daughter by her bedside. Her mother desperately needed her now and yet also needed to know she had a future.
‘Will you go?’ her mother asked.
She nodded helplessly. She told herself she did it for her mother, but knew that the truth was she would do it just as much for herself. It was a selfish decision that shamed her, that would probably shame her all her life—yet it was a solution and she was not going to turn her back on it. She couldn’t.
She prepared her packs that day while Thirl was gone. That night she dozed by her mother’s bedside, Sheyli’s hand held in her own. She left the next morning.
She didn’t look back. Her eyes were too tear-filled to see anyway.
~~~~~~~
Chapter Five
And great was the punishment inflicted on the world because a few followed the ways of wickedness. Humankind asked in despair: ‘What barrier is there to Lord Carasma when ley lends him strength, when Minions do his bidding? He will take all the land that was the Margravate.’
Goodperson rose to find that his land, assaulted by ley, was as coast shaped anew with each tide, and his animals were as beasts of the forest. Yet he said, ‘Fear not. Turn from the Unmaker for before him you will grovel for all eternity. Be of good cheer, for the Maker has handed down to you the Rule that shall be your protection.’
—The Rending II:6: 1-7
As luck would have it, Keris fell in with a chantor within minutes of leaving Kibbleberry. She was annoyed, having expected to ride to the border alone. Sheyli Kaylen lived still, but her daughter wanted solitude to grieve. She wanted time to come to terms with her guilt at leaving, yet she was denied the opportunity.
The chantor, a vision of red face and coloured silks, was resting while fanning himself beside the road not far outside the village. He jumped up as she rode past, waving his jewelled fly switch in her direction, an action that sent his bells chiming and his silks flapping in the sunshine. ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘Wait, for me!’
Obedient, this time at least, to the upbringing that had taught her to heed those who represented Chantry, she pulled up. She even maintained a bland expression to reflect nothing of her irritation. He climbed on to his palfrey, grasped the leading rope of his pack-ass and joined her out on the road.
‘Ah, lass,’ he said in the lilting accent of the Eighth Stability, ‘Right glad of company, it is I am. I was escorting several chantoras to Kte Marlede’s, fine pious women off to a retreat at the chanterie there, but I’ve met no one going my way since, and Portron Bittle, rule-chantor of the Order of Kt Ladma—that’s me—is not a man to be relishing a solitary life, surely.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have chosen to be encoloured, Chantor.’ The words slipped out before she could reflect on their wisdom. Of all people, a chantor dedicated to the explanation and the enforcing of the Rule. Hardly the sort of man she wanted to have as a travelling companion. In her annoyance, she was wickedly amused to find herself looking down on him. He was short and his palfry was dwarfed by her crossings-horse.
He paused in his flood of words and gave her a measured look, evidently unsure if she had intended the comment as a sly poke at his chantist celibacy, as indeed she had. His glance roved on to her bundles loaded on her pack-horse’s back, topped with Piers’ blackwood staff and her bowstave, then to the single throwing knife she wore at her waist and the quiver slung on her back. Lastly he eyed her trousers and boots, her shirt and leather jerkin, the Rule-banned clothes she’d worn on surveying trips with Piers in the countryside.
‘You’ll be off on your pilgrimage,’ he said unnecessarily and straightened the cuffs on his bright red and mauve gown. She nodded. ‘You should be wearing your skirts, lass. I know even a chantor puts aside his robes to make a crossing because they may hamper movement at crucial moments, and the colour is not conducive to, er, camouflage either, but you’re not in the Unstable yet. This is still the First Stability and you should be wearing your skirts. When we stop for a rest, you must be changing.’
She lied. ‘Into what? I brought no skirts with me.’
She thought he’d be shocked, but he seemed more interested than surprised. ‘None? Well then, there’s nothing much we can be doing about it, is there? I can hardly be lending you mine. Tell me, child, how is it you are unaccompanied?’
‘My father and mother are…are dead and my brother has already made his pilgrimage.’
He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘You should not be travelling alone. The Rule is quite clear: women should seek company for protection, lest they be a temptation to the unruly.’
It was the last straw. ‘Then let the unruly conquer their lusts. The sin should be theirs, not mine. I’m willing to take the risk.’
He looked shocked. ‘Lass, you don’t have the right of it. Should you find trouble on your way, then Order is threatened, and with it, all humankind. Everybody should do their utmost to prevent disorder. For you to be taking a risk is selfish because more than just your own safety is threatened.’
She knew he was right, but it was still hard to accept. She took a deep breath and flexed fingers that had been holding reins too tightly. ‘Never mind, Chantor,’ she said striving for lightness, ‘now I have met you and you can protect my virtue between here and Hopen Grat.’ She’d never before dared to make fun, even obliquely, of a stranger, let alone one who was a chantor, and she felt a moment’s amazement at her temerity. I feel like someone else, not Keris Kaylen, the mapmaker’s meek daughter. I feel like…like a dog that’s been let off the leash for the first time, ready to play, or fight. Free. She sat a little straighter in the saddle and felt good about herself. Darn you, Thirl Kaylen. I’ve got my dowry money
and I’ve taken Father’s—your—crossings-horses and your bowstave and your sleeping sack and your theodolite and your mapmaking tools and your master charts, and I don’t give a damn. She’d decided that if she was going to be hunted down as a thief, there was no point in being a modest one.
‘Which crossing are you making, lass?’ the chantor was asking. He’d said several other things as well, but she had not been listening. ‘To the closest stab, I suppose? The Second?’
‘Yes. What about you, Chantor?’
‘Oh, I’m not off on a pilgrimage. The Father-chantor of the Order of Kt Ladma has ordered me back for a spiritual retreat, that’s all.’ He stirred uneasily in his saddle as if there was something that bothered him about that. ‘But you wouldn’t be knowing where that chantery is, would you, lass? It’s in the Eighth Stab. I have to be trekking the Unstable from north to south in the months to come and it’s a rough ride, I can tell you. Hard on one’s rear.’
He shook his head sorrowfully and she almost laughed. He was perhaps fifty years old, and had round red cheeks, a rotund belly and large feet, none of which seemed to fit in well with his small frame. He had a bald patch in the middle of a white frizz of hair, but his face was unlined and glowed with amiable goodwill. Which she found odd, seeing that most rule-chantors were hard men, ruthless in enforcing Order. ‘I hate the Unstable,’ he said suddenly. ‘Ever made a crossing, lass?’
She shook her head.
He nodded reminiscently, his white hair flying about his ears. ‘I hate it. It’s an evil place that subverts the innocent and damages the pure. When I was a lad of your age—I was a butcher’s second son, you know—I was setting off on my pilgrimage too. That was when I decided I wanted to be encoloured, when I came to see the chantist way was for me. I was looking about me, and seeing all that evil… Nay, feeling it deep in my bones contaminating me. And I knew that I had to be a chantor to fight its spread. Kinesis is the surest way to hold the Unstable at bay. Kinesis and the establishment of Order and obedience to the Rule. Up until then, I hadn’t been believing, not really, you know. I was young and scornful of Chantry and the rigidity of the Rule. But out there,’ he waved a hand in the direction they were taking, ‘out there, you feel Chaos. You feel it corroding the earth beneath your feet. You feel it unmaking what has been created, you feel it twisting the laws of life and growth. You feel the hand of the Unmaker trailing his fingers across your soul, wanting to make it his own. And then you know that the only bulwark against Chaos is Order, and where better to help in Order’s maintenance than within Chantry?’
She looked at him curiously. ‘You’re ley-lit, then?’
He nodded again. ‘Aye, for my sins, it’s a hard thing to be ley-lit in the Unstable, lass. You feel more.’ He sighed.
‘Do you go through the other stabilities to get to the Eighth?’ she asked. ‘Or do you go direct?’
‘The usual route is due south to the Fifth. Stock up there, and then on to the Eighth, straight as a mule to water. Of course, it’ll be depending on the guide one has, surely.’
‘You’ll go through Pickle’s Halt, then.’
‘Pickle’s Halt? I don’t know it. But it’s a dozen years since Porton Bittle was leaving the First and the halts come and go like the seasons. It’s a dangerous job to be a haltkeeper. May the Maker bless ’em. I remember once—’ He started to reminisce, telling a story that, as far as she could tell, had nothing whatsoever to do with halts or haltkeepers. She stopped listening and occupied herself with her own thoughts instead.
She was tempted to go to Pickle’s Halt. The trouble was that it was not on the way to the Second Stability, and it was doubtful that anyone ever went from the Halt to the Second. If she visited the Halt, she would then have to return to the First Stability in order to reach the Second, a dangerous manoeuvre if Thirl was after her, and one which would cost money in guides. Yet she did so ache to talk to Pickle. She wanted to know where the map had come from. She wanted to know who’d murdered her father. And she wanted to know how he had been killed. Piers Kaylen, who was as wily as an old rat in a farmer’s barn? He could not have been an easy man to murder.
‘—and so there I was,’ Chantor Portron was saying, ‘covered in feathers from my pate to my toes, naked as a babe, with a beautiful lass in my arms and the hedrin-chantor coming in the door.’
She blinked, startled, and wondered what she had missed.
‘And you, lass, haven’t heard a word I’ve been saying.’ He sighed. ‘Few people listen to me after a while. I talk too much.’
‘And what if you do?’ she asked, amused, suspecting now that he had just tagged on that startling punch line to wake her out of her reverie. ‘You like talking.’
He laughed. ‘Aye, that I do. But a chantor should be listening more than he prattles. Here I am, telling you all about myself, and I don’t know a cat’s whisker about you. What’s your name, lass?’
‘Keris. Keris—Kereven.’ She had not thought to lie until her name had already been trembling on her lips; then she’d had a blinding flash of memory of herself, kneeling on the floor with the tatters of her father’s blood-spattered clothing in her hands and the thought was in her head that if someone had murdered Piers Kaylen, perhaps Kaylen was not a good name to own, not in the Unstable. And if Thirl was chasing her, it might not be a good name to have in the First, either.
With a momentary sense of wry bafflement, she considered herself. Where was the girl she had been, the obedient daughter? Since she’d learned of her father’s death she’d done a dozen things that ought to have shamed her deeply. She’d hidden something that was not hers to hide, then hidden and fed a convicted thief. She’d stolen from her brother, run away from home, left her dying mother, and now she’d lied about her name. And she felt amazingly light-hearted about all if it. Except leaving Sheyli. That did shame her, but she pushed the feeling deep and let the other emotions dominate: joy in her new-found freedom, excitement at the thought of what lay ahead, contentment with the idea she was controlling her own life.
A dog let off the leash? No: rather a butterfly shedding its chrysalis only to find it had wings…
As they rode on she was smiling to herself.
~~~~~~~
At her side the chantor noted the smile and envied the boundless confidence of the young. He at least was old enough to know that it was not so easy. Maylie, he thought. Maker, how she looks like Maylie. And he felt a pain he had not felt for years.
~~~~~~~~
They arrived at the border towards sunset. The cluster of shops and tents at the end of the road had once been known as Hope and Gratitude. The hope was for those leaving on their crossing; the gratitude was that of those arriving from the Unstable, grateful their crossing was over. The name had long since been contracted down to Hopen Grat.
There was nothing permanent about Hopen Grat’s appearance. No one lived there long; it was too close to the Unstable. As a consequence, a sense of uneasy transience pervaded the ramshackle constructions lining the rutted tracks. The shopkeepers operated out of shanties or tents, made quick money by selling goods at high prices, then moved back into the interior of the stability with relief. Chantry transferred chantors in and out of the town in quick succession, both kinesis-chantors to maintain the chain, and devotion chantors to serve the needs of pilgrims. There were no Defenders posted here, perhaps because no Trician would have stayed, so there was no one to enforce the Rule. In fact, Order hardly existed. In Hopen Grat a moment’s lack of watchfulness could mean being robbed penniless, raped or murdered.
And yet there was some commerce, some normality. You could buy the supplies you’d forgotten to bring, or replenish those you’d used up. You could have your mount shod, or have his wounds sewn up. You could hire a guide, or send a letter via a courier. You could ask for information about relatives or friends who had ridden out and never returned. You could have a bath in the bath house if you were dirty enough, visit the doctor if your need was urgent enough, or purch
ase a horse if you had money enough. You could also buy the services of an over-used whore, perform your kineses at the shrine, seek absolution from a chantor, buy a good luck charm, or pay for a ward against being tainted.
But some things you could not do. You couldn’t find a thatcher or a mason or a tailor—nothing that hinted at permanence or luxury was for sale in Hopen Grat—and you’d never find the scum who’d robbed you, raped one of your party or murdered your friend.
The main street was a diseased gut. It smelled, seethed, belched, grumbled. It twisted and turned, narrowed and swelled. It groaned with people and animals, shuddered with noise, heaved with activity. The buildings, if they could be called such, squatted along it like growths and exuded garbage like running sores. Hopen Grat resembled no other place in the First; it had its siblings elsewhere, on the edge of the other stabilities. Border settlements were all alike—contaminated towns, polluted by their proximity to the Unstable, muddied by the touch of Chaos, tainted by the gaze of the Unmaker.
As she rode into Hopen Grat with Chantor Portron, Keris felt overwhelmed. Her earlier confidence had ebbed away. Everyone seemed to be shouting, pushing, shoving. All about her purses were being stolen, bottoms pinched, bargains made, wagers lost. Hopen Grat made her feel dirty.
‘Watch your purse, lass,’ Portron said unnecessarily under his breath.
‘Is it always like this?’ she asked and kicked away a hand that groped for Ygraine’s bridle.