by Glenda Larke
‘Every time I’ve been here, anyways. Shall we be hunting out the guides before making camp, do you think?’
She nodded. ‘I wouldn’t want to leave our tents unattended in a place like this.’ A blue-scaled hand brushed her boot and she flinched away in alarm. The owner of the arm scuttled away between a press of mounted men, but not before she’d had an impression of webbed feet and a hairless head sunk directly on to bony shoulders. She turned wide-eyed to Portron. ‘Chantor, the Unbound come here?’
‘Aye.’ His tone was a mixture of distaste and distress. ‘It’s hard to stop them. They’re coming for supplies, poor souls. The Defenders do patrol the length of the kineses chain sometimes, but you’ll need hundreds of men to keep the tainted from crossing the border entirely.’
She was shocked. ‘But the kinesis chain should keep them out—’
‘It works better against the Wild and Minions. The Unbound aren’t noticing it much, I’m thinking, at least not unless they’ve committed themselves to the Unmaker. It’s more Order that repulses the tainted and, as you may have noticed, there’s not too much Order here. Alas, you can see many of the excluded here too, not just the Unbound. Hopen Grat’s a dangerous place, I’m always thinking, lass. Murders aplenty, and the corpses bear the mark of the tainted often enough. Keep your wits about you. Hey you,’ he called to a passing hawker of supposedly magical amulets, ‘where do we find the guides?’
‘First right and straight on! An amulet, maid? Guaranteed effective for ten days against ley tainting.’
The amulet, Keris knew, would be useless for all its guarantee. She nudged Ygraine after the chantor and Tousson followed obediently. When a stranger put a hand to the packs, the crossings-horse turned to nip at him savagely.
The guides were camped along a rise away from the worst of the town. She surveyed the neat row of canvas and tethered animals with approval. Guides had the same orderliness to their camps that Piers had inculcated in her. ‘Which go where?’ she asked.
‘Look at the numbers,’ Portron said. Each camp had a number indicated somewhere, scrawled in charcoal on the canvas perhaps, or just indicated by a number of ribbons fluttering from a ridge-pole. ‘You’ll be having a choice, Maid Kereven. There’s five or six bound for the Second Stab. I’ll just have to take this one.’ He pointed his fly switch at a canvas strung between two trees. In the shade beneath, a man lay at his ease on a bed roll, his head pillowed on a pack with a hat tilted over his eyes.
She knew instantly who it was and repressed a feeling of vague unease. Just because a cat didn’t like him, doesn’t mean he’s evil…
Still, she remained seated on Ygraine while Portron dismounted and went forward on foot. ‘Um, begging your pardon for rousing you, Master Guide, but would your services be for hire to the Eighth Stab?’ he asked.
The hat tilted back and the head raised itself a little. Black eyes, the same obsidian chips she had expected to see, scanned the chantor neutrally. Whatever it was that had been the cause of his shame back in Kibbleberry, it didn’t seem to make him blush in the presence of a rule-chantor. ‘They are,’ he said in that voice like the scrape of a millstone. He sat up but didn’t bother to stand, or even make a kinesis of greeting. ‘I’m leaving first light tomorrow. Ten golds each for the full journey, payable before we leave. You supply your own hard rations, enough to get as far as the Fifth. And I don’t travel with Defenders. If you want an armed fellowship, you’ll have to wait another three weeks for Mink Medrigan’s.’ His eyes flicked briefly to her. ‘The child goes with you?’
‘The woman does not,’ she snapped, wondering if he would recognise her. His gaze returned to her with awakening interest, lingering momentarily on her throwing knife, then on the quiver, then drifting down to her mount. The crossings-horse gave him pause and she saw him frown as he tried to place her. Then he appeared to lose interest again and looked back to Portron.
‘Are you ley-lit? he asked.
‘I am.’
‘What hard rations do you have?’
‘A flour sack of biltong and a half of dried minnows. Two grand rounds of hard cheese. One of damper flour mixed with dried fruit. A mix of horse beans and fullen oats for the animals, just the one sack.’
‘That should suffice. Be down by the pond over there,’ he waved past his tent, ‘at sun-up. And no skirts or bells or bright silks, please.’ He nodded a dismissal and lay down again. A hand tilted the hat over his eyes once more.
‘Ah—’ Portron cleared his throat. ‘May I be asking your name, lad?’
She grinned at the thought of Master Obsidian-eyes being addressed as lad, but the man did not seem to react. ‘Storre. Davron Storre. And yours, chantor?’
‘Portron Bittle, at your service, of the Order of Kt—’
The hard eyes emerged briefly once more from under the brim of the hat. ‘Perform your devotions all you want on this journey, Chantor Portron, but don’t bother me with them. Is that clear?’
‘Ah, yes, as you wish, although devotions to the Maker can never be—’ The eyes disappeared as the hat thunked down under a determined hand. Portron blinked and retreated.
‘I think you just met your match, Chantor,’ Keris remarked as they rode away. ‘You won’t get much conversation out of him on your journey.’
‘Alas, I do believe you may be having the right of it.’ He sighed. ‘And the pilgrimage will be taking all of two or three months, too. I hope his heart is not as black as his eyes.’ Then he shrugged. ‘Ah, it’s all on the palm of the good Maker, blessed be His name. If it’s my fate to arrive at the Fatherhouse, then arrive I shall. Now what about you, lass? Which of these guides heading for the Second Stab will you take?’
‘The one who leaves earliest,’ she said promptly. She knew any one of them might recognise her, but the odds were against it. She had a face that was easily forgotten. As for Ygraine and Tousson, for all their good points, there was nothing remarkable about their appearance. It was unlikely that anyone would remember them as Piers’ animals.
She visited all the guides who were bound for the Second Stability—there were six of them—and there was not one who showed that he found her familiar. Two chided her about her ownership of the crossings-horses, a third tried to buy them from her and a fourth told Portron it was a threat to stability to have a woman ride one, let alone own two of the beasts, and what was he going to do about it? The man closest to having the ten pilgrims he considered necessary to make the journey profitable estimated that he would be leaving the day after the next and didn’t mention the crossings-horses at all, so she added the name Keris Kereven to his list, and then she and Portron rode off to find a place to pitch their tents.
That evening, while Portron was giving an impromptu sermon on the Rule to a group of fellow campers, she went off to find the Hopen Grat Chantry-shrine. She was not so much interested in performing evening devotions as in buying the pilgrim’s pass she needed, and also in making some ritual kineses for Sheyli. And perhaps for herself too, for forgiveness for her abandonment of her dying mother.
You did it for yourself, Keris Kaylen, admit it. Because you couldn’t bear the idea of marrying anyone, least of all Harin Markle. Because you couldn’t stomach the idea of living in Thirl’s house for the rest of your life, either. Especially not if he was going to marry that fluffy little idiot, Fressie Leese. You let Sheyli persuade you to go because it was convenient… She wriggled the end of her nose in an attempt to stop the tears that threatened her.
Right then she did not like herself much. And she did not feel very old either.
She was not too sure devotions would make her feel any better. Her dislike of implicit obedience to the Maker’s Rule made her regard all kineses and the value of the Maker’s forgiveness with deep scepticism, but she went anyway. Locating the shrine without trouble, she bought her pass in the Rule Office next door, and discovered devotions were already in progress in the shrine itself. As the building was full, she joined the worshippers knee
ling on the bare ground outside. She assumed the attitude of reverent attention: both knees to the ground, back straight, hands flat to the front of the thighs, reflecting that it was better outside than inside. The ground was softer than the stone floor of the shrine, and she could look around if she was bored.
The front of the shrine was highly coloured, as were all chantist buildings. This one had murals of knights fighting off Minions, their hands outlined in colours as they made their ritual kinesis gestures at their enemies. She had doubts whether a few kinesis signs would really scare Minions, but the picture was interesting nonetheless. Inside, a devotions-chantor was reading the Phrases and predictably, they were from the Book of Pilgrims. A pleasant smell of jasmine oil drifted through the crowd, for jasmine was always used at the evening Prostration devotions.
‘And so it was,’ the chantor read, ‘that the Maker turned to Knight Batose and said: “Go thou—and thine—once in thy life, to worship at my shrines and holy places across the Unstable, for only such a journey will entitle thee to come to the ordered Table of Paradise in the afterlife.”
‘ “But,” the Knight protested, “mine life shall be endangered, and mine children placed in jeopardy before the maws of the Unstable.”
‘ “Thou hast the will to choose,” the Maker said, “but this I say unto thee: no Man nor woman who comes not to worship at a distant shrine shall sup Order at my Tables after death, unless a child less than twenty summers—” ’
Stupid convoluted language, Keris thought morosely. Why don’t holy men ever say anything plainly? The answer supplied itself, unbidden. Maybe it’s because if it was said clearly enough, we’d know it was nonsense. Why do we have to risk our lives to save our souls? It doesn’t make sense, and the Maker ought to be logical. She sighed and tried not to think that maybe, just maybe, the Holy Books were not the inspired word of the Maker speaking through his holiest followers after all, but the ravings of some mad knight, ensconced in a cave somewhere and suffering the visions of the insane.
Still, when the time came for the congregation to perform kinesis, she joined in with the rest of the gathering, fingers and hands and arms making the ritual gestures, her body taking up the correct postures—first on this knee, then that, then both, forehead to the ground. She did it for her mother, for forgiveness, and finally she did it hoping that she would survive the crossing. Survive, and remain untainted. At least this is the service of Prostration, she thought, and not Abasement. Abasement entailed kineses performed mostly flat on one’s stomach.
It was dark by the time the devotions were finished. She began to wonder if she’d been foolish to leave it so late to return to camp. She and Portron had pitched their tents a little distance away from the bulk of the pilgrims, too, at her insistence. The smell from the public pit latrines at the back of the camping ground had been too much for her to stomach. Now the darkness of the unlit town and the rough paths that led to the tents was disturbing. Most people abroad moved in groups, with lanterns, and she had not thought to bring even a candle from her pack.
She set off, walking fast, glad of her trousers and boots and regardless of the hardened ruts underfoot, trying not to think of the stories she had heard about the Unbound who served the Minions of Chaos. ‘They like the dark,’ Piers had said once. He’d been trying at the time to convince her that the Unstable was no place for a woman Unstabler. ‘They kill for pleasure, but never cleanly and never fast. The younger the victim the better, because to Carasma the death of the young is the greatest insult he can bestow on Creation. What they do to women, especially the young ones, is the worst. Sometimes they don’t have human shape, but that doesn’t stop them taking what they want first…’
When she reached the foot of the rise where most of the pilgrims were camped, she saw a group of people ahead on the track. There were both men and women, with several lanterns among them, and they were standing talking. None of them looked her way, and without a light she knew she was almost invisible anyway. The scene looked ordinary enough. It was the voice she heard that stopped her dead. Thirl. Thirl giving her description, right down to the horses and the colour of her tent.
‘No,’ someone replied, ‘we haven’t seen anyone like that. A thief, you say? Fella, your chances of finding a particular thief in Hopen Grat are as slim as a flatworm.’
‘Perhaps. Should you see her, don’t tell her I’m looking, eh?’
Keris waited and watched in silence, shivering. The group moved off towards the tents. Thirl angled his way up the hill away from her and, she was thankful to note, away from where she was camped with Portron. She hastened on her way.
‘Ah, there you are,’ the chantor greeted her cheerfully, reinforcing his relief with a kinesis. ‘I was beginning to worry. This is not a place to be wandering about in at night, lass. You’re a mite too confident for your own safety, you know.’ He handed her a plate of bread and a hunk of meat he’d grilled over the campfire. ‘Fresh beef I bought from a hawker for both of us.’
She accepted his rebuke with a nod, knowing he was right, and took the food with thanks. As she sat beside the fire to eat, she was glad of his presence and reflected wryly that she’d never thought she would be grateful for the company of a rule-chantor. She did not think Thirl would be able to find her or the tent in the dark, but she was worried nonetheless. Come daylight he would find her fast enough, and if he intended to charge her with theft, she was in trouble. At the very least, he could force her home.
‘Chantor Portron,’ she said, ‘I think I’ve changed my mind. If Master Davron Storre will have me, I’m going to leave with you tomorrow.’
He gaped at her, face blank, white hair a halo lit by firelight. ‘You want to go to the Eighth Stability?’
‘No. No, just as far as Pickle’s Halt. That’s about a week into the Unstable. It’s a—private matter. A pilgrimage of sorts, I suppose. My father died there, you see.’
Suddenly, she had an unbidden vision of Storre as she had seen him back in Kibbleberry, hard as knotted ironwood, all muscle and toughness dressed in worn brown leather and coarse linen. A man who had done something so shameful it could make him flush like a chantora teased by the town rake. She had to remind herself that the Minions of Chaos could not survive in a stability. Could not, in fact, pass the kinesis chain. Davron Storre, therefore, could not belong to the Unmaker. Besides, no Minion would blush, for Maker’s sake…
~~~~~~~
Portron had his own vision as he watched Keris. For a brief moment he was transported back more than twenty years… A face under the wimple of her Ordering, freckles across a straight nose, and frightened grey eyes looking into his. He had not been so very young then, but his fingers had trembled as he loosened the wimple and seen her hair for the first time: soft and fine and long.
‘I’ll try not to hurt you, Maylie,’ he’d said.
‘I hope it takes a long time to make a baby,’ she’d whispered, love shining through her fear. ‘I want it to take forever.’
~~~~~~~
Chapter Six
And Chantry shall guide us, and be our protection against Lord Carasma the Unmaker. They have established the Rule, and they shall oversee the establishment of Order in every stability, devoting their lives to our well-being and the defeat of Chaos. Honour them and give them their due.
—Knights X: 12: 2-3 (Melcom the Pious)
Rugriss Ruddleby was seated at his desk in the Anhedrin’s office of the Chantry Hall in Middleton, going through a pile of reports. The Chantry Hall was the most impressive building in the whole of the Eighth Stability, possibly in all the stabilities, and the Anhedrin’s office was the most magnificently appointed room in the building, as befitted the head of the sixteen-member Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Chantry. The ceiling and walls were heavy with gilt and festooned with ornate tracery. Chandeliers dripped crystals, chairs squatted on curled carvings, polished onyx gleamed on table tops, inlaid wood parquetry was evidence of trees slaughtered with scant attention t
o the Rule. What did that matter after all? This was only one room in one building, and anyway it was dedicated to the greater glory of the Maker, blessed be His name…
The office had belonged to Rugriss Ruddleby for a year past, and it would be his for another two years, before a strict cycle of rotation passed the position of Anhedrin on to another of the Sanhedrin. Rugriss had long coveted the post, but now that it was his he was finding the responsibility and the decision-making that went along with the power was fraught with petty irritations. Or worse. Not even the gilded luxury of his surroundings could make up for the major worries and aggravations of being Anhedrin.
He was a tall thin man with a lean face and, in spite of his anxieties, he was still as sleek as a cat on the prowl, thanks be. He carried no excess weight, his muscles were hard to the touch, his stomach as flat as a millstone and he did not look his age. He believed a person should care for the body that the Maker had created for him, so he exercised, he watched his diet, and if taking care of himself also meant adding a little colour to greying hair, then he wasn’t past doing that either.
Someone had once told him that frowning encouraged wrinkles, so he was careful not to frown as he read the report from a devotions-chantor that had happened to come across his desk, but he felt like frowning. The report disturbed him, although it took him a while to realise exactly why. After some thought, he took hold of his stole of office and shook it in an agitated fashion. The pure silver bells around the fringe at its end tinkled like wind-chimes and the nacre sewn to the gold satin of the stole flashed with kaleidoscopic colour.
A lowly novice-chantor hurried in to the office in answer to the summons.
Rugriss did not look up. ‘Ask Hedrina Cylrie Mannertee if she would be so kind as to step into my office.’ He was deliberately brusque, and the novice hurried to obey, slippers slapping on the polished parquetry.