Havenstar

by Glenda Larke

  They camped that night on a hillslope, sheltered by an outcrop of rocks. The rain had stopped and the fire burned normally, but the cloud was still low enough to cut off the view and darken the landscape, and there was little wood to be had for burning. They built only one fire between them, and everyone contributed something to a single stew. Baraine complained as he produced his contribution of sweet yams, a thick cut of dried meat and a handful of grain kernels, saying he was contributing the best food and he expected to get it back again on his plate. Corrian bared her gums at him and asked if he would like to carve his initials on each grain kernel first, just so he could be sure he received the frigging right ones?

  Baraine stalked off and Keris looked around to find that Corrian and she had been left alone to attend to the stew. ‘Just because we’re women, they think we can do the cooking,’ she grumbled. She minded the assumption, rather than the task.

  ‘Aagh, that’s the way of the world,’ Corrian said, puffing a cloud of black smoke over the yams she was peeling. ‘If it irks you, lass, skim off the sweet meat for y’self first and then piss in the pot.’

  She studied Corrian’s face to see if she was joking, and decided she wasn’t. The old woman grinned at her. ‘It’s called the battle of the sexes, love, and I’ve been at it for nigh on fifty years. Maybe longer. My ma always said I started on the job in me cradle. Who cares if they don’t know they’ve been done in. We know, and that’s what counts. Stick together, I say, and do the dirty on ’em.’

  Keris scraped some more root vegetables, supplied by Meldor, and added them to the pot. ‘Why did you come on this pilgrimage, Mistress Corrian?’ she asked. ‘Why this one, and why now?’

  The woman clamped her teeth down on her pipe and cackled. ‘No one calls old Corrie the Pipe "Mistress", lass. No need to be proper with me, I’m just a one-time whore turned Madame, born and bred in Drumlin’s Cess, and I don’t need no fancy words to call me what I’m not. But you want to know why a pilgrimage now? Well, first because I’ve nivver been on a pilgrimage. And second, I reckon after a lifetime of whoring and thieving, I’d better look proper repentant in the eyes of the Maker. No short pilgrimage would take care of my sins, lass.’

  ‘Repentant?’ she asked, remembering a number of lewd suggestions Corrian had made to the males of the party, from Scow to Chanter Portron, about what they could do if they came to her tent or, for that matter, if they just took a few minutes out behind those bushes over there...

  Corrian leered. ‘Hard to ask a pussy not to stiffen its tail when the toms come sniffing around.’

  ‘Looked more like the pussy sniffing out the toms to me,’ she replied, poking at the fire to help it along. She was beginning to learn how to talk to the old woman without blushing.

  Corrian’s bright little eyes peered at her in interest. ‘Ah, I like you, lass. Straight out of a chanterie class, but you’ve got spunk. And a good head on you. Tell me, which one of the toms are you wriggling yer backside for?’

  ‘I missed out on a chanterie education, and I don’t think I’m—er—wriggling at all yet.’

  ‘Slow, love, slow,’ the woman chided. ‘This is going to be a dull journey, you gotta have an interest on the way.’ She put the last of the yams in the stew and considered. ‘Forget Quirk. I know his type. Born to lose. Hopeless case and probably couldn’t get it up anyways. As for Baraine, well, he’s a meaty hunk, but that type doesn’t go for plain faces. All for show, he is, and you’re not the showy type. If he did pick you up it’d only be because there was nothing else, and he’d drop you at the first sign of summat better, and for him, better may well be a pretty lad rather than a lass. Portron? Nah. Chantors are bad luck. Too much conscience in types like him, even though he’s got an eye for a bit of tail. Back in the Cess, half our customers were encoloured bastards. Unable to live the straight and narrow Chantry says they must, yet unable to admit it in public. Sneaking around us whores in the dead of night instead, wanting a quick fumble. They make sorry lovers, I can tell you.’ She grunted her contempt and passed on to Scow instead. ‘The tainted one? He’s out, with those looks of his, unless you’ve got a hankering for the grotesque and I bet you haven’t. And I’ve heard that if you’re ley-lit it ain’t possible anyways, too painful. They’re not called Untouchable for nothing. Graval? Now there’s a possibility, if you don’t mind creeps down your spine. Ah, maybe I exaggerate and he’s just a fool. Who knows? I’ve been wrong often enough. Meldor has class; you could do well for y’self there, love, and he can’t see neither.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said dryly, and then, when Corrian did not continue, she added, ‘You’ve missed out Master Storre.’

  ‘Ah, so it’s him that interests, is it?’

  She gaped at Corrian. ‘Storre? Me and Davron Storre?’

  ‘Well, maybe not. Anyways, that man you don’t mess with, lass. He carries his storm with him wherever he goes, any woman worth her juices can see that. He’s trouble and heartbreak and more besides. He hates himself, that one, and that type’s always bad for a woman to be around. You get beat up, or dragged down, one or t’other, with a man like him. I like a man who can laugh, myself.’ She sighed sadly. ‘Not that Davron wouldn’t be a good poke, mind—’

  Keris busied herself lifting the pot lid to stir the stew. ‘It’s no wonder you feel in need of the longest pilgrimage.’

  Corrian leered some more, still puffing, and not in the least fazed. Keris had not expected her to be.

  ~~~~~~~

  Over dinner Davron asked everyone to gather around and then told them what to expect the next day. None of it was good. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we meet our first ley line. It’s a small one, or it was back when it was mapped a month or two ago. But it’s new—it never used to exist here, and new lines are more unpredictable than old ones. Worse, it’s an offshoot directly from the Snarled Fist, and such lines can be powerful.’

  ‘What’s it called?’ The question came from Quirk. They all knew he was not in the least interested in the line’s name; he just needed to say something to cover his fear. The first ley line, small or not, was always the most dangerous for someone who was not ley-lit.

  ‘The mapmaker has given it the name of the Dancer.’

  ‘Can’t we ride around it?’

  Scow answered hastily before Davron, in exasperation, had time to give a sharp reply. He shook his maned head and said, ‘If we could, we would.’

  ‘Once we reach the ley line, I will escort you across, one at a time,’ Davron continued. ‘There is just one thing to remember: obey all orders, no matter how silly they seem. If I tell you to stand on your head and gesture a Chantry-praise, do it immediately and without question.’ He emptied the dregs from his mug on to the ground. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘As an after-dinner speech, that one seemed designed to wreck the digestion,’ Quirk muttered to Keris.

  Overhearing, Portron chided him, saying, ‘Perform your kineses, lad, perform the rituals, and you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Quirk, ‘trouble is, out here, how’s the Maker going to see them?’—but he waited until the chantor was out of earshot before he said it.

  ~~~~~~~

  Later that night, as Keris was passing through the camp on her way back from relieving herself away from the tents, a handful of words drifted out from Scow’s tent into the silence of the night: ‘But Margraf, would she know, do you think?’

  She stopped dead and turned her head towards the tent. Shadows cast on the canvas wall told her Scow, Meldor and Davron were all inside. One of them had spoken, but the words had been said so softly it was impossible to say whose voice had given them life.

  The conversation murmured on, indistinct and desultory.

  She turned away, irrationally sure the speaker had been referring to her, but it was not that which she found disturbing. It was the word Margraf.

  Once, there had been a single monarch of all Malinawar. A Margrave or a Margravine, he or she had been addressed by the h
onorific ‘Sire’. The monarch had vanished with the Rending and the coming of the Unstable, and now each stability had a Margrave, and each of the eight was addressed as Margraf. They commanded the Defenders and controlled the domain lords of their respective stabilities, but everyone knew that true power resided with Chantry’s Sanhedrin. What could a Margrave do, when every aspect of life was subject to the Rule, which he himself—as Commander of the Defenders—was bound to enforce? Two Hedrin from each stability combined to form the sixteen-person Sanhedrin, and it was they, interpreting the Holy Books, who said what was the Rule and what was not; it was they who in truth ruled what had once been Malinawar. The Margraves were the law enforcers, not the law-makers.

  None of it interested Keris much. All that concerned her now was that there were eight Margraves, and certainly none of them was sitting inside Scow’s tent. Who, then, had been addressed as Margraf? And why?

  Later, just as she was dropping off to sleep, she had a disquieting thought. What if the Minions of Chaos had some sort of pecking order in their ranks? What if the most important of them was addressed as Margraf?

  Davron? Or Meldor?

  Could Davron be a Minion? Her cat had been terrified of him... But Davron’s mount didn’t seem skittish when he rode it. Besides, he’d been well inside the stability when he had come to Kibbleberry. No Minion could do that. It was possible that a Minion could enter a border town for a few hours at a time. Piers had told her that he had heard of one or two such cases, but Kibbleberry wasn’t on the border.

  Her thoughts went on, troubled and confused. What about Meldor? A Minion would never be blind...would he?

  ~~~~~~~

  Keris and Portron were on guard duty together again that night. This time it was Meldor who came to wake her. Much to her surprise she realised that he had mounted guard alone. Sensing her astonishment he gave one of his enigmatic smiles and said, ‘In the dark, I do better than you do, you know. Be especially vigilant tonight, Keris; we are close to the ley line and the Wild are difficult when influenced by ley.’

  Difficult. She could have thought of a better word.

  She took her bow and arrows and her throwing knife and set off on a round of the camp, passing Portron walking in the opposite direction on the way. He did not look happy.

  Twice she saw shapes move out in the darkness and smelled the stench of the Wild; once both she and Portron caught a glimpse of lights like half a dozen huge fireflies twinkling amongst nearby rocks. Fireflies. Hadn’t Piers mentioned magical fireflies once? Portron dismissed the notion altogether. ‘That’s ley of some kind,’ he said, and his voice was edged with hate. ‘Minions using ley to light their way. They dance it out of their fingertips.’

  ‘Should we tell Davron Storre they are here?’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re no danger when they light their way. It’s when they’re as stealthy as rats in the kitchen you should fear. Keep an eye on the lights, by all means, but be watching the darkness more, for it’s there an attack comes from.’

  As he proceeded on his way, he tried to make his progress around the camp unpredictable, varying his speed, sometimes doubling back, sometimes stopping. She copied his style, realising how much more effective it was than a sentry’s steady tramp, and as she walked she tried to comfort herself with the thought that her father had rarely mounted guard at all. Travelling alone as he often did, it would not have been possible. But then, it was also easier to hide the camp of one man than that of a fellowship.

  This camp is certainly not hidden from Minion eyes...

  She felt the quiet menace drift in towards her, and shuddered. Circling the camp in the dark, jumping at every movement, seeing things where there was nothing to see, dreading what she did see, imagining every sound was an approaching creature of the Wild or a Minion, she spent the several hours of guard duty as tense as a lute string.

  Half an hour before the first dawn light, Graval emerged from his tent. He complained of stomach problems and made a dive for the camp perimeter. She barely had time to warn him not to go too far. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered back out of the darkness. ‘I’m not going any distance. First sign of trouble I’ll scream so loud I’ll wake the camp.’

  She worried though, especially as the sky was beginning to lighten before he returned. ‘What did you put in that damn stew?’ he grumbled as he passed her on the way back.

  Rarely had she been so glad to see the dawn.

  Davron was the first person up. He nodded in her direction and went to Scow’s tent, to check on his assistant’s foot, she supposed. Portron made signs to her from the other side of the camp, indicating he wanted to put an end to his guard duties in order to perform his morning kineses, those of the Obeisance devotions. She nodded her acknowledgement, and continued on her rounds.

  There wasn’t much to see yet. A ground mist hugged the land, blocking off any sight there might have been of the ley line. But she knew it was out there, somewhere. It came to her as a far off pulsing, neither sound nor vibration, but rather a thickness felt as an emotion. It did not remind her of the place where Scow had nearly lost his foot. She could not sense wrongness, but rather...excitement. She thrilled at its touch, and that shocked her.

  She turned away and circled the camp once more. By the time she’d returned to the same spot facing the ley line, the mist had retreated a little to uncover a group of ochre rocks some fifty paces away. Like much of the landscape of the Unstable, they were an unnatural shade, too bright to be normal. They crouched along the slope like animals about to spring on prey, bright brassy animals with block-like heads and solid haunches. She turned away, aware she was being fanciful, imagining things...

  And couldn’t resist turning back, to take another look.

  One of them had moved. It was flesh and blood, not stone. It had crept up the slope in the few seconds that her back had been turned. It had no eyes, no face, just a blank yellow mass for a head, yet she felt appallingly threatened. She unslung her bow from her back, fitted an arrow with fingers that trembled, grateful that her bow was strung and that she now wore the leather bracer on her arm as a matter of course.

  ‘Master Storre,’ she said, her voice penetrating and harsh, vibrant with an appeal for help.

  The animal leapt towards her. There was unexpected power in those block-like hindquarters. As the creature opened up in the first bound, she saw what there was to fear. The mass of its head was nothing more than rows of jagged teeth that meshed and unmeshed with crushing power in two lines across its face. No mouth: its whole face was toothed.

  She released the arrow. It thunked down into the earth, penetrating the soil just in front of where she expected the animal to land, some thirty paces away. A second and a third arrow followed in quick succession. The beast skidded to a halt, its huge paws furrowing in the dirt, its face ending up only inches away from the embedded arrows.

  It crouched looking at her—if indeed it could look. There were no visible eyes, no nostrils, no ears: just those teeth interlocking like the jaws of a giant nutcracker. She expanded her awareness. Davron now stood at her side with a throwing knife held by the blade, raised to throw. Scow lumbered up on her other side, bandaged foot and all, battle axe in hand, ready to let fly. The three of them stood, poised, waiting.

  And the creature backed down. Its companions slunk away still looking like blocks of stone, hunkering off on plate-sized paws with their stomachs scraping the ground; the leader stood facing the camp for a moment longer, then joined them.

  There was a collective sigh of relief. When Keris turned it was to see everyone else standing behind them in various states of undress. Her call had been more penetrating than she’d hoped.

  Baraine lowered his own bow and glanced contemptuously at her arrows sticking out of the soil. ‘Trust a woman to miss.’

  ‘She didn’t miss,’ Davron said in a level voice. ‘Have you forgotten what I said about it being unwise to kill the Wild? A death in the pack only makes the others v
indictive. Far better to frighten them off.’ He looked around the group. ‘Well, what are you all staring at? Excitement’s over. Go have your breakfast and break camp. Keris, you go fetch your arrows. You don’t want to waste any.’

  They all turned away, leaving Keris feeling oddly crestfallen. Fighting off the Wild might have been second nature to Davron and Scow, but it was still new to her. She had not expected thanks, exactly—but, well, something. She sighed and unscrewed the tension on her bow. Then, as if he’d heard her thoughts, Davron turned around and came back. He stood looking at her for a moment and she felt an absurd desire to have him take her in his arms and pat her on the back and say, There, there, there’s no need to cry.

  Instead she continued to attend to her bow, dry-eyed.

  ‘You did well,’ he said at last. He sounded diffident, embarrassed, as if he had forgotten how to praise and the words no longer came easily. ‘Who taught you to use a bow?’

  ‘Piers Kaylen.’

  ‘Are you any good with that throwing knife?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not really. If I can have two or three practice shots first, at the same target from the same place, then I have no problems. But that’s not much good in an emergency, is it?’

  He gave a grunt of assent. ‘It’s not your distance judgement that’s at fault,’ he said, ‘not if your archery is always so good. It’s just knowing how many turns of the knife to the distance. I could probably teach you, given the time.’ He looked down at the knife he was still holding by the blade. ‘A thumb’s width to the left of your left-hand arrow,’ he said. ‘Four and a half turns with this knife.’ He let fly casually, with only the briefest of glances at his target. It buried itself in the soil, a thumb’s width to the left of her arrows.