Havenstar

by Glenda Larke

  Damn the lot of you, she thought in a fury. I won’t ever forget.

  ~~~~~~~

  Chapter Thirteen

  And the Minions of Chaos serve the Lord in all things, with their Wild Ones tied to them by chains we cannot see, Pets and Master both glorifying in the Lord’s dread service. Beware, Pilgrim, for I say unto you, there is naught you can do against such servants if Carasma has sent them after you. Fall instead to your knee, hand on heart, and make your peace with Creation, that you may one day be at one with That Which Was Created.

  —Pilgrims V: 22: 6

  ‘You’re Piers’ daughter? By all that’s dark in Chaos, what are you doing here, girlie?’

  The large green troll blinked at Keris from across the other side of the table in the halt common room, while she resisted the temptation to respond to the ‘girlie’ by calling him froggie. Instead she asked mildly, trying not to feel five years old, ‘Why not, Master Pickle?’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t have liked it for a start. This is not a pilgrim trail for ordinary people, lass, at least not from the direction of the First.’

  ‘I’m not particularly ordinary. I’m ley-lit, a master mapmaker’s daughter. Piers’ daughter. That counts for something. I came because I want to know how he died. And why.’ She fingered the end of the staff propped up against the table. It was Piers’ blackwood staff that he’d taken everywhere with him and she had brought it down from her room on an impulse, thinking that perhaps she would give it to Pickle. The wood was warm and smooth under her hand. Comforting.

  ‘Krissy, Krissy, what does it matter how he died? He died, and a fine man he was. Remember him for that. I’ll get you included in a party of Chantry dignitaries or some other suitable escort heading north for the First—’

  You wouldn’t say that if I was Thirl. ‘Thank you. I’d appreciate that. But I’ll be going to the Second, not the First. And I’m not going anywhere until I have a few answers, Master Pickle.’ She clutched the staff a little tighter, seeking reassurance.

  Pickle spent a moment gazing at her, then looked into his drink, considering. She took the opportunity to glance around the common room.

  Davron, Scow and Meldor were together as usual, talking to another Unstabler. They were all drinking some of the local spirit that was the end result of a distilling plant in Pickle’s cellar, its basic ingredient known only to Pickle, which was probably just as well. Corrian had already disappeared upstairs with a toothless trader known as Gasp the Smell. Graval Hurg and the Chameleon were nowhere to be seen, and Portron, apparently remembering what Davron had once said about kineses in his presence, had retreated to the stair hall to hold a small devotions session. The only other occupants of the common room were a group of Defenders morosely regarding their glasses and eyeing—even more morosely—the tainted waitresses.

  ‘Why should I give you any answers?’ Pickle asked finally. ‘You wouldn’t like ’em if you heard ’em.’

  ‘Because Piers was your friend and I’m his daughter.’

  He stared at her again, still considering. She stared back, refusing to be intimidated. He leaned his bulk across the table towards her, and the slab-top groaned. ‘Stubborn,’ he growled.

  She nodded, and did not lean away from him, even though his breath did smell of tebblewitz yams and garlic.

  ‘Your Dad said you had twice the gumption of your brother. Whatsisname—Tirl.’

  ‘Thirl.’

  ‘He stayed at home, I suppose.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘All right, lassie, I’ll give you the full story, but you won’t like it.’ Blandishments had not worked so now he was aiming to punish her recalcitrance. At least she knew she was going to get the truth, with no glossing over the unpleasantness of a messy death.

  He settled back in his especially reinforced chair. ‘Your Dad had dinner with me the day he arrived, everything as normal, although he’d had an unusually rough trip. After dinner, he went on up to his room to avoid a kinesis session. Several of the ley-lit followed him up to buy maps.

  ‘Some time that evening, two ... creatures climbed the stockade wall into the yard. A Minion and her pet Wild. My stableboy was killed. His head was bitten off and his heart eaten out of his body. The guard at the gate must have heard something and went to investigate. He was killed too. Ripped open and all his guts spilled into the hay. The intruder and the pet then climbed up to the second storey and entered the building through a shuttered window, by ripping the shutters off their hinges. Nobody seems to have noticed the noise. The room was empty at the time and most of the halt guests were still downstairs.

  ‘They then sniffed along the passage until they came to a room occupied by an unbound man called the Mantis. He was a stranger around here, and we don’t know much about him. He opened the door to ’em, poor fellow. What exactly happened after that, we don’t know. Certainly he was tortured. His throat was crushed at some point, perhaps to stop him screaming. Later, we don’t know how much later, he was killed. His room was thoroughly ransacked.

  ‘Then the bastards went to Piers’ room. Piers put up a bit of a struggle. Nothing much, you understand, but by this time people had heard things and were beginning to come out of their rooms asking what was going on. I was called from down in the common room. I came upstairs, and saw there was blood seeping out under the door of the Mantis’s room. I opened the door and found him. By then the Wild must have killed Piers as well. I’m not quite sure how. You can take your pick: his neck was broken, his ribs were stove in, and something had taken a great bite out of his neck—maybe after he was dead—and drunk his blood.’

  Keris looked down at her hands. She had been moving a pile of crumbs left on the table from one place to another. He died, she told herself. How doesn’t matter. How doesn’t matter—

  But it did. Terribly.

  Her hand strayed to caress the top of Piers’ staff again. ‘Go on,’ she said, and the huskiness of her voice, the unbearable lump in her throat, wanted to spill over into helpless tears. Girlie be blasted, she thought. I won’t act the way he expects me to!

  He went on, ‘After I found the Mantis, I looked around for Piers, not knowing he was already dead. Damn good man to have in a fight with those knives of his, Piers was, and I was pretty sure whatever had done the Mantis in was still around. We were all out there in the passage making enough noise to wake a hibernating puckleworm, yet Piers’ wasn’t there. That wasn’t like him…’ He sighed. ‘That was when that thing came bursting out of Piers’ room. The Wild, with its maws all covered in blood. Piers’ blood, dripping down from its mouth and matting its curls of wool. Horrible thing. Sort of like a pear-shaped dog with talons and too many teeth for its mouth. They were stuck out all over the place, I remember. Couldn’t close his jaws over them...’

  This time it was Pickle’s voice that was husky. He took a drink from his mug. ‘The Minion came next. A bitch with reddish hair, the colour of moggie fur. Name of Cissi Woodrug.’

  ‘You knew her?’

  ‘Yep. Friend of mine once, back in the days before she was corrupted. Ley-lit daughter of a courier who took her with him on his trips after her mother died. Hard as nails was Cissi, but cute. Very cute in a brittle kind of way. Knew the Unstable like most people know their own hearths.’

  He paused but she didn’t say anything.

  ‘She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Lo there, Pick. Long time no see.” Piers’ blood was all over her. If there was any justice in the world she would have been struck dead, right there and then, just with the look I gave her. “You going to kill me too, Ciss?” I asked.

  ‘ “Nah,” she said. “Next time maybe. I reckon you’ll suffer a bit over what happened to your friend the mapmaker, so why cut short a man’s suffering? That’s not the way of a Minion.” She was alive with ley; it crackled all over her. Not that I could see it, mind, but that’s what the ley-lit said afterwards, she sparkled with ley like cracklewood in a fireplace. I reckon that’s
what gave her protection against the stability of the halt. She and that pet of hers had somehow absorbed enough ley to shield themselves.

  ‘ “What did the Unmaker have against Piers’?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. “Gather everyone in the building in the common room,” she ordered, imperious-like. Well, we did. We didn’t have all that much choice. That pet of hers winkled everyone out of the rooms, right down to the cookboy, poor lad. Several of the Defenders who were here then tried to rush her and the animal. The bitch’s dog-pet was too fast for most of them, and the man who almost got to her with his pike, well, Cissi sort of swept him aside with the weapon in her hand. He let go of the pike with a yell you could’ve heard halfway to the Fist. His hands were burned to the bone.’

  He gave an involuntary glance at a spot in the middle of the room. ‘Men bleed a lot when they’ve been tore apart,’ he said softly, ‘and she was right. Sometimes you suffer more when you live to remember.’ He sighed and shrugged. ‘What more is there to say? She lined us up and asked us one by one if any of us knew anything about some map or maps that the Mantis had, or that Piers had. Special maps, she called them. Well, no one did, and I reckon that was the truth. When a slobbering beast with his teeth still dripping blood looked up from what he was eating and licked his chops, and that bitch looked down into the depths of your soul with her red eyes, I figure no one could have lied to save their old granny, let alone a map.’

  He took another drink, draining his mug this time. ‘And that’s it, lass. Cissi left us. Walked out with that beast, calm as you please, although I think the stability was getting to them both a bit by that time. She was fidgeting. That pet of hers took the cookboy with him as a late night snack. He was the eighth. Oh yes, and there was the baby too. Chaosdamn, how could I have forgotten? It died as well, just because it looked tasty, I reckon. It was swallowed whole, gulped down just like that, still crying its heart out.’

  They were silent for a long time after that. Pickle ordered himself another drink and sipped it, but Keris just sat, hands cupped around the end of the staff, so nauseated she didn’t dare open her mouth.

  ‘Tell you one funny thing,’ Pickle said after a while. ‘We found the ownership papers for Piers’ horse in the Mantis’s room, and for the Mantis’s horse in Piers’ room. Never did figure that one out. Anyway, I put the scrip for Ygraine in with Piers’ things when I packed ’em up to sent them to you. Piers’ things had been ransacked too, of course, and the room itself torn to bits. Chaosblast of a mess.’

  ‘Did you ever find out anything about the Mantis? Who he was, where he’d come from?’

  ‘Well, of course I asked everyone who passed through for the next few weeks. I wanted to know if he had any family or anything; anyone who ought to be told. An Unbound from down south said he’d known him. The Mantis was a loner, he said, in service from time to time with a mapmaker from the south. A man called Deverli. And that was all I ever found out about the poor fellow. Not much of an epitaph, is it? Maker knows what his real name was.

  ‘Tell you another odd thing, though, Keris me girl, that little group over there—’ he nodded towards Meldor, Scow and Davron ‘—they were through here a day or two before either the Mantis or Piers arrived, and they were looking for the Mantis. And they asked after Piers too. I told ’em I reckoned Piers would have been heading back to Kibbleberry by then. It was late in the season, after all. They left; the Mantis and Piers arrived a day or two later. But I guess they’ve already told you what all that was about.’

  She felt the muscles in her face tighten. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t say they’ve mentioned it.’

  ‘They were back a couple of weeks later as well. Asked me about what happened. Wanted to go through the Mantis’s things. I let ’em—didn’t seem much point not to. There wasn’t anything of value. Wanted to see Piers’ gear as well, but I’d long since sent that off with Blue Ketter. They also spoke to the Kitten. She’s the chambermaid here. The one with the whiskers. It was her that packed up Piers’ baggage. I just didn’t have the heart. He was a good friend, Piers.’

  She looked up from the pile of crumbs. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now, Master Pickle.’

  He nodded. ‘Told you that you wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I didn’t expect to like it. But I still wanted to know.’

  ‘We buried him outside the stockade wall. But, you know how it is.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ The Unstable would have wiped away every scrap of evidence there’d ever been a grave. And, according to Chantry, Piers would never be at one with That Which Was Created. Instead of being returned to Creation, his body was now part of Chaos, and his soul—well, whether it would ever find its way through to the Maker was a question to which nobody knew the answer.

  Chantry said everyone must make their pilgrimage. Chantry excluded the unwanted to the Unstable. Chantry refused to allow the Unbound back into the stabilities, even for the short time they could bear to be there. Yet Chantry also told you it was a terrible thing to die in the Unstable. Damn Chantry, damn them all.

  She stood up abruptly and picked up the staff. She knew now she would never be able to part with it. ‘Goodnight, Master Pickle.’

  He nodded sadly and began to play with the heap of crumbs she’d made.

  To leave the room she had to go past Davron’s table, but he reached out to touch her sleeve as she passed. ‘Keris, there’s someone here I’d like you to meet.’ He indicated the stranger at the table. He was a small, bright-eyed man wearing the rough leathers so preferred by Unstablers. ‘This is Rossel,’ Davron said. ‘He’s a peddler—’

  ‘—Of pins and needles, string, thread, hobnails, charms, scissors, whetstones and knives,’ the man said. ‘If you have any needs, lass—’

  She smiled at him. ‘Not at the moment. I’m Keris.’

  ‘—Kaylen,’ Davron added, ignoring her instinctive gesture of annoyance at his giving her full name. ‘Piers’ daughter. I wanted you to hear what he has to say, Keris. There is something odd happening to the south, and I wondered what you, as a mapmaker’s daughter, might make of it.’

  Rossel nodded and dropped his peddler’s demeanour as swiftly as his spiel. He may be a peddler now, she decided as she listened, but once he was much more than that. He spoke like an educated man; the cheery bonhomie of a peddler had suddenly became the inquisitive intelligence of someone more used to research than selling. She wasn’t surprised: most of the excluded had held jobs vastly different to the ones that earned them a living in the Unstable.

  ‘It’s good news, we hope,’ he said, bright eyes fixed on hers. ‘There have been a number of patches of stability, fixed features, popping up out of nowhere. Seven to be exact, that we know of. Down near the Eighth Stability.’

  ‘How big are they?’ she asked and sat down on the chair Davron proffered. She hadn’t intended to stay, but all her emotional fatigue vanished at the idea that new stabilities were appearing. Hope, she thought. Hope, at last—

  ‘Oh, not that large. Larger than the old fixed features, though. All more or less the same size. I haven’t seen them myself, but from what I hear they are all about a mile long and not quite as wide. And all with edges ruled as straight as a sober man heading for his bed on his wedding night. From what I’ve been able to find out, they all appeared around about the same time. But why, and how, we don’t know.’

  ‘Did anyone see them appear?’

  ‘Not so far as we can find out. There was a camp near one of them and the people there said they heard a funny noise during the night, there was a slight earth tremor accompanied by a flash of light bright enough to illuminate the inside of their tents. Then, when they woke in the morning, there it was on their doorstep, so to speak: a fixed feature.’

  ‘If only we could find out how it was done. And by whom. Or by what,’ Scow said softly.

  ‘If only we could replicate it,’ Rossel said. ‘There’s one not-so-good thing about them, though. The tainted don’t like them. The sa
y they start feeling sick if they enter one for long.’

  ‘In that case, they may be more like an ordinary stability, rather than a fixed feature,’ Davron said with a quick frown.

  ‘I don’t know what could have made them,’ she said. ‘I’ve often wondered what caused fixed features. Some people say that they’re only remnants of the old Margravate, just as the eight stabilities are. But why then do they always have straight edges? My father took me once to the huge Chantry library in Drumlin to see the map they keep there, under glass. It supposedly dates back to the days shortly after the Rending. There are no fixed features marked on it at all, not one. Which seems to indicate they were something that developed later.’

  ‘And unfortunately, as we all know,’ added Meldor, ‘that post-Rending period in our history was one of terrible turmoil, mass starvation and so on. Records were lost, momentous events weren’t even recorded... I doubt whether we’ll find the answer by looking back.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t be much help. The best I could suggest would be that all the new areas are marked on a map—accurately, mind—to see if there is any clue provided by their relative positions or their orientation. If it turns out that they are randomly scattered, I don’t know what else to suggest.’ She stopped speaking, suddenly aware that she was giving useful information to people who may not have the best interests of the Unstable at heart. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m tired. I think I’ll turn in. Glad to have met you, Master Rossel.’ Before any of them could protest or detain her, she was gone.