Havenstar

by Glenda Larke

  ~~~~~~~

  Davron sighed. ‘Suspicious as a kitten faced with a pack of dogs,’ he said.

  ‘Do you blame her?’ Scow asked.

  Davron laughed and shook his head. ‘No. Creation, what a fellowship trip she’s had for her pilgrimage! Just two weeks into the Unstable, and we’ve had enough excitement for half a dozen trips. It’s a wonder she hasn’t been demanding her money back.’

  Rossel raised an eyebrow. ‘That bad, eh?’

  ‘Worse,’ said Meldor. ‘Believe me, this news of new fixed features is the only good thing we’ve heard in weeks. Thanks for bringing it to us, Ross.’

  ‘Good luck that I found you. Where do you want me next?’

  ‘I think—I think the time has come for us all to go ... home.’

  ‘Home, eh? I’ve no quarrel with that. Tomorrow you can tell me why you look so glum about it, but right now, if you fellows will excuse me, I’m for bed as well. I’m whacked. I’ve had a horse under me so long today I can’t get my knees together.’ He deposited some coins on the table and headed for the stairs.

  Scow signalled the waitress for another drink and glanced across to where the haltkeeper still sat. ‘What do you think Pickle told Keris?’ he asked Meldor.

  ‘The details of what happened to Piers, I suppose.’

  Scow nodded thoughtfully. ‘Maybe that’s all she ever came here for. Maybe she doesn’t know about the maps. Maybe they’ve all gone, if ever the Mantis brought them here to start with.’

  Davron’s face hardened. ‘Of course he did. Cissi Woodrug believed they were here. She questioned the Mantis, who put her on to Piers because he’d already sold them to the mapmaker. It’s logical, isn’t it? The Mantis knew we were hard on his heels. Maybe he even knew the Unmaker had got a whiff of the maps’ existence and wanted to destroy them. He meets Piers and he knows a mapmaker would pay the earth for a trompleri map—’

  ‘But neither he nor Piers have them when Cissi the Minion looks,’ said Meldor.

  Davron gave a low laugh. ‘Maker, she must have been furious when she realised she’d been a shade too hasty in killing the only two men who might know where they were.’

  ‘If only we’d waited longer,’ Scow said, ‘instead of assuming that the Mantis was still ahead of us!’

  ‘None of that,’ Meldor said. ‘We did what we thought was best at the time. We weren’t to know we’d missed him. The point is that the maps were probably passed to Piers, and Piers hid them somewhere. Somewhere here, in the Halt.’

  ‘And left some sort of message among his things that told his daughter about them,’ Scow suggested, ‘else why is she here, and how did she know the name Kereven?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Meldor agreed. ‘I think the time has come for us to talk to Keris Kaylen.’

  ‘Talk?’ Davron asked, with a grim laugh. ‘She won’t tell you a thing! Use ley, Meldor. Force her.’

  ‘Davron, Davron, there are better ways. She’s a—’

  ‘She’s a foolish child trying to ride a horse that’s too big for her, out of greed, I imagine. Probably thinks she can make a fortune out of the map. Doesn’t she realise her father died because of it? Or maybe she doesn’t care.’ He drained his mug and stood up. ‘I’ll be in my room if you want me.’

  Meldor gave the faintest of smiles as Davron disappeared upstairs. ‘Do you think, Sammy, that just possibly our friend has found Kaylen a shade more attractive than he wanted to?’

  ‘And that’s why he’s acting like a mule with a headache lately?’ Scow was astonished. ‘She’s not much to look at. Ley-life, Meldor, why would he hanker after a mouse when he married a woman like Alyss of Tower? Alyss is as beautiful as a summer’s day is long!’

  ‘A mouse? Is that how you see Keris Kaylen, Sammy?’

  Scow swilled the last of his brew around in the bottom of his mug. ‘Well, not quite. Her teeth are too sharp for a mouse, perhaps.’

  ‘Go on.’

  They both knew that they did not speak of Keris’s looks. ‘She is young, but hardly a child. A woman who hasn’t yet been touched, let’s say. Wants very much to be strong and has many elements of a rebel, but lacks the real strength of a true dissident. Yet. At the moment she’s—a mixture, I think. Capable in many ways, but unsure of herself. Scared of the Unstable, but refusing to show it. Swings between being confident and feeling insecure, between being excited by adventure and being terrified of it, between knowing what she wants, and not knowing at all.’ He grinned and his tongue lolled out. ‘Pretty much as we were at that age, I suppose, and nothing age won’t cure, one way or another.’

  ‘I think perhaps you do her an injustice. Most of us weren’t like that, not at her age. She’s lived all her life under the Rule, but it has chafed, and she’s angry. She’s already questioning. We didn’t question until we’d lived without the Rule, until we’d seen other ways, heard other ideas. She’s special, Sammy.’

  Scow nodded thoughtfully. ‘You think she’s already questioning Chantry? She still spends most of her time with the chantor.’

  ‘And who else is she going to spend it with? Corrian? Graval? I don’t think she’s too enamoured of Chantry. If Portron was the usual sort of rule-chantor, I don’t think she would’ve spent five minutes in his company. Portron just had the good sense to see that preaching to her wouldn’t gain him anything. He may be a true believer, but he hates contention, religious or otherwise. At the first sign of disagreement or unpleasantness he backs away.’

  Scow smiled. ‘Yes, I’ve noticed.’

  ‘I think I’ll have a word with our host over there. If my senses tell me correctly, he’s still there, and half awash, I’d say.’

  Scow looked across to Pickle. ‘Definitely half sunk. Potent stuff, this brew of his.’

  Pickle looked up as Meldor came across to his table and his green face sagged a little deeper into depression. ‘Damn it all, Margraf,’ he said, ‘have you any idea of how hard it’s becoming to get staff around here? Anyone with any ambition or gumption finds out about Havenstar, and the next thing I know, they’re off. And it’s all your fault!’

  ~~~~~~~

  Up in her room, Keris was going through her things, sorting out clothes and gear to be washed or repaired, and checking the fletching on her arrows. It was late, but she was too frightened to think of going to bed yet. Her thoughts were going round and round in circles. Piers—one of the most competent of all Unstablers—had been killed right in this building, surrounded by Defenders and canny Untouchables like Pickle. Killed by a Minion and her pet. For a map.

  The map I now have in my baggage.

  She didn’t know what to do. Hide the map somewhere? Destroy it? Keep it and assume that the Unmaker’s Minions had no way of finding out she had it? It’s very presence terrified her. She even wondered if the Unmaker had tried to subvert her for some reason connected with it, or whether she’d been just a random choice.

  She had no answer, and no one to ask.

  She emptied out her quiver on to the bed so that she could check over her arrows, and a pile of sand came with them. ‘Tarnation,’ she muttered. Where in the name of Creation had that come from? She must have laid the quiver down on the ground at one stage, and accidentally scooped up some sand into it. She took up a pinch and put it in the palm of her hand. She fingered it, thinking that it looked like a powdered form of the soluble iron salts she used as a basis for her inks. She was running short of it, so instead of throwing it away she poured it into one of her empty paint pots instead.

  She was stowing the pot away with her mapping things when someone knocked at her door.

  He opened the door to ’em—

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked, her voice several tones higher than normal.

  ‘Meldor. I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘Do I have any choice?’

  He chuckled. ‘Only about the time. It can wait until tomorrow if you are tired.’

  She opened the door. ‘And then spend all night worrying a
bout what it is you’re going to order me to do this time?’ she asked. ‘No thanks.’ She didn’t know whether she was relieved or dismayed to see that he had brought both Davron and Scow with him.

  ‘A drink?’ Scow asked and showed her a wine skin and several of Pickle’s pewter mugs. ‘This is good Eighth Stab red, not Pickle’s gut-wrenching brew.’

  She’d never drunk alcohol in her life, but it suddenly seemed a good time to start. ‘Thank you.’ She waved a hand towards her bed. ‘The accommodation is somewhat cramped, but take a seat.’

  Scow poured wine into a mug and handed it over. She sipped tentatively, uncertain whether she liked it.

  ‘We want to know why you chose to come here, to Pickle’s Halt,’ Meldor said, sitting down. Davron settled next to him; Scow joined her on the floor, back to the wall.

  ‘I would have thought that was perfectly obvious,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Davron said. ‘You didn’t come here just because your father died here—’

  Meldor frowned at him and interrupted. ‘We believe just before he died your father was given some items that belonged to us. We want them back.’

  ‘You were looking for my father before he even arrived here.’

  ‘Not exactly. We were looking for the Unbound who also died here that night, the Mantis. Look, let me begin at the beginning.’ He accepted a mug of wine from Scow. ‘We had a friend. A man named Kereven Deverli, a young mapmaker. He was a talented young man; brilliant. Better, perhaps than your father even. He didn’t make standard maps for pilgrims though. He was more interested in—well, in trompleri maps. I’m guessing you know what they are?’

  She gave a curt nod.

  ‘He believed the best way to make the Unstable safe for pilgrims was to rediscover trompleri techniques. Davron and I know more about ley than any man alive, and he came to us because he thought we might be able to help him. Well, we did help him. We found him a safe place to stay, we paid him and in return he promised to let us know if he uncovered the secret of the technique. And apparently he did. He made a number of trompleri maps. He sent word to us, but unfortunately before we arrived to see what he’d done, the Unmaker discovered what he was doing. A tainted traitor was dispatched to kill him and destroy all the maps.

  ‘We believe some maps survived. How many we don’t know. It could have been just one. Anyway, it—or they—were spirited away by Deverli’s assistant, the Mantis.’

  She listened without comment, sipping her drink. She tried to sense whether he spoke the truth, but couldn’t judge. How much eyes normally betray a speaker, she thought. But his blind eyes tell me nothing.

  ‘If the Mantis had then brought the maps to us, he might still be alive,’ Meldor continued. ‘Unhappily, he tried to sell them. We heard about that, and Minions got to hear of it as well. They reported back to Lord Carasma, who sent Cissi Woodrug after him. He fled as far and as fast as he could. We came after him as well, but somehow missed him. We thought he might be heading for Piers, believing that a mapmaker would buy such maps, so we headed for the First after leaving here. Davron went to Kibbleberry, as you know, but Piers was not there. By then, in fact, he was dead. When we found out that, we all came back here, but could find nothing. We were prepared to think that the maps had been irretrievably lost, so we decided to return home. Then, when we were gathering together a fellowship in Hopen Grat, you turned up.’

  ‘And we began to wonder just what was bringing you to Pickle’s Halt,’ Davron added. ‘And came to the conclusion it was the maps.’

  Keris looked from one to the other and shook her head in wonderment. ‘Let’s for a moment suppose that were true,’ she said, ‘and I certainly don’t admit that it is, what in Creation’s ordering makes you think I would voluntarily tell you where the map—maps—could be found, or what happened to them, let alone hand them over to someone who is bonded to the Unmaker? You’re all out of your tainted little minds!’

  ‘We had nothing to do with your father’s death,’ Meldor said. ‘In fact, that was the last thing we wanted. With Deverli dead, we need another skilled mapmaker to learn the secret of trompleri maps. We hoped to have the maps to show Piers, and to ask him to discover how they are made.’

  Scow leant over and refilled her mug.

  She said, ‘And if he had, do you think he would have told you, just like that? My father was a moral man. He would never have helped anyone who had dealings with the Unmaker.’

  ‘Oh damn it all,’ Davron snapped at her, ‘we want the secret so we can defeat the Unmaker, not help him!’

  ‘Defeat the Unmaker? Defeat Lord Carasma?’ She stared at him. ‘Who do you think you are? The Maker?’

  Scow stifled a laugh. Davron threw up his hands in frustration.

  And someone screamed, loudly.

  They all turned their heads to listen. The screaming—several voices now—grew louder and more frantic. Keris’s heart lurched painfully.

  ‘Downstairs, in the common room,’ Meldor said as they all jumped to their feet. There was a moment of confused congestion as everyone tried to leave the room at once, then Davron shot out, closely followed by the others. Keris—having paused to snatch up her knife—was last.

  The screaming may have come mostly from the common room, but the cause of the panic was in the entrance hallway, where Portron had been holding his kinesis meeting, and they came upon it the moment they turned the corner on the stairs. They halted as one.

  Portron was lying on the floor, propping himself up groggily on one elbow. His bald patch was streaming with blood. Pickle was in the doorway to the common room, blocking it with his bulk. Graval was at the front door of the Halt, trying to lift the beam that was the bar to the door. He could not budge it. It would have taken Pickle to raise it, or perhaps several ordinary men.

  There was something strange about Graval. His face was contorted with agony. He kept on releasing the bar to slap his clothing. Nothing was visible there, yet he hit wildly at his coat and trouser legs as if he wanted to put out smouldering sparks of fire.

  Pickle took a step towards him, but Graval gestured with a hand and a band of colour distorted the air between the two men. The haltkeeper staggered back as if he had been punched.

  And all the while, something was throwing itself against the door trying to shatter it from the outside. Each time the door shuddered, people in the common room screamed. Keris bit back a strong desire to shriek herself. Whatever was trying to break in had to be huge. The thick slab door was juddering, bending under the blows. The hinges—massive chunks of iron—showed signs of stress. The bar itself seemed to be holding, but the brackets that kept it in place had already cracked. In between blows, the sound of splintering wood was audible to them all. The creature was not only trying to break the door down, but was also clawing the wood, shredding it from the outside.

  Scow stared at the brackets as the cracks widened. ‘Chaosblast!’

  Graval shook an agitated finger at Portron. ‘You did this!’ he screeched. ‘You with your endless kinesis! Oh, Lord help me! I cannot stand it—’ He turned back to the door, throwing his whole weight under the bar in one last desperate attempt to raise it. ‘Pet, pet, come pet...help me...’

  The creature outside the door redoubled its onslaught.

  Pickle turned to Davron in outrage. ‘You! You brought that creature here. Into my halt! Another Minion, here, in my house, with his Wild—’

  But none of them needed Pickle’s anguished accusation to know what Graval was, or what was on the other side of the door. Keris felt her body go icy cold. She’d stopped several steps higher up the stairs than Davron and Meldor, but she was no more safe than any of them right then. If the Wild broke in, people would die. She made her decision and acted all in one fluid second that seemed to stretch forever, and knew even as she threw her knife that she was going to kill a man.

  ~~~~~~~

  Chapter Fourteen

  And the Minions of Lord Carasma gladly do his
bidding in the world he cannot reach, for he is tied to the ley from whence he draws his power. And therein, poor pilgrim, lies both your despair and your hope. Remember with hope that the power of the Unmaker is finite; remember with despair that the Minion and his pet are the monsters of Chaos that will dog your footsteps on their master’s bidding.

  —Pilgrims XX: 32: 6

  Graval remained standing for a moment, almost as if he had been transfixed against the massive slabs of the door by the knives that protruded from his throat.

  Keris stared, uncomprehending. Knives. Two of them. Side by side. Only one of them was hers.

  Graval was not pinned to the door. That was an illusion, soon broken as he slowly slid down to his knees and toppled, already dead. There was an initial fountain of blood as the knives dislodged, then the flow thickened, soaking into his clothes, oozing onto the floor.

  Hot raspberry jam clotting in the pot; blood gelling on the flagstones.

  The hammering at the door was frenzied.

  Keris felt her own knees going. She lowered her eyes to Davron, to find that he had turned to look up at her. His face was expressionless. ‘Not bad for someone who said they can’t be accurate with a knife throw.’ The words seemed neutral, bland. Ridiculous. They had just killed someone...

  He didn’t wait for a reply but grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up the stairs. ‘Get your bow,’ he said urgently. ‘That pet might not give up just because its master’s dead.’ At the head of the stairs he peeled off in the direction of his room. She ran for her own, propelled half by his parting push, half by her own fear. Her hands shook as she gathered up quiver and bowstave, as she fumbled to string the bow. The thudding blows at the door continued. They came down the stairs together, already fitting arrows to the string, suddenly comrades, linked by a killing, by the knowledge that they were fighting for their lives.