by Glenda Larke
‘You no longer worship the Maker?’ she asked, and wondered if he had turned to the Unmaker instead.
‘On the contrary, I worship him every day of my life. It is Chantry I no longer believe in. Chantry and the Rule. Not to mention the idiocy of kinesis. But this is not what I came to talk to you about.’
‘Still trying to pry information out of her, I see?’ Davron, appearing at her elbow with Scow. He laid an arrow on the table in front of her plate and Scow drew up two chairs for them to sit down. Both men were dressed in riding clothes.
Keris picked up the arrow and turned it over in her hands. ‘This is mine.’
‘That’s right,’ Davron said. ‘You left it lying around in the chest of a rather nasty animal last night.’
‘You went after that thing?’
‘Scow and I, yes. This morning. Found it dead a mile or so into the Roughs. He was already being disintegrated by the Unstable, but we did manage to salvage the arrows. Mine finally did the trick, I fancy. I got him in the eye; more luck than skill, I’m afraid. Yours was lodged in his chest-plate, which helped to weaken him. Dangerous shot to make that, though. Pets are often reinforced there—with fur, scales, thickened skin or whatever. Better to go for the throat, or the underarm or the groin.’ He gave a sudden grin. ‘As I was trying to do.’
A waitress came by and dumped some mugs of char and a plateful of food in front of them. Davron helped himself and passed the plate to Scow. ‘And now, Keris, it’s reckoning time. About the maps—’
‘I didn’t come to Pickle’s Halt to find a trompleri map,’ she said carefully. ‘If you’ll think back, you’ll know I wasn’t intending to come here at all at first. I was booked to travel to the Second.’
Meldor gave Davron an inquiring glance and the guide nodded, remembering. ‘What made you change your mind?’ he asked.
‘My brother. He came to Hopen Grat looking for me. You were leaving that morning; the guide to the Second wasn’t going for a day or two.’
‘You were running away from your brother? Why?’ Meldor asked.
‘Because I didn’t want to be branded as a thief.’
‘Ah,’ he said in sudden comprehension. ‘The crossings-horses. Of course.’
‘And a few other things. My dowry money. Mapping equipment, camping equipment. All legally my brother’s. He wasn’t going to use them; he didn’t want to be a mapmaker. I did. He was going to bribe the local Rule Office so that he could become a tavern keeper. He wanted me to marry a friend of his. So I ran away from home. I knew I could never be a mapmaker of course, but I wanted to go to my uncle in Salient in the Second. When Thirl, that’s my brother, came after me, I decided to go with you instead. I wanted to speak to Pickle about my father’s death anyway, but most of all I needed a quick passage out of Hopen Grat. I intend going to the Second Stab now.’
Davron settled back in his chair with a sigh. ‘So much for all our hopes. The trompleri maps really are gone, lost...’
‘And so is our only hope to find a mapmaker who might have been able to duplicate Deverli’s work,’ Meldor added. ‘There’s no one in any of the Stabs who has Piers’ imagination.’
‘Imagination?’ she asked without thinking. ‘My father was a practical man, not an imaginative one.’
‘Not imaginative?’ Davron raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘Of course he was! Why, you have only to look at his maps—’
Suddenly she was tired of hiding her talents, and she could not even be bothered to think through the implications of the confession she was about to make. She said acidly, ‘My father was a rank traditionalist when it comes to mapmaking. Mind you, he was probably one of the best surveyors who ever lived and the accuracy of his maps was phenomenal, but he would never have altered the format one brushstroke from his father’s and his grandfather’s day if it had been left up to him.’
They all stared at her. It was Davron who broke the silence. He gave a low chuckle of appreciation. ‘It was you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been drawing all Piers’ maps for the past five years! All the coloured ones were yours. All the revolutionary changes in style and presentation, they were yours.’
She nodded and stood up. ‘Thank you for returning my arrow, Master Davron. I’m sorry I’m not able to help you with regard to the map. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.’
~~~~~~~
Scow and Meldor exchanged bemused looks as she made her way to the hall stairs. ‘I’ll be damned,’ said Meldor. ‘Can that be true?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Davron. ‘I knew Piers and now I know her—oh, yes.’ An amused smile played around the corner of his lips. ‘The maid’s a devil, Margraf.’
Meldor looked annoyed, but the annoyance was with himself. ‘I underestimated her, and I was the one who said she was special. Careless, careless.’
‘Now what?’ Scow asked.
‘That’s obvious,’ Meldor said. ‘We persuade her to come with us. We need an innovative mapmaker of talent, and if she made those Kaylen maps, she’s the person.’
‘And just how are you going to do that?’ Davron asked mildly. ‘She trusts me about as much as a minnow trusts a pike, and you not much more. What bait can you possibly use that will persuade her to travel in the company of a man who could well turn around and kill her anytime? Or are you going to coerce her with ley? That would be a big mistake.’
‘You were the one who advised it before.’
‘Only so that we got to hear the truth. But for mapmaking we would need her co-operation. Coercion would not achieve that.’
‘No,’ Meldor agreed, ‘and I would never consider it. There are other ways.’
‘Just don’t tell her the truth about Havenstar,’ Davron warned. ‘That won’t persuade her to do anything except run for the nearest rule-chantor. She wasn’t happy with our using ley to free Sam from the bilee. She’d be appalled if she knew what we were really doing with it.’
‘I think I know exactly what to use for bait,’ Meldor said slowly. ‘And I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t find it tasty.’
~~~~~~~
Chapter Fifteen
If a dog barks at a mountain, does the mountain suffer?
—saying of the old Margravate of Malinawar
Chantor Portron regarded Keris anxiously. ‘So Master Pickle has arranged for you to go to the Second? But no fellowships go that way from here, surely?’ The chantor had found Keris out in the stables grooming her horses, and now he dodged around after her keeping up a flow of conversation as she attended to Ygraine.
‘No, but traders apparently do. They come from the Third, stop by the halt to make deliveries, then pass on to the Second. Master Grossbik and his wife make that particular crossing all the time. I’ll be safe with them. And they are willing to take a couple of maps as payment. Don’t worry about me, Chantor. I’ll be fine. How’s your head, by the way?’
‘Ah, a wee bit of a headache, that’s all. I hit the wall when Graval pushed me, but I’m fine now. Master Davron’s fellowship is off tomorrow too, I’m thinking.’ He hesitated, as if he had reservations about that, but then added, ‘I’ll not be sorry to be leaving this place. I’m anxious to be reaching the Eighth as soon as possible, and all in one piece too.’
She smiled. ‘After a journey like this one has been, you’ll be needing that retreat once you get there.’
‘Well, to be honest, it’s not really a religious retreat I’m on, lass. I’m after fathering a babe for Chantry. Looking forward to it, I am at that. My second. Bit worrying though, for a man of my age. It’s a long time since I had experience with, er, well— But I shouldn’t be saying that to a maid! Me and my tongue.’
She straightened up, forgetting the grooming. ‘You’re after doing what?’
He blushed slightly and went on the defensive. ‘All on Chantry’s business, lass. When numbers are down, ’tis the duty of selected chantoras to bring another babe to Chantry and I’ve been chosen to father one such. The mother-to-be is a rule-chantora of my
order. ’Tis an honour much appreciated among we chantors.’
Shock jerked a sharp reply from her. ‘I’ll bet it is!’ He looked hurt by her blunt cynicism, but she went on relentlessly. ‘So that’s what Meldor meant when he referred to a breeding chantora! This is not a holy practice that is much discussed with the unencoloured public, is it? I’ve never heard of such, although I’ve heard much made of the chastity and celibacy of Chantry men and women. Tell me, on what grounds were you chosen? Do you know the chantora concerned?’
He looked horrified. ‘Of course not! This is not a matter of—of personalities, Keris. Or desire. Or choice. ’Tis our duty, and the selection of the pair is a matter for Hedrin-chantors to decide.’
‘It is to be hoped your chantora also thinks it an honour,’ she said dryly.
‘Well, of course she does! She is to be allowed to bear a child, a privilege that all women must be coveting, surely.’
She stared, both fascinated and repulsed. ‘And the, er, logistics of this liaison?’
He looked increasingly uncomfortable, aware he had somehow lost control of the conversation. ‘Logistics? Ah, well. I stay in the chanterie until such time as, er, the chantora has evidence that she is, um, increasing.’
‘And then?’
‘Why then, I will be returning to my Rule Office, and she to her duties. The child, when it is born, will be taken to another chanterie, to be raised there by others. Under a name not known to us, of course. The chantora may well become a wet nurse for some years, to other chantora infants, or to those taken from their over-productive mothers and given to Chantry.’
‘Not given,’ she said involuntarily. ‘Not given. Taken. Wrenched from their homes and true families.’
‘Keris, Keris,’ he said reproachfully. ‘It’s the Rule. Why, think what would happen if the population of the stabs was allowed to grow freely? How could people be fed? Housed? We have to exercise control, for the greater good of everyone.’
‘Control?’ she asked bitterly. ‘It seems your idea of control is to breed yourselves, at the same time as preventing others from doing so—or taking away the off-spring they do have! Is that just?’
‘It’s just a question of regulation,’ he protested. ‘Of keeping numbers right. Chantry has to be obtaining its chantors from somewhere, and the younger they come to the service of the Maker, the better. At the same time, Order must be observed, and large unruly families are threatening Order, you know that. There is no place in the father’s trade for surplus sons, for example, and no marriage opportunities for the surplus girls—it just wouldn’t do, you know.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it wouldn’t, would it?’ She took a deep breath, aware that she was losing her composure. ‘Tell me,’ she said more calmly, ‘why don’t you allow a breeding chantora to feed her own child? Why give her someone else’s instead of her own?’
‘A chantora’s job is not that of a mother, Keris. Nothing must come between her and her duty to Chantry. It is felt that caring for her own child would be too much of a distraction. Similarly, children brought up by strangers must surely be more dedicated to Chantry rather than their families. Some of the greatest chantors in Chantry history have been men and women who did not know their own parents, who started life as chantry children raised within the confines of Chantry walls.’
Oh Maker, poor Aurin! Sheyli would have loved you so much… She thought of Sheyli’s anguished, ‘There’s not a day but I don’t think of him.’ She thought of Meldor’s, ‘I never knew my parents. I never even knew what stab they were from.’ She thought of Davron, ordered to abandon a crippled boy in the Unstable, one of the so-called Unbred who were ordinarily suffocated at birth because of birth defects. She thought of the young chantora waiting for a man, a paunched, balding, white-haired man she did not know, waiting for him to arrive and impregnate her.
Tyranny, she thought. The worst kind of tyranny of all, the tyranny of guilt. And of love. If we love Creation, we must serve the Rule and bow to the tyranny of Chantry. If we don’t, we commit a sin against all humankind… Aloud she repeated bitterly, ‘It wouldn’t do at all.’ She bent to Ygraine’s foreleg again.
Portron, made uneasy by her tone, looked around for an excuse to leave. ‘I must ask the stableboy to groom my palfrey,’ he muttered, and disappeared.
She attacked her task with unnecessary force, ignoring Ygraine’s rather startled snort.
‘Keris?’
She straightened again to eye dubiously the new silhouette in the doorway. This time it was Meldor who blocked the light. ‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘Although how in all Creation you know that, beats me.’ She sounded sour, and did not care.
He did not appear to notice her tone. ‘We’re leaving for the south tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I have a proposition for you.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘You haven’t heard it.’
‘I don’t need to. The answer’s still no.’
‘You want to be a mapmaker. I can make that dream come true. Come with us tomorrow, and you can have your own shop, your own equipment. Staff to help, if you want. Tainted assistants to take you into the Unstable. All paid for.’
She eyed him carefully. ‘I seem to have heard a rather similar offer once before. Only thing was, there was a rather large and unattractive snag concealed in the deal. Something about serving the Unmaker, I seem to recall.’
‘I do not serve Carasma.’
‘No? Then perhaps the sediment dirtying the bottom of the glass is of other origins. Let me see: you are offering to make me a mapmaker—’
‘Yes.’
‘In return for—?’
‘Your promise you’ll search for a way to make trompleri maps, and that once you have found the secret, you will share it with us.’
‘And if I don’t find it?’
‘I’ll take the chance.’
‘Why do you want trompleri so badly?’
‘To defeat Carasma, why else?’
She paused in her task to look at him. Was he lying? She thought so; at least he was not telling the whole truth. She started brushing the stiff hairs of Ygraine’s mane. ‘The answer’s still no.’
‘You ran away rather than be forced into a marriage you didn’t want. Won’t the same thing happen to you at your uncle’s? You’ll be expected to marry. The Rule demands it of you. Keris, I offer you everything you ever wanted, I know it.’
‘Do I have to remind you what happened to your last mapmaker and his assistant?’
‘We will protect you.’
‘Ha! Can you tell me how? Once the Unmaker decides on an Unstabler’s death, he’s doomed sooner or later, for all that Carasma can’t do the deed personally. Perhaps crossing a ley line. Perhaps in an attack by the Wild. Or by Minions. Yet I can’t be a mapmaker by staying in a stability. If there’s a secret to be found about trompleri, it’ll be found right here, in the Unstable.’ She threw the rug back over Ygraine and turned to Tousson, who nipped at her bad-temperedly and then deliberately stepped on her foot.
She pulled the animal’s ear and it reluctantly lifted its hoof. ‘You miserable sod,’ she said. ‘I know you did that on purpose. The answer’s still no, Meldor.’ She started brushing the horse’s coat. ‘And, quite apart from the danger, I have a good reason. Several good reasons. You travel with a man who’s a bonded servant to the Unmaker. And you mess with ley. That’s enough to make up my mind.’
‘You are aware I could … coerce you.’
‘I suppose so, but I doubt whether I’d ever find the answer to trompleri techniques if you made a slave of me.’ She did not comprehend the flicker of appreciation across his face. He stood for a while longer, listening to the sounds of her brushing, the satisfied snuffling of the horse, then he turned and walked away. She watched him go: straight-backed, undefeated by her rejection.
She leant her head against Tousson’s back and stifled a desire to weep. She knew he was right; there was no way out for her. Born a woman, born to fit the
mould made for her by her sex and her father’s profession, born to obey the Rule because to disobey was to risk the destruction of what was left of the world. The tyranny of guilt.
You fool, Keris. You ought to go with him, she thought. The destiny he offers is better, surely, than that which awaits you in Salient. You know what awaits you in Salient. Boredom. Subjection to the Rule for the rest of your life. Is that what you want? The more rational side of her replied, In Davron’s company, you may not make it further than the next camp down the trail.
She sighed and sat down on the feed bin in the stall. What in the name of all Creation should she do?
~~~~~~~
She was packing away the horse comb and brush when Davron came. She shot him a flat look and flung the horse blanket back over Tousson. ‘What do you want?’ she asked ungraciously.
‘Meldor seems to think I might be able to persuade you to come with us.’
‘He’s mad. It’s because of you I won’t go! Are you insane, the pair of you? The moment I found a way of making trompleri maps, if I ever did, you would be making a worship sacrifice to tell your Lord to send his Minions down on my head.’ She did not really believe what she said, but she derived a childish satisfaction from saying it nonetheless.
‘I’m no spy for Carasma, let alone one of his worshippers,’ he said mildly. ‘Be rational, Keris. I am sure that you can see that my one hope is to destroy Carasma’s power. Then he can’t command me to perform any task for him. And one way to break his hold is to have trompleri maps. With people able to travel through the Unstable with a minimum of risk, there will be more and more Order here, less Chaos—’