Havenstar

by Glenda Larke

  ‘And while all this is going on, Lord Carasma just calmly watches? He might not be able to order an execution, but he can hint to his servants it might be a good idea to hunt down the mapmaker, just as he apparently did with Deverli. And even if he didn’t, you need more than trompleri maps to bring Lord Carasma to his knees. Sweet Creation, we’re talking about the Unmaker! He has ruled the Unstable for a thousand years. He destroyed old Malinawar, all except a few islands of stability in this hellish sea. Perhaps he destroyed the whole of the rest of the world. I know he wiped away a whole mountain of the Impassables. Who’s to say he could not also wipe away everything beyond the borders of what was once the Malinawar Margravate?’

  She untied Tousson and led her to the feed bin, retying her there as she added softly, ‘I’ve read the histories. My father bought us a copy of Torgath’s Annals when I was a child. Once there were oceans of water, and lands across them where our ships sailed; once there were whole countries to the west and south that we traded with, and what have we left of all that? What happened to all those other places? They haven’t come to our rescue. Doubtless they suffer from Carasma’s depredations just as we do. Perhaps they never discovered how to prevent the encroachment of Chaos; perhaps they’re all dead. And yet you want me to believe you have a way to bring Carasma to his knees with a few maps? Don’t make me laugh!’

  She ducked under Tousson’s neck and came to face him, hands on her hips. ‘And that’s not the only hole in this offer of yours. There are other gaps large enough for a whole ley line to flow through. Meldor says he’ll set me up as a mapmaker, as if any Rule Office would tolerate a woman mapmaker in their jurisdiction. Not even a bribe of treasury proportions would buy such an aberration.’ She gave him a contemptuous look. ‘You must both think I’m awfully stupid.’

  He was silent for a long moment. Then he shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. Yes, I suppose it must seem that way. I think it was more that we expected you to take a lot on trust. We did not intend to set you up in a shop in a stab, you know. You are right, Chantry would not countenance it. We had other ideas.’

  ‘Do you really expect me to follow you without a full explanation of what you’re up to?’

  There was another long silence. ‘All I can say is that, as unlikely as it may sound, if trompleri techniques can be rediscovered, I believe there’s a possibility we may free ourselves from the Unmaker. At the very least, a great many people will be saved from what happened to Quirk, and what happened to Baraine.’ He had half turned away, avoiding meeting her eyes. ‘Yes, I’ll admit it, I want this too, more than you could possibly guess, for myself. For my own well-being. You are probably my only chance. But I would not ask you for myself, because you are right: join us and you could die. Die horribly, and die soon. I am not worth that kind of sacrifice from anyone. I neither ask it nor expect it nor desire it for myself. But I have dedicated my life, what dregs I have of a life, to bringing down Carasma. And a trompleri map could help do it.’

  She stared at him. ‘You want revenge!’

  ‘Chaos above, what sort of a man do you think I am? That I would go after the Unmaker for revenge?’

  ‘Then what do you want?’

  ‘For the Unstable, for Unstablers, I want security. For myself—’ He paused and when he finally spoke again she barely caught the words. ‘I want peace.’

  His expression was as bleak as a mid-winter’s day in Drumlin’s Cess. Her irritation melted away.

  He went on, ‘My advice to you as a friend would be to leave us. To get as far away as you can go. It would be safer, but it wouldn’t be right, Keris. This is everyone’s fight. Our stabilities are prisons and the walls are closing in on us. We have to fight back or one day there will be nowhere for us to live, no place for our children.’

  She could not speak. She rubbed her arms for warmth and wondered why his words made her feel so cold.

  He said, ‘Join us. Please. There is no reason that Carasma should suspect you to be a master mapmaker. A woman? It’s unheard of! There is nothing that will make him fear you.’

  She gave a dry laugh, trying to dispel the coldness of her fear. ‘Creation, Davron, you underestimate him! In the ley line he turned me inside out. What do you think he first offered me? And what do you think I replied? This will make you laugh—I told him a career as a mapmaker was not enough. Nothing less than granting me the ability to make trompleri maps would be enough to make me give up my soul to him. And I didn’t really mean it. We both knew that was the one thing he could never allow.’

  His shock rendered him speechless.

  ‘I think there are more of his spies about than you know,’ she said. ‘Graval had you fooled. You didn’t even suspect he was ley-lit, as he must have been, let alone suspect what his loyalties were. How many more of Carasma’s Minions are there, travelling in disguise in fellowships, lurking here in the halt even, somehow shielding themselves from the touch of Order?’

  ‘We will put an end to that. All Minions wear a sigil; we can check. We are sending out warnings.’

  She continued, relentless. ‘Anyway, Carasma didn’t need spies to find out all about me. He knew who I was the moment he drowned me in the ley of the line he occupied. He knew my innermost desires and my guilt. He knew I was haunted by my mother’s death. Spies, and an ability to touch the minds of those he confronts in the line: a lethal combination. Don’t talk to me about my safety, Master Guide, because I don’t believe in it.’

  He stared at her, still silent, then made a another frustrated gesture with his hand. ‘You’re right. Go home. Or go to your uncle. At least you will be safe.’ There was no bitterness in his voice; what she heard was worse than that. It was a hopelessness so corrosively pungent it seemed to contaminate the air between them. For a moment they continued to look at one another, and in that moment she saw once again the echo if his desire for her, that inexplicable stirring of a man of experience and position, for her. Then the echo faded into the despair and he turned to go.

  He has made the decision to kill himself, as you once suggested to him. The thought came unbidden and stayed to poison her choice. No, her more rational self protested. He wouldn’t do that. And then, Oh, he wouldn’t fall on his knife, perhaps. But there are other ways of dying…

  She had a sudden vision of Sheyli. Of her mother sending her away to have a chance at life. And she, Keris, accepting the chance that had meant a betrayal of the woman who had given her life.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, panicking.

  Davron turned back, pausing merely as a courtesy, without hope or expectation.

  ‘You—you have decided to die,’ she said.

  Emotion twitched at one corner of his mouth. ‘That was once your advice. It has begun to look more attractive. But no, I’ve not decided to take my own life.’ She noted the careful wording and her heart lurched, stricken, as if it was all her fault. ‘Would you perhaps go with Meldor, if I was not there?’ he asked, carefully neutral.

  Her heart hammered as if she cared what happened to him. As if he mattered to her. But I don’t even like him.

  He said, ‘I can’t jeopardise Meldor’s plans by my presence anymore. And perhaps, if I am not there, you will ride with him. He needs you, Keris. Help him. Help him bring down the Unmaker. That is his aim. I was just along for the ride. Ah, don’t look so upset, I’m not going to cut my own throat.’

  ‘There’s more than one way to kick a dog.’

  ‘I promise I won’t actively seek death, either.’

  He’s lying, she thought. He’ll challenge every Minion he sees. He’ll be a one-man rampage across the Unstable until something gets to him before he gets to it. Shut up, Keris! You are swamping yourself with guilt!

  ‘Wait,’ she said, as he turned to go once more. ‘Perhaps I’ll go with you and Meldor and Scow, if—’

  He continued to wait, without expression.

  She took a deep breath. ‘—if you can explain to me why you made this bargain with the Unmaker. If you tell
me what you gained from it.’

  The blackness of his eyes flashed with a brilliant anger. ‘What difference does that make?’

  She struggled for the right words. ‘If I can understand what makes a man strike such a bargain, then perhaps I won’t … fear you so much. Despise you so much.’ I might understand why my instincts tell me to trust you.

  A chuckle of reluctant amusement broke through his anger. ‘Ley-life, but you have an honest streak, Kaylen!’ He regarded her, smile fading into calculation, apparently debating her tentative offer.

  With sudden premonition, she thought, I’m not going to like this.

  He leant carelessly against the door post of the stall, in control again. He was suddenly the Master Guide once more, the man who’d waited for customers back in Hopen Grat and had stared more at her horses than at her. ‘What could the Unmaker offer me?’ he mused in bitterness. ‘I had everything I ever wanted… I’ll tell you what he offered, and you can see if you dare to judge me.’

  And she listened while his words went through her like a cold shafting of ley. ‘He offered me the life and sanity of my wife. Of my daughter. And of my unborn son. I took up his offer… And I’d do it all over again. There, does that answer your question?’

  ~~~~~~~

  Chapter Sixteen

  It is written that before the Rending, many were the wild creatures that lived in the Realm of the Maker. The fish of the sea were wondrous to behold, the birds of the sky were a joy unto the eyes of Humankind, and the animals that walked the Margravate were too numerous to count. Some were fearful in aspect; others were venomous. Many were dangerous—but this I say unto you: none were as dangerous as the Wild, for the Wild were created by the Unmaking. They are a perversion and should they cross your path, beware.

  —The Rending 9: 10: 2

  A day’s ride and the Roughs, the plains that surrounded Pickle’s Halt, were behind them. The horses, fresh after their rest and well-fed on the halt’s fodder, did not like the pock-marked surface of the plains, and the echo of their hooves resounding from the hollowness of the land beneath them made them capricious and skittish.

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ Keris heard Scow mutter to Davron. ‘The spaces below are widening.’

  The guide nodded, seemingly imperturbable, although she wondered. ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ he said.

  Just at sunset they reached the long line of the cliff barrier bordering the southern edge of the plains, a blue band of rock stitched on to the flat land like coloured braid around the hem of a chantor’s robe. It was called the Sponge. They camped there, a bare hundred paces from the cliff, for the night.

  She eyed the Sponge uneasily as they erected their tents in the twilight. She’d heard her father speak of it often enough. ‘Full of the Wild,’ he’d said. ‘Even the Minions hate it. And no way around.’

  It stretched as far as she could see in both directions and it rose into the air four times the height of a tall tree. There was no way over the top either, not with horses. The only route was through.

  Before the light was completely gone from the sky, she walked over to the base of it to take a close look. It was just as Piers had described it to her, rubbery in texture, blue in colour, consisting of interlocking bridges and pillars and columns, passages and holes and arches. There wasn’t a straight line or a flat path or a large cavern anywhere in it, just twisting warrens and niches, holes and wells and walls.

  There was light. It filtered in through holes from above, through entrances along the sides, then through the network of spans and cavities, funnels and warrens until it was a dim and diffused blue. There were many entrances and exits; the problem was that once inside, it was easy to become lost. Nor was there any point in marking a path for the next fellowship to follow either, because the passages kept on changing. Spans fell, others grew, holes filled in, burrows opened up, exits disappeared and new entrances split open. A guide had to find his own way through each time he passed that way. She knew Piers had used Ygraine as his guide. The canny old crossings-horse had never seemed to have trouble finding a short route from one side to the other. Other Unstablers used dogs or ferrets. One or two boasted that they didn’t need animals to sniff out a route because they could do it themselves.

  She was still contemplating the structure when the Chameleon, Portron and Corrian joined her. None of them seemed any more comfortable with the sight than she did.

  ‘A cheese with holes,’ the Chameleon remarked, wrinkling his nose in distaste. ‘How far through, Keris? Do you know?’

  ‘A day’s journey if Master Davron knows what he is doing and we’re lucky. But the width varies, and it’s all too easy to get lost inside.’

  ‘Cheeses never have that many holes. At least not where I come from,’ Portron said. ‘It’s more like a honeycomb.’

  ‘Blue cheeses, maybe, but blue honeycombs?’ Corrian asked, somehow managing to light her pipe and talk at the same time. ‘Sides, honeycombs are regular. This is a maze gone bonkers. Reminds me of the slums of Drumlin Cess, and it stinks just as bad, too.’

  ‘What is that smell?’ the Chameleon asked.

  ‘The Wild,’ Keris said. Her curt response made him jump.

  ‘Once I saw someone sliced up in a street fight,’ Corrian mused, puffing. ‘Made a right proper job of him, they did. His lungs were a bit like that: all spongy and holey. Maybe that’s why they give it that name. The Sponge.’

  Keris shook her head. ‘My father said he heard that it was named after something that came from the sea. When there were seas.’

  The Chameleon poked at the blue chunk of wall in front of him. It gave slightly under his fingers like a living thing. He drew back hurriedly. ‘An animal?’

  ‘I don’t know. A kind of plant perhaps?’

  He rubbed his cheek, his nervousness obvious. ‘Well, let’s hope this is not alive. I don’t like the thought of walking inside something that’s still, er, capable of digestion.’

  ‘Let’s be getting back,’ Portron said, ‘It’s getting dark.’ But when Quirk and Corrian began to walk back towards the camp he ambled behind, forcing Keris to slow her pace to his. ‘You haven’t told me just why you decided to come with us,’ he said. ‘This is a dangerous route, lass.’

  She cut him short. ‘I’ve decided to become an Unstabler, Chantor. I am now in Meldor’s employ.’

  He gaped, then shut his mouth with an audible snap. ‘Doing what?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I’m a mapmaker.’

  ‘Impossible! It’s a man’s profession.’

  ‘No one cares for such things in the Unstable.’

  ‘But who would be after buying your maps?’

  ‘Do you know, I’ve been thinking about that and I’ve come to the conclusion that Unstablers wouldn’t care a flea’s purse for anything but the accuracy of the map, and the ease with which it could be read. Ordinary people might balk at buying a woman’s map, but not those who know the Unstable, not those who know maps.’

  ‘You will be breaking the Rule. Opposing Chantry, and all that Chantry stands for.’ He waved his fly switch at her in agitation.

  ‘Oh, I’ll probably have a shop in some bordertown like Hopen Grat where Order doesn’t operate and no one takes much notice of the Rule and rule-chantors.’

  ‘Maker help you, Keris! That doesn’t make it right. Besides, you know Meldor and Storre are messing with ley. You saw what they did with that bilee. How can you think of working with a man who has deliberately sought to make the power of the Unmaker’s realm his own?’

  She sighed, in her heart agreeing with him. ‘Chantor, why didn’t you tell people at the halt about it? Why didn’t you tell the Defenders that Meldor and Davron dabble in the forbidden?’

  ‘Believe me, I was wanting to. But somehow—’ He shivered and stopped, holding her back. ‘He told me not to, and I couldn’t. Keris, there is evil abroad in that man.’

  ‘Meldor?’

  ‘Yes. I wish I could remember wher
e it was I’ve seen him before.

  ‘If you felt he was evil, then why are you here?’

  ‘Because you are, disorder be damned! I might still be back in Pickle’s Halt, waiting for the next fellowship to pass, if you hadn’t announced you were riding out with Davron. I was thinking of dropping out of the Fellowship until I knew you weren’t.’

  She was taken aback. ‘Oh. Oh, Creation. I never meant—’

  He sighed. ‘’Tis too late now. You’re a headstrong lass, Keris Kaylen, and I’ll be hoping that you have a change of heart. ’Tis never too late to return to the Rule and the protection of Chantry.’

  ‘You won’t—you won’t deliberately make trouble for me, will you? With Chantry, I mean.’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘I—er— Yes, well. I’m not looking to stir the burnt crust at the bottom of the pot. I’m too old for crusades.’ He had a sudden thought. ‘What is Master Meldor wanting a mapmaker for?’

  She hedged. ‘An investment, I imagine. Doubtless he thinks there’s money in maps.’

  He looked over to where Meldor was warming his hands on the single campfire. ‘I’ve been scouring my brains to think where I’ve seen him before.’

  ‘Probably in a chantery somewhere. He was a chantor, once.’

  ‘Meldor?’ He continued to stare at the blind man. ‘But I’ve never seen him bend a knee in kinesis, nor read the Holy Books—’

  ‘I said he was, not is. He’s blind, Chantor Portron, and quite apart from the fact that he’d find it hard to read anything, doubtless you know what the Rule says about the blind.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Sometimes it’s hard to remember he can’t see. Anyway, just because he’s not allowed to stay in a stab, doesn’t mean a chantor should be giving up his calling. He can serve the faithful here as well as—’ He paled and almost fell. ‘Holy ley-life!’ he breathed.