by Glenda Larke
‘May as well dismount,’ Scow said to the Chameleon, coming up with a handful of dried animal turds the Unbound had given him for fuel. ‘I’ll make a fire and we’ll have some char while we are waiting.’
Quirk slipped from his horse, stretched and rubbed a sore back. ‘I won’t complain about that. Anything to delay looking down through something that’s more holes than wood and rope, and knowing that there’s nothing under me for as far as the eye can see, and probably a whole lot further.’
‘Where do they get the makings of a bridge from anyway?’ Corrian asked. She was already digging about in her packs for nosebags for her animals and some weed for her pipe. ‘We haven’t seen a tree since we left the Fifth. Never thought I’d miss a tree, but I’d give up a night with someone young and warm in my bed just to see a decent greenwood down the path aways.’
Scow grinned at the thought of Corrian relinquishing the chance of a young man’s passion merely to see a forest. ‘Wood for use in the Unstable usually comes from the Unstable. It works like this: travellers pay the bridgemen to use the bridge, bridgemen buy what they need from traders. The traders, usually excluded themselves, buy in the border towns or from other Unstable camps. Life’s hard and unpredictable, but people survive.’
‘How much trouble do people like this get from Minions?’ Keris asked, looking over towards the tents.
‘Oh, not that much. Why would Minions bother? The Wild are another matter, but then, we tainted can be a bit formidable ourselves.’ He nodded in satisfaction as the fire caught. ‘Did you notice that huge fellow with the horns over there?’
Corrian gave an evil grin. ‘Yep. Tell me, do his nether regions match the size of his topknot?’
He raised an amused eyebrow. ‘And of what possible interest would that be to you?’
‘None of the personal kind, I suppose,’ Corrian said with a sigh.
‘The worst problem the tainted have is the Unstable itself,’ Scow continued. ‘It’s unpredictability. The lack of natural laws. You never know when it’s going to rain, or in fact what it is going to rain. You never know what season it will be tomorrow. You have to continually move your tents, and yourself. Oh, and that reminds me of some more bad news. Meldor says the Minions have found us again.’
Portron moved uneasily where he squatted by the fire and gave a quick look around. ‘How does he know?’
‘Oh, he knows,’ Scow said, deliberately vague. ‘He says there’s a pair on that cliff up there.’
Keris sighed. ‘I suppose it was inevitable. These canyons have to be crossed, and all they had to do was watch any of the bridges along the way…’
‘But why would they bother?’ Portron asked. ‘What’s so special about us?’
She could have kicked herself. Why in all Creation had she said that? ‘Nothing that I know of,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I meant that if the Unmaker wants to keep track of what happens in his domain, he doesn’t have all that much difficulty in doing so.’
‘I have some good news as well,’ Scow said, stirring the char. ‘This particular canyon is the second last one. The last one is tomorrow, and that one’s not bottomless, just a couple of hundred paces down. The Deep flows through it.’
‘That’s good news?’ Quirk asked.
‘And why not? It means we won’t have to walk through ley. Believe me, a bridge over it is better than a walk through it.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Corrian agreed, ladling out some char.
And now what? Keris thought. The Minions have found us, therefore so has the Unmaker…
‘Drink up,’ Scow said, glancing towards the camp of the Unbound bridgemen. ‘It seems the meeting’s over and we’re on our way again.’
~~~~~~~
As Keris arrived at the near end of the bridge, Meldor was waiting for her. He sniffed the air as she came up, as if to identify her, and then said, ‘I’d like to talk to you tonight. Join me for supper in my tent.’ No ‘please’, she noted, or any other indication that it was a request rather than an order, yet he made it sound she’d be doing him an honour if she agreed. How does he do that? she wondered. Ley-life, but he’s a clever man.
‘As you wish,’ she said.
He nodded casually and patted Ygraine, murmuring into the horse’s ear, calming the animal as it eyed the bridge with its ears back.
‘It’s all very well for you,’ the Chameleon said sourly to Meldor as he pulled his reluctant mount forward. ‘You can’t see how far it is down there.’
‘Being blind does have some advantages,’ Meldor agreed.
As she edged over the bridge a few minutes later, leading Ygraine, Keris felt as though the world was being split through like a broken apple beneath her feet. No matter how she stared into the fissure below, she could see no end to it. It plunged down and down—and down—until there was no seeing any longer. ‘And I’m hanging over this, like a spider in a web, supported by a few flimsy strands of hemp,’ she muttered to herself. ‘There’s a Minion up there somewhere spying on us, I’m in love with a man I can never have, and in my packs I have something the Unmaker wants desperately to destroy. I must be insane. I could be safe with Uncle Fergrand in the Second now.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Keris Kaylen, your brains are tainted.’
~~~~~~~
‘Another drink?’ Scow asked and showed Keris the wine skin. ‘We stocked up again in the Fifth.’
‘Thanks, but I haven’t quite finished this one yet.’ She settled back more comfortably on the floor of Meldor’s tent, propped up against his saddle. Piers’ blackwood staff was on the ground beside her. She had taken to carrying it when she was walking around the camp because she liked to think it gave her some of Piers’ confidence. She was not, however, confident enough to tempt fate by refilling her mug of wine. ‘I think one cup of that stuff is enough,’ she said, ‘if I’m also to absorb whatever it is you want to talk to me about.’ She looked to where Meldor was lying back against the fenet wool of his bedroll. ‘I enjoyed the meal, Master Meldor, and I thank you for the invitation. Now perhaps you should tell me what it is all about.’
Meldor nodded to Scow, who then hung up the wineskin on the tent pole and slipped outside. Guard duty, she thought. To make sure no one hears what is said? They had a stranger in the camp that night; a courier named Gawen who had just arrived from the opposite direction and had asked if he could share their company for the night. Even couriers, it seemed, could feel the need for human companionship once in a while. Davron had made him strip to the waist first, but once they were sure that he wore no Unmaker’s sigil he’d been made welcome.
Scow’s absence from the tent only served to make Keris more aware of Davron’s presence. The master guide sat on the groundsheet, bent knees supporting his forearms in front of him. He was not looking at her, any more than she looked at him, but it did not do any good. He filled Keris’s thoughts like too much festival pudding filling the stomach. Disgruntled and restless, she thought, The wretched man exudes enough sensuality, just by being. I’d be aware of him even if I never glanced his way.
‘We thought it might be a good idea if you knew a little more about ley lines. Or rather about what we think of them,’ Meldor said without preamble. ‘It may help you to find a solution to the problem of creating a trompleri map.’
She nodded. ‘I’ve heard it said that the unmaking of the world causes cracks. Ley, the evil of disorder, then enters through the cracks from the Chaos of the unmade parts of the Universe.’
‘Yes, and I’ve heard them described as the Unmaker’s claw marks,’ Davron said dryly. ‘There are any number of theories.’
‘And you’re about to hear another,’ Meldor added, ‘which we happen to like better. Keris, understand this first: as a chantor, I spent more time studying the Holy Books than any man alive. I believe that the Maker told us in those writings what had happened to us, and how to correct it. Unfortunately, we did not always listen. His words, given to certain knights and prophets, were mixed up with
those of much less holy men, many of them bigots or idiots, or both. The problem has been to try to sort out which are the true words of the Maker, which the words of power hungry men from Chantry, and which the words of sincere men who didn’t talk with the authority of the Maker.’
‘And you think you’ve managed to do it.’
He smiled faintly at the dry scepticism of her tone. ‘Ley lines are not some sort of fault lines,’ he continued. ‘A true reading of the Holy Books tells us that they were lines of power, not evil. The beginnings of the unmaking of the world made cracks, true enough, but these cracks released power from the fabric of the world, not evil from Chaos beyond.’
‘That’s a convenient way of excusing your use of ley, I suppose,’ she said.
Meldor was unruffled. ‘Look at it this way, Keris. Think of a wood fire. Where does the heat come from?’
She blinked. She’d never thought about it, but it was an interesting question. Where did it come from? ‘From the wood, somehow. By the burning?’ she suggested tentatively. Obvious answers which really did not explain anything.
He pointed to her blackwood staff. ‘So there is heat trapped in here, which doesn’t feel hot while it is trapped, and which is released as heat if the wood is burnt. Let’s not call it heat, but power. A power that can cook food, warm our bodies—or be used for destructive purposes. Similarly, I believe there is power sealed up in the world, which is only released if the fabric of creation is torn, as the Unmaker has torn it here in the Unstable. And that power can be used for good purposes or for evil, just as the power in wood can.’
‘Power. Not evil.’
That’s right,’ Meldor agreed. ‘Power. Magic, if you like to use that word; I don’t. It is too imprecise and implies things like spells and incantations, which I believe are so much nonsense. Magic is just a form of power, like the heat trapped in the wood. A fire is not evil although it can burn your house down. Similarly magic—or power—is neither good nor evil.’
‘You really believe a ley line is not evil?’ She was incredulous.
‘It isn’t. Not innately.’
‘Tell that to Quirk,’ she said, but she felt the stirrings of interest.
‘Or me?’ Davron asked softly. ‘But I have come to think Meldor is right. Just as a careless child is burned by fire, a ley line can taint the ley-unlit. In other words, where the Unmaker is not involved, tainting is more of an accident. The ley-unlit should not be asked to cross ley lines, anymore than a child should be asked to plunge his arm into the flames of a kitchen fire. Chantry is as much to blame for the horrors of crossing ley lines as is the Unmaker, simply because it’s Chantry that asks pilgrims to do it.’
Meldor continued, ‘Moreover, Carasma directs the escaping power, using it for evil purposes. He can rearrange the fabric of a man into a monstrosity, create an earthquake or halt the ageing process in his Minions. He uses it to enforce his dominance. He uses it to further Chaos by promoting the unnatural.’
‘And you? How do you use it?’
‘We have learned how to absorb a certain amount of ley, just as Minions do. It’s easy enough for anyone who is ley-lit. Then it can be used as a weapon—to hit, to cut, to burn, to kill—simply by directing it to do so, as the Minions can. We have had certain success with more pleasant uses, as well. I use it to enhance my senses, to “see” things without vision, as you have guessed. We’ve had some success with speeding up the healing process in cases of injury. There are probably other uses we’ve not yet discovered. A close reading of the Holy Books, I might add, indicates that the Maker himself advocates its use, and that in the past it was indeed used by knights and other chantors. We can teach you to use it, if you wish.’
‘You think if I have ley in me, it may help me draw a trompleri map.’
‘I do.’
‘There’s a catch,’ Davron drawled, ignoring a warning glance from Meldor. ‘Ley is addictive. Once you have started to absorb it, you can’t ever do without it. It is my opinion that you would eventually die if you did not have it.’
She stared at him, unravelling the implications of that.
Davron. It meant he could never live away from the Unstable for too long at a time. He had condemned himself to being an Unstabler forever. And if they won the battle against the Unmaker, if ever the world was restored, he—and Meldor—would die…
She felt tears at the back of her eyes. For both men, even victory spelt doom.
With sudden revulsion, she said, ‘I’ll never mess with ley.’
Meldor said, ‘Deverli imbibed lay. It could be important.’
‘You think that enabled him to draw trompleri maps?’
‘Possibly. We—I—feel it’s worth a try.’
You bastard, she thought. You don’t care about us, about the people you use; you only care about the end result…
‘Trompleri could be more important than we thought, Keris,’ he continued, imperturbable. ‘What are these fixed features that suddenly appeared down south? That is the area Deverli was mapping.’
‘You think just mapping a place with trompleri techniques could make it stable?’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘No.’ She knew that wasn’t so. The map she had in her possession showed a ley line and all the changes of an Unstable world.
‘Well, it’s a possibility. However, up until we heard about these new fixed features, we were actually more interested in how ley can be used to mend the Unstable.’
In spite of herself, Keris felt a surge of excitement; the immensity of the concept his words suggested staggered her.
‘In fact,’ Meldor was saying, ‘we believe that ley must be used if the world is to be mended. It’s ley that has held our world together, that still holds together the stabilities. It is the binding force of Creation. Once it leaks out, Chaos results.’
‘Sweet Creation, how Chantry would hate to hear that!’ She began to smile, then drank the last of the wine and decided it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever tasted. ‘I hope you are careful about just who you tell. About using ley, I mean. There’s an awful lot of ley-lit fools out there who’d love to have the power of Minions without having to give up their soul and bond themselves to lord Carasma to get it.’
Meldor glanced at Davron, blind eyes turning towards the black as if they could see. She mistrusted the look; there was a great deal they weren’t telling her still. She guessed, with only a smudge of doubt lingering, that there were indeed others out there besides themselves who had been absorbing ley. What in heaven’s ordering are they up to?
‘Is there anything else I should know?’ she asked carefully.
Meldor’s reply was bland. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
She was sure he was lying. She looked across at Davron, only to have him look away.
The back of his neck was reddening and she hid the glimmer of a smile. He must find his tendency to blush a terrible nuisance... She tried to be content with the thought that at least he’d warned her against imbibing ley.
‘I think I need to have time to consider all this,’ she said and stood up.
Neither of then tried to stop her as she said goodnight and left.
~~~~~~~
Outside the tent she stretched and enjoyed for a moment the luxury of viewing a night sky that blazed with colour. A normal sky. At least the Unmaker could not alter that. The heavens remained as they always had, the Blue Necklace swinging its way across the south, the red Sunburst exploding in its motionless glory to the north, the black of the Pitch Tub to the west with its border of Star Sparkles, overhead the milky band of the Moonstones and the eight moons, each not much bigger than the largest of the stars.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ a soft voice asked out of the darkness. It was the courier, Gawen, still sitting by the last glowing turds of the fire. At his feet a pair of black hounds stirred restlessly; they were ugly beasts, with sad red-rimmed eyes, and drooping jowls punctuated by curved canines.
He saw her eyes on the animals and said,
‘They are especially restless tonight. I would not be surprised if there was a Minion or two out there somewhere.’
‘Are those hounds as formidable as they look?’
‘More, probably. In this country, they have to be. I heard once that your father travelled alone, without even animals. Was that true?’
‘Not entirely. He hired the excluded from time to time. And he had his horses. Tousson, his pack horse, is as good as a dog any day.’ She felt a moment’s irritation. She had so much to think about, her mind was so churning with ideas that she wanted to be alone. And who had told him she was Piers Kaylen’s daughter anyway?
‘I never met him, more’s the pity. He stayed up north of the Wide, and I always work this territory.’ He paused, then said with some bemusement, ‘I have just been propositioned by the most extraordinary lady.’
She chuckled. ‘I hope it won’t upset your pride if I tell you that you are the last in a long line.’
He grinned. ‘No, not really. And I hope you won’t take it amiss if I say that I would rather be propositioned by you.’ The invitation was so straightforward and without guile that she could not help but smile. He was handsome in a weather-beaten sort of way, a little older than Davron, but she was not tempted.
‘Corrian has much more experience,’ she said. ‘I would be a poor bargain by comparison. Goodnight, Master Gawen.’
‘You don’t look like the back end of my oldest mule,’ he said mournfully, but he didn’t try to delay her further. ‘Goodnight, Maid Kaylen.’
Feeling absurdly pleased by his invitation, even though her more rational self told her that there was hardly much competition in the present company, she turned away to go to her tent.