by Glenda Larke
Once again it was Meldor who answered, his mellifluous voice rolling over her like a bank of fog, blanketing any desire she might have had to disbelieve. When Meldor spoke, it was easy to accept. A dangerous man. ‘Havenstar is small as yet and grows only slowly. One day it will be big enough for all, but not yet. In addition, it remains a fragile place, easily sabotaged. We offer a place within its security only to those we trust, and to those who are prepared to pay the price.’
‘Which is to fight for the end of the Unmaker,’ Scow added.
‘Are you prepared to pay that price?’ Meldor asked.
‘Are you going to tell me your plans?’ she countered.
He considered. ‘I don’t suppose it would do any harm. Firstly, we would like every honest Unstabler to have access to trompleri maps. Secondly, we hope to wage war against the Minions and their pets, to destroy them utterly. Thirdly, we want to enlarge Havenstar so that it does indeed become a home to all excluded. So that no one will ever need to wander the Unstable because they have no other place to go. And finally…’ He hesitated, as if he was choosing his words carefully. ‘Finally, one day soon, there will come the confrontation with the Unmaker himself. A confrontation we must win.’
She felt sick. ‘Win? How can you be sure you can defeat the Unmaker?’
He smiled, but there was no mirth there, only a deep sorrow that tightened her stomach to a ball. ‘Sure? I’m not sure. There are predictions in the Holy Books that seem to indicate we have a chance. Just a chance. Every step I’ve taken has been made because I believe it is what the Maker recommends. But how can I be sure? All I know is that we can’t afford to lose.’
It was not what she had wanted to hear.
She sat still, miserable with fear, but was given no chance to indulge in self-pity. Someone started yelling outside: one of the Unbound who had accompanied Meldor from Heldiss’s camp. The shout was taken up by several others, and the sounds were ones of dire urgency. Only one word was clear, but it was enough to freeze her blood: ‘Minions!’
Scow and Davron plunged for the tent opening as one man. She followed, pulling out her knife as she went. She paused outside the tent-flap trying to take it all in. The camp was a blur of movement and noise. Something growled off to her left; there was a yapping somewhere in the darkness to her right. In the distance an animal wailed, in either pain or anger. Sounds close by curdled her insides with terror. A shape loomed up out of the blackness and fell dead at her feet, its matted-fur hide feathered with arrows, its serrated tongue lolling out of a boned mouth that gushed fluid in a dying gurgle. Other unimaginable creatures loomed in the darkness, briefly glimpsed when the light from the fire or a lantern glinted in eyes, or sheened from scaled skins. This was not an attack by a few odd Minions and their pets. This was a full scale onslaught by tens of beasts and their masters.
Even as that realisation woke in Keris, something leapt at her out of the gloom. She had no time to throw her knife, and would have been flattened under the clawed forefeet of a Wild had not Scow swept his long-handled battle axe between them and half-severed a dog-like head from the massive shoulders that had been coming her way.
‘Get your bow!’ Scow yelled at her. ‘Keep your distance from them!’
It was good advice. She headed for her tent, stumbling in the dark. She glimpsed Davron fighting a red-haired woman mounted on a tainted animal not unlike Scow’s Stockwood; both man and woman were using ley and the clash resembled a war between flashes of lightning. A burst of red fire was dissipated against an equal blast of purple force. Flames sprouted and died, sparks fountained at each clash, hiding them both from view. She wrenched her gaze away because to watch was more than she could bear.
Behind her, Meldor was now standing calmly outside his tent, his head tilted to better sense what was happening around him. Then, with casual flair, he flicked ley outwards from the palms of his hands. He rarely missed his target. Minions, sensing the intensity of his power, flung themselves away from him; the Wild, not so wise, yelped and jerked as fur or flesh burned. The brightness of the ley left patterns dancing in front of her eyes.
A burning turd whisked past her ear like a lethal weapon; she had no idea where it came from, but suspected a friend when it hit a Wild that was advancing on her. The creature screamed and veered away out into the night.
Several snarling carnivores appeared out of nowhere and started to herd her away into the dark of the camp perimeter. She swung her knife at them, warding them off. They were playing with her, daring her to try to pass them, then darting in with snapping jaws when she did try. Frustrated, aware that her single throwing knife was hardly adequate against such a pair, she was glad to be rescued by Davron who had apparently rid himself of the redhead’s attentions. He slashed at the creatures with his whip. Flayed skin flicked away from their bodies in strips, blood gushed. They turned tail and fled. The smile Davron gave her was grim. ‘Don’t worry about not killing the bastards this time around,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ she said and then the battle swirled between them and she lost sight of him. In front of Corrian’s tent a bear-like creature backed into her. In a panic she stabbed at it with her knife. It had been edging away from Portron, who, as far as she could see, had been doing nothing more lethal than sprinkling it with water. She pulled the blade out, gratified to find the creature collapsing like a pricked bladder, but then was forced to part company with the knife almost immediately when the pet’s master leapt at her in a rage. She had a glimpse of blond hair and a mouth rimmed with blood and threw the weapon, aiming for the man’s throat. She misjudged completely. The Minion had been moving towards her and in her hurry she’d made no allowance for the diminishing distance. The knife hilt hit his chin and bounced harmlessly to the ground. He jerked away, scarlet lips drawn back in a snarl. Ley flickered out of his fingers, and she ducked. Portron flung some more water and the man screamed as it hit his skin.
‘What is that stuff?’ she yelled at the chantor.
‘Kinesis-dew!’ he shouted back, but the words meant nothing to her. The Minion turned his ley on Portron and the chantor emptied his jug at him in total panic.
She scooped up the knife and hesitated briefly before she could brace her courage enough to slide the blade into the Minion, who was still desperately batting at his arms trying to wipe away the water. The steel caught on bone and grated, making her wince, but the man slithered to the ground jerking the knife out of her grasp.
‘That’s me lass an’ all, brawly done by the Maker’s grace!’ Portron said, slipping almost unintelligibly into his broadest brogue. He smirked with an unchantry-like satisfaction and pulled the knife free to hand it back. ‘The unsouled bastard of that maggot-ridden Lord of Lies, Carasma—bless me, but ye’ve snaggled his goings on, once and for evering!’
But there was no time for congratulations, or even to wipe the knife clean. Something came lurching out from behind the tents looking and smelling like a midden heap on the move, with huge maws overflowing with teeth in the middle of a triangular head. Words stirred in Keris’s mind: a pear-shaped dog with too many teeth for its mouth, and she felt cold prickle her spine.
She edged back, still clutching her bloodied knife. It was useless against such a beast, even if she managed an accurate throw. The pet had too many layers of fat, too much sheltering flesh… It took a step towards her, and she threw the blade anyway. It buried itself hilt-deep just below the creature’s eye. It did not even seem to notice.
‘Oh ley-life,’ Portron muttered, and shook his flask of kinesis dew. It was empty.
‘Midden,’ she said, and cast around for someone in a better position to help. There was only Corrian. She was now standing in the doorway of her tent, swearing, a spate of invective that would have embarrassed a bullock-driver. She was waving what appeared to be an ordinary saucepan, and when she saw the pet was advancing on Keris she threw it. It hit the creature on the back of the head, a blow it scarcely seemed to notice, but
this was followed by a volley of missiles pulled haphazardly from Corrian’s belongings. A small sack of beans, a packet of dried beef jerky, a boot, a cake of soap, a candle holder, the other boot and her tin of pipeweed followed the saucepan. This last must have represented considerable sacrifice on the old woman’s part and it caught the pet between the eyes as it turned its head to investigate the airborne barrage. The animal gave an enraged bleat and flung itself at Corrian.
It snatched at her, and she threw up an arm to ward off the attack, still screaming profanities all the while. And the beast scrunched its many layers of teeth over her forearm.
Teeth stuck out all over the place…
When it turned away from Corrian, back towards Keris, it held Corrian’s severed arm in its mouth. Blood dripped down its jaws, bone crunched, splintered. And something had taken a great bite out of his neck—
Keris retched.
And remembered, too late for Corrian, her ley. She remembered it only because her rage loosened her hold on it and it danced out of her fingertips, unbidden, to glow there as an aura of wrathful light. The hands of the knights in the mural on the wall of the shrine in Hopen Grat, she thought stupidly. Ley. Meldor was right.
And then the pet, still chewing Corrian’s arm, was coming at her. She tilted her fingertips at him, and let her anger and the ley run out like crackling fire, intent and power mingled into force. Her fear vanished. Perhaps she would die as Piers had died, and maybe that was not such a bad death. She was guilty, she had abandoned her mother, she was drunk on forbidden ley, she loved a man who was bonded to the Unmaker, she’d rejected Chantry for a renegade apostate knight. Nothing seemed clear-cut any more.
The ley hit the beast in the middle of his massive brown chest, where wrinkles of skin furrowed into folds. It flared and then spread into lines of burning current. The pet sizzled. It doubled up, screaming, and began to run. Keris didn’t watch it go. She looked down at herself, briefly puzzled that she was still alive. Then she remembered Corrian.
She went to follow the old woman, who’d dragged herself off into her tent, but Portron prevented her. Around them the noise of the fighting was dying down and the Minions were backing off, calling their pets to them. They’d been repulsed, she thought with mild surprise. She looked past Portron to search out Davron. He was unhurt, poking at the mountainous heap of a dead pet, to make sure it really was dead.
Portron continued to drag at her arm. ‘You used ley,’ he accused. His face was the colour of white pottery clay. ‘Keris, it’s a sin! How could you?’
‘It saved our lives, yours and mine and Corrian’s too, perhaps. Portron, get Meldor. Tell him what happened, quickly. Corrian’s hurt.’
She pushed him away and dived into the tent.
It was dark but she could see that the woman was sitting on her bedding, her pipe still in her mouth, and alight at that, her hand gripped tightly around the truncated end of her arm to stop the worst of her bleeding. Keris had expected to find her weak and prostrate with pain. Instead she was livid with anger. ‘Did you see what that rotting-livered bastard did to me? That pock-marked pox-ridden sod of a monster ate my arm! He frigging-well ate—’
‘Corrian, hold the stump up above your head,’ she interrupted. ‘You don’t want to bleed to death—’
‘It’s all right, Keris,’ Meldor said as he entered the tent, Scow behind him. ‘We’ll take care of it.’
Relieved, she ducked out, only to find she’d fallen into Portron’s clutches yet again. She tried to divert him. ‘Chantor, what, by all that’s dark in Chaos, is kinesis-dew?’
‘It really is dew. Dew taken from between the Chantry Houses along the kinesis chain. Dew that’s fallen in places that have been soaked with the presence of kinesis devotions for generations. It burns the Chaos-damned like acid. Keris, I want to talk to you about what you’ve done.’
‘Well, I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said rudely. Then, as she glimpsed the anguish on his face, she relented a little. ‘Listen Chantor, I know you’re worried about me, but I am of pilgrim age, you know. I make my own decisions, my own mistakes. And the decision I’ve made is to follow Meldor. With this hand of mine, I probably don’t have all that many choices anyway, but I’ve made this one. And that, Chantor, is that.’
She pulled away and went to look for Davron.
‘We lost a man,’ Davron said as she came up. ‘One of the Unbound who came with Meldor. Kellin Large Ears, poor man. Ley-burned.’
She shuddered, remembering the sizzling flesh of the pet. ‘Corrian’s lost an arm. I left her swearing at Meldor fit to burn the hair from his scalp with her vocabulary. Was anyone else hurt?’
‘A few cuts and burns. Nothing Meldor can’t fix. You? I saw you facing up to that pet.’
‘I singed it and it made off.’
‘It won’t last. I killed its mistress.’
‘I’m glad. She was the woman with the red hair, I suppose? I think she may have been Cissie Woodrug, the Minion involved in the death of my father.’
‘Then I’m doubly glad I’ve disposed of her.’ There was grim satisfaction in his voice. ‘Did you see the Chameleon’s trick with the burning turds from the fire? He found it was effective against furred beasts. Burning manure sticks to them, apparently.’
She swallowed, trying to loosen the knot in her throat. ‘Davron, what was it all about? Could it have been—me? Lord Carasma said Cissie would be punished for letting the map get to me. Maybe this is her revenge for the punishment?’
He thought that over, then said slowly, ‘Or maybe it’s just that she sensed from Carasma that he would prefer you dead, especially if it has been reported to him that your hands are not as badly injured as they are supposed to be. Perhaps she thought she’d be in his favour again if she did the deed?’
She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Oh Davron. You’ve just—just scared the freckles off my nose.’
His lips gave a lopsided twist. ‘I have not. They’re still there. I happen to like them.’
‘You must be the only person who does.’
‘Suits me. Keris, it will be all right. Tomorrow we’ll ride like the wind, and we’ll leave the bastards behind. Our mounts are rested and the Minions have been sorely battered tonight, I’ll swear. We’ll sandwich your tent between Meldor’s and mine and Scow’s from now on. In fact, you are welcome to share my tent if you want, except—’ He made a gesture with his hands that spoke volumes.
She shook her head violently. ‘I’ll be all right.’
I could bear this, she thought. It could even be tantalisingly enjoyable, if I knew that one day we would be together. If I could see some hope, somewhere, sometime. But there’s nothing ahead. We have no future together.
Maker help us.
~~~~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Five
Scorn not any road to salvation if that road is true. When the Lord Carasma uses ley, his evil is manifest, but should a Knight use ley and his heart be pure, who are we to say that there is not purity in the act?
—Knights IV: 9: 5 & 6 (Kt Jorgan)
Keris baffled Portron.
She was just twenty, a maid as yet unwed, and for all that she had apparently worked for her father, she had no great experience. She should have therefore been biddable, amenable to Chantry strictures, willing to follow the advice of an older and wiser man wearing Chantry colours. Instead she was intractable, stubborn, self-opinionated, recalcitrant and far too curious about things that should not have been of concern to an unencoloured woman of tender years. She ought to have been content to follow a chantor’s leadership. Instead she’d decided to throw in her lot with two Unstablers of dubious morality and motivation who dabbled in the forbidden and kept company with one of the tainted. Scow might be harmless enough, perhaps, but Meldor-Edion was clearly an apostate of the worst kind, intent on corrupting the innocent… And as for Davron, his influence was diabolical. The man was little better than a satyr, it was obvious.
Could Keris
really be interested in such a man, as Corrian had implied? Certainly she’d been spending a lot of time in his company lately, and he had rescued her from the Deep, but Portron could not imagine what the attraction was. He thought Davron, for all his obvious lechery, was far too severe a man to appeal to someone as young and as lively as Keris. Why, the fellow hardly ever smiled, and those black eyes of his were like pits filled with coal, showing a soul as cold as a smith’s unlit forge.
Portron shook his head in bewilderment and remembered Maylie. Skinny, curious, generous Maylie with her freckled nose and trusting grey eyes. He had loved her—ley-life, how he’d loved her! She’d had red, roughened hands, he remembered, product of a lifetime of hard manual work. He’d thought them a badge of honour. Not like Keris’s hands. Hers had been long and fine and artistic. Had been. What by all that was holy in Creation had happened to the left one? She wasn’t saying…
Sometimes now when he recalled Maylie’s face, it was Keris’s he pictured. They were so alike or was it his memory playing tricks? He had only his memory to rely on. There had never been a picture of Maylie, and his memories of her were twenty years old now. She would remain forever twenty in his mind. Twenty, and in love.
And so like Keris.
They’d had a daughter, he and Maylie. He knew that much, although the knowledge of the baby’s gender was supposed to have been forbidden them. Certainly Maylie had never seen the baby she’d given birth to, but she’d bribed a lowly unencoloured worker to tell her whether it had been a girl or a boy and then she’d smuggled the information to him. He’d been long gone from her chanterie by then, of course, back to his Rule Office.
She would be Keris’s age now, wherever she was, his daughter.
Impossible, of course, that Keris was Maylie’s child. Keris knew her parents and had been raised by them. Whereas Maylie’s child, his child—she’d be a chantora somewhere. She was born into Chantry, would have been raised by Chantry, would now be part of Chantry, encoloured into one of the Orderings.