Havenstar

by Glenda Larke

  Yet Chantor Portron could not help but feel that his child, wherever she was, would resemble the pilgrim maid from Kibbleberry. Whether he ached to guard Keris from the twin dangers of ley and her own headstrong nature because she reminded him of Maylie, or because she made him think of the daughter he’d never seen, remained a matter of confusion to Portron. He regarded her with paternal affection and protectiveness, yet there were times when the jealously he felt was more akin to that of a lover. It shamed him, and he buried it deep.

  It’s just my pastoral duty. I want to help a girl who is alone in the world, alone and unsupported. It is my duty.

  And then he would remember with tearing potency the way Maylie had looked at him the day they’d been unable to hide her pregnancy any longer and they’d known he’d be obliged to leave.

  When he thought of that moment now, it brought the kind of feelings that made Portron sigh and kneel to perform the kinesis of penance.

  Not only did Chantor Portron have trouble understanding Keris, but he was at a loss to explain what had happened to her. He didn’t know how she could have survived the fall into the canyon, he couldn’t explain the kind of damage done to her hand, and he had no idea how she’d absorbed ley into her body, or why. He only knew that she was committing a sin of the gravest kind, a sin large enough to ensure not only automatic exclusion, but also expulsion from Chantry congregations. And she would not listen to him. He’d begged her to take heed. He wanted to nag and threaten and cajole, but every time he broached the topic she brushed him away. ‘Not now, Chantor,’ she’d said more than once. ‘I’m tired. We’ve ridden far, and I cannot face an argument.’

  True, on the first day after the Minion raid, she had seemed exhausted. He’d noticed with alarmed concern that she’d swayed in the saddle. They’d ridden hard and fast, so there was reason to be tired, but she’d been close to collapse. Still, he did think she ought to have listened. And anyway, that evening, after they’d passed through a small ley line, she’d appeared much better. Portron had his suspicions about what she’d done in the ley line, along with Meldor and Davron, but he didn’t want to dwell on that.

  Several days later, when he tried to bring up the subject again, he was overheard by Corrian and found himself verbally assailed by the old woman. ‘Ah, Chantor,’ she said after Keris had walked away in irritation, ‘what makes you think in that chuckle-skulled head of yours, that she’ll listen to you sprout such mutton-brained nonsense?’

  Corrian’s tongue was back in form, even if the wild riding they’d done had wreaked havoc with her body. She’d spent the first two days after losing her arm riding in front of Scow on Stockwood in a semi-sedated state, followed by evenings and nights stretched out in her tent tired and crotchety. Now, however, on the third day, as they sat in the common room of yet another halt, her wits seemed to be as sharp as ever and she was quite capable of berating Portron even as she complained about her aching arm.

  ‘Keris saved our lives, and I don’t care if she did shoot invisible whatever out of her fingers to do it. I’m grateful anyway. I’m mighty attached to this life of mine. It’s the only one I’ve got,’ she said. She pointed at her missing forearm. ‘See this? See how it’s healing? Well, if Meldor’s doing that with his ley, why in Creation’s Ordering should I, or anyone else, object?’

  ‘Because it’s wrong,’ Portron mumbled, anxious that Meldor at the next table did not hear. The idea that the charismatic man who had been Knight Edion was now an apostate with the powers of ley within him scared Portron more than he cared to admit. ‘It’s a sin, Mistress Corrian. Chantry would be within its rights to cut you off from all salvation!’

  ‘Reckon it’s not Chantry as does that, Chantor. It’s the Maker, when He comes to decide whether my bits are to be accepted into That Which Was Created, or tossed into Chaos.’ She surveyed him shrewdly. ‘Seems to me that you got a problem, chantor. You’ve been dodging confrontations all your life, and now you’ve got one right in your own front yard—’ she tapped her forehead ‘—and you got to make up your mind what you’re going to do about it.’ She cackled. ‘Now that’s the Maker’s justice for you.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Chantor,’ Quirk interrupted. He was sitting next to them, but they’d forgotten he was there. ‘Doesn’t it say something somewhere in the Holy Books about ley being the salvation of humankind?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t! Er, well, I suppose there is a bit that’s saying the act of using ley might possibly be a true act, if the user himself is pure.’

  ‘And that we should not scorn any true route to salvation,’ Quirk persisted, ‘That’s in the book of Knights somewhere.’

  ‘It’s a vague reference,’ Portron protested unhappily. ‘No one takes any notice of it.’

  ‘Maybe they ought,’ Corrian said, and looked smug.

  Portron was sure he had never met anyone he disliked more. Unless it was Meldor. Or Davron.

  ~~~~~~~

  ‘We’ll have to watch him,’ Davron said quietly at the next table. ‘He is disturbed by our use of ley.’

  Meldor, hands clasped around a mug of something that was misnamed beer, asked, ‘Do you think he’ll he take what he knows to Chantry once my coercion wears off?’

  Scow murmured his assent.

  Davron said, ‘I think so. Although maybe he might feel some reluctance if Keris is with us. He won’t want her hurt.’ He grimaced. ‘Confound the man. Your coercion won’t last forever, and we hardly want Chantry sending Defenders into the Unstable, chasing after us in righteous indignation.’

  ‘Would they?’ Scow asked. ‘Why bother with us if we stay within the Unstable?’

  ‘Oh, they’ll bother, all right,’ Meldor said. ‘I don’t have the slightest doubt of that.’ He smiled slightly at Scow. ‘Did you know a group of Defenders came through here only two days back, asking if anyone had seen an elderly blind man with a deep voice? Or so our host informs me.’ He did not look particularly worried.

  Davron frowned. ‘What prompted them, do you think?’

  ‘Maybe they’ve just heard too many rumours about Havenstar. About ley. Chantry fears ley more than anything else. They believe anyone who dabbles in it is akin to being a Minion, and for an ordinary person who has access to a stability to dabble—well, that’s tantamount to declaring war on Order. They fear such a man could come into a stability and do untold damage.’

  Davron sighed. ‘Someone like me, for instance.’

  ‘Exactly. Davron, if Portron talks, your life will be in danger whenever you step foot into a stab.’

  ‘So will yours.’

  ‘I’m excluded. I don’t venture past border towns. You do.’

  ‘What do you suggest? That we kill him?’

  Meldor, to Davron’s alarm, seemed to consider this suggestion seriously. ‘It would be one solution, but I do have a distaste for acting in a way that makes us no better than those we oppose… No, I think we will let the chantor go his own way. He will have his uses.’

  Davron raised an eyebrow. ‘When you talk like that, I wonder what you are up to, my sightless friend.’

  ‘Just so long as Chantor Portron doesn’t wonder yet a while…’

  ~~~~~~~

  The fellowship avoided the Sixth and Seventh Stabilities. Twice, they also deliberately avoided fellowships guarded by Defenders. They rode fast, hoping to leave their Minion attackers behind, still licking their wounds. Of course, it was only a matter of time before other Minions spotted them, they all knew that.

  They reached the Wanderer and in the crossing of this ley line, renowned for its treachery, Keris absorbed still more ley. She’d been shocked at how weak she’d been after she’d used ley on Cissie Woodrug’s pet. By the time they had reached a small ley line the next day, she’d felt exhausted and ill. She reflected wryly she’d never thought she would be glad to plunge into a ley line. Now, several days later at the Wanderer, she was uneasy with her realisation of how much she appreciated the possibility of imbibing still
more ley. She enjoyed the strength and vitality it gave her.

  ‘Now I know why I was so attracted to the Snarled Fist,’ she said to Davron. ‘There is something seductive about ley.’

  He nodded soberly and they exchanged glances. They knew the price they paid. With ley they felt strong; without it, they would die.

  While she was within the Wanderer she searched for more minerals or soils that could be used in inks and paints, but found nothing. It was not until they reached the Graven several days later that she had any luck.

  The Graven was wide and slow-moving. It presented few dangers to fellowships, being renowned more for its gentle colours and tranquillity than for upheaval. Davron told her no more than a handful of people had ever been tainted in the Graven over the past one hundred years, with which fact she comforted herself while she searched the soil it touched with its flow.

  She found sienna, the earth pigment that would give her varying shades of yellow and brown, including the reddish-brown of burnt sienna once she had done the firing necessary. Nearby she found some ferric oxide that could be used to make brighter reds, so she was well satisfied.

  That evening she drew a small portion of a trompleri map using what she had found, but kept it until the morning light before showing it to Meldor, Scow and Davron. Meldor, of course, could not see it at all, and it was Davron who described it to him, in a voice that shook with excitement. ‘It’s a large-scale map of some of the land we passed through yesterday,’ he said. ‘It shows a brown plain and that rocky gully where we were almost swept aside by that whirlwind.’

  ‘I used a map of Letering’s to get the right measurements,’ she said. ‘And I chose that particular place because I have the right colours for it. I only have browns at the moment, from yellow-brown to red-brown.’

  ‘Oh, ley-fire,’ Davron said. ‘Meldor, there’s a whirlwind there. It’s spinning across the corner of the map. I can see it moving. I almost expect it to pick up the paint from the vellum! You’d think you could touch it and feel the wind of it, yet when I do, there’s nothing. I feel nothing, yet it spins away from beneath my fingers… And look, what’s that? A rider of some sort. Just coming down into the gully. You can see how he’s going downhill! It’s incredible… the hillside looks so real! A lone person on a—is that a horse? No, I think it’s a tainted beast of some sort. Keris, this is wonderful.’ He looked up and she was disconcerted to see the admiration in his eyes. ‘Holy Maker, I wish you could see it, Meldor.’

  ‘I wish I could too.’ There was a note of wistfulness in his voice. ‘My thanks, Keris. One day you will be honoured in Havenstar.’

  She blinked. ‘Honoured? I don’t want to be honoured. I just want—’ She paused, trying to think what she did want. ‘I guess I just want things to be better. For everyone.’

  ‘Nothing for yourself?’ Meldor asked.

  ‘Things being better, that would be for myself.’

  ‘They will,’ Meldor said. ‘I promise it.’

  She smiled, but did not quite believe it.

  Scow, as usual, brought them back to practicalities. ‘How much difficulty will you have getting the right colours in ley lines for the maps?’ he asked.

  ‘It won’t be easy. I suspect that I’ll be able to make all the range from dull red to brown to orange to yellow without any problems, because the easiest things to find are probably going to be the ochres, the umbers, the siennas. There won’t be any carmine or madder or indigo or gentian or woad, though. They come from plants and animals. Even sepia. That’s from the ink of the river squid. And where to find minerals that are usually deep-mined? Copper, for example. If I have copper I can make verdigris to get green. If I have cobalt and aluminium oxides, I can get cobalt blue—that’s probably the most important of all. Greens I could mix.’ She frowned, thinking. ‘Dark green-blues I could probably get from iron pigments… But cinnabar? Is that usually mined? I don’t even know what it is.’

  ‘Something to do with mercury, I think,’ said Davron. ‘What about white?’

  ‘I’m bound to find chalk under a ley line somewhere.’

  ‘There will be people to help you in Havenstar,’ Meldor said. ‘We could probably find an expert in paint-making, I shouldn’t wonder. We have just about every artisan you care to name.’

  Havenstar…

  To Keris’s ears, it didn’t even sound like a real place. She still had no idea of what it was. She had pestered both Scow and Davron for more information and both of them had been equally vague. ‘Oh, you will see,’ Davron had said and his voice had softened like a man about to describe his lover. ‘Havenstar is difficult to explain. It is different. Rare. Perhaps after seeing it, you would think even an ocean was prosaic. Better to wait and see than have me try to explain with words that will only be inadequate. After all, nobody believes in wyverns anymore, do they?’

  ‘Wyverns? You’re joking, right?’ He just laughed.

  Scow was even less informative. ‘You’ll see it differently to me,’ he had said. ‘I’m not ley-lit, so I see only the shadow, the reflection, the mask. Useless to ask me for a description. And yet, Havenstar will never mean as much to you as it does to me, and in that I am luckier. Havenstar speaks to my soul, Keris.’

  And that did not help to explain the place either.

  Nor did she feel she knew all the truth about Meldor’s plans. There was a suppressed intensity in him now, as if his planning was about to reach its culmination, its finale. He was as an animal poised to spring, with muscles gathered, gaze intent; an animal waiting for just the right moment to surprise an unsuspecting prey. And that frightened her as much as anything else he’d ever done.

  Often, when they met groups of the excluded, Meldor, Davron and Scow would be involved in long discussions with them, after which camps would sometimes be struck and people would disperse purposefully, or messengers would hurry off in different directions as if there was no time to be lost. None of the others in the fellowship were ever given an explanation. ‘They are Havenbethren,’ was all Keris was told, ‘friends to Havenstar.’ She couldn’t help but feel that Meldor was stirring the cauldron of his revolution.

  ~~~~~~~

  ‘You are what?’ Portron asked. The chantor stared at Davron across the campfire in shock as Keris watched.

  Davron, unperturbed, poured himself a morning cup of char, or Scow’s Brew as they’d come to call it, and repeated what he had just said. ‘We are not going to the Eighth Stab after all. I have spoken to my friend Martryn, he’s the guide of that fellowship that’s camped just over there—’ he waved at the small group of tents just down the valley ‘—and he’s more than willing to have you join them. They are on their way from the Seventh to the Eighth, and expect to arrive at the kinesis chain in two days. I have recompensed him. You won’t have to pay him anything.’

  ‘But—’ The chantor gazed at Davron in bewilderment. ‘But where are you going?’

  ‘Our destination does not concern you, Chantor,’ Davron said and this time there was a hint of steel in his voice.

  Portron turned to her. ‘Keris—?’ he asked.

  ‘Chantor,’ she said, ‘I’m an Unstabler now, and I’m not going to wait to be told I’m also one of the excluded. Besides, I don’t want to have Chantry coming after me because I’m drugged up to the ears with ley.’

  Portron winced. ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘It’s true. It’s what I am. And you know it’s your duty to report it. Just be grateful that Davron is letting you go.’

  Portron went several shades paler. It had apparently not occurred to him that he might have been in danger. ‘I wouldn’t have betrayed you,’ Portron said quietly to her.

  Did he mean it? Probably, but she wondered if he would remain steadfast once he was part of a chantery again. ‘Chantor, you’ve done your best with me, and by your own standards you have failed. Let it remain like that.’

  He stared silently for several long minutes. She didn’t budge, nor did she lower he
r eyes. He tore his gaze away and looked at Corrian. ‘Mistress? Surely you are not going with the Master Guide too?’

  The old woman shrugged. ‘I hadn’t thought to, but what the lass says is dead right. I’m lacking an arm, and I’m no great shakes as a citizen as far as Chantry is concerned at the best of times. What are the odds, think you, that I’ll be excluded by you encoloured prayer-chanting folk as well?’ She turned her gaze to Davron. ‘I’m not much use to anyone respectable-like, ’cept maybe as a one-armed cook, and I have only the slimmest notion of where you’re bound, Master Guide, but if you’ll have me—?’

  He hesitated, glanced at Meldor who had been standing aloof from the group, received a nod from the blind man, and said with a smile, ‘Anyone brave enough to fight a pet by lobbing cooking pots at it is welcome, Mistress Corrian.’

  ‘Not to mention hurling invective,’ Keris said with a laugh. ‘I believe I learnt more swear words in two minutes than I had in a lifetime before that.’

  Portron gave her a grim look of disapproval. ‘Then I guess that means I’m the only one,’ he said. ‘Very well. I’ll go with Master Martryn.’ He puffed himself up a little. ‘I hope you don’t all live to regret this.’ He stalked away into his tent to pack.

  Meldor stirred and the smile he gave was enigmatic. ‘I hope so too,’ he said softly. ‘Havenstar may depend on it.’

  ~~~~~~~

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Why must humankind insist on making themselves unequal, one to another? The soft-spoken man shrinks before the strong, the proud beauty preens before the plain, and both accept their place as if it were rightful. Havenstar was built for all men to march as brothers, Havenstar was created for all women to walk tall. But always there are some pigeons that strut and others that cringe, for we are all human after all.