by Glenda Larke
‘Bad news, I fear,’ his father was saying. ‘We don’t ride out too far anymore; it’s too dangerous. Avian pets scout for us, and we are subject to Minion attack if we venture too far.’
‘They’ve found Havenstar.’ Meldor’s quick frown said it all.
‘I’m afraid so. None have penetrated our defences so far, but we dare not spread ourselves too thin further out. Their numbers are building up, too.’
Meldor sighed. ‘It had to happen sooner or later. I just wish it had been a little later. However, we’re getting reinforcements, as you’ve doubtless noticed, Brecon. I have asked the Havenbrethren to come home. Any sign of the Unmaker?’
‘No, thanks be.’
‘Ride on, then.’ Meldor nodded his thanks, and the two men sketched a kinesis and rode away.
‘The son, he was wearing a ring and he’s not Chantry,’ Quirk said in wonderment. ‘Did you see that, Keris?’
‘And why should he not?’ Scow asked.
‘This place is going to take some getting used to,’ the Chameleon said, bemused, and his eye mounds rolled sideways—one to the left and the other to the right—in humorous self-mockery. ‘Ley-life, when a blacksmith’s son waves a ring with a stone the size of a garlic clove under my nose, I feel weak in the knees, as if the land is going to disintegrate under my feet just with the wicked sin of it all.’ He grinned at her. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
Corrian chuckled wickedly. ‘Aye, that it is. I do believe the place has possibilities.’
‘No rings, though, at least not for you two, I’m afraid,’ Davron said. ‘Although you’re welcome to wear any other form of jewellery.’
‘And why no rings, when I’ve always hankered to wear summat on my fingers that could knock the teeth down a snooty Trician’s gorge?’ Corrian asked.
‘Because rings are worn in Havenstar as a sign of being ley-lit.’
‘And where is Havenstar?’ Keris asked, looking around.
‘Everything you see sandwiched between the Riven and the Writhe is Havenstar. Look beyond the ley line,’ Scow replied.
She stood up in her stirrups to see better, but was frustrated by the coloured mists drifting over the Writhe.
‘Never mind,’ said Davron. ‘We’ll ride on to the bridge not far ahead, and we’ll cross the line there. We have twelve bridges in and out of Havenstar because we don’t ask the ley-unlit, like Corrian here, to risk tainting unnecessarily.’
‘More than that,’ Meldor added. ‘I came to the conclusion that ley-crossings can eventually be felt by the Unmaker. I thought bridges might help us maintain our secrecy.’
Half an hour later, they were greeting the guards at the nearest bridge. Meldor and Davron were quickly recognised and saluted with kinesis gestures of welcome and respect. As they rode on over the Writhe into another world, Corrian poked her tongue out.
Keris stared, speechless.
The land sparkled. Shone. Every particle of soil gleamed with fiery colour, every blade of grass was lambent in its greenness, every bush and every tree seemed to move with opaline life. ‘Merciful Maker!’ she said at last in appalled disbelief. ‘You have soaked the land with ley!’
‘That’s right,’ Meldor agreed with complacent satisfaction.
‘How can anyone ever get used to that?’ she asked, more to herself than to anyone else. Was it possible to become accustomed to being constantly surrounded by a ley-saturated land, to being constantly aware that colours moved within a solid object?
Quirk halted beside Keris on the other side of the bridge and slid off his horse. ‘Tell me what you see,’ he begged. ‘I don’t see anything special. It’s just like a stability, any stability to me, although I’ll admit I don’t feel sick the way I did when we crossed through the Fifth.’
For a moment she was at a loss, aware they were all listening to her. Davron was the only one who would know if she adequately answered the question, for only he could see ley.
She chose her words carefully. ‘It’s as you see it, a land with copses of trees and meadows and woods, a farm over there with a mosaic of fields; it’s all that. But there is more. More inlaid into it, woven through it, embroidered on it. Imagine—imagine that this world you see is also strewn with iridescent opal dust. That everything is luminescent with effervescent bubbles. No, that’s not quite right. It’s not just flashes of colour that I see when I look, it’s flashes of—of life. The colour moves, as if Havenstar has a soul, and she has drawn back her veil so that you can glimpse her heart.’ She paused. ‘When you say that ley is merely power that binds the world together, I have to believe you, Meldor, but what I see tells me that ley is more than that. I used to fear it; but here I see the touch of the Maker. It’s the—the flash of a kingfisher’s blue, the cider-gold sparkle of sun on water, the misty ring around a moon, the dimpled laughter of a baby. It’s all the things that make you want to bend your knee and thank the Maker from your heart for all of That Which Was Created.’ She looked across at the Chameleon. ‘I hope that answers your question.’
There was silence, then Meldor said, and his voice was torn with grief and pride, ‘Thank you. Thank you for being the first person who has made me see Havenstar.’
‘But I still don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You have soaked the land with ley somehow, I can see that, but how does that make it safe? Why isn’t it just another kind of unstable?’
‘The Unstable is unsafe because it has ley on it, but none within it. Ley lines are unsafe because they have too much ley. All we did was take some of the ley from the lines and put it back into the land. The result is Havenstar, a safe place, semi-stable, yet not hostile to the tainted because it is not created with the rigidity of Order, nor constructed with the unforgiving uniformity of the Rule.’
‘Did Old Malinawar once look like this?’
‘No, no. The Maker is much more skilful at integrating ley than we poor humans! Malinawar doubtless looked like a stability does. Our ley keeps leeching out of the soil and we have to keep on putting it back. Perhaps it is this instability that makes the result acceptable to the Unbound.’
‘Come on down,’ Davron said, climbing down from his horse, ‘I’ll show you how it’s done.’
They all dismounted to look at the complex system of irrigation gates, tanks and sluices next to the bridge. The Riven’s ley, thickly livid and rope-like, was channelled from the line into a buried holding tank.
‘Looks like animal guts,’ said Corrian, peering in.
Water and ley from the Writhe were then added through irrigation ditches and stirred by means of a giant wooden comb powered by donkeys dragging the levers around as they circled the tank on the outside. The mixture was then distributed into Havenstar through irrigation channels.
‘There are many such tanks,’ Davron said. ‘For safety reasons we space them out.’
‘The whole of Havenstar is criss-crossed with a complex system of gutters and ditches and trenches,’ added Meldor, ‘designed by a man, Switchin Lesgon, who was a master bridge-mender in the Fourth until he was excluded for a crime. The ley is held in suspension in the water and is then absorbed into the soil. Separated from the main body of the ley lines and broken up into droplets, it becomes less dangerous and less potent. Eventually it drains out again, along with the water, and is either recycled or channelled back into the ley lines.
‘It was hard, back-breaking work, I can tell you. There was not one of us, myself included, who did not take their turn with a spade in those early days. At the end of the first year, though, we had a place where the tainted could live and yet where a building was not reabsorbed back into the land within a matter of days, or crumbled by upheavals, or mysteriously changed in nature. When Haveners planted vegetables or crops or fruit trees, they grew, and grew normally. By the end of the first year, I knew we had created something special.’ He clapped the Chameleon on the back. ‘Tell me, how do you feel, Quirk?’
The Chameleon hesitated. ‘Strange. At peace. As if…as if I
have come home.’
‘You have. You are an Unbound man in Havenstar. You may not be able to see ley, but the ley that tainted you is still inside you, part of you, and it bonds with the ley of Havenstar. The longer you live here, the more you will love this land. You can’t see its true glory any more than I can, but you can feel it. The ley-lit or the Unbound: who can say who is the luckier?’ He moved off to speak to some of the Havenguards near by.
Davron said quietly, ‘Think, he created Havenstar, yet he has neither seen it nor felt it.’ He sounded infinitely sad.
As they walked back towards the horses, Keris eyed the guards and a pile of halberds, pikes and bows outside the door to the bridge guardhouse. ‘What is it you fear?’
It was Scow who replied. ‘Minion attack. Or sabotage of the system. If someone were to flood the channels with too much ley—well, we might become one gigantic ley line.’ He shook his mane at the thought.
‘Someone like me, for example,’ Davron said harshly, his flinted voice scraping across Keris’s nerves with words she didn’t want to hear. ‘He can’t ask me directly to kill any follower of the Maker, remember, but this…this he could ask.’
With sickening horror she realised that this was what both Meldor and he thought he was destined to do. She gazed at him, sickened with the pain of knowing.
~~~~~~~
‘There’s one disadvantage to Havenstar no one has mentioned to you yet,’ Scow said cheerfully to Keris, Quirk and Corrian that night as they sat at the camp fire, eating the damper bread Davron had cooked in the coals. They had ridden deeper into Havenstar that afternoon, and had only stopped when the sun was about to set, choosing a camp site beside a stream under some trees. Keris was now delighting in the intensity of the ley glitter. It was brighter in the darkness, providing its own illumination independent of the firelight or the night sky. ‘Remember,’ Scow continued, ‘cockroaches savour the sweetest dishes.’
Quirk groaned. ‘Don’t tell me. The place is riddled with fire-flaming Minions and pets with bad breath.’
‘Not quite, but close. It’s the Wild that are the problem. They are just as attracted to Havenstar as tainted Haveners like us are. You have to be careful and we’ll have to mount guard tonight. As for Minions, well, they could live here just as we do, but up until now there’ve been none to worry about. They never used to come south of the Riven, any more than the ordinary Unstabler did.’
Quirk grimaced. ‘Until now. Until I get here. What is it about me, Keris?’
‘Can’t be you,’ she said sleepily and stretched back against her saddle. ‘Must be Corrian.’
The old woman sent a stream of acrid smoke in her direction by way of answer. ‘What I want to know is this: why the Chaos I can’t wear a ring in this place and the ley-lit can? It don’t make sense, anymore than the Rule did, with Chantry dressing up like peonies and us poor whores having to look our best in brown.’
‘The rings are for the quick identification of the ley-lit,’ Scow said.
‘And why is it necessary to know in a hurry who can see ley and who can’t?’
It was Meldor who answered, his tone laced through with regret. ‘We deal with ley every day in Havenstar. The ley-lit are therefore especially valuable here. Only they can see what we are doing, literally. Only they can be the irrigation engineers, our master builders, our master planners. And sometimes in an emergency—which occurs often enough—it is necessary for them to see at a glance just who can see ley and who can’t. Hence the rings.’ He sighed. ‘I thought to make Havenstar a place where there were no Tricians, no Chantry, no hedrins, no knights. And there aren’t. Instead there are the ley-lit. Our new aristocrats.’ He gave a smile of pure ironic whimsy. ‘Lady Keris, here you are special not only because you make special maps. Here you are noble, like it or not, because you’re ley-lit.’
Corrian made a noise that sounded distinctly uncomplimentary. ‘Wouldn’t you know it? I end up on the bottom of the muck-heap yet again! Ley-unlit and ring-less. Bah!’
‘Face it, Corrie,’ Quirk said, ‘neither you nor I were fated to be noble.’ He rolled his eyes upwards in comic resignation and then made off towards his tent, too tired to stay awake any longer.
Was I so fated? Keris thought. I’m just a mapmaker’s daughter! Aloud she asked, ‘Where are we bound for tomorrow?’
‘Shield,’ said Scow. ‘That’s Havenstar’s only city. There are any number of villages, but Shield is the only place of size. We’ll be there before nightfall.’
She yawned. ‘Chaos, I’m tired. Davron, I hope I’m not on guard duty first off because I’ll never stay awake.’ Yet, even after the others had dispersed, Scow to guard duty, Corrian and Meldor to bed, she lingered with Davron by the fireside, reluctant to say goodnight. She sensed a bleakness in him that scored deep; he was back in Havenstar, and he believed he was doomed to destroy it.
‘I love you,’ she said quietly. ‘And I’ll go on loving you.’ The additional words, ‘no matter what’, remained unspoken, but she knew he would hear them anyway.
‘I wish I could show you how much you mean to me,’ he said evenly. He sounded prosaic, as if he was talking about the dust on his shoes. She was not deceived.
‘I know. Creation, I know.’
They looked at one another helplessly, and loved all the more, from a distance.
~~~~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Seven
And out of the darkness of the Unstable will come one who lives in darkness, yet is clad in light. And he shall take up the sword to change the world.
—Predictions V: 1: 4 & 5
Edion had been born a wheelwright’s son, but perhaps he would not have made a good wheelwright. He was a dreamer, even as a boy, and liked activities that involved his mind rather than his body. He had no skills with his hands and he was content to have it that way. Throughout most of his boyhood he was even glad Chantry had taken him from his family as a baby; glad because being raised by his true parents would also have meant that he would have been destined to be an artisan. With no understanding of what he had missed, he just appreciated what he had instead: the opportunity to study, to pore over the written word, to learn, even if it also meant the austere life of a chantery orphanage.
And so it was that Edion the wheelwright’s superfluous baby became Edion the novice chantor, later novice knight, a thoughtful, perceptive boy with a strong leaning towards the ascetic. Novice Edion in turn became Knight Edion of Galman, philosopher and intellectual, seeker after knowledge, a man with little interest in his own comfort or in wealth. The change from Knight Edion, a fervent believer in Chantry and the Rule, to Meldor the Excluded, a rebel against the institution and its creed, was slow in its evolution and may never have reached its logical conclusion had not Edion gone blind.
He had always decried the pain the Rule inflicted on individuals. It offended both his sense of justice and his idea that Chantry’s aim was one of service to humankind. In his early years as a knight he’d often spoken out against the more outstanding of the Rule’s injustices, and had preached compassion and tolerance against transgressors even as he himself lacked an interest in people as individuals. It was more what was right that concerned him, than what was kind. If this was a fault in him it was neither one he recognised, nor one that Chantry cavilled over. His superiors thought all compassion should be subordinate to what was better for society, and that meant what was better for Order. Chantry preached the rule because it preserved stability; Edion questioned it because it was unjust.
Such was their respect for the depth of his learning and their healthy regard for his popularity among congregations, that for many years Chantry was loath to criticise Knight Edion for his forthright views. He went among the people and preached his doctrine and generally the Sanhedrin refrained from comment. Sometimes his criticisms were even heeded by his superiors. At the same time, his most fervid critics within Chantry, and there we many, bided their time until they had an excuse to strike, which came when
it became clear that the knight was losing his vision.
Edion was stripped of his knighthood, although not of a chantor’s colours—those he chose to renounce himself, several years later, after he had furthered his travels in the Unstable and discovered the true extent of the suffering there. It was then that he declared himself a free follower of the Maker, a heresy that was deserving of death, although the Sanhedrin chose not to pursue it for reasons that had a lot to do with their own popularity and little to do with the Rule. Instead they allowed Edion to sever all ties to Chantry, and to change his name. It was in their interests to have Knight Edion of Galman sink into obscurity as quickly as possible.
Although his open rebellion occurred only after his exclusion, the seeds of Havenstar’s beginning had been kernelled when he was still a knight, long before he’d lost his sight. Driven by a need for an interlude of contemplation and even deprivation, Edion had at one time embarked on a long journey into the Unstable with several fellow chantors. He’d thought to travel south in search of the lost lands of Bellisthron and Yedron simply because he wondered if it was possible to find and unite the lost nations against the Unmaker.
Thwarted by the ferocity of the Unstable, they’d failed in the attempt, but on the journey he’d seen a triangle of land caught between the Riven and a ley line he’d named the Writhe. It had contained several fixed features that seemed impervious to instability, which was strange since the area was sandwiched between two ley lines of unequalled caprice. It was an exceptionally attractive slice of the Unstable, a green and fertile land, well-watered with streams and well-endowed with vegetation, a pleasant aberration in an otherwise desolate, barren landscape.
He’d remembered the place and years later—after he’d gone blind, after he’d been excluded, after he’d been unencoloured from Chantry, after he’d confirmed his own theories with regard to ley—he’d gone back, this time carrying with him his dream of creating a home where the excluded could live safely. There he applied all he had learnt from his wide reading of both holy texts and the unencoloured writings in Chantry libraries. There he created something unlike any other place, stable or unstable, something unlike anything that had existed before or after the Rending. There he had created Havenstar.