Havenstar

by Glenda Larke

  She blinked away tears. ‘You ask too much of him. The Maker asks too much. Innocent people will die at his hands? That will devastate him beyond bearing!’

  Meldor was implacable. ‘Yes, it will. Go to him, Keris. Help him to be strong.’

  She stood, without replying. There seemed to be no more words she could say. Even words of farewell seemed superfluous. With his usual unerring instinct, he reached out and touched her hand, no more than that. She allowed the touch, knowing it said all that could be said, and then left him.

  ~~~~~~~

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  And of those who hold our hope and stand before Lord Carasma in the final hour of battle: even in victory shall one fall; in defeat all shall die.

  Predictions XXIV: 6: 1

  With the dawn, Keris, Scow and Quirk saw for the first time the rampant, turbulent ley now loose within the bounds of Havenstar. A flood, Keris thought, shocked. Storm ley turgid within the very heart Havenstar… And she felt something clench right in the middle of her chest. Fear, pure fear. It screwed up her insides like ruthless hands wringing out a cloth.

  It was only ley, she knew, but such ley.

  Purple—not clear magenta-purple, but an angry colour, slashed through with bulging skeins of puce and plum. Ugly, threatening. It rolled inexorably across the landscape before them, from right to left, head-high and moving.

  I can’t be tainted, she thought. I have no need to fear this. But fear she did.

  ‘Is it very bad?’ Quirk asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he did this?’

  She nodded miserably. ‘It must be killing him.’ It was an unfortunate choice of words. Scow blanched, aware that the killing of Davron was exactly what might result from a confrontation between them.

  A rider, a stranger, came plunging out of the ley. He was whipping his horse, and did not slow even though he must have seen them. They drew up and waited, but he galloped past, unheeding. Wild eyes stared unseeing out of a blanched face and there was a trickle of blood down his cheek.

  ‘What is there up ahead?’ Keris asked Scow. Her voice was thin and unnaturally high.

  Scow answered, equally shaken. ‘A village. Dawnbreak. About half an hour’s ride from here. Fifteen houses or so, maybe sixty or seventy people. It’s the only village between us and the Knuckle. A farming community. There are a couple of additional isolated farms as well, over to the east. That’s all. The other villages are behind us, outside of the ley still, I would say.’ He sounded matter-of-fact, but there was none of his usual good-humour lurking in his voice.

  ‘This is scaring my eyelashes off,’ the Chameleon said. ‘Do we ride on?’ He meant, ‘Do we ride on into that?’

  She nodded and resolutely dug her heels into the sides of the tainted beast she was riding. They stopped again just before they entered the ley, not because they hesitated to enter, but because they saw shapes coming towards them out of it. People, the inhabitants of Dawnbreak, fleeing on foot or leading carts loaded with their families and their most precious belongings. They emerged from the thick tangle of ley, coughing and retching as if they’d been walking in particle-laden smoke, the pitiful human remnants of what had been a prosperous village of Haveners.

  The first man staggered past dazed and unheeding. It seemed doubtful that he even realised he’d emerged from the ley. He was middle-aged, wearing the rough working clothes of a farmer and leading a tainted ox and wagon. The rest of his family were piled on to the wagon: an old woman, a younger woman with furred ears, and three children, all tainted. Every one of them was bloodied, dirty, exhausted. One of the children was hideously maimed, twisted into something that scarcely seemed human. The younger woman held the girl and rocked to and fro, crooning in a monotone that set Keris’s teeth on edge. The child looked out of idiot eyes and drooled.

  Keris felt the tears coming and bit them back. Davron! Oh, Maker, Davron my love…

  Another woman stepped out of the ley behind the first group. There was more sense in her gaze, although she limped and reeled as she walked. ‘Don’t go that way, milady,’ she said to Keris and shuddered. ‘Don’t go that way.’ Scow dismounted and reached out to stop her, but she eluded his grasp and waded on. ‘The ley is coming!’ she shouted at him. ‘I don’t have time to stop.’

  Scow let her pass and clutched at one of the refugees in the next group instead. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Tell us!’

  The man, wearing the collar tags of the Havenguard, looked fearfully back over his shoulder. He wore the ring of the ley-lit and had a child on his back and another in his arms. ‘The Lord Betrayer,’ he said. ‘The Lord Betrayer came, riding on the Beast. And he pulled the ley behind him. Such ley!—I’ve never seen such ley. Red ley, red as blood. The colour of fresh-spilled blood.’ The eyes that gazed at Scow’s were wild with pain and shock. ‘I had three untainted children.’ He held out the child he carried so they could see her. She was more animal than human, with the furred face of a weasel and the sharp teeth of a carnivore. ‘See?’ he asked. He sounded half-mad. ‘She’s wildish now. Look at her. She can’t even talk. Her mother went mad and killed herself. Yesterday I had a wife and three fine children and a farm and a house and a life.’ He started crying. ‘Then the Beast came. The Beast and the Betrayer.’

  No. Oh, no.

  Davron, love, how will you ever forgive yourself?

  The child standing silently at the man’s side clutched a kitten and sucked her thumb. She was nine or ten years old and she had ley-lit eyes that were too large: terror-filled.

  No child ought to look like that…

  ‘Poor Havenstar,’ the man said. ‘My poor children.’ He turned away and walked on with his burden.

  ‘The Beast?’ Quirk asked finally.

  She shook her head. She knew no more than he did.

  They stood, numbed, waiting for nothing in particular, while that pathetic stream of people passed with their jumbled belongings, things chosen unwisely in their hurry. This one had saved the wind-chimes from the doorway, but had forgotten to bring food for the children; that one had bundled his daughters onto a cart wearing only thin shifts. Almost all the children were tainted or deformed. At least one they saw was dead.

  And as they streamed by, those uprooted people, Scow’s normal ebullience dulled and the Chameleon looked away, refusing to do more than glance at them. Both Scow and Quirk were Haveners now, and the spirit of the land had entered their blood. She knew they must have felt its demise like molten metal eating through their skin to their hearts. Even she, who was not bonded as they were, ached with a pain almost beyond bearing. Dead children, tainted human beings, a village lost, broken hopes and dreams; it all hurt so.

  And then one last desperate scatter of people passed by in silence, heads down, and Quirk said in a flat, unemotional voice, ‘There were only forty people, counting the children.’

  ‘He did this. How ever will he live with himself afterwards?’ Scow murmured.

  Nobody said that he night not be alive afterwards. Nobody said that it might be up to them to kill him if that was the only way it could be stopped. Nobody mentioned his name.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ Keris said.

  ‘Where to?’ Quirk asked.

  ‘Meldor said the Knuckle, so I suppose that’s where we’ll look first.’

  She urged her reluctant mount forward and entered the purple skeins. Even Scow and Quirk, who could see nothing more than mist, were subdued by it. It clung, wet and cloying and evil. Only power, she tried to convince herself, and failed. This was more than just ley. It had been tainted by the Unmaker as well…it was evil.

  They saw then that not all the people had managed to escape. Some were still running inside the ley, almost aimlessly, no longer sure of direction or where safety lay. They were fleeing in panic, beyond rationale—and the children they carried with them were screaming in terror, their bodies newly twisted with brutal tainting.

  ‘Oh Maker preserve us.’ Quirk
’s whisper was hardly more than a strangled protest in his throat.

  They tried to offer assistance, to point the way out of the ley, but these people were beyond assistance, beyond reason.

  ‘We must stop him.’ It was Scow who gave voice to what they were all thinking. There was a new hardness in his voice, leaving no doubt he’d kill his friend if he must.

  If he can. Keris drew out her compass, hoping to keep a correct heading towards the Knuckle, although compasses were notoriously unreliable when ley was nearby. However, there was no other way they could work out the direction anymore. All recognisable landmarks around them were being dissolved. The trees they passed were melting down into slime, the grass beneath the feet of their mounts was slick with foulness, already decomposing. The smell of putrefaction saturated the air around them.

  When they reached Dawnbreak, it was to find the houses were already half-dissolved into rotting heaps. Farm animals lay piled together in yards, flesh liquefying, smelling vile. There was nothing in the fields that resembled growing crops, and it took imagination to resurrect the lines of rotten stumps into fences or hedgerows. The village and its surroundings were all disintegrating into foulness.

  The ley was thick around it, and dark. It was almost as if it was feeding on the ruins.

  ‘Let’s go on,’ said Scow quietly.

  Keris and Quirk turned their mounts after Scow without a word.

  ~~~~~~~

  ‘I’m going back,’ Keris said.

  ‘But why?’ Scow asked, reining in beside her.

  ‘He’s not there,’ Keris said flatly. ‘He won’t be in the Knuckle.

  Scow eyed her dubiously. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘The ley—the ley is growing weaker the further we go into it. The damage here was done hours ago, whereas back at the edge it was recent…’

  He did not understand.

  ‘Scow, when we first rode into it, the ley was travelling from right to left and it was strong. Then we went further in and it was flowing from left to right. Further on still, right to left. And now look: ahead of us it’s left to right again, but behind us it’s still right to left. And ahead of us its weaker. Don’t you see what that means?’

  He shook his massive head.

  ‘That man said he was mounted on the Beast, pulling ley behind him. Davron is going methodically through Havenstar, destroying it piece by piece, line by line. Snaking his way. North to the Writhe, south to the Riven, north to the Writhe, south to the Riven—slightly further east after each turn, dragging ley behind him—destroying great swathes of the land as he goes.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’ Scow gasped. ‘Keris—think of the distances involved. He can’t possibly cover all of Havenstar!’

  ‘The Beast. That’s the Beast’s doing. Whatever it is. He’s riding some supernatural beast, some anti-creation of Carasma’s. Something tireless, fast beyond belief…’

  Quirk drew in a shuddering breath. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Go back. Wait for him outside the ley, in that part of Havenstar that is still … untainted.’ She used the word deliberately; that was how she viewed what was being done to the land. It was being unmade, unbound, tainted.

  ‘And then?’ Scow asked.

  ‘Burn a map, I suppose. To destroy the ley.’ And maybe Davron as well.

  He was silent, thinking. Then he said slowly, ‘Keris, where is the ley coming from?’

  ‘Out of the Knuckle,’ she replied.

  ‘Would it help if we, um, I don’t know, made a mess of the source, do you think? You did bring the map of the Knuckle, didn’t you?’

  She drew in a sharp breath. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I did. I brought everything we could possibly need.’ She slipped off her mount and unpacked her maps from the saddle bags. Scow and Quirk dismounted to look over her shoulder. There was no sign of any people anywhere in the area portrayed. It did not include the bridge and the guardhouse or the irrigation works to the east of the Knuckle, so the lack of human activity was not unexpected. People did not frequent the areas around ley confluences too closely.

  The Knuckle as seen on the chart seethed like a stew pot on the boil, but the stew was as red as newly-shed blood and as thick as glue. It seemed to pour over into Havenstar, a broad red ribbon of liquid…

  ‘If you stabilise it, what will happen to the ley supply for Havenstar?’ Quirk asked.

  ‘I don’t think burning the map of part of a ley line would stabilise the whole line,’ she said. ‘Remember the map I burned? The ley from further up just flowed around the edges of the stabilised bit.’

  ‘But it might interrupt its flow into Havenstar. It might cut it off from the Beast.’

  ‘Dare we do it?’ Her stomach churned. ‘What if I’m wrong and Davron is still there in the Knuckle? We might kill him. Or worse.’

  By way of answer Scow reached for his flint and steel.

  ‘No,’ she said, assailed with doubt, fighting back panic. ‘No—don’t.’ I can’t. Not like that—

  ‘Then I’ll go on to the Knuckle,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the map with me. If Davron’s not there, I’ll go ahead and burn it.’

  She nodded, breathing more freely. ‘Yes. Good idea. If the ley stops pouring over into Havenstar, then you’ll know that somehow or another, I’ve managed to stop Davron and you won’t have to burn the map. You go with him, Quirk. I’ll go back to ley-free Havenstar, and I’ll wait there.’

  ‘It’s a pity we don’t yet have maps of Havenstar proper,’ Quirk said. ‘Then we could see exactly where he is.’

  ‘He’ll turn up.’ As if I’m talking about a late-comer to a festival dinner, she thought, and winced. ‘You take the compass, Scow. I can get back simply by putting myself at right-angles to the flow of ley.’

  ‘And what if—what if I am needed where you are?’ Scow asked lamely.

  Needed to kill Davron.

  She stared him down. ‘You heard what Meldor said. There are other chances. And hear what I say—if Davron dies, it will be by my hand, no one else’s.’ If I can—

  He looked at her, considering, then nodded, took the compass from her and looked away. She stepped forward, and deliberately kissed his cheek, ignoring the pain it caused her. Then she did the same for Quirk, pulled herself into the saddle and rode away without looking back.

  ~~~~~~~

  Behind her Scow and Quirk exchanged glances.

  Quirk raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Shall I come with you, do you think?’

  ‘No, I think not,’ Scow said, with a hint of his usual humour. ‘I think we’d both be much happier if you didn’t.’

  ‘Someone has to be around to bop him over the head,’ Quirk agreed. ‘Although just how I could do that when he charges past on the back of a rampaging beast, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Just do your best to look after them both,’ Scow said. The depth of sadness in his voice said it all.

  ~~~~~~~

  Keris rode a little way out into the untainted part of Havenstar, away from the throbbing ugly line of contaminating ley. She needed time, and she did not want to meet Davron and the Beast before she was ready.

  When she decided she was far enough away from the ley, she unpacked her mapping things and set to work to make a chart of her immediate surroundings. She measured the distance between some rocks and the top of a small hill to give herself a fixed distance for one side of the triangle, and took angles from both ends of the line for triangulation of the area she wanted to cover. It was not large because she didn’t want a small scale map, and once she was able to fix the main features on it—a clump of trees, the hill, the rocks—she drew them in on a blank piece of parchment using ley inks. By that time several hours had passed.

  Before she could start colouring the map she became aware of a rumbling noise. For a moment she was not sure whether she heard it, or felt it. She sensed vibrations through the earth, then a tingling in the air. She looked up from her work to see a cloud of dust approaching along the edge of
ley—fast.

  With a cold rein on her feelings she readied her telescope and prepared to look.

  Distant movement enlarged, clarified—

  Davron, riding the Beast.

  He stood balanced on its massive shoulders, a man tormented beyond reason. His whole body shuddered. Sweat poured from him. He had stripped off his shirt, and his upper body was wracked by the pain of his terrible journey. The sigil he wore seemed too big for him now, as if he’d shrunk. Lost weight in a matter of hours… His ribs and veins showed beneath his shivering skin, a living map traced beneath a fragile covering, to reveal a man touched by death. His skull was a death’s head, his cheeks sunken, his lips pulled back into an unnatural rictus smile.

  His eyes, dear Maker, his eyes. They burned deep into himself, sunken in hollows, reflecting pain beyond comprehension.

  And the Beast he rode…

  It was huge. Larger than anything that had ever lived naturally in the world, surely. At the shoulder it already stood taller than a man, and those shoulders were immense. They gave way into a solid neck and a head like a battering-ram. The distance between its red eyes was as wide as the span of a man’s arms, and the malevolent gleam there was pure evil. A single spiralled prong projected from its forehead, and it glowed red-hot, steaming in the cool air of the cloudy day. Powerful legs thundered the Beast on its way, churning up the ground with their power, scorching the soil as the creature passed. Flecks of molten heat flaked scarlet from its flanks as it ran…