Havenstar

by Glenda Larke

  Davron drove the Beast. He stood on it shoulders, holding twisting black reins. Guiding it on its terrible path, a man tormented beyond reason. And behind the Beast, attached by streamers of molten fire, came the ley. A long red ribbon scraping blood from the land with its raw evil, dragging its destruction through Havenstar, contaminating with its scarifying touch.

  Keris could watch no longer. She dropped her face to her map board and touched the nadir of existence in her despair. The Beast and its rider passed her at a distance without seeing her where she knelt, huddled on the ground.

  She pulled herself back to life, willed her spirit back to wanting to live, forced herself to pick up her brushes once more. And made her map. She made it as best she knew how, and should have been gratified to see how quickly it took on dimension, how wonderfully it came to life. Instead she concentrated on shrinking her vision of Davron and the Beast to a tiny pinpoint in the back of her mind, for only then could she work. Only then could she live.

  And when she’d finished, then there was nothing she could do but wait. And perhaps that was the most terrible time of all. The Beast and Davron had been travelling towards the Writhe, which was not far from where she stood. At that pace, in just an hour or two, they would be back…

  ~~~~~~~

  She stood in their path, at the centre of her trompleri map, and raised a hand to stop him. Her other hand, loosely hanging at her side, held her newly made chart behind her back.

  He saw her, began to halt the Beast, as she had known he must. Even if he was driven by his need to complete his task, she knew in her heart that she still had the power to halt his wild ride. For a moment. He drew back on the reins. Leant against them in his effort to drag the creature he rode to a reluctant halt. It balked, skidded—and came to a heaving, steaming stop just before it ploughed into her.

  She whispered, ‘Davron…’

  He answered, and the answer shivered her with horror. ‘Keris, if you come any closer, if you let loose your ley, I will be forced to kill you. I am charged to finish the task and I must do whatever it takes… And don’t doubt that I can do it. I have enough ley in me to blast you from here to Drumlin.’ His voice was strung out with pain, thinned with it, utterly unlike his normal gravelly tones. ‘Don’t make me kill you,’ he said softly, pain upon pain. ‘Not you too. Don’t attack me, please—I will be so much faster than you.’

  She believed him even though he never actually locked his gaze to hers. And yet she heard the pleading in his tone, she heard the words he dared not speak: Stop me. Do whatever it takes to stop me. Please. His spoken words were said not for her, but for Carasma.

  ‘Davron—’ She did not know what to say. There was nothing she could say. His pain unmanned her, dissolved her resolution, shattered her determination.

  The Beast pawed the ground, and its fire licked out in her direction. She could feel the heat. It was impatient. Davron’s hold on it was slipping. In a moment the beast would be out of control, running once more—

  She could not bear to see his pain. His hands were lacerated on the reins and dripped blood. His chest heaved. His skin was scarred with burns. She turned her head away, unable to watch him, wishing that she had not heard the agony in his voice.

  ‘I trust you,’ he whispered. ‘You will always do what is right.’ He turned to look ahead and flicked the reins.

  Within that movement, while his gaze was not upon her and his hands were busy with manipulating the reins, she held up the map above her head and touched her ley to its edge. He started to look back at her. His arm started to move in her direction with its weapon of ley, but was snagged by the reins wrapped around his hands. His devastated eyes radiated their approval, their love—and his fear. He didn’t want to die. Not here, not now, not at her hands.

  There were many words she could have said to him; she spoke none of them. They both knew they could die, and die horribly. They both knew that there could be worse things, perhaps, than death. They both knew how they loved. Words would not have added anything.

  The flame flared at the edge of the map and moved inwards…

  She smiled through a blur of tears. At least they would be together as they went forward into an unknown instant. Davron’s hand untangled from the reins, and swung towards her, even as he fought it— She twisted the chart so that the flames snatched the map’s centre.

  The world exploded into burning incandescence.

  ~~~~~~~

  A tiny sliver of time became an eternity, stretching out without foreseeable end. Keris felt herself to be transparent, to be without solidity. All around there was only white light, a brightness that precluded all thought, all feeling. Davron vanished, the Beast vanished, there was no background, nothing to be seen but light.

  A feeling of joy, so intense it burned, touched her mind. Love engulfed her, heavy with power and weight, frightening in its hugeness—and then vanished. She thought she was dead. She thought she was being absorbed into That Which Was Created.

  The light disappeared.

  For a moment she couldn’t see anything while her eyes adjusted.

  ‘Keris?’ The word was tentative, yet pregnant with caring.

  She felt a hand slip into hers and hold hard.

  ‘Davron?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Maker—’ Her vision cleared. Davron was kneeling at her side, still holding her hand—and she felt no pain. Her eyes went to his upper arm: the sigil was gone. Her first wave of joy was so intense she almost fainted with it. Then she saw that he glowed with ley, a sick ley, heavy with Carasma’s influence.

  She scrambled up on to her knees and looked about them. The ley had vanished from the area she had mapped. They were in a small rectangle of stability—not Havenstar stability but real stability. There was normal meadow grass beneath her feet, tangled through with flowers and thistles. To her left she could see the Beast, lying on the ground under some trees. It was not moving.

  Stretching off in that direction, the landscape seemed stable, normal, until it met the band of purple that bordered it like a wall. A few scattered patches of ley did remain, where perhaps it had been at its most virulent. In one of the patches the Unmaker stood, marooned. He was reeling, and his figure was no longer quite human. His face seemed flattened and deformed; his body kept shifting in size and shape, as if he was having trouble maintaining a human form. As if he could not quite decide what he was supposed to look like.

  She said, more to herself than to Davron, ‘Of course! He must have been there in the ley the Beast was dragging, otherwise it wouldn’t have been so evil.’ And then the truth of what she was seeing really hit her. ‘Maker and midden,’ she whispered, clutching hard at Davron. ‘I stabilised the Unmaker.’

  She turned to him, appalled at the enormity of what she’d done. And felt his anger at Carasma. The rage in him was deep, rooted wrath, the product of his five years of pain. Every muscle tensed.

  ‘No—’ she said, fearing what he would do. He mustn’t die now, not when he was free of his sigil.

  And then someone screamed at them, tearing her out of one fear and into another. ‘Look out! Keris, Davron, look out—’

  They both turned in shock. It was the Chameleon.

  Hidden, watching all that had happened, driven half-mad by the shock of being suddenly stabilized, Quirk had staggered to his feet because he had seen what Keris and Davron had not: the Beast lived. It had dragged itself up and was lumbering towards them, insane with fear and rage and stability, intent on the destruction of the man it blamed. It lowered its fiery prong and began to gather speed.

  ‘Oh Chaos,’ she whispered.

  Davron stood, his body straightening, to find poise and courage where moments before he had seemed beyond both.

  And Quirk flung himself across the intervening space towards the Beast, waving and shouting, attracting its attention. It hesitated and turned towards him. And charged.

  It was all the time she and Davron needed. Ley fled from th
eir hands, fast and true and searing. The Beast shook its gigantic head in pain. Quirk danced nimbly out of the way.

  The ley bounced across the burning hide of the Beast, annoying but not destroying it.

  ‘Its eyes, go for its eyes,’ Davron said.

  The beast turned back towards its tormentors. This time the ley pierced its eyes and it bellowed with rage and pain, but still it came on, head lowered like a bull about to toss an attacking dog.

  ‘Do you have your knife?’ Davron asked, almost casually. His hand reached to his waist where the whip handle was thrust through his belt. The plaited rawhide with its impregnated glass lay curled against his thigh. He shook it free and held out his left hand to Keris. She pressed her knife into his palm.

  As the Beast ploughed towards Davron, the whip snaked out and wrapped itself around the base of its red-hot prong. Davron dodged to run alongside the blinded creature, brushing against it, shoulder to shoulder as it swung around. Then, hauling himself up on the whip, he plunged the knife deep into its eye. The great animal sagged, its run ending. Its prong snapped, sawn through as Davron wrenched on the whip handle. He fell free, tumbling. Ichor pumped out of the wound left in the Beast’s forehead as its body toppled, missing Davron by inches.

  And it changed. It had been animal-like; now it became something else. A blackness, a nothingness that had dimension, a dark furriness. The earth beneath it crumbled as if eaten away. Davron scrambled back from the edge of the hollow in shock.

  She winced, realising that the smell of scorched meat in her nostrils was Davron’s own flesh, crisped where he had brushed against the Beast. He must have been in agony, yet he did not acknowledge that he’d been hurt. He stared down at the blackness that had been the Beast and watched it melt away until there was nothing left but a hole with charred edges, and the still-smoking horn lying nearby on the ground. Then he turned towards the Unmaker.

  Carasma stood where he had been, in the midst of the small patch of ley. His human form had further disintegrated. It was blurred now, its shape only vaguely human. A string of ley snaked out from him and before any of them could react it had encircled Quirk’s neck. Quirk stood rigid with terror within the razor-sharp light of it. It was as slick as a honed knife blade, as dangerous as a garrotter’s wire, and it was clear from the expression on his face that the Chameleon had been made to see it even though it was made of ley. One false move and he would decapitate himself.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ Carasma said to Davron, ‘or I’ll kill this excuse for a man.’

  Keris flicked a glance at Davron in which terror and horrified astonishment were equally mixed. Carasma was frightened?

  ‘I belong to the Maker,’ the Chameleon pointed out, his voice squeaky with fright. ‘You cannot touch me, or you break the Law of the Universe, and condemn yourself.’

  ‘Quirk will cut his own head off if he moves as much as an inch,’ Davron whispered to her, despairing, ‘and Carasma won’t have done a thing.’ Sooner or later Quirk would tire and fall against the garrotte…

  ‘Do nothing,’ the Unmaker warned Davron, ‘or I will never loose him.’ His mouth was a mouth no longer, yet he spoke.

  ‘Coward,’ Quirk said, still squeaking. ‘Pick on someone your own size. What are you anyway, some bully in the school-room? Is this the great Lord Carasma? Why, you’re a nothing! Scared shitless, you are, with only your feet damped by ley. Put you in a stability, and you’re gutless!’

  He’s right, she thought in wonder. Carasma’s afraid, because he can only survive on this world within ley. And all he has about him is that little ley mud puddle… She watched his wavering form and wondered if he felt pain. He’d indicated once that he could not, yet obviously being marooned in such a small patch of ley caused him an anguish he could not hide. Perhaps he fears extinction. Or madness.

  And then she saw what he was doing. He was sending out another string of ley, this time towards the band of purple that edged the area of created stability. He intended to hook on to it, to pull it to himself, to make himself safe again in a haven of ley. All he needed was a little time.

  ‘You worm,’ Quirk told Carasma. Keris signed a kinesis of silence, but the Chameleon took no notice. He seemed unable to keep his mouth sensibly shut. ‘How are you going to crawl out of this one, eh? That’s stability all around you. And let me tell you something else you don’t know, you oh, so clever fellow—burning a trompleri map brings instant stability. That’s what happened here, in case you didn’t notice. And yesterday Meldor the Blind burnt trompleri maps up and down the borders of Havenstar, sizzling your Minions to a blister, or sending them crazy.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ the Unmaker rasped, but his shock was obvious.

  ‘Yes, of course I am. Flinging me from unstable Havenstar to stability like this has sent me out of my mind!’ Quirk laughed, giggled. ‘I’m the biggest coward in the world—ask anyone, yet here I am telling the great Lord Carasma the unpalatable truths he doesn’t want to hear. Hasn’t the guts to hear! I’m as mad as a water-beetle. But I’m just an Unbound man. Imagine what has happened to your Corrupted Ones. Your Minions and their pets are dropping dead all around the borders to Havenstar, raving mad and foaming at the mouth.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Davron agreed. ‘My word on it as a Trician of Storre, honour of a Master Guide. Your attack on Havenstar has failed. And don’t think that killing Keris here will stop the output of trompleri maps. The secret of their making is no secret any longer. Anyone can make a trompleri map now, thanks to us.’

  Through the ley, Carasma tested the truth of Quirk’s words and darted a desperate look around.

  ‘You’ve failed, you miserable cur,’ Quirk said. ‘Your Minions are dying and the Unstable will soon be ours—what then, Lord Muck of nowhere?’

  And Carasma, in a burst of uncontrolled rage, jerked on the line of ley that ringed the Chameleon’s neck.

  ‘No!’ Keris shrieked.

  The Unmaker blanched, realising too late what he had done.

  For a moment Quirk still stood, face expressionless, as if nothing had happened. Then his head rolled from his shoulders, the severing cut so fine that at first there did not seem to be even any blood. For one horrifying moment his body still stood where it was. Then, silently it fountained blood and crumpled.

  And the anger in Davron sought its balm.

  He pulled the ley surrounding the Unmaker into himself: all its savage colour, all its corruption and contamination. It unwound from the ley-mire like string from a ball and twisted its way across the intervening space towards the guide.

  Carasma battled its loss, but he was weakened by the nearness of stability, driven to the edge of madness by its encirclement, fundamentally damaged because of his crime against the Law. He had killed one of the Maker’s own.

  Yet he tried. Both of them, man and Unmaker, tugged at the ley. It writhed and twisted between the two like the gut of a slaughtered animal. Two combatants swaying and battling for supremacy, one a being called to account for his offence against the Law, the other a man fuelled by his anger at what had been taken from him. The weapon was not brute force, but will.

  ‘Maker!’ Davron cried, the cry of a man too long denied solace. And the ley moved towards him.

  The age-old battle between Chaos and Creation had been replayed yet again, and this time Chaos lost.

  Lord Carasma the Unmaker took the only way out. He reached upwards to the other parts of himself, to the Chaos of the Universe beyond the world, and pulled himself free.

  The force of his going rent the air and ground. The earth was split deep beneath his feet, hurtling the Chameleon’s body into the rift. The air was ripped apart from ground to sky by a band of black lightning, the bitter acridity of it lingering long after it was gone. Carasma vanished with it, gone in a flash of Chaos back to the beginnings of the Universe to lick his wounds, leaving the world to the Maker.

  ~~~~~~~

  The sun shone and the grass was crisply green. It crushed
beneath Keris’s feet, and stayed crushed even after she’d crossed to Davron’s side. She gathered him into her arms, his skin to her skin, feeling his body pressed against hers for the first time.

  ‘Davron?’

  ‘I’m here. Weak, but I’m here.’

  ‘I think you have to rid yourself of the ley you have in you. It’s too contaminated.’

  ‘Maker, yes. It’ll kill me else. Let me rest a minute and then we’ll go to the Writhe. I’ll replace it there.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right? Those burns—’

  ‘Try a spot of healing, love. It would help. It bloody hurts.’

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘Give me your ley. Think of it as a balm, turn it towards healing, and tease it out to me.’

  She did as he asked, doing her best to soothe away his pain, but the depth of the anguish she saw in his eyes—that she was not sure she could ever cure. She bent over him and her tears came. Tears of grief, of relief, of sorrow. For Davron, for Quirk. For what they both had lost.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Davron said, ‘about Quirk. It was—quick. Was he truly mad, do you think, or did he goad Carasma deliberately? Knowing what he might achieve?’

  ‘He—he knew I was going to burn a map. He must have known he could burn with it, and yet he stayed; he was that brave. Was he mad after that? Perhaps. But I think he knew what he was doing nonetheless.’ She choked on the words, remembering, and had to stop.

  He held her close, cradling her, burying his face into her neck ‘I don’t know that I can go on living,’ he whispered at last. ‘Keris—the village, Dawnbreak. What I did—’

  ‘You did nothing,’ she said firmly. ‘The crime was Carasma’s. And you—you and Quirk between you—you have sent the Unmaker back to the beginnings of Time. How many will not die young because of that? How many will never be tainted? What you’ve done this day will set the balance right. As for any idea of not living: do you think I will let you go so easily? Davron, we have a future. For the first time I can hold you! And you can see your daughter, look after her, love her. And perhaps we can even look for your son. Don’t speak to me of not being able to live!’