Havenstar (17 page)

His long
tongue lolled out and she thought, incredulous, that he was able to
be amused by her graceless attempts to find something to say that
might be of use. ‘Ah, lass, let’s talk of something else, eh?’ He
was sweating now, and his large hands were gripping his leg so
tightly the skin below was whitening. ‘And let’s hope that that
young man finds his way back to the ridge, and can then guide
Davron back here.’ He glanced upwards. Beyond the canopy of leaves
overhead, the sky was darkening.

She looked at
the nearest of the dwarf trees along the gully edge, remembering
the masses of wrigglers squirming in and out of the flowers. She
could no longer see them, but their stench permeated the air, or
perhaps it was the reek of the trumpet-shaped blossoms themselves
that smelled. The place was corrupt, unclean. It was more than just
the stink of putrefaction, it was the odour of…wrongness. She felt
nauseated.

‘It wasn’t far
back to camp,’ she said. ‘Quirk could hardly get lost.’

‘He could put
his leg into another one of these,’ he replied, nodding towards the
bilee.

‘No. Don’t
even think it. Anyway, he was riding Tousson.’

‘He reminds me
of myself.’ His face was ashen now. ‘Before I was tainted. Full of
fears. I was a farm boy, you know. Just a simple lad, anxious to
get the pilgrimage over and done with so I could go home and never
leave again.’ The words were flowing out, streaming away from him
as he tried not to succumb to the pain that ate into his foot. ‘I
never wanted to go on a pilgrimage. I was scared. Chaos-blamed
terrified
. My lass was there with me—Tilly, her name. A lot
like you, I suppose. Nothing much to look at, but as good a kid as
ever breathed. Kind, gentle, loving. Loved animals. Had freckles
across her nose and a laugh like a new-born donkey. I’d known her
all my life, pulled her pigtails and pushed her into the village
pond when we were kids. And suddenly there she was, smiling at me
and I couldn’t pull my eyes away… I could hardly believe that she
wanted me.
Me
, Sammy Scowbridge.

‘It was the
first ley line that got me. The guide tried to rescue me, but the
Unmaker is not so easily thwarted. Ley-life, the pain, Keris—the
pain.’

She didn’t
know whether he meant what he was feeling now, or what he’d felt
then. Perhaps both. She reached out to put her hand on his bare arm
even though it was an inadequate gesture. His skin burned her
fingers and she jerked away. Untouchable. Stupid. Of course he was
untouchable.

He did not
seem to notice her reaction. ‘When I crawled to my feet, on the
other side of the ley line, I looked for Tilly. To see if she was
all right. And she was looking at me. Such a look. Pain, grief,
tearing grief, horror. And worst of all, the revulsion. The
overwhelming revulsion she couldn’t hide.’ He shuddered, and tears
slipped down his huge cheeks.

‘How long ago
was that?’

‘Five years.
Just five years. Hard to believe, eh? I’m only twenty-five.
Sometimes I feel a hundred.’

‘Was Davron
Storre the guide?’

He shook his
head. ‘Oh no. Davron wasn’t a guide then. Although I did meet him
shortly after I was tainted…’

‘Not a guide
then? I would have thought he’d been a guide longer than five
years!’ Davron Storre, he seemed so competent. He reminded her of
Piers sometimes, the way he moved with an easy grace but never
relaxed for a moment, as if he saw and heard and sensed things that
others missed. The
tautness
of him…

‘He’s only
twenty-nine.’

She sat back
on her heels, staring. She’d thought Davron closer to forty. ‘Only
twenty-nine?’ What could have etched an extra ten years of pain and
living into his face? What awful catastrophe had turned a young man
into someone with a gaze like his?

Scow gave no
explanation and she knew he never would. It was Davron’s story, not
his. ‘It’s a hard place, the Unstable,’ was all he said.

‘You don’t
seem at all like an overly-nervous farm boy now,’ she said, and
then blushed. ‘Oh, Chaos, that didn’t come out quite the way I
meant it.’

She saw the
tilt of his lips even in the dimness. ‘I know you weren’t making
snide remarks about my present, er, imposing physiognomy. Keris,
when you lose everything you ever had, what is there left to fear?
As for the—what shall I call it? Assurance? A man can’t move in the
company of men like Davron and Meldor, and not have a little polish
rub off on him. I’ve changed more in five years than most people
change in a lifetime.’ He released his leg for a moment to touch
her, as if he wanted to reassure himself of something. She resisted
the impulse to snatch her hand away from the fire of his fingers.
‘You’re ley-lit, aren’t you?’ he asked, removing his hand.

‘I don’t know.
Maybe. How can you tell?’

‘You feel this
place, in a way I can’t. I can
see
what it is, but you—your
skin crawls just to be here because tainted ley is strong here.
It’s what is known as a ley-mire. A place where the breaking of the
world is at its most active and recent. A place inhabited by the
worst of the Wild, and the oldest of the Minions. It bears the
touch of the Unmaker, and you feel it into the deep of your bones.
And the touch of my hand burns you, because of the tainted ley in
me.’

‘Oh.’ She
hadn’t hidden the pain of his touch as well as she’d thought.

‘That’s the
tragedy of the Unbound,’ he said. ‘Davron and I have been together
five years. He saved my sanity, my life. And I believe I helped
him. We love one another as deeply as friends can, yet he cannot
endure my touch for more than a moment or two. He has to steel
himself just to place a hand on my shoulder. We are as brothers,
but he must sit on the other side of the campfire. He is my closest
friend, but I cannot hug him. Pity the tainted, Keris. The
ley-unlit turn from us in revulsion because they cannot understand.
The ley-lit feel our tragedy for they can see our humanity beneath
the cloaking evil, but they must reject us because their
sensitivity cannot endure the presence of Chaos, of unbinding, that
lives within us. Davron and I travel together, but we walk
apart.’

She understood
now the strange gesture with which the two men had greeted one
another. A fleeting touch was all Davron could tolerate. ‘Have
you—have you heard of a place called Havenstar?’ she asked.

He gave a
short bark of laughter. ‘Where wizards cure the Unbound with magic?
Don’t believe the tales, Keris. There is no cure for my, um,
condition
. If ever the Unmaker was destroyed and Order
restored to the Unstable, we tainted would die. Order would kill us
within a month or two. We are already unnatural and there is no way
back…none. I shall live and die in this flesh. I am a man, with all
a man’s desires and feelings, but I wear the guise of a monster and
must toughen myself to bear the look in other men’s eyes. In a
woman’s eyes. We tainted have only one another in the end.’ He
looked straight at her and she knew he was telling her he’d seen
the way she’d felt when she had first met him. Revulsion, pity,
compassion, fascination, he had seen it all, and despised it for
what it was even as he understood it. Then he smiled again, as if
to tell her that he knew she now saw him differently.

‘But the
tainted live in halts,’ she said slowly, following her own line of
thought. ‘Fixed features, like the one on the ridge. And there is
stability in such places. It must be of a slightly different kind
to the ordered stability of stabs. If we could find out how such
places were made… If we could duplicate the same forces that
created such areas—’

He grunted.
‘What makes you think they were made? Maybe they are just the
remnants of other stabilities. If ever you find out, tell me.’

‘Something
keeps fixed features the way they are, and we ought to be able to
find out what it is,’ she said, but he’d retreated behind a barrier
of pain.

It was a
relief when she heard the coming horses.

Meldor,
Portron and Baraine had come with Davron and Quirk, and they’d
brought lanterns with them. The light was needed now; it was almost
dark under the trees. Quirk sent Keris a speaking look. ‘That damn
horse of yours bit me,’ he hissed at her as he dismounted. He
rubbed his backside meaningfully.

Davron slid
off his horse and came straight over to her and Scow. For a moment
he let his gaze roam, taking in the scene, then he ignored her and
flashed a smile at Scow. It was the first time she’d seen him give
a genuine smile to anyone and the effect was startling. He suddenly
changed from a block of granite to a handsome man. The years
dropped away and she could see that, yes, perhaps he was only
twenty-nine. The obsidian shone, the face softened, the lines
smoothed away…

‘Thought you
had more sense, Sammy,’ he said. Sammy. Not Scow. His voice could
never be anything but gravel on the move, but the tone was
affectionate.

‘Didn’t look
where I was going,’ Scow replied with a shrug. ‘You bring the
axe?’

‘Yes, but
that’s a last resort, my friend.’

‘Don’t waste
your time, Davron. Let’s get it over and done with.’

‘There are
other ways.’

Scow glanced
blankly from Davron to Meldor and then seemed to understand what
the guide meant. His face hardened. ‘No. you have no idea what
might happen. And what about—?’ He gave a side-long look at
Portron.

Davron
shrugged.

Scow continued
quietly, calmly, ‘Come on, Dav, let’s be practical here. This is
me, Scow, remember? I can take it.’

‘Maybe
you
can, but who says
I
can?’ The words were simple
enough, but there were levels of meaning beneath them, which they
all heard.

‘I’ll do it,’
Baraine said without emotion. ‘I’m reckoned a pretty fine axeman
back on my domain.’ They all knew he was probably not boasting. The
rich young bloods of the First Stab ran log-chopping competitions
among themselves, just for fun, and probably to irritate Chantry
who frowned on almost any tree-felling as unacceptable change, but
who were often powerless to intervene when the great Trician
families were involved.

She saw the
look Davron shot Baraine and thought it enough to frizzle his
eyelashes, but Baraine did not even notice. She could not bear the
thought of that elegant hunk of prime beef chopping off Scow’s leg
and then going home to boast about it to his uppercrust friends as
though it was some sort of adventure. Even Portron, who had knelt
beside Scow to perform the kinesis of supplication, could not hide
the expression of distaste that crossed his face at Baraine’s
words.

Only Meldor
seemed unmoved. He dismounted and walked unaided to Scow’s side.
‘Sammy, why have we done what we have done, if not for moments such
as this? If we lose sight of smaller needs in our search for the
greater good, then we lose our humanity.’

Scow glanced
at Portron and Baraine.

‘We’ll send
them away,’ Davron said.

‘I’m not going
anywhere,’ Baraine drawled and moved closer.

Portron looked
indignant. ‘I’m certainly not budging either. Kinesis may be of
help—’

‘Chantor, this
is the Unmaker’s realm,’ Davron pointed out.

‘It matters
not a whisker,’ Meldor said, and he was speaking to Scow. ‘Let them
see.’ He too knelt, but not for devotions. He laid an unerring hand
on the bilee where Keris had uncovered it and beckoned Davron to
join him.

Something
about his determination made her step back nervously. Davron laid
both hands on the bilee.

‘What are they
doing?’ Quirk murmured in her ear, his uneasiness making his voice
squeaky. Even Baraine, who had not bothered to dismount, and
Portron, who was continuing his devotions, watched with wary
eyes.

‘I don’t
know,’ she said.

Nothing
happened for a long while. Then slowly the air around Meldor and
Davron’s hands began to glow faintly. A thin red wisp of mist
gathered there, before fanning outwards moving like vapoured-breath
on a cold morning.

The skin
across Keris’s forehead tightened and her hands tingled but she
didn’t move. She only knew that she did not like the feel of what
was happening.

Portron
scrambled up abruptly, his face a mask of rigid shock. For a moment
she thought he was going to intervene, but he controlled the
impulse and remained standing, straight as a rhumb line on a map,
radiating revulsion.

‘What—what’s
happening?’ Quirk whispered, and she realised he could not see the
glow, or the faint ribbon of mist.

‘I don’t
know,’ she said again.

The tension in
the air increased, the glow deepened. The temperature around them
seemed to drop. She started shivering. Baraine dismounted and, his
gaze intent on the bilee, edged closer.

And then the
ground around Scow erupted.

Green liquid
from the bilee squirted into the air in a stinging fountain. The
glow around Davron and Meldor shattered into a thousand tiny comets
of molten colour that shot through the air in every direction,
trailing fiery feathering. One of them hit her on the cheek. It
burned coldly, like winter’s ice on her face. She flinched and
scrubbed the hurt away.

Scow fell
backwards, ejected from the bilee like unwanted garbage. His foot,
minus his boot, was covered in green slime and all three men were
spattered with the same foul bile. Where the bilee had been there
was now a depression in the ground.

Ley-life
, she thought in blankest astonishment.
Somehow
they exploded it!

‘Water!’
Davron snapped.

Both Baraine
and Quirk ran to the horses to fetch waterskins. They washed away
the slime from Scow as best they could and then loaded him on to
his tainted mount. No one spoke. Keris glanced across at Portron.
He was still rigidly angry and deliberately refused to catch her
eye. At her side, Quirk was pale with fear and Scow was equally
colourless as he fought his pain. His leg was intact, but the skin
was raw, stippled with pin-points of blood and oozing fluid.