Havenstar (18 page)

Meldor wiped
away the bile on his clothing and remounted his horse. Neither he
nor Davron seemed affected. Baraine was suddenly displaying an
unaccustomed animation, as if he’d just been watching a show put on
for his benefit. He turned to Davron wanting to ask something, but
one look from the guide’s black eyes halted the question before he
could form the words.

They rode back
to the ridge in silence.

It was Meldor
who doctored Scow back in the camp. How, since he was sightless,
she did not know, because he and Scow and Davron all disappeared
into Scow’s tent. The rest of them, subdued, fended off the
questions from Corrian and Graval, tended the animals, ate their
supper and turned in for the night.

She could not
sleep. She was tense with reaction, still thinking over what had
happened and unable to make sense of it. Finally she could stand it
no longer and left her tent to go to Portron. ‘Chantor,’ she
whispered at his tent flap. ‘Are you still awake?’

‘Oh, aye,’ he
said. ‘Sleep and I have parted company this night, I think.’ He
sighed. ‘Come in, lass, and take a seat on my bedroll here. Surely,
circumstances are unusual enough for us not to be bothered with
conventions tonight. In fact, I was half expecting you. You saw,
didn’t you?’

‘The glow, you
mean?’ she nodded uneasily. ‘What was it? What did they do? How did
they do it?

He sighed
again. ‘I don’t think there is the slightest doubt but that you are
ley-lit, lass. That was ley you were seeing. They were working the
ley.’

‘Working the
ley? You mean, using it? But—that’s impossible, isn’t it?’

‘’Tis surely
an abomination! The way of the Unmaker and his Minions.’ The anger
in his voice was clear, but there was something else too. Fear.
‘Now I know why Davron made such a fuss when Baraine and I insisted
on accompanying him and Quirk back to Scow and you. He didn’t want
us seeing what he was going to do. I said I had to go because Scow
might need a man of colours at such a moment. And Baraine was just
curious. But Davron ordered us to stay.’

‘And you
disobeyed?’

He looked
uncomfortable. ‘Well, not exactly. I protested, I felt I had to.
There are times when a chantor has to be making a stand. Anyway, in
the end Meldor said we could go. He told Davron it didn’t matter. I
suppose he thought that as you and Quirk were going to see, it made
no difference if Baraine and I were there as well.’

‘They are, er,
Minions of Chaos? Meldor and Davron?’

‘And Scow
their tainted servant… I don’t know, Keris. There was a time when
the ley-lit could feel the presence of a Minion, but of late it
seems the Unmaker’s servants have learned to conceal themselves
better.’ He slumped a little and his voice in the darkness was that
of a tired old man. ‘Maker help us all if that’s what they are, for
none of us will reach safety again.’

‘I have seen
Davron in the First Stability, twice, at Kibbleberry. The last time
wasn’t long ago. He couldn’t have been a Minion then.’

‘You are
offering me hope, child, but if they aren’t dedicated to the
Unmaker, then it’s still a dangerous game they play. An abomination
in the eyes of Chantry. Ley will subvert them, corrupt them,
perhaps even kill them… That way there lies only evil. I should be
confronting them, but I fear, lass. I fear. If they are truly the
Unmaker’s servants ’tis certain death to be challenging them. I
wish I could remember just where I’ve seen Meldor before. It might
be important…’ His voice trailed away. ‘I’m just an old
rule-chantor from the Order of Kt Ladma. I’m not even a good
chantor.’

That was too
much for her. If someone like Portron could not cope with what
faced them, how could she? She said goodnight and scuttled back to
her tent.

Still she
couldn’t sleep. Fear chilled both her body and her emotions.
Disorder be damned, you wanted to come to the Unstable, Keris my
girl. You’ve wanted it all your life!

Was it only a
short time ago she’d thought of herself as a butterfly touching the
first freedoms of its new life? She’d rejoiced in the joy of it!
Now she thought of Sheyli, and of Piers, and cried a little.

~~~~~~~

She woke to
find someone shaking her foot through the padding of the bedroll.
Immediately wide-awake, she sat up. It was dark, but she had no
trouble recognising Davron’s outline against the cloudless sky. He
was kneeling down outside, pushing the tent flap aside to reach in
to her feet.

Fright flooded
through her, unbidden, unwanted.

‘Your turn on
guard duty,’ he said. ‘You and Portron, till dawn. Two hours.’

She nodded,
trying to contain the fear. ‘How’s Scow?’

‘Fine. Meldor
gave him something to help him sleep, and he dozes still.’

‘And is what
happened yesterday evening another secret you don’t want told?’

She felt
rather than saw his smile. ‘Bit late for that now, I think. Tell
whoever you want. Portron certainly will.’

‘Is this what
you are so ashamed of—using ley?’

The smile
became a chuckle, but there was more pain than mirth in it. ‘Ah no,
Keris.
That
I am proud of.’ He dropped the tent flap and
moved away. She dressed and pulled on her boots, wondering why her
mouth had suddenly gone dry.

‘Oh Maker,’
she thought. ‘Why, by all that’s dark in Chaos, didn’t I stay in
Kibbleberry?’

~~~~~~~

And Kt Gredal
held fast to his faith as the Wild sprang upon him and tore him
asunder. His blood poured forth, but still he called not upon the
Unmaker to leash his unmade beast. Instead, when he turned to the
Lord of Chaos, he said: ‘The people hereafter shall bind themselves
with devotions, and you shall be defeated. Chaos shall be no
more.’

—Knights II: 3:
3-6 (Kt Gredal the Anchorite)

The second day
on their way was worse than the first, the third worse than the
second.

The land grew
more and more alien, more and more grotesque. When Scow lit a fire
to make tea on the fourth morning, the flames burned cold and
greenish and the water refused to boil. Then, as a seeming
reflection of the twisted landscape, things began to go wrong with
the progress of the fellowship as well. Throughout the day,
Graval’s mare caused a hundred different problems by spooking the
other mounts. A pack loosened unnoticed on one of Baraine’s mules
and chose to fall just as they were wending their way across a
chisel-sharp col, to be irretrievably lost into the canyons below.
Corrian’s mount cut its foot and had to be rested, so the old woman
had to ride her pack animal while its packs were distributed among
the others.

Keris had
grown up with tales of the Unstable, yet nothing had prepared her
for its reality, for its sheer unpredictability. They rode down a
gully sweltering in foetid heat, rounded a corner—and were faced
with a howling gale of freezing wind and lashing rain. They brushed
up against bushes, only to see them crumble to dust. They pushed
their way through a sea of waving grass tall enough to dwarf a
mounted man, only to find that on the other side there was bare
earth honeycombed with bottomless holes.

She’d drawn
these things on maps, she’d heard Piers and others speak of them,
she’d imagined them, she’d heard Davron tell them what to expect,
and that morning she’d glanced at her own map as well, but still
everything came as a shock, usually unpleasant. The gullies were
bleaker, the heat and cold more extreme, the grasses more savagely
serrated, the holes deeper, the rain more viciously determined than
she had dreamed possible. They were her words on the map, it was
her lettering that said: ‘jagged gullies—hard going’; ‘sea of grass
(beware cutting edges)’; ‘holed ground—dangerous,’ yet when she saw
those places it was as if she had never anticipated them. All her
confidence, her youthful arrogance, ebbed away.

And to
think I dreamed of being a mapmaker. I wouldn’t last five minutes
out here alone
...

She thought of
Piers then. Six months in every year he had spent here, sometimes
alone, mapping and surveying the dangers. The route they followed
was his. Piers himself must have investigated a dozen others
looking for the safest way, the least arduous, the least
treacherous. She gained new insights into her father’s tenacity and
courage, just by experiencing a little of what he too must have
endured.

Still, it was
hard to convince herself that they had it any easier than a
mapmaker searching out a route, especially when it rained most of
the afternoon. The clouds that brought the rain roiled just above
them in ugly brown colours; the water stained everything the same
dun tint. It even tasted sour on the tongue. Once or twice she
thought she saw dark shapes slinking through the rain, shadowing
them. Once or twice she caught the stale stench of rottenness that
went along with any creature of the Wild, and she dreaded the night
ahead.

‘Slashers, or
some such,’ Davron said within her hearing. He glanced across at
her. ‘Probably their ancestors were just cute domestic cats before
the Unstable tainted them.’

Their mounts
slipped and skidded and even fell. She was glad of Ygraine’s grumpy
stolidity, her sure tread, especially when she saw both Quirk and
Corrian ended up in the mud once. Fortunately neither was hurt, nor
did the animals bolt. Corrian swore as she rode on, brushing mud
and gravel out of her clothing. Keris had never heard those
particular oaths before, although most were graphic enough for her
to guess the meaning. By now, she had drawn her own conclusions
with regard to Corrian’s line of work back in Drumlin city.

Sometimes they
were forced to lead the horses, and Graval spent the time skidding
and sliding, complaining about his boots, and somehow managing to
stumble into the others or get in their way. ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d say.
‘Terribly sorry. Didn’t mean it. It’s these boots, smooth soles,
you know. Should have got ’em hobnailed, but I didn’t know— Oh,
sorry—’

‘If the
blighter says that one more time, I’ll clobber’m with ’is own
muckin’ boot,’ Corrian muttered. ‘Clutch-footed muckle-top. Thought
there wasn’t a man in the world I wouldn’t take to bed if I was
desperate enough for a poke, but believe me, I’d draw the line with
that one. Gives me the creeps, he does. Like a miserable gutter-cur
that sneaks around the midden and has nivver learned to look a man
in the eye. Apologise, apologise—why the shit doesn’t he just learn
to do something right for a change, instead of muckin’ things up
and saying sorry after?’

It was a
sentiment they all had considerable sympathy for, even Portron who
did his best to be charitable on principle, and Meldor who seemed
to be able to remain equable in the worst of situations. Davron,
Keris noticed with some surprise, was sucking in his cheeks as if
he was having a hard job not to laugh. She’d not thought him to be
a man who would find humour in the graphic earthiness of Corrian’s
plain speaking, but then, she was beginning to wonder if she
understood anything at all about him.

They camped
that night on a hillslope, sheltered by an outcrop of rocks. The
rain had stopped and the fire burned normally, but the cloud was
still low enough to cut off the view and darken the landscape, and
there was little wood to be had for burning. They built only one
fire between them, and everyone contributed something to a single
stew. Baraine complained as he produced his contribution of sweet
yams, a thick cut of dried meat and a handful of grain kernels,
saying he was contributing the best food and he expected to get it
back again on his plate. Corrian bared her gums at him and asked if
he would like to carve his initials on each grain kernel first,
just so he could be sure he received the frigging right ones?

Baraine
stalked off and Keris looked around to find that Corrian and she
had been left alone to attend to the stew. ‘Just because we’re
women, they think we can do the cooking,’ she grumbled. She minded
the assumption, rather than the task.

‘Aagh, that’s
the way of the world,’ Corrian said, puffing a cloud of black smoke
over the yams she was peeling. ‘If it irks you, lass, skim off the
sweet meat for y’self first and then piss in the pot.’

She studied
Corrian’s face to see if she was joking, and decided she wasn’t.
The old woman grinned at her. ‘It’s called the battle of the sexes,
love, and I’ve been at it for nigh on fifty years. Maybe longer. My
ma always said I started on the job in me cradle. Who cares if they
don’t know they’ve been done in.
We
know, and that’s what
counts. Stick together, I say, and do the dirty on ’em.’

Keris scraped
some more root vegetables, supplied by Meldor, and added them to
the pot. ‘Why did you come on this pilgrimage, Mistress Corrian?’
she asked. ‘Why this one, and why now?’

The woman
clamped her teeth down on her pipe and cackled. ‘No one calls old
Corrie the Pipe "Mistress", lass. No need to be proper with me, I’m
just a one-time whore turned Madame, born and bred in Drumlin’s
Cess, and I don’t need no fancy words to call me what I’m not. But
you want to know why a pilgrimage now? Well, first because I’ve
nivver been on a pilgrimage. And second, I reckon after a lifetime
of whoring and thieving, I’d better look proper repentant in the
eyes of the Maker. No short pilgrimage would take care of my sins,
lass.’

‘Repentant?’
she asked, remembering a number of lewd suggestions Corrian had
made to the males of the party, from Scow to Chanter Portron, about
what they could do if they came to her tent or, for that matter, if
they just took a few minutes out behind those bushes over
there...