Havenstar (20 page)

Baraine
lowered his own bow and glanced contemptuously at her arrows
sticking out of the soil. ‘Trust a woman to miss.’

‘She didn’t
miss,’ Davron said in a level voice. ‘Have you forgotten what I
said about it being unwise to kill the Wild? A death in the pack
only makes the others vindictive. Far better to frighten them off.’
He looked around the group. ‘Well, what are you all staring at?
Excitement’s over. Go have your breakfast and break camp. Keris,
you go fetch your arrows. You don’t want to waste any.’

They all
turned away, leaving Keris feeling oddly crestfallen. Fighting off
the Wild might have been second nature to Davron and Scow, but it
was still new to her. She had not expected thanks, exactly—but,
well, something. She sighed and unscrewed the tension on her bow.
Then, as if he’d heard her thoughts, Davron turned around and came
back. He stood looking at her for a moment and she felt an absurd
desire to have him take her in his arms and pat her on the back and
say,
There, there, there’s no need to cry
.

Instead she
continued to attend to her bow, dry-eyed.

‘You did
well,’ he said at last. He sounded diffident, embarrassed, as if he
had forgotten how to praise and the words no longer came easily.
‘Who taught you to use a bow?’

‘Piers
Kaylen.’

‘Are you any
good with that throwing knife?’

She shook her
head. ‘Not really. If I can have two or three practice shots first,
at the same target from the same place, then I have no problems.
But that’s not much good in an emergency, is it?’

He gave a
grunt of assent. ‘It’s not your distance judgement that’s at
fault,’ he said, ‘not if your archery is always so good. It’s just
knowing how many turns of the knife to the distance. I could
probably teach you, given the time.’ He looked down at the knife he
was still holding by the blade. ‘A thumb’s width to the left of
your left-hand arrow,’ he said. ‘Four and a half turns with this
knife.’ He let fly casually, with only the briefest of glances at
his target. It buried itself in the soil, a thumb’s width to the
left of her arrows.

They walked
forward to retrieve them.

‘You’re Piers
Kaylen’s daughter,’ he said, a flat statement of fact. ‘Piers
wouldn’t have taught any shop assistant how to use a bow like
that.’ He gestured at the arrows. They were buried several inches
into the hard-packed ground, each several inches apart, evidence of
the strength and accuracy of her draw. ‘Why did you say your name
was Kereven?’ He bent to retrieve her arrows.

She said, ‘My
father died. My mother was dying. My brother wanted to marry me off
to one of his beer-swilling friends. He was going to turn the shop
into a tavern. I didn’t want to be married and I didn’t want to be
a tavern wench, fending off drunken hands up my skirt. And so I ran
away. I didn’t want my brother finding me, so I lied about my
name.’ She took back her arrows and he pulled his knife out of the
soil and brushed it clean.

‘Why Kereven?’
he asked, standing up and looking straight at her.

She blinked.
For a moment she could not think why, then remembered.
The name
of the trompleri mapmaker. Kereven Deverli. Stupid
. Why in all
Creation had she chosen that name? ‘It was the first name that
popped into my head,’ she said truthfully.

His black eyes
branded her with his disbelief and her heart turned over in fear.
She made as if to go, but he caught her arm in an iron hand. ‘What
do you know of me? Of us?’ he asked, pulling her across to him, so
that she was close enough to have been in an embrace. Blinding
terror swept through her, although he uttered no threat. The same
feeling she had known in that gully with its bilee trap, the same
feeling the Wild had given her as it leapt—she knew it again. And
knew beyond any possibility of doubt that Davron Storre, guide, was
tainted with the touch of the Unmaker. Not tainted physically, like
poor Scow, but tainted nonetheless, in some subtle, more terrible
and much more dangerous way.

He released
her arm and then repeated, ‘What do you know of me, Keris Kaylen?’
There was no menace in his voice; just a sense of urgency, of
strain, of shame.

It was because
of the name. Kereven. Something to do with the map. It had to
be.

She found her
voice at last, was able to breathe again. ‘Nothing. I know nothing.
What—what is there to know?’
He’s just a man. There’s nothing
there to fear. He is just a man, an ordinary man. Corrian was
right. He despises himself. Because he has done something awful,
and he can’t forget it
. And then she remembered the cat. The
churning fear of the animal…
He isn’t ordinary, damn it!

She turned to
walk away from him up the slope towards the camp. Her heart was
beating faster now than it had when she was facing the Wild and her
emotions were as teased out as hackled flax. Perhaps the worst
thing of all was her memory of something she’d seen in those black
eyes. Desire. The desire of a man for a woman... For the first time
in her life she had seen something in a man that spoke of a need
for her—a need beyond just passing lust—and she had seen it in the
eyes of a man whose presence could stultify her with fear.

‘Hey, Kaylen,’
he called suddenly from behind her. ‘Are you ley-lit?’

She turned,
still walking, astonished at the joyousness of his tone—and stopped
dead. He was standing where she’d left him, waving a hand to
indicate the plain below. The mist had retreated fully, and the ley
line was revealed.

She choked,
overwhelmed.

She had heard
so much about ley lines, how terrible they were, how dangerous. Why
had no one told her they were so gloriously beautiful? Not even the
trompleri map had prepared her for such magnificence, such
wonder.

‘Why yes,’ she
said. ‘It seems I am.’

~~~~~~~

Fear not Lord
Carasma when you walk the paths of stability, for he is less than
the Maker and your devotions will be as a wall around you. Fear
Lord Carasma only when you walk the land that he has made his, for
the earth trembles beneath his feet and the Maker cannot hear
you.

—Knights IV: 8:
9-10 (Kte Fessa)

Davron ducked
into Scow’s tent. The tainted man lay propped up on his bedroll
with Meldor unwrapping his bandages and giving him a lecture at the
same time. ‘Of course it’s going to hurt if you will rush around
the place waving pikes at slashers—’

Scow corrected
him politely. ‘It was a battle axe, actually. And stone fyrcats.
And thanks to Keris Kereven, I didn’t have to do much rushing.’

‘Well, I can’t
get everything right; I am blind, you know. Davron, how does this
look to you?’

He eyed the
healing leg with distaste. ‘Disgusting?’

Meldor
appeared to take this to mean it was healing nicely, because he
looked satisfied and began spreading ointment over the scabbing
skin.

Davron
watched, but his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘You were right. She is
Piers Kaylen’s daughter.’

‘Of course,’
Meldor said complacently. ‘You had only to listen to her to know
she wasn’t some shop assistant who’d stolen a couple of
crossings-horses when her master died.’

‘Chaosdamn,
I’d like to know just how you see so much when you can’t see at
all.’

Meldor
straightened up and regarded him. His eyes may have been sightless,
but the look was somehow penetrating. ‘Perhaps it’s not I who see
so much, but you who see so little. You’ve been so caught up in
your own misery you no longer know how to look. There are other
people out there with their own troubles, their own miseries. Judge
people by what they are, not by first encompassing them with your
own experiences. Not every woman is Alyss of Tower-and-Fleury, not
every mapmaker is Kereven Deverli, not every Chantor carries the
same Holy Book.’

‘You would
have me trust everybody, Keris Kaylen included?’

‘I would have
you think more with your brains and less with your bile. But enough
of this; I don’t wish to argue with you, my friend. We have enough
problems without adding to them. Tell me about Keris.’

‘She admitted
her identity. The problem is—why is she here? Why is she bound for
Pickle’s Halt?’

‘Her father
did die there,’ Scow pointed out.

‘So she risks
life and limb to take a look at his grave? Which won’t exist
anymore anyhow. She’s got more sense. No, she has a reason, but
what? And that’s not bile talking, Meldor.’

‘You think she
knows about the trompleri map,’ Meldor said. It was a statement,
not a question.

‘It seems
likely.’

‘We don’t know
Piers Kaylen had it,’ Scow said.

‘Now that’s
stretching coincidence too far,’ Davron replied. ‘Of course he had
it. Who has it now, that’s the problem.’

‘She doesn’t,
surely. Ouch—that hurts!’

‘Sorry,’ said
Meldor. ‘No, she can’t have it, that’s why she’s bound for the
halt. She knows about it and wants to get her hands on it. But what
do we make of the name she chose as her own: Kereven?’

‘There’s a lot
more to that young woman than is first visible,’ Davron agreed.
‘Something tells me she knows more than she should. About us, I
mean. She—well, she could be a danger.’

‘She mentioned
Havenstar to me,’ Scow said.

That
interested him. ‘Did she now?’

‘Oh, come on,’
Meldor protested. ‘She’s a mapmaker’s daughter. Of course she’s
heard of Havenstar. That doesn’t mean she knows anything about it
that approximates to the truth.’ He rewrapped the last of the
bandage and tied it with deft fingers. ‘However, keep an eye on
her, Davron. We don’t want any more complications.’ He turned away
from Scow to face him. His eyes remained unfocussed and unseeing,
yet he still gave the impression of perception. ‘Use her if need
be; if she knows more than we do about the map, we must have that
information.’

He nodded. ‘Of
course.’ He looked down at Scow. ‘Are you all right now? We have to
get started.’

Scow nodded
and stood. Davron went to the tent flap to go out, but turned back
in the opening. ‘She’s ley-lit, by the way.’

‘Naturally,’
Meldor said placidly. ‘I never thought otherwise.’

~~~~~~~

When Davron
had gone, Meldor said in soft tones, ‘There’s a brew stirred up
there, Scow; the girl’s a catalyst. It won’t go unnoticed by Lord
Carasma. Keep a watch on things.’

He did not
specify what things he referred to, but Scow knew what was meant.
‘You were hard on him,’ he said.

‘Not as hard
as he is on himself. There never was a chance for exoneration. He
has always known that, so he seeks to atone, to expiate. But
expiation will not help unless he learns first to forgive himself.
And for the overly proud man Davron once was, that is the hardest
thing of all.’

~~~~~~~

Keris, Chantor
Portron and Baraine stood together on the hill slope, watching the
ley line. She had ached to be ley-lit, but she was no longer so
sanguine about its advantages, not now as she stood there on the
slope of the hill near the camp and watched the ley line move below
her.

When she
finally dragged her gaze away to glance behind, it was to see
Graval and Corrian and Quirk striking camp, utterly unaware of that
glorious corridor of colour and light and movement below. ‘They
can’t be ley-lit,’ Portron said sadly. He’d seen a ley line before,
but the sight had obviously not lost its power to impress him
because he’d been standing next to her bemusedly muttering at
intervals, ‘And to think such beauty is the work of the forces of
evil, lass,’ and ‘Hard to believe the Maker didn’t have a hand in
the making of it, to be sure!’

She looked
back to the line. ‘Why can’t they see it?’ she asked. The question
was a rhetorical one; no one knew why some people were ley-lit and
others were not, except to say that the tendency ran in
families.

‘It’s the
Maker’s will,’ Portron replied.

Beyond him,
Baraine stood transfixed, arms hanging loosely by his sides in the
way the Kibbleberry village simpleton stood when his mind was
blank. His only comment had been an amazed, ‘The power... Holy
creation—the power of it!’

A moment later
Quirk came to stand beside Keris. His colour was bad; she was
reminded, absurdly, of uncooked chicken-skin. ‘Ah—I guess it’s the
ley line you’re looking at, isn’t it?’ he asked.

She
nodded.

‘I—I can’t see
anything. Just a line of whitish mist, as if there is cool damp air
lingering along the banks of a river down there.’ He ran through a
string of nervous gestures. A tug at the hair in front of his ear
was followed by a clearing of his throat, then he chewed his lip
and tugged his hair again, all before he could bring himself to ask
miserably, ‘Keris—er—could you tell me what you see? If it’s not
too much trouble?’

It was a more
difficult question to answer than he realised. She found it hard to
describe something that was so alien, hard to find the right
similes. ‘It’s a little like a ribbon,’ she said at last, ‘lying
across the land. In some places it is twisted; in others crumpled;
in others smooth. It is about two hundred paces across, I would
guess, and it extends as far as I can see in both directions.
There’s no way around it.’

‘Yes, but what
is it
like
?’ he persisted. ‘That is, if you don’t mind
telling me...’

She wondered
what to say. The ribbon itself did not move, or rather it did not
appear to do so. She assumed that if it travelled sideways, then
the movement was imperceptible. However, inside, in the fabric of
the ribbon, it moved all the time. Blues and purples and reds
shimmered and changed and flowed. In some places the hues rose
above the ribbon in solid waves, only to splash down in a backwash
of foam or disappear into whirlpools of colour; other areas seemed
calmer.