Havenstar (21 page)

Above the
ribbon the air was coloured too, tinted. A tunnel of translucent
mist, pinks, mauves, copper... The hues swirled and twisted and
skeined; they plunged down, then fountained upwards as if a
capricious wind played along the tunnel to move mist-veils through
the air. Balls of light shot past and vanished full speed into
nothing, showers of coloured sparks tumbled and then winked
out.

No words could
do it justice. Finally all she could say was, ‘It’s a band of
moving colours. Beautiful. And rather...strange. Alien.’

She paused,
acknowledging to herself the truth of what she saw. None of it was
real. There was no wind, no waves, no ribbon of colour. She would
have known that much, even if she’d known nothing about ley lines.
What they were looking at were forces, not realities. Wild
energies, fields of magic power. Those sparks would not burn, those
balls of lightning would not blast anyone to pieces. They were
dangerous nonetheless because they represented the forces of ley,
and those forces could indeed kill. They could kill ley-lit and
ley-unlit, without distinction, in ways that were
unpredictable.

She said, ‘I
see magic, Quirk, and it frightens me even as it seduces with its
beauty.’

‘It frightens
me,’ he said unhappily, ‘and I can’t see a flippety thing. Sometime
this morning I’m going to have to ride into that, and I keep
thinking that I’m not going to ride out of the other side looking
the way I did when I went in...’ He turned and plodded back towards
his dismantled tent.

Baraine
watched him go and then turned to Keris, saying just loud enough
for Quirk to hear, ‘What a whey-faced scaremonger! What was he
thinking of, joining this fellowship? Does he even know we’re
heading all the way down to the Eighth, or is he so witless he
mistook our destination?’

Meldor, who
had approached them on silent feet, also heard and turned on
Baraine with unexpected ferocity. ‘The bravest men are those who
feel fear yet still perform the deed. Remember this: that man
elected to join this pilgrimage, knowing he was ley-unlit. Knowing
he had tens of ley lines to cross and any one of them could taint
him. Is that not bravery? I wonder if such a man is not worthier of
your birth than you are, Baraine of Valmair.’ He strode off, with
all the assurance of a sighted person, leaving both Baraine and
Keris gaping after him. It was the first time Meldor had shown the
least sign of anger towards anyone, and the words were spoken with
the cutting edge of a well-honed axe.

Baraine’s
expression showed he was ruffled up, but he said nothing. He turned
his back on the line and headed into the camp to strike his tent.
Keris looked at Scow limping by, leading Davron’s pack horse.
‘Would I be wrong,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘if I suggested that
Meldor gets a little peevish to see one of the highborn act without
honour, because Meldor is himself a Trician?’

Scow grinned
at her, but would not confirm her suspicions. ‘I haven’t told you
how much I admired what you did this morning,’ he said, ‘with that
creature of the Wild. You acted with courage and good sense. Davron
tells me you’re Piers Kaylen’s daughter, so I suppose we shouldn’t
be surprised. Your father was one of the best in the Unstable, and
undoubtedly the greatest of all mapmakers, with the possible
exception of Deverli. He’ll be sorely missed.’

‘Thank you.
And you can tell Master Storre that he talks too much. I don’t want
the whole world knowing who I am.’

‘Why not?
Piers was a fine man.’

‘Maybe because
I want to be me, not just Piers the Mapmaker’s daughter.’
Perhaps because I don’t want the whole world to know I’m the
daughter who left her mother when she was dying
...

He nodded. ‘I
think I can understand that, a little. Back home I was always young
Sammy, Tomal Scowbridge’s son. My father was larger than life, you
know, and I was just a kid who could never match up. No one
remembered me when my Dad was around. That’s one thing getting
tainted put an end to, I guess,’ he added with a wry grin.
‘Everyone remembers me now. But I don’t suppose Davron will spread
your identity around. As you may have noticed, he’s hardly a
gossip. More the taciturn type.’ His eyes continued to twinkle at
her, overly large, but full of good humour.

I like him,
she thought, and wondered what in the world he saw in Davron
Storre.

As they rode
out towards the Dancer, she considered the oddities of this
fellowship she’d joined. All those years as a child hanging around
the map shop, with her ears flapping as she listened to adult talk,
had taught her much about human foibles and how to judge people,
but this group had her baffled.

Why was Meldor
or Davron—or Scow?—addressed by one of the other two as Margraf?
What had Davron meant when he’d asked, ‘What do you know about us?’
How had they used ley to free Scow from the bilee? If one of them
was a Trician, why was he travelling like this, without servants,
in the company of commoners? How was Meldor able to ‘see’ so much
when he had no eyesight? His abilities were too uncanny to be
explained away by any glib reference to the senses of smell and
hearing and touch. And why did Davron and Meldor and Scow spend so
much of their time together in serious discussion? It did not take
a particularly perceptive person to see that something was worrying
them, and worrying them badly.

Baraine she
thought she understood. He was the sort of fool who had decided
he’d enjoy playing at being an ordinary fellow with common folk and
was finding it not nearly as enjoyable as he had anticipated. He’d
stick it out though, and then go home and make fun of them all. In
any story he ended up telling, he would be the hero and the rest of
them would be figures of fun.

Portron, Quirk
and Corrian were all probably exactly what they said they were, but
how did Graval fit in? A trader who thought he was bad luck? He
seemed so ineffectual; ludicrous even, riding a horse he couldn’t
control, bumping into people, dropping things, tripping up—it
should have been clownish, but it was somehow not funny. Whenever
he came near her, she tensed as if he was somehow going to spill
something all over her or step on her toes. She was not the only
one who felt that way either, all of them were making an effort to
dodge Graval, even Portron, although she could see that the Chantor
felt guilty about it. She felt sorry for Graval, but wanted to feel
compassion from a distance.

As they rode
parallel to the Dancer, searching for a suitable place to cross,
she looked over to where Davron rode, mounted on that magnificent
crossings-horse of his, all hidden emotion and guilt. What was the
matter with him, that his presence alerted her senses to the
Unmaker? What was it that had made a man like that—obviously
competent, physically personable, who had the assurance of a
Trician—into a man who despised himself? He was the biggest mystery
of all, but she wasn’t sure she wanted it solved. Sometimes
solutions brought their own problems.

Portron
noticed her watching the guide and said with a twinkle, ‘Ah lass,
why don’t you ride with him a-ways? I’m sure he can be telling you
more interesting tales than I.’

Her instinct
was to reject the idea immediately, but Davron had turned his mount
towards the ley line, and her interest overrode her distaste for
being in his company. She urged Ygraine up beside him as he
approached the ley. ‘I’d like to learn about ley lines,’ she said
without preamble. ‘Would you teach me what the different hues and
the movements signify?’

She thought
for a moment he was going to refuse. Knowing his reluctance to
explain anything, she wouldn’t have been surprised. Instead he
stared for a moment, shrugged and said, ‘Why not?’ He waved a hand
at the line. ‘The colour is toning down now, but it’s still not
suitable for a crossing. We’ll ride on a bit further and I’ll tell
you what you are looking at.’

The lesson was
not an easy one. To someone with experience each subtle variation
of colour meant something, and the flow of forces through the air
could be read like a handbill, but it was hard to be literate when
there were thousands of variations to be learned. ‘You see that
spiralling swirl there?’ he asked. ‘When the spiral is tightening
like that, all energy is being trapped. The areas around are then
safe, but the problem with such spirals is you never know when they
will become too tight. Then they uncoil with horrendous force. As
they lash free, the ground heaves and anybody nearby is likely to
be killed.’

‘Have you seen
it happen?’

‘Once, when I
was much, much younger. I was in an escort party. The guide
misjudged and we were caught too close when a spiral unravelled.
Luckily no one was hurt.’ He gave a reminiscent smile. ‘I was
closest and was caught in the backlash. It stripped the clothes off
me. I suddenly found myself without a stitch of clothing, in full
view of a party of giggling young women. I was seventeen years old
and totally humiliated. I had to scrabble around bare-arsed trying
to retrieve my trousers and shirt while the ley whisked them around
in a whirlwind. Some of my fellow guides still bring up that
incident when they want to take me down a peg or two, the
bastards.’ The smile broke out into a grin and she was amazed at
the difference it made. The hard-eyed guide was gone, and in his
place was someone she wanted to know.

He waved a
hand at another patch in the ley. ‘See that deep purple colour
there? It signifies a basic instability where anything can happen.
It’s to be avoided at all costs, unless there are force lines in a
figure of eight above it. A figure of eight is highly restricting
to ley energy...’

Having made
the decision to teach her, he was relentless. When she complained
she could not tell the difference between subtle gradations of
colour, he remarked that it took years of study to be competent at
ley line crossings. ‘You won’t learn one hundredth of what there is
to know today. And even someone with your father’s experience could
be wrong from time to time. The ley is Lord Carasma’s realm, not
ours.’

She shivered
slightly.

‘Scared,
Kaylen?’

‘Yes,’ she
admitted. ‘Aren’t you?’

She looked at
him as she spoke. The flare of pain in his eyes caught her
unawares—aching, rending pain, as if his soul had been torn. His
answer when it came seemed prosaic by comparison, even as the words
shocked her. ‘For myself? No, not in the least. Ley is...seductive.
I look forward to being in contact with it.’ He glanced across at
her. ‘Is that too honest for you, Keris?’

She didn’t
answer. All her fear of him came flooding back.

‘Well,’ he
continued, ‘if it makes you any happier, I do fear ley for those I
escort. My job is to get everyone where they want to go, untainted,
unhurt, and as quickly as possible. One trip in every four, I fail.
Either someone gets tainted, I lose someone to the Wild or a Minion
or a whirlstorm or the unpredictability of ley, or even just a
stupid accident like a fall from a horse. One trip in every four,
Keris, I lose someone in my care. Yes, I fear ley lines.’

She felt
compelled to offer him some comfort. ‘Could anyone else do better?’
she asked.

‘I can answer
that,’ Meldor said, who had ridden up behind them, unnoticed. ‘The
reply is an unequivocal no.’

‘And quite
pointless to the dead or tainted who were in my care,’ Davron said
evenly.

They rode on,
in silence this time. She glanced nervously at the ley line, and
wished they could get the crossing over and done with. Yet she felt
no evil from it. Danger, yes, but no wrongness, not like the area
around the bilee. The ley line bubbled with strength, rather than
evil, she was sure of it. But didn’t Chantry say that the lines
were cracks in Creation, through which the Unmaker’s wickedness
entered the world?

Davron said
suddenly, ‘Kereven is the first name of a talented mapmaker; did
you know that when you took on the name?’

She jumped and
answered too quickly. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Kereven
Deverli. He’s dead now,’ he said. ‘He mapped the southern Unstable.
He was even better than your father, I think.’ He reined in his
horse to study the ley line, and dropped the subject, much to her
relief. ‘I think this might be it,’ he said. ‘See, the tint all
along here is a soft blue. The ground colours appear flat, their
movement is smooth. The patterns are definitely unaggressive. The
flow of energy in the air is sluggish. I don’t think we’ll get a
better place than this to cross.’ He turned to Meldor who halted
his horse beside him without prompting. ‘What do you think?’

Meldor sat
still, sightless eyes staring upwards, sensing the line in other
ways. His lips parted slightly, his head cocked to listen; every
now and then he took a deep breath. ‘It’s a bad line,’ he said to
Davron in his rich, aristocratic voice. ‘A lot of localised
turbulence and pent up angers, as if Carasma has been around
lately. I don’t like it. But it seems quiet enough here and this
part may well be the best of a bad choice. There’s a lot of
suppression though. Stay alert.’

‘Let’s check
it out. Stay here, Keris. You and the others.’ He and Meldor swung
their mounts into the line without the slightest hesitation,
leaving their pack animals behind.

‘What’s
happening?’ Quirk asked a moment later. ‘Can you see Davron and
Meldor?’

‘Can’t you?’
Keris asked.

He shook his
head. ‘The mist is too thick.’

‘They are
riding slowly. Picking their way. Davron’s leading; he keeps
looking down, up, around, at the colours of the line, I
suppose.’

Quirk stared
hard, and fidgeted. The others had joined them but nobody spoke
much. Tension ached in the air around them. They all knew someone
could die in the next hour or so. It was useless to remind
themselves that most fellowships came safely through crossings.
Useless to remember that only a few pilgrims were ever tainted,
fewer still were ever killed. They were standing there, facing the
ley, feeling its magic, knowing the Maker probably could not answer
their prayers. Fear saturated them to the bone.