Havenstar (40 page)

‘That’s the
one.’

‘She’s there
now?’

‘Oh, I
shouldn’t think so. She’s married, after all, but then, what do I
know? Tricians don’t tell the likes of us what they’re up to, do
they?’

‘No. Not very
often,’ Keris agreed.

She left the
shop and went to look for the domain, driven by an overwhelming
curiosity, and a bizarre desire to hurt herself.
Lovely Alyss,
moonshine and quicksilver
… She did not doubt for a moment
Davron had gone there.

The river was
barely more than a stream and the domain house in the distance,
long and low with a slate roof, was set on the opposite side
surrounded by farm fields. The near side of the stream was a tangle
of trees, bushes and undergrowth into which a narrow path
disappeared. It was not the kind of woodland scenery Keris was used
to; the Fifth was drier than the First and the vegetation was more
stunted and tangled as a consequence. Still, it was suddenly good
to see proper trees again, and feel grass beneath her feet, grass
that crushed beneath her shoes. She set off down the path, catching
glimpses of the domain house through the growth as she approached
closer.

What she did
not expect was to see Davron.

He should have
been in the house, surely. Instead he was standing hidden among the
trees, watching the buildings on the other side of the river, so
intent that he did not see or hear her. She came to a halt, stood
motionless, appalled. She was intruding and her intrusion was
unpardonable, yet she could not bring herself to move.

From where she
stood she could see he was watching two children playing in front
of the house. One was a girl of about eight, the other a boy some
two or three years younger. They were Trician children; she could
see that much by the fineness of their black and grey clothes.

A plump
middle-aged woman came out of the house and called to them. The
girl promptly caught hold of the boy’s hand and began to walk
towards the door until he protested and pulled away. There was a
scuffle, a child’s shouted protest and several giggling chases
before both of them ran off into the house and all was silent
again.

It had been a
short glimpse of ordinary daily life, without any particular
meaning, yet it left her with a feeling of profound sadness. She
glanced back at Davron and began to back away.

He turned and
saw her, and stopped dead.

She thought he
would be angry. Instead he stood like a man on the edge of a chasm,
knowing any minute that the edge would crumble beneath him. There
was no room for anger in his despair. She stepped towards him,
unable to do anything else. ‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why can’t you go
and see them?’

The woods
around them seemed hushed, quiet, waiting for his answer. He was
silent for so long she thought he was not going to reply at all,
then he said quietly, without emotion, ‘Because if I try, if I
speak to my daughter, my wife will tell Chantry that I wear this.’
He touched his sleeve at the place where the Unmaker’s sigil was
fused to his biceps. ‘I have not spoken to Mirrin—my daughter—since
the day this was placed on my arm. I have never held my son in my
arms, or heard him call me father.’ He looked back at the building
on the other side of the stream. ‘Every time I come to Dormuss I
stand here and watch the house, and hope that I will at least catch
a glimpse of Mirrin. Just a glimpse. Often I stand all day, and I
never see her at all.’

Alyss, his
wife, would betray him to Chantry? she was stupefied. If Chantry
knew about his sigil, Davron would die, condemned as an apostate.
Immediately, after the most summary of trials, with no time for any
excuses. The woman threatened him with death, yet he had done it
all for her, for Alyss, his wife.

Davron leant
against the tree and Keris watched in growing horror as he began to
cry, shoulders shaking helplessly as the grief of five years
spilled over into the present.

~~~~~~~

Nothing is
colder than the grey ashes of an old love, nothing warmer than the
bright coals of the new.

—Old saying of
the Margravate of Malinawar

Domain lords
were allowed to have large families. The reason was obvious and
undisputed. So many of their sons were destined to die in service
to the people of their stability, to die—or to be tainted and
excluded.

Thus, when
Davron of Storre was born to the wife of a domain lord of the
Fourth Stability, he already had four elder brothers and two
sisters.

His father,
Camone of Storre, was a large untidy man with untidy habits who had
married a woman of fey charm and no self-discipline. The result was
a family that enjoyed life in a state of eternal disarray and
constant laughter. The children ran wild for much of the time,
scattering their mischief through the house and the estate, leaving
the consequences for the servants. Had they been less likeable they
may have been despised for their irresponsibility, but like their
parents, they were pleasant-natured and kind. They may have been
fickle, but none of the Storre brood were ever malicious. The more
perspicacious servants were doubtless aware that the wildness and
the self-centredness of the Storre children were products of their
future rather than their present. The Storres knew the sweetness of
life, possibly the length of life itself, would for them be
short-lived, and they were determined to live it to the full.

Their
existence was not completely without discipline. There were lessons
and these could never be shirked. Arms training started for the
boys when they were five and part of every day was dedicated to it
thereafter; combat drills and exercises became an integral part of
life. A variety of weapons was presented to them over the years,
each needing to be mastered before the ultimate choice of a
personal weapon was made.

There were
other lessons too. Those in reading and numbering and the Rule were
taken in the local Chantry school. Pathfinding, mapreading,
equestrian skills and similar attainments that would help them one
day in the Unstable were taught by expert tutors or by their
father. The sons of Storre knew how to magnetise and read a
compass, how to plot a course by the stars, how to live off the
land. They could mount and dismount from a galloping horse by the
time they were ten, or they could diagnose and treat common equine
problems such as a sprained fetlock or a bout of colic.

By the time he
was twelve, Davron had passed all the written and oral tests needed
to qualify him as a Defender, and he’d chosen his preferred
weapons, the throwing knife and the whip. For two more years he
honed his skills within the walls of his father’s domain, but by
then the carefree years were already over. The first inevitable
tragedy had come and left its scars. The eldest Storre brother was
dead in the Unstable, killed by a Minion while riding guard on a
large fellowship.

When he was
fourteen, Davron started riding in the local Defender troop that
policed the area against those who broke the Rule. A year later,
his father died as a consequence of a combination of old injuries
received in the Unstable, and another brother, retired from the
Defenders after being mauled by a Wild, took over the domain. That
same year, Davron killed his first human, an Unbred boy whose only
crime was to have been born deformed. A few months later,
sixteen-year-old Geralt Storre, the best loved of his brothers and
the closest to Davron in age, disappeared after being tainted.

When Davron
himself was sixteen, he rode his first tour of duty in the
Unstable, crossed his first ley line, and discovered, against all
odds, that he was ley-lit. At that age he was a pleasant boy,
well-liked by his male peers and the object of sidelong glances
from Trician girls who saw something in him beyond the ordinary: a
romanticism, a sense of honour, a thoughtfulness that was beginning
to overtake the superficiality his early erratic upbringing had
encouraged. At twelve Davron had been both shallow and spoiled. By
sixteen, he was much more caring and introspective. He accepted
responsibility and fought with courage. If he had a fault, it was
pride. He was proud of his honour, of his integrity.

As a younger
son, with no possibility of ever inheriting the Storre domain and
thus being one of the landed gentry, he was destined to be a
Defender, alternating guard duty on crossings with policing duties
at home. There was no other profession open to him, although the
domain of Storre would always be obliged to provide him with a home
in one of the domain cottages.

He embarked
down the expected road knowing there were no other options and it
worried him not one whit. The first time he’d ridden out into the
Unstable as part of a guard contingent he’d enjoyed himself. He
liked the comradeship of his fellow Trician Defenders, he enjoyed
the exhilaration of the unknown, the danger of ley crossings, the
sheer unbridled adventure of the ever-changing Unstable.

He began to
read the ley lines, and because he was ley-lit as well as being
talented, promotions came quickly. He volunteered for more
crossings than were required of him and gradually acquired the
skills that would stand him in good stead later, as a guide. Both
his mind and his body were being challenged, and as a consequence
his personality developed more depth, but he never lost the strong
streak of romanticism and honour.

At eighteen he
fell in love.

Alyss of
Tower-and-Fleury was on her pilgrimage when he met her. She was two
years older than he was, but less wise and with much less
experience of the world.

Taken with the
black-eyed youth who was all whipcord and muscle yet who seemed
gentle, she gave him every encouragement. By the time her
pilgrimage was over, they’d declared their love.

He courted her
with letters and frequent visits; they were married immediately
after his own pilgrimage at the age of twenty. Alyss moved to the
Storre domain as custom dictated. At her insistence, and when he
was given a choice, Davron opted for local law enforcement duties
rather than crossings assignments. As a married man, soon with a
child on the way, he had no wish to be parted from his wife, and
yet there were times when he regretted he could not spend more time
in the Unstable. If he’d allowed himself to consider the matter, he
would have realised that at heart he was an Unstabler. Stability
with all its regulations stifled him. When it was necessary to deal
with Chantry, he had to subdue his hostility. The Rule irritated
him and only in the Unstable could he feel truly free.

Yet when his
daughter Mirrin was born, there could have been no happier man than
Davron of Storre. He adored his daughter and resented the duties
that took him away from her. As for Alyss… Had he known how Scow
was to describe his wife to Keris, he would have agreed with the
description. Alyss was indeed like moonlight: ethereal, beautiful
quicksilver. She was a tease and a flirt and so much fun. She was
kind and gentle and generous. She could never pass a hurt creature
or a beggar child without stopping. He loved her as much as it was
humanly possible to love, and had the Unmaker not stepped into his
life, he would probably have gone on loving her that way, and been
happy in that love. He didn’t see that she was still untried, as
yet untouched by adversity, callow. Even her charity was something
that never caused her pain. It was the footman who passed her
coppers on to the beggar, the maid who cared for the wounded fawn
she found, her physician who cared for the newly-tainted boy they
discovered in the Unstable. There was little below the surface of
Alyss of Tower-and-Fleury, but Davron felt no lack and did not know
the illusory nature of the dream he lived.

When Mirrin
was three, Alyss found she was expecting another child, but this
pregnancy did not seem to progress well. She was tired and fretful
and often ill. She was irritated by Mirrin’s noise, discontented by
the smallness of their house on the Storre domain, unhappy with
Davron’s absences on patrol. She harped on things that hadn’t
worried her before: her parents had never seen Mirrin, it was so
long since she’d seen her mother, she missed her home in the Fifth.
She wanted her mother for this new birth. She was frightened.
Please—could they go to the Fifth Stability? She could have the
baby there…

Davron, while
sympathetic, was more concerned about the danger. Crossings were
becoming more treacherous. He knew better than most the sort of
tricks a ley line could produce and he dreaded gambling the life of
his wife and child on the unpredictability of ley. But he loved
Alyss, and she pleaded so desperately.

He planned it
meticulously. It was to be a strong group with a large contingent
of Defenders, too large surely for any of the Wild or the Minions
to risk attacking. He was aware of the paradox that the larger the
group, the more they drew the attention of the Unmaker, but at the
time he still felt it was worth the risk to have the security of
numbers. He hired the best of guides. He himself would lead the
armed escort and the men were his hand-picked elite. Every comfort
was provided for Alyss and Mirrin, including a physician and a
chantor in attendance. Alyss laughed at her husband for all his
precautions, but he was determined that they should not come to
harm.

Not far into
the Unstable, they found and rescued a young farm boy called Sammy
Scowbridge. Abandoned by his fellowship after having been tainted,
he was almost dead of starvation and half out of his mind because
of what had happened to him. Alyss insisted that her physician give
him the best of care, but it was Davron, hardly much older than the
traumatised farm boy, who restored Sammy Scowbridge’s peace of
mind. He saw something in the youth, in his tragedy, that tugged at
him; inevitably he was reminded of Geralt’s disappearance. His
brother had been abandoned just as Sammy had, alone and on foot,
never to be seen again.