Havenstar (44 page)

Meldor glanced
at Davron, blind eyes turning towards the black as if they could
see. She mistrusted the look; there was a great deal they weren’t
telling her still. She guessed, with only a smudge of doubt
lingering, that there were indeed others out there besides
themselves who had been absorbing ley.
What in heaven’s ordering
are they up to?

‘Is there
anything else I should know?’ she asked carefully.

Meldor’s reply
was bland. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

She was sure
he was lying. She looked across at Davron, only to have him look
away.

The back of
his neck was reddening and she hid the glimmer of a smile. He must
find his tendency to blush a terrible nuisance... She tried to be
content with the thought that at least he’d warned her against
imbibing ley.

‘I think I
need to have time to consider all this,’ she said and stood up.

Neither of
then tried to stop her as she said goodnight and left.

~~~~~~~

Outside the
tent she stretched and enjoyed for a moment the luxury of viewing a
night sky that blazed with colour. A normal sky. At least the
Unmaker could not alter that. The heavens remained as they always
had, the Blue Necklace swinging its way across the south, the red
Sunburst exploding in its motionless glory to the north, the black
of the Pitch Tub to the west with its border of Star Sparkles,
overhead the milky band of the Moonstones and the eight moons, each
not much bigger than the largest of the stars.

‘Beautiful,
isn’t it?’ a soft voice asked out of the darkness. It was the
courier, Gawen, still sitting by the last glowing turds of the
fire. At his feet a pair of black hounds stirred restlessly; they
were ugly beasts, with sad red-rimmed eyes, and drooping jowls
punctuated by curved canines.

He saw her
eyes on the animals and said, ‘They are especially restless
tonight. I would not be surprised if there was a Minion or two out
there somewhere.’

‘Are those
hounds as formidable as they look?’

‘More,
probably. In this country, they have to be. I heard once that your
father travelled alone, without even animals. Was that true?’

‘Not entirely.
He hired the excluded from time to time. And he had his horses.
Tousson, his pack horse, is as good as a dog any day.’ She felt a
moment’s irritation. She had so much to think about, her mind was
so churning with ideas that she wanted to be alone. And who had
told him she was Piers Kaylen’s daughter anyway?

‘I never met
him, more’s the pity. He stayed up north of the Wide, and I always
work this territory.’ He paused, then said with some bemusement, ‘I
have just been propositioned by the most extraordinary lady.’

She chuckled.
‘I hope it won’t upset your pride if I tell you that you are the
last in a long line.’

He grinned.
‘No, not really. And I hope you won’t take it amiss if I say that I
would rather be propositioned by you.’ The invitation was so
straightforward and without guile that she could not help but
smile. He was handsome in a weather-beaten sort of way, a little
older than Davron, but she was not tempted.

‘Corrian has
much more experience,’ she said. ‘I would be a poor bargain by
comparison. Goodnight, Master Gawen.’

‘You don’t
look like the back end of my oldest mule,’ he said mournfully, but
he didn’t try to delay her further. ‘Goodnight, Maid Kaylen.’

Feeling
absurdly pleased by his invitation, even though her more rational
self told her that there was hardly much competition in the present
company, she turned away to go to her tent.

A sudden
caterwaul scrambled her thoughts, a human scream followed, then the
sounds of a scuffle, all coming from behind her tent. Without
thought, she ran towards the noise; a moment later Davron raced in
from her left, recklessly leaping guy ropes, while Scow barrelled
in from the right like a bull on the rampage.

‘Where—?’
Davron snapped out the question.

She pointed.
‘I think it was Quirk.’ The Chameleon had been on sentry duty with
Portron.

A flare of
light blinded them all, arcing through the darkness with throbbing
brilliance before vanishing.

‘Who’s there?’
Davron yelled, running on, knife already drawn in one hand, the
butt of his whip clutched in the other. ‘Keris, get a proper
light!’

But Master
Gawen had already plunged a torch prepared for just such an
emergency into the heart of the camp fire. He came up bearing it
aloft like a banner.

‘Watch out!
It’s a Minion—!’ Quirk’s voice came out of the dark, raw with
terror. There was a scrabble of stones and the diminishing sound of
running feet.

Corrian,
hauling on clothes, groping about her person for her pipe, appeared
at Keris’s side. ‘What’s all the dither?’

‘Quirk?’
Davron grabbed the torch from the courier, and moved into the patch
of darkness beyond Keris’s tent.

The Chameleon
was lying there on the ground, hands clutched to his knee. ‘There
was someone trying to get inside Keris’s tent,’ he said. He rocked
himself, trying to overcome the pain of an injured leg.

Davron
hesitated, looking off into the dark.

‘Don’t be
stupid,’ Scow told him, with scant politeness as he knelt beside
Quirk. ‘Whoever it was, he’s gone now.’

Davron
shrugged and turned his attention back to the Chameleon. ‘Did he
get you?’

‘Yes. With a
wretched ley-blast. At least, I suppose that’s what it was. I never
saw what hit me. I glimpsed him sneaking around the tents, but
nobody sneaks like I do. I came up on him from behind, was about to
clobber him one—and then I had to go and stand on the tail of the
fellow’s pet.’

Davron looked
at him, incredulous. ‘You
what
?’

‘Well, I
didn’t see it. It was some slinky black thing—’

‘What were you
doing creeping around after a Minion anyway? Are you mad?’

‘I didn’t know
it was a Minion, did I? I thought it must be another bandit. He was
slitting Keris’s tent. Ouch! Scow, don’t touch that! It hurts like
the very devil.’

‘We’ll get you
to Meldor,’ Scow said, and hefted the Chameleon into his arms as if
he were nothing more than a child, and a half-starved one at
that.

Davron glanced
around the assembled group. ‘Portron, did you see anything?’

‘Nothing. I
was on the other side.’

‘Better get
back there, and be especially vigilant. Gawen, you take Quirk’s
place with your dogs. Keris, did he take anything?

She walked
over to look at the damage. A knife lay on the ground near the
tent; she picked it up and gave it to Davron. ‘No, he didn’t have
time to do much. Barely had the knife inserted into the canvas by
the look of it.’

He looked at
her, face expressionless. ‘Odd that it should be your tent he
chose, isn’t it? Corrian’s is closer to the edge of the camp and
Quirk’s would have been easier to approach without being seen.’

She turned
from him, stiff with fright. Coincidence, surely. Corrian looked at
her in sympathy. ‘If you feel scared, lass, you can share my
tent.’

‘I’ll be all
right, but thanks anyway.’

Inside her
tent, she lit her only good wax candle with trembling fingers.
Coincidence? Or had the Unmaker sent one of his Minions after her,
to make sure she did not have the trompleri map? She felt sick.

She sat down
for a while, thinking. So much happening all at once, so many
ideas… She opened up her packs and took out her mapping inks,
paints, pens and brushes. Ley was not evil, as Chantry had so long
preached. Ley was power, and it could be used. Used to make a
trompleri map. Slowly she reached out and picked up the small
bottle in which she had stored the mineral salts she’d found in the
quiver. She turned it over and over in her hands, wondering if she
really wanted to travel down the path her thoughts were taking,
wondering if she really wanted to know how to make a trompleri map
after all.

Her fingers
fumbled opening the jar. It took an effort of will to mix up ink
and paints, to add the tannin powder and the dyes to the salts,
until finally she had what she wanted: a small amount of black ink
and several small pots of varying shades of brown paint.

A clean sheet
of parchment pinned to the portable mapping board, a tracing of
part of Piers’ large scale map of Wedge Hill where the fellowship
had stopped on their first night in the Unstable… Then, taking a
deep breath, she began inking in the outlines.

It seemed no
different from any other map. The hill taking shape under her pen
remained flat against the paper. Doggedly, she worked on, waited
for the ink to dry, then applied the paint. She had to close her
eyes for a minute, so that she could picture the hill, its steep
sides of shale and broken earth, the gentler slope to the north,
the steep track on the southern side. She mixed and merged the
paints on her palette, then on the paper, taking infinite care,
until she had achieved what she wanted.

Except that it
was not what she had hoped. It looked no different from any other
map she had ever created. She heaved a sigh and pushed the
parchment away. As she washed her brushes, she was aware of her
fatigue as well as her disappointment. Perhaps the whole chart had
to be completed for it to work, but all she had was browns, and
precious little of that. Perhaps all the ingredients of the inks
and paints had to come from a ley line, just as she believed the
salts had. She dried her brushes and went to put the parchment
away—and stopped short. Her colours had become a dark smudge on the
paper. Indistinct, without detail or delineation. She stared, not
comprehending for a moment. Was there a hint of contour? It did
seem to be raised up, she was sure of it. Not as clearly as the
hills on Deverli’s map, of course—

With an abrupt
movement born of her fear, she shoved her map out of sight and took
an anxious look around her tent. Belatedly, she pushed her pack in
front of the small tear the Minion had made in the canvas.

Deverli’s map.
For the first time on the journey, she dug into her mapcase and
pulled out the trompleri map.

It was dark.
Smudged, indistinct.

It took her
another minute to understand. Night. A scene viewed by night. Of
course. She had never seen the map at night before, but of course
it was reflecting the real time of day, as well as the actual
conditions of the place it portrayed. If she looked closely she
could make out the larger rocks and hills and copses, illuminated
by moonlight.

She drew out
her own map of Wedge Hill again and knew she’d done it. Not well
because she lacked enough of the correct materials, but she’d done
it.

She had made a
trompleri map.

~~~~~~~

Alas, that
humankind knows not the most precious of its jewels till it slips
from his grasp
.

—-Old Saying of
the Margravate of Malinawar

‘Not asleep,
Keris?’

Scow, who’d
been crossing the camp on his way to Keris’s tent when she had
emerged from it, pitched his voice to a whisper so as not to
disturb anyone else. ‘I was just coming to see if you were all
right. I saw your candle. I was worried you’d gone to sleep with it
still burning.’

‘No.
I—er—couldn’t sleep. Are you on guard?’

‘Yes. Davron
decided to put three on at a time tonight. You and he and Corrian
will take the second shift.’

‘How’s
Quirk?’

‘Fine. Meldor
fixed the worst of it. He’ll be a bit sore for a while, that’s all.
You’ll be tired if you don’t sleep.’

‘In a moment.
Can I ask you something first? Scow, how well do you know this
courier?’

‘Gawen? We’ve
come across him from time to time. Quiet chap, pleasant enough, I
think.’ He gave her a sharp look, but did not ask why she was
interested.

‘A trustworthy
courier?’

‘All couriers
are trustworthy, you know that. Otherwise they wouldn’t be
couriers.’

‘I want to
have a few private words with him. Do you think you could send him
to wake me when his stint of guard duty is finished?’

‘As you wish.
And really, Keris, you ought to get some sleep.’

‘All right,
I’m off.’

She ducked
back into the tent, knowing Scow was right. She had to sleep, but
her eyes kept straying to the tear in the canvas of the tent. If
the Minion had not been discovered he might have searched her
belongings and found her trompleri map. Perhaps that was what he’d
been after in the first place. She refused even to consider the
other possibility: that he’d been intent on murder.

She reached
out and took up both the trompleri map and her own poor attempt to
emulate it. She took one last look at them both, and then, with
cold determination, she overcame her reluctance and fed the edge of
them both to the candle flame.

~~~~~~~

‘Can’t you
sleep either?’ Scow asked Davron.

The guide, who
had just emerged from his tent, regarded Scow with a grimace. ‘One
of those nights. What do you mean “either”? You’re not supposed to
be sleeping!’

‘Not me:
Keris.’ The Unbound man nodded towards her tent, where the candle
still burned.

‘Probably
scared stiff. Not that I blame her. Scow, I’m worried about just
why that Minion was there. I’d give a day of my life to know if he
was aware she wasn’t in th—
Holy taint!
What’s that?’

A brilliant
flash of white light lit up Keris’s tent from the inside. Then it
burst outwards, shrivelling the canvas in an instantaneous flash of
heat and incandescence.

For a split
second Scow and Davron stood still, momentarily beyond shock, then
a blast of air hit them both. Scow, who was larger, was just
knocked flat; Davron was lifted and hurled back into his own tent,
which then collapsed on top of him, its guy ropes wrenched from the
ground as the shockwave filled the canvas like a sail billowing
before a gust of wind.