Havenstar (51 page)

Not only did
Chantor Portron have trouble understanding Keris, but he was at a
loss to explain what had happened to her. He didn’t know how she
could have survived the fall into the canyon, he couldn’t explain
the kind of damage done to her hand, and he had no idea how she’d
absorbed ley into her body, or why. He only knew that she was
committing a sin of the gravest kind, a sin large enough to ensure
not only automatic exclusion, but also expulsion from Chantry
congregations. And she would not listen to him. He’d begged her to
take heed. He wanted to nag and threaten and cajole, but every time
he broached the topic she brushed him away. ‘Not now, Chantor,’
she’d said more than once. ‘I’m tired. We’ve ridden far, and I
cannot face an argument.’

True, on the
first day after the Minion raid, she had seemed exhausted. He’d
noticed with alarmed concern that she’d swayed in the saddle.
They’d ridden hard and fast, so there was reason to be tired, but
she’d been close to collapse. Still, he did think she ought to have
listened. And anyway, that evening, after they’d passed through a
small ley line, she’d appeared much better. Portron had his
suspicions about what she’d done in the ley line, along with Meldor
and Davron, but he didn’t want to dwell on that.

Several days
later, when he tried to bring up the subject again, he was
overheard by Corrian and found himself verbally assailed by the old
woman. ‘Ah, Chantor,’ she said after Keris had walked away in
irritation, ‘what makes you think in that chuckle-skulled head of
yours, that she’ll listen to you sprout such mutton-brained
nonsense?’

Corrian’s
tongue was back in form, even if the wild riding they’d done had
wreaked havoc with her body. She’d spent the first two days after
losing her arm riding in front of Scow on Stockwood in a
semi-sedated state, followed by evenings and nights stretched out
in her tent tired and crotchety. Now, however, on the third day, as
they sat in the common room of yet another halt, her wits seemed to
be as sharp as ever and she was quite capable of berating Portron
even as she complained about her aching arm.

‘Keris saved
our lives, and I don’t care if she did shoot invisible whatever out
of her fingers to do it. I’m grateful anyway. I’m mighty attached
to this life of mine. It’s the only one I’ve got,’ she said. She
pointed at her missing forearm. ‘See this? See how it’s healing?
Well, if Meldor’s doing that with his ley, why in Creation’s
Ordering should I, or anyone else, object?’

‘Because it’s
wrong,’ Portron mumbled, anxious that Meldor at the next table did
not hear. The idea that the charismatic man who had been Knight
Edion was now an apostate with the powers of ley within him scared
Portron more than he cared to admit. ‘It’s a sin, Mistress Corrian.
Chantry would be within its rights to cut you off from all
salvation!’

‘Reckon it’s
not Chantry as does that, Chantor. It’s the Maker, when He comes to
decide whether my bits are to be accepted into That Which Was
Created, or tossed into Chaos.’ She surveyed him shrewdly. ‘Seems
to me that you got a problem, chantor. You’ve been dodging
confrontations all your life, and now you’ve got one right in your
own front yard—’ she tapped her forehead ‘—and you got to make up
your mind what you’re going to do about it.’ She cackled. ‘Now
that’s the Maker’s justice for you.’

‘Don’t worry,
Chantor,’ Quirk interrupted. He was sitting next to them, but
they’d forgotten he was there. ‘Doesn’t it say something somewhere
in the Holy Books about ley being the salvation of humankind?’

‘No, it
doesn’t! Er, well, I suppose there is a bit that’s saying the act
of using ley might possibly be a true act, if the user himself is
pure.’

‘And that we
should not scorn any true route to salvation,’ Quirk persisted,
‘That’s in the book of Knights somewhere.’

‘It’s a vague
reference,’ Portron protested unhappily. ‘No one takes any notice
of it.’

‘Maybe they
ought,’ Corrian said, and looked smug.

Portron was
sure he had never met anyone he disliked more. Unless it was
Meldor. Or Davron.

~~~~~~~

‘We’ll have to
watch him,’ Davron said quietly at the next table. ‘He is disturbed
by our use of ley.’

Meldor, hands
clasped around a mug of something that was misnamed beer, asked,
‘Do you think he’ll he take what he knows to Chantry once my
coercion wears off?’

Scow murmured
his assent.

Davron said,
‘I think so. Although maybe he might feel some reluctance if Keris
is with us. He won’t want her hurt.’ He grimaced. ‘Confound the
man. Your coercion won’t last forever, and we hardly want Chantry
sending Defenders into the Unstable, chasing after us in righteous
indignation.’

‘Would they?’
Scow asked. ‘Why bother with us if we stay within the
Unstable?’

‘Oh, they’ll
bother, all right,’ Meldor said. ‘I don’t have the slightest doubt
of that.’ He smiled slightly at Scow. ‘Did you know a group of
Defenders came through here only two days back, asking if anyone
had seen an elderly blind man with a deep voice? Or so our host
informs me.’ He did not look particularly worried.

Davron
frowned. ‘What prompted them, do you think?’

‘Maybe they’ve
just heard too many rumours about Havenstar. About ley. Chantry
fears ley more than anything else. They believe anyone who dabbles
in it is akin to being a Minion, and for an ordinary person who has
access to a stability to dabble—well, that’s tantamount to
declaring war on Order. They fear such a man could come into a
stability and do untold damage.’

Davron sighed.
‘Someone like me, for instance.’

‘Exactly.
Davron, if Portron talks, your life will be in danger whenever you
step foot into a stab.’

‘So will
yours.’

‘I’m excluded.
I don’t venture past border towns. You do.’

‘What do you
suggest? That we kill him?’

Meldor, to
Davron’s alarm, seemed to consider this suggestion seriously. ‘It
would be one solution, but I do have a distaste for acting in a way
that makes us no better than those we oppose… No, I think we will
let the chantor go his own way. He will have his uses.’

Davron raised
an eyebrow. ‘When you talk like that, I wonder what you are up to,
my sightless friend.’

‘Just so long
as Chantor Portron doesn’t wonder yet a while…’

~~~~~~~

The fellowship
avoided the Sixth and Seventh Stabilities. Twice, they also
deliberately avoided fellowships guarded by Defenders. They rode
fast, hoping to leave their Minion attackers behind, still licking
their wounds. Of course, it was only a matter of time before other
Minions spotted them, they all knew that.

They reached
the Wanderer and in the crossing of this ley line, renowned for its
treachery, Keris absorbed still more ley. She’d been shocked at how
weak she’d been after she’d used ley on Cissie Woodrug’s pet. By
the time they had reached a small ley line the next day, she’d felt
exhausted and ill. She reflected wryly she’d never thought she
would be glad to plunge into a ley line. Now, several days later at
the Wanderer, she was uneasy with her realisation of how much she
appreciated the possibility of imbibing still more ley. She enjoyed
the strength and vitality it gave her.

‘Now I know
why I was so attracted to the Snarled Fist,’ she said to Davron.
‘There is something seductive about ley.’

He nodded
soberly and they exchanged glances. They knew the price they paid.
With ley they felt strong; without it, they would die.

While she was
within the Wanderer she searched for more minerals or soils that
could be used in inks and paints, but found nothing. It was not
until they reached the Graven several days later that she had any
luck.

The Graven was
wide and slow-moving. It presented few dangers to fellowships,
being renowned more for its gentle colours and tranquillity than
for upheaval. Davron told her no more than a handful of people had
ever been tainted in the Graven over the past one hundred years,
with which fact she comforted herself while she searched the soil
it touched with its flow.

She found
sienna, the earth pigment that would give her varying shades of
yellow and brown, including the reddish-brown of burnt sienna once
she had done the firing necessary. Nearby she found some ferric
oxide that could be used to make brighter reds, so she was well
satisfied.

That evening
she drew a small portion of a trompleri map using what she had
found, but kept it until the morning light before showing it to
Meldor, Scow and Davron. Meldor, of course, could not see it at
all, and it was Davron who described it to him, in a voice that
shook with excitement. ‘It’s a large-scale map of some of the land
we passed through yesterday,’ he said. ‘It shows a brown plain and
that rocky gully where we were almost swept aside by that
whirlwind.’

‘I used a map
of Letering’s to get the right measurements,’ she said. ‘And I
chose that particular place because I have the right colours for
it. I only have browns at the moment, from yellow-brown to
red-brown.’

‘Oh,
ley-fire,’ Davron said. ‘Meldor, there’s a whirlwind there. It’s
spinning across the corner of the map. I can see it moving. I
almost expect it to pick up the paint from the vellum! You’d think
you could touch it and feel the wind of it, yet when I do, there’s
nothing. I feel nothing, yet it spins away from beneath my fingers…
And look, what’s that? A rider of some sort. Just coming down into
the gully. You can see how he’s going downhill! It’s incredible…
the hillside looks so real! A lone person on a—is that a horse? No,
I think it’s a tainted beast of some sort. Keris, this is
wonderful.’ He looked up and she was disconcerted to see the
admiration in his eyes. ‘Holy Maker, I wish you could see it,
Meldor.’

‘I wish I
could too.’ There was a note of wistfulness in his voice. ‘My
thanks, Keris. One day you will be honoured in Havenstar.’

She blinked.
‘Honoured? I don’t want to be honoured. I just want—’ She paused,
trying to think what she did want. ‘I guess I just want things to
be better. For everyone.’

‘Nothing for
yourself?’ Meldor asked.

‘Things being
better, that would be for myself.’

‘They will,’
Meldor said. ‘I promise it.’

She smiled,
but did not quite believe it.

Scow, as
usual, brought them back to practicalities. ‘How much difficulty
will you have getting the right colours in ley lines for the maps?’
he asked.

‘It won’t be
easy. I suspect that I’ll be able to make all the range from dull
red to brown to orange to yellow without any problems, because the
easiest things to find are probably going to be the ochres, the
umbers, the siennas. There won’t be any carmine or madder or indigo
or gentian or woad, though. They come from plants and animals. Even
sepia. That’s from the ink of the river squid. And where to find
minerals that are usually deep-mined? Copper, for example. If I
have copper I can make verdigris to get green. If I have cobalt and
aluminium oxides, I can get cobalt blue—that’s probably the most
important of all. Greens I could mix.’ She frowned, thinking. ‘Dark
green-blues I could probably get from iron pigments… But cinnabar?
Is that usually mined? I don’t even know what it is.’

‘Something to
do with mercury, I think,’ said Davron. ‘What about white?’

‘I’m bound to
find chalk under a ley line somewhere.’

‘There will be
people to help you in Havenstar,’ Meldor said. ‘We could probably
find an expert in paint-making, I shouldn’t wonder. We have just
about every artisan you care to name.’

Havenstar…

To Keris’s
ears, it didn’t even sound like a real place. She still had no idea
of what it was. She had pestered both Scow and Davron for more
information and both of them had been equally vague. ‘Oh, you will
see,’ Davron had said and his voice had softened like a man about
to describe his lover. ‘Havenstar is difficult to explain. It is
different. Rare. Perhaps after seeing it, you would think even an
ocean was prosaic. Better to wait and see than have me try to
explain with words that will only be inadequate. After all, nobody
believes in wyverns anymore, do they?’

‘Wyverns?
You’re joking, right?’ He just laughed.

Scow was even
less informative. ‘You’ll see it differently to me,’ he had said.
‘I’m not ley-lit, so I see only the shadow, the reflection, the
mask. Useless to ask me for a description. And yet, Havenstar will
never mean as much to you as it does to me, and in that I am
luckier. Havenstar speaks to my soul, Keris.’

And that did
not help to explain the place either.

Nor did she
feel she knew all the truth about Meldor’s plans. There was a
suppressed intensity in him now, as if his planning was about to
reach its culmination, its finale. He was as an animal poised to
spring, with muscles gathered, gaze intent; an animal waiting for
just the right moment to surprise an unsuspecting prey. And that
frightened her as much as anything else he’d ever done.

Often, when
they met groups of the excluded, Meldor, Davron and Scow would be
involved in long discussions with them, after which camps would
sometimes be struck and people would disperse purposefully, or
messengers would hurry off in different directions as if there was
no time to be lost. None of the others in the fellowship were ever
given an explanation. ‘They are Havenbethren,’ was all Keris was
told, ‘friends to Havenstar.’ She couldn’t help but feel that
Meldor was stirring the cauldron of his revolution.

~~~~~~~

‘You are
what?’ Portron asked. The chantor stared at Davron across the
campfire in shock as Keris watched.