Havenstar (41 page)

And so he
spent time talking to Scow, brushing aside the differences between
Trician and farm boy. He delved inside himself to find the wisdom
to help Scow confront what had happened: the tainting, the betrayal
of his love. Along the way he made the closest friend he would ever
have. When Scow finally was able to look down at his reddish mane
and say with mournful humour, ‘But Tilly always said she liked men
with hair on their chests,’ Davron knew he was over the worst.

A day later
they arrived at the Wanderer.

All seemed
quiet. The guide was well pleased with the ley patterns, and Davron
concurred. But the patterns lied. Perhaps the two men missed some
subtle clue that would have told them all was not well, perhaps it
was just that when the Unmaker was present he could, if he wished,
subdue the patterns as he sat in wait…

The main party
was already across when Davron rode into the line as escort for
Alyss, with Mirrin sitting on his saddle bow. Both mounts were
well-trained crossings-horses, so he had seen no need to
dismount.

They were
halfway through when a thick mist of sulphurous yellow surrounded
them. The air was clear where they were, but the artificial way the
vapour swirled around told Davron that it was designed to cut them
off from escape. When he reached out to touch one of its eddies, he
was burned by its acidity, when he breathed one of its tendrils, he
choked.

‘What is it?’
Alyss asked, impatient. ‘Why are we stopping? It’s just a
mist.’

‘Don’t move.
It’s harmful.’

She looked
around, expression dubious. ‘How can a mist be harmful?’

He felt a
moment’s irritation and quelled the feeling as unworthy. ‘This is a
ley line, Alyss. We’d better dismount in case it spooks the
horses.’ His voice was quiet as he tried not to show her the fear
he had for her safety, hers and Mirrin’s. Neither of them were
ley-lit. They could both be tainted.

He helped
Alyss down from her horse and she clung to him, trembling as she
sensed his fear. He held Mirrin in his arms and cursed himself for
ever agreeing to this trip.

That was when
the Unmaker appeared.

He was naked
except for his pendant. His skin glistened with golden sweat and
open sexuality. He was aroused and his arousal threatened them all.
His swarthy penis thrust through the tight curls of his golden
pubic hair, its lividity ugly and menacing.

He feasted his
eyes on Mirrin and Alyss, and laughed.

‘What do you
want of us?’ Davron asked, dry-throated.

‘You,’ Carasma
replied. ‘You, Davron of Storre. You, to become a Minion of Chaos,
mine to command for all eternity.’

Alyss buried
her face in his shoulder, weeping; Mirrin began to cry too, and her
sobs of terror tore into him. He could not help his shudder.
‘Never—’ he whispered. ‘You would unmake my soul.’

‘Of what use
is a soul to him who will not die?’

‘My soul is
not mine to give,’ he said with a courage he did not feel. ‘I
worship the Maker; my soul is His.’

The golden
face tensed, its classic features suddenly seeming to take on hard
shadowed planes, like an anvil. ‘Come to me, or I taint your wife
and child.’

Alyss heard
and moaned, sagged in his clasp. Mirrin, not understanding, began
to scream.

Davron felt
the world crash in on him. There was no direction he could turn, no
route for escape no matter what he did, and he didn’t know what to
do. The alternatives were each so terrible there could be no choice
between them. ‘I cannot,’ he whispered, almost not believing that
this could be happening. ‘I cannot give up my soul; I cannot serve
evil. I cannot.’

Alyss turned
on him, twisting in his arms. ‘Davron, for mercy’s sake, stop
him!’

‘I don’t know
how—’ he stammered.

Her eyes
dilated with a horror so extreme he thought she might cease to
breathe. He had never felt so helpless, never felt such inadequacy.
All he held dear he had in his arms, yet he was unable to protect
them. The muscles in his throat tightened.

‘Let me show
you what I can do,’ Carasma said, and drew an image with a gesture
of this hands. The yellow mist cleared a little; just enough to
show a semblance of Alyss and Mirrin before them… Monsters,
dragging themselves along the ground, monsters with human faces.
Mirrin, innocent and apple-cheeked; Alyss, silver-smiled and
gentle. The rest was obscenity.

Alyss, the
real Alyss, screamed. She beat at him with her fists, begged him to
save her, to do what the Lord asked, why was he frightened of a
little mist, let them ride away out of there, flee, anything,
anything— Mirrin saw her face in the monstrosity before her, heard
her mother’s hysteria, and her own screams redoubled. Davron buried
her face in his shoulder and rocked her.

He stood
speechless, spirit-broken, knowing now all the colours of evil. The
choking horror in his throat clamped his muscles tight, tearing his
voice from him. He did not know it then, but he would never be
smooth-voiced again.

‘If you loved
me you would do anything—’ Alyss shrieked, her hands clutching,
digging in, shaking him. ‘What of Mirrin? You say you love
her!’

And in that
moment he left all his youth behind.

‘Look on them
as they will be, if you refuse,’ the Unmaker purred. ‘Look well,
and ask yourself it you will be able to live with what you have
done.’

‘I will kill
us all,’ Davron said, his voice hoarse and painful, as he strove to
hold his frantic daughter. Alyss screamed at him, but he could not
bring himself to hear what she was saying.

‘Not yet,’
Carasma said. The words were viciously joyful. ‘Not yet. First I
will taint them. Look, Davron of Storre, and see what your
stubbornness has wrought.’

But as he
lifted his hand to point it at Alyss, she drew herself away from
her husband, shuddering. ‘No,’ she said with sudden cold calm. ‘No.
I will not be tainted. I would rather give up my s—’

Davron knew
what she was going to say. To her, anything was better than being
tainted, or was it Mirrin’s fate that concerned her? Perhaps she
was going to offer herself to Carasma so that her daughter could go
free, but Davron was no longer sure if he knew her. There had been
a coldness in her voice he’d never heard before, as if she was a
stranger who despised him.

He drew back
his fist even as she started to say the words that would sell her
soul to the Unmaker. And he hit her, hard. Her head snapped back
and she fell senseless.

Mirrin
struggled out of his arms and ran to her mother. ‘I hate you!’ she
screamed at him. ‘You hit Mummy! You’re not my Daddy never again!’
They were the last words she ever spoken to him, and they were to
echo and re-echo in his memory like shards of hell, the pain of
them never diminishing. Mirrin, with her head buried into her
mother’s clothing, crying herself almost into a stupor, never
looking at him again…

Davron stared
at Carasma, helpless. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ he croaked,
his voice harshly unrecognisable to his own ears. ‘I will not be
your Minion, not ever, no matter what it costs me, or mine. But—let
them go free, without harm now or ever, and I will perform one task
for you. One task, of your choosing and at a time of your
choosing.’ He was gambling, and he knew it. Gambling that Carasma
would give him time, time to suffer, and that in that time he would
find a way out of his dilemma. Or kill himself.

Carasma
hesitated, suspicious. ‘Anything?’

‘As long as it
is to be done within your realm. I will do nothing in any
stability. One task, and I shall be free of any obligation and safe
from you and your servants.’ Bile welled up into his throat and
mouth. Traitor! Betrayer of his class, apostate of his Oath to the
Defenders, traitor to Chantry. The moment he opened his mouth to
bargain with the Unmaker, he lost his honour…

Carasma
considered. ‘What pain is there in that for you? I am beginning not
to like you, Davron of Storre—I prefer you to suffer.’ He sneered
down at Alyss. ‘I wonder what sort of baby will be born to a
tainted monster?’

Davron
swallowed the bile. Deliberately, he allowed his desperation to
drag at his voice. ‘One task, at the time of your choosing. Is that
not punishment enough for any man?’

‘No, not good
enough. You will disappear into a stability and I will never see
you again. You must swear to spend three-quarters of every year
here in the Unstable. And if you do not keep your word, if you kill
yourself, then I shall taint your daughter, or any ley-unlit issue
of yours, any descendant through all time, when they come to do
their pilgrimage. My word on it. Now do you accept my side of the
bargain?’

He paled,
knowing he would be saying goodbye to the life he had led. He
plunged on, unable to think of an alternative. ‘Yes, if I have your
assurance as the Unmaker that after I have performed your task,
I—and mine—will be safe from your harm for all time?’

He smiled.
‘The only harm that will come to you and yours will be what you
will do to yourselves, Master Davron.’ He began to nod in a
self-satisfied way. ‘Yes, I think I begin to like this. It has
possibilities… Do you accept, then?’

It was worse
than Davron had hoped for, but he knew it was all he was going to
get. ‘I accept,’ he said. And the shame he felt at his capitulation
began.

Five years
further on he finally cried for what he had lost that day, cried
because another woman had asked him why he could not see his
children.

~~~~~~~

Keris wanted
to take him into her arms, she wanted to hold him, comfort him,
love him. She wanted to banish his pain, his tears. Instead she
stood helpless, aware that he shrank from being touched.

She
waited.

Finally he
calmed, walked to the stream, washed his face, wiped it dry with
his hands. He lowered himself to the ground with his back to a
tree, his head tilted back to lean on its trunk, his knees bent to
support his forearms. And briefly, he told he what had happened
that day in the ley line, when he had lost his world. ‘She will not
permit me near my daughter,’ he finished, his voice flat, ‘and she
has hidden my son from me.’

She went to
kneel at his side, still not touching him. ‘I don’t
understand.’

A long pause.
And then: ‘Alyss forbade me to see Mirrin ever again, forbade me
ever to see the child she was bearing.’

She searched
for reasons, to excuse the inexcusable. ‘She feared for their
safety—’

‘She knows
Carasma is always bound by the terms of his bargains. No, she
was…ashamed. Ashamed that I knew she’d been willing to sell her
soul to save herself, so she had to blame me, punish me. And she
despises me too. Despises me because I couldn’t protect her as it
was my duty to do, couldn’t protect our children, without selling
myself to Carasma.’

‘You judge her
harshly.’

He said in
sudden anguish, ‘I would have forgiven her anything, understood
anything…except what she did to Mirrin and Staven. She could have
turned me in to Chantry there and then and I would have understood.
Applauded her courage, even. Loved her still more, knowing the
depth of her sacrifice to save the world from what I might do to
it. And I cannot blame her for blaming me! Maker, how could I
condemn her for something I do myself, every day of my life? No, it
was what she did to Mirrin and the boy that I can never forgive.
Never.’

She waited,
understanding at last that he hated his wife.

‘Mirrin, she
was only three. Think about it, Keris. Think about what she saw and
heard that day. Her own face on the shoulders of a monster. The
Unmaker threatening her, and her father powerless to save her. She
saw me strike her mother senseless. And then Alyss forbade me to
see her, forbade me to explain anything, forbade me even to say
goodbye. ‘Come near her again, and I shall tell the world you wear
the Unmaker’s sigil,’ she said. So I left, turned my back on my
daughter and her trauma. I accepted that, I accepted it as the
price I had to pay. As my punishment, if you like.
She will have
her mother,
I thought.
Alyss loves her as much as I do.
Alyss will be her support and her comfort.’

He paused,
still not looking at Keris, and she knew she still hadn’t heard the
thing that had turned his love for Alyss into a cold rage against
her.

‘I left them
there, and rode off with Scow. He offered to come with me. A few
days later I met Meldor for the first time, and we’ve been together
ever since. I have a bargain with him, too. I help him and he kills
me when the time comes.’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘Not much of a
bargain, is it? But I can’t kill myself without endangering the
future of my children, and my children’s children.’

He dropped a
hand to the ground and began to sift soil aimlessly through his
fingers. ‘Alyss went on to Tower-and-Fleurys. But instead of
staying with her parents, she left Mirrin and rode off to the
chanterie in Middlemass. It’s a closed kinesis order that sends
chantoras to the chain, and she told them she wanted to sever her
marriage to me and replace it with one to them, as a
kinesis-chantora. They told her the dissolution of her marriage was
only possible if she sacrificed something of great value. So she
gave them our baby. Our son. When he was born she offered him to
Chantry. He was taken from her, given another name, and sent
elsewhere. She never even put him to the breast. And now he is
untraceable, destined never to know his origins, destined to be a
chantor.’

She drew in a
sharp breath, and turned involuntarily to look at the house on the
other side of the river.

‘The girl was
Mirrin,’ he said, ‘but the boy was her cousin, not my son. I have
never seen him and never will. I will never know where he is, or
even know his given name. I—I call him Staven.’ He raised his face
to look at her, and his gravel-voice broke. ‘Mirrin lost her father
in circumstances that were inexplicable to her. Just when she
needed Alyss most, she was rejected by her as well, with
breathtaking callousness. My son was given over to strangers who
only care to raise chantors for their cause. Mirrin and Staven will
never know one another. For that, for all that, I shall never
forgive Alyss of Tower-and-Fleury.’