Havenstar (43 page)

Scow grinned
at the thought of Corrian relinquishing the chance of a young man’s
passion merely to see a forest. ‘Wood for use in the Unstable
usually comes from the Unstable. It works like this: travellers pay
the bridgemen to use the bridge, bridgemen buy what they need from
traders. The traders, usually excluded themselves, buy in the
border towns or from other Unstable camps. Life’s hard and
unpredictable, but people survive.’

‘How much
trouble do people like this get from Minions?’ Keris asked, looking
over towards the tents.

‘Oh, not that
much. Why would Minions bother? The Wild are another matter, but
then, we tainted can be a bit formidable ourselves.’ He nodded in
satisfaction as the fire caught. ‘Did you notice that huge fellow
with the horns over there?’

Corrian gave
an evil grin. ‘Yep. Tell me, do his nether regions match the size
of his topknot?’

He raised an
amused eyebrow. ‘And of what possible interest would that be to
you?’

‘None of the
personal kind, I suppose,’ Corrian said with a sigh.

‘The worst
problem the tainted have is the Unstable itself,’ Scow continued.
‘It’s unpredictability. The lack of natural laws. You never know
when it’s going to rain, or in fact
what
it is going to
rain. You never know what season it will be tomorrow. You have to
continually move your tents, and yourself. Oh, and that reminds me
of some more bad news. Meldor says the Minions have found us
again.’

Portron moved
uneasily where he squatted by the fire and gave a quick look
around. ‘How does he know?’

‘Oh, he
knows,’ Scow said, deliberately vague. ‘He says there’s a pair on
that cliff up there.’

Keris sighed.
‘I suppose it was inevitable. These canyons have to be crossed, and
all they had to do was watch any of the bridges along the way…’

‘But why would
they bother?’ Portron asked. ‘What’s so special about us?’

She could have
kicked herself. Why in all Creation had she said that? ‘Nothing
that I know of,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I meant that if the Unmaker
wants to keep track of what happens in his domain, he doesn’t have
all that much difficulty in doing so.’

‘I have some
good news as well,’ Scow said, stirring the char. ‘This particular
canyon is the second last one. The last one is tomorrow, and that
one’s not bottomless, just a couple of hundred paces down. The Deep
flows through it.’

‘That’s good
news?’ Quirk asked.

‘And why not?
It means we won’t have to walk through ley. Believe me, a bridge
over it is better than a walk through it.’

‘I’ll drink to
that,’ Corrian agreed, ladling out some char.

And now
what?
Keris thought.
The Minions have found us, therefore so
has the Unmaker…

‘Drink up,’
Scow said, glancing towards the camp of the Unbound bridgemen. ‘It
seems the meeting’s over and we’re on our way again.’

~~~~~~~

As Keris
arrived at the near end of the bridge, Meldor was waiting for her.
He sniffed the air as she came up, as if to identify her, and then
said, ‘I’d like to talk to you tonight. Join me for supper in my
tent.’ No ‘please’, she noted, or any other indication that it was
a request rather than an order, yet he made it sound she’d be doing
him an honour if she agreed.
How does he do that?
she
wondered.
Ley-life, but he’s a clever man.

‘As you wish,’
she said.

He nodded
casually and patted Ygraine, murmuring into the horse’s ear,
calming the animal as it eyed the bridge with its ears back.

‘It’s all very
well for you,’ the Chameleon said sourly to Meldor as he pulled his
reluctant mount forward. ‘You can’t see how far it is down
there.’

‘Being blind
does have some advantages,’ Meldor agreed.

As she edged
over the bridge a few minutes later, leading Ygraine, Keris felt as
though the world was being split through like a broken apple
beneath her feet. No matter how she stared into the fissure below,
she could see no end to it. It plunged down and down—and down—until
there was no seeing any longer. ‘And I’m hanging over this, like a
spider in a web, supported by a few flimsy strands of hemp,’ she
muttered to herself. ‘There’s a Minion up there somewhere spying on
us, I’m in love with a man I can never have, and in my packs I have
something the Unmaker wants desperately to destroy. I must be
insane. I could be safe with Uncle Fergrand in the Second now.’ She
shook her head sadly. ‘Keris Kaylen, your brains are tainted.’

~~~~~~~

‘Another
drink?’ Scow asked and showed Keris the wine skin. ‘We stocked up
again in the Fifth.’

‘Thanks, but I
haven’t quite finished this one yet.’ She settled back more
comfortably on the floor of Meldor’s tent, propped up against his
saddle. Piers’ blackwood staff was on the ground beside her. She
had taken to carrying it when she was walking around the camp
because she liked to think it gave her some of Piers’ confidence.
She was not, however, confident enough to tempt fate by refilling
her mug of wine. ‘I think one cup of that stuff is enough,’ she
said, ‘if I’m also to absorb whatever it is you want to talk to me
about.’ She looked to where Meldor was lying back against the fenet
wool of his bedroll. ‘I enjoyed the meal, Master Meldor, and I
thank you for the invitation. Now perhaps you should tell me what
it is all about.’

Meldor nodded
to Scow, who then hung up the wineskin on the tent pole and slipped
outside.
Guard duty,
she thought.
To make sure no one
hears what is said?
They had a stranger in the camp that night;
a courier named Gawen who had just arrived from the opposite
direction and had asked if he could share their company for the
night. Even couriers, it seemed, could feel the need for human
companionship once in a while. Davron had made him strip to the
waist first, but once they were sure that he wore no Unmaker’s
sigil he’d been made welcome.

Scow’s absence
from the tent only served to make Keris more aware of Davron’s
presence. The master guide sat on the groundsheet, bent knees
supporting his forearms in front of him. He was not looking at her,
any more than she looked at him, but it did not do any good. He
filled Keris’s thoughts like too much festival pudding filling the
stomach. Disgruntled and restless, she thought,
The wretched man
exudes enough sensuality, just by being. I’d be aware of him even
if I never glanced his way
.

‘We thought it
might be a good idea if you knew a little more about ley lines. Or
rather about what we think of them,’ Meldor said without preamble.
‘It may help you to find a solution to the problem of creating a
trompleri map.’

She nodded.
‘I’ve heard it said that the unmaking of the world causes cracks.
Ley, the evil of disorder, then enters through the cracks from the
Chaos of the unmade parts of the Universe.’

‘Yes, and I’ve
heard them described as the Unmaker’s claw marks,’ Davron said
dryly. ‘There are any number of theories.’

‘And you’re
about to hear another,’ Meldor added, ‘which we happen to like
better. Keris, understand this first: as a chantor, I spent more
time studying the Holy Books than any man alive. I believe that the
Maker told us in those writings what had happened to us, and how to
correct it. Unfortunately, we did not always listen. His words,
given to certain knights and prophets, were mixed up with those of
much less holy men, many of them bigots or idiots, or both. The
problem has been to try to sort out which are the true words of the
Maker, which the words of power hungry men from Chantry, and which
the words of sincere men who didn’t talk with the authority of the
Maker.’

‘And you think
you’ve managed to do it.’

He smiled
faintly at the dry scepticism of her tone. ‘Ley lines are not some
sort of fault lines,’ he continued. ‘A true reading of the Holy
Books tells us that they were lines of power, not evil. The
beginnings of the unmaking of the world made cracks, true enough,
but these cracks released power from the fabric of the world, not
evil from Chaos beyond.’

‘That’s a
convenient way of excusing your use of ley, I suppose,’ she
said.

Meldor was
unruffled. ‘Look at it this way, Keris. Think of a wood fire. Where
does the heat come from?’

She blinked.
She’d never thought about it, but it was an interesting question.
Where
did
it come from? ‘From the wood, somehow. By the
burning?’ she suggested tentatively. Obvious answers which really
did not explain anything.

He pointed to
her blackwood staff. ‘So there is heat trapped in here, which
doesn’t feel hot while it is trapped, and which is released as heat
if the wood is burnt. Let’s not call it heat, but power. A power
that can cook food, warm our bodies—or be used for destructive
purposes. Similarly, I believe there is power sealed up in the
world, which is only released if the fabric of creation is torn, as
the Unmaker has torn it here in the Unstable. And that power can be
used for good purposes or for evil, just as the power in wood
can.’

‘Power. Not
evil.’

That’s right,’
Meldor agreed. ‘Power. Magic, if you like to use that word; I
don’t. It is too imprecise and implies things like spells and
incantations, which I believe are so much nonsense. Magic is just a
form of power, like the heat trapped in the wood. A fire is not
evil although it can burn your house down. Similarly magic—or
power—is neither good nor evil.’

‘You really
believe a ley line is not evil?’ She was incredulous.

‘It isn’t. Not
innately.’

‘Tell that to
Quirk,’ she said, but she felt the stirrings of interest.

‘Or me?’
Davron asked softly. ‘But I have come to think Meldor is right.
Just as a careless child is burned by fire, a ley line can taint
the ley-unlit. In other words, where the Unmaker is not involved,
tainting is more of an accident. The ley-unlit should not be asked
to cross ley lines, anymore than a child should be asked to plunge
his arm into the flames of a kitchen fire. Chantry is as much to
blame for the horrors of crossing ley lines as is the Unmaker,
simply because it’s Chantry that asks pilgrims to do it.’

Meldor
continued, ‘Moreover, Carasma directs the escaping power, using it
for evil purposes. He can rearrange the fabric of a man into a
monstrosity, create an earthquake or halt the ageing process in his
Minions. He uses it to enforce his dominance. He uses it to further
Chaos by promoting the unnatural.’

‘And you? How
do you use it?’

‘We have
learned how to absorb a certain amount of ley, just as Minions do.
It’s easy enough for anyone who is ley-lit. Then it can be used as
a weapon—to hit, to cut, to burn, to kill—simply by directing it to
do so, as the Minions can. We have had certain success with more
pleasant uses, as well. I use it to enhance my senses, to “see”
things without vision, as you have guessed. We’ve had some success
with speeding up the healing process in cases of injury. There are
probably other uses we’ve not yet discovered. A close reading of
the Holy Books, I might add, indicates that the Maker himself
advocates its use, and that in the past it was indeed used by
knights and other chantors. We can teach you to use it, if you
wish.’

‘You think if
I have ley in me, it may help me draw a trompleri map.’

‘I do.’

‘There’s a
catch,’ Davron drawled, ignoring a warning glance from Meldor. ‘Ley
is addictive. Once you have started to absorb it, you can’t ever do
without it. It is my opinion that you would eventually die if you
did not have it.’

She stared at
him, unravelling the implications of that.

Davron. It
meant he could never live away from the Unstable for too long at a
time. He had condemned himself to being an Unstabler forever. And
if they won the battle against the Unmaker, if ever the world was
restored, he—and Meldor—would die…

She felt tears
at the back of her eyes. For both men, even victory spelt doom.

With sudden
revulsion, she said, ‘I’ll never mess with ley.’

Meldor said,
‘Deverli imbibed lay. It could be important.’

‘You think
that enabled him to draw trompleri maps?’

‘Possibly.
We—I—feel it’s worth a try.’

You
bastard,
she thought.
You don’t care about us, about the
people you use; you only care about the end result
…

‘Trompleri
could be more important than we thought, Keris,’ he continued,
imperturbable. ‘What are these fixed features that suddenly
appeared down south? That is the area Deverli was mapping.’

‘You think
just mapping a place with trompleri techniques could make it
stable?’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘No.’ She knew that wasn’t
so. The map she had in her possession showed a ley line and all the
changes of an Unstable world.

‘Well, it’s a
possibility. However, up until we heard about these new fixed
features, we were actually more interested in how ley can be used
to mend the Unstable.’

In spite of
herself, Keris felt a surge of excitement; the immensity of the
concept his words suggested staggered her.

‘In fact,’
Meldor was saying, ‘we believe that ley must be used if the world
is to be mended. It’s ley that has held our world together, that
still holds together the stabilities. It is the binding force of
Creation. Once it leaks out, Chaos results.’

‘Sweet
Creation, how Chantry would hate to hear that!’ She began to smile,
then drank the last of the wine and decided it was the most
wonderful thing she’d ever tasted. ‘I hope you are careful about
just who you tell. About using ley, I mean. There’s an awful lot of
ley-lit fools out there who’d love to have the power of Minions
without having to give up their soul and bond themselves to lord
Carasma to get it.’