Havenstar (45 page)

When he
crawled out again, it was to find the camp almost completely
flattened.

Meldor’s tent
was still standing because it had been protected by Portron’s and
Gawen’s, but all the others were either collapsed or sagging. Of
Keris’s tent there was simply no sign.

‘Keris,’
Davron whispered. He ran to where she had been camped. ‘Maker,
Keris—! Damn it, someone get a light.’

There was a
babble of questioning voices, of cursing, of running feet. Gawen’s
hounds were howling. Davron, frantic, knelt in the ruins of Keris’s
tent, flinging things aside, scrabbling in amongst the dark huddle
of bundles on the ground. ‘A light, someone! Maker damn it, will
someone give me a light!’

In the dark
under his hands something stirred and groaned.

Portron strode
forward holding the lantern from his tent. Davron snatched it from
him and held it up to see better. ‘Keris?’

Another groan
and one of the bundles uncurled at his feet. Unbelievably, it was
Keris and she was alive. She said, ‘I—I’m all right. I think.’ She
tried to kneel and staggered, but it was Scow, not Davron, who
jumped forward to support her by an arm around her waist, careful
not to let his skin brush hers.

‘It’s not
possible,’ Davron whispered, scrambling up. ‘The heat— Your tent
burned. Vanished. You ought to be dead.’

She touched a
weak hand to her hair. ‘Almost.’

‘Are you
hurt?’

She considered
the question for a moment. Then said, ‘Singed. I’m all right.’

‘By the
Creator’s holy grace,’ Portron exclaimed, ‘
what
happened
?’

‘You should be
dead,’ Davron reiterated flatly. ‘How is it possible that you
survived?’

‘The—the blast
went upwards. Upwards and outwards. I ducked. Rolled myself into a
ball. Dived down behind my packs. It sucked—all the air out of—me.’
She shuddered. ‘Oh, midden. I think I’ve lost most of my hair.’

Meldor
frowned. ‘I’ll take a look at you if you’re hurt. The rest of you,
get the camp straightened up again, and keep a good watch.’

‘I’m all
right,’ she said, still shaking. ‘I’m not burned,
just…shocked.’

‘I don’t
understand. What happened?’ Corrian asked.

‘It was ley,’
Portron said with certainty. ‘Nothing else produces light like
that.’

‘I think we
can take it that the Minion left something behind,’ Meldor said,
‘presumably with the intention of killing Keris. Scow, back on
duty. Davron, you take Keris to Scow’s tent. She can sleep there
for the moment.’ He paused. ‘Davron?’

Davron took a
deep breath and gathered his wits, aware that Meldor was doing his
job. He made a gesture towards Keris, as if to help her, but she
disengaged herself from Scow and stood erect. ‘I’m all right.’ As
the others moved to obey Meldor, she gave a brief glance around her
belongings to check them out, but nothing seemed to have been
damaged. It was as she had said: the blast had gone upwards.
Surreptitiously Davron ran a hand over the nearest of her packs and
then rubbed his fingers. There was no ash, nothing. The tent had
been completely vaporised.

He picked up
her bedroll. ‘Are you sure you’re not burned anywhere?’ He tried to
sound neutral, but guessed his behaviour had more of the appearance
of a hen fussing over chicks. He waved her towards Scow’s tent.

She turned to
walk beside him. ‘I feel a bit sore on my face, but it’s nothing
much. My hair— What does my hair look like?’

He held the
lamp up, taking the opportunity to study her face. ‘Short. A sort
of uneven frizz. It’ll grow.’ His fear was dampening down, to be
replaced by an irrational anger. He clutched the bedroll tighter,
aware that his hands were shaking. ‘What I want to know is what
happened.’

‘I don’t
know.’

The denial was
all-encompassing, and he didn’t believe it. He stopped and shoved
her bedroll at her. ‘Sit down,’ he growled and started to re-erect
Scow’s tent. ‘I would like to know just what you’ve been up to,’ he
added between blows with a rock to a loosened tent peg. ‘Where did
that ley come from, Kaylen?’

She was
silent.

‘You do know,’
he accused.

‘Yes. It’s
nothing I want to talk about right now.’

‘I’m
responsible for all that happens to this fellowship. I’m
responsible for everyone’s safety. I need to know what
happened.’

She shook her
head. ‘It’s over. Finished. It won’t happen again.’

He hammered
the last of the pegs in with unnecessary savagery. He wanted to
fling his anger at her, force her to tell him everything she was
hiding. And was wise enough to know that if he did, her
stubbornness would increase, not dissipate.

He stood
upright and faced her. ‘I do have your interests at heart,’ he said
quietly.

‘Yes, I think
I believe that now.’ Her voice was outwardly calm, with only the
tiniest of cracks to show that she was not as steady as she was
trying to appear. ‘But Meldor does not, and you’d go straight to
him with whatever I told you.’

He was silent,
aware of the truth of that accusation. ‘You don’t accept my
judgement,’ he said at last.

‘Not in the
matter of Meldor. He cares nothing for others, only for what they
can offer him. Thank you for fixing the tent.’ She picked up her
bedroll and opened the tent flap. ‘Goodnight.’

He accepted
his dismissal.

~~~~~~~

‘She wouldn’t
tell me anything,’ he said to Meldor. ‘She distrusts you too
much.’

The blind man
was sitting on his pack in his tent, sipping water from a mug. ‘Ah.
You didn’t push it.’ A statement, not a question. ‘You’re in love
with her, aren’t you?’

The denial
stuck in his throat. He could not forget the horror of that moment
when he’d seen her tent evaporate, disintegrate so thoroughly that
not even ashes were left. He’d thought her dead and the emotion
inside him when he realised she was unhurt was one he’d not thought
he would ever feel again.

‘She’s a
child,’ he said, and knew the remark to be inane. Meldor did not
even deign to comment on it.

Davron hung
the lantern he had been holding on the central support pole and
unhooked the wine skin instead, to pour himself a drink. ‘What—what
if I am? It’s impossible, and we all know it.’

‘Don’t let it
cloud your judgement.’

‘Now, just
when have I ever allowed love to affect my judgement?’ he asked,
and the sarcasm lay thick in the air between them. He drank the
wine deeply and far too quickly, before he added, ‘If you use her
badly, Meldor, it will be the end between us.’

The blind man
nodded, as if confirming something to himself. ‘Love her if you
will, Davron, but don’t trust her. Don’t mention Havenstar. She’s
far too independent to be trusted. And far too canny.’

Davron did not
bother to reply, but he was aware of the irony. Last time it had
been he who had been warning Meldor against her.

~~~~~~~

Keris woke to
the feel of a hand on her ankle, shaking her foot. She roused,
aware that sunlight was already touching the peak of the
canvas.

‘Maid
Kaylen?’

‘Yes. I’m
awake. Master Gawen?’

‘That’s me.
Scow said you wanted to see me.’

He was leaning
in the tent flap and she gestured him in all the way. ‘It’s
daylight,’ she said, rubbing her eyes. ‘I thought I was supposed to
be on guard duty last night—’

‘The guide
thought you had better rest instead. What did you want to talk to
me about?’

She regarded
him, alert now, the last of sleep gone and all the memories of the
night flooding back. The flame’s touch to the maps, the moment’s
warning she’d had as the parchment crackled. She had flung the maps
upwards in an instinctive reaction, and dived behind her packs as
the whole world exploded around her. The air had been sucked from
her lungs, leaving her curled up and helpless, fighting to draw
breath… She fingered her hair, remembering.

He sat back on
his heels, regarding her speculatively where she sat, still
half-wrapped in her bedroll. ‘I’d like to think this is an
invitation to something more like yon Corrian had in mind, but
somehow I think not. So, lass, what is it you want for me?
Something to courier, doubtless?’

She nodded.
‘Seven letters, to people in different stabs. They are all
mapmakers. For some of them, I don’t know the full address.’ She
reached into her bedroll and drew out the letters to show him.

‘It doesn’t
matter; mapmakers are easy enough to find. You do realise I won’t
be delivering them all myself, though? I’ll pass some on to other
couriers going in the right direction; it’s quicker that way.’

She nodded.
‘Pass them on, by all means. And there’s something I should tell
you, before you accept the letters. They contain knowledge that
Carasma and his Minions would kill for.’

Gawen
shrugged. ‘No reason for them to ever hear about them, is there?
I’m a courier, lass. I shan’t even tell those who carry them where
they came from. Now, let’s get down to essentials. It’ll cost, you
know. Let me see: the Fifth, I’ll charge you as silver for that
one…’

~~~~~~~

‘I don’t know
why you say you’re such a coward,’ Keris remarked to the Chameleon.
‘Seems to me that jumping a Minion in the dark demonstrates a
certain amount of reckless audacity. And as for standing on a pet’s
tail—!’

Their mounts
were walking side by side across a plain of cracked red soil, and
Quirk wore an expression of long-suffering fortitude. His knee was
hurting him and he did not much mind if everyone knew it. ‘Midden,’
he said by way of contradiction. ‘I thought the fellow was some
scrawny bandit. Believe me, it never occurred to me that the
apostate bastard would shoot fire from his cheek-bones like a
spit-lizard shooting its slobber.’ He eased his knee against the
saddle with his hand. ‘The shitty little turd. I may not be able to
see it, but that stuff hurt.’

She nodded.
‘Ley moulded to the wishes of the one who wields it. It’s said they
carry it in all the spaces of the body and can concentrate its exit
through the pores of the skin.’

‘Like Meldor
through his fingers. I don’t know what that blind man did, but it
was miraculous. The pain has only just come back. How can ley be
used to both hurt and heal?’

She didn’t
answer. She was looking off to the side where a vast tower of red
dust swirled upwards. ‘A whirlwind,’ she said, awed. ‘Ley-fire,
look at it!’ Its base was twenty paces across, while the top
disappeared into a red billowing cloud of dust. They’d seen many
whirlwinds since they’d left the Fifth Stability, but this one was
by far the largest. It screamed as it moved, sucking up the soil
and whisking even rocks into its inverted skirt of whirling
power.

‘Disintegrating the land,’ Portron muttered from behind them. ‘The
Unmaker at his unholy work again. There won’t be much left of the
Unstable if he continues to destruct it at this pace, damn his
cursed unsoul.’

‘We are close
to the Deep,’ said Scow, riding up to join them. ‘You can see the
top of the canyon from here.’

The Chameleon
grimaced. ‘The last bridge. I’ll be glad to get this over and done
with.’

Keris tore her
eyes away from the whirlwind, which was already speeding away into
the distance, to see where Scow was pointing. There was a long line
of rocky slopes beyond the Deep. The tumbled blocks and pinnacles
of rock interspersed with ugly patches of slime looked more like
gigantic rotting teeth with bits of half-masticated food caught in
the gaps. The scree below the blocks was then the gums anchoring
the teeth, wet and slimy with fouled rivulets of moisture, sloping
down to the edge of the gullet, the canyon that contained the
Deep.

The canyon was
the widest they’d had to cross yet and the rope and slat bridge
that spanned it had all the fragility of a spider’s anchor thread.
It swayed and undulated, moved by some invisible draught of air
that rose from somewhere below.

‘Oh help,’ the
Chameleon said, pulling at his ear, ‘Keris, I really don’t have a
head for heights.’

She
contemplated the rotting teeth of the landscape ahead with profound
distaste. ‘How much was taken away from us,’ she murmured. ‘Whole
cities and communities once lived here. It’s said that Malinawar
was once the most beautiful of all countries, that its people were
the most blessed. Yedron had too much desert, Bellisthron too much
water and Premantra was too flat—but Malinawar was paradise.’

They came to a
halt at the edge of the canyon and waited while Meldor and Davron
talked to the Unbound attendant. Below, the river of ley coiled its
way between pitted walls of purplish stone, and long lines of ley
mist cavorted above its surface with sensual abandon.

Scow had
managed, as usual, to obtain animal pats for a fire, and was soon
serving up char while the fellowship waited.

‘Must have
been bloody mad,’ Corrian muttered as she sipped her char and gazed
at the swaying bridge. ‘Why the flipping hell didn’t I stay in
Drumlin’s Cess and be damned? By all that’s scabrous, but I miss
even the smell of that place.’

‘The smell?’
Keris asked, blinking. She’d once accompanied Piers on a trip to
Drumlin and had visited the Cess, that tumble of tenements in the
heart of the city. There had been a discrepancy between the
original cadastral maps of the area and the present configuration
of houses, a situation Chantry regarded as grievous more because it
involved change than because the cadastral maps were used to
calculate taxes. They had called in the mapmaker to check out just
what had happened and who was at fault. Her memory of the smells
involved recollections or urine stink and rat-musk, stale pickles
and rising damp, dung fires and spreading mildew. It was not
anything that she could imagine anyone missing.