Havenstar (11 page)

—The Rending
II:6: 1-7

As luck would
have it, Keris fell in with a chantor within minutes of leaving
Kibbleberry. She was annoyed, having expected to ride to the border
alone. Sheyli Kaylen lived still, but her daughter wanted solitude
to grieve. She wanted time to come to terms with her guilt at
leaving, yet she was denied the opportunity.

The chantor, a
vision of red face and coloured silks, was resting while fanning
himself beside the road not far outside the village. He jumped up
as she rode past, waving his jewelled fly switch in her direction,
an action that sent his bells chiming and his silks flapping in the
sunshine. ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘Wait, for me!’

Obedient, this
time at least, to the upbringing that had taught her to heed those
who represented Chantry, she pulled up. She even maintained a bland
expression to reflect nothing of her irritation. He climbed on to
his palfrey, grasped the leading rope of his pack-ass and joined
her out on the road.

‘Ah, lass,’ he
said in the lilting accent of the Eighth Stability, ‘Right glad of
company, it is I am. I was escorting several chantoras to Kte
Marlede’s, fine pious women off to a retreat at the chanterie
there, but I’ve met no one going my way since, and Portron Bittle,
rule-chantor of the Order of Kt Ladma—that’s me—is not a man to be
relishing a solitary life, surely.’

‘Then you
shouldn’t have chosen to be encoloured, Chantor.’ The words slipped
out before she could reflect on their wisdom. Of all people, a
chantor dedicated to the explanation and the enforcing of the Rule.
Hardly the sort of man she wanted to have as a travelling
companion. In her annoyance, she was wickedly amused to find
herself looking down on him. He was short and his palfry was
dwarfed by her crossings-horse.

He paused in
his flood of words and gave her a measured look, evidently unsure
if she had intended the comment as a sly poke at his chantist
celibacy, as indeed she had. His glance roved on to her bundles
loaded on her pack-horse’s back, topped with Piers’ blackwood staff
and her bowstave, then to the single throwing knife she wore at her
waist and the quiver slung on her back. Lastly he eyed her trousers
and boots, her shirt and leather jerkin, the Rule-banned clothes
she’d worn on surveying trips with Piers in the countryside.

‘You’ll be off
on your pilgrimage,’ he said unnecessarily and straightened the
cuffs on his bright red and mauve gown. She nodded. ‘You should be
wearing your skirts, lass. I know even a chantor puts aside his
robes to make a crossing because they may hamper movement at
crucial moments, and the colour is not conducive to, er, camouflage
either, but you’re not in the Unstable yet. This is still the First
Stability and you should be wearing your skirts. When we stop for a
rest, you must be changing.’

She lied.
‘Into what? I brought no skirts with me.’

She thought
he’d be shocked, but he seemed more interested than surprised.
‘None? Well then, there’s nothing much we can be doing about it, is
there? I can hardly be lending you mine. Tell me, child, how is it
you are unaccompanied?’

‘My father and
mother are…are dead and my brother has already made his
pilgrimage.’

He shook his
head sorrowfully. ‘You should not be travelling alone. The Rule is
quite clear: women should seek company for protection, lest they be
a temptation to the unruly.’

It was the
last straw. ‘Then let the unruly conquer their lusts. The sin
should be theirs, not mine. I’m willing to take the risk.’

He looked
shocked. ‘Lass, you don’t have the right of it. Should you find
trouble on your way, then Order is threatened, and with it, all
humankind. Everybody should do their utmost to prevent disorder.
For you to be taking a risk is selfish because more than just your
own safety is threatened.’

She knew he
was right, but it was still hard to accept. She took a deep breath
and flexed fingers that had been holding reins too tightly. ‘Never
mind, Chantor,’ she said striving for lightness, ‘now I have met
you and you can protect my virtue between here and Hopen Grat.’
She’d never before dared to make fun, even obliquely, of a
stranger, let alone one who was a chantor, and she felt a moment’s
amazement at her temerity.
I feel like someone else,
not
Keris Kaylen, the mapmaker’s meek daughter. I feel like…like a dog
that’s been let off the leash for the first time, ready to play, or
fight. Free.
She sat a little straighter in the saddle and felt
good about herself.
Darn you, Thirl Kaylen. I’ve got my dowry
money and I’ve taken Father’s—your—crossings-horses and your
bowstave and your sleeping sack and your theodolite and your
mapmaking tools and your master charts, and I don’t give a
damn.
She’d decided that if she was going to be hunted down as
a thief, there was no point in being a modest one.

‘Which
crossing are you making, lass?’ the chantor was asking. He’d said
several other things as well, but she had not been listening. ‘To
the closest stab, I suppose? The Second?’

‘Yes. What
about you, Chantor?’

‘Oh, I’m not
off on a pilgrimage. The Father-chantor of the Order of Kt Ladma
has ordered me back for a spiritual retreat, that’s all.’ He
stirred uneasily in his saddle as if there was something that
bothered him about that. ‘But you wouldn’t be knowing where that
chantery is, would you, lass? It’s in the Eighth Stab. I have to be
trekking the Unstable from north to south in the months to come and
it’s a rough ride, I can tell you. Hard on one’s rear.’

He shook his
head sorrowfully and she almost laughed. He was perhaps fifty years
old, and had round red cheeks, a rotund belly and large feet, none
of which seemed to fit in well with his small frame. He had a bald
patch in the middle of a white frizz of hair, but his face was
unlined and glowed with amiable goodwill. Which she found odd,
seeing that most rule-chantors were hard men, ruthless in enforcing
Order. ‘I hate the Unstable,’ he said suddenly. ‘Ever made a
crossing, lass?’

She shook her
head.

He nodded
reminiscently, his white hair flying about his ears. ‘I hate it.
It’s an evil place that subverts the innocent and damages the pure.
When I was a lad of your age—I was a butcher’s second son, you
know—I was setting off on my pilgrimage too. That was when I
decided I wanted to be encoloured, when I came to see the chantist
way was for me. I was looking about me, and seeing all that evil…
Nay,
feeling
it deep in my bones contaminating me. And I
knew that I had to be a chantor to fight its spread. Kinesis is the
surest way to hold the Unstable at bay. Kinesis and the
establishment of Order and obedience to the Rule. Up until then, I
hadn’t been believing, not really, you know. I was young and
scornful of Chantry and the rigidity of the Rule. But out there,’
he waved a hand in the direction they were taking, ‘out there, you
feel Chaos. You feel it corroding the earth beneath your feet. You
feel it unmaking what has been created, you feel it twisting the
laws of life and growth. You feel the hand of the Unmaker trailing
his fingers across your soul, wanting to make it his own. And then
you know that the only bulwark against Chaos is Order, and where
better to help in Order’s maintenance than within Chantry?’

She looked at
him curiously. ‘You’re ley-lit, then?’

He nodded
again. ‘Aye, for my sins, it’s a hard thing to be ley-lit in the
Unstable, lass. You feel more.’ He sighed.

‘Do you go
through the other stabilities to get to the Eighth?’ she asked. ‘Or
do you go direct?’

‘The usual
route is due south to the Fifth. Stock up there, and then on to the
Eighth, straight as a mule to water. Of course, it’ll be depending
on the guide one has, surely.’

‘You’ll go
through Pickle’s Halt, then.’

‘Pickle’s
Halt? I don’t know it. But it’s a dozen years since Porton Bittle
was leaving the First and the halts come and go like the seasons.
It’s a dangerous job to be a haltkeeper. May the Maker bless ’em. I
remember once—’ He started to reminisce, telling a story that, as
far as she could tell, had nothing whatsoever to do with halts or
haltkeepers. She stopped listening and occupied herself with her
own thoughts instead.

She was
tempted to go to Pickle’s Halt. The trouble was that it was not on
the way to the Second Stability, and it was doubtful that anyone
ever went from the Halt to the Second. If she visited the Halt, she
would then have to return to the First Stability in order to reach
the Second, a dangerous manoeuvre if Thirl was after her, and one
which would cost money in guides. Yet she did so ache to talk to
Pickle. She wanted to know where the map had come from. She wanted
to know who’d murdered her father. And she wanted to know how he
had been killed. Piers Kaylen, who was as wily as an old rat in a
farmer’s barn? He could not have been an easy man to murder.

‘—and so there
I was,’ Chantor Portron was saying, ‘covered in feathers from my
pate to my toes, naked as a babe, with a beautiful lass in my arms
and the hedrin-chantor coming in the door.’

She blinked,
startled, and wondered what she had missed.

‘And you,
lass, haven’t heard a word I’ve been saying.’ He sighed. ‘Few
people listen to me after a while. I talk too much.’

‘And what if
you do?’ she asked, amused, suspecting now that he had just tagged
on that startling punch line to wake her out of her reverie. ‘You
like talking.’

He laughed.
‘Aye, that I do. But a chantor should be listening more than he
prattles. Here I am, telling you all about myself, and I don’t know
a cat’s whisker about you. What’s your name, lass?’

‘Keris.
Keris—Kereven.’ She had not thought to lie until her name had
already been trembling on her lips; then she’d had a blinding flash
of memory of herself, kneeling on the floor with the tatters of her
father’s blood-spattered clothing in her hands and the thought was
in her head that if someone had murdered Piers Kaylen, perhaps
Kaylen was not a good name to own, not in the Unstable. And if
Thirl was chasing her, it might not be a good name to have in the
First, either.

With a
momentary sense of wry bafflement, she considered herself. Where
was the girl she had been, the obedient daughter? Since she’d
learned of her father’s death she’d done a dozen things that ought
to have shamed her deeply. She’d hidden something that was not hers
to hide, then hidden and fed a convicted thief. She’d stolen from
her brother, run away from home, left her dying mother, and now
she’d lied about her name. And she felt amazingly light-hearted
about all if it. Except leaving Sheyli. That did shame her, but she
pushed the feeling deep and let the other emotions dominate: joy in
her new-found freedom, excitement at the thought of what lay ahead,
contentment with the idea she was controlling her own life.

A dog let off
the leash? No: rather a butterfly shedding its chrysalis only to
find it had wings…

As they rode
on she was smiling to herself.

~~~~~~~

At her side
the chantor noted the smile and envied the boundless confidence of
the young. He at least was old enough to know that it was not so
easy.
Maylie
, he thought.
Maker, how she looks like
Maylie
. And he felt a pain he had not felt for years.

~~~~~~~~

They arrived
at the border towards sunset. The cluster of shops and tents at the
end of the road had once been known as Hope and Gratitude. The hope
was for those leaving on their crossing; the gratitude was that of
those arriving from the Unstable, grateful their crossing was over.
The name had long since been contracted down to Hopen Grat.

There was
nothing permanent about Hopen Grat’s appearance. No one lived there
long; it was too close to the Unstable. As a consequence, a sense
of uneasy transience pervaded the ramshackle constructions lining
the rutted tracks. The shopkeepers operated out of shanties or
tents, made quick money by selling goods at high prices, then moved
back into the interior of the stability with relief. Chantry
transferred chantors in and out of the town in quick succession,
both kinesis-chantors to maintain the chain, and devotion chantors
to serve the needs of pilgrims. There were no Defenders posted
here, perhaps because no Trician would have stayed, so there was no
one to enforce the Rule. In fact, Order hardly existed. In Hopen
Grat a moment’s lack of watchfulness could mean being robbed
penniless, raped or murdered.

And yet there
was some commerce, some normality. You could buy the supplies you’d
forgotten to bring, or replenish those you’d used up. You could
have your mount shod, or have his wounds sewn up. You could hire a
guide, or send a letter via a courier. You could ask for
information about relatives or friends who had ridden out and never
returned. You could have a bath in the bath house if you were dirty
enough, visit the doctor if your need was urgent enough, or
purchase a horse if you had money enough. You could also buy the
services of an over-used whore, perform your kineses at the shrine,
seek absolution from a chantor, buy a good luck charm, or pay for a
ward against being tainted.

But some
things you could not do. You couldn’t find a thatcher or a mason or
a tailor—nothing that hinted at permanence or luxury was for sale
in Hopen Grat—and you’d never find the scum who’d robbed you, raped
one of your party or murdered your friend.

The main
street was a diseased gut. It smelled, seethed, belched, grumbled.
It twisted and turned, narrowed and swelled. It groaned with people
and animals, shuddered with noise, heaved with activity. The
buildings, if they could be called such, squatted along it like
growths and exuded garbage like running sores. Hopen Grat resembled
no other place in the First; it had its siblings elsewhere, on the
edge of the other stabilities. Border settlements were all
alike—contaminated towns, polluted by their proximity to the
Unstable, muddied by the touch of Chaos, tainted by the gaze of the
Unmaker.