Havenstar (42 page)

He looked at
her with helpless eyes, and she dropped her gaze. In her heart she
cried for him, and knew that had she stood in Alyss’s shoes his
children would have been the most precious beings alive. How could
she have done that to her own flesh and blood? To
his
children?

‘I don’t know
why,’ he said, as if she had spoken aloud. ‘I suppose she feels
that offering her son to Chantry will help to expiate her sin.
Perhaps she would also have offered Mirrin, if her parents had
allowed it. I don’t know why she did the things she did. I don’t
know what stops her from telling Chantry about me anyway. Perhaps
she’s afraid I would then tell the world exactly what she was
prepared to do.’ He shrugged. ‘If so, then she knows me little. I
have told no one that. Not Meldor, not Scow, no one—until now. And
I’m not sure why I’m telling you. Perhaps—’ His voice caught as he
looked at her. ‘Perhaps it has become important to me that you say
you understand why I did what I did, if you can.’

She did not
hesitate. ‘Yes.’

The immediacy
of her reply took him by surprise and he stared, then laughed. ‘Oh,
Keris, dear, is there anyone as—as wonderfully forthright as you
are?’

‘I didn’t need
to think. Most women would have honoured a man who did what you did
for her and for your daughter.’
I
would have.

‘Oh Keris—’
She wasn’t sure what she had done, but she heard some of the burden
was gone from his voice, and was glad.

He stood,
giving one last reluctant glance at the domain house. ‘Let’s go.
Was Letering out when you called? Were you wanting to ask him about
trompleri maps?’ She accepted his need to talk about something
else, a neutral topic. ‘Yes. And not just that. He has an ingenious
way of showing the land height with lines and numbers. I think he
must use some form of vertical triangulation, using a theodolite. I
have long thought it possible—’

She chattered
on, trying not to think how much she would’ve liked to kill Alyss
of Tower-and-Fleury for what she had done to this man at her side.
She knew now who had put the polish on the obsidian blackness of
his eyes.

~~~~~~~

She went to
him that night.

She didn’t
know or care why he had been assigned a single room; she was just
glad it was that way. She waited until the last service of the day,
the Abasement, was finished and the last of the drifting
moonflower-wine perfume had dissipated. When the Chantery was
finally still and quiet, she crept along the stone-flagged
corridors to his room.

He opened to
her knock immediately, as if he’d been wide-awake and waiting.
There was even a candle burning by his bed. He gestured for her to
enter, but he remained remote, standing away from her. ‘Is there
something wrong?’ he asked.

She shook her
head dumbly.

He understood
then. His face changed, darkening as he flushed. ‘Oh no, Keris. No.
I thought you understood! I thought you knew it’s not
possible.’

‘I thought— I
thought— I know your wife was beautiful, and I’m plain, and I have
no experience…’

He groaned,
and she stumbled into embarrassed silence. ‘You don’t understand,’
he whispered. ‘Sweet Creation, you don’t understand.
It’s not
possible
.’

She rushed on.
‘I’m not asking for anything permanent. I know you’re a Trician,
and I’m just a mapmaker’s daughter, but I thought— You did want me,
I know you did!’

‘Keris, Keris.
Hush. Of
course
I wanted you. Want you. I’ve wanted a lot of
women in the five years since I was bonded to the Unmaker. I’ve
never taken one of them, and I never will. I am cut off from the
tainted, and from the normal, and from the ley-lit. Carasma’s
little joke on me, you see, because I didn’t specify it in our
bargain. I can never lie with anyone as long as I wear this.’ He
touched the sigil on his arm. ‘Except a Minion, I suppose. And that
I will never do.’

She looked at
him, uncomprehending, not wanting to understand.

Gently, so
very gently, he took up her hand and, eyes never leaving her face,
he allowed his lips to brush the back of her fingers. She felt the
first jolt when he touched her hand, but that was just the
beginning. His lips were burning incandescence. The pain screamed
through her, searing, pulsing deep, molten metal being poured into
her veins. It lasted only for the sliver of time he held her, for
the briefest breath of his kiss to her fingers, but it had her
sinking to the floor, dragging in deep breaths at the memory of the
agony.

Gradually the
beating of her heart calmed. She looked down at her hand: it was
unmarked. She stumbled to her feet and stood before him. Her eyes
filled with tears. When he reached out again she refused to flinch,
but all he did was stroke her hair. Tenderly he twisted a strand
around his finger, touching the only part of her that would not
feel the wounding fire of his touch.

She turned
away then, blindly groping for the door. She barely heard his
whispered words as the door closed behind her, but they echoed on
in her head as she ran crying along the corridor until she did not
know whether they had been her words, or his.

‘I’m so sorry.
Forgive me. Forgive me.’

~~~~~~~

She has magic
in her colours, despair in her heart and gives beauty she does not
have. She will vanquish the Lord or die in the ley because of him.
In her hands is both salvation and death.

Predictions
XII: 2: 23

Ley-life but
I feel old,
Keris thought.
How long ago was it that I left
Kibbleberry? Four weeks? No, it must be more like six. Yet I feel
I’ve aged ten years… I was a child, and now I’ve grown up.

She looked
across at Davron, where he rode to the side and slightly ahead of
her. His clothing was, like hers, stained with dust and sweat. His
seat on his crossings-horse was relaxed, yet there was something
about the way he held his head that told her he was alert and
watchful.
I am beginning to read him so well. Is this what it is
like to be in love—to look at someone and know how they
feel?

They were
riding through a land that seemed utterly without redemption. Dry,
harsh red in colour, slashed through with bottomless fissures and
crazed with cracks, land so desolate it was easy to think of it as
being already partially unmade. What had Portron said? I keep on
thinking I’ll come across a hole in the world… A place where there
is nothingness… Well, there were holes enough in this landscape to
make him think his worst nightmare was coming true.

The chantor
was riding beside her, his shoulders slumping a little with
fatigue. He had lost weight in the weeks since they’d left the
First; his paunch had slimmed to a more flabby, less noticeable
roundness. She wondered idly why it was that he was so protective
of her. There did not seem to be any reason she could see. She’d
never given him any encouragement to think she might be amenable to
Chantry interference in her life, and she didn’t think he was
guilty of falling in love with someone thirty years younger than he
was.

Her eyes
strayed back to Davron. Solid, sorrow-laden, troubled Davron.
I
must have been mad. Whatever made me think that he felt anything
for me? It was just the reaction of a virile man who hasn’t had a
woman for five years… It wasn’t me he wanted, it was just relief. I
wish knowing that made a difference—but it doesn’t. Before, I just
wanted him; now I love him, and it hurts…

Ley-life, how
I love him…

Creation, his
courage. The only way he could find freedom would be to change the
whole world, and that’s what he was trying to do, knowing all the
while he’d probably lose. And yet refusing to surrender.

Helpless to
aid him, she considered the way he wrapped himself around with his
protective shell, the way he kept himself under tight control all
the time, waiting, endlessly waiting, knowing that his life could
end in his madness as he attacked all he cared to maintain and
protect. His life could end with a dishonourable act of horror,
anathema to a man who placed great store by his honour. The courage
he must possess just to go on living was heart-rending.

‘Chaos
dammit!’

Disgust
riddled Chameleon’s voice, coming from behind her. She turned and,
as always, found herself disoriented by her first impression. He
blended into the landscape so perfectly his horse appeared to be
riderless. ‘Another of those damn fish-net bridges,’ he said.
‘Keris, will you hold my hand this time?’

‘Are you
mind-tainted? I’ll be too busy holding on to the ropes.’

That wasn’t
quite true; usually she had both hands fully occupied with dragging
a reluctant, blindfolded horse across a rope-and-board bridge that
was about as stable as a tattered pennant flapping in the breeze.
Luckily there were always tainted Unbound bridge guardians to help,
but even so it was an ordeal. Ahead Davron and Meldor were already
dismounting to talk to those at this bridge, probably the same
individuals who’d originally built it. Bridges never lasted long.
The landscape changed around them too much and too often.

‘There seem to
be so many more people in the Unstable here than there were north
of the Wide, don’t there?’ Quirk remarked as they drew up. ‘We keep
bumping into the tainted all over the place.’

‘Others beside
the Unbound, too,’ she agreed, dismounting.

‘Yeah. Those
renegades yesterday, for example. None of you ley-lit ever did
explain to my satisfaction just what happened to the clothing of
that couple of spike-headed bastards who were leading them.’ A
group of excluded thieves, led by two stubble-tonsured thugs, had
tried to rob the fellowship, only to think better of it when Meldor
had released a bolt of colour from his fingertips that had set
their leaders’ clothes smouldering. Neither the Chameleon nor
Corrian had seen the ley, but they’d seen the effects of it.

Keris grinned.
‘Meldor took a dislike to their fashion-sense and performed a
little sleight of hand, that’s all.’

Quirk wanted
to question her further but was interrupted by Portron, who was
dismounting beside him. ‘Davron’s negotiating with this lot on a
price for use of that cat’s cradle, I suppose,’ the chantor said,
eyeing the bridge ahead with considerable misgivings. He wiped the
sweat from his face with his sleeve. ‘Creation, what I wouldn’t
give for a bath!’

To Keris the
discussion between the guide and the tainted bridgemen did not look
like a bargaining session over the toll. As far as she could tell,
the Unbound greeted Meldor and Davron as old friends. In fact,
after a few minutes, the two men were invited into one of the tents
in the camp erected some distance away.

She’d noticed
before that Meldor appeared to be well acquainted with many of the
tainted they’d met since they’d left the Fifth Stab behind. Some of
them had even seemed to treat him as if he was still a knight.
Women ran alongside his horse, just to touch his foot, men reached
for his hand or knelt at his feet. As for paying to cross any of
the numerous bridges they’d been forced to use, as far as she could
tell no money had ever changed hands. On the contrary, once she’d
even seen what appeared to be a bag of coins pass the other way,
from the Unbound into Davron’s hands. Although she supposed she
could have been mistaken about its contents.

Still…

She glanced
towards the tents, but there was no sign yet of Meldor and Davron
emerging. Scow was talking to some of the others there, and after a
while he took something from one of them and headed back to where
she and the rest of the fellowship were waiting.

‘Probably
wining and dining him,’ Portron said, referring to the Unbound and
Meldor. He sounded sour. He was even less enamoured of the blind
man since his further usage of ley against the bandits.

‘Very likely,’
Keris agreed.
He’s being entertained as if he is among his own
people
… Her own thought startled her. His own people? These
Unbound, once pilgrims, now wanderers forced to roam the Unstable,
seeking a way of making a living, seeking a place where they could
be safe for a while? These scattered groups of refugees they’d
encountered—the outcasts of the stabilities: the thieves, the
deformed, the blind, all those excluded from stability by the Rule?
Yes, perhaps they were his people. He too was an outcast, rejected
by Chantry. Not that you’d ever know it now. Meldor did not act
like anyone who’d been rejected, in fact, he seemed to have grown
in stature since they’d left the Fifth. He’d become more regal,
more confident, as if he was shrugging off a disguise he’d been
wearing and was now assuming a different mantle, that of leader. A
respected leader.

‘May as well
dismount,’ Scow said to the Chameleon, coming up with a handful of
dried animal turds the Unbound had given him for fuel. ‘I’ll make a
fire and we’ll have some char while we are waiting.’

Quirk slipped
from his horse, stretched and rubbed a sore back. ‘I won’t complain
about that. Anything to delay looking down through something that’s
more holes than wood and rope, and knowing that there’s nothing
under me for as far as the eye can see, and probably a whole lot
further.’

‘Where do they
get the makings of a bridge from anyway?’ Corrian asked. She was
already digging about in her packs for nosebags for her animals and
some weed for her pipe. ‘We haven’t seen a tree since we left the
Fifth. Never thought I’d miss a tree, but I’d give up a night with
someone young and warm in my bed just to see a decent greenwood
down the path aways.’