Havenstar (46 page)

‘Yep, the
smell. Nothing like it. Ever had a whiff of a brothel, lass? Cheap
scent and sex, semen and—’

Out of the
corner of her eye, Keris saw Portron beginning to puff up, but
Corrian was saved from another burst of indignation from the
chantor by Davron.

‘Everything’s
set,’ he said, as he walked up with Meldor and several of the
tainted. ‘I’ll go first as always. You’re next, Chantor. All of
you, leave your pack animals for the attendants, as usual, and wait
for my signal.’

They’d done it
all before, but it had not become any easier with practice. Just to
watch Davron make the crossing pulling his reluctant mount behind
him made Keris feel sick. The bridge jerked and danced like a
living thing, the ropes seemed so frail, the canyon so deep…

Four ropes,
Keris thought. Only four. A handrope on either side and two more
ropes on to which the slats of the flooring were lashed. A pattern
of smaller cords joined handropes to the base. She tried to
convince herself that it was just a path with a fence on either
side, nothing to worry about, but she did not believe it, any more
than the Chameleon did.

They crossed
one by one: Portron after Davron, then Corrian, followed by Quirk
who was interminably slow, and then Scow. Meldor remained behind as
well. He regarded it as his job to spend a few minutes talking to
each animal, calming it before the crossing.

When Scow had
reached the opposite side, Davron gave Keris the signal that it was
her turn. She blindfolded Ygraine, nodded to Meldor, and started
across.

Don’t think
about what’s below.
Difficult, when the slats beneath her feet
were each separated by several inches from the next, and there,
through the gaps, the roiling of the ley was visible in ugly purple
billows. Purple, the colour of the most violent forces of ley.
Stop thinking about it
—

She was about
a third of the way across when something alerted her to trouble
behind. She turned her head, glancing back, aware now that the
Unbound watching the crossing had raised their voices. They were
gazing upwards. She followed the line of their pointing
fingers.

A bird. No,
not a true bird; this was a featherless manta. It had just swooped
low over the bridge, between her and the watchers behind. Its
spotted wings undulated and as it banked around, it passed her
overhead, a bare wingspan away. Two close-set eyes positioned at
the top of the belly stared down and for one brief second they
looked into her own. Intelligence gleamed, and worse—a Wildish
malevolence.

She dragged at
Ygraine’s reins and moved on, more hurriedly this time. The manta
ray was a pet, she was sure of it.

On the next
pass, it flew behind her again; but this time it slashed down with
its tail as it came over the handrope. The tail, a fleshy poker
that trailed out behind it, was edged with sharp bony plates that
seemed to discharge searing heat; the slicing edge of it hewed
through the rope as if it were straw and left smoking ends.

The bridge
bucked under the onslaught. Keris, trying desperately to drag a
balking Ygraine at a run, made a grab for the handrope when the
bridge lurched. She missed the rope completely as it unravelled,
and almost toppled over into the canyon. She fell to her knees,
slid as the bridge twisted yet again, and snatched at the slats
beneath her. Ygraine crashed into her, and then—with a scream of
fear that tore into her heart—the horse slipped, legs flailing,
from the bridge and disappeared into the canyon.

She dragged
herself back to her knees, clutching the remaining handrope with
both hands. Ygraine was gone. The mare that had served Piers Kaylen
for fifteen years. The wave of grief she felt submerged her fear.
Ygraine had been a link to her father, and now she was gone, just
as Piers had gone… And she was kneeling on a half-wrecked bridge
over a canyon, with the Deep beckoning below. She took a deep
breath and looked up.

The ray had
banked and returned; it was now heading back towards the same part
of the bridge. This time it did not have everything its own way.
Scow had his bow out on one side of the bridge, and several of the
tainted were shooting at it from the other. It slewed, dodging, but
came on.

‘Keris!’
Davron was calling to her from the far end of the bridge.
‘Run!’

She picked
herself up, staggering as the bridge writhed, and started towards
him. She screamed, ‘Don’t come!’ and willed herself not to look
behind, not to see what was happening. Willed herself not to notice
that there was nothing bordering her on the right now, no side to
the bridge, no handrope; nothing to stop her from plunging over the
right-hand side should she fall.

And behind her
the ray slashed the second handrope, burning and cutting with a
single slice.

She was on her
knees again, tossed there by the living thing that writhed beneath
her feet, clutching hard at the slats. There was no fence on either
side now—just a path of slats, still swinging violently, stretching
away before her. She stayed on all fours and scrabbled on, sobbing
in terror.

Davron was
shouting encouragement, but in her panic she could not hear the
words. He’d run out on to the bridge, heedless of his own
danger.

The next time
the ray came in closer, so close she felt the downdraft of wind
from its wings. She saw the savage slash of its tail as it plunged
downwards on her right. This time there was no easy target—the two
supporting ropes underneath were sheltered by the slats—yet in
managed to insert its tail into a gap between the boards to saw at
the rope as it dived past. The rope did not snap immediately, but
twanged apart, strand by strand. She heard it. Felt it, as the
bridge shuddered with each breakage.

‘Get back!’
she screamed at Davron. He turned and dived for the end of the
bridge. She clung as best she could to what was left of it. The
whole thing was bucking wildly now, alive, possessed, wanting to be
rid of her…

The rope
parted, the right hand edge of the path tipped down. She heard
herself screaming. There was nothing under her feet. She was
suspended, kicking. Clinging to the one remaining rope, her knees
knocking against the slats that now hung vertically. Below, the
purple ley flowed on.

The ray
shrieked out its triumph and dived in once more.

She clamped
down hard on her panic. She swung her body, used the momentum to
shift herself sideways, sliding her hands one at a time.
Once.
Twice—Maker, how long can I hold on?
She had lost sight of
Davron; she no longer knew what was happening around her. Her whole
being was concentrated on her hands, on holding fast.

She swung and
her feet tangled in what had been the handrope. She struggled, but
only wound herself tighter into a web of hemp.

The ray struck
again.

And again.

It banked for
a third attack on the last rope and caught a knife—Davron’s—in its
eye. It fell tumbling towards the ley, shrieking its pain, but the
damage had been done. The last rope was almost severed all the way
through.

I’m going
to be dashed against the cliff
.
Maybe that’s a better way to
die than to drop into the ley
…

The final
strand parted and she was swinging toward the solid face of the
canyon.

There was a
vicious jolt on the ropes that entrapped her. If she had not been
so tangled she would have lost her hold and fallen free. As it was,
the jerk simply pulled everything tighter around her. A split
second later she slammed into rock.

The breath was
driven from her chest. Her shoulder and thigh took the brunt of the
blow and pain speared into her body. For some moments she could see
nothing, hear nothing, think nothing. Every rational sense was
submerged in pain.

She swung in
her cocoon of rope, wrapped tight and paralysed like a spider’s
hoarded feast, and only slowly did rationality return. She was
alive. She was dangling over space on a single anchor strand, free
of the cliff that was somehow some distance away. She was bruised
from neck to ankle—but she was alive.

Tentatively,
disbelieving, she looked up.

Some distance
above there was an overhang. The bridge had struck that first, and
hooked itself there. Her body—entangled further down the rope—must
have hit the cliff only at the extremity of its swing from the
overhang, thus saving her from the full force of a collision with
the canyon wall.

She looked
down. The ley line was tens of paces below; too far to fall and
survive. Her situation was still dire.

Meat on a
butcher’s hook, she thought. What in the midden do I do now?

Carefully—very
carefully—she began to free her arms and hands from the wrapping of
rope.

‘Keris!’

She choked,
acknowledging only then how much she’d wanted to hear his voice, to
know he was safe.
Davron.
He was on the overhang, lying
flat, poking his head out to look down on her.

‘Keris, are
you hurt?’

‘No,’ she
lied, ignoring the pain of her bruising. ‘Please get me out of
here.’
I’m scared.

‘The rope’s
fraying. Stay very still.’

She froze. She
had already freed one arm; the other she left where it was. Her
body revolved slowly, showing her the cliff face, then the length
of the canyon, then the far side of the gorge wall where the
tainted were lined up, watching…

‘Keris, I
don’t have any rope I can use here, and I can’t haul you up on the
one that’s supporting you. It will break for sure. I’m going to use
my whip—wrap it around your wrist.’ The plaited raw hide snaked
down. It seemed pathetically thin. The tip of it he had tied around
what looked to be his torn-out coat sleeve, giving it more length
and something to grab that was not impregnated with glass. It
dangled in front of her nose. Cautiously she reached out to take
it. Some small stones rattled down and hit her on the head, then
there was a cracking sound she couldn’t identify. Her rope shivered
slightly in sympathy and sent her spinning a little faster.

And another
voice bellowed down the canyon. ‘Davron! That overhang is breaking
away! It can’t take your weight…’ It was Scow’s voice from further
up, and it was raw with panic. ‘Davron—for Creation’s sake—!’

Keris heard
the words with an intense clarity, as if they were outlined in
light.
Davron’s weight. And her weight.

‘Davron!’
Scow’s bull-like roar again. ‘Take my hand!’

‘Wrap it
around your wrist, Keris,’ Davron said without emotion.

She heard the
cracking once more, saw the rock shift beneath him, absorbed the
momentary fear on his face. Felt her ropes vibrate and slip a
little lower.

Scow shouted,
more anguish this time, ‘
Davron—!
’

With a
calmness that seemed to belong to someone else, she drew her knife
from the scabbard at her belt. Still calm, she reached up to the
single line of fraying rope that linked her to the overhang—and cut
it through.

She fell in
silence.

It was
Davron’s ‘
NO!
’ that echoed from canyon wall to canyon wall,
the sound of agony ripped from the soul of a man who had once
thought he had no more capacity to feel pain.

~~~~~~~

Any deep study
of the holy texts will tell a diligent student that the Unmaker,
while he appears to Humankind most frequently in a human-like
guise, is not a Being in any normal sense of the word. He is a god
with no form but what he chooses to take. He is, simply, Chaos,
just as the Maker is Order. What Lord Carasma cares to show us is
illusion…and we should never forget this because it is essential to
our understanding of his nature.

—From the
writings of Kt Edion

‘Davron—there’s
no point.’ Scow looked at the guide and unaccustomed worry lines
furrowed into the large planes of his face. ‘She’s dead. Even if
she survived the fall, she would not have survived the ley. Portron
tells me it’s still roiling, a bruised purple colour. It’s a
killing ley.’

‘Not
necessarily. It’s like that because the Unmaker is down there.’

‘How do you
know?’

‘I know. I
felt him. The moment she fell, I felt him. He planned this.’

‘Then what the
Chaosdamn are you thinking of? He must have wanted her dead very
badly to risk a possible violation of the laws that govern his
place in this world—’

‘She can’t be
dead. I won’t believe it.’ Davron pulled on his fingerless riding
gloves, then bent to check the lacing on his boots.

‘Then will you
at least believe the cliff face you’re intending to descend is
dangerous? That overhang broke off, remember. The whole face is
friable.’

Davron ignored
him.

Scow’s worry
deepened. ‘Ley-fire, but I wish Meldor were here. Dav, we have a
fellowship that’s been split in two, and we’re in the half that has
no pack animals, no food, very little water and no tents. Somewhere
not far away there’s a Minion that’s just lost his manta ray pet
and he’ll be aching for someone’s blood. We need your
guidance.’

Davron stopped
what he was doing and turned to face Scow. He took a deep breath.
‘Sammy, she heard what you said. She heard and she cut the rope.
For me
. Do you understand that? And so now I’m going to do
this for her. And you are perfectly capable of looking after the
fellowship for as long as it takes me to do this.’

‘Dav, if she
hadn’t cut it, you’d both be dead. Damn it all, another breath and
you would have plunged down with the overhang when it went. She
sacrificed her life for you—and now you want to throw your life
away, and it’s hardly going to do any good. She’s
dead
,
Davron.’