‘Tell me about
him, about Kereven Deverli. What sort of things did he do? Where
did he go?’
‘Well, he was
always messing about in ley lines. There was such a big argument
about it, because we aren’t supposed to go into ley lines anymore,
you know. That’s what the bridges are for.’
‘Why did he
keep some of the colours under the counter, separate from the
others on the shelf?’
‘He said they
were his special ones. We weren’t ever to touch them. He mixed them
himself. I never even saw him use them. But then, he often used to
lock the door. It’s a secretive business, making maps, you
know.’
‘So they
weren’t made special somehow, after they were made? They were
special from the moment he mixed them?’
‘Oh, well…’
The feeler scratched some more as he pondered. Colibran wanted
badly to help. ‘I think so.’
She continued
to pester him with questions and gradually began to build up a
picture of Deverli and his mapmaking. ‘This is all conjecture,
mind,’ she said to Davron and Meldor when they came to see her that
afternoon, ‘but I think Deverli took ordinary ingredients and left
them in a ley line. He then brought them back and mixed up his
colours. I don’t think he actually had to dig in a ley line for his
pigments, or anything like that. I’ll need to go to a ley line to
prove it.’
While Meldor
considered what she’d said, she studied him. He was dressed in
something that was halfway between the flamboyant garb of a
knight-prophet of Chantry and the plain austerity of a margrave. It
was a long white robe, embroidered around the neck and hem with
gold thread. It made him appear noble, yet there was a touch of the
ascetic as well. She wondered who’d chosen it for him. It did not
seem to be something either Scow or Davron would select, but she
couldn’t help feeling it was exactly right for Meldor the Blind,
now Margrave of Havenstar. He would never be just Meldor to her
again.
‘Keris,’ he
said finally, ‘you are valuable to us. We want to use your time to
the best advantage. I think experiments like this can best be left
to others. I will send someone I trust to assist you. Just tell him
what you want done. After all,’ he added with a smile, ‘the more
people who know, the safer you are.’
‘What do you
want me to do with my time, then? Experiment with burning trompleri
maps?’
‘No,’ he said,
faintly impatient. ‘Not that either. Favellis and Dita can work on
that, once you’ve done some maps for them to experiment with. I
want you to do what you do best: make maps. Let me explain.
Eventually I want maps of all Havenstar and all the surrounding
areas, but more importantly I want maps of our borders now. How
better to protect our land than to watch the enemy approach on a
chart, and thus know when and where to thwart him with our
Havenguard?’
‘Large scale
charts, so you can tell friend from foe.’ She nodded, thinking.
‘That’s going to require an enormous amount of parchment. And
inks.’
‘And labour,’
Davron added. ‘She’ll need help, Meldor.’
He nodded.
‘You’ll have everything you need. I’ll put people on to making
rag-paper for you. There’s no way we can get hold of enough
parchment in such a short time. You’ll need more staff to do the
tedious unskilled work. Confine yourself to what others can’t do,
the surveying and the actual mapping.’
‘It’s not as
much as it sounds, I suppose,’ she said, half to herself. ‘Deverli
had already done a lot of standard maps of the Havenstar area
before he died. I can transfer that work over into trompleri, or
have other people do it.’
‘Davron and
Scow will go with you when you are out surveying.’
She nodded and
felt her heart lift. Surveying, mapmaking—and Davron. Davron …
almost. She looked across at him to share her pleasure, only to see
that he was gazing at Meldor in consternation. At first she thought
it might just be concern that they would both find it too much of a
strain, then she realised the real reason. He was afraid. Afraid of
being separated from Meldor because the Margrave was the only one
who might be able to thwart the Unmaker when he came to claim the
service Davron owed him. She waited for Davron’s protest, but he
shrugged in resignation and grunted his acquiescence. She didn’t
know whether the acceptance came from his trust in his friend, or
from his innate fatalism. He looked across at her and smiled, but
all her joy of anticipation had drained away.
‘There’s one
other thing I came to talk to you about, Keris,’ Meldor was saying.
‘I want nobody to know what happens when a trompleri map is burned.
It is to be kept absolutely confidential—I can’t stress that
enough. And I want you to write to each of the mapmakers who had
letters from you about trompleri. I want you to tell them that on
no account should a trompleri map be burned or, in fact, destroyed
in any way whatsoever. Put the fear of the Maker into them, tell
them anything: that it will give off poisonous fumes, that it will
unmake stability, anything except the truth.’
‘But
why—?’
‘Trust
me.’
She subsided
reluctantly. ‘I’ll do it today.’
‘I’ll send a
courier to collect them. And now I want to see the Chameleon. May I
go through into the house, Keris?’ He was asking her permission?
She was embarrassed and called for Colibran to show him the
way.
She and Davron
were left looking at one another. ‘How bad is it?’ she asked. ‘Why
does he fear attack after all these years of peace? Why is he
calling all the Havenbrethren home?’
He was sombre.
‘The Unmaker knows about us now, knows where we are. He knows we
search for the secret of trompleri. Minions may have already told
him that we’ve found a way to stabilise the Unstable. We are too
dangerous to him, too dangerous to be allowed to live here in
peace.’ He toyed with the edge of one of her maps where it lay on
the table in front of him. ‘It won’t be long before he attacks.
He’s moving his Minions through the Unstable already, and we are
doing the same thing with our Havenbrethren. We have to reinforce
our Havenguards, and train more men and women. We have a number of
Unbound Tricians helping us.’
She listened,
and watched him. He was clad in clean clothes of a finer material
than she’d been used to seeing him wearing, and he now wore a
chunky red-gold ring on his right hand. ‘You aren’t wearing your
knives!’ she said suddenly. He wasn’t carrying his whip either. It
was the first time she’d ever seen him unarmed.
‘I don’t wear
them in Havenstar.’ He sounded casual, but the tell-tale flush
spread from the back of his neck up to his ears. He said hurriedly,
‘You do realise, don’t you, that Portron might bring Chantry down
on our heads ?’
She would not
be diverted. ‘Not wear them? Why not? It’s not that safe here,
surely? I’m told the Wild can be bold—’
‘Not inside
the city.’ He sighed, seeing that she was not about to be
side-tracked. ‘Keris,
I’m
the danger here. Me. It’s better I
carry no weapons. It evens up the chances that I can be stopped
when the time comes.’
She was
silenced, feeling sick, wishing she’d had the sense not to ask.
Suddenly he
laughed, sounding almost light-hearted. ‘It’s that damned blush of
mine, isn’t it? I just can’t seem to do anything about it and it
gives me away every time. I feel an awful fool, colouring up like a
torchlight all the time.’
‘Don’t
denigrate it. I may never have spared you a thought if you hadn’t
lit up like a flame the day we first met.’
‘Really? That
almost might make it worth it. But no, maybe not.
You
try
impressing a troop of ley-scarred Defenders under your leadership,
or a fellowship of wily sinners on a pilgrimage, when you blush
like a lad at his first kiss! It’s been the bane of my life.’
‘Well, I like
it.’
‘Ah. Just as I
happen to like a certain spattering of freckles across an otherwise
ordinary nose…’
She pulled a
face at him and felt her sorrow dissipate.
‘When do you
want to leave for the borders?’ he asked.
She dragged
her mind back to business, forgetting in the meantime what he’d
said about Portron. ‘I have to write those letters, then go through
the rest of Deverli’s maps to see exactly what areas he has
surveyed. I’ll have to make some decisions about just what I want
done with regards to the production of more inks and paints.
Organise whoever it is that Meldor sends me, start training people,
prepare a number of trompleri maps for Favellis and Dita—’ She
looked up at him, suddenly appalled by the amount of work involved.
‘Shall we say six days?’
‘Fine. I’ll
get the paper organised for you and do what else I can to help.
Make me a list of paint ingredients you may need.’
‘And the
Chameleon? Why does Meldor want to speak to him? He’s not going to
send him back into the Unstable, is he?’
‘Everyone who
comes to Havenstar knows they can be called upon to fight, Quirk
included. Meldor wants him to embark on a career of
Minion-watching.’
She sighed.
‘An impressive profession for someone who vows and declares that of
all the world’s lily-livered cowards, he has the lilyest
liver!’
‘The Unstable
makes cowards of us all. And none of us get what we want when the
Unmaker plays with us.’
~~~~~~~
Keris was
amazed how quickly she slipped into routine. She would spend a week
or more at a time out on the borders doing the surveying with
Davron and Scow, then return to Shield to stock up on supplies, to
check how her team of helpers was coping with the work she gave
them, and to draw up maps of those areas she’d just surveyed. She
loved the work and felt much more at home in the Unstable than
she’d ever felt before. With astonishment, she acknowledged that
although she retained a healthy respect for its vagaries, she no
longer feared it. She’d grown more sure of herself and her
abilities. Under Davron’s tutelage she was even becoming an expert
with the throwing knife.
Her one
complaint was that sometimes she felt swamped under heaps of vellum
and parchment and charts. She worked all day, every day, and nights
as well, mapping by lamplight in her tent or in the bustle of her
shop workroom in Shield. She surveyed for maps, planned maps, drew
maps, altered maps. She talked about maps, thought about maps,
dreamed about maps. Wryly, she wondered if it was possible to have
too much mapmaking in her life.
Her knowledge
of her craft expanded. Maps which deviated too far from the true
aspect of the land refused ever to become trompleri maps, no matter
how much ley-ink was applied. Maps with too small a scale could
never become a trompleri map. Her assistants, experimenting in ley
lines, were soon able to tell her ten hours in a ley line was
enough to turn almost all of the components for inks and colours
into ingredients so ley-soaked that the final mixture, when she
made it up, was as good as any Deverli had created.
‘As simple as
that!’ She laughed, sharing her pleasure with Davron.
Davron
obtained any equipment she needed for mapmaking and recruited the
people to help her. He planned their trips with meticulous care
and, together with Scow, guarded her as she surveyed the Unstable
bordering Havenstar. They discussed everything with easy
camaraderie, and their friendship contained as much laughter as
pain. He could be cheerful, romantic and humorous, even though he
walked through life balanced on a knife blade. On one side lurked
death at the hands of his friends; and on the other, the death of
his friends at his hands, knowing all the while that Carasma was
already reaching to twist the knife handle.
That he could
often close all that off behind a steel gate of pain and let his
eyes gleam with love, or humour, was to her nothing short of a
miracle.
At those times
when she felt the saddest, when she felt at her most pensive, she
would go to her bedroom and look out of the window there. She’d
never seen a window with such a large expanse of thick glass, made
possible only by ley, and the view never failed to imbue her with
awe. To the right and left there were the rooftops of Shield—ornate
flamboyance and a mixture of styles made them look like a
playground for faerie, while directly in front of her was a view
over the lake. Perhaps she would never glimpse the ocean as she’d
dreamed, but here there was more water than she had ever hoped to
see all at once. She loved its many moods, the way it reflected the
blue of the sky, the way it could sparkle with sunshine and ley, or
brood with bad weather in slatey darkness. When she watched the
fishing boats leave the dock bouncing on the breeze as their
triangular sails filled, she knew she’d never tire of it. If she
could not have an ocean, at least she could have the lake.
Corrian still
stayed in the house, and so did Quirk when he was in Shield. Most
of the time, though, the Chameleon was out in the Unstable, spying
on Minion camps. Keris feared for his life, but he seemed to lead a
charmed existence, shielded by his camouflage abilities. He
travelled alone, and on foot. In spite of his constant
protestations about his basic faint-heartedness—worthy, he said, of
the most abject of invertebrates—he seemed almost to enjoy his
dangerous forays into the Unstable. He was fond of maintaining that
his worst enemy was sheer grinding boredom.
‘Minions,’ he
said, ‘are the dullest creatures on earth. Left to themselves, all
they ever seem to do is pick on one another and tease their Pets
into mouth-frothing rages. And watching hour after hour of that is
about exciting as gawping at spiders having sex.’
His periodic
protest to the Margrave about mind-numbing tedium were ignored;
Meldor insisted the information he obtained was invaluable. Thanks
to Quirk, they were able to position Havenguards according to the
concentrations of Minions outside Havenstar borders. ‘To know your
enemy is to have won the first battle,’ Meldor told him.