Havenstar by Glenda Larke

over it with a strange mixture of unease and euphoria. She
longed to speak to someone about it, but trusted no one enough to
divulge such a secret. She had to content herself with remembering
all that she’d heard about such maps, with piecing together what
Piers had told her, and the odd snippets of information she’d heard
from time to time from customers.
    ‘Trompleri,’
Piers had said once, ‘that’s not the correct word. It was actually
three words in the old language. Three words run together to make
one, and then hopelessly mispronounced. The original words meant
“trick the eye”.’
    Trick the eye;
it was true. That’s what the map did. When she looked at it, she
saw part of the world in miniature, shade and shadow, movement and
motion, all of it real with depth and dimension and texture. Yet if
she ran a hand across it, it felt no different from any other
mapskin. It was smooth to touch with just the slightest of bumps
where the ink or paint was thick. How much better just to look at
it! Then, it was real. She could see the hills projecting out of a
rolling plain, jutting up out of the flatness of the vellum, so
real that her mind could not understand why her fingers could not
feel their roundness. She could see the twinkling shine of sunshine
on a stream, its moving waters flowing across the skin, skimming
the stones drawn beneath. Yet when her fingers dipped into the
water, they felt nothing but the aridity of dried paint. Strange
nodules—plants of some kind?—shaded the ground alongside, yet when
she touched nodules and ground, they were all on the same plane. An
animal grazed on grass clumps, moving across the dry dust of a
blighted landscape with dainty steps; a rocky outcrop cast a shadow
that moved with the passage of the day; and once, just once, she
saw a group of people ride across one corner, mounts and riders as
real to her as the pilgrims who passed the shop would be to an
eagle flying high over Kibbleberry village.
    And there, in
all its terrifying glory, was a ley line, snaking from north to
south like a colourful, poisonous serpent, contaminating the land
with its evil; worse still, inching its way sideways, sucking up
colour and leaving behind a withered burn-scar of grey that the
land struggled in vain to repair.
    A trompleri
map moved and changed as the landscape it portrayed altered. By
showing the variations in light and shadow, a trompleri map
recorded sunrise and sunset, daylight and dark, or even the passing
of a cloud, the falling of rain. A trompleri map showed the
movement of people and animals, the passage of the tainted and the
Wild, the trek of pilgrims and guides, couriers and traders; it
showed all visible life—and the corpses of death. It was all there,
momentarily etched on two-dimensional vellum with all the three
dimensions of the real.
    It was
disquieting. And wonderful. It fascinated and it terrified.
    A trompleri
map was magic.
    ‘Imagine,’
Piers had said several years earlier. ‘Imagine, Keris. If I had
such master charts, there would be no need to risk my life in the
Unstable. When the ley lines moved, the change would be recorded
there on the vellum. And if an Unstabler had one, well, a glance at
the map and he’d know where best to cross. And when. A trompleri
map is the ultimate master chart. It keeps itself updated!’
    ‘But do they
exist?’ she had asked, her youthful imagination stimulated by even
the idea of such a wonder.
    ‘Once upon a
time they did. But the secret of making them was lost and gradually
those that existed disintegrated with age. Maybe it’s just as
well.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘I’d be out of a job otherwise.’ He
paused. ‘And yet—’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I’ve heard
tell just lately that someone has rediscovered the secret. Or is
close to doing so.’
    ‘Truly?’
    ‘There have
been rumours. But then, there are always rumours about those who
frequent the Unstable.’ He sighed. ‘It’s the nature of the place
and its