Havenstar by Glenda Larke Page A

people, I suppose. If I listened to rumours I’d believe in
dragons spewing fire and fire-flies that talk, in beautiful ladies
imprisoned by the Minions of Chaos and in heroes that rescue them,
in a magic kingdom called Havenstar and wizards who live there and
make trompleri maps—’
    ‘Wizards?’
    He’d laughed
and ruffled her hair. ‘Ah, just tales, Keri. Nobody I know has ever
been to Havenstar and nobody I know has ever seen a trompleri map.
Or a wizard, or a dragon or an imprisoned maiden waiting to be
rescued. And Havenstar is just a dream-place, made up by the poor
wretched tainted Untouchables who fantasize about a sanctuary where
they will be safe and can lead normal lives, where wizards will
miraculously cure their ills. Many set off to find it. They never
come back.’ He shook his head, touched suddenly by sadness. ‘Pity
them, the Unbound. Think about what the name means: Unbound, pulled
asunder, unravelled. They have been partially unmade, just as our
poor Margravate was partially unmade so long ago. Theirs is the
saddest of all existences.’
    Much more
interested in talk of magic, she hardly heard his sorrow. ‘And the
wizards make trompleri maps?’
    ‘So it’s said.
Tales, Keri lass, tales. Out there in the Unstable you hear a
hundred such stories and no more than two or three are true.’ He
grinned. ‘Usually the most incredible of all, at that. For that
reason alone I’ll keep dreaming of owning a trompleri master chart,
but I won’t believe in them until I have one such in my hand.’
    Well, two
years later he had apparently held such a map in his hand. And a
fat lot of good it did him, she thought. It probably killed him.
Always supposing that whoever was searching his things was the one
who murdered him, and it was the map that they’d been hunting…
    ~~~~~~~ ~
     
    At first she
had no idea what area the map represented. It was an abnormally
large scale chart—1:5,000—that covered only a small area. It
portrayed no halt or houses or signs of settlement. It was signed
with the name Kereven Deverli, and it was undated. According to the
title at the top, it represented an area known as Draggle Flats
West. It was certainly not a map of any place north of the Wide.
The names written beside the features drawn there were unknown to
Keris: Milkwaters, Gaggle Crag, Melldale Bushgrass, the Humps—she
knew none of these places. Even the ley line had a name she did not
recognize: the Writhe.
    She searched
through some of the old maps Piers had stored in the attic, looking
for one that mentioned such names. These maps were not the ones
Piers had created. He had bought them from other mapmakers long
ago, before he had been married, in the days when he had travelled
widely in the Unstable, even as far as the Eighth Stability.
    Eventually,
after an hour or two of work, she found the Writhe—or the
beginnings of it—marked at the extreme edge of one of the charts.
It was near the Graven, the ley line that separated the Eighth Stab
from the Seventh and the Sixth. The most puzzling thing of all was
that the Writhe angled south, beyond the Eighth Stability, which
meant that the trompleri map showed a portion of the Waste. But who
would ever want to make a map of such a place? No one ever went
even as far south as the Riven, the ley line that flowed beyond the
southern edge of the Eighth, not anymore; it was too dangerous.
There were no stabilities there, no areas of Order at all, just
endless instability and horror. Or so it was said by the few who
had gone exploring in years gone by and managed to return.
    According to
legends, there had been other countries in the far south once. The
twin nations of Yedron and Yefron, wicked Vedis where tyrants ruled
and fabulous Bellisthron that floated on the lakes of Thron. The
most ancient of the Holy Books spoke of such places, but if they
really had existed, they did no more, or were separated from what
was left of the Margravate of Malinawar by too wide an