Havenstar Read Online Free PDF

it be good for their souls? What’s the matter with devotions
at shrines in their own stability? Why should we all have to make
this truly ridiculous journey once in our lifetimes, or risk dying
unhallowed and destined for the Hell of Disorder no matter how
knightly a life we’ve led? The whole thing is just a way Chantry
has of fleecing the population!’
    ‘Nonsense,
dear, and you know it. They could fleece us quite adequately at our
local shrines if need be. We do this because the Maker requires it
of us, to show that at least once in our lives we put Him first
before our personal desires and indeed before our personal
safety.’
    ‘Is He so…so petty ? It’s not right, Mother. People die out there in the
Unstable. Or are terribly tainted and then excluded, unable to ever
return. Is that fair?’
    Her mother’s
expression was that of someone who had heard it all before from the
same source, and often. She said quietly, ‘Those who die are
received directly into Heaven’s Order. You would be more tolerant
of your faith and the Rule if you were older and closer to death,
child.’
    She winced.
The words struck too close to home. Her mother’s illness was
worsening as the strange lump that grew inside Sheyli Kaylen sucked
her life away while it swelled and groped its way through her body.
She was frail now. Even her hair, once luxuriantly abundant, seemed
as fragile as the delicate lacework woven on to the neck of her
nightdress. An illegal frippery that, but it showed Sheyli had once
been a woman of spirit prepared to defy the Rule, even if she did
keep the rebellion hidden on her nightwear. Keris said with
unaccustomed gentleness, ‘Father will be home soon. Perhaps even
today.’
    ‘Perhaps. But
Keris, you heard what that Cosey woman just said: four uncharted
ley lines on their route. Your father will have had much to do. Did
you put their silver in the till?’
    Keris shook
her head and took the money out of her pocket. ‘For Thirl to drink
or gamble away? No. This will buy you some more sleeping medicine
for a start, and still leave more than enough to pay what we owe to
Master Ferit for the yams and onions he bought us at the Daltoner
Market last week. Thirl needn’t know about it.’
    Her mother
sighed. ‘I don’t—’ she began, but whatever she was going to say was
obliterated by the sudden desperate howling of a cat.
    ‘Yerrie?’
Keris looked up in astonishment and went back into the shop to see
whatever was alarming the normally placid animal.
    It was another
customer, a man just dismounting out in the yard.
    ‘Hush up,’ she
hissed at Yerrie. It backed over into a corner, lashing its tail
angrily. She stared out of the door, thinking the visitor must have
a dog, but she couldn’t see one. He did have a pair of matched
crossings-horses that could have been twins they were so alike.
Short, with stumpy necks, stiff manes and thick legs, striped all
over with brown and black and dirty grey, crossings-horses were
unprepossessing beasts, much ridiculed by those who did not ride
them. Their value lay in their stamina—they could run for hours
carrying heavy loads—and their ability to leap, not heights, but
widths. Their hindquarters and back legs had the hidden power of
coiled springs, while their narrow backs, well-padded with fat,
made them comfortable to ride, even though they were bad-tempered
and impatient. Unstablers, those ley-lit who lived in stabilities
yet worked the Unstable for a living, would ride nothing else, and
traditionally resented anyone else owning or using one.
    Even if she
had not seen the horses, she would have soon known their owner was
an Unstabler. He had the aura of assurance and the lack of
conformity that was commonplace among those who chose to work
outside the stabilities. Couriers, guides, mapmakers, traders,
tinkers, peddlers—such men, leading dangerous and often solitary
lives, rarely followed convention, and while some were uncouth and
tongue-tied in any kind