Strands of Starlight (22 page)

She felt herself falling, and Terrill reached forward and caught her shoulder. “Steady.”

The word was a command, and she obeyed without question, drawing herself up as straight as the Elf. She let the light fill her, drank it in with her entire body.

“Now,” said Terrill. “Slowly.” And he lifted his sword and moved in.

Her vision was augmented by the immanent presence of the stars, and a shifting lattice of potentials and possibilities wove about her. She saw the future and knew where Terrill's blade could strike at any given moment. A finite possibility even existed that he would simply drop the sword and walk away, but as she lived the probabilities, she watched them collapse into the ever-present now and knew that at the last moment, he was going to feint, withdraw a fraction of a pace, and cut at her left side.

Her blade was already moving, flowing effortlessly into the pattern that was forming. The potentials changed again, energy shifted.

Terrill altered his plans. A head shot. Miriam moved, balanced, flowed, and when wood smacked into wood a few inches from her ear, she was already planning a counterstroke.

All the same, though, she had not lost cognizance of the meadow, the grass, the blue sky, and the white clouds. They were all a part of the pattern also, as if only on just this day would the Elf decide to parry her attack downward instead of to the side and step in with his left foot rather than his right. All a part of the Dance.

But after a few minutes, the starfield reasserted itself violently in Miriam's mind, and she faltered, stumbled, and collapsed. Terrill caught her and lowered her gently to the ground.

She opened her eyes again. The world was back to normal. “That is what you did not see,” said the Elf. “Openings, possibilities. Nothing I did escaped you.”

She was too weak to say anything for a moment. Finally: “What . . . was that?” she whispered.

“The Greater Dance,” he said. “A small part of it. You did not simply look at it, you participated with knowledge. Such is the way of the Elves. Knowledge. We do not consider mere faith to be a great treasure.”

She blinked at him. “But . . . but I'm not an Elf.”

Terrill stroked her head gently. “When you healed Varden,” he said with kindness, “you linked with him, and you absorbed something of his nature. It showed that your being was receptive, and perhaps that should have warned Varden away from transforming you. But he did—you insisted—and you absorbed more.”

“What are you saying?”

“You are part Elf now.”

The blending of starlight and daylight had left her weak, dizzy, and she could not comprehend the import of Terrill's words. All she knew was the stars, the stars that shone brightly within her.

“We will end here for the day,” said the Elf. “You have much work ahead of you. You will notice that I am not fatigued. The power is yours, but you have yet to learn it. But you will. I have no doubt of that.”

She nodded absently. As he helped her to stand up, she noticed that the world still retained the brightness, the newness. Terrill seemed younger, more clearly defined, and she sensed that his emotions and motives, though still unreadable, had edged toward intelligibility.

But she also felt—suddenly, dimly, but with certainty—that there was more between her and Terrill than the teaching of swordplay.

As usual, Terrill guided Miriam to the forest's edge. But rather than turning disinterestedly on his heel, he seemed inclined to pause as though he wanted to say something. Words, though, did not come, and after a moment, almost embarrassed, he bowed to her, wished her a good afternoon, and departed.

She remained where she was, wondering, her back against a tree. The fields surrounding the village had been cleared, the harvest gathered in, and the winter sowing of barley and wheat had been finished the week before. Saint Brigid had settled in for the cold season. With no overlord to take for himself the pick of the crop, winter in the Free Town was comfortable, if not luxurious: the houses were warm, the food adequate, the feasts many and joyous.

She looked at her hands, held one up against the shadows of the forest, and examined the lambent sheen about it. She turned around, regarded the village, and noticed that perspectives had sharpened, edges were clearer, colors were brighter. She could pick out pebbles on the ground two bow shots away.

Terrill had only told her part of the truth. Yes, she had absorbed something of the elven nature, but what her body told her now, what the stars said as they blazed within her, what the unnerving clarity of her surroundings revealed was that she was still absorbing, still changing. Her transformation had been but a seed, and it had taken root and lifted its leaves in starlight. It was beginning to bud now, and what flower it might bear she was afraid to guess.

She started off toward the town gates, her steps soundless. She did not think about her vow. She was too numb. Whatever lay in the future, she would deal with later—at present she had herself to contend with. But the starlight clung to her, enveloped her, comforted her. She closed her eyes and felt the slowly changing Dance. And that was comforting also.

When she reached the gate, she felt the unease in the village. It hung in the air like a fog, like an odor. She knew these people. They had befriended her and cared for her. She could not help but know that there was something wrong.

Francis waved at her from his forge, just as he always did, but he was disturbed. She met Andrew in the street, and he bowed low, as usual, but there was something on his mind. When she entered the house, she found Varden and Roxanne at the table with Kay. The priest had his face in his hands. The Elf and the witch were both serious, but they smiled at Miriam when she entered.

“Blessings on you, Miriam,” said Varden.

She decided to find out just how much she had changed. “The hand of the Lady be on you, Varden.”

Varden blinked, startled.

“The whole village is upset,” said Miriam. “What's going on?”

“Aloysius Cranby,” said Kay, mumbling through his hands. He suddenly struck his fist on the tabletop. “Damn him! Is he trying to buy the papacy with the blood of innocents?”

“Nothing has happened yet,” said the Elf.

“But it will.”

“Anything is—”

“Yes,” said Kay. “I know. Anything is possible. Merely different probabilities. Tell me, Varden, what are the chances of Aloysius Cranby giving up on the Free Towns?”

“I asked a question,” said Miriam.

Varden spoke. “The bishop is attempting to organize a crusade against the Free Towns.”

Miriam's mouth tightened. “On what grounds?”

“Heresy.”

“Heresy? What does heresy have to do with it?”

Roxanne spoke. She was well along in her pregnancy, and her hand rested protectively on her belly. “Miriam, consider the people sitting together at this table.”

Miriam understood. Elf, witch, priest of the Church. Such a gathering could not take place anywhere else in Adria—perhaps not in all of Europe. If Cranby needed the fuel for the Inquisition, there was plenty of human wood in the Free Towns.

“A man came down from Alm,” said Kay. “Cranby's made some kind of deal with the barons. He gets his crusade and they get the land.”

“But you fought the barons before,” said Miriam. “It might be hard going, but—” The look on Kay's face made her break off.

“It's not just greed this time,” Kay said softly. His eyes were bleak. He was a priest of the same Church that Aloysius Cranby served, and he was also a friend of Elf, and of witch, and a loyal citizen of the Free Towns. He would have to choose, and the choice was a terrible one. “It's the Church, too. If Cranby gets his way, then how can any Christian fight against the barons who will be carrying out the wishes of the Church?”

“A rather clever scheme.” Roxanne spoke objectively, but Miriam knew—they all knew—that she and her child would be among the first to go to the stake if the Free Towns fell.

Miriam discovered that her hands were clenched. “I'm no Christian,” she said.

“Miriam!” Kay looked stricken.

“I'm no Christian,” she repeated. “I'll fight. Even if everyone else is scared out of their wits by Aloysius Cranby rattling a monstrance in their faces, I'll still fight. What do I have to lose? You can't see the scars on my legs anymore, but I remember how I got them. And I remember who gave them to me.”

“But you're a different person now,” said the priest. “No one will recognize you. And you can control your power.”

“A little.” She leaned up against the closed door, folded her arms. “But I'm still a healer, and I still heal.” Her jaw clenched: the old mortal anger came back now in spite of the starlight. “I'm not running anymore.”

Varden eyed her. “Do you speak from anger, Miriam?”

She turned on him. “Dammit, Varden, sometimes it's all I've got.”

She left, slamming the door behind her.

***

Varden was following her. She knew it as clearly as she saw the stars, and she did not know whether to curse the ability or not. At the forest's edge, she stopped and waited for him, then started off once more.

“You are disturbed,” he said after they were among the trees.

“Aren't you?”

“I am as I am.”

“And I suppose you'll love the soldiers as they tie you to the stake, right?”

She immediately regretted her words, but she could not take them back. When Varden spoke, though, his voice was gentle. “Another move by the Church to exterminate us is not unexpected. We have been persecuted for centuries now, ever since the Council of Ephesus declared the Doctrine of Particular Divinity to be a test of orthodoxy.”

“You take this rather calmly.”

“I take the changing of seasons rather calmly also,” he said. “Summer gives way to autumn, which in turn yields to winter.” He gestured at the leafless trees. “It may be that the season of the Elves is ending. We will prolong our lives if we can, Miriam, but if our age ends, we must end with it. We have nothing to complain about.”

“And if it's the end of the Free Towns, then the folk who are tortured and burned have nothing to complain about either, right? It's all part of the cycles, right?”

“I did not say that the Free Towns should not battle for survival.”

“Of course not. Only that they should do so with love and kindness in their hearts.” She turned to him. “Take a good look at where you and your people are, Varden. You used to be all over. You used to wander freely and without fear. Now you're stuck out here in the middle of the deepest forest in Adria, and it's that way all over Europe and probably beyond. You're all dwindling, dammit, and the Free Towns are probably going to get burned to the ground. Maybe it's time you and your people learned a little about being angry. I'm alive today because when I woke up in the forest with blood all over my thighs, I vowed I'd live to kill the man who did that to me. And I'm here. And I still intend to do it. And none of this foolishness about stars and patterns and compassion and . . . and . . .”

She could feel the sadness in him, but she pushed on.

“. . . and love is going to stop me.”

Varden regarded her for several minutes. The sounds of birds and animals wound around them. Branch rubbed against branch in the cool wind that flowed through the treetops above them, and Miriam sensed that snow was coming—dark, cold clouds building up in the north.

When the Elf spoke, he seemed to be a part of the approaching storm, for his voice was like ice. “What are you afraid of, Miriam?”

The question was direct, precise. But she met his eyes, and for strength she looked not to the old litany that had seen her through torture and sickness, but to the words she had learned from Terrill:
I am here, and Varden is here. We both stand upon the same ground, breathe the same air, see the same stars.

And she managed to open her mouth, to speak with honesty. “I'm afraid I won't be able to kill him,” she said bitterly. “Terrill told me I'm part Elf now. And all I see from the Elves is compassion and love. I can't kill someone I love.”

“Are you so sure?”

“You're talking riddles. If I can't kill him, then all this”—she gestured, a sweeping arc of her hands that indicated her body, the forest, perhaps the entire world—will be for nothing. And I'll sit in the forest and smile at the squirrels until the soldiers cart me off to the stake.”

Varden said nothing.

“Dammit, don't you ever get angry?”

He turned his gaze away from her. “I was angry. Once.”

“Well?”

“Someday,” he said quietly, “Terrill may tell you about it. You can judge then.”

And she felt the grief in him like a glacier that, cold and glittering, defied the rays of the sun even at the height of summer.

***

As Miriam made her way back to the village, she felt Varden standing where she had seen him last, arms folded, eyes on the ground as if searching there for an end to whatever memory it was that eluded renewal. And when she reached the priest's house, she knew that he was still there, silent, the winter forest around him and the air chill.

He had spoken before of the sorrows of the Elves, and she had assumed that such emotions were of a general nature: the persecutions, the losses, the end of a way of life. She had never considered that, like her, Varden and Terrill and perhaps even Natil and Talla might have their own deeply personal griefs, ones that the cycles of the years left untouched, that only the final fading of their race could dissolve.

Immortal regret, Immortal pain. She wondered whether her own anger would go on and on forever, until, on some unimaginable fading . . .

What am I thinking?

She entered Kay's house, wanting nothing now but her room, a bed to hide in, and a fire to keep her warm—as though any amount of blankets or heat could drive away the frost in her heart.

Roxanne was gone. Kay was sitting alone at the table, his eyes red, his face pale. “Miriam?”

She realized that the room had grown dark to his eyes. The sun had slid behind the mountains. “Yes, Kay.”

“Was it true . . . what you said . . .?”