Strands of Starlight (36 page)

“As I thought,” said George. “In any case, they confronted me with the cloak, and there wasn't much that I could say.”

“And what is the situation now?” said Terrill.

“The soldiers are still here. And the spies. And Janet . . .” His lip quivered, and he covered his face with his hands.

Miriam put the cloak back on the peg and knelt beside the man, her arms around him. “Easy, my friend.”

George sobbed. “They've sent my daughter to live in the Chateau at Hypprux. Ostensibly as a guest. Ostensibly to further her education. In truth, she is a hostage. To ensure my cooperation.”

Only half-aware of what she was doing, Miriam closed her eyes, let the light of the stars fill her. She realized suddenly that she was giving the mayor strength. George's sobbing quieted slowly, and he regained control.

“Peace, friend, peace.” Stars. She felt the flow and soothed as she could, healing him for the second time.
And he's part of Her, too. Everything is. . . .

When she opened her eyes, George was looking at her. “So I am required to be a spy myself,” he said, “or my daughter will take the consequences.”

“To whom are you to report?” said Terrill. “The men in the street?”

“Are they still there?”

“They did not see us.”

“The soldiers at the gate?”

Terrill snorted softly in reply.

George nodded, relieved. “Actually, one of Cranby's agents stops in once a week. He's due soon.”

Miriam stood up. “It may be the bishop himself who is due soon,” she said, regretting for the hundredth time that Kay had not stayed her hand.

Terrill regarded her levelly. “Do not expect Cranby to return. He is dead.”

It took Miriam a few moments to understand. “How do you know?”

“Varden is my brother. I know.”

Miriam thought of Varden. The healer. The Elf who had put his sword away forever. In seconds, any joy she felt at Cranby's demise was eclipsed by her sorrow at what that action must have cost Varden. “Oh, dear Lady.”

She went to the cloak again, took it in her hands. The Dance was infinite, infinitely varied. A single step was enough to alter it. She had played her part. So had George. Mika was a partner, as were Varden, and Terrill, and Janet, and Charity. . . .

The list could have gone on forever. Indeed, the list would have had to encompass the universe in order to be complete. “Tell me, Lord Mayor,” she said softly. “If you had known what would come of your gift of a cloak to a little, mutilated girl, would you have, nonetheless, tendered the gift?” The golden threads in the embroidery glistened at her, weaving, crossing.

George looked as if he were trying to guess the meaning behind the strange actions and questions of this Elf maid. “My lady,” he said, “I would have, regardless. The girl was cold. She needed help. She had given me help. How could I do anything but give in return? Dear God, if she had been willing, I would have taken her into my own house!”

The emblems had blurred to Miriam's eyes. Slowly, she put the cloak back on its peg. “I am sure, my lord, that the girl, in her own way, is grateful to you.”

Again, from outside the room, came the sound of weeping.

“And who is that?” said Miriam. She noticed that Terrill was watching her, examining her, analyzing her; but this time the look in his eyes was one of tenderness.
A little further,
he seemed to be saying.
Only a little further. Please . . .

George bent his head. “Lady Anne. My wife. Janet's mother. It's been hard on her.” He hesitated. “I would guess that you are traveling north. Toward Hypprux, or maybe beyond. Could you . . . is there any way that you could see that our Janet is well?”

Terrill answered dispassionately. “How much of what we have said here will you tell to Cranby's agent?”

George's head snapped up. “Upon my word, nothing.”

“In spite of the fact that if you are discovered, Janet will suffer?”

“Terrill!” cried Miriam. “What are you doing?”

“It is well, my lady,” George gasped. “He has a right to know. No, Terrill, I will say nothing to the bishop's agent. But I will trust that you and Mirya and the powers of your race will see to it that you leave unnoticed so that I will not be found false.”

“So be it,” said Terrill. “We do indeed travel to Hypprux. Other matters call us there.”

“And we will see that Janet is safe,” said Miriam. “I give my word.”

Terrill glanced at her. His eyebrows lifted for an instant, then settled. “Let us go then.”

In the other room, Anne sobbed again.

“A moment, please,” said Miriam. She had touched George's heart, and she felt that her own had widened as a consequence. When she looked about the room at the cabinets, the desk, the racks of carefully rolled documents, she saw in everything beginnings, potentials. Even the rushes on the floor were full of promise.

There was need in the other room.

She went to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the hall. Anne's crying was louder now, and it came from behind a curtained doorway. Miriam paused. She was intruding, but . . .

Lifting her hand, she pushed aside the green velvet drape and entered the bedchamber. Anne was lying facedown on the white bedspread, her head cradled in the fold of her arm. The window was open, and the air was fresh, warm, scented with early spring.

Miriam shook her hair back so that her ears were visible. Calmly, she let the starlight take her, felt her identity begin to slip, did not fight. In the back of her mind she saw a flicker of blue and silver. “Lady Anne,” she said softly.

The woman lifted her head. Blond and blue-eyed, she reminded Miriam of Elizabeth, and when she thought of Anne's daughter, Janet, hostage in a strange city miles to the north, she consistently visualized Charity in that role.

Anne caught her breath. “Fair One . . .”

“Be at peace,” said Miriam. “I'll see that Janet is safe. But for now, let me help you.” She extended her hands, and after a moment, Anne pushed herself up and grasped them.

The day was growing hot when Terrill and Miriam turned their horses once again onto the hidden path that led northward. The trail here was broad enough for two to ride abreast, and Miriam remained at Terrill's side as the sun passed noon and westered. Terrill was thinking, his sight turned within himself, and he appeared to be paying little attention to her, but he spoke up suddenly near the middle of the afternoon. “What did you do to Anne? For that matter, what did you do to George?”

Miriam herself had been silent since they had left the city. She felt subdued, calm. The starlight had flowed through her instinctively, and the widening she had felt in her heart had remained. She felt as though the morning's ride toward Saint Blaise had been made by a different person.

She looked at her hands and wondered for a moment whose they were.

“What did I do?” she said. “Strength. Comfort. Aid.” She tipped her head back, looked at the leaves against the sky. “What else are we here for?”

“I am . . . impressed.” There was affection in his voice. “And grateful. I watched you give yourself to the light.”

A little further . . . only a little further . . .

“I gave myself a little,” she said, “but it wasn't really much. Healing comes easily for me. I've done it all my life. Fighting, though . . .” She shrugged, tossed her hair back over her shoulders.

Terrill rode in silence for a while, then reined in his horse. “We have not eaten. We should stop for a moment.”

“We won't make very good time if we do.”

“I have some preparations to make.”

His voice was as analytical as it ever had been, Miriam noticed the chill of the light in his eyes. She shrugged again and they dismounted where the trees were thin. Miriam was doffing her pack when Terrill's voice rang out harshly.

“
Mirya! Elf!
”

The urgency of his tone made her to drop her pack and whirl. A wooden sword was streaking at her head, and she only just managed to get her hand up in time to catch it.

Terrill was already leaping in, and Miriam had but a fraction of a heartbeat in which to link with the stars before he was upon her. As she watched the potentials change and shift, she realized that he was moving at full speed, that his strokes were going to be at strength.

Which made Hoyle's swordplay seem infantile in comparison.

Terrill's face was a mask of indifferent concentration as she parried his blow. Her wooden sword splintered along its edge, and she winced. Terrill spun to follow up. Head shot. Parrying again, she swung Terrill's sword down, kicked it away, and swept her foot behind the Elf in hope of catching him off guard.

No luck. Terrill leaped clear. At the same time, he was swinging for her open side. Irritated, Miriam blocked hard. This time it was Terrill's turn to flinch.

But in the back of her mind, Miriam was almost frightened. Terrill's charge had come out of nowhere, and all that told her that he was not bent on taking her life was the fact that he had tossed her a wooden sword instead of challenging her with steel.

She was angry also. By what right . . .?

Terrill was driving in again, and her anger flowed into her block. Both blades splintered and broke.

Terrill flashed out his sword. “Draw, Elf.”

She had no choice: his first stroke was already coming. Rainfire slid out of its sheath just in time to block a cut at her neck that would have taken off her head. “What the hell are you doing, Terrill? Dammit, this is live steel!”

“So it was with Hoyle, Mirya.” He was moving, turning, feinting, attacking. She could not believe his skill, but she had little time for belief or disbelief. Terrill somersaulted back, rolled to his feet, cut at her legs.

The starlight saved her. She danced out of the way, but the vision was draining her strength into an abyss of fatigue, and her sight was blurring at the edges. Terrill, though, showed no signs of letting up. She knew that he could go on like this for hours. Was he going to kill her then?

“
Elthia!
” she cried, bringing up a sword that seemed of a sudden to weigh tons. “
Me ya ciryo!
”

“You are picking up the language. Interesting.” Terrill was not even breathing heavily. Miriam was gasping.

She had no strength for anger anymore, for every particle of her being had to be given over to the Dance and to her sword. She lost cognizance of everything save Terrill, the changing potentials, the stars.

Feint, parry, stroke, counterstroke . . .

. . . leap . . .

. . . and she forced herself on through the weakness that mired her feet and weighted her arm. She dragged starlight into her body as she dragged air into her lungs.

There was no time for anger, no time for anything.

Too weak to attack, reduced to parrying, she doggedly blocked Terrill's battering swings one by one. Nothing escaped her. But if she weakened more . . .

And she knew she would weaken more.

Her mind blurred into the Dance until she was no more than an expression of the pattern that went on in and about everything. As she reached for more starlight, she reached out to a larger portion of the Dance. She felt her heart widening again, expanding, filling.

A blue-white star burned in her mind. Or maybe it was she that burned within the star. She did not know. But what awareness of herself she had left she threw into it, and the flare nearly knocked her unconscious.

But everything came back then. Terrill, the forest, the grass under her feet, the blue sky, the sound of running water a half league away, the moon, the stars . . . the Lady . . .

She was no longer Miriam. She was the Dance, and Terrill was the Dance also, and as her sword came up, weaving in and out of the shifting pattern of life and death, Terrill's blade was leaping forward once again. Effortlessly, she blocked . . .

. . . and counterattacked.

Sword to Sword, face-to-face, they fought in the middle of the clearing, dancing in and out, matching speed for speed and strength for strength. There was no fatigue, there was no advantage to either: the Dance was flowing with itself, and there could be no victor.

Simultaneously, they stopped. Terrill nodded, bowed, sheathed his sword. “Good.”

Her fatigue was gone. The forest went on around her. The world, the universe went on around her. But though her awareness returned and she could again call herself Miriam, she was not, she knew, the Miriam to whom Terrill had thrown a wooden sword.

She felt the starlight moving through her. Change . . .

“What . . . was that?” Her voice sounded odd. A different inflection had, it seemed, become a part of it. Memories floated in dim recollection. Something about a sparrow hawk, and about Terrill when he did not sorrow . . .

She shook her head, trying to clear it, but it was already clear.

“Now you know what it is like to fight without anger,” said Terrill. “I wanted you to know. I wanted you to lose your fear of giving yourself. I wanted you to learn to use the starlight vision so that it would not drain you. But it was your anger that most concerned me.”

“I'm not giving anything up,” she said. She had focused too long on her goals, and her responses were almost automatic. “I have things to do.”

“I have no objection,” said Terrill. “I ask only that you act without anger.” He smoothed his hair with a flick of his head. He was not even sweating. “This was the last chance I had to teach you. I am sorry the lesson had to be so forceful.”

She was surprised that she was not more angry at the form the lesson had taken. She felt, instead, rather calm. “Try what? To dissuade me?” Still, she heard the alteration in her voice.

The Elf's mouth tightened for a moment. “I wonder sometimes if you ever listen to me. You killed Hoyle, and you intend to kill again. But each time you draw sword you create a potential for your own death, and anger makes that potential all the greater. I have done my best to fulfill my responsibility not only to you, but also to those whom you may fight, for in teaching you, I have a hand in their fates. So.”