Maze of Moonlight (3 page)

Up in the wide loft, Miriam, his wife, breathed softly in unfeigned repose, and Vanessa's fourteen-year-old restlessness rustled the straw and feathers of her bed.

Vanessa. Did she sleep? She seemed to. But that, perhaps, was her only normal quality. Lake rose, crept to the stairs that led to the loft, peered up anxiously. It was important that Vanessa be asleep tonight. It was important that she remain asleep. She saw enough already: it would not do at all for her to hear also.

The fire crackled abruptly and sparked once, twice, and the mules and oxen grumbled sleepily in the adjoining stable as they hunkered down amid dry and plentiful litter. Vanessa groaned softly as though in reply. Lake bowed his head, wondering what she saw in her dreams, frightened because he suspected that he knew.

An hour dragged by. Two. Distantly, he heard the bells of the Benedictine abbey, and he began to wonder whether he had been wrong, to hope that the subtle but unmistakable feeling that had prompted him to remain awake by the fire was false, the product of worry about himself, his past . . . and his youngest daughter.

A tapping on the door: measured, light.

Lake stared at the fire. In the corner of his mind, he detected a barely perceptible glimmering. It was inviting, gracious. He thrust it away.

Once more the tapping; this time softly, reluctantly, as though it would not be repeated again. With yet another anxious glance at the loft, Lake rose and crossed the room, lifted the bar softly, and swung the door open.

The night was cold and black, but even if the glow from the fire had not illuminated faintly the gray-cloaked figure standing in the snow outside, Lake would nonetheless have seen enough to confirm his feelings and his vigil, for there was a light about his visitor that seemed to shine from within. It played softly on his womanly face, and it echoed the gleam of starlight in his eyes.

“Varden.” Lake spoke reluctantly. “I . . . expected you.”

“Be at . . .” Varden hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Be at peace. May I enter?”

In answer, Lake turned away from the door and went to stand before the fire with folded arms. Behind him, Varden entered and shut the door, but though Lake heard the rustle of a cloak being removed, shaken out, and hung up on a peg, he also heard enough to tell him that Varden, as though unsure of what hospitality he might find in this house, had stayed just within the threshold.

Silence. The crackle of the fire. The scrape of branch against snow-laden thatch.

“It has been a long time,” said Varden at last.

Lake did not turn. “Ha' it been that long?”

“Twenty years,:

“That's na long . . . for such as you.”

Varden was silent. Then, cautiously: “I believe I feel the years more now than I once did.”

Even though his back was turned, Lake sensed his visitor's manner and presence. Slender and straight, arms folded, eyes troubled, Varden had not moved. It had indeed been a long time. Lake would have preferred that it had been longer.

“How is Ma?” Lake said at last.

“She is . . .” Varden's voice was suddenly strained. “She is dead, Lake. She died a week ago.”

Lake bowed his head, but he could not find the tears.

“We can still do much,” Varden continued softly, “but we cannot take away age.”

“You never could.”

“Not so. Once—” But Varden broke off, stood in silence. “Roxanne believed in cycles,” he said after a time, “and in her Goddess, and in death and rebirth. She would not have allowed such magic, even had it still been possible.”

Up in the loft, Vanessa stirred again. Lake started, looked towards the top of the stairs.

“But she was old,” said Varden. “It was her time, so she told us. Natil and Mirya and Terrill and I were with her when she left. Charity, too.” He hesitated. “I . . . I do not know where she is now.”

Lake found that his jaw was clenched against tears that he could not, would not feel. Annoyed with himself, he unclenched it. “Well, that's wha' comes o' being human,” he heard himself say. “That's wha' comes o' getting old. I'm old myself. Middle-aged, and getting fat and . . .”

Lake turned around, and he saw plainly the gleam of starlight about Varden. His voice caught. He could see it. Of course he could. And he could see what had happened to Vanessa, too. Thank God or the Lady or whoever watched over such as made up his family that it took that taint of ancient blood to detect such things, otherwise . . .

Involuntarily, he looked up at the loft again. No. Never. Vanessa would have a chance. Maybe in a city somewhere, away from her father, away from reminders, even unconscious reminders, of another heritage and race, her symptoms might fade. She might never know what she was. She might never have to.

Yes, he could do that. He could do . . . something.

“I'm . . . old myself,” he repeated. “I suppose that's good. I'd have a hard time explaining endless youth as well as everything else.”

Varden had not moved. “Everything else?”

“Well . . . the stories, the rumors. They've followed me even here. And I've ne'er learned to sleep very well. People noticed that, too.” Lake scuffed at the rushes on the floor. “It's hard to get away from your birth . . . or your parents.”

Varden's young face turned pained. “
Lakei—
”

“Dan call me that.”

Varden lowered his gaze. “And do you hate me so much?”

Lake turned away, eyes stinging. “I dan hate you. If I hate anything at a', I hate what you di' to me. An' so I hate wha' I di' to Vanessa.”

“I am sorry.” Varden fell silent again, and when Lake looked up, he noticed that, in addition to the almost subliminal shadow of starlight that played about Varden, there was a hint of transparency to him, as though he hovered on the borders of existence.

He blinked, looked again. It was true. Roxanne was dead, and Varden, in accordance with the fate of his kind, was . . . fading . . .

“Cam sit down an' . . .” Lake's voice caught at the invitation as much as at his realization, but he pushed on through, “. . . an' warm yourself.”

Varden hesitated for a moment, then nodded and sat down on the bench near the hearth. Clad simply in the green and gray of the shadowed forest, he seemed to Lake a gleaming, wild thing, as out of place in this peasant dwelling as a fox. But the firelight only heightened the sense of the ephemeral about him. Hovering, Only hovering. And Roxanne was dead. Soon, very soon, only the heritage would remain.

Lake remained standing. Outside, the wind picked up, and the snow rattled on the wooden shutters.

“I stayed away because I knew your desires,” said Varden, and if he himself had noticed the transparency, he gave no sign. “I came because I gave in to my own. Roxanne is . . .” The starlight in his eyes was troubled by grief, “Roxanne is gone. There are but four of us left in the world. I . . .”

He bent his head. Lake could not find the tears. Varden could.

“And so you wanted to see me,” said Lake.

“It is . . . so. I wanted to see you, to . . . to know that life continues. Roxanne and Charity speak of the mystery of the corn, the dry head of seed which appears dead, but which grows into new life. I need that hope now. So, I believe, do we all at this time of fading. So I wanted to see—”

“You wan' to know about Vanessa.”

Varden nodded. “I do. I looked. I have seen.”

“I was afraid you'd do that.”

Abruptly, the light in Varden's eyes turned angry, defiant. “Why? Do you not think that I care?”

Lake fought with his own anger, the burst of temper that would have done no good. How could one rage against what had already been done. Roxanne had loved Varden. Other people had loved . . . others. Lake's heritage was shared by many: how was it that he found the temerity to complain? “My other children—girls and boys both—they dan see it. Whatever they've got from you is hidden. An' that's good. But Vanessa: she's . . . taken after me . . . an' . . .”

He whirled suddenly on Varden. “Dan it bother you? Dan it touch you? No . . . it can't, I guess. You're down there i' Saint Brigid wi' people wha look at you wi' belief an' dan hate you. An' you're fading anyway: soon you'll na ha' to worry about anything.” Varden looked away quickly, but Lake continued. “But Vanessa and the rest, and their children, and their children's children . . . now and again it's going to show up in them, and they'll ha' to fight wi' it, and they'll either deny it, or go mad, or get burned or . . . or . . .” His hands were shaking furiously, and he clenched them and thrust them into the pockets of his overtunic. “Or they'll ha' it wake up i' them, and then one day, if they've enough o' it, they wan't be human anymore. An' then it'll be all the same for 'em. They'll die anyway.”

Varden did not look up. “And do you wish that I had not loved your mother?”

“I . . .” How much did Varden's kind feel? Did they bleed? Of course they did. The Inquisition had demonstrated that over and over again. But could they bleed inside? Could they feel that day-to-day gnawing that could turn every hour into a new trial, every careless word into a pang of fear? Lake did not know.

But Varden was weeping silently now: a grief too deep for utterance, a sorrow that struck its roots down into the infinite ages of the past. Did he feel? Of course he did.

“Forgive me,” said Lake.

Varden shook his head. “It is I who should ask forgiveness. I have troubled you. That was not my intent. It is not the intent of our—” Instinctive courtesy made him catch himself. “Of my people.”

“We've needed t' talk,” said Lake heavily, “if only t' shout at one another. I guess we've both known that for a long time.”

Varden nodded.

“You want to know about Vanessa.”

“Tell me. Please.”

“Why? Wha' can you do for her?”

“I would protect her.”

The transparency made a mockery of Varden's words. Lake glared at him. “You can't protect her. You can't do anything for her.”

Shadowed and glimmering in the dusk left by the low fire, Varden took a deep breath. “Tell me.”

“She's . . . different.” Lake spoke softly, unwillingly, as though his utterance might make more real an already too real fact. “The other children, they grew up, married, started families. Charlotte wa' the last. She's up in Furze now wi' a hat maker, an' doing well. Anthony lives a few fields awa'. He's the eldest, ha' children of his own, and Baron Paul waived the inheritance fees: when I die, he'll take my fields wi'out cost or question.” He stared moodily into the fire. “All o' them, all quite normal. And then . . . Vanessa.”

Varden leaned forward, listening.

“She wa' strange from the beginning,” Lake went on, just as softly, just as unwillingly. “Even when she wa' barely talking, she spoke o' things that set the priest to crossing hi'self. She'd go an' play with the river as though it were another child, and she'd talk to birds like she thought they'd answer.” Above, in the loft, he heard his daughter stir, cry out softly in her sleep, fall silent again. “We tried to ignore it, but it kept getting worse, and now . . .” He shook his head. “It's as if she in't really one o' us.”

Varden's starlit eyes were intent, fixed. “What do you do about it, Lake?”

“Wha' am I supposed to do?” Lake shrugged helplessly. “Foster it? It's as though she's old and young at once. She says strange things, asks odd questions. She's always talking about the patterns—”

“The Dance.”

“She calls it the patterns. She tells people what's going to happen. She's ne'er wrong. But she dan talk much to me. I can't say but that I dan let her.”

Varden looked alarmed. With a guilty glance at the loft, Lake sat down, leaned towards him, spoke earnestly. “I grew up i' Saint Brigid,” he said. “They tolerated such things there. It's different now, I'm sure, but of all the Free Towns, Saint Brigid probably still tolerates them.”

Varden nodded. “They do.”

“They even tolerated Ma, so long as she wa' . . . discreet.”

“They did. And they love Charity.”

Lake shook his head. “I couldn't stand it i' Saint Brigid. E'eryone knew, an' so I ran awa'. I wanted to be . . . human. I wanted to fit in. I din't want people pointing at me, whispering to one another.
There he goes,
they'd say.
There he is, the Elf-child. One o' us, and yet not.
I ran awa' from that, came to Furze Hamlet here, settled down. I learned the ways, married, had children . . . and now . . . now it's all cam back on me, and it's put us all in danger.”

“Does the priest trouble you?” Varden was keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Lake grimaced. “Bonnerel is a good man. At first he spoke o' it as some kind of holy vision . . . like Clare or Hildegard. But he's always been uneasy about what he's heard about me, and he's frightened by what he sees in Vanessa, because she really in't anything like Clare or Hildegard. He's getting more frightened, too, an' he might just do something sa'day.” He passed a hand across his moist brow. Someday? Any day. “I can't blame him. She's like sa'thing out o' the forest.”

“Vanessa is as human as you.”

“Aye, Varden. Tha's it exactly. As human as me.” Lake felt the anger rising again. Varden could talk of comfort, could mumble all the reassuring words that he wanted, but that did not change in the slightest the fact that Lake could not look into his daughter's eyes without having his own denials and fears thrown into his face like a bucket of hot pitch. “Tell me, now. How human am I? How much starlight do you see in me? What kind o' fading does such as I face?”

If Lake's words had stung, Varden gave no sign. “What do you intend to do for her?” he said.

Lake stood up, folded his arms, hung his head. “God know. I dan. I'll think of sa'thing, though. What wi' the schism and all, the Church is turning bad. Gregory set the Inquisition loose on sorcery some years back, and so I'm ha'way expecting . . .” He shrugged. He did not want to say it. Someday. Any day.

But Varden was shaking his head. “The Inquisition has attempted before to make inroads into Adria. It was last directed at the Free Towns, at the instigation of Baron Roger of Aurverelle. It failed.”

“That was before I was born,” said Lake, “an' people still talk about it as though it were some kind o' miracle. I suppose it was, too: Roger just turned around and let the Towns go. Just like tha'. But times have changed. E'en the Free Towns ha' changed. It could happen again. And in any case, it wan't take a crusade to claim Vanessa, only one frightened priest and a few woman-hating Dominicans.”