Spires of Spirit (9 page)

“It's fine wood,” said David. “Very fine wood. And I know exactly what to do with it. But I can't carve . . . I can't carve a crucifix . . .”

“Because of Alban?”

David dropped the bowl and shook his hands helplessly. “Because of what I see in the wood!”

But as he had opened his hands fully, something had fallen to the ground between him and Varden, and, looking down, he saw that a head of wheat, bright and golden, now lay on the lush meadow grass.

David stared at it. The stars above the plain. The woman. She had taken his hand.

He finally managed to lift his gaze. Varden was watching him. For a moment, the Elf examined the wheat, and then he met the carver's eyes once more. “What is in the wood, David?”

“The face and figure of a woman. It's too strong. I can't fight it.” He looked fearfully at the wheat. “I must be mad.”

“You are not mad,” said Varden. “You are simply upset and afraid.” He considered for a moment. “I hope you are not afraid of us.”

“Right now, Elves are the least of my fears.”

“I am glad to hear that.”

The wheat lay on the ground, palpably real. There had been n o wheat in his hand when he had left his house, and its presence now meant that he could not discount the woman he had seen as a mere hallucination brought on by his encounter with the oak tree. But that meant . . .

“What does the woman in the tree look like?” said Varden.

David did not even have to close his eyes to regain the vision. “Tall. Slender. Dark hair . . . gray eyes . . .”

David saw Varden start, saw his gaze flash back down at the head of wheat. He followed the Elf's eyes, noticed that the wheat was oddly intact and whole, even after having been crushed in his hand for several hours.

Varden spoke at last. “Have you ever . . . have you ever heard the name
Elthia
?”

David searched his memory. “I've . . . I've heard Andrew say it once or twice.”

“Just so. Andrew has learned a few things from us.”

David hesitated. It was difficult to ask the question because he was, again, afraid of the answer. “You say it's a name. Who is she?”

Varden smiled. “Everything,” he said. “You. Me. Talla and the others over there. The grass we sit on, the trees about us, the air we breathe. This fire, and this . . .” He reached out to the wheat, held it up. “. . . this head of wheat.”

David stared.

“She made us,” said Varden. “She
is
us. And upon occasion, She wears an outward form for our convenience.” The Elf looked past the wheat at David.

The carver hesitated again. He did not want to hear the answers to his questions, did not, in fact, want to ask them in the first place. “What . . . what does She look like?”

Varden was silent for a moment, then: “Tall. Slender. Dark hair . . . and gray eyes. She is robed in—”

“Blue and silver,” David said, shutting his eyes. The words continued as though of their own accord: “Her girdle is of amethysts and emeralds.” He felt the Elf put a hand on his shoulder, but he continued to speak. “Her hair . . .” he faltered, “is . . . is caught back on one side . . . with a . . . a . . . a . . . golden clasp . . .” His throat was constricting. “A-and the stars . . . they go on . . .”

“How do you know this?”

“. . . forever . . .”

“David?”

“I . . .” David put his hands to his face, covered his eyes.

“David, how? You saw all this in the tree?”

“I saw
Her
, Varden. In the forest. Just before you found me.” David's voice was tight, strained. He had seen . . . had met . . . “I wasn't in the forest anymore, and She was there. She made me look at Her, and She called me Her child. Then She kissed me and put . . . and . . . and . . . She must have put that wheat into my hand . . .” He wept. “Why is She doing this? Why is She tormenting me so?”

“Is She tormenting you?”

David dropped his hands. Varden was still holding the wheat.

“My sister,” said the carver, “is in danger. I can only save her if I carve a crucifix for Alban. I can't carve the crucifix because I see Her in the wood. You ask me if She's tormenting me. What say you, Varden?”

“As I recall, David, you could not carve a crucifix because you hated death. Why now do you blame my Lady?”

The wheat in Varden's hand glowed golden, embodying the harvest, the gathering in. David recalled the ripe fields, the hues of red and russet in the autumn leaves. It was death. Death given form and color. But then again . . .

“I don't blame Her,” he said, realizing that, given Varden's explanations, as much as the wheat embodied death, it also embodied
Elthia
, and that meant . . . “I only want to save Catherine.”

. . . that meant that . . .

“And deny death.” The Elf's statement was stark.

David pressed his lips together. “What do you know of death, Varden?” he said after a time. “As I recall, you and your people are immortal.”

“Immortal?” Varden smiled sadly. “Maybe. But we can be killed. And we have indeed been killed, as you well know. In any case, we are fading. Another century, perhaps two, and the Elves will be no more. Mortals cannot comprehend our ending.” He turned his gaze on David. “We face death in our own way, friend. And you?”

He shrugged. “I'm mortal. I'll die eventually.”

“You run from death,” Varden pressed. “You will not even carve a crypt to hold the bones of one who might have passed honorably from life.”

“You should see what they're doing with death these days, Varden.”

“I have seen.” The Elf held the wheat reverently. “They have turned death into a god. And they worship it. And you, David, have turned life into a god. And you worship it.”

“Life seems to me to be a better god than death.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” David was astonished that the Elf would respond in such a way. “Death is suffering. Death is pain.” And suddenly it came back to him, and the words tumbled out. “Death is your mother and father covered with boils and blotches in a strange city . . . and no one caring because the streets are already so choked with the dead that two more bodies don't make any difference. Death is a boy and girl wondering what happened to mama and papa, wondering what they're going to do now. Death is your sister entombing herself in a convent, because she thinks that's all she can do. Death . . . death . . . death is . . .” Suddenly, he was wandering once again through the plague-ravaged streets of Maris, and his eyes filled with tears and his voice fled.

Varden held him as he wept. And when at last David came to himself and to his present enough to raise his head, he saw in Varden's face a touch, an echo, of the face of Elthia, as though, through the being of this Elf, She was watching him.

“I know, David,” Varden said gently. “I know. But is that death . . . or merely the prelude to death? Your mother and father died, and their bodies rotted. But what about your parents themselves?”

“Yes . . . yes, that's true.” But his agreement was of the mind only. It held no savor of belief. “They're in Heaven, I suppose. But that doesn't change what I saw, and it doesn't change what Catherine and I went through.”

“True. It does not,” said Varden. He considered a moment. “I want to tell you something, David. You have loved life, and have honored it, and have recreated it in your art. I have seen your carvings. They are beautiful. An elven hand could not have done better. But though you love life, you have missed something important. Tell me, Carver,” he said, lifting the wheat and holding it before David's eyes. “Is this stalk of wheat alive or dead?”

David stared at it. The head was ripe, golden, but its color came only from its dryness, and its stalk had been severed. It was dead, and he was about to say so when he remembered that the seeds held within it were themselves alive, and would sprout into next year's crop, green and growing under the warm sun.

“Answer me, Carver.”

“It's . . .” In his mind's eye David saw the plowed fields, cleared and barren and with the first snows sifting down to cloak them in white. But they were full of seed. And the cold ground contained the dens of animals who would give birth during the winter. And if there were only an endless summer, what would happen? There would be no planting, and no harvest, no ripe melons, no golden wheat . . .

“Alive or dead, Carver?”

“It's . . . I don't know. It looks dead. Dry. But it's alive . . . I guess. Or else it has to die in order to make the seeds for the next crop.” He looked at Varden.

Varden looked right back at him. “Can you contemplate this,” he said, “and insist that death is evil?”

The Elf held the wheat out to him. Trembling, David took it in his own hand. The wheat seemed to shimmer with a light that hovered just at the edge of seeing. “I can't love death,” he said.

“Death does not ask to be loved,” said Varden. “It asks only that you do not run from it or deny it. Death comes in sorrowful ways, true, but there is sorrow in life also. I called the Lady
Elthia
. Her full name is
Elthia Calasiuove
: Bright Lady Shining with Clear Radiance. But She has another name, one that is yet longer, and in your tongue it would be Star of Light, Abyss of Darkness. Without light, darkness could not be seen, and in the absence of darkness, light would be unrecognizable. And so She is both. Totality. Completion. Wholeness.”

“Why . . . why did she come to me?”

“Have you not realized it yet? You have loved Her passionately in your own way, and you have given Her honor in your craft. You could not bring yourself to deny Her. You share much in common with our folk.”

“And Catherine?” David demanded. “All this is going to do her no good at all if Alban has his way. I want her safe. I don't care about fat priests, or wheat, or . . . or . . . or
anything
if Catherine is in danger.”

Varden held up a hand. “No harm will come to Catherine.”

“How can you say that?”

“I said—”

“I heard what you said!”

Varden simply looked at him, and David sensed the power that dwelt behind those starlit eyes. The thought of who and what he was talking to forced itself through his fear and anger.

“I'm . . . not afraid of you,” he said.

“That is well,” said the Elf quietly. “You have nothing to be afraid of. Alban, however . . .” He shook his head. 'It is not our nature to fight. Perhaps it was once, but no longer. Now, when the Albans of the world threaten us, we withdraw. In that withdrawal, we lose brothers, sisters. And then, sometimes, something happens that makes a particular withdrawal too costly, the thing threatened too precious.” For a moment, he looked terribly haunted, and David wondered what friend—or, perhaps, lover—Varden had lost. “So it is now. I said that Catherine will be safe. She will be. The Lady's favor to you will not come to nothing. It cannot. I will not let it. Carve the tree as you see fit, David.”

“But if I do, then . . .”

Varden held his gaze again, and again David sensed the power in him, sensed a deep loss that years, numberless years, had not diminished in the slightest.

“Do what you must do,” said the Elf.

***

The next morning, Varden guided David back to his house. The paths they took contorted themselves in odd ways, ways that the carver had never seen before, and he was not overly surprised to find that the oak he had run into the night before had vanished.

Varden looked at the place where the tree had been, but said nothing about it. He was strangely quiet this morning, and when they reached the door of David's house, he broke his silence only long enough to wish the carver good morning and good luck before he disappeared back into the trees, his gray cloak fading into the autumn hues of the forest.

Some inward premonition made the carver nervous as he fumbled at the latch, and when he swung the door wide, he nearly cried out: for a moment he thought the Lady Herself was waiting for him in the middle of his workshop. But it was only the tree, the dead tree, his vision now possessing it utterly and telling him what it should be, what it
had
to be.

Silently, he went to his workbench and picked up his tools. No preliminary sketches, no chalkmarks, nothing but his inner eye and the compelling presence of the dead—yet living—wood before him.

He was dimly aware that his arms were raising the mallet and chisel . . .

The tree was alive beneath his hands. It had stood in the forest, spreading leafy branches in the sun for countless years, and then it had died, and summer heat and winter ice had dried it and frozen it . . . and yet now it lived again. Now it seized some inner part of him, pulled him into itself, folded itself about him, welcoming as it did so the strokes of his mallet and the cuts of his chisel as if its former death in the forest had been only a prelude to this infinitely more glorious rebirth.

David felt it. At once, he was carver and carved, artisan and art, releaser and released. He, too, felt the blows of the mallet, felt the fetters of dross imprisonment falling from his limbs. Life poured into his wooden arms, and starlight and sunlight mingled in his soul, blasting through layers of dry paralysis, twining through and revitalizing him. Before his eyes, he watched the wood change, watched himself change, and as he carved, he felt himself standing in a sea of stars, their light shining brilliant in the darkness, while about him the sun whirled, the earth turned, and the moon waxed.

He did not stop. He could not stop. Dragged by vision, but dragged willingly, he worked without pause. The face grew. His face grew. He no longer knew who he was, did not care. She was looking at him, he was looking at himself. Clear-eyed, bright-browed, arm upraised as if calling the essence of life to Her side. She took shape even as She gave him his own form. Carving Her belt, he was carving amethyst and emerald, he was carving gems, but it did not seem at all remarkable to him. Nor did it seem at all strange that Her robe—blue and silver just as he had seen it—glowed under his hands as surely as if he were working cloth.

And three days later, when he had finished, he sat on the floor before the statue, hungry, exhausted, and shivering . . . with a flood of peace flowing through him. The vision was reality, the compulsion fulfilled, and the just-risen sun was sending a shaft of golden light in through the east windows of his house, gilding the walls and workbench, wrapping the statue in a hazy glory.