Strands of Starlight (33 page)

“We will be able to leave by noon,” he said. “We need not delay.”

“How long to Hypprux?”

“Three and one half days,” the Elf responded.

Below her, there were dark stains in the street. Charity's blood. “He could have turned,” said Miriam. “He could have turned and still made the gate.”

“That is so.”

“He rode her down deliberately.”

“True.”

She pushed herself away from the sill and faced him. “Let's go kill some humans,” she said.

The Elf's grief was evident, but he did not say anything. He reached out as though to touch her cheek, but appeared to think better of it. He bowed and departed, his feet noiseless on the stairs.

Miriam knelt by the side of Charity's bed, took her hand, and pressed it to her lips for a moment. The shimmer about the witch was plain to her. So much starlight they had put into such a small woman! And what would happen to her now?

She noticed that Charity's eyes were open.

“Miriam.”

“Cara.”

Charity hovered on the borders of sleep. “Try, Miriam. Please try.” Her eyes closed.

Andrew looked at Miriam, puzzled. “Try?”

Miriam nodded, rose. “Try to love,” she said simply, and her voice broke. Her feet, though, were as silent as Terrill's as she went down to the street.

***

Terrill tapped at the door of the priest's house just at noon. He was wearing his gray cloak and, as usual, his sword. Kay, who had answered the door, bowed and gestured him in, and after considering a moment, the Elf entered.

He found Miriam in her room, buckling on her sword. “Be at peace,” he said.

Her words in Andrew's house had pained Terrill, had even frightened him, and she found herself examined again, this time in great earnestness. “Be at peace, Terrill,” she said reassuringly. “The hand of the Lady be on you.”

Terrill was still tense. “And on you.”

“I'm ready.”

“It is well. Everything is prepared. And I can tell you that Cara is well. She is awake.” He smiled slightly. “And she is very hungry.”

Miriam smiled also.

He turned to the play of leaf shadows on the window. “She can see the stars.”

Miriam had been bending over her pack, but she straightened. “Will she . . . do you think . . .?”

“I cannot say. It is too early. Much will depend upon her own reactions and inclinations. Varden could tell more, but he is not here.”

In her mind, Miriam saw Malvern Forest stretching north and east, league after league. She saw the road that ran along its western flank, bare dirt in some places, ancient Roman pavement in others. “Cranby has a horse.”

“My brother is quick,” said Terrill, “and he knows the paths of the forest.”

“What will he do?”

Terrill was silent for a time. “Varden has his choices.”

Miriam picked up the pack and slung it over her shoulder. “So do we.” She stood beside Terrill at the door and again felt his earnest, almost fearful analysis. She laid a hand on his arm. “I'll try, Terrill, if only for Cara's sake. But it's not easy.”

The Elf bowed deeply to her in the manner of his people. “The horses are waiting.”

“Horses?”

“We will need them. Mika does not have our endurance, and we may need bursts of speed that two legs alone cannot give us.”

Kay was waiting at the front door, wringing his hands. He had not slept the night before, and his eyes were red from both fatigue and the death he had seen that day. It pained Miriam to see him suffering, and she embraced him. “I'll be all right,” she said. “I'll be back, don't worry.”

He lifted his eyes to her. “Fair One . . . I . . .” He could say no more, and he simply hugged her. Miriam could feel that he was weeping.

Fair One.
There had always been distance between them. Kay did not know hate. He did not know the kind of fear that made life a furtive hell. All that was enough to separate their worlds. But since her transformation, and growing as the months passed, there was something else, too.
Fair One.

“Kay,” she said. “It's still me. I'm still Miriam.”

He peered into her face. “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

It was not quite a lie for either of them.

Terrill's voice was factual. “It is time.”

Miriam touched Kay's head. “You haven't asked,” she said, “but you need this. May the hand of the Lady be on you, Kay, now and always.” It was as much of a blessing as she knew, and she kissed him and followed Terrill out into the noon sunlight. She turned back once. “You'll take care of Esau, won't you?”

Kay stood at the door, a slight figure in a black soutane. Almost boyish. But his eyes . . . “I will.”

Terrill had continued on, and when she caught up with him, he extended his hand, and she took it.

***

Evening. The road lay blank and bare. The sky was tinged with rose and red in the west, with violet and indigo at the zenith. Varden waited at the edge of the trees, watching the distant mounted figure that trotted steadily northward: a part of the pattern that shifted—incrementing, decrementing—with each breath, each thought.

The future promised little hope for the Free Towns, but there would be none at all of Aloysius Cranby lived. The bishop carried north with him the knowledge that Saint Brigid was frequented by Elves, that his companions had been killed by an elven blade, that the priest's housekeeper was of that race herself. Any one of those facts was enough for the Inquisition, and the combination thereof would bring the baronial armies to the Free Towns as surely as the warm summer sun brought bees to the flowers of the fields.

But if the bishop were no more, then there would be time, for his lieutenants would battle for power and alliances would have to be made. The Elf saw that the most probably future was one in which the Free Towns had a reprieve of only a few months, but much could happen in a few months. Anything was possible. There were only differing degrees of probability.

But he could still see Charity lying in the street, her head crushed.

He put his face in his hands, trying to banish the vision, attempting to find in himself the love that he needed this evening. Anger had given him nothing. Hate had emptied his heart. He had to love.

When he looked up, the man on horseback was much closer, but the horse had been ridden too hard, and it was tired. Its head hung as it slowed from a trot to a walk despite the urgings of its rider.

Varden stayed under the trees, looked at his hands. He had not killed in over three hundred years, not since that terrible night when he and his brother had descended upon the cluster of farmhouses near the town of Aurverelle, driven by anger to precise and exacting butchery. Their swords had flashed, and when they were finished, they had returned to the clearing in the forest where the tall, slender body lay, her red-gold hair cut short by the humans who had called her demon, her features nearly unrecognizable.

With Talla and Natil, they built a pyre with their bare hands, taking wood from the forest that the trees had given up willingly and laying it tenderly about the remains. A bolt of summer lightning had kindled a small blaze in the forest, and with that flame they fired the wood.

Natil laid her harp on the pyre, and as the fire grew, brightening, consuming the wood and the body, the instrument suddenly cracked, strings snapping loudly, sparks showering through the night air as bright as stars.

When it was done, they had scattered the ashes. Varden had put away his sword. Natil had not touched a harp again for many years.

Aloysius Cranby was very close now.

Who was this tall, slender stranger, then, come now with red-gold hair and eyes the color of emerald? Why, when Varden had manipulated the energies of the universe to reshape the body of the ill-tempered healer girl, had the strands of starlight woven and interlocked themselves into a matrix that had given her such a form as she now wore? Was it merely accident brought on by his own memories and regrets?

He could not believe that. Nothing happened by chance. But whatever purpose Miriam fulfilled, it lay beyond his comprehension, lost in the interweaving of past and future that contained everything: Saint Brigid, the Free Towns, Adria, the Elves. . . .

Even Aloysius Cranby, bishop of Hypprux.

Varden stepped out when Cranby was a few yards away. The bishop saw him, drew sword, spurred his horse.

But the animal was tired, and Varden simply ducked to one side and lashed out with a foot. The bishop topples, falling heavily into the dust.

Varden saw the potentials shift. There was always the chance that Cranby would give up his plans, his ambition. The chance was absurdly faint, but it had to be offered.

“Your Excellency,” he said. “War is not good for your people. There will be much suffering. Your own Savior preached peace. I most humbly ask you to reconsider your plans regarding the Free Towns.”

Aloysius Cranby stood up, lifted his sword. “You should know about my Savior. You tempted Him in the desert.”

“I did not. You know my people have only brought healing. Why—”

Cranby moved in, slashing. The Elf rolled out of the way. “All the killing could end here, Your Excellency. Your people and mine could live in peace, without fear. I ask only that you reconsider your plan.”

“The Inquisition is here for a purpose, Satan.” The bishop's voice was a flat monotone, his words a pronouncement. “If the Free Towns are a part of your unholy empire, then they must perish. You killed my companions, and now you want to kill me. But I have a sword, I am unafraid, and I am strong in my faith. You cannot win.”

Varden listened. He could not say for sure whether the churchman believed his litany of condemnation or not. Perhaps it was only something to believe in, a depiction of a sure, definite opponent in a world that had none, an objective that gave some purpose to lives that were not so much lived as endured.

Sadness. Sadness in the world of men. Sadness in Aloysius Cranby. Varden felt the human pity stir in his own heart. Sadness in Varden of Malvern.

“I am sorry, Your Excellency.” Here it was, happening once more in spite of his vows, his promises, his sorrow.
Arae a Circa.
Day of Renewal. It was indeed the first of May, and his hands were seconds away from blood.

Cranby moved again, swinging, doubling back quickly, his sword flashing in the twilight. Varden saw his moves, knew what was planned even before the bishop himself did. He simply stepped aside. “Forgive me, Aloysius,” he said softly.

“
Damn you!
” Cranby screamed, but his words were cut short. Varden slid in behind him, hands blurring. The sound of two dull cracks hung in the still night air as the bishop's spine snapped.

The horses went on its way and the road was once again deserted save for a solitary corpse that stared with unseeing eyes at the evening sky. The first stars began to appear.

Bright flowers graced the formal gardens of the Chateau. The weather had been warm since early spring, and roses were blooming alongside hyacinths, tulips were brilliant and stalwart, hawthorn glistened like coral.

Roger of Aurverelle poked idly at the base of a daffodil with the toe of his boot. The effeminacy of this city still rankled him. It was all very well to build a keep, or a place, or a chateau. Such things were necessary. But then to ornament them like drabs tricked out in gutter finery . . .

He had given up complaining about it, or about the courtiers and the sycophants with their perfumes and their fine clothes and their pretty manners. Such things would change. He was chamberlain now, and with the support of the baronage that would come from a successful conquest of the Free Towns, he would eventually be able to do as he wished.

“Lord Chamberlain . . .” The voice was a cultured blend of the urbane and the ironic. Roger looked down at Brendan a'Lowins, marshal of Hypprux, who held a letter cylinder in his pale hands.

“What do you want, mouse?” Roger hated the man. Brendan's long hair was elaborately curled and perfumed, and the drooping mustache he had cultivated seemed less a mark of anything masculine than a faintly humorous incongruity.

“A letter from Saint Blaise, messire.” As though to distance himself as much as he could from this rough forester who had dressed himself up first as a baron, then as chamberlain of the city, the marshal had cultivated the very precise accent and dialect of Maris. “One of the bishop's archers delivered it to the porter, and as I was on my way to see you, I brought it with me.”

Poison, though Roger. Poison in my food someday. A woman's trick. That's what the likes of this waterfly has in mind. As if anything could spring from his loins except cabbages and eels. “Is it from Cranby?”

“I believe so.”

Roger took the case and shoved it into his belt. If it was from Cranby, then it would be in Latin, and he would have to get a priest to read it. The bishop appeared to enjoy reminding him of his comparative illiteracy.

He looked up at the cloudless sky, longing to be away from the city for a time. He could head south, down to one of the peasant hamlets, and he could find a woman there. That was what he needed: his leathers, his sword, a woman. She would have good solid earth under her thighs, and she would know what it felt like to b e covered by a real man. Oh, she would scream and fight, to be sure, but he would have his way. He always had his way.

His shoulder throbbed. No, not always. There had been one occasion . . .

“The archer said something about the good bishop traveling south with his friars,” said the marshal.

“Whatever the good, stupid bishop wants,” said Roger. “Just so long as the good, stupid bishop is back here for the mustering. We need him.”

“Just so, messire.”

Contemplating the marshal, Roger could think only of mice. “Get away from me. Go attend to your embroidery.”

The marshal flared delicately. “My Lord Chamberlain, I am an officer of this city.”

Roger was about to laugh in his face when a flash of movement caught his eye. It was a young woman with hair like flax. She wore a gown of pale blue and was wandering through the gardens reading a book. Her head was bent low, as though she were trying to ignore her surroundings.