Strands of Starlight (12 page)

“Are you afraid?” said Varden.

“The last time I entered this forest, I wound up wishing I hadn't.”

“Be at peace. You are safe here.”

“Where are we going?”

“I want to show you something.”

His courtesy was impeccable. She was suspicious. “Is this how Jaques Alban disappeared?”

Varden blinked. “Alban? Why do you speak of him?”

His words might have concealed nothing . . . or everything. Miriam shrugged. “You said Roxanne calls today Beltaine. What do you call it?”

“
Arae a Circa
,” he said. “Day of Renewal.”

“What renewal?”

“I will show you. Come. Please.”

After a moment, she nodded. The trees surrounded them, the path twisted and turned, and the ground was spotted with shadow and sunlight. The air was alive with spring, scented with the odor of leaf and blossom.

And Miriam sensed the bond between Varden and the forest.
His
forest, she might have said. Tree and flower, stone and earth, he was a part of them all, and they of him. His garb of gray and green, foreign as it was in the town, fit in among the mossy trunks and rippling streams, and if he touched a bush or a branch, it was with the air of greeting family and friends.

A sparrow hawk dropped out of the sky as they crossed a meadow, and it swooped across the grass and lit in a tree. “Blessings,” said Varden, and the bird nodded its head, then mounted into the sky with quick wing beats.

The path rose slowly, ascending a gentle slope that gradually turned into a small hill. At the top was a cluster of beech and poplar trees.

The morning was well along when they finished their climb. Miriam gasped at the sight that lay below and before her, for on one side of the hill, the trees fell away to give a clear view to the northeast. Malvern Forest stretched off for miles, an apparently endless sea of tossing, gleaming leaves, the young sun glinting and shimmering in the greenery and the fresh, morning breeze singing through the myriad branches.

Spring was at its peak, ripe with the newness of a reborn world. This was a time of flower and leaf, but not of fruit. The harvest was still only an expectation, still merely potential. The world reveled in its youth.

Varden stood beside Miriam. “We call the day
Arae a Circa
, that is, Day of Renewal. This is a time when new paths are chosen, new decision are made, changes in life are contemplated.” Miriam turned to him and stared: his already feminine face had softened even more. He looked like a woman.

The sunlight wove about him in a shimmering aura. He stooped to pick a flower, straightened, and proffered it to her. She took it, but she held it uncomfortably, as though it were a symbol of something she was not certain she wanted.

“You've brought me to holy ground,” she said.

“Holy?” said Varden. His face still held the glow of womanhood. “This place is cherished by my people. Perhaps that is the same thing.”

“Why are we here?”

“Renewal,” he said. “I come at this time of year to find it, and I thought that, maybe, you might also.”

She lifted her eyes, but this time she looked beyond the forest. Malvern did not go on forever. In the direction she faced, it gave way to the dairy lands of Adria. To the north was Hypprux, and Aloysius Cranby . . . and many memories. Farther was Maris, where she was born. Memories again.

And somewhere out there walked the man she wanted to kill, who was, in a sense, emblematic of her entire life of violation and pain.

“There's only one way I'm going to find renewal,” she said.

“How will you do that, Miriam? Are you skilled with a sword?”

“I can learn.”

“Can you not forget?”

She nearly snarled at him. Forget? Forget eighteen years? Forget her entire existence? “No.”

“Can you not leave it in the past, go on and not look back?”

“
No!
” The word bounced off the surrounding trees and fell into silence. “Somehow . . . I'm going to find him and kill him. There's no renewal for me until then.”

“My lady—”

“
Dammit, Varden: he took my soul. I want it back
.”

“Will killing him restore your soul?”

The aura shone about him, shading into hues of blue and silver. Miriam was struck by the thought of the powers he wielded, and she felt cold at the thought of what she contemplated asking. “You helped me before,” she said. “Will you help me now?”

“I am not sure that there is help for me to give. What kind of help could I give you?”

She nearly asked him, then and there, but she stifled the words. Instead she said: “You want me to give up? Should I settle down, Varden? Find a nice man to marry a nasty little woman with scarred legs and a heart to match? You touched my mind. Do you think I can? Do you?”

His voice was so soft as to be inaudible, but she saw his lips move. “I do not.”

She turned her back on the endlessly rolling forest, dropped the flower. “Then don't expect me to find renewal out here. For me, renewal comes at the tip of a sword.”

“Perhaps it will, Miriam.” The voice startled her: it did not sound at all like Varden. She looked. He was wrapped in thought, the aura still bright about him, his garments no longer green and gray, but shining blue and silver. She seemed to see beyond him then, to a grassy plain that lay bathed in starlight.

The aura faltered, shifted, faded. “I am sorry to inconvenience you,” Varden said simply.

“Thanks for trying to help,” she said. “You shouldn't, though. Not this way, at least.”

“It was something I had to do.”

“Why?”

“I told you,” he said as they descended the hill. “When I healed you, I felt what you feel. I know your pain. This is how my people deal with the year's accumulated sorrow. We renew. We restore ourselves.”

“So you've forgotten all about it now?”

“I have not. I have put it into perspective. Pain strikes, and it departs. Winter is followed by spring, which leads to summer. All things must pass, even the Elves.”

“Even my anger?”

“Even that, unless the world is changed.”

“It'll change.”

Varden was silent.

They continued. The sun climbed toward the zenith, and the day grew warm. When they came in sight of the town, Miriam, saw that buntings had been unfurled from the balconies and towers. Green, red, blue, they flapped and rippled in the breeze. “What's going on?”

“The first of May,” said Varden. “Roxanne honors her Goddess, the Elves renew and offer homage to the Lady, and human folk praise the holiness of the Virgin.” He smiled as he looked at the pennants and streamers. “And who is to say? All three might be the same.”

“You're very open-minded.”

“Is there another way?” he said gently.

His words irritated her. “Tell me,” she said. “Were you so damned accepting of everything when Jaques Alban was priest?”

“It was difficult at time.”

“Or impossible?”

“It was difficult, no more,” said Varden. “Nothing is impossible: there are merely differing degrees of probability. Alban was a trial, to be sure. He threatened Andrew, and he attempted to exhort a crucifix from David.”

“What did he do?” They had halted at the edge of the forest.

The Elf looked at her as though he guessed the reason for her questions, but he answered. “Andrew was our first friend in Saint Brigid. I helped him out of some . . . difficulty. We grew to love him and his family.”

“Was that when he and Elizabeth adopted Charity?”

Varden looked uneasy. “It was about that time,” he said. “A year later, Alban came to know of our friendship and threatened Andrew with greater excommunication—he was, of course, a friend of Aloysius Cranby and could arrange such things—unless Andrew contributed his work to the building of the new church. Andrew was going to capitulate, but Francis the smith threatened Alban in return. The smith is not a religious man. I imagine that if the Church's devil came to his house, Francis would beat him senseless with his heaviest hammer. Which is, I believe, what he threatened to do to Alban. Alban dropped his threat.”

Miriam sensed that she was near something. “What did you do for Andrew? In the beginning, I mean. Did it have anything to do with Charity?”

Varden simply looked at her for a minute. The light in his eyes flickered. “Do you love Charity?” he said.

Miriam shrugged. “She's a nice girl.”

“I think you care more than that.”

“All right: yes, I like her. She's been very kind to me.”

“I will say this,” said the Elf. “We helped Andrew, and Andrew helped Charity. I will say no more.”

You don't have to. That's enough . . . for now
. Aloud, she said: “So what about Alban and David? Francis said something about it.”

Miriam felt Varden's glance as though it were a physical touch. For a moment, he examined her, and she began to fear that she had pressed her questioning too far.

But he appeared to reach some decision. “Once again, Alban wanted work for his church. A crucifix. David is famous throughout the land for his woodcarving—”

“Yes,” said Miriam. “I've seen the statue in the church.”

“Have you really?”

There was an odd tone in his voice. She could not fathom it. A silence grew. “It's . . . it's the Virgin . . . isn't it?”

“I suppose it could be.” Varden smiled softly and went on. “David has a sister in a convent to the north. Alban threatened her.”

“But David didn't carve the crucifix.”

“He did not. Alban disappeared about that time, and his threats went with him.”

“Very convenient.”

Varden merely looked at her.

“Alban makes trouble, and he vanishes,” said Miriam. “Just like that. And Roxanne mentioned an old hag—the Leather Woman—who cast spells on villagers. And she disappeared. Just like that. It sounds like Saint Brigid has become a very happy town since the Elves arrived.”

“Would you have me answer any other questions, Miriam?” Again, he sounded as though he knew why she was asking.

Again she was tempted, very tempted, to voice her desire. But no, not yet. Too soon. She was now more confident that her suspicions about Alban were true, but she had to be sure. And there was also the question of the Leather Woman. Charity? What could an old hag, long vanished, have to do with Charity?

In answer, a thought came into her head, but she dismissed it as foolish, almost insane.

Varden was looking at her. Examining her. Sizing her up.

***

Varden floated among the stars.

He had but to stretch out his mind a little to feel the limits of the universe. The moon was there, and the sun, and seas of stars that floated in the void like vast whirlpools. Saint Brigid was there, too, and he cast his awareness through the streets of the town, staying in the present, ignoring for the moment what could happen, what might come to be.

The streets were bright with torches and lamps, and the balconies were hung with tapestries and hangings. Andrew and Elizabeth ran hand in hand toward the common, pausing, as though they were newly wed, for a long kiss in the darkness of a porch. On the common, a cooking fire had been built, and Kay stirred a huge pot of stew, tasting it with a beatific smile on his face, snapping his fingers with delight when words failed him. Francis played the viele, and people danced; and Michael had become a bit of a juggler, and he did not drop the balls too often.

Varden touched a familiar house, entered. Roxanne was donning elven garb, tucking the gray breeches into soft boots and belting her tunic loosely. Her dark hair fell in waves and curls. He smiled. She felt his presence.

“Varden?”

Here, beloved.

“I'm almost ready. Are you not coming?”

I will be along, Sana. I have some work to do.

“Will you be long?”

Not long at all.
He touched her cheek, and she smiled.

“I'll meet you at the edge of the forest.”

He kissed her, and then his awareness left her house. Silently, he felt along the street and took a turning, noting as he did that the folk of Saint Brigid were dancing a long dance on the common. Francis played his viele, and Harry had joined in on a musette. Couple by couple, the villagers spun down the green and back again, split apart and rejoined. Francis whooped.

Only the real for now, not the potential.

A star called him, bright blue white and shining, but he continued down the street and slid into Kay's house. Down the hall. An oaken door. Miriam lay on her bed, eyes unclosed, wrapped in a comforter. Her face was hard, and Varden saw the pain of the past and the present in it, as well as the massive horror that had come to dominate both and thereby threaten the future. He almost turned away to seek reassurance among the stars, but he stayed, watching Miriam, reliving the rape, stepping through it moment by moment, possibility by possibility.

He explored the alternatives, followed the strands of probability that led away from the event, found that most led to madness, the rest to death. This present, this present alone, with Miriam lying in Kay's house wrapped in a comforter, brooding on hate and revenge, had been the only future that continued for any length of time. There was meaning in that.

He twisted his consciousness, looked into the future. He did not know fear, but what he saw there was unsettling, for the lattices of the possible blurred into the infinite and unpredictable.

He turned back to the young woman on the bed. He knew what she wanted, knew also that she would eventually ask for it, but did not know what he would say in return.

Someone knocked on the front door. Miriam flinched. Varden saw the cascade of memories: soldiers, armed men, shouting people, the dungeon at Hypprux, the blades. . . .

He pulled away from her thoughts, filtered through the wall, and saw Charity enter. “Miriam,” she called.

Miriam did not stir.

Charity ran down the hall and knocked at the door. “Miriam.”

“Yes,” said the healer at last. “I'm here.”

Charity threw the door open. “Come on, Miriam. Everyone's having a good time on the common, and you're lying in bed.”