Strands of Starlight (38 page)

Terrill rolled over and looked down at her. “I . . . I pray not.”

Right now, she did not want to kill, she did not want to hate, she did not want to fear. Simple existence was her goal, and indeed, she had attained it. “You pray,” she said. “For her or for me?”

He did not meet her eyes. He was resting on his elbows, and he stared off at the forest a thousand yards away.

“You lost your beloved, didn't you?”

His lips moved soundlessly for a moment. Then: “She was murdered before my eyes. I could not save her.”

“And you . . .”

“My brother and I planned and executed vengeance. We were most exacting. Afterward, Varden set aside his sword forever. And I retained mine.”

“Forever?”

“Until I can find renewal.” He put up his hands and rested his face in them. “She was tall, beautiful. She could heal, and she could sing. We grew together over the years. We were inseparable. And then one day we were captured by men of Aurverelle. We were unarmed. They had their sport with us.”

Miriam went cold. “Did they . . .?”

“That,” he said into his hands, “and worse. And then they killed her slowly. I managed to escape only after she was dead. I bore her body away with me.”

“But you went back.”

“I did. And Varden and I slew them.” He dropped his hands, looked down at her again. “Her name was Mirya.”

“Terrill . . .”

“Now you know why I counsel you against your actions. I have slain in anger, and I am no happier as a result.”

“And if you hadn't acted, how would you feel?”

He did not reply.

She touched his cheek. “I'm a healer.”

“My wounds are beyond your powers.”

“I care about you, Terrill.”

His eyes were misty. He seemed to look beyond her. And she knew now what he was seeing. “And I about you, Mirya.”

Gently, she reached up, took his head between her hands, and brought his lips down to hers.

***

Just as daybreak, they bathed in a swift stream that passed near the forest on its way east to join the great River Bergren. The water had tumbled down from the heights of the Aleser and retained the chill of its origins in the glacial melt. Gasping from the cold, mildly chagrined at having forgotten her hairbrush, Miriam sat on the bank and dried her hair with her fingers as she watched Terrill standing motionless and naked in the stream, tracking fish and, she imagined, talking to them.

The day was warming up when they rode north. Miriam was wearing, once again, her brown shift, and Terrill was in the garb of a country man, a broad straw hat on his head. Clad as he was, his elven face looked ridiculously young, and they both laughed about the children being allowed out on the road.

At sext, they heard the crisp peal of distant church bells. They rested the animals at the side of the road and lunched on bread, wine, and cheese. Hypprux lay under a hazy cloud in the distance, and they could smell the odor the the retting pools, dank and pungent. Terrill wrinkled his nose. “I cannot understand how anyone would want to live in that stench.”

Miriam was looking at the city. She had seen it in much this same way when she had first journeyed toward it on her way down from Maris, skirting the shores of Lake Onella, sleeping in ditches and in the decaying wrecks of abandoned outbuildings. She had been fleeing persecution in the north then, living with the constant taste of fear. Now she was returning, changed.

She shook her head ruefully. “It's the seat of power for this part of the land.”

“The seat of
their
power, maybe.”

“Do you know the city, Terrill?”

He gazed at it with a sense of weariness. “In a way that is of no help to us. I visited it once.”

“I don't understand.”

“It was centuries ago. The city was much smaller then, and less preoccupied with power and wealth. There was another time also, but that was before it was even called Hypprux, when its folk lived in houses built on log pilings set into the river.”

The idea seemed outlandish to her. “When was that?”

He thought for a moment. “About thirty centuries before the establishment of the church.” He took a drink of wine from the skin and passed it to her. “You know Hypprux much better than I. Tell me.”

She picked up a stick and drew on the ground. “Hypprux is built on either side of the River Tordion. It's also surrounded by a wall.”

“We will have to scale the wall.”

“Is that wise?” She drank. “Wouldn't it be better to enter the city through the gate, watch the Chateau for a day or so, and find out the ways of the place? I got out by sheer luck, and I'm sure getting in will be no easier.”

Terrill took the wineskin back from her. “Such a course of action would take time. I daresay neither of us thinks that Mika has that time.”

“I know, but—”

“We will scale the wall tonight.” He tipped his hat down a little to shade his eyes. “You have never explained to me how you escaped.”

She shrugged. “The guard forgot to lock me in one evening. He thought I was unconscious. But I crawled out and found my way to a sewage pit. When a man came to empty it, I hid in his cart along with the turds. Before he tossed everything in the river, I climbed out.”

Terrill took her hand gently. “You have a great heart,” he said. “You are very brave.”

“Bravery had nothing to do with it,” she said. “I had nothing to lose, Terrill.”

He seemed to see beyond her for a moment, then: “What about the river?”

“There are chains across the river,” she said. “But they're for boats.”

“Guards?”

“Well . . . yes, guards.”

“Are you skilled at rope climbing?”

“I don't know. I haven't tried it recently. I've changed. I'm sure you've noticed.” She grinned at her own joke.

“It will be difficult,” said Terrill. “Do not doubt that. It will take all our skill and knowledge. Have you given any thought to Janet Darci? We will have to look for her also. Once inside the keep, though, we should be able to slip about somewhat.”

“But how do we do that without knowing the routines?”

“Elves are known for being ingenious.”

She knew that he was laughing at her a little, but she did not mind, because it was the kind laughter of a friend and a lover.

***

A few miles from the city walls, there was a small wood. There they cared for the horses, ate, and waited for nightfall.

Miriam sat with her back against a tree, watching the city, idly fingering the pendant that Varden had given her. The last time she had entered Hypprux, she had been a prisoner: completely at the mercy of the men who bound her and, later, mocked and tortured her. Now, however, she was returning changed, armed, taking power for herself.

Hypprux was an opponent to be weighed, examined, judged; an intricate set of puzzles that she—dispassionate, cautious—had to solve, one at a time. But she could do it. She knew she could. Mika would not die. The dungeons of Europe had claimed too many wise-women, too many healers, too many witches. Perhaps she could not do much, but she could save one. Years before—and how many she was afraid to guess—Terrill's lover had been tortured and killed. Miriam was about to even the score.

In spite of her feelings of dispassion, she knew that her anger still existed, but she had begun to understand that it did not stem solely from her violation. Rather, it grew out of her society as a whole: the Church and the overlords who controlled, violated, raped the body and soul both; the serfs and commoners who consented to the abuse. She herself had once consented, but no more. She had withdrawn her permission, had, in fact, withdrawn herself from the human race. She was connected to the mortal world still, as she was with everything, but she would not allow it to direct her.

“And tonight, Miriam,” she murmured, “we do some directing of our own.”

Miriam. Her name. She turned it over in her mind, pushed thoughts of anger and revenge aside, examined it dispassionately. Terrill had been calling her Mirya for the last day, and though she had not complained, neither had she really accepted the name as her own.

Out across the flax fields, the city of men rose up, hazy and prosperous. She felt herself opposed to it, distant, even disdainful.

“I am Mirya,” she said suddenly. The name settled into her mind, and something else settled, too. She felt more herself, and she had a greater sense of her own presence. Yes, she was here, under this tree—the grass beneath her, the air about, the sun above—an essential part of the webs, the patterns, the Dance that formed the being of the Lady.

“Mirya,” she said again. She nodded: a short punctuation. It was done.

Elven, silent, clad in forest hues of gray and green, seeing by starlight, shimmering softly in one another's eyes, Mirya and Terrill approached the walls of Hypprux. They skirted the silent masonry until, at some distance from the main gate, Terrill laid a hand on Mirya's arm. “Here,” he said under his breath. “Before we proceed, find your stars and give yourself to them. Your life will depend upon them for the next several hours, perhaps for the next several days.”

She understood. When she had asked about learning the ways of the Chateau earlier that day, she had been thinking as a human. As an Elf, she moved with the Dance, aware of all its intricacies. What need had she of learning when she could reach out and be?

She slid into the vision of the stars and saw a lattice of interweaving lifelines, probabilities, potential futures. She felt the guards on the parapet, felt also that inaction had dulled their eyes. Patrolling the walls of Hypprux, it seemed, was a job, nothing more. Safe, secure, routine.

Terrill reached back to the small pack he was wearing and extracted a grappling iron and rope. When the guards were distant, he threw the hook silently, expertly. It lodged in the crenellations sixty feet above their heads. He gave the rope a good pull to make sure it was fast and then put it into Mirya's hands. “We have a few minutes before the guards come back,” he said. “Take your time. Be gentle with yourself.”

With a silent prayer to the Lady, she hauled herself up foot by foot. She surprised herself: her ascent was silent, though slow, and the guards' attention was still dull and distant when she pulled herself over the top. Terrill followed in a third of the time, and he coiled the rope and put it and the iron away.

“It should be relatively simple now to reach the street level,” he whispered.

“True. Providing we don't meet anyone on the stairs.” She put her hand to Rainfire for reassurance, though a fight was not what they wanted.

“Do you know this area?”

“The walls? No. I know the streets, though.”

Keeping to the shadows, they skirted the inner parapet until they came to a gap. Stairs led down. There was a small fire at the bottom, and men sitting around it.

“Armed, too,” said Terrill. “I hope this is not standard practice in Hypprux.” They continued around the wall.

The second stair they found was better, but there was a man coming up. Mirya did not need Terrill's gesture to know that the guard would not look at a small corner at the base of a tower. They hid in the darkness. The man passed them by.

The stairs led to a back street, unlit, the houses shuttered and quiet.

“One of the poor sections of the city,” said Mirya. “This street to the first turning, right, then all the way to the Street of Saint Lazarus, then left to the heart of the city and the Chateau. The Cathedral of Our Lady of Mercy—” She paused at the name, shook her head, continued. “The cathedral is hard by, and th dungeon is beneath the keep. There's an outside wall tot he Chateau grounds, and an inner curtain wall to the keep, then the outer wall of the keep itself. We'll have gates to pass.”

“Walls we can climb, and gates we can pass,” said Terrill, “but we do not want to stroll openly along the Street of Saint Lazarus. Do you know the back streets?”

“Given my previous status, I know the back streets best.”

Mirya led Terrill through alleyways and passages between dank buildings and squalid houses. They paid little heed to the sounds of people arguing in the upper rooms, men laughing and shouting, the complacent snoring of a justified sinner; but then, ahead, they heard scuffling footsteps.

“Someone,” hissed Terrill.

Mirya had already seen the strands of starlight shift into new futures. She stepped into the darkness of an enclosed church porch. After glancing at the crucifix and hesitating a moment, Terrill followed.

It was only a drunkard. He passed by without noticing them.

Mirya peered after him. “I have to keep reminding myself that they can't see in the dark.”

They moved along winding, crooked streets that were clotted with refuse and dung. The way opened out a little as they drew near the the Street of Saint Lazarus, but they waited long minutes before they could be sure of crossing the main thoroughfare unseen.

With Terrill following soundlessly, Mirya found her way along more streets and alleys, picked up the shore of the River Tordion, and came at last to the northwest side of the Chateau. The outer wall was coated with a layer of white plaster and was higher than that of the city. And better patrolled.

“The palace grounds are large,” she said, “and there are many outbuildings. Here, we're closes to the keep.” The river flowed at their backs, muddy and polluted. She found herself wishing for the quiet streams around Saint Brigid.

“The gates are shut for the night,” said Terrill. “We will have to climb again. Although . . .” He indicated a small door in the wall. It was of heavy oak studded with bronze nails. “We might keep that in mind for our departure, We will most likely be carrying Mika.”

“I'm a healer.”

“Can you heal minds also?”

The question hung. Mirya thought of what weeks of torture might have done to Mika's soul. But she recalled George and Anne and what she had done for them. “I think so . . . now. . . .”

“Let us bear the door in mind, though. I can see that it is barred, but not customarily guarded.”

They waited long minutes before it was safe to throw the grapple. As it was, Terrill missed the first time, but he caught the iron without a sound. The second time, the hook held. “Again.” He gestured to Mirya.