Strands of Starlight (45 page)

He could not see anything—and probably would not have seen even if his lamp had been working—and it was not surprising therefore that he stumbled over a pile of stones that the men had left before his house so that they could repair the wall the following day.

His foot caught on a large block and he fell into the darkness, his empty lamp clattering across the hard ground, but he was caught by strong hands. “Are you not well, Kay?” said a woman.

He did not recognize her voice. “I'm . . . all right . . .” He regained his footing and groped for the lamp, but the woman had it in her hand already. There must have been a little oil left, with enough of a spark in the wick to ignite it, for the lamp was burning again, and Kay could see a fair face, almost elven, framed by dark hair. “Charity?”

“No,” she said. “A friend, though.” She took his arm and guided him toward his house. “Come. You look tired.”

There was something familiar about her, as though he had seen her in the village many times before, but he could not place her. Someone's cousin?

Kay poked up the fire in the kitchen while the stranger hung her cloak on a peg and accepted his offer of a seat by the hearth and something hot to drink. Her eyes were clear and gray, and her gown, like her cloak, was blue. Her hands were graceful, and when she took the peppermint tea from him, they cupped his own for a moment and held them. “Thank you, Kay.”

“God bless,” he said. Her hands were still about his, as though this passage of a simple herb infusion from one to another was as sacred as the giving of a consecrated host. He looked into her eyes. “Do . . . do I know you?”

“You do,” she said. “I'm in Saint Brigid often.”

“It's very late for you to walk alone.”

“Saint Brigid is safe. There is something precious here.”

“That's true,” he admitted.

She released his hands,t ook the cup, sipped. Her eyes watched him over the rim. “You're disturbed,” she said.

Kay turned away, folded his arms inside his sleeves, looked at the fire.

“Well?”

“Yes,” he said. “I just discovered that I've lost my religion.”

She set the cup aside, clasped her hands loosely in her lap, leaned back in her chair. “Lost it? Are you certain?” Her voice was compassionate. “It has been my experience that nothing is lost without there being something offered in its place. It is the way of the world. Or am I incorrect? Do you have a hollow place in your soul now?”

“It feels like it. Everything I've believed in has gone away.”
I don't even know this woman. Why am I telling her this?

“Everything?”

“Well . . . there's still the Elves, what they've taught me. But you have to understand—” He turned around, and she looked so utterly familiar that he was surprised that her name did not spring immediately to his lips. “You . . . have to understand. . . .” He seemed to live among shadows, real and unreal, dancing hand in hand. “I've spent all my life becoming a priest. To leave it now is . . .” He gestured helplessly.

She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She reminded him of Roxanne. “Change is frightening,” she admitted. “But to live is to change. And maybe one spends all one's life preparing for each change as it comes along.”

Like Roxanne. Like an Elf. A suspicion was growing on Kay, but he tried to dismiss it. It was too incredible. Yet Varden's words, spoken long ago when David had first unveiled the panels for the church, came to him unbidden:
Someday, my friend.

“So what am I doing, then?” he said, his voice shaking a little. “I've spent my life becoming and being a priest. So that what? So that I can give it up?”

“So that . . .” She considered for a moment, eyes thoughtful. “So that you can put it into perspective. So that you can see all your life as a part of what you are, but not all of what you are. You were a priest. And you still are, I think. That is a good thing. It has opened your sight to the spirit, to the unseen, to the holy. It has played a part in shaping your soul, in making you what you are. Now you feel empty and hollow. Perhaps that is a good thing, too, because it is shaping you once again.”

“Shaping me? To become what?”
Someday, my friend.

She shrugged slightly. “You know best, Kay. Maybe to become a better priest. There are difficult years ahead, and the people of Saint Brigid will look to you for assurance that their faith rests upon a man from Galilee and not upon a throne in Avignon. You may have to become a little more than what you have been. You may have to stand in two worlds. As for yourself, you've grown beyond faith.”

“Grown beyond it? What do I have instead?”

Someday
. . . He was afraid of the thought, it thrust itself at him. Where had he seen this woman before? How did she know all this? Neither human nor Elf she was. Something else. Something more.

She stood up, regarded him levelly. “What do you have instead, Kay? You have direct knowledge.”

“
How?
” He took a step toward her, his eyes beginning to mist over.

Someday, my friend.

She was smiling. “By looking, Kay. By hearing. By feeling.” Her smile broadened. “Do you understand now?”

Dawn began to brighten the windows. The light found its way in through the shutters and streaked the walls of the kitchen. Birdsong. The earth awoke, breathed. Faintly, Kay heard Charity's voice lifted in an elvish song, sweet and clear on this spring morning:

“
Ele, asta a mirurore,

Cira a ciraie,

Elthia Calasiuove,

Marithae dia.
”

“I understand,” he said. His voice was an awed whisper. “I understand, My Lady.”

***

Breakfast was hearty: good porridge, black bread, honey and butter, milk straight from the obliging cow. Monsignor Gugliemino ate at the big common table in the downstairs room of the inn at Alm. The shutters had been thrown back and the warm light of the just-risen sun streamed in and glowed golden on the wooden floor.

Artisans and merchants, farmers on their way to work who had stopped in for a bite to start the day, fellow travelers whose names he did not know—all regarded him curiously, for the cut of his clothes and the papal insignia on his cloak marked him as anything but a local resident. But in spite of the threat of war and inquisition that hung over the Free Towns, he detected no hostility. He could raise his head form his plate and smile, and the smile would be returned—a little nervously, perhaps, but genuinely.

The innkeeper approached him, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a tall, stately woman who wore her long blond hair in heavy braids. “Is there anything else I can get you this morning, Monsignor?” She seemed genuinely friendly.

He finished the last of his milk and looked out the window that gave a view of the forest. A skylark fluttered to the window and perched there, unafraid. “This is a wonderful place,” he said. “How could anyone—” He broke off, not wishing to spoil the morning.

“I believe I'm finished her, madam,” he said with a smile. “If you'll give me my reckoning and ask your son to fetch my horse, I shall be departing shortly. Can you tell me how far it is to Saint Brigid?”

“Saint Brigid? About a half day's ride. Are you going there?”

He nodded, wiped his mouth, and stood up. How could he not go there? He was not only legate, he was investigator also, and he was sure that Roger of Aurverelle would never dream that he was not returning directly to Avignon, but was instead journeying south to look for the humble priest who had written so eloquent a plea to Clement. Gugliemino had seen the parchment himself, the calligraphy shaky, the Latin stilted. And yet the words were simple. From the heart. “
My dear Holy Father!
” Fit to soften even the jaded soul of one accustomed to papal politics. There was something in Saint Brigid, and Monsignor Gugliemino was going to find out what it was.

And something about that was giving him hope, a gentle sort of hope, a hope that fit in very well with this May morning and this common room with its sunlight and view of the forest, and a wind rustling through the trees and a skylark singing on the windowsill. . . .

Mirya spent the rest of the night among the stars, bathing herself in their light, resting. In the Chateau, Terrill had rewoven the lattices only slightly, and the action had left him—experienced though he was—weak and trembling. Mirya had done more, much more, and it was not until dawn approached that she found strength enough to stand. As the horizon brightened, she walked slowly to the top of a hill that rose above the level of the treetops. A golden arc sparkled on the rim of the world and then grew swiftly into a disk. She raised her arms and let the light fill her.

The sun was a star, and it was warm and close. It dried the dew that had fallen on her and took the last of the chill from her bones. It, too, was a part of the Dance, a part of the Lady, and Mirya found within herself a well of gratitude that she had not thought existed: deep, clear, overflowing this morning, responding to the day, the sun, her memories of the Lady's hands gentle upon her face, her certainty that she was loved, that she would be always.

She was happy as she had never been before. Running, hiding, torment; there had been no room for joy. Now there was room, and more room. And it was filled. Love, a home, a people—everything seemed to be coming to her. And she nearly laughed at the idea that it was through pain, despair, and violence that she had, at last, come to herself, to fulfillment.

And then the sudden thought, like a mailed fist: she stood this day on a hill and greeted the sun—elven blood coursing through her veins and the stars bright within her—because Roger of Aurverelle had raped her on a spring morning over a year ago.

The causality was absurdly simple: rape, anger, transformation, growth: all linked, all following one from another, a series of free choices that had come to form the core of her present existence.

All the sunlight in the universe could not warm her now. She had not eaten, but the nausea that gripped her buckled her knees.

Roger of Aurverelle was an integral part of the pattern of her life. But for him, she would still be a little fugitive healer, would in all probability still be running. How precious a gift he had given her, and in how strange a fashion!

But I have to kill him.

She could not rationalize, and she could not equivocate. She knew what she would do on the following day, and she would take full responsibility for her actions. There was no other way.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I'm sorry.” And in the back of her mind, she admitted that she might have been talking to Baron Roger of Aurverelle. It was a disturbing thought: she did not know whether she deserved praise or condemnation.

The sun was well into the sky when she at last stood up. She would not turn back. Regardless of what she had gained in the last year, Roger had still raped her. That was his responsibility, and he had to deal with its consequences.

Away and below, the forest moved, branches and leaves tossing in a mild east wind. Jaw clenched, holding off tears, she walked back into the forest and, for the rest of the day, prepared for her task. Slowly, she took herself through the fighting dance that Terrill had taught her and had drilled into her brain until it left off being learning and turned into instinct. Movement by movement, she let the stars take over.

As she moved—turning her hands just so, and bending her knee at the proper time—she felt her connection with the clearing in which she danced, the forest around it, the land stretching off for miles around, the world and everyone in it. Lattices. Webs. And there was one in particular: the one that enfolded her and Roger of Aurverelle, George and Anne, Janet, the Free Towns. . . . It wove and turned and fluctuated about her as if she stood poised at some incredible focus of tension and stress.

The responsibility was crushing, but she could not escape it. The lattice she formed and balanced was not to be altered with any amount of starlight, but was held, and shaped, and changed, simply by her existence. Action or nonaction bound her equally. She could not beg off.

She finished her dance, drew Rainfire. She cleaned and polished it, checked its edge, then sat with it unsheathed in her lap, meditating. It was a sharp blade, very keen, very fine, and it could easily cut through flesh . . .

. . . or futures.

***

The lands south of Alm were a pleasant combination of shadowed forest, rolling grassland, and in the distance, craggy mountains that soared up to summits white with snow. It all reminded Gugliemino strongly of his home in Italy: the alpine foothills rich with farm and vineyard and forest and a scattering of villages that, from above, looked like a child's toy left out upon a piece of green velvet.

He stopped his big bay horse in the middle of a stone bridge, the water rushing under him, crashing over rocks; the mingled sounds of mist, rain, spray, a million drops all gathering together into what was almost a voice.

The monsignor could understand why this place would arouse the green of a man like Roger, and it would be easy to underestimate the readiness of these people to defend themselves. In Alm, in all the villages through which Gugliemino had passed, he had never heard a harsh word or felt anger or hostility. If he had detected anything, it was no more than a quiet, tragic regret:
It all could be so different.

But there was determination present also. It could indeed be different, but if it were not, then pity poor Roger of Aurverelle, for the monsignor felt certain that beneath the regret slumbered a wrath that would rise up to defend what the Free Towns deemed precious.

He breathed deeply of the sweet air. He had talked with priests and with layfolk. And this morning he had met a young man clad in green and gray who had pointed him along the right way when the road had forked. He had noticed the flash of starlight, but he had also noticed the courtesy.

It all gave him hope. He no more wanted this land laid waste by men and arms than he desired the quiet valleys about Montalenghe and Ivrea plowed up and sown with salt. In Hypprux, he had been entertained by men who claimed to be his friends, men who uttered veiled threats, who spoke of war and killing with casual indifference, men among whom he was afraid. Here . . .