Strands of Starlight (47 page)

“First blood,” she said. “Don't bother to yield.”

His shock turned to anger. “Damn you, woman.”

The returning blow almost numbed her arm. Mirya sought the stars and poured strength into herself. The lattices were hazy with potentials leading off into various futures, various outcomes. She was near the middle of the knot of probabilities that formed this battle.

Down. Up. With a leap, Mirya side-slipped a thrust that would have removed her ribs, turned in midair, kicked Roger's sword arm away, and went straight for his throat.

It was a calculated risk, and she lost. The webs shifted and Roger backhanded her. She staggered, caught herself, then dropped flat onto the ground as Roger's sword whistled through the air where her neck had been.

Quickly, she riffled through the futures and saw very few options other than being spitted on Roger's blade. She chose, rolled onto her back, and swung. Rainfire impacted on Roger's right leg and cut deep.

“
Elthia!
”

Her cry mingled with Roger's curse as she sprang to her feet. Flailing with his free arm, Roger tipped and fell heavily on his side just as Mirya's sword cut into his throat. She saw the gush of blood and knew that the battle was over.

She stood over him. If he had known her, she would have enjoyed the sight, but she was a stranger to him. As far as he was concerned, the battle had been without reason, and that one simple fact made everything—the battle, her training, her sacrifices, her transformation—meaningless.

She dropped to her knees beside the dying man, anger seething through her. “Damn you,” she screamed. “Damn you!
Don't you know me?
”

He simply stared at her, eyes glassy, uncomprehending.

Bending over him, she seized his head, reached for the webs that made up Roger of Aurverelle, let the memory of the rape flow into him. She felt his terror, but she persisted, forcing the experience on him. She was raped, and he was raped, and she knew that he would die with full knowledge.

But grappling as she was with the lattices of Roger's psyche, she could see that he was sick, that he had been for a long time. She saw his illness—brutality, grief, loss—etched unmistakably in the weave of his existence, and she knew something of why he was cruel, why he killed, why he forced his anger upon the bodies of women.

Just as she knew a little of why she herself manipulated, plotted, hated; why she had, in despair, decided to vent a lifetime of outrage upon the body and soul of one man.

She stepped back mentally, feeling weak, sickened. About her, potential futures swirled like a pearly mist, and she was moderately surprised: the fight was over. The knot should have been behind her.

But she saw what she had not seen before. She was indeed at the focus of a lattice that stretched between the Free Towns and Baron Roger of Aurverelle, for the void left behind by Roger's death would give free rein to those who would rush in to fill the vacuum. Clarence had his own plans for the Free Towns. So did those who would remain loyal to the baron of Aurverelle's plans.

The futures were absurdly clear now: at least two armies, sieges, towns captured and recaptured, fields burning. All of Adria would be involved.

She had killed Roger, she had enacted her revenge; and in doing so she had destroyed the Free Towns.

She sought a way out of the dilemma and found nothing. Living, Roger would have allowed the Towns to continue in a bastardized state, with much of their population intact. Aloysius Cranby would have pushed for a full inquisition, but Roger would have controlled him. Cranby's position was now filled by Clarence, but Roger's would be empty. Dead, he could do nothing.

Living, though . . .

Roger's blood had puddled around his opened throat, and his breath was a shallow frothing, almost nonexistent. There was one future—Mirya had seen it that morning—in which she healed him.

I can't do that.

But what future would the Free Towns have if she did? Even if Roger lived, they would be in his power, paying tribute to him or to his representatives. Perhaps he would use them as he used Beldon Forest: a fine place to hunt unusual game.

Living . . . dead . . . or maybe . . .

She had to choose. She looked through the futures, weighed them, felt the delicate strands of causality and potential. Something precious was in grave danger, and she felt the awakening of what Terrill had called
wrath
.

Deliberately, she allowed her power to flame up her spine, searched among the stars for the one that she could tap, and let its energy flow through her. It was several minutes before she was done, for Roger had been very near death. She had to drag his life back to his body, ram it home, and weave healing about it to keep it in place. But when Roger was alive and well again, she did not stop. Wrathful, she had made her choice, and she was doing now what she had once vowed never to do.

For a while, she examined the web that was Roger of Aurverelle. Then, carefully, she set to work, changing strands, altering patterns and perceptions, transforming his existence. When she was through, he was still Roger of Aurverelle, but some parts of him were new, and some were different, and the weave of the futures he would create had been remade.

She sat back shaking. As terribly as she had been raped by Roger, it was as nothing compared to the magnitude of the violation she had perpetrated upon him. If souls had ever been taken, she had taken his; and the clarity of his eyes when he sat up and blinked at her did nothing to diminish her horror.

“Fair One.” He licked his lips, looked uncertain, dropped his eyes in shame. “Do I know you?”

Wearily, she shook her head. “You do not. We have never met. Ever.”

He passed his hands over his face. “Please excuse me,” he said. He nodded in Janet's direction. The girl had wrapped herself in the blanket and was staring at them, frightened. “I fear that I've done this maiden wrong.”

“It might be well—” She broke off, noticing that the elven inflection in her speech had redoubled.

Farther to go.
But there was no farther to go now, at least not in terms of Elf or human. She let the words choose themselves.

“It might be well for her to return to Saint Blaise,” she said. “I will take her.”

“Yes . . . perhaps that would be best.”

He stood up and stretched. He was still Roger of Aurverelle, still prideful, still violent, but his bent was now toward different ends.

He looked about as though he saw the world for the first time. With a manly grace, he stooped, picked a flower, and offered it to Mirya. “If I have affronted you, Fair One, my apologies.”

“Perhaps.” She took the flower, but she felt ill. She was seeing a mechanical contrivance go through its preordained motions. “You have been conspiring against the Free Towns.”

“Aye.” He looked bemused. “I've been wrong. The Church meddles too much. So do the barons.” He ran his fingers across his cheek where Mirya had cut him. The wound was gone now; he felt the skin abstractedly. “I'll have Janet's belongings collected and sent after you to Saint Blaise. Cranby is dead, and I'll see that Clarence's plans come to nothing.” He laughed in a warm basso. “The silly ass.”

When they went to Janet, the girl shrank away from Roger. He looked hurt, but he seemed to understand. Mirya knelt before Janet. “Do you wish to return home?”

“Fair One . . .” Janet's eyes were wide, wondering. “I . . .”

Mirya forced a gentle smile through her pain. “There is no need to fear me.”

“My father told me about the Elves, but I did not think I would ever meet one.”

“Be at peace.”

“It would be nice to go home.”

“Then you shall.”

Roger looked concerned, sympathetic. “Fair One,” he said, “I feel as though I owe you something.”

Mirya felt bleak. “You owe me nothing, sir.”

“Still . . .”

“Only make certain the Free Towns are spared and I will be satisfied.” As she turned away, she murmured to herself: “And then maybe everything will not have gone to waste.”

She was an Elf, and like Varden, like Terrill, like all beings whose burden of immortality gave them more than ample time to reflect upon such things as consequence and responsibility, she wondered desperately about renewal.

Southward again. Beldon Forest fell behind, turning first into a haze of green, then into a dark line on the horizon. Hypprux lay to the east, veiled in smoke. The grasslands rolled gently, crisscrossed by streams. The presence of humans was manifested only rarely—a scattering of huts, an occasional village—and Mirya stayed far away from it.

Janet sat before her on Cloud, eyes still wide with wonder at seeing, talking, touching this immortal being; and even the violence she had suffered could not stem her curiosity or silence her questions. Where are you from? How do the Elves live? Are all the elven ladies warriors? Do you have a lover?

Mirya smiled tiredly at the onslaught. She answered when she could, what she could, but she was more often than not silent, almost brooding. Janet was wise enough not to press for answers. In fact, she seemed perfectly happy to let her questions hang while she sat with one hand on the immortal arm that encircled her waist as though to reassure herself that she did not dream.

But she did dream at times, and Mirya would stay nearby while Janet slept, watching the stars overhead and within, watching the visions that came to the girl. The violence and the fear would surface, and Mirya would soothe them away.

Healing. Comfort. Varden had talked about them, as had Terrill. She was beginning to understand. She could give, and by that giving she herself was increased, was able to give even more. There was joy in that.

Janet's face was pale and lovely in the starlight. “Mirya,” she said once after the Elf had banished a nightmare, “I . . . I love you.”

Love. It was something of a miracle. Mirya answered in Elvish, the words coming to her effortlessly as the girl slid back into more peaceful dreams. “
Ilme mari yai, Yaneti.
”

She leaned back on her elbows, her long legs stretched out on the grass, and the thought came to her that sleep was, at times, a good thing, something to break the continuity of the days, to put distance between oneself and painful events.

But oblivion, even temporary, was no longer possible for her, and she spent the hours of darkness within herself, among the stars, pondering.

There was not much else I could have done.

Weighed in some objective balance, Roger's violation was a small thing compared to the horror that would have fallen upon the Free Towns as a result of his death. And if he had lived untouched, the Towns' lot would have been little better. The balance was true . . . if she wanted to believe it.

But she could not believe, and the memory of what she had done was a raw ache in the pit of her stomach. Varden had talked of renewal, and he had tried to show her how to achieve it; but she wondered if Varden himself had ever found any renewal, even on those countless days when he had stood on a hilltop and greeted the dawn. Terrill, she knew, had not, save in his love for her; and that was a tenuous thing indeed, based as it was on his memory of a long-dead Mirya who had, seemingly, returned.

But she was not at all certain that Terrill's conviction was untrue. Hour by hour, since she had healed Roger, since she had finally done away with the conflict in her heart, her language, her gestures . . . even her memories had been changing. If Terrill had been with her to say “
Ele, Miryai. Manea,
” she would have, without thinking, answered him: “
Alanae a Elthia yai oulisi, Terrilli,
” flicking her hair out of her eyes with a toss of her head that had been so characteristic of . . . someone else.

Like Charity, she had been reborn. But her rebirth, unlike Charity's, had been a bitter one, sought without regard for responsibility or consequence until both had risen up and overwhelmed her.

She went out among the stars, found the one she was looking for, and went down on one knee before the Woman robed in blue and silver. Her gray eyes were untroubled, serene, and Mirya wished that she could have some of what they contained, because what she saw was the past, the present, and the countless futures fused into a simple Being in which grief, sorrow, and pain had no place.

“Be at peace, child.”

“It is not easy to find peace,” Mirya whispered. “I hate what I did.”

“I know.”

“How do I leave it?”

“You accepted it. That was the first step. Remember this: Your pattern, your dance, meshes with many others, and your path is shaped by what it crosses. Would you want sovereignty over all?”

Mirya bent her head. “I would not.”

“It is well, If you had killed Roger, by your own admission you would have failed. In a way, you triumphed.”

Mirya's eyes flashed in spite of her tears. “Triumph? How do I live with my triumph?”

The Lady turned half away and watched the stars for some minutes, then sat down on the grass beside the Elf. “There was a maid came out of Maris, once upon a time,” She said. The light glistened in Her eyes, and Mirya wondered if She wept. “She was burdened with great powers. She was filled with anger and hate, and she would turn those emotions on others, whether they were deserving or not.”

“Lady, I—”

“Hear me. But she is not angry anymore, and the only hate she feels is directed at something she did . . . once. This is not ideal, but it is an improvement.” She looked at Mirya. “And how did she arrive at this improvement?”

“I grew, Lady.”

“In spite of yourself. Now, knowing what you are doing, you may find your way easier. Take comfort in that. I cannot say
Deny your pain.
There is no life without pain. But use it. Grow beyond it. And do not deny your joy, either, for without it, life has no meaning.”

“Varden was right, then?”

“About being on a path?” She smiled. “He was indeed. But then, everyone is on a path, so it was an obvious conclusion.”

***