Strands of Starlight (8 page)

Although Esau plodded along steadily, the miles to the village seemed endless. The bleeding was weakening her, and the ground blurred and darkened. She was vaguely aware that the pony had rounded a bend when she heard shouts of surprise. Lifting her head, she made out a walled village. Two men were running toward her.

“Esau,” she whispered. “Stop.”

She loosened her foot in the stirrup. Some obscure element of pride made her want to stand on her own feet, but her legs betrayed her. When she slid off Esau's back, she collapsed in the dust of the road.

Commotion. Voices. She was nearly blind with pain and blood loss, but she felt herself lifted by strong, gentle arms. “Please,” she mumbled. “Please don't hurt me.” She was fainting again, dizziness spiraling up around her.

“I'll take her to the priest's house, David,” someone said. “You run and get Varden. She needs a healer.”

I am a healer.

But she could not heal herself, and the darkness was taking her too far away in any case.

Miriam opened her eyes. The room was quiet, and the only illumination was that of a fire burning on the hearth. Dark, carved beams crossed the ceiling, their shadows flickering as the flames crackled and snapped.

The pain was gone, replaced by a warmth that had settled into her body as though flesh and bone were glowing with a soft, golden light.
I've been healed,
she thought.
Healed by someone with great power.

Somewhere in the distance, a door closed. Footsteps approached, then receded. Another door, and then once more only the crackling of the fire that warmed the room and echoed the light within her. She was almost inclined to close her eyes and drift off to sleep, but her memory was returning—the man, the sharp blows, the pain—and she shuddered.

When she turned her head, she found she was not alone. A young man was sitting in a chair by the bed. He was dressed simply in green and gray, and his dark hair fell smoothly to his shoulders. His face was gentle, almost womanly.

“Hello,” he said. “My name is Varden.”

She was looking at his eyes. They reflected the firelight, but there was something more to them, something that seemed to fill their depths. Starlight, maybe. “Miriam,” she whispered, still staring. “You . . . healed me?”

“I did,” said Varden. “I have that talent, among others.”

She turned her face into the pillow for a moment and sighed. The pain was no longer with her, but the memory clung to her mind, a tangled montage of grasping hands and leering faces. She felt unclean and empty, both.

Varden leaned forward. His tunic was open at the throat, and a pendant in the form of a moon and rayed star swung free, glittering in the firelight. “I understand,” he said. His voice was sad.

“You can't understand.” Her hands clenched on the comforter. “I want to kill him. I want him dead. I'd just healed him, and to repay me—” She broke off suddenly, white-faced.

“I know of your power,” he said simply. “And you know of mine. Why do you fear?”

She was still wary. “Where am I?”

“This village is called Saint Brigid. It is the southernmost of the Free Towns. You are in the priest's house.”

Beyond Varden, she made out a bench, a table, chairs. Moonlight shone in through a window of glass, glinting on the lozenge-shaped panes and on a crucifix on one wall. “You don't look like a priest.”

“Kay is the village priest. Andrew the carpenter brought you here.” Varden sat back, watching her. “Kay's attitudes about those who are . . . different . . . are much more enlightened than those of his Church, and many folk here are not unused to such powers as you possess. You will find this village a haven.”

A few hours ago, she would have considered his words an invitation to paradise. But that was all gone now. The montage came back, and her hands shook with her rage. Eight years—and now this. Varden laid a cool hand on her forehead. “Peace.”

The memory did not go away, but it eased, and she was able to master it. She wondered at him. Varden's touch was effortless, almost casual. He and his powers were one. His eyes held her, deep blue and filled with that strange starlight.

“Who are you?” she whispered, mouth dry.

“A healer, like yourself.”

“That's not all you are.”

A slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Maybe.” He withdrew his hand. “How do you feel?”

He was evading her question by asking his own, but she did not press him any more than she would have prodded a lion. Held by those frighteningly gentle eyes, she looked away only with an effort.

“How do I feel?” Her voice was harsh. “Angry. There's only one way I'm going to find healing.” Holding up her hands, she examined them. They were, like the rest of her, tiny. They were not used to holding any weapon larger than the small eating knife she carried. She felt weak and helpless, but hate and anger were burning inside her as hotly as the power ever had. “Somehow . . . somehow I'm going to kill him.”

“Some paths are closed to us,” Varden said gently.

“That's easy for you to say: you weren't raped.”

He rose and went to the window. He looked up at the moon as if taking counsel, and the light wound around him in a soft shimmer. When he turned around, she was conscious again of his eyes. “Among my people, Miriam, the ways of healing involve more than closing wounds and casting out disease. We try to bring comfort and strength. As I healed you, my mind touched yours, and I lived through your violation. Believe me: I understand.”

“Then how can you stand there and talk to me about barred paths?” she cried. “That's not human.”

He returned to his chair in silence. The starlight flashed in his eyes. Miriam felt uneasy, and as the silence lengthened, she clenched her hands on the coverlet again, afraid to ask that last, direct question.

A quiet tap at the door broke the spell. “Come,” said Varden, his voice pitched just loud enough to carry.

A slight man in a rumpled soutane entered with a tray. His thin, fair hair barely showed his tonsure. “I heard voices,” he said cheerily. “I brought our maiden some dinner.”

Miriam flinched. Her maidenhood could not have been farther fled.

The priest stood over her and tried to smile reassuringly. “I am Kay,” he said. “How is it with you, mistress?”

“Well . . . my body is healed.”

He failed to catch the implication. “I have some soup, if you are hungry.”

She was not, but his young face was so earnest that she sat up and ate a few spoonfuls to please him. Kay hovered, resting a hand on Varden's shoulder. “God bless you, my friend,” he said softly. “Thank you for coming.”

“Could I do otherwise, Kay?”

Kay smiled at him and turned to Miriam. “Mistress,” he said, “you are welcome in my house. You may stay as long as you wish, and you may come and go as you please.” He spoke with the rustic formality of a peasant. This, Miriam decided, was no city-bred clerk, educated in some northern town and given a pleasant and comfortable cure because of high-ranking friends. Kay was obviously a man of the country, and was just as obviously glad of it.

Miriam nodded slightly. With Kay present, Varden was more distinctly different, the light in his eyes more evident. “Thank you,” she managed.

But she had heard the words before. Mika had said them.
You're welcome here. You're safe here. As long as you want.
Of course. Until her power flared and she—

She stopped short, her train of thought utterly demolished. Varden, himself a healer, had said she was safe. And it was Kay, a priest, who had offered her sanctuary.

The Free Towns. My God. And maybe this place floats every Lammas Eve after all. . . .

Kay was bowing to her. “I must go,” he said. “Vespers is well overdue, and tonight I have some special concerns.”

“What? Me?”

Her tone made him frown slightly. “I had . . . I had thought to pray for strength for you.” He looked uncertain.

“Don't bother. I appreciate the thought, but don't bother. I don't want anything from your God or your Church.”

She expected him to become enraged, but he only looked sad. “As you wish,” he said. He touched Varden's shoulder again. “God bless, my friend.”

“The Hand of the Lady be on you, Kay.”

Kay closed the door behind him. “I pray you, Miriam, speak more kindly to Kay,” said Varden. “He is a good man.”

His calm rankled her, and her words to Kay had made her bold. “And what about you, Varden? Are you a good
man
? Or something else?”

He said nothing for a moment. She might have commented on the weather. “What would you know, Mistress Healer?” His voice was quiet, but he could not have been more terrifying had he shouted.

She dropped her eyes. “Nothing . . . at present, Varden. Thank you for healing me. I'm not sure you did any good, though: I have to kill him now, and I'm not sure I can. You probably should have let me die.”

“Be at peace.” He laid a hand on her forehead. “Sleep now. You have traveled far, and my powers cannot achieve everything. Sleep.” Though soothing, his words carried the essence of command, and she obeyed.

***

She slept fitfully, wandering through labyrinthine corridors of dream, trapped by doorways bricked up with montages of groping hands, leering faces, pain, blood. She awakened frequently throughout the night, not knowing where she was, crying out, falling back into nightmare as though she were a swimmer too storm-tossed to pull herself onto shore.

Varden remained by her bed; and when, infrequently, her dreams parted enough for her to peer out into consciousness, she saw him, his eyes shimmering with the stars. Once, in the hours just before dawn, she fled into consciousness with a shriek and found herself clinging to Varden, her cheek pressed against his tunic.

“You are safe here, beloved,” he said, laying her back down. “There is nothing here that will harm you. Rest.”

After that, her dreams were more tranquil, and she had glimpses of starlit skies and sunlit forests. For an instant before she awoke, she saw a grassy plain under a night sky. A woman walked there, robed in blue and silver.

Miriam blinked at the pale morning light that washed the room. For a few minutes, she was too groggy to remember anything, and she was content to know that she was in a soft bed and that there was a fire on the hearth.

Then memory returned. She winced, her stomach cramped, and the white-hot anger blazed up again.

Rolling over, fists balled beneath the pillow, she gritted her teeth and fought. She had to control her anger. There was a task before her now, and she had to think, to plan. Somewhere, sometime, she would find the stranger; somehow she would kill him. She had run too long. She would no longer be a victim for the world. The change started now.

The hammering in her temples subsided slowly, and she sat up. Varden was gone. Fresh clothing lay neatly folded on the table. A pitcher of water and a basin sat beside it.

Resolve had calmed her, and she rose, washed, and dressed herself in the simple blue gown that had been left for her. Someone had estimated her size very well, though the style seemed more fitting for a young girl than for a woman who had been battered by life for most of a decade. The flowered trim on the hems seemed superfluous, even frivolous, but at the same time it comforted her, as though the idea that a seamstress had thought to adorn clothing so innocently implied that somewhere, innocence was safe.

She found her bundle at the foot of the bed, and she dug through it for the brush Mika had given her, then took a moment at the mirror by the door and ripped at the stubborn tangles in her hair.

Innocence. Had she ever been innocent? Fear alone had dominated her existence since she had first lifted her infant hands and cured a playmate's cut. Fear blotted out everything. Even her parents had been afraid, and eight years ago, in fear, they had put her out of the house.

She looked again at the gown. It was an unkind reminder of what she had never possessed. Such innocence was safe here in Saint Brigid, perhaps, but it had best stay far away from little vagabond healers lest it be blasted.

A distant knocking. The sound of muffled voices.

She listened at the door and distinguished Kay's cheerful tenor and a woman's gentler inflections. “No, she's not up yet,” the priest was saying. “But I expect her soon. There's a hot breakfast waiting for her.”

“Did she spend a hard night?” It was a girl's voice, actually, firm and clear, with a touch of water in it.

“Varden sat with her.”

“Bless him. Mother sent these along with her best wishes.”

Miriam lifted the latch and stepped into a short hall that ran to left and right. There was light to the left and she could see a small kitchen.

“Is that you, my child?” called Kay.

She winced at the
my child
. “Yes.”

When she entered the kitchen she found Kay and a girl of perhaps thirteen years. “Miriam,” said Kay, “this is Charity. She's the daughter of Andrew—the man who carried you here.”

Miriam knew without asking whose gown she wore. “Hello,” she said softly, staring at her.

“Blessed be,” said Charity. Her voice was sweet, and she wore her dark hair long, almost reaching to her waist. Blue eyes, like mountain lakes, regarded her quietly. She curtsied as though Miriam were gentry.

“I . . .” Miriam felt uncomfortable under the gaze of those blue eyes. Innocence. “Thank you for the gown.”

Charity smiled. “I'm glad I was able to help.” She laughed. “I'm also glad we're the same size.” She was holding a cloth-covered basket, and she lifted it slightly. “Mother sent some bread.”

“Elizabeth is the best baker this side of the mountains,” Kay explained. “Eating her bread is like . . . is like . . .” He had lifted his hands in preparation for the simile, but it did not come. He furrowed his brow. “It's . . . uh . . . very good. Very good indeed.”

“I will assume your guest is hungry, Kay,” Charity prompted.

Kay clapped a hand to his head. “There I go. My child,” he said as Miriam winced again, “you must forgive me. Please, come sit down.” He pulled a chair away from the split-log table.