Shroud of Shadow (46 page)

“Agreed,” she said. “With all my heart.”

And then she went off, eagle feather fluttering, harp tucked beneath her arm, beads and bells rattling and jingling gaily, and Albrecht watched her with a face that was at once much grayer and much more hopeful than Jacob had ever seen it before.

“Excellency? What's going on?”

Albrecht shook his head. “Oh, Jacob,” he said softly. “There are wonders in the world.” He stared after Natil. “There are wonders.”

***

Rain would be coming soon, but Jacob felt a brightness growing within him, filling him with light, making all the world radiant, banishing the past as morning might dismiss a dark and evil dream.

He left Furze that afternoon with Natil on his arm, and as they walked out along the road that led south through the pasturelands, autumn was growing about them. The leaves were just beginning to turn—no colors yet, but a sense that color was somewhere just in the future—and the air was soft with the changing season.

“You were right, Natil,” he said.

“Master?”

“Don't give me that master crap. I'm not your master. I'm just Jacob. I'm a pauper.”

She laughed, and Jacob thought that he had never heard such a sweet sound. And, in fact, at his hearing of it, the brightness within him doubled and redoubled. “You were right, though,” he said. “It
is
a lovely day.”

She unlinked her arm from his and slid it about his waist. “Now you know how to see, Jacob.”

“I have to add my thanks to Albrecht's.” He squinted into the afternoon light, tried to use that as an excuse for the fact that his eyes were watering. He did not even convince himself. He did not care. “You've done everything for me.”

She shook her head. “I was but your harper, Jacob.”

“There you go again with that crap. Harper? You did everything. You even . . .”

He stopped suddenly, thinking of Edvard and Norman. Yes, she had done everything. Even the painful things.

As though she had guessed his thought, she changed the subject: “What will you do now?”

“Now?” He shrugged, wishing that he were young again—a man walking out into the fields with a maid—wishing that his memories of Natil might have more of a chance of displacing . . . others. “Well, there isn't much left for me to do in Furze. I've signed all the papers, I've convinced everyone who needed convincing that I'm not crazy, I've briefed Albrecht and Mattias on all the holdings and the idiocy that they might run into, and I hired Charles and all the accountants away from Francis. I can stay on as an advisor, maybe. But . . .” He felt, tasted, the brightness: it was good. And it seemed to him that Natil was right about something else, too: about moving on, about leaving when one's work was done. “But maybe I'll ask Albrecht to get me into the Benedictine monastery up across the way. I can use some peace and quiet.” He grinned. “Maybe they'll take an old monk who used to be a rich man.”

Natil shook her head. “If they take you,” she said, “they will have a rich man indeed.”

They reached a crossroads.

“It is time for me to go,” said Natil.

“Where?”

“South.” She weighed her harp, shrugged.

The regrets, the wishes, stayed with him. “You'll always be welcome in Furze, Natil.”

“I know,” she said. “Farewell, beloved.” She kissed him, squeezed his hand, and went off down the road.

Jacob watched her for a long time, watched her through the shimmering veils of brightness that seemed to come up from the earth and down from the westering sun. It was autumn, autumn as sweet as a ripe plum, and it was time for an old man to think about retiring. But even retiring seemed to be bright, almost unbearably bright.

He found a tree off to the side of the road, climbed up into it, and sat down on a branch. Natil was a speck in the distance by now, and the light was still rising.

Brightness, falling through the air, welling u p from within him, mingling with all that he could see. Yes, it was time; and when he thought he saw the harper turn once, wave, and then disappear over a rise, he lifted a hand into the brightness and waved farewell until he had not a scrap of strength left. But the brightness took over after that, and it waved and waved and waved . . .

. . . forever.

***

The rain came that evening, sluicing away the summer as the years had sluiced away the world of the Elves.

Natil had spoken to Jacob of making her good-byes, but in truth her leave-takings had lain not only within Furze, but across the world. For a hundred years, she had traveled, looking for Elves, and now that she had the certain knowledge that she was the last, she realized that she had also been saying good-bye to the last fragments of old belief and old recognitions. She had sung in a shaman's skin hut in Asia, had harped in tepees pitched on the plains of what would be called America, had played for nobles beneath a blue Italian sky, but it had all been a departure: the last soft kiss of mortal and immortal before the separation and the long darkness.

Now she was going to make her last good-byes, and as what lay ahead embodied perhaps the brightest of the latter-day memories that she possessed, she had saved it for the very end.

The rain continued. Traveling slowly, she worked her way around the big loop in the road that swung to the west. Saint Brigid had long been deserted, and only a tumble of stone and a ruin of rotting wood marked the place where once had stood a small, orderly village with tidy streets that meandered off as streets would; but she found what was left of Andrew's house, and the priest's house, and that pile over there—the rain was coming down even harder now, having not stopped for three days—must have once been the church. It was hard to tell. It had been a long time for humans, and humans were now all that counted.

She wandered among the ruins like a ghost for several days, without quite knowing why. What did she expect? Fading? Fading seemed all that was left for her. But she did not know how to fade.

A ghost herself, she wondered whether she saw other ghosts. Or perhaps these desolate heaps of rubble were so redolent of the past and its happiness that she could not but see them as they once had been, could not but see those she had loved. Andrew was there, working in his shop. And Elizabeth greeted Immortals at the door. And Kay smiled and snapped his fingers over a blissfully fragrant pot of stew. And there was Charity, who had once been old and ugly and unloved, but who had found grace and a new life through the power of the Elves. And a nasty little woman named Miriam was finding even more than that.

But Natil saw also—out of place here in Saint Brigid, but somehow appropriately present among these shades—Omelda. Dogged, determined as an ox, she stumped up and down the streets with a head full of plainchant and an indefatigable determination to win back the privacy of her mind. But for her the power of the Elves had failed, just as everything else that the Firstborn had touched had failed. With the passing of the centuries, everything had failed.

Just like the Firstborn themselves.

The rain came down, and, sitting on a tumbled wall, her oilcloth-wrapped harp resting on her lap beneath her sodden cloak, Natil saw Mirya and Terrill, hand in hand, passing into the forest just as they had on that last day, when they had given themselves and their existence to stop the fire that threatened all of Malvern. And Varden was waiting at the edge of the trees to welcome them, his young, maidenly face so full of the burden of pity that he had learned from his human cousins.

Together, they vanished.

Natil looked at her hands, half expecting them to have grown transparent, ephemeral. But no: they were solid, even bright. They seemed to shun any thought of fading.

Did she, then, have more ahead of her? Was this a sign, a finger that pointed to more centuries of wandering and harping? Was she to continue, to live as she could, to perhaps wait for the rebirth and be present to witness it and to speak words of welcome that the world would not have heard for half a thousand years?

“
Alanae a Elthia yai oulisi
,” she murmured, the rain drumming on her hood. But the Elves of the future would no more know the ancient tongue than they would know the Lady.

“I would teach you, if you would be taught,” she said into the patter of falling water. She lifted her head. The rain came down like a cold hand, splashing her face. “And, O my Lady, if that is Your wish, then I will wait.”

Thunder. Thunder in the distance.

But she had dreamed it already, and she had not seen herself in her dreams. Hadden and Wheat and the others had awakened, had raised Elvenhome, had with self-conscious instinct set about their lives of helping and healing; but Natil had not been there. If her dreams had been true—and she knew now that they were—then she would not be waiting for the Elves of Colorado.

Death had been denied her. Fading would not claim her. Waiting was not an option. “What gets us through?” she murmured in English. “What will get them through?” She put her wet hands to her face. “Dear Lady, what will get
me
through?”

Night fell. The rain poured down from a sky that did not appear to know anything of moon or stars. But when Natil finally lifted her head, she saw, in the distance, a light in the forest.

Golden, shimmering up out of the falling drops, it shone like a star, at once evanescent and palpable, far away and within reach. And Natil knew it, knew what it was, knew where it came from. And she suspected that she knew what it meant.

It was a grace beyond belief, this sudden inbreaking of hope for one who had herself failed the hopes of others; but Natil was an Elf, and she knew about grace and hope, for in better times she had given both away freely. Like her people, she had loved without question. She had healed gladly and simply. She had offered a hand of friendship over and over again, despite rejection, despite pain, despite even death.

She had given without thought, and, if she had in these last days failed, then she had failed because she had tried to give. By what right, then, could she now question either love or grace? Here were both being offered to her, and she could only trust, open her hands, and accept.

She rose then, clutching her harp within its wrappings, and left Saint Brigid, left behind the good-byes and the regrets and the failings. She went into the forest, into the ancient home of the Elves. She went toward the light. And though the paths were overgrown, she found them. And though the ground was muddy, she crossed it. And though the streams were swollen with a week of constant rain, she forded them.

Wet birds huddled on wet branches and peered out at her from wet wings, damp foxes stared as though she were a stranger, deer started. Midnight came and she was still traveling, following the light that danced and beckoned. Quickening her steps, she skidded down slopes, slipped on paths that had grown treacherous with mud.

Up above her now, the light shone like a torch held aloft in summons, and Natil climbed, fighting for handholds, toeholds. She had almost reached it when she lost her footing and fell, tumbling back into a ravine. The stars spun and swam before her eyes, and when she came to herself, she was lying on her back in six inches of water, her harp sitting, wrapped up and unharmed, on her stomach. Still dizzy, she staggered upright, steadied herself against the bank of crumbling earth, and peered ahead.

A short distance away, rising out of the side of the hill, was a forked tree. Light streamed from its cleft, a golden brilliance that seemed somehow touched with the blue of sky and lake, the green of tree and herb, the brown of earth, as though the sun had taken all the colors of the planet into its arms and mingled them with itself.

Carefully, Natil climbed out onto the grass and approached. The Lady was there. Natil could not see Her, but she knew She was there.

“
Elthia Calasiuove
,” she said, but there was no reply save in the rain that fell, the wind that blew, and the light that streamed out of the cleft in the tree.

She freed a hand from her cloak, drew nearer. Her fingers slid into the radiance as though into a pool of water. She felt warmth, air. She pulled her hand away and looked at it. Not a mark, not a blemish.

“
Elthia
. . .” She was asking for reassurance, for confirmation, for certainty. But though in the past the Elves had worked only in knowledge, the world had changed, and the knowledge was gone. This, then, was a time for hope and for trust. This was a time for grace.

She set a hand on an outstretched limb, and, quickly, without hesitation, swung a leg through the cleft, through the light. It was a lesson, a reminder of what she had forgotten about giving and love, and when she felt—as she knew she would—solid ground on the far side, she planted her foot, closed her eyes, and shifted her weight to it.

And then she was standing in sunlight, standing in a grassy meadow that was alive with wildflowers. She knew their names—it did not seem at all remarkable to her that she knew their names, or that the language in which she knew them was American English. There was indian paintbrush. There was cinquefoil. There was columbine. And hollyhock and kinnickkinnick. And mariposa lily and starflower and wild hyacinth and yarrow. Prickly poppy waved on tall stalks, and morning glory twined up through thickets of scrub oak and chokecherry.

She looked up. Mountains surrounded her,--tall mountains, taller than the Aleser, craggy and barechested with stone outcroppings—and on their slopes, aspens stood slender, fluttering with new leaves, and pines were dark and green with fresh needles. A hawk circled on a high thermal in the very, very blue sky, and when it saw her, it dipped its wings in greeting.

And far up beyond the hawk, almost lost in the ocean of air, were the parallel contrails and bright sparkle of a westbound 747.