Blue Heart v(-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  But that lesson was shattered when Deke came pelting up the mountain path.

  Mikhal listened carefully to Deke and saw the sense in the headman's orders. Calmly, methodically, and without any fuss, he gathered up the children, including the childlike butterfly, and led them away, down paths only he and the goats knew.

  Then, down paths only he and the wild things knew. Only then did he tell them, in simple words they could understand, why he had hidden them away, and why they must stay hidden.

  Even the wind shuddered away from the scream, a shriek of agony that went on and on forever before it finally died to a sobbing whimper. The headman's wife sagged back into the arms that held her firmly erect.

  Baron Munn handed the hot iron back to the Captain of his Household Cavalry, and turned back to the headman. Four more men held him tightly, forcing him to kneel in the dirt but holding his head up by the hair so that he could not avoid watching.

  "Now," the Baron said pleasantly. "Tell me where the girl is. No more lies. No sending my men off on wild-goat chases to look where she isn't."

  "I don't know! I swear it!" the headman sobbed desperately. "I told old Mikhal to hide them all, and I don't know where he went! No one knows, no one can know, he's gone where only the wild things are! Please, by the gods, you must believe me!"

  The man wept, great, racking sobs that shook his body.

  "Oh, I do believe you," Munn said and smiled. "But one of these others may know what you don't."

  He waved a hand at the villagers gathered under the swords of his men. They winced away.

  "So, in case there is someone who knows, this entertainment jvill go on until I am certain that you are correct., And when your dear wife can bear no more, I shall choose someone else."

  He signaled to his Captain, who handed him the iron, reheated to whiteness. "As pleasant a diversion as this is, my objective is still the same. I want the girl."

  The headman's wife began to scream again, before the white-hot iron even touched her.

  Hands on her ears, the girl crouched on her haunches, rocking back and forth. She tried to shut out everything, words, thoughts, all —

  "They killed Headman Cracy an' his wife last night," Deke sobbed, his voice full of anguish. "Hurt 'em real bad. afore they killed 'em."

  She knew that. She'd known that long before Deke learned it. She could still feel the pain that had sent her to huddle in the back of the cave, racked with agony she could not explain.

  Deke hugged his skinny arms to his chest, pausing now and then to wipe his nose and eyes with the back of his hand.

  "They started on my pap and mam this morning!" Deke continued, his face screwing up into a mask of grief and bewilderment.

  She knew that, too. And she knew that Deke's momma was only heartbeats from that same darkness that had taken Momma Cracy and Headman Cracy.

  "Why they like that, Mikhal?" the boy sobbed, finally flinging himself into Mikhal's arms. "Why they gotta hurt and kill people? We never done nothin'! Why they gotta hurt my mam and pap?"

  Mikhal pulled the boy to him, holding him close to his chest in a sheltering embrace. While the boy sobbed, Mikhal cursed under his breath.

  The girl knew why. Mikhal cursed himself for sending Deke to spy on the village. Mikhal thought he should have gone himself.

  "It's 'cause they're bad, Deke," Mikhal murmured between curses. "It's 'cause they want what we got, an' just 'cause they life to hurt folks, an' this's a good excuse to make somebody hurt. None of it's our doin', Deke. None of it."

  The old man kept his voice high enough for the other children to hear. He was a teacher; even in the midst terror, he would teach.

  "Ain't none of it our fault," he said, and the girl felt his eyes probing the darkness, looking for her. "We just gotta get through this, an' make sure it don't happen again."

  They hurled Momma Cracy an' Poppa Cracy, hurted 'em an' kilt 'em. The girl's thoughts were filled with con-fusion, terror, and anguish. They hurted 'em, but it's 'cause they want me. They gonna hurt Deke's momma an' poppa, they gonna hurt everybody till they get me!

  She rocked back and forth, tears burning down her cheeks, trying to work out reasons and answers. But there were no reasons, and she had never hi her life touched minds like these. Mikhal was right. Mikhal was right.

  But these horrible people wanted her. These people were all her family, every adult was her Momma and Poppa, every youngling a brother or sister. They all loved her, and she loved them all. It was all she had ever known, that love, that cherishing.

  They're getting hurted, an' it's 'cause of me! She buried her face in her arms, and faced the inescapable. If — -if I go to 'em, they might hurt me ... if I don't, they gonna hurt everybody, an' maybe kilt 'em, too.

  Her traumatized mind kept trying to resolve the questions, and finally she groped her way through the fog to an answer, and a decision.

  She loved them. They loved her. They were being hurt because of her. She could not bear that. And there was only one way to stop the hurt.

  She slipped away, as quietly as a mouse, running down to the village to make the bad men stop.

  Baron Munn stared at the lovely girl, completely enthralled. She was more beautiful than he dreamed, more vulnerable and tender, and her terror only served to make her lovelier in his eyes. That terror fed the hunger within him in a way that even the dying pain of her elders had not done.

  She was perfect in every way.

  She cowered at his feet, where she had thrown herself, weeping, placing herself between him and the woman he had been torturing, trying to hold him off with her soft little hands. Hands like fluttering doves, like white butterflies.

  He took her face in his hands, carefully, and raised her eyes to his. Even weeping could not make her less than lovely.

  Her eyes were as blue as the sky in winter, as a bottomless lake.

  "The eyes are said to be the vision of the heart, and your heart is a heavenly blue," he said, running a hand over her molten silver hair. "What is your name, little, dove?"

  "P-P-Pilane," she choked out, silver tears coursing sweetly down her cheeks.

  He smiled.

  He ordered the villagers to make a cage in which he would carry her back to Karse. He ordered it carved and painted, and lined in layers of the village's fine wool, to keep her warm and sheltered and safe.

  He had captured the butterfly. Now he would bring his prize, his Pilane, back to his barony for all to see, see and lust after, but never to touch. Only he would savor that touch, at his leisure, and savor what came after touching.

  The villagers made his cage in a day and a night, all of them laboring until they dropped from exhaustion. He left as soon as it was completed, under cover of the first snow of winter. He headed for White Foal Pass at a forced march, driving his own men as hard as he had driven the villagers. He wanted the journey to Karse, to safe-haven, to be as quick as possible.

  Behind him, the remaining villagers could only gather to mourn their dead, and to pray to the gods for their special daughter. They held no illusions about what was to befall her, her beauty would serve to enchant him only for so long — and when it palled, he would feed his desires in other ways. They prayed, then, for something, someone, to send her quick release — through rescue, or painless death.

  When the stranger rode into the village, it seemed that their prayers had been answered, and a rumor that he was the messenger of the gods went through the village on the wings of the wind.

  He certainly looked anything but human, riding a tall, handsome white horse with strange, knowledge-filled blue eyes. And he himself was garbed in pristine white, his face heartstoppingly handsome beneath silver-streaked hair. But most startling of all were his silver eyes, as filled with knowledge, sorrow, and understanding as those of his steed.

  What else could he be? And even though he protested otherwise, they knew he was goddess-sent.

  He listened carefully to their story with a troubled and angry fa
ce.

  "I can stop them," he said, in a clear, edged voice, as sweet as springwater and as sharp as a blade of ice. "I can stop them. But the danger is great, and there is a chance that your Pilane will not survive."

  "Better that than a life as that man's toy!" Mikhal snarled bitterly. "Her life will be short enough in any case in his hands!"

  Behind him, the rest of the villagers nodded or spoke their agreement. Some wept, but all agreed. Baron Munn's actions had left them no illusions.

  "Go to White Foal Pass, then, as soon as the snow stops," the stranger told them.

  And then, he rode away.

  That night, the light snow turned into a full winter storm, a blizzard the likes of which no one, not even Mikhal, had ever seen. Snow fell so thickly and heavily

  that it was a struggle just to get from house to house within the village.

  Then it became too cold to snow; the wind strengthened, and whipped the snow already fallen into huge drifts. The cold grew deeper and deeper.

  The blizzard lasted until moonrise the next night, then died.

  At first light, the villagers put on their snow-staves, loaded up their sleds, and followed old Mikhal along the goat-tracks to the pass.

  They found the Baron's soldiers and horses, frozen, as if they had been struck down by a cold more deadly than any man could imagine, and all in a single moment. They found the Baron with his hands frozen to the bars of the locked cage, his dead eyes staring into it, as if he had seen something he could not understand.

  But Pilane was gone, without a trace.

  They never found her.

  The Queen wiped her tears away, and waited for her Herald to say something more. But as he sipped his tea, she shook her head.

  "Is that all?" she demanded. "Just that? A mystery?"

  "There is a little more," the Herald said, putting down his own cup. "One version of the story tells that the messenger took their prayers to the goddess, and it was She who made the storm and took the girl to her side. Another says that the man was only a man, but also a great and powerful mage, who used his magic to bring the storm and save the girl, and that he took her to his palace to live in peace. The last version says also that the man was a mage, but that he was heart-friends with the strange and mysterious Tayledras — that he begged their help, and it was they who sent the storm and took the girl to their homes above the trees, where she was loved, protected, and happy for the rest of her days."

  "Tayledras?" the Queen replied. And she wondered; did Elspeth know of this legend? She was with the Tayledras, even now. Did she know the real ending to the story?

  "The one thing that all three legends agree upon," the Herald continued, "is that whether it was a goddess, a mage, or the Tayledras, whoever took Pilane created a butterfly to take her place and remind those who loved her of her beauty, her goodness, and her own sacrifice to save them. They call it the 'Blue Heart' and it is a butterfly, they say, that lives only in early winter, after the first snow and only during the full moon. And they say this was done so that the memory of Pilane and all she was would never be lost to the mountains."

  He sighed, and was quiet for a few heartbeats.

  "And that ends my story, Your Majesty," he said at last.

  "It's a lovely story," Selenay replied, lost in thought for a moment. Then something occurred to her, and she sat straight up in her chair. "The girl's name — it was Pilane] and that's your Companion's name!"

  The Herald grinned a little shamefacedly. "It means 'butterfly' in a very old mountain dialect," he chuckled. "Which may be the reason why he has made himself into an expert on the little creatures."

  But Selenay had another reason for laughter. "You mean that he had you two out in the snows of the mountains chasing a legend!" she laughed. "A butterfly — that is only a legend — out in snow and moonlight — in White Foal Pass?"

  When she finished, tears of laughter were bright hi her eyes, and she was holding her side.

  "You — the most dangerous man in the Circle — chasing snow-butterflies in the moonlight!"

  He hung his head sheepishly. "I am afraid so, Majesty," he replied. "And with your leave, I really must go.”

  The Queen waved her answer weakly from her chair, laughing soundlessly.

  As he stood and turned to leave, the Herald placed a small package on the table beside her cup. "A gift, Your Majesty," he said. Then he was gone, the door closing behind him.

  After several moments, the Queen wiped her eyes, and got herself back under control. She picked up the package, curiosity overcoming her laughter. The Herald's gifts were rare, but fortunately were seldom as sinister as his "stories" could be.

  Inside a wrapping of soft gray woolen cloth she found a carved, wooden presentation case for a hand-sized book, a case she opened with the key taken from the ribbon tied around it.

  In the right side was a black-velvet-lined recess, containing a thin book. In raised silver letters on the elegant white leather cover were the words, The Blue Heart and beneath them, C. Pilane.

  In the left side of the box was a glass-covered velvet-lined display case.

  Positioned carefully on the black velvet was a butterfly. Each wing was no larger than her two thumbnails together. The wings were the color of molten silver, with an oblong blue spot on either side of the creature's slender body. Those marks, when seen with the wings fully opened as they were displayed, made the shape of a heart.

  A heart as blue as a Companion's eyes, or the color of the clear winter sky.

  The End

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