Part 1

Chapter 14,253 wordsPublic domain

THE STARMEN

Leigh Brackett

GNOME PRESS, _Inc._ _New York_

FIRST EDITION

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

THE STARMEN

ONE

Michael Trehearne was to remember that evening as the end of the world, for him. The end of his familiar life in a familiar Earth, and the first glimmering vision of the incredible. It began with the man who spoke to him on the heights behind St. Malo, by the light of the Midsummer Fires.

There was a great crowd of tourists there, come to watch the old Breton festival of the sacred bonfire. Trehearne was among them, but not of them. He stood alone. He was always alone. He was thinking that the ritual being performed in the wide space of stony turf was just too quaint to be endured and wondering why he had bothered with it, when someone said to him with casual intimacy,

"In four days we shall be through with all this, going home. A good thought, isn't it?"

Trehearne turned his head, and looked into a face so like his own that he was startled.

The resemblance was that of a strong racial stamp, rather than any blood kinship. If two Mohawks were to meet unexpectedly in the hills of Afghanistan they would recognize each other, and it was the same with Trehearne and the stranger. There was the same arrogant bone-structure, the odd and striking beauty of form and color that seemed to have no root in any race of Earth, the long yellow eyes, slightly tilted and flecked with sparks of greenish light. And there was the same pride. In Trehearne it was a lonely, bitter thing. The stranger bore his like a banner.

During the moment in which Trehearne stared, amazed, the stranger remarked, "I don't remember seeing you on the last ship. How long have you been here?"

"Since yesterday," answered Trehearne, and knew as he formed the words that they were not the ones expected of him. A wild throb of excitement ran through him. He said impulsively, "Look here, you've mistaken me for someone else, but I'm glad you did!" In his eagerness he all but clutched the man's arm. "I must talk to you."

Something in the stranger's expression had altered. His eyes were now both wary and startled. "Upon what subject?"

"Your family--my family. Forgive me if I seem impertinent, but it's important to me. I've come a long way, from America to Cornwall and now to Brittany, trying to trace down my own line...." He paused, looking again into that remarkable face that watched him, darkly handsome, darkly mocking in the firelight. "Will you tell me your name?"

"Kerrel," said the man slowly. "I beg your pardon, Monsieur. The resemblance is indeed striking. I mistook you for one of my kin."

Trehearne was frowning. "Kerrel?" he repeated, and shook his head. "My people were called Cahusac, before they went into Cornwall."

"There was doubtless a connection," said Kerrel easily. He pointed abruptly to the open space beyond. "Look--they begin the final ritual."

The great bonfire had burned low. The peasants and the fisherfolk, some hundreds of them, were gathered in a circle around the windy glow of the flames. A white-bearded old man began to pray, in the craggy Breton Gaelic.

Trehearne barely turned his head. His mind was full of the stranger, and of all the things that had oppressed and worried and driven him since childhood, the nagging little mysteries about himself to which now, perhaps, he would find the key.

He glanced away only a second, following the gesture of Kerrel's arm. But when he looked back, Kerrel was gone.

Trehearne took half a dozen aimless steps, searching for the man, but he had melted away into the darkness and the crowd, and Trehearne stopped, feeling sold and furious.

His temper, long the bane of a rather luckless existence, reared up and bared its claws. He had always been childishly sensitive to insults. If he could have got his hands on the contemptuous Kerrel he would have thrashed him. He turned again to the festival, controlling himself as he had learned painfully to do, realizing that he was being ridiculous. But his face, so like that of the vanished stranger, had a very ugly look around the mouth.

The Bretons had begun the procession around the waning fire. Short, burly men in bright jackets and broad-brimmed hats, sturdy women in aprons and long skirts, their improbable starched coifs fluttering with ribbons and lace. Sabots clumped heavily on the stony ground. They would march three times sunward, circling the embers, and then solemnly, each one, pick up a pebble and as solemnly cast it into the coals. Then they would scramble for the charred brands and bear them home to be charms against fever and lightning and the murrain until the next Midsummer Eve.

It struck Trehearne that most of them, except the very old, looked painfully self-conscious about it all. In a thoroughly bad humor, he was on the point of leaving. And then he saw the girl.

She was standing some ten feet away from him, in the forefront of the crowd, which had shaped itself into a semi-circle. She had wanted him to see her. She was swinging a white hand-bag like a lazy pendulum on a long strap, and her gaze was fixed on him. She was smiling, and the smile was an open challenge.

In the reflection of the great bed of glowing embers, Trehearne saw that she was another of Kerrel's breed--and his own, whatever it might be. But it was not that recognition that made his heart leap up. It was herself.

The red-gold light danced over her, and perhaps it was only that faery glow that made her seem more than a handsome girl in a white dress. Only a trick of wind and starlight, perhaps, that made Trehearne see in her a changeling, bright, beautiful, wicked, and wise, and no more human than Lilith.

She beckoned to him, with a small imperious movement of her head. He had forgotten his anger for the moment, but now it returned. He began to walk toward her, across the front of the crowd, a tall man, splendidly built and strong, bearing in his own face the stamp of that strange, wicked beauty, his eyes yellow as the fire and as hot. She saw that he was angry, and she laughed.

Whether it was the sound of her laughter that drew the attention of the Bretons, or merely a chance look, Trehearne never knew. He came up to her, and she said,

"I am a Kerrel, also. Will you talk to me?"

He was about to answer, when he realized that the noise of the sabots had broken rhythm, and that the crowd of tourists was staring at him and the girl and then past them at the Bretons. He heard an uneasy muttering of questions in French and English, and behind him a great silence.

He turned. The ritual circle was broken. The old man who had prayed was coming toward them, and with him were other men and women, drawn as though by some compulsion from the ranks of the marchers. They were all old, their faces weathered and seamed by the passing of many winters, and in their eyes he saw the spark of an ancient hatred, the shadow of an ancient fear.

He had seen that same look among the older country folk of Cornwall--directed at himself.

The old man raised his hand. He stopped only a few feet away, and the others with him. There was something infinitely threatening in the squat monolithic bulk of that little crowd, a survival from an older world. The girl flung up her head and laughed, but Trehearne did not feel like laughing.

The old man cursed them.

Trehearne had not one word of Gaelic, but he did not need a knowledge of the tongue. Nor did he need to have explained to him the gesture of angry dismissal. The Bretons had already picked up their stones from the fire. In another minute, they would use them, on himself and the girl.

He caught her rather roughly by the arm, but she pulled away and shouted something at the old man, still laughing, still mocking, and he thought again that she was changeling and no ordinary girl. The words she spoke might have been Gaelic, but they had a different sound. Whatever they were, they held no kindness. Trehearne thrust his way through the sightseers, who parted readily to let him through, and in a minute the girl came after him. The voice of the old man followed them down the slope of the hill, and the curious tourists stared after them until they were out of sight.

The girl said, "Are you still angry?"

"What's the matter with them?" demanded Trehearne.

"The peasant folks have long memories. They don't understand what it is they remember, only that evil things once happened to them, because of us."

"What sort of evil things?"

"Have there been any new ones since the beginning?" Her voice held a dry humor. Trehearne had to admit there hadn't been. From the stealing away of maidens to witchcraft, family legends tended to a wearying sameness.

"However," he added, "the Kerrels and the Cahusacs both must have been outstanding in their field, judging from the reception they gave us back there."

He stopped. They were far from the crowd now. The walled island city bulked huge and dark, a medieval shadow against the night and the sea. The girl was a white wraith in the gloom, all astir with the salt wind that tumbled her hair and set her skirts to rippling. He did not speak to her, but stood there silently, trying to see her face in the starlight. After a while she asked him,

"What is in your mind?"

"I am waiting to see if you will vanish like the other Kerrel."

She laughed. "Kerrel is a rude man. I have offered myself to make amends. Surely you can't be angry now!"

It was his turn to laugh. "No. In fact, I'm thankful for your--by the way, what relation is he to you?"

"None."

"But you said--"

"It was a small lie, and it served its purpose."

"Well, anyway, I'm thankful for Kerrel's rudeness. I'd much rather talk to you!" His ill-humor was quite gone. He took her hand, and was amazed to find how strong it was. The girl seemed to radiate an immense vitality, an aliveness that made all the other women of his knowing appear like half-awakened clods.

"What do they call you," he asked, "who are _not_ a Kerrel?"

"Shairn."

"That doesn't sound Breton."

"Doesn't it? My other name is even more unusual. It's unpronounceable, and means _of the Silver Tower_."

Her eyes were very bright in the starshine. He thought that in some secret way she was mocking him, but he did not care. He said, "I'll stick to Shairn." They had started down the path again. He told her his own name, and she asked,

"You are American?"

"Fourth generation."

"From Brittany to Cornwall to America," she murmured, as though to herself. "The years, the generations, the mingling of other strains--and still the Vardda blood breeds true! Michael, you're wonderful!"

He repeated the word _Vardda_, wonderingly.

"A tribal name. You've never heard it." She laughed with pure delight. "You're incredible. No wonder Kerrel made a mistake! Listen, Michael. You wonder about your family, your race. Oh, yes, I heard all that. Well, perhaps I'll tell you--or again, perhaps I won't! There's a little cove beyond the lighthouse. I'll meet you there, in the morning."

TWO

Morning is an indeterminate time for an appointment. Trehearne made it early, clambering over the spray-wet rocks. The sun was warm, and the sea was very blue, flecked with white foam. A high excitement burned in him. He had not slept, thinking of the girl Shairn and the man Kerrel, trying to analyze the strangeness that clung about them and touched some buried chord within himself. He had not succeeded.

There was something almost fierce in the way he moved. He was oppressed by a fear that Shairn would not come. He felt that she was playing some game of her own with him, though for what purpose he could not guess. But having started the game, he was going to see to it that she played it out. If she did not come he would find her, if he had to take the stones of St. Malo apart to do it.

He found the cove. It was deserted. Reason told him that he was impatient, but he was disappointed and angry all the same. Then, looking closer, he saw footprints in the sand, small naked ones leading to the water. A beach robe and a pair of sandals were tucked into a crevice in the rocks.

He searched the waves that rolled idly in between two grey, tumbled shoulders. There was no sign of her. Trehearne's eyes took on a hard, bright glint. He stripped off his shirt and slacks and plunged into the cold surf.

He was an excellent swimmer. In his college days he had gone through a phase of being a star athlete, until he was stopped by a vague conviction that his physique had been designed for something more important than leaping over bars and running arbitrary distances on a cinder track. He had never found the important thing, but the conviction remained with him. It was part of that pride which was the mainspring of his character--a meaningless pride, he was forced to admit, which had served only to make trouble between himself and the world.

He made the circuit of the cove twice before he found her, hiding among the broken rocks of the north wall, half veiled in glistening weed, laughing at him. He reached for her and she went under him like a dolphin, breaking water ten feet away to splash and dive again.

He chased her down into the rustling blue-green depths and up again to the sunlight and the foam, and her body was the color of silver, fleet and lithe and wondrously strong. He might have caught her, but he did not, only touching her with his fingers to show her that he could. Her hair was unbound, a streaming darkness around her head, and her mouth was red, and her eyes were two green dancing motes of the sea itself, unknowable, taunting, fickle as the waves.

At last she rolled over on her back to float, breathless, pleased with herself and him.

"Let us rest!" she said, and he floated near her, watching the motion of her white arms in the water. The lines of an old poem came unbidden to his tongue.

"'What bright babes had Lilith and Adam-- 'Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters, 'Radiant sons and glittering daughters....'"

"The man who wrote that knew only half the truth," said Shairn. "Let's go in."

They found a sheltered spot where the sun was warm. Absently, Shairn smoothed a patch of sand with her palm, and rumpled it again. After a while she said,

"What sort of a man are you, Michael? What do you do? How do you live?"

He looked at her keenly. "Do you really want to know? All right, I'll tell you. I'm a man who has never been satisfied. I've never had a job I could stay with very long. I'm a flier by trade, but even that seems a dull and rather childish business. And why? Because I'm too good for any of it."

He laughed, not without a certain cruel humor. "Don't ask me in what way I'm too good. I seem to be unusually healthy, but that's only important to me. My brain-power has never set the world on fire. I have no tendency to genius. In fact, a suspicion creeps upon me that I'm just not good enough. Whichever way it is, there has always been something lacking, either in me or the world."

Shairn nodded, and again he was conscious of a queer wisdom in her that did not fit with her youth. She smiled, a small thing full of secrets.

"And you thought that if you learned the origin of your blood you would understand yourself."

"Perhaps. My father was a weedy little man with red hair. He swore I was none of his. I didn't look like my mother's side, either. I've never looked like anybody, until I met you and Kerrel. Oddness becomes very wearing, especially when you don't know why you should be odd." He added, "The villagers in Cornwall called me changeling. I had the same thought when I saw you."

"So we are of one race. Could you stay with me, Michael?"

"You're not a woman, you're a witch. I've never met a witch before."

She laughed outright at that. "Nonsense. Witch, changeling--those are words for fools and peasants."

"Who are the Vardda, Shairn?"

She shook her head. "I told you last night. It is a tribal name. You were saying to Kerrel that you had come to Brittany to trace down your family. Do you know where to start?"

"I learned in Cornwall that they came from a place called Keregnac."

He thought she started a little at that name, but she said nothing, and he asked, "Do you know the town?"

"It's not a town," she answered slowly. "Only a tiny village, lying on the edge of a great moor. Yes, I know Keregnac." She picked up a bit of driftwood and began to draw idle patterns in the sand. "I don't think you will learn much there. The village is very old, and is now almost dead."

"But," he said, "I don't have to worry about that now, do I?"

"How do you mean?"

"You, Shairn. You know about my family, my race. I don't have to depend on Keregnac. You'll tell me."

She flung down the bit of driftwood. "Will I?"

"You said last night--"

"I don't remember what I said. And anyway, one says many things at night that sound foolish in the daytime." She stood up. "Perhaps Kerrel was right."

"About what?"

"About you. He made quite a scene when I joined him again. He said a number of things, and some of them were true."

"Such as what?" asked Trehearne evenly.

"Such as that heredity has played a rather cruel trick on you, and that you're better off to know nothing about your ancestry. Get me my robe, Michael, I must go."

But he had reached out and caught her wrist, and his grip was not gentle. "You can't do that," he said. "You can't refuse to tell me now."

"Oh," she said softly, "but I can. And I do."

"Listen," said Trehearne. "I've come a long way, and I've been through a lot. You're a beautiful woman, and I suppose you have a right to your whims, but not about this."

She looked down at his hand that was locked so tight around her wrist, and then up at him again, and her eyes were bright and very hot. "Is that your idea of persuasion?"

"Are you going to tell me?"

"No." She showed him her teeth, silently, in a catlike smile. "Kerrel is waiting for me."

"Let him wait."

"But he won't. We're leaving St. Malo today, and I assure you he won't go without me." He dropped her wrist.

"I'll follow you."

Her eyes were blazing. "That will be a long way."

"Brittany is not so large."

"Did I say I live in Brittany?" She caught up the robe and flung it around her shoulders, and then she said, "All right, Michael, follow me. I'd like that. Follow me as far as you can!"

She left him, going swiftly over the tumbled rocks. Trehearne watched her until she was out of sight, not moving from where he stood. After a long while his gaze was drawn to the sand and the patterns that Shairn had traced there. Amid the aimless, rambling lines a word stood out in large clear letters.

KEREGNAC.

THREE

A hired car and driver took Trehearne, for an exorbitant price, to Keregnac. On the first day they had roads, and made excellent time. On the second the tiny Fiat labored in agony along rutted cart tracks. The sea was far behind them, and the driver complained incessantly of the mad desires of Americans. Why should anyone wish to go to Keregnac, a place that even the Bretons had forgotten?

Trehearne was in a strange and savage mood. The sound of Shairn's name was in his ears, and all the things that she had said and done went round and round in his head, and the more he thought of them the more he hated her, and the more he wanted her. And the more he hated Kerrel, who had her, and who was part of whatever secret life she lived. But Shairn and her affairs were only part of it. He had come close to the end of his quest. He had almost grasped it, only to be denied at the last by a woman's fickle impulse. He would not be denied any longer. Shairn had started something that could not be stopped, no matter where it led.

The driver lost his way among the ruts and the stony hamlets. When he begged directions, the peasants regarded Trehearne in dour silence and could not be compelled to answer. It was impossible even to learn whether others had gone this way before them.

Trehearne had foreseen this possibility. He had had enough such difficulties in Cornwall. He had got a map and directions in St. Malo, and he forced the luckless driver on by dead reckoning. It was night before they came wallowing into a muddy square half paved with ancient stones and saw the lights of half a dozen dwellings clustered around it.

"Go there, to the largest house," said Trehearne. "Ask if this is Keregnac, and tell the master we'll pay well for lodging."

The driver, himself in a thoroughly foul humor by now, did as he was bid, and in a few moments Trehearne found himself in a three-room house of crumbling stone, the walls blackened with smoke and age. A meagre fire burned on the hearth, and two home-made candles furnished all the light.

It was enough to show Trehearne's face.

Oddly enough, the squat, hard-handed peasant who was master of the house showed neither fear nor hatred. Nor was he surprised. A certain slyness crept into his sullen expression, but that was all.

"You shall have the best bed, Monsieur," he said, in vile French and pointed to a gigantic carved _lit-clos_. "I have also one good horse. The others have gone ahead into the _landes_. You will wish to overtake them."

Trehearne tried to conceal his excitement. "Monsieur Kerrel and Mademoiselle Shairn?"

The peasant shrugged. "You know better than I what their names might be. I am not a curious man. I enjoy good health, and am content."

He called sharply in the Breton tongue, and a woman came to prepare food. She had a heavy, stupid face. She glanced once, sidelong, at Trehearne and after that was careful neither to look at nor speak to him. As soon as the simple meal was on the table, she hid herself in the adjoining room.

The ancient crone who sat knitting by the fire was not so cowed. As though age had placed her above necessity, she kept her bright little eyes fixed upon Trehearne with a mixture of hostility and interest.

"What are you thinking, _ma vielle_?" he asked her, smiling.

She answered, in French that was almost unintelligible to him, "I am thinking, Monsieur, that Keregnac is greatly honored by the Devil!"

The man snarled at her in Gaelic, bidding her be silent, but Trehearne shook his head.

"Don't be afraid, _grandmere_. Why do you say that?"

"From time to time he sends his sons and daughters to us. They eat our food, borrow our horses, and pay us well. Oh, very well! We could not live, if it were not for them." Her white coif bobbed emphatically. "But it is still the devil's money!"

Trehearne laughed. "And do I appear like the devil's son?"

"You are the very breed."

Trehearne bent closer to her and said, "Once my family lived here. Their name was Cahusac."

"Cahusac," she said slowly, and between her gnarled fingers the clicking needles stopped. "Eh, that was long and long ago, and Keregnac has forgotten the Cahusacs. They were driven out...."

"Why?"

"They had an only child, a daughter, who married one of these handsome sons of the Evil One, and...." She paused and looked at him wisely. "But forgive me, my old tongue has not yet learned caution."

Trehearne dropped to one knee beside her, so that he might see her face more clearly. His heart was hammering. "No, no, _grandmere_! Don't stop--it was to hear these things that I came all the way from America. This daughter of the Cahusacs--she had a child?"