Maze of Moonlight (32 page)

The forest that lapped about the lower slopes of Shrinerock Mountain was thick with the growth of ancient trees and riven by a multitude of ravines and crevasses. It was the perfect place to hide, and Baron Paul, familiar with his estate as his conquerors certainly were not, had concealed beneath its shadowed canopy of leaves and branches nearly three hundred survivors of the sudden and incredibly effective assault on his Shrinerock estate.

With him were his wife Isabelle, a few servants, and about a hundred and fifty men of the castle guard. Villagers and freeholders filled out the group, along with the abbot of the looted Benedictine abbey and a few of his monks. But though, as Paul explained to Christopher, the forest was providing concealment, its safety could at best be termed relative. The baron and his people had little food, no blankets, no horses, and a number of wounded. They could not even make a fire, for the free companies were looking for them.

“It was unbelievable,” said Paul. He was sitting dejectedly on a stone, away from the shelters of sticks and leaves that his men had put together for those most critically hurt. “Absolutely unbelievable.” He bent his head with emotion, ran a hand through his thinning hair.

Isabelle, beside him, took his hand. The plight of the estate had overcome her customary shyness as it had extinguished Paul's daft humor. “They came as pilgrims to Saint Adrian's spring, Messire Christopher. They came in the night, and of a sudden.”

Wenceslas, the abbot, shook his bullet head. “Pilgrims. God's curse on 'em.” The half dozen monks with him crossed themselves at the oath, but appeared to agree with it.

“They entered the cave late in the day, when few were about,” said Paul, “and then they climbed the passage that leads up from behind the spring all the way to the castle well. They opened the gates to the others. How they knew the way, I don't know. Besides myself, Catherine was the only one who knew the secret, and she . . .” He put his hands to his face and sobbed. “She held the door against what looked like fifty while we escaped.”

Isabelle put her arms about him. “She was a valiant woman, husband.”

“The heart of a man in the body of a maid.”

“No,” said Isabelle. She smiled softly, as though remembering past times. Good times. “The soul of a Fair One wrapped in fair flesh. She was wearing green and gray when she died.”

Paul was nodding. “It's true. She was.”

Fair One. Clothes of green and gray. Faintly, Christopher heard the sound of Natil's harp. She was away with the wounded and the frightened, doing what she could for them, and he sensed with the surety of instinct that there was more to her music now than vibrating strings.

An Elf. All this time, all his trust, and she was an Elf. And what was she doing for the wounded? Healing them? Probably. Now there was no need for her to hide her abilities. So she could heal openly, just like that . . .

He stared. Mirya and Terrill. Miraculous healing. Elves again. And they had—dear Lady!—healed Vanessa!

He had been shaken by Paul's inadvertent revelation, but now he felt distinctly ill. What did Vanessa have to do with this? It was a good thing Natil was out of sight, or he would have . . . would have . . .

The monkey climbed up on his shoulder, pulled his hair, nibbled at his ear. Christopher patted it absently, feeling something collapse within himself. Tamed and taken, just like the monkey. And when would he start finding himself possessed by an irresistible urge to plant peach trees?

But Paul was still shaking his head at the utter defeat he had suffered, and Christopher forced himself to thrust aside his thoughts about the harper. Time enough for that later. “Are you sure no one else knew?”

“No one in Adria.”

That did not answer the question. Or, rather, it raised another. “Who else?”

Paul shrugged. “Well, my son Jehan. But he's . . .” Paul suddenly lifted his head. “Oh, dear Lady. Oh, no.
Ai, ea sareni, Elthiai!
”

Abbot Wenceslas frowned at the elvish words, but Isabelle clung to her husband. “Paul . . . Paul . . . it couldn't be Jehan. It just couldn't be. Why would he do such a thing?”

“I failed him, Isabelle,” said Paul. “I failed him from the start. He was high-chested and fiery, like a spring colt, and I sent him off to be nurtured by . . . by marmosets.”

Martin had been standing off by himself, arms folded, head down, almost lost in the darkness, but at Paul's words, he turned and started to walk away.

Paul was on his feet instantly. “No, Martin,” he said, stretching out his arms to the lad. “Forgive me. I didn't mean that.”

Martin stopped, shook his head. “You did, Messire Paul. But that's what I always tried to tell you. I know my place. I've always known it. I'm a marmoset, like my father, like his father. It's our lot. We make cheese.”

“You're not like that.”

Martin's smile was bitter. “I'm much worse, actually.”

Christopher, though still annoyed with Martin about Vanessa, could not but admire his honesty: he had revealed as much as he could without committing himself irretrievably to the stake. But Paul was shaking his head furiously. He was a man who had lost everything, even, so he believed, his son, and he was now trying frantically to cobble together some fragments of faith.

Christopher did not know what to say to him: his own faith had been abruptly shattered once again.

But now Natil was approaching, her harp in her hand, her steps silent—as much a part of the forest as the trees about her—and Christopher felt like a fool for not having seen it long before. Every motion of her body, every gesture of her hands, every glint of immortal starlight in her eyes screamed out at him that this was no human woman. This was something else, something other, something alien: a wild thing that had walked out of the forest and into his castle, bringing . . .

He stared at the Elf. She returned his gaze tranquilly, a little sadly.

. . . what? Healing? Comfort? Was that not what she had given him? And yet, at the hands of her kind, his grandfather had—

Shaking, he turned away from her, forced his eyes and his attention onto Paul, Isabelle, the abbot and the black huddle of his monks. Martin's darkling presence at the edge of the clearing. People: ripe with the odor of good, human sweat, pungent with the aroma of defeat.

“We can't stay here,” said Christopher. “We've got to get all of you away.”

Wenceslas' broad face was shrewd with the knowledge of one who had once been a soldier. “I doubt we have enough weapons to go around, even if we all could use them. And with no horses, 'twill be a long way across the pastures. We'd be seen afore we reach cover.”

“I doubt we could fight our way out in any case, Abo,” said Paul, “but Messire Christopher is right. Fields or not, we'll have to get away. The companies are already looking for us.”

“Haven't they done enough?” said the abbot. “They've taken the castle, they've done their killing.” He looked discouraged. He had obviously entered the monastery to escape the very thing that had found him. “They've got what they want.”

“Not all of it,” said Christopher. He was too conscious of Natil's presence. She might well have been a star, blindingly incandescent to his inner sight. “There's a nice gold cross you have, lord abbot. And those rings of yours . . . I'll bet they 'd fetch a fine price.” He paused meaningfully. “As would you.”

To Christopher's surprise, the churchman removed his rings and his pectoral and tossed them on the ground. “So much are they worth to me, Baron Christopher. I'd give 'em all—including my life—for thes afety of those who are here. Or even for the healing of a single scratch of one of the wounded.”

Natil spoke. “Payment,” she said, “is not required. What I have, I give freely. Those who were hurt are healed.”

The monks looked plainly frightened, but the abbot shook his head resignedly. “I knew you had some strange friends, Messire Paul. You and your father both.”

“Friends, indeed,” murmured the baron. He reached out, and Natil took his hand. “You can trust Natil with your life, Abo.”

Christopher remembered his own words. He also had trusted Natil with his life, and he had said so. And she had never given him any reason to regret that trust.

Could he still trust her? She had not indicated otherwise. Indeed, any distrust he felt was apparently of his own making, for Natil, to all outward appearance, was still Natil. She harped, and she healed. That she had suddenly been revealed as an Elf and a worker of magic had not changed her. And Christopher recalled that, though she apparently held immense potencies in her hands, her attentions toward him had been only of the most mundane sort: a touch, a smile, good counsel, and sweet music.

But what the hell did she want?

He could have asked, but he was unwilling to parade his fears and his grandfather before everyone. Yet, at the same time, he was not at all sure that, even had he and Natil been alone, he would have had the nerve to utter the question. Feeling helpless, feeling frightened, he let it be. There were more immediate problems at hand.

He told Paul and the others that he had already sent word to the members of the alliance . . . though he omitted certain pertinent facts about Yvonnet's involvement with the free companies. But he estimated, and Paul and Wenceslas concurred, that it would be another week at least before the forces of Hypprux and Maris were gathered and equipped. It was almost a certainty that the companies that had taken Shrinerock would find the refugees hiding in the forest by then.

They had to get away, but fifteen or sixteen miles of open pasture lay between them and Malvern Forest, the nearest cover. On foot, the refugees had no hope of crossing it undetected. The companies would see them . . . and ride them down.

The stars hovered about midnight like a flock of white geese. Christopher eyed them. Bad days and worse news. “Everybody go to bed,” he said brusquely. “We're just going to give ourselves headaches if we keep on this way, and I'm sure that's exactly what the companies want. We'll . . .” He glanced at Natil. As tranquil as she was, she almost seemed embarrassed, like a girl caught stealing fruit. “We'll figure out what to do tomorrow.”

Paul was silent for a time, then, at last, he nodded as though relieved that someone else was willing to give orders for a few hours. He rose slowly, offered his arm to Isabelle, and took her away to a bower of bracken that his men had prepared. Wenceslas and his monks retired to bare dirt. The soldiers arranged watches.

Natil eyed Christopher as the camp rustled into a silence broken only by the call of night birds and the faint clink of mailed and vigilant guards. Christopher ignored her and climbed a tall oak tree. The monkey ascended leisurely beside him, but Christopher grunted his way up, smiling inwardly at the bitter irony. Taken and tamed, perhaps, but not quite a monkey.

From the upper branches, he could see the castle standing upon the mountaintop, shimmering in the moonlight like some impenetrable fortress out of an old poem. Pinnacle upon pinnacle, tower upon tower, whitewashed and filigreed and chimneyed and spired, Shrinerock seemed hardly to belong to the world of men and women and their constant and humiliating depravity.

Tired, discouraged, Christopher wedged himself into a fork, wrapped his arms about the trunk, and dozed, his mind still slogging through the problem: one of the capital fortresses of Adria, taken without a struggle, its calamity brought on by the idiocy of the very barons whose help Christopher had enlisted. And now it was supposed to be saved by that same help.

Oh, this was as stupid as Nicopolis! As stupid as his ancestors' constant preoccupation with the fool's question of elven dominance. As stupid as his own obsession with a simple peasant girl who saw too much in the world.

And Vanessa indeed saw too much for a human. Just like Natil, by her own admission, saw too little for an Elf.

He remembered Mirya and Terrill, knew now what they were. But why Vanessa? Why a peasant girl? It did not make sense. Nothing did, unless Vanessa herself, in some way, were—

Gritting his teeth, horrified by the logic of his thoughts, he pressed his forehead against the bark. “Please,” he whispered. “Please not that. I just love her for what she is. I don't want her to be . . . to be like that.”

Beside him, the monkey chittered restlessly and then curled up against him and went to sleep.

“Not that.”

He slipped into uneasy dreams, and it seemed to him that he was wandering in forests of moon-spattered darkness, searching for something. His task was an urgent one, and his eyes proving useless, he had to feel his way along the twisting paths with outstretched arms, groping and staggering without even brute instinct to guide him. And then, searching as he was for unknowns in this wilderness of dark trees and twining roots, of sound and odor and half-glimpsed things that flashed in the moon's bright beams and then flitted away as soft as owls, he realized that he was lost. Lost forever. Even God could not find him here, for God belonged to towns and castles and cities, to the vaults of cathedrals and the jeweled hands of moneyed prelates. God had no more business in this forest than did Christopher delAurvre.

Ahead, shining like a star: light.

And now the inescapable question: having cast away jewels and prelates and towns and cathedrals, having cast away even God, did he want light? Or was he, in fact, groping about in the wilderness by his own choice? Was it not comforting to be lost, to have given up, to be sure at least that the goal was absurd, the maze all encompassing, the patterns inhumanly intricate, beyond even the vaguest comprehension by mortal beings?

The light beckoned.

It would be easy to give up. It might even be comforting. He could stay in his castle while the country went to hell, and he could eat himself alive with the acrid bitterness of hope denied. But he was a delAurvre, and, proud, imperious, pig-headed, he had made his decision long ago.

Of course he wanted the light. He had wanted the light from the moment he had heard about his grandfather's loss of nerve. He had craved it since he had witnessed it borne aloft by a singing acrobat. He had followed it all the way across Germany and Hungary until he had drawn up with the French and German knights on the plains of Nicopolis. He had groped in the darkness for so long afterward precisely because he felt that it was there—it had to be there—
somewhere
.