Maze of Moonlight (33 page)

Hands out before him to feel his way, eyes fixed on the radiance that sent the shadows of the forest fleeing before it, he pushed through the trees. Yes, he had made up his mind already. He had, as always, chosen the light.

And Christopher opened his eyes to find himself staring into a dawn of pink and gold fire, a dawn that limned the trees of the forest with ephemeral flame and sparkled on the many windows of Shrinerock Castle.

Tall, straight, its walls thick and its defenses manifold, it was quite capable of holding out almost indefinitely against any power that he could bring against it. But had Roger not seemed equally invulnerable? And he had fallen.

And Christopher himself, with Natil, had successfully breached even stronger and more impenetrable fortresses, even when they were bent not upon keeping him out, but upon keeping him in.

He suddenly found himself examining the castle from a different perspective. In.

Fifteen or sixteen miles of open fields, and Baron Paul and his people on foot. Even if they started out in the darkness, daylight would still find them far away from shelter.

In.

And Roger had thought himself indomitable.

In.

It came to him then. In. And an elven hand had felled his grandfather.

Christopher stretched. The monkey yawned. He gave it a scritch and climbed down to the ground. As he expected, Natil was waiting at the base of the tree.

He looked into her face, and he tried not to be shaken by what he saw there. “What do you want, Natil?”

She did not flinch. “I want what my lord wants.”

“Don't give me that
my lord
crap. I'm no more your lord than this monkey is.”

Natil did not falter. “I took service with you, Christopher delAurvre. An Elf's word is binding throughout all the Worlds.”

“Even though you're fading.”

“Even more because of that, my lord.”

He thought of Shrinerock, locked and bolted and barred, thought of how it resembled a very large, very tightly made stone box. And boxes could contain as well as protect. “And what do you see among the patterns, harper? What do you see that your lord wants?”

“I . . .”

“You're close enough to me to see what I want, aren't you? You can see that much.”

“I see, my lord.”

“Can you do it?”

Natil hefted her harp in both hands. “I am a healer, my lord.”

His mouth clenched, and he stifled an insane urge to grab her by the front of her tunic and shake her. “
Can you do it?
”

She looked over her shoulder in the direction of the castle, and Christopher did not doubt that she was examining in earnest what few comprehensible shreds of the labyrinthine patterns were left to her. Poor Natil! She was as limited as the humans she was trying to help!

But after a time, she nodded. “I can.”

***

Berard of Onella entered the great hall of Shrinerock in the accompaniment of shouts and the clash of weapons. It was one of the luxuries he was beginning to permit himself. Nothing really ostentatious as of yet: just the slow examination of a new existence. It was a bath of money, so to speak, and he wanted to be sure of the temperature before he settled in.

He seated himself in the canopied chair at the high table, and at a wave of his hand, the captains who had transferred their allegiance from Hypprux to the Fellowship sat down. Servants began cutting up loaves of bread and filling wine cups, and platters of meat appeared, announced by trumpets.

Berard was reflective. Once, he had been but a sub-commander, one faceless man among the many brought to Adria by the Christian zeal of Yvonnet a'Verne. Now he had everything. Joanna was waiting for him up in his chamber (she had no choice: she was shackled to his bed), there were servants and entertainers and camp followers aplenty. Eustache de Cormeign provided a convenient and on-site liquidator for the loot, and Shrinerock was an impenetrable base of operations from which the vastly augmented Fellowship—unshakably loyal to him so long as the success was easy and the money plentiful—could reach out and shake ripe apples from the heavily laden tree that was Adria.

He reached for the fruit bowl and picked up an apple. Shaking apples from Adria. Apples of silver, apples of gold, apples (he thought of Joanna—surely she was starting to like him, was she not?) of flesh and blood. They were all apples, they all came to him easily. They could not but come.

Adria was much like France. But where France was a worn-out whore of a country, her face lined and seamed with the use of many men, Adria was something like Joanna: soft and pretty, made to be enjoyed. And, like Joanna, Adria seemed to respond fairly well to a slap.

The same, though, could not be said for Jehan. He had, in fact, not responded at all well to the news that Shrinerock was to be the first object of Berard's affections. Informed of the plan just before the attack, the young man had actually caused such an unpleasant scene that Berard had been forced to order him bound.

Berard could understand. Paul was, after all, Jehan's father, and Jehan had always thought a great deal of his father. Poor lad: his father had probably not cared a fig for him.

Nevertheless, sometime during the night, Jehan had managed to slip his bonds and had run off. The lad had been well liked by most of the men of the Fellowship, and doubtless the guards had not made it too difficult for him. Berard could understand that, too. But with Jehan now missing, the task of eliminating all the possible heirs to Shrinerock was going to be that much more difficult. And Jehan was one to nurse grudges: that could possibly mean trouble.

Berard stuffed his face philosophically. This was the good life, come to him as though it had dropped out of the sky, and the rest would fall soon enough. It did not really matter that Paul and many of his castle folk were hiding in the forests below the castle. They would be found soon enough . . . or they would die of starvation. Either was fine with Berard. It did not even really matter about Jehan. A technicality, that was all. Berard was not overly worried. If he could weather the meandering politics of the Italian city states, he could find his way through the much simpler maze of Adria and the delMaris.

Baron Berard. It had a nice sound. Too bad about Jehan.

The roar of Saint Adrian's spring was a torrent of sound that spilled out of the holy cave and cascaded down the slopes beneath Shrinerock. The old man, so went the tale, had caused the spring to appear out of the dry stones of the mountain, turning the lands all about from desert to forest, from waste to rich pasture; and the spring gushed out of the cave as though quite prepared to beat the unbeliever to the ground rather than suffer the slightest doubt as to the verity of the miracle.

Christopher believed. At present, creeping as he was towards the entrance of the shrine, he was willing to believe in almost anything. He was even willing—with the pig-headed audacity so characteristic of the delAurvres—to believe that tonight, in the absolute darkness that preceded the rising of the moon, yet another miracle would take place at Shrinerock Mountain, one conjured forth not by any saint of the Church, but rather through the power of one whose beginnings were lost in the dim and terrifying mysteries of the First Creation.

With him were Paul, Wenceslas, and the strongest men he had been able to find among the guards and the refugees. The roar of water muffled their footsteps and drowned the clink and thump of the heavy tools that they carried—hammers and picks and mauls salvaged from the ashes of town and village—as, with moonrise still two hours away, they groped their way along the upward path, eyes wide, hands reaching, working more by feel and smell and hearing than by sight.

And somewhere else, Christopher knew, Natil was sitting down with her harp, her hands to the strings and her eyes on Shrinerock, preparing to work magic. Elven magic.

His hands turned damp and sweaty. Peach trees. Any urge yet? No? So far so good.

Dark as it was, it was even darker within the cave. The roar of the spring buffeted the men, and Christopher caught Paul by the arm. “You don't happen to have any night vision in that elven blood of yours, do you, Messire Paul?”

“The Lady knows I wish I did, my friend,” Paul replied over the sound of the water. “But the blood came into my family a long time ago, and I am as are many others: immortal blood in my veins, but too little to make much of a difference.”

Yes, Natil had talked about that, too, months ago, when she had told him about Elves, about what the old stories said. Old stories! Christopher was still cursing himself for his gullibility—and for his cursing. Without Natil, the alliance would have been still-born. Without elven help, he himself might even now be locked in a cell beneath the Château. Or dead.

The turbulence of the spring churned moisture into the air. Christopher's face was damp, his hair lank. “You know the way to the passage?”

Paul squeezed his hand. “In my sleep.”

Christopher passed the orders back down the file. One hand on the shoulder of the man in front. Follow. Watch your step.

The men moved slowly along the edge of the rushing water, toward the mouth of the passage that led up to the castle above. This was no martial advance: attack by such an ill-equipped few would have been brave but foolish, and Christopher had given up such idiocy. He was, instead, intent upon the much more practical goal of getting Paul and his people to safety—to Malvern, at least, perhaps as far as Aurverelle.

He suddenly stopped short, his hand tight on Paul's shoulder. Ahead, broken into a faint cascade of glittering sparks by the cataract that fell from the rocky wall and plunged into the pool below, was a flickering light.

Guards.

He felt Paul nod. “They can't have heard us,” said the baron of Furze. “I can hardly hear myself. But you've good eyes, my friend.”

“Fear does that.”

Paul led the party up the invisible path by feel and then ducked behind what seemed to the touch to be a massive wall of boulders. The waterfall was off to the right now, jetting out with such force that it contacted the receiving pool some distance behind the party.

“The drought hasn't done anything to this, has it?” Christopher said in Paul's ear.

“It's a miracle.”

“Whose?”

But their advance had brought them within sight of the passage, for Christopher saw a flickering glow that outlined the shape of an opening among the rocks behind the falls. Yes, there were guards. He murmured a prayer of thanks, realized a moment later that he had addressed it to the Lady whom Natil so frequently invoked. He had asked Her for help before, and his request had obviously been granted.

So much attention he was getting these days! “I'm going in,” he said with a dry mouth, but a massive hand descended upon his shoulder, and the abbot's deep voice rumbled close by:

“And I also, my good lord baron of Aurverelle.”

“You're a churchman.”

“Aye, but once I was a knight. And I have a right hand. And as long as I have a right hand I can pick up a club. And as long as I can pick up a club, I can revenge the deaths of some monks who died praying for the souls of such men as killed them.”

Together, the two went toward the light, inching along a foot-wide ledge with the water jetting out above them; and when they reached the passage, Christopher bettered his grip on his sword and peered cautiously around the corner. The light was spilling from the far side of a turn. The guards had taken up their positions away from the wet.

“Too bad for them,” he whispered to the abbot.

Wenceslas hefted his club. “God be praised.”

The baron grinned wickedly. “She certainly deserves it, doesn't She?”

Wenceslas crossed himself. Christopher clapped him on the shoulder and winced a little at the feel of rock hard muscles. Without waiting, though, he made for the turning; and the two guards who were occupying the dank chamber beyond were caught unawares by the sudden, murderous attack from the downside of the passage. Wenceslas' cudgel smashed one tot he ground with a solid crunch as Christopher's sword tore through the throat of the other before he could even gasp in surprise.

The water masked the sound of the fight and the fall of the bodies. In a few minutes, though, it would have to mask even more.

Wenceslas dragged the dead guards out of the way as Christopher took one of the torches, went back down the passage, and waved the rest of the party forward. Paul led them up, climbing spryly, and when he reached Christopher, he shook his hand. “My thanks, Messire Christopher.”

Christopher grinned. It was time to drop such formalities. “My pleasure, Paul.”

Paul smiled, took the torch, and led them forward, first through the chamber in which the guards had been slain, then beyond. The air was damp and stagnant, the ground stony, the passage narrow and steep. Abbot Wenceslas, a big man, now and again had to force himself through a constriction as though he were shoving a grape through a finger ring.

But a short distance upwards, the passage opened out into a large room that was loud with dripping water and irregular with pits, depressions, and outcroppings of a thousand shapes and sizes. On the far side, another aperture led further up, but immediately above it, the roof dipped down in a cluster of rough boulders that seemed thrust into the room like a finger.

Without comment, Paul pointed at the cluster, and with dour nods, the men set to work. Hammers, picks, clubs: anything heavy that might persuade a stone to break smashed rhythmically against the overhang with the regularity of swiples falling on a floor of wheat. And, as though the men were indeed threshing, Wenceslas himself called the changes in a low voice that reverberated throughout the room, carrying even over the still tumultuous roar of water.

Christopher worked, too, raising a sledge and smacking it home, showing his companions that even the baron of Aurverelle knew how to keep time to a caller's chant. But as he worked, he wondered what Natil was doing. Was she keeping her word? How would he know?

Minutes passed, lengthened. The work went on. The temperature in the chamber rose. The air was sodden with humidity. Dirty, sweaty men strained aching muscles against the impassive stone.