Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

But as Natil, as though exhausted by her performance, sat with bowed head, a single line of her song was still ringing in Christopher's memory, shining out like a star from all the death and the futility. He had wanted the magic, and he was suddenly wondering if he might have been given a little piece of it, just enough so that he could, perhaps, find his way back to the rest on his own.

Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut . . .

Roland's last act was something that, though sparkling with the same chivalric glitter that had dusted the rest of his gleaming life with diamonds, had a touch of the humble to it, an acknowledgment of his limitations.

His right glove he lifted up to God.

And what delAurvre had ever lifted up his right glove to anyone? What delAurvre had ever done anything that was motivated in the least bit by humility? Even Christopher's journey to Nicopolis had, at bottom, been an attempt to burnish up what he had seen as the tarnished honor left behind by his grandfather.

Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut . . .

If he could do that: offer his glove to . . . to someone. Not to God. That would not work. He did not want to pledge himself to any transcendent being whose existence had been used alternately as a lure and a club for the last fourteen centuries. If he, a delAurvre (and there it was again, that overweening pride) was to offer service, it had to be to something untainted by exploitation or profit. It had to be humble, without reward, and it had to smack of common humanity, of that Kingdom that included all the Hobs and Tims and Toms—and Vanessas—of the world.

He stood up. The hall seemed to breathe again. “My thanks, dear harper, for your song.”

Natil lifted her head, stood, and curtsied. “Have I pleased you, my lord?” Her eyes were luminous, as though gleaming with starlight. “Did I give you what you desired?”

Christopher nodded. Humility. Common humanity. And he knew what he could do. “You did indeed. Thank you.”

***

Paul delMari, baron of Furze, read the letter a second time. When he finished, he was just as puzzled as he had been the first time. He sat back in his chair and contemplated trying the letter a third time, but he knew that he had understood it perfectly well the first time. Reading it twice had been superfluous. Thrice would be the mark of an idiot.

“What do you make of this, Isabelle?” he asked his wife as he rose and offered her the parchment.

Isabelle set aside her embroidery and took it. She knew how to read better than most educated men, and for an instant, her eyebrows lifted at the salutation, but then she skimmed rapidly over the words, her lips barely moving.

She finished, dropped the letter onto her lap. “Christopher delAurvre?”

Paul nodded. “Christopher, indeed. He appears to have recovered from his trip home from Nicopolis, although whether also from his madness remains to be seen.”

“Asking for help?”

Paul shrugged. At times like this, without any clear-cut problem or solution at hand, possessed only of a sense of bewilderment, he was inclined to be at a loss. Perhaps that was why Jehan had left him: the boy had recognized his father as something of a ditherer. “It's for a worthy cause.”

Isabelle shook her head, pondering. “Didn't his grandfather kill your grandfather?”

Paul shrugged again, uncomfortably. “That was fifty years ago,” he said, “and a case of misunderstanding, I believe. Roger was always a bit hasty. Except toward the end.”

Isabelle usually kept her feelings to herself, but a bubble of incredulity rose to her normally tranquil surface, broke, and spread openly across her face. She held up the letter. “Husband . . . I'm not sure at all about this.”

“Well, it's very simple,” said Paul. He rose and took a turn about the bedroom, hands behind his back. “He's worried about the free companies destroying Adria—as though we need much help these days—and he wants an alliance. He's certainly not being underhanded about it.”

Isabelle snorted delicately. “The delAurvres have always been underhanded.”

“Not since Roger reformed. They've actually been rather exemplary since then.”

Isabelle set the parchment aside and resumed her embroidery: an ornate chasuble for Abbot Wenceslas of the Benedictine monastery across the valley. “What do you want to do?”

“Well,” said Paul, “initially, I want your opinion of getting entangled with Aurverelle.” Politics. He did not like them, but his position occasionally forced him to roll up his sleeves and plunge his hands into the stink. “I think I have it, though.”

“The delAurvres are too unpredictable,” said Isabelle as she tied off a thread. “Look at Roger: one day he's about to destroy the Free Towns, and the next he's turned completely around. Everyone knows that story. He came back from Beldon Forest a changed man. Some minstrel even went and composed a song about Roger of Tarsus.”

“And was promptly flattened by Roger for his temerity, as I recall.”

Isabelle went back to her embroidery. “You must admit that it was a sudden conversion.”

“I suspect there were . . . reasons for that.” Paul went to the window. If he craned his neck, he could peek around the corner of the tower to the left and catch a glimpse of Malvern Forest. So few these days. And fading fast. Isabelle had not known about the Elves when she had married him, but she had reconciled herself to their existence and visits as befitted the dutiful and honorable wife that she was. She did not like to talk about them, true, but she had accommodated them.

Very few now, though, were willing to accommodate them. Very few, in fact, believed in them at all, nor, indeed, had any cause to. Perhaps for that very reason, it had been a long time since anyone from Malvern had come to Shrinerock. Times were changing. Getting darker. Much darker. Autumn had