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

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