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

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.

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