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

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.

Chapter Twenty-three

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,