Maze of Moonlight (26 page)

While molten lead drips down on everyone.

“. . . we could shatter it in a trice . . .”

Given, say, several hours, since the gates are reinforced with iron.

“. . . and then we could ride right up the main street to the aldermen's hall.”

While the townspeople wave and smile at us.
Berard rubbed the back of his neck. It was indeed getting hot. “I must compliment you, Jehan: very forthright.”

Jehan tossed his head. “That's the way to do it. That's the only way to do it. Fie on Robert of Geneva.”

Berard sighed inwardly. Had Jehan not been such a devil of a fighter when it actually came to hand-to-hand combat, he would have quietly gotten rid of him sometime in the last few months. As it was, though, Jehan was convenient, and Berard hoped that, in the near future, he would become even more convenient.

It was as good a time to start as any, he supposed. First move, then. A pawn. “I can't help but wonder if there might be another way in,” he said idly.

“There's no other way in. Or if there is, only a coward would take it.”

This was brutally unfair, Berard realized. After all, Jehan did not even know what game he was playing. But he continued. Another pawn. “The canal, for example. It must go through the wall somewhere.”

“Are you saying that we should slog our way through the water and come up in the middle of a sewer?”

“It would simplify matters.”

“I—”

“Besides,” Berard yawned, “Gonzago is in charge. We follow his orders.” He glanced sideways at Jehan, who was now peering anxiously at Gonzago's plumed helmet. “There's always a way in. A good attacker exploits whatever opening comes his way. A good defender does his best to stop him . . . or at least keeps the openings from being discovered in the first place.”

Jehan's temper, always faintly simmering, was rising to full boil.

“Like your father,” said Berard, moving a bishop. “A very wise man.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he entrusted the secret of the hidden access to Shrinerock only to you.”

“I'm his only son! Of course he'd tell me!”

“It must be quite a burden . . .”

Jehan was forthright. As usual. “None whatsoever.”

“. . . to know something like that.” Berard reached up to scratch his head. His fingers were interrupted by his helmet. He shrugged philosophically: a soldier's lot. “Why did he construct such a thing in the first place?”

Jehan was hot and angry. “He didn't construct it. It's a part of the mountain. You'd spend ten years and several fortunes trying to fill up all those caves.”

Berard nodded, edged a pawn forward another square. “That wouldn't do at all.”

“Shrinerock is safe enough. Who but a coward or a thief would come up from the spring, anyway?”

The second bishop now. “The spring?”

“Saint Adrian's spring. You know, that holy place that all the pilgrims are always visiting. Surely you remember Saint Adrian, Berard. He's the patron of this whole country.”

Gonzago's plume was in motion now, the commander dispatching a flock of messengers to bear his decision to the captains of the individual companies. Stealth? Berard wondered. No. Probably a fight. But not—please God!—a frontal assault. Gonzago was a better man than that.

Loot, and a few women, and wine. It would be a hard day, a good night. But Berard had a few moments left to pursue his game. “Yes,” he said, idly reaching for a knight, “I remember Saint Adrian.” He chuckled. “How ironic that his spring should contain the greatest weakness of the castle that guards it!”

“Yes . . .” said Jehan, watching the messengers apprehensively. “Ironic.”

Berard positioned the knight and turned to hear what the messengers had to say. Mate in two, if he were lucky.

***

The April afternoon was cool, with just a trace of a breeze from the sea, and the streets of Maris were crowded with townsfolk and visitors come for the celebration. Mimes and acrobats worked and busked the plazas. Servants in Ruprecht's livery rode along the main thoroughfares, scattering coins and flowers. Everyone was to be happy, everyone was to participate.

And Christopher delAurvre, not one to spoil the mood, leaped and tumbled in the middle of the great common that lay before the fortress of Maris. His hair and beard, left to grow for the last two months, were shaggy, unkempt, and deliberately spattered with mud; and his clothing was ragged and fantastic with tatters and scarves. He looked like an itinerant savage, and, indeed, he played the part well, growling like a bear at the children, scattering them amid feigned and sincere squeals of fright, propositioning a donkey so sincerely—and graphically—that the bystanders howled. And when Natil, laughing as hard as the rest, at last swallowed her mirth and struck a chord on her harp, he grinned brightly, turned his cap upside-down, and broke into an expansive dance.

Everyone clapped. Christopher was a good dancer, and an even better madman. The perfect oddity to compliment such a pretty harper whose modesty was such that she actually blushed at the applause given her. But Natil, regardless of her origins or her reasons for serving Christopher so steadfastly, seemed to be almost innately modest, whether about her skills as a harper . . . or her knowledge of the Elves.

Natil actually knew a great deal about them, and listening to her stories that winter, Christopher had begun for the first time to understand something of the maze of patterns that surrounded his family.

No one—perhaps deliberately, perhaps because those who had firsthand knowledge were dead—had ever told Christopher that his ancestors had all been obsessed with the Elves, seeing in their effortless, sylvan existence a challenge to the delAurvre dominion over man, field, and forest. Some had actually made a practice of hunting them, and that ferocity had gone so far as to infect the people of the estate in general. Nearly four hundred years before, went one tale (and Natil, overcome by her own skill, had wept when she had told it), two Elves, male and female, had been captured alive by Aurverelle men. The female had been raped and tortured to death, but the male had escaped, only to return some time later to slaughter the captors and their families.

It was a horrible little story of witless violence, anger, and revenge, perfectly in keeping with delAurvre excess. Roger, it seemed, had been but the last and most bestial of his family, pursuing his vices in open defiance of any kind of decency and justice.

Elves. Christopher did not doubt that within the flamboyant conventions of the storyteller's art lay the grain of truth for which he had been searching. They existed. They had power. Roger himself had mentioned them. It had not been madness, then, that had caused the old man's sudden shift in allegiance and behavior: it had been magic.

But though Christopher had been elated by the revelation that lay within Natil's stories and tears, still it chilled him that an ancestor, someone he had known, had been so struck by such inhuman powers, and that those same energies had, indirectly, touched his own life. It was because of Roger's inexplicable change that Christopher had been moved to try to make up for his grandfather's dichotomous failure of character, to finally journey to Nicopolis and have his last particle of belief dashed almost irrevocably.

Almost irrevocably, but not quite. Vanessa had come, and she had awakened his compassion. And then Natil had arrived . . . and she had brought her own kind of magic. And now Christopher was dancing in the streets of Maris, offering his glove to all of Adria.

He was not yet free. But he had gotten his bindings loose.

Christopher and Natil finished up, and the baron, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, rolled on his back, received a scritch on his belly from the pretty harper, then rose and padded off after her, now and again sticking his tongue out at the laughing townsfolk. If he recalled that the monkey had behaved in just such a fashion before its encounter with Natil had turned it into a model citizen of Aurverelle, he also kept in mind that the parallel had been first drawn by himself.

They ducked into the portal of a small chapel, and Christopher counted the coins they had collected. “Thirty pennies,” he cried gleefully. “Just enough for dinner . . . or . . .” He glanced at the crucifix on the wall, waggled his eyebrows roguishly, “. . . or to buy Jesus.”

As charming in motley and tatters as she was in furs and fine cloth, Natil shook her head and sighed at his poor taste. “Baron Ruprecht will be providing dinner,” she reminded him. “You should rest before we have to perform.”

“Yes . . . you're probably right.” The cathedral bell began to toll. “My God, is it that late?”

“It is.”

“I've been having too much fun.” Christopher stretched out his arms and laughed. “I haven't acted like a madman for some time now. I rather miss it.”

“You are not mad, my lord.”

He laughed again. “Really, Natil: you say the most absurd things sometimes. Who but a madman would do this?”

Her eyes were knowing, almost unnervingly so. But, nonetheless, Christopher liked her and trusted her. In fact, the particularly audacious entertainment that they had planned for Baron Ruprecht tonight—late tonight—would have been impossible without her.

It would be difficult, dangerous work. Pytor had wrung his hands at the idea, and Jerome had crossed himself, but Christopher was actually enjoying it all. “Come on,” he said. “I'll race you to the fortress. Last one there is . . . umm . . .”

Natil lifted an eyebrow.

“. . . is an Elf! How about that?”

She laughed, and Christopher bounded out of the alley at a run. He beat her to the gates easily.

“Now,” whispered Natil.

Silently, undetected by the slumbering acrobats and entertainers who had been granted the shelter of the great hall of Maris after the Easter feast, Christopher and his harper rose. Deep as they were within the high, multiple walls of the fortress, there was not even a faint glimmer of moonlight at the windows to relieve the absolute darkness; and Christopher wondered how they could ever find their way across the hall and into the corridors without causing an uproar. But Natil took his hand and led him unerringly toward the doorway, speaking in the faintest of murmurs to tell him to step over one of thee sprawled sleepers or avoid a table or a chair that had been left out.

If there were guards nearby, their attention had apparently wavered for an instant. Christopher and Natil, unnoticed, crept out of the hall, followed a corridor towards the deserted kitchen, and finally stood in a cul-de-sac just off the pantry.

Christopher could see nothing. He had been forced to take Natil at her word when she told him to rise, step, or turn. The harper's perceptions, on the other hand, seemed undiminished. She knew where she was. Judging by her movements, the castle might well have been fully lit by the sun. It was incredible that she could find her way through the darkness, and yet Christopher was somehow not surprised.

Working sightlessly, he stripped off his tatters and motley to reveal a tunic and stockings of simple, dark cloth. Soft shoes, a long knife at his side—a sword, he knew, would have been too clumsy—and a coil of rope over his shoulder completed his arrangements. Save for Natil's beloved harp, they left everything else in the cul-de-sac. If they were successful tonight, they could retrieve it at will. If not, it would not matter.

“I'm ready,” he said.

“The hand of the Lady be on you, my lord,” said Natil. And again, she took him by the hand and led him through the darkness.

She had said much the same thing to the errant monkey, but whose hand? What Lady? He was sure that she had not been referring to the Virgin. But Christopher supposed that the harper's blessing, whatever it meant, was as good as any, for ladies' hands had been on him throughout his life, and it was from soft arms and softer faces that he had learned much, whether sterility, compassion, or rebirth.

The windows of the upper floors looked out above the encircling walls, and the light of the moon and stars poured into the corridor. Outside, the fortress and the sleeping city lay silver in the heavenly light, and beyond them, the sea glittered, sparkling.

He was still holding Natil's hand, and he saw that she was clad in the same tunic,breeches, and boots that he had seen before. She slung her harp over her shoulder. “Do you wish to continue?” she asked formally.

He grinned. “You know I do. This is the best thing I've done since I rode off to Nicopolis. Better, in fact.”

Natil's eyes twinkled. “Indeed.”

She bowed, touching her hands to her head and opening them wide, then turned and put a foot out the window. Unlike the Château, the fortress of Maris was without ledges, almost without any sort of handhold whatsoever, and she spent a minute or two examining the wall before, feet on the sill and fingers hooked under the lintel, she stretched up and found a hold. Christopher stared as she lifted herself with the strength of one arm.

He leaned out and peered upward. The harper's garments blended with the wall even in moonlight, but he saw that she had ascended to an upper window, and that she was stretching down a hand to him.

“Isn't there another way?” he said.

“There are guards on the stairs,” replied Natil. “Ruprecht is a cautious man. He worries about plots, and frequently fears for his safety. Hence, his tower bedroom.”

With a shrug then, he took her hand and strained himself up until he was perched beside her. He tried to ignore the drop beneath his feet. “What now?”

Natil's eyes flickered inwardly. They were in shadow at present, but further climbing would inevitably expose them to the light of the moon only a few days past full. “Up to the roof. Then across and down. The guards on the parapet can be avoided.”

“Is that what the . . .” He decided to risk it. He was already thinking it, for it was becoming uncomfortably obvious. “. . . patterns say, harper?”

Her eyes were on him. The breeze from the sea was cool, moist. “Patterns can change, my lord.”

“So Vanessa found. You see them, too, then.”