Maze of Moonlight (44 page)

“Seen enough?” said Christopher.

Jehan shook his head. “You have to understand, Messire d'Aurverelle: this was my home.”

Christopher looked at Mirya. The Elf, drawing on sources of strength unavailable to humans, was recovering quickly from her exertions in the forest, but her renewed vitality had not taken the bleakness from her eyes. She stood, arms folded, watching the distant flames that were devouring Malvern. She knew all about losing one's home . . . or one's world.

He touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry, Mirya. I'm truly sorry.”

She nodded. “My thanks, dear friend.”

He blinked. Friend? Now he was a friend of the Elves? What was next? Sleeping with them?

But Jehan was stalking deliberately towards the hole that had been rammed through the gate. “Are you two coming?”

Mirya started off, but Christopher put a hand on her arm. “Is this wise?” he said. “Jamie and the others are going to be wondering what the hell we're doing up here. They've made a generous offer: I don't want them to think I don't give a damn about it. And the longer we delay, the more time Berard has to breach the walls.”

“The barons trust you,” Mirya replied. “They and their men are already on their way to Saint Brigid. They can go no faster. And as for Jehan . . .” She looked at Christopher meaningfully. “It would not be wise to leave alone one who is so close to despair.”

Fretful though he was, Christopher understood. Jehan resembled at present a certain baron of Aurverelle who had returned from crusade with a soul full of ashes. “Yes . . . yes. I know.”

“Come then.”

They followed the young man through the gate and across the courtyard, entered the residence, ascended the stairs tot he bedrooms and living quarters. The rooms were essentially intact: the free companies had doubtless enjoyed the appointments of a well-furnished castle.

Jehan turned, lifted the torch. Vaulting, beams, torn tapestries. An overturned table and an occasional pool of dried vomit witnessed the excesses of Shrinerock's most recent inhabitants. “It's been over ten years.”

Christopher shook his head. “It's gone, Jehan.”

“Maybe . . .” The young man looked down the corridor. “There are other stairs, other rooms. I want to look.”

Jamie and the barons were waiting. Saint Brigid and Vanessa were waiting. “Dammit, Jehan! For what?”

“Something I've lost.”

Down one hall, then another. A stone door with a hole battered in it. Jehan poked his torch in, then stepped into the room beyond, leaving his companions in the corridor.

It was an ordinary enough room. Beside a bed, there was a table, a desk, a bookcase well stocked with leather bindings. Clothes still hanging in the wardrobe were set into eerie motion by the flickering light.

“This was my room,” said Jehan, his voice echoing down the hall. “They didn't keep it for me. They gave it to Martin.”

Christopher kept his impatience in check. “I'm sorry, Jehan.”

“For what, messire? I believe the better man won.”

But as Jehan brooded on the room, Christopher realized that Mirya was standing stiffly, staring, her sight apparently turned inward. Christopher had seen her so before, in the forest and elsewhere, but she had always seemed at ease with her inner vision. Now, though, she looked almost frightened.

“What is it?” he said. “Mirya!”

“Something is happening,” she replied distantly. “Something is changing. The patterns . . .” She gasped suddenly. “Dear Lady! It is Vanessa!”

Christopher understood nothing. “What? What's she doing?”

“She is . . . changing the patterns.”

He goggled at her. “Can she do that?”

“She has before. But . . . this time . . .” The look of distance and fear deepened.

She fell silent again, closed her eyes. Christopher grabbed her arm. “This time what?”

No answer.

“Mirya! What the hell's going on? What's happening?”

The Elf opened her eyes, spoke slowly. “Vanessa has altered the patterns. And . . . perhaps herself.”

Christopher felt cold, sick. Vanessa? Altered? “What are you talking about?”

Mirya shook her head. “Vanessa has the blood. We sent it to sleep, but I fear it has awakened again. And . . . there is more that can happen.” She sighed, smiled with a sense of the bittersweet. “Under certain circumstances, the blood can transform. It has . . . happened before.”

“But what did she do?”

The Elf shook her head. “I am not certain. It is all . . . confused.”

Dan,
Vanessa had said at their parting.
Dan make plans, Christopher. Patterns can change i' a heartbeat, an' you might na wan' me after.

Christopher felt his jaw clench. “Always, Vanessa,” he murmured to himself. “I'll always want you. I'm . . .” He thought of the free companies surrounding Saint Brigid, thought of the pathetically small force he was going to lead against them. “I'm not going to let you down again.”

Vanessa's family, Etienne of Languedoc, Berard of Onella: the idiotic twists of the patterns that had chained Vanessa to a life of helpless torment just as Roger of Aurverelle had once chained village girls to his bed. But Vanessa had fought, and she had freed herself. And now Christopher was fighting, too: fighting Berard, fighting Roger, fighting the patterns.

I'm not going to let you go again.

Jehan stepped out of the room, his movements distant. Christopher, still shaken, eyed him impatiently. “Are you finished?”

Jehan's voice was toneless. “There is something I need.”

“Can't it wait?”

“I think not.” Jehan fixed him with a dull eye. “I think you might do well to come with me, Messire d'Aurverelle. This castle has many armories. I seek one of them. Given your plans and desires, you might wish to replace your light mail with something more appropriate to knightly combat.”

There was wisdom in Jehan's words, but the lad's allusion to chivalry rankled Christopher. “You know, Jehan, if I could kill them all with a cask of poisoned wine, I'd do it.”

Jehan nodded. “I know you would, messire. I don't know whether to laud you or weep.”

But as he led them back towards the stairs, he paused at a stone door. Like many in the castle, it had a ragged hole in it.

“What is it now?” said Christopher.

“This was my parents' bedroom.”

“Fine. Fine.”
Just go on, will you?

Jehan turned and started down the hall again, but a low moan from the room beyond the door made him whirl. Christopher also turned, his sword in his hand, but Mirya cried out and plunged through the hole. In a moment, the moan turned to sobbing. “Water, quickly,” the Elf commanded. “In the name of
Elthia
, water!”

For an instant, Christopher and Jehan stared at one another. “There's water in the kitchen,” said Jehan. “Follow me.” But when, simultaneously, they turned for the stairs, they crashed into one another and fell on the floor.

Jehan got to his feet, pulled Christopher up after him. He glared at the baron. “
Follow.
”

Christopher followed, and in a minute they had found the kitchen and returned with a brimming pitcher. In the fetid darkness of the baronial bedroom, they found Mirya bending over an emaciated figure. Jehan lit the candles in a wall sconce, but a soft radiance born of no torchlight illumined the Elf, and her hands lay lightly on the face of the—girl, was it?—who lay on the bed.

It was indeed a girl, but thin and gaunt as an old woman, the scanty garments that she wore—under the circumstances, more horrifying than titillating—seemingly the shroud of a corpse. And when Christopher brought the pitcher to the Elf and held it ready, he stared, stricken, for he saw that the girl had been chained to the thick bedpost.

His grandfather . . .

But Mirya took the pitcher and poured the water into her cupped hand while the girl, still sobbing, lapped weakly. The radiance about the Elf seemed to turn the water into palmfuls of light. “Be cleansed,” she said. “Be changed. Be healed.”

As Christopher watched, the gauntness left the face of the girl, her flesh plumped, her eyes lost their glassy stare—and at last she appeared to come to a cognizance of more than a guttering existence. She cried out and put her hands to her face, and Mirya thrust the pitcher at Christopher and gathered the whimpering, sobbing child into her arms.

“She has been here for days,” said the Elf quietly. “Berard had her for his sport. He did not think to free her when he left.”

Christopher looked at the pathetically tiny ankle that was held by a thick iron chain. “He just . . . chained her up? And left her?”

Mirya nodded.

Christopher set the pitcher aside, passed a hand over his face. Berard and Roger, like Christopher and the monkey. The monkey, though, was dead. Berard . . .

He clenched his fists, swore inwardly. Mirya had attended to Roger, but that was in another time, another world. He himself would deal with Berard.

“What's your name, child?” he said softly.

The girl's mouth worked. “Joanna,” she whispered.

Christopher knelt beside the bed. There had been nothing noble about his grandfather, nothing save the planting of a few peach trees. “Joanna,” he said, “you're among friends. You're safe.”

“I don't know you,” she said. “Who are you?”

“I'm Baron Christopher of Aurverelle. And this is Mirya of Malvern. She's a healer . . . and . . .”

Mirya looked up, looked at him.

“. . . and . . . she's my friend.”

Mirya smiled through sudden, silent tears. Joanna shuddered, sobbed quietly. The Elf rocked her.

Christopher clasped the Elf's hand. It was over. Roger's ghost had been banished. Other tasks lay ahead.

But when he rose, Jehan was gone. “Where the devil . . .?”

“Jehan is on the next level up,” said Mirya as she rocked Joanna. “Down the corridor5 about twenty paces to the right of the stairwell. There is no door: a section of wall should be open.”

“You know where he is? The patterns?”

“The patterns say less and less, my friend. But in past years, my kind came here often. I can guess.”

Christopher nodded. Less and less. Fading. But before he left, he drew his sword and put all the strength of his shoulders and hips into a strike that smashed through the bedpost to which Joanna was chained. Reaching out, Christopher slipped the ring from the wooden stump and put it into the girl's startled hands.

“Be free,” he said. “Be healed.”

Mirya's cheeks, he saw, were damp.

“I'll find Jehan.”

Taking a candle, bearing light into the darkness of a deserted castle, he left the room, climbed stairs, turned to his right, and followed the upper corridor toward the ruddy flicker of torchlight.

Yes, Jehan was here. A section of wall had, by hidden mechanism and secret prompt, swung back, and Christopher, passing through the opening, found himself in a kind of armory. Here, though, were no common weapons of base metal, for the swords he saw gleamed with gold, the pikes and spears with silver. Mail and plate sparkled with gems.

At his approach, Jehan looked up from a surcoat he was holding. “Take what you want, Messire d'Aurverelle,” he said, sweeping out an arm. “Go and battle your enemies . . . and mine.”

The surcoat in Jehan's hands, agleam with jewels and embroidery, was blazoned with the delMari gryphon and silver star. Jehan held it up, regarded it solemnly. “It was for my adubbement,” he explained. “My father . . .” He bent his head. “My father so wanted me . . .”

Christopher did not know Paul delMari well, but he knew him well enough. “He still wants you.”

“No . . . no . . .” Jehan shook his head, his eyes hollow. “He has Martin now.” He examined the surcoat again. “But . . . I'll take this.”

His mouth set, he clutched the garment to his chest.

“It's all that I'll need,” he said.

Martin Osmore, resplendent in the livery of a knight of Aurverelle, leaned across the immense desk and seemingly transfixed the mayor of Saint Blaise in his chair. “How many men? All you have.”

Paul delMari did his best to suppress a smile. Folding his arms, he leaned against the wall near the door of the office, content to watch from a corner the confrontation between virtual noble and ostentatious peasant.

“Ah . . .” Matthew was a stout man, and his dark hair was suddenly damp with sweat. “. . . see here, Martin. I can't just go and authorize the departure of all the city's men-at-arms.”

“Why not?” said Martin. “As you've been telling me all my life, you're the mayor.”

Matthew seemed to inflate a little at the reminder of his office. “There you go again, Martin. I'm afraid you've not much of a head for figure. Never have. That time in Shrinerock didn't do a thing for you in that department—”

Martin glanced at Paul. Smiling, Paul lifted his eyes to heaven, spread his hands.

“—and that's why your mother and I want you to marry Agnes Darci,” Matthew continued. “She's a nice girl, very practical—knows a groat from a penny, you know—and she's got a head for figures. Good hips, too! You'll need her if you're to amount to much, you know.”

“Right now,” said Martin, “I need soldiers. Saint Brigid needs soldiers.”

“And . . . this Saint Brigid stuff. I can't send all the men-at-arms to Saint Brigid with you.”

Martin glanced again at Paul, this time with a look that said:
You see what I have to deal with? Can you blame me?
But Paul winked and nodded.

Give it to him, son,
he thought.
Give it to him.

Martin turned back to his father. “I'd like to know why.”

“Well,” said Matthew, “they're . . . just not our people, you know. They're rather queer.”

Martin's eyebrows lifted, his dark eyes widened. “I'm sorry: I didn't realize that.”

“And that's another thing—” Matthew began, but Martin's mailed fist crashed to the desk, stopping him in mid-sentence. Matthew stared at the fist, then at Martin. Paul delMari smiled. Yes, that black Aurverelle livery was rather impressive. Just like Martin himself.

“Lord Mayor,” said Martin, “the Messire d'Aurverelle, at great risk to his life, is attempting to put an end to the threat of constant pillage and violence that hangs over all of Adria.” The lad whacked out the words as though he were driving wooden pegs into a plank. “I am on my way south to help him.” Whack! “I'm asking for men.” Whack!