Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

had said. And, true to her word, she had raised him from a stable floor, harped him back to some sense of honor, preserved him from captivity and death. But had he now asked too much? He did not even know why she had come to help him. An Elf? Helping a delAurvre? Dear Lady!

A fragment of stone wavered and fell, but only a fragment. The rest of the mass was proving obstinate.

But it must have been at about that time that Natil began harping, for there was a sudden change in the atmosphere, and the pervasive, liquid roar was joined by a sound that was not a sound, a vibration in the air that, though faint and almost without substance, nonetheless cut the ear as though with knives and razors.

At its appearance, Wenceslas staggered back as though he had been struck in the face, and the assault on the overhang lost momentum. Paul nodded and touched his forehead. “Elthia Calasiuove.”

The sound continued, building into a thrumming shriek of ephemeral energy. Magic. Elven magic. Christopher's thoughts fled to his grandfather, and he could not help but wonder what Roger had seen and felt during those last moments before his old, brutal life had been ripped from him. Shaking, he fought to keep himself from plunging away down the tunnel to the spring.

But Paul was unfazed. “Honor your God in your house, Abo. Honor my Lady in Shrinerock!”

He grabbed the heavy maul that the abbot had dropped and, with a cry in Elvish, smashed it into the outcropping. The stone suddenly vibrated, and an urgent groan came from above.

“That's done it!” he shouted. “Everyone out! Hurry!”

They ran, Christopher and Paul standing on either side of the downside aperture and thrusting the members of the party through as they counted heads. When everyone was out, and as rocks started dropping tot he floor of the cave, Christopher pointed to Paul and jerked his thumb down the passage.

Without comment, Paul seized Christopher and shoved him out of the cavern ahead of himself just as the entire, ponderous mass of the ceiling shook itself loose and fell, sealing the room and pelting the two men with dust, gravel, and cobble-sized stones as they ran down the passage to the spring.

A stream of loose stones and gravel skittered along the slope after them, then abruptly rustled to a stop. The whine of Natil's energies hung in the otherwise silent air like a taut harpstring, and Christopher discovered that he had a clear view of the moonlit mouth of the cavern. The cataract was gone. The pool was emptying.

“Sacrilege?” whispered the abbot. His voice echoed in the hush.

Faint grindings, growing louder. Paul snatched a torch, held it up, examined the mouth of the spring. “No,” he said. “It's stopped up. Run, you idiots!”

And now even the ubiquitous tremolo of Natil's magic was suddenly threatened with eclipse, for the groan of tortured rock built, mounted, crescendoed in lithic apocalypse. A loud crack, and a stream of muddy water exploded out of the passage, doubling and redoubling, growing in the space of a few heartbeats into a torrent that quickly overflowed the pool and went raging down towards the entrance to the shrine.

The men dropped their tools and fled. Christopher and Paul, following right behind them, sprinted down the path and threw themselves out and to the side of the entrance an instant before the flood filled the entire cavern and screamed and frothed its way down the slope.

Still, though, the air was caught in a noose of magic that seemed to be one with the very substance of the mountain. Lying on the moist earth beside the flood, Christopher looked up at the castle. It was glowing softly, its towers and roofs limned in pale blue. He swallowed and looked away quickly.

But the energies abruptly peaked, faded, dwindled into a murmur, vanished; and when Christopher looked again, the glow was gone. But though Shrinerock still lifted white towers toward the stars with a beauty and strength that many might well have deemed imperial, something was different about it now. Christopher, searching, straining his eyes in the moonlight, realized finally that the glint of its many glass windows was absent, as was the glow of lamplight and torchlight that had previously seeped from its closed shutters. In fact, when he looked more carefully, he discovered that, as far as he could see, windows, doors, and gates alike had been replaced by hard, unyielding surfaces of fused stone.

The word of an Elf was indeed binding: the free companies were trapped within Shrinerock.

Paul delMari was approaching middle age, but he bounded down the road like a youngster. Christopher's plan and Natil's magic had bought the refugees in the forest several additional hours in which to cross the pastures unmolested, but not until he was well out of earshot of the castle did Paul risk even a muffled call: “Isabelle! Martin! It's done!”

At his words, those who had gathered in the shadows just within the edge of the trees stepped clear and started off towards Malvern Forest. They were burdened lightly—they had little to begin with—and Natil had healed the wounded. They would make good time.

But Natil herself was not with them. Christopher was almost relieved. Perhaps she had decided that her work was finished, that it was time for her to depart. But she had admitted that the magic for which Christopher had asked would be taxing, and he was unnerved to find himself deeply worried that something had happened to her.

He ran, caught up with Paul. “Where did Natil say she was going to be?”

Paul paused in his merry jog down to the forest. “Up on the higher ground, my friend.”

Christopher frowned: he did not know the way. Paul, however, guessed his thoughts.

“I don't see her, either,” he said. “Let's go look.”

Together, they struck off along the moonlit paths of Shrinerock Forest. Paul knew the way of the woods, and he led Christopher through the trees, up slopes and