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

Funny . . .

“Joanna, open those windows.” Joanna, though, was shackled to the bed, and his words only sent her off into a fresh bout of sobbing.

Groping, Berard went to the window himself. It was pitch dark in the room, without even a shred of starlight or moonlight to light his way—something which struck him as damnably odd—and he stumbled over a footstool and barked his shins on a chair before he reached the casement. He fumbled for the latch, but its touch and lack of cooperation informed him that it had acquired the same mysterious affliction as the doorknob.

Funny . . .

“Damnation!” He smashed a fist against the panes and was rewarded with a set of bruised knuckles.

The man in the hall was alarmed. “My lord!”

Joanna sobbed.

“Shut up, all of you!” Berard's fatigue was rapidly giving way to bewilderment, and thence to outright rage; but he groped about until he came up against a wall sconce. He removed a candle and thrust it into the embers of the banked fire. It caught in a moment, and he carried the light to the window.

But, instead of glass, he found only an unyielding surface of smooth, gray . . .

Stone?

“What the hell's going on?”

It was granite. It had to be granite. And as his shaking fingers now discovered, the formerly wooden rails and stiles were also granite, as was the window frame itself.

He stood, stunned, but was roused by another worried cry from the corridor. Heart sinking, he went to the door. Granite. Hard, impenetrable granite.

He crossed himself. “Mother of God.” But Joanna was sobbing hysterically again, and he recalled that God's mother probably cared for him little more than his own.

He threw a boot at the girl, then rapped on the door, carefully, with the pommel of his sword. “Get some men up here with hammers and picks.”

“Ah . . .” The man on the far side seemed to hesitate. Berard pursed his lips. A mutiny? That would explain a great deal. The expanded Fellowship was held together only by the promise of loot and the fact that Berard seemed to promise more of it than anyone else. It was always possible that some other captain . . . “I'm afraid that will take time, Messire Berard.”

Berard wanted to scream, but he forced himself into calculation. Panic would do him no good. Panic was what had cost poor Giovanni so dearly outside Bologna. “What do you mean?”

“All the other doors and windows in the castle have been turned to stone, too. We're breaking the men out of the barracks now, and then we'll have to break into the storage room for the tools.”

Berard stared at the blank expanse of stone that had once been a door. The whole castle? But that . . . that meant . . . that meant that . . .

He did not know what it meant.

He stared at the granite. The granite stared back. “Then do it!” he shouted.

“As soon as possible, my lord.”

“Faster than that, you idiot!”

He heard the man run off. With the candle still burning in his hand, he leaned against the wall. Every door and window in the castle. Who on earth could do such a thing? And what powers would they have to be wielding in order to do it?

He recalled Jehan's drunken babbling about the Elves, felt a shiver in spite of the stifling heat. Elves? No, ridiculous. Just a legend.

But Jehan had seemed so sure, so matter of fact. But then again he had been drunk. But then again . . .

Berard's head was suddenly hurting, and an ache gnawed at his stomach. An obstacle—an exceedingly clever and definitely preternatural obstacle—had appeared in the road that he was traveling toward the free conquest of Adria. And Berard knew from experience that such obstacles did not just happen. Which meant that someone—equally clever, perhaps (and the ache in his stomach increased) equally preternatural—was behind it all.

“I'll find you,” he murmured. “I'll find you. And then we'll see who you are, and what I'll do about you.”

Two hours later, the tramp of heavy feet outside his door gave way to the crack of hammers and mauls and battering rams; but the door fell only with a half-hour's concerted work, for as the wood had been thick, so was the stone it had become. Long before Berard could escape his prison, though, he heard more shouts from outside. Muffled though they were, they obviously proceeded from the castle walls.

The door finally caved in. Berard grabbed the first man that came to hand. “What's going on outside?”

“There are people on horseback down on the slopes.”

Attack. He thought so. “How many?”

“Two, messire.”

“Two?” Berard stared for an instant; then, with a curse, he ran down the corridor, skidding and slipping on the fragments of stone that littered the floor.

The sun had risen during his confinement, and when he gained the top of the curtain wall, he could see clearly that the man had been absolutely truthful. Below, about a hundred yards away, were two figures on horseback: a man and a woman. The man appeared to have a monkey on his shoulder.

“Who goes there?” Berard shouted. “Damn you, what do you want?”

The shout came back. “I'm Christopher delAurvre, baron of Aurverelle, and I want you and your scum out of my country!”

Berard eyed him. Christopher of Aurverelle? The one who was mad? He suddenly felt better. Christopher was but a man—in this case, a man with a monkey on his back—and therefore the uncanniness of Shrinerock's transformation began to give way to the simple humanity of an adversary.

Doors and windows could be battered open, humanity could be attended to. Berard beckoned to one of the guards. “Get a crossbowman up here, quickly.”

The man took off at a run. Berard turned once again to Christopher. “And is sorcery among your talents, my good Baron Aurverelle? That could prove interesting to the Church.”

“I've got a lot of