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

stone thrown into a lake: a plash, a ripple, and then . . . nothing. “I will come at need,” she said, and then she bowed deeply, touching her hands to her forehead, picked up her harp, and departed soundlessly into the darkness.

Christopher looked after her. “It's mad,” he whispered to the deserted streets. “It's all mad.” The monkey perched on his shoulder mumbled reproachfully, and Christopher glared at it. “You're forgetting who's the monkey around here, sir,” he snapped, and then, out of an irony that had become habitual, he forced a wan grin. “You run Aurverelle. I'll throw the fruit.”

But Christopher had not come to greet Vanessa's friends: he had come to warn them. That night, the town council gathered in the house of Abel, the smith, who, though dark and hairy as a savage out of an old tale, formally and courteously introduced Christopher to a room crowded with the descendants of those whom old Roger had once thought to conquer.

They were not entirely unprepared for his news about Shrinerock. Rumors of the catastrophe had been filtering through the southern part of Adria for the last two weeks, and the council had ordered the defenses of the town strengthened. The gates, long in disrepair, Abel had mended himself, and he and the other men had also reinforced the walls, deepened the surrounding ditch, and had installed the encircling palisade of fire-hardened saplings. Saint Brigid was no Maris, to be sure, but neither was it a helpless, undefended village.

Christopher, though, suspected that the preparations would prove useless. Berard had several thousand men with him, and judging from what was left of Ypris and Furze, they possessed, in addition to armor and weapons, siege machinery and several heavy guns.

“I'd recommend that you all evacuate,” he told them. “I'm sorry to have to put it so bluntly . . .” Would his grandfather have apologized for bluntness? Never! But Christopher went on without hesitating. “. . . but I think you've lost from the beginning.”

But an older woman near the front of the room shook her head and stood up. This was Charity, Abel's mother, the weaver and midwife to whom Vanessa had apprenticed herself. She was respected and loved in the village, and though Christopher suspected that her religious beliefs were no more orthodox than Natil's, even Dom Gregorie, the priest, seemed on friendly terms with her.

She was over a decade past her half century, but her face was essentially unlined, and her voice was as clear as a girl's when she spoke. “If we leave,” she said, “I think that they will not be satisfied. If we go to Alm, they will come to Alm. If we go all the way to Saint Blaise, then they will eventually come all the way to Saint Blaise. Once, long ago, I told Mirya . . .” And she looked around as though to ask whether any in the room remembered another threat now fifty years past. “. . . that we faced a battle that had to unite all of us. I will say it again. But this time we embrace the grandson of our former enemy.” She smiled at Christopher: it was a warm smile, and along with forgiveness, he caught a trace of light in her lake blue eyes that reminded him of Vanessa . . . and of Natil and Terrill and Mirya. “And I for one bid him welcome to Saint Brigid, and hope he will not think us too stubborn because of our determination.”

Charity sat down. A fighter. They were all fighters. Vanessa's father, Christopher recalled, had come from Saint Brigid. “You're all sure of this?”

He saw the men and women of the council exchange glances as the shadows from the hearth fire flickered across the walls. Glances, nods, murmurs. Yes, they were sure.

“You're all mad, you know.”

Abel scratched his bald head. “And would you leave Aurverelle to the brigands, m'lord baron?”

Christopher was indignant. “Of course not.”

Abel smiled, his mouth a dark line in a face patched with the scars of old burns. “Well, then . . .”

The monkey seemed to agree, for it bounded in through the open window, clambered to Christopher's head, and stared at him, upside-down, from inches away. Charity clapped her hands appreciatively, and Vanessa, present because Christopher was present, laughed.

But Christopher turned to Vanessa. “What about you?”

Vanessa shook her head. “These people tak me in. They've been good t' me. I wan leave them.”

It was suicide. “Vanessa . . .”

“Nay, m'lord. I've found my home a' long last, an' I wan leave it willingly.” She stood up, held out her hands to the monkey, and with a yip it leaped into her arms. She stroked it for a moment, then lifted her brown eyes once more. “I mean it.”

A fighter. She had fought Etienne, fought herself. She had struggled against the fate mapped out for her by her parents, and she had, it seemed, triumphed; for as she stood before Christopher and pledged her loyalty to what had once been a village of strangers, she seemed to have nothing at all in common with the helpless, frightened child who had opened her eyes in a bedroom in Aurverelle. Vanessa was a woman now, a human woman, and a strong one; and Christopher, despite his fears for her safety, knew that he would not have loved her otherwise.

But her refusal meant that her continuing survival would be based not upon Christopher, but upon the alliance. Looking at her now, looking at the faces—old and young, worried and determined—that were turned toward him in this little house in a little village, Christopher was shaken. Into the hands of such as Ruprecht and Yvonnet he was commending these?

He calculated. Another few days remained before the alliance forces would begin to gather at Shrinerock. And he knew—he had no illusions or false humility about it—that, without his presence, the gathering would eventually fragment. He would, therefore, have to leave Saint Brigid. He would have