Maze of Moonlight, Gael Baudino [ebook reader screen TXT] 📗

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