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

She was lovely and frightening both. Jamie was staring. Pytor unconsciously crossed himself.

Vanessa looked up. “I told you not to make plans, Christopher. I told you that you might not want me after.”

Christopher was rooted. “What . . .?”

Vanessa forced herself to say the words, slowly, carefully, all the while shuddering as though the sound of the alteration in her voice was itself a horror. “It was I who made Jehan decide to kill Berard. He was almost upon the decision himself, and when I shifted the patterns so that the siege would not be anymore, he chose.”

Christopher stared into eyes that seemed to reflect too much light, into a face that was touched with elvishness. “No . . .” You might na wan' me after. “No . . . it's just a coincidence.”

She shook her head, shook her hands to indicate herself. “Is this a coincidence, Christopher?” Her eyes were streaming. “Too much starlight . . . too much starlight.” She put her hands to her face, jerked them away as though recoiling from the touch of the near-luminous flesh. Her resolve broke then, and she cried out: “Dear Lady, Christopher, I do not think I am human anymore!”

***

The free companies were destroyed. Many were dead, many were wounded, many more were prisoners.

The sun rose through the roiling smoke of the forest fire, the fields grew hot even to the unarmored, and the sky remained a rainless blue. The villagers and the men of the alliance buried the dead—Dom Gregorie blessing the graves of brigand and ally alike with sad but divine impartiality—and the women of Saint Brigid tended the wounded.

Christopher watched from the shadow of the forest. Out there were the dead and the wounded, but here, at his side, Vanessa was a casualty, too. Though she was sitting on the ground, speaking haltingly with the Elves, the sound of her voice and the radiance of something beyond health that was about her told of a wound more profound than any that could have been given by sword, arrow, or spear.

Angered by the death of Charity, her teacher and her friend, threatened with the loss of the village that had become her home after she had been driven from her birthplace, Vanessa had fought the only way she could. She had known something of the patterns, she had known that they could be changed, and so she had changed them.

But in altering reality, she had altered herself. She perhaps could not be considered entirely elven now, but as she had suspected—and as Mirya, Natil, and Terrill had reluctantly confirmed—she was no longer quite human.

Still gripped by an aching weariness that seemed about to wring a sob from his heart, Christopher stared out across the battlefield, watched bodies being taken away, wounds being dressed. A casualty. She had tried to fit in, she had tried to be simply, mortally, wonderfully human . . . and now both were forever beyond her.

And perhaps beyond him.

“Can I na . . . not undo it?” Vanessa was asking Mirya. “I mean, after all, I did it to begin with.”

Mirya shook her head, her green eyes sad. “Consider,” she said, her voice as soft as the whisper of the dry leaves above her head, “Abel can take ore from the earth, and he can smelt it and turn it into steel. But he cannot turn that steel back into ore. The steel remains steel.”

Yes, that was it. Vanessa was steel. Pure steel. But though Christopher smiled at the rightness of the thought, he wondered whether his resolve was firm enough to clasp that metal to his heart.

Out across the fields, he saw Paul delMari. The baron of Furze was helping Martin direct the burials. Paul had fought with the strength of a youth that morning, but his manner with the vanquished was now polite and businesslike. But as Christopher watched, Paul seemed to consider, and then he suddenly beckoned Martin to his side.

The bond between Paul and Martin had grown. Paul grieved for Jehan, for all the foolishness of his son's brief life, and for his own errors and misjudgments. Martin still agonized about his homosexuality and the uncertainty of his future. But they were indeed father and son now, and they were both determined to shape the patterns of the future to their desires.

Vanessa bent her head, Natil put her arms about her. “You have always been a kinswoman, Vanessa. Now there is a greater tie between us.”

Vanessa shook her head, half-sorrowful, half-puzzled. “I am sorry, Natil: I just want to be human.”

Paul was calling to Jamie and one or two of the other barons who were nearby. Martin stood before him, looking perplexed. But when Paul was surrounded by his peers, he spoke in a stern voice, a voice that carried clearly across the fields. “Kneel down, Martin.”

Seemingly in shock, Martin knelt.

“Some,” Natil was saying, “will always be more than human. That was foreordained from the first sharing of love between immortal and mortal.”

Paul drew his sword. A touch of the blade to Martin's shoulders, a light tap of Paul's fist on his chin—old Roger, in accordance with the delAurvre tradition, had nearly struck Christopher to the ground—and it was over.

The assembled barons were smiling. Paul's voice came again: proud, clear. “Rise, Messire Martin of the house of delMari!”

For Martin, embraces, smiles, congratulations to one who had just taken his place in a brotherhood of arms. No one in the little group doubted his worthiness. Peasant blood? That had just been done away with, and Paul delMari's reputation, particularly this morning, was such that no one would ever doubt his ability to make knights . . . or sons.

But Vanessa was staring at her hands, examining fearfully the work of her own blood. The change was subtle, but profound. No one who had known her could have any doubt. “I just wanted to help,” she said. The grief