Moving Target Read Online Free Page A

waist of his worn hiking shorts, he waited for his morning visitor and thought about the manuscript page he was translating.
    Not since Eve has a woman been so deceitful. I was trapped in the cloth woven by her own hand, spellbound cloth, unclean, wrapped in her plans like an insect in a web; and I thought all the while that she loved me. She did not. She loved only her own clan, needed nothing of me but my seed.
    Cursed sorceress. I dream of her still.
    I yearn.
    I need.
    I see her bright hair in every hearth fire. I see her eyes in every violet. I smell her scent in every summer garden.
    God spare me from the torment of the Devil.
    The modern Erik almost smiled but didn’t disturb his stillness. No doubt about it, Erik the Learned had been one unhappy camper when he wrote those lines. The elegance of the script couldn’t disguise the savagery of his emotion. At a distance it was hard to tell whether hate, love, or some unholy combination of the two drove the Learned scribe. One thing Erik North knew for certain. Internal evidence in the design of the illuminated capital letters indicated that the page belonged toward the front of the Book of the Learned. The design, like the gather marks along the margin, became increasingly complex through the years of the book’s creation.
    Despite the comfortable surroundings and sun-warmed January day, Erik didn’t slouch carelessly beside the swimming pool. Instead, there was an uncanny stillness to his body, the stillness of a predator. Beneath a tawny thatch of hair, his chest barely moved with each slow breath he took.
    Most people shift position or fiddle with a button or pick at their clothes or scratch their nose or drum their fingers. He didn’t do any of those things. Even his eyes were narrowed so that he could blink with almost no movement of his eyelids. It was a hunter’s trick.
    A roadrunner appeared on top of the castle wall as though teleported there. Round, glass-bright eyes examined every bit of the large yard with its vine-covered arches and rosebushes whose lineage traced back to the Middle Ages. The bird’s black crest flared and settled like a nervous heartbeat. In the desert, water and sex were the only things an animal risked its life for. The pool’s turquoise allure was irresistible.
    No matter how long and hard the roadrunner peered, it saw nothing but a breeze moving among the bougainvillea vines, jacaranda and citrus trees, and medieval herb garden. Satisfied that it was safe, the brownish hawk-size bird dropped seven feet to the interior flagstones and zipped over to the curving edge of the spa that was attached to the pool. In the center of the curve, water only a quarter-inch deep sparkled and murmured over a small ledge leading from spa to pool. Daintily the roadrunner waded to the precise center of the ledge and began dipping water from the pool with quick, oddly graceful jerks of its head.
    The bird was within reach of Erik’s hand. If he wanted a feathered snack, the roadrunner was lunch.
    Motionless he watched the bird, storing up each nuance of its movements, the subtle pattern of light across the mottled brown and cream feathers, the elegant balancing act of wings and neck, feet and long tail. The chaparral cock was uneasy, but not nearly so nervous as it had been four days ago when Erik had first sat in the yard and waited for the thirsty bird to gather its courage to drink. During this winter’s unusual drought, the pool had become a daily stop on the roadrunner’s rounds.
    In another week, two at most, Erik would have the bird eating from his hand. Animals of all kinds accepted him. They always had. Maybe it was his stillness. Maybe it was simply that he respected them for what they were: independent, blissfully self-centered, and completely alive in the moment.
    The roadrunner’s throat fluttered rapidly as it drank one last time. Then its narrow tail jerked like a conductor’s baton. An instant later the bird turned, ran lightly