Fortress in the Eye of Time

CHAPTER 2

Spatters of rain on the dust.

Trees whispering and nodding and giving up leaves, twigs sent flying. Smell of stone, smell of bruised leaves, smell of lightnings and rain-washed air.

Taste of water. Chill of wind. Flash of lightning that hurt the eyes. Boom of thunder that shook heart and bone.

It was like too much ale. Like too much to eat. Like too much heat and too much cold. Everything was patterns, shapes, sounds, light, dark, soft, sharp, rough, smooth, stone-cold, life-warm, and all too much to own and hold at once. Sometimes he could hardly move, the flood of the bright world was so much and so quick.

Tristen stood on the stone parapet, watched the lightning flashes fade the woods and sky and watched the trees below the wall bow their heads against the stone. Thunder rumbled. Rain swept in gray curtains against the tower, spattered the surface of the puddles and cascaded in streams off the slate of the many roofs. Tristen laughed and breathed the rain-drenched wind, raised hands and face to catch the pelting drops. They stung his palms and eyelids, so he dared not look at them. Rain coursed, cold and strange sensation, over his naked body, finding hollows and new courses, all to the shape of him.

It was delight. He looked at his bare feet, wiggled his toes in puddles that built in the low places of the stonework and made channels between the stones in the high places. Water made all the dusty gray stonework new and shiny. Rain made slanting veils across the straight fall off the eaves and played music beneath the thunder-rumble. Tristen spun on the slick stones and slipped, recovering himself against the low wall of the parapet and laughing in surprise as he saw, below him, where the gutters made a veritable flood, brown water, where the rain was gray. A green leaf was stuck to the gray stone. He wondered why it stayed there.

“Tristen!”

He straightened back from his headlong dangle, arm lingering to brace himself on the stone edge as he looked toward Maurylʼs angry voice. He blinked water from his eyes, saw Maurylʼs brown-robed figure. Maurylʼs clothes were soaked through, Maurylʼs gray hair and beard were streaming water, and Maurylʼs eyes beneath his dripping brows were blue and pale and furious as Mauryl came to seize him by the arm.

He had clearly done something wrong. He tried to cipher what that wrong thing was as Mauryl took him from the wall. Mauryl was hurting his arm, and he resisted the pull, only enough to keep Maurylʼs fingers from bruising.

“Come along,” Mauryl said, and held the harder, so he thought saving his arm was wrong, too. He let Mauryl hurt him as he hurried him back along the parapet, Maurylʼs black boots and his bare feet splashing through the puddles. Maurylʼs robes dripped water. Maurylʼs hair made curling ropes and water dripped off the ends. Maurylʼs shoulders were thin and the cloth stuck to him and flapped about his legs and leather boots. The staff struck crack, crack-crack against the pavings, but Mauryl hardly limped, he was in such an angry hurry.

Mauryl took him to the rain-washed door, shoved up the outside latch with the knob of his staff, and drew him roughly inside into the little, stone-floored room. Light came only through the yellowed horn panes, storm-dimmed and strange, and the rain was far quieter here.

Mauryl let go his arm, then, still angry with him. “Where are your clothes?”

Was that the mistake? Tristen wondered, and said, “Downstairs. In my room.”

“Downstairs. Downstairs! What good do they do you downstairs?”

He was completely bewildered. It seemed to him that Mauryl had said not to spoil them. Maurylʼs were dripping wet. So were Maurylʼs boots, and his were downstairs, dry. It had seemed very good sense to him, and still did, except Mauryl lifted his hand in anger and he flinched.

Mauryl reached for his shoulder, instead, and shook him, deciding, he hoped, not to hit him. Mauryl would indeed strike him, sometimes when Mauryl was angry, at other times Mauryl said he had to remember. It was hard to tell, sometimes, which was which, except Mauryl would seem satisfied after the latter and far angrier than he had started after the former, so he wished Mauryl had simply hit him and told him to remember.

Instead, Mauryl beckoned him to the wooden stairs, and led him down and down the rickety steps. The soaked hem of Maurylʼs robe made a trail of rain drops on the wood, in the wan, sad light from the horn panes set along the way.

Clump, tap, clump, tap, clump-tap, downward and down. Tristenʼs bare feet made far less sound on the smooth, dusty boards. He supposed rain didnʼt spoil the clothes after all, and that he had guessed wrong. The water on the dust beneath his feet felt smooth and strange. He wasnʼt sorry to feel it. But he supposed he was wrong.

And confirming it, when Mauryl reached the walkway that led to his room, Mauryl banged his staff angrily on the floor. His robe shook off more drops and made a puddle on the boards.

“Go clothe yourself. Come down to the hall when youʼve done. I want to talk to you.”

Tristen bowed his head and went to his own room, where he had left his clothes on his bed. The puddles he left on the board floor showed faintly in the light from the unshuttered horn panes. His hair streamed water down his back and down his shoulders and dripped in his eyes. He wiped it back and tried to squeeze the water out. It made dark tangles on his shoulders, and his clothes stuck to his body and resisted his pulling them on. So did the boots. His hair soaked the shoulders of his shirt, and he combed the tangles out, to look as presentable as he could.

Maybe Mauryl would forget. Maybe Mauryl would forget he had asked him to come downstairs and tell him to go away. Sometimes Mauryl would, when he was lost in his books.

The thunder was still booming and talking above their heads, and the water was still running down the horn panes — the horn was yellowed and sometimes brown: it had curious circles and layers and fitted together with metal pieces. The horn colored the light it let in, and the shadow of raindrops crawled down its face, which he loved to see. A puddle had formed on the sill, where a joint in the horn let raindrops inside. Sometimes he made patterns with the water on the stone. Sometimes he let it stand until it spilled down off the sill and he waited and waited for the moment.

But he was cold now, and with his hair making his shoulders wet, he began to be cold all over. He took his cloak from the peg and slung it about his shoulders, hugged it about him as he went out into the wooden hall and clumped down the wooden steps, down and down to the study, making echoes that Mauryl couldnʼt help but notice. He was here. He was obeying, as Mauryl said.

Mauryl was standing by the fire. Mauryl had changed his clothes and wrapped himself in his cloak, too. Maurylʼs hair had begun to dry, a silver net around his ears, not combed, and Mauryl had his arms folded, so he looked like a bird puffed up in its feathers, cold and cross.

“Sir,” he said. Mauryl seemed not to notice him. He waited what seemed a long while for Mauryl to look at him, and wondered if Mauryl would after all forget he was angry. Or change his mind.

Then abruptly, fiercely, Mauryl turned his shoulder to the fire and looked him over, head to foot and back again, searching, perhaps, for another disappointment — disappointment was in the set of Maurylʼs shoulders. Fault was in that stare. Tristen stood, hands clasped before him, downhearted, too, that he had so failed Maurylʼs expectations.

Again.

His feet were numb with cold. He bent his toes in his boots, deciding he deserved to be cold, and maybe he could have fallen off the wall, but he did look where he was putting his feet, he truly did. Or he was quick enough to stop himself. He remembered slipping. He stood very respectfully in the archway, awaiting invitation to approach the fire, wondering if he should tell Mauryl how heʼd saved himself.

He thought not, in Maurylʼs current displeasure.

“I cannot begin,” Mauryl said slowly, “cannot begin to foresee the things you invent to do. From waking to sleeping, from one moment to the next, boy, what will you do next?”

“I donʼt know, Mauryl. I havenʼt thought of that.”

“Can you not think of consequences, Tristen?”

“I try,” he said faintly. “I tried, master Mauryl, I did try to think.”

“You great—”—fool, he thought Mauryl was about to say. But Mauryl shook his head, and hugged his arms about himself, cold, too, Tristen decided. Mauryl on his own, without the necessity of bringing him inside, didnʼt want to be cold, or dripping wet. So Mauryl hadnʼt noticed the wonder of the rain or seen the veils blow along the walls. Perhaps if he explained…

“The rain made curtains,” he said. “The air smelled different. I went up to feel it.”

“And the lightning could strike you Dead. Dead, do you hear?”

“Dead,” he said. Sometimes Mauryl spoke Words he could hear and meanings came to him. This one did, with a shock of cold: Dead was a dark room with no candle, no floor, no wall, no ceiling. It drank his warmth, and wrapped him in, and took his breath. He couldnʼt get another. Then he found himself sitting on the floor across the room, and the fire crackling with more than usual sound in the hearth next to him. He saw the light on the stones and it proved he could see, it proved there was warmth.

He had blinked and he was here by the fireside, and Mauryl was squatting in front of him, touching his face with a hand worn as smooth as the stones and the dusty boards, a hand as gentle as Maurylʼs hand could be, sometimes, for reasons as strange as Maurylʼs angers.

“Boy,” Mauryl said, as if he were sleeping in his bed and Mauryl were telling him to wake up. “Tristen.” Mauryl touched his cheek, traced the line of it, brushed his wet hair back behind his shoulder. The stone under him was warm from the fire. He didnʼt know why he was sitting there, but it seemed Mauryl had again said a Word, one of the soundless ones.

He had been standing in the rain, watching the lightnings flash. Mauryl had said lightning could strike him dead, but Mauryl had said a Word and sent him to that dark place. Then another Word had brought him back here to the fireside. Nothing so remote as lightning would have harmed him. It was Mauryl — only Mauryl he had to fear.

And to obey, not to make Mauryl angry again.

Thunder cracked, and he jumped, overwhelmed afterward with a shiver, hugging his knees against him until Mauryl pried one hand loose, clenched it in his, and wished him to stand up; but he was shivering too much of a sudden to straighten his legs. Thunder boomed out again above the towers and shocked the breath out of him, but Mauryl kept pulling at him until he found the strength at least to get his knee under him.

Then, clumsily, helping Mauryl, too, he could gain his feet and unwind himself out of the tangle of his cloak. But it was Mauryl who found him a place to go, taking him as far as the bench beside the fire and making him sit down, when he had no such wit left in him. Mauryl sat down by him and took his hand in his lap, clenched it tight, tight, while somewhere in the heights above them something suddenly banged.

He looked up, heart pounding in his chest.

“Only a shutter loose,” Mauryl said, holding his hand. “Only the wind blowing it. Foolish boy, look at me.” Mauryl caught his shoulders and, when a further crash distracted him, took his face between his hands, compelling his attention.

He shivered, teeth all but chattering, while the wind banged and hammered to get inside the towers, but Maurylʼs eyes claimed his, Maurylʼs whisper was more present than the thunder.

“Listen, boy. Listen to me. Itʼs an empty wind. Itʼs only rain. There are hazards in the storm, and you run such dreadful risks, boy, but not all in the storm. Be afraid of the dark. When the sky shadows, always be under stone, and always have the shutters closed, and the doors well shut. Have I not said this before?”

His teeth did chatter. “I took off my clothes,” he said, deciding perhaps he had done that matter right. “Iʼm sorry yours got wet. Iʼm sorry you had to come into the rain.”

He wasnʼt right. He hadnʼt understood. Maurylʼs look said so.

“You were Naked,” Mauryl said, and that Word came to him, and he felt Maurylʼs keen disappointment in his mistakes.

The wind hammered and banged at the tower. The whole world was angry and dark, and confounded by him, who blundered clumsily from mistake to foolishness and back again to everything that made Mauryl angry with him. He wished again that Mauryl would hit him and be done. He didnʼt want more such Words, just the quick sting of Maurylʼs hand, after which Mauryl would say he was sorry and talk to him in his softer voice again. Maurylʼs blows were like the tingle in his skin when Mauryl made the tea taste sweet and he was holding the cup. Maurylʼs blows stung, and tingled, and afterward, brought him that quiet certainty Mauryl could give him, of all things made right with the world.

But now Mauryl would not let him look away. Mauryl frightened him and made him look him straight in the eyes a long, long time.

“You know Words,” Mauryl said, then. He didnʼt want Mauryl to know that. He was afraid of the Words. They came out of nowhere, and struck him in the heart, and made it hard to get his breath. He didnʼt know the Words Mauryl had. Mauryl took them out of somewhere and said them and they were real, some making things sweet, some taking away pain.

Some struck him with understanding, and fear, or shame.

“Tristen. You know that you were naked.”

“Yes, master Mauryl.” He knew now he was wrong to be naked out of doors. He didnʼt know why. It was wrong to ruin his clothes. But he shouldnʼt have been outside without them. Mauryl had worn his. He thought he understood the bits and pieces of Maurylʼs anger. It was, after all, about ruined clothes. He had been mistaken.

“You know there was danger.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you know you were in danger?”

“No, master Mauryl. And Iʼm sorry you got wet.”

Mauryl shook at him. So it still wasnʼt the right answer.

“Boy. Tristen. Forget the cursed clothes. Itʼs not the point. Fecklessness is the point. Putting yourself in danger is the point, boy. Youʼre safe in here, inside. Whenever youʼre outside, youʼre not completely safe. Be careful. Watch your feet. Watch your head, donʼt forget what Iʼve told you, and donʼt forget to think. Gods, every move, every breath, every foolish butterfly on the wind does not deserve your rapt attention!”

He remembered the butterfly. It was how heʼd skinned his elbow on the stairs outside. He remembered everything, even the sting, and the tingle of Maurylʼs fingers on his skin, and the way the sun lay on the stones when they were dry.

“Boy.” Maurylʼs fingers popped against his cheek, lightly, startling him into seeing Mauryl again. Maurylʼs eyes were black-centered. Maurylʼs face was grim and bitterly unhappy. “I wonʼt be here forever, boy. You canʼt look to me for all the answers, or to tell you what to do.”

“Why?” That was very unsettling to hear. It frightened him. “Where will you be?”

“I wonʼt be here, boy. And you had better know what to do.”

“I donʼt know what to do!” He was trying to be straightforward with Mauryl, as Mauryl demanded. But he was beginning to be scared, now. “How long will you be gone, sir? Where will you go?” He did not conceive a place outside this place. He couldnʼt think of one.

“Things end, boy. People go away.”

“No.” He caught at Maurylʼs hands. “Donʼt go away, Mauryl.” He had never thought before that there was anywhere to go, or any other place to look down from, at the woods, or up from, at the sun and the clouds. But there must, then, be other places. “Iʼll go, too.”

“Not by my choice,” Mauryl said. “Not now. And if youʼre good, if you think hard, if you study — maybe I wonʼt have to go at all. I could be wrong. I might stay after all. If youʼre very, very good. If you study.”

“I will study.” He snatched at Maurylʼs hands. “I will. Iʼll try not to make mistakes.”

“Do you know, boy, that your mistakes could open the keep to the Shadows, that you could leave a door unlatched, that you could be outside enjoying the breeze and the rain, and do something so utterly foolish by your inattention to the hour, that they could get you while youʼre outside, — and then what could I do, can you say? I had to come out in the rain just now to get you, foolish lad, and what if it were something worse than rain, what if it only looked good and felt good to touch, and what if it only felt good for the moment, boy, eh? What if it opened the doors and opened the windows and left you nowhere to run, then what would you do? Can you answer me that?”

“I donʼt know, Mauryl!”

Mauryl freed his own hands and captured his instead. “Well, youʼd do well to figure it out before you do something so foolish, wouldnʼt you, boy?”

“I want to! I want to, Mauryl!”

“Wanting to wonʼt be enough. Trying wonʼt be enough. After itʼs got you is far too late. Before is the only time you own, lad, the only before you can trust is now, and you donʼt even know how long before is, do you, foolish boy?”

“No.” He thought that Mauryl was telling him his answer, maybe the very means to assure that he would never go away, but he could by no desperate reach of his wits comprehend what Mauryl was saying. “I donʼt know, Mauryl. I want to know, but Iʼm a fool. I donʼt understand anything!”

Mauryl bumped his chin with his finger, and made him look up.

“Then until you do understand, pay very close attention to doors and windows. Donʼt do stupid things on the parapets. Donʼt risk your safety. Donʼt go out in storms, donʼt let the sun sneak behind the walls when youʼre not paying attention.”

“I wonʼt, Mauryl!”

“Go practice your letters while the storm lasts. Read and write. These are useful things.” Mauryl stood up and rummaged among parchments on the table, sending several off onto the dusty floor, along with a tin plate and a dirty spoon. Tristen dived down and rescued them, and put them up on the table again; but three and four more hit the floor immediately after, and Mauryl caught his sleeve, compelling his attention to a small codex Mauryl had pulled from among the parchments. Mauryl pressed it into his hands and folded his fingers over the aged leather.

“Here is the answer, boy. Here is your answer to all your questions. Here is the way. Learn it. Study it. Become wise.”

Tristen opened the book to its center. Its pages were thick with copywork, a bold and heavy hand that was not at all like the writing on the parchments Mauryl trampled underfoot, not written in the delicate, rapid letters Mauryl used.

Someone else copied this, Tristen thought, and although that ‘someone elseʼ was not the thunderstroke of a Word, it was a thought he had never framed in his mind, a thought that there could be someone else, or anyone else, now, or ever.

But there had been. There were, in the same way there were, Mauryl hinted, other places. There must be other someones.

There must be, in those other places, as naturally as there must be a sun over those places and a wind to rattle their shutters, someone like Mauryl and someone like himself. There was more than one dove, was there not, that lived in the loft?

There was more than one mouse in the lower hall. There were at least six, that Mauryl called sneaking little thieves, and yet put out bits of bread for them, because Mauryl said they were old, too, and moving more slowly now than they had.

So things had greater numbers than one, and mice grew old, and doves flew out over the woods Mauryl said to fear — and yet came back safe to their roosts in the loft, which had no shutters to bolt. There were many, many of them.

And someone other than Mauryl had written the copywork in this book, using straight, black letters that crossed the page in rigid dark masses, when Maurylʼs flowed like the tracks of mice across the dust.

“Boy!”

He had walked straight ahead, thinking of the precious book in his hand, not the stairs before him. He had forgotten, first of lessons, the single step down. He caught himself, at Maurylʼs voice, and made the little step safely, feeling shame burn in his face as he looked back.

Mauryl shook his head, out of patience with a fool.

So, shamefaced, he took his little book down to the table where the wall sconces were. He took the waxed straw from the holder and carried fire from the watch-candle, which was his task to renew every night and every morning, and lit the three candles.

Candles donʼt come like dewdrops, Mauryl had said, when once he left the drafty kitchen door open and the watch-candle had burned out. Mauryl had been out of sorts and had him light his straw instead off the embers in the hearth, which ate up half the straw at once, Mauryl grumbling all the while about fools leaving doors unlatched, and saying candles were hard come by, and they should be burning knots of straw by winter if his husbandry was so profligate.

Winter was a Word, howling white and bitter cold. Straw was a little one, yellow and dusty and hot. Dewdrops he knew from spiderwebs on the shutters, and the old keep had many spiders.

But where did candles come from, that they were at once so scarce, and yet vanished every handful of days for new ones to fill their holders?

They were like the little book, written in another hand, evidence of something outside, and of things more than one. Once he began chasing that thought, it seemed clear to him that candles came from somewhere.

And where then did their clothes come from, when Mauryl said, Mauryl had said it just this morning, that it was one thing to conjure something to do what it would do anyway, and one thing to make things seem better than they were, and quite another, Mauryl had said disgustedly, to conjure a new shirt, which had to come of a good many herb bundles, and which heʼd torn on a splinter in the loft.

Mauryl had taught him how to patch it, and made him do it many times until he made it right.

Mauryl gave him such an important thing as this book, on which Mauryl said everything rested, and he thought only about shirts and candles, his thoughts skittering about as they always did, chasing down so many, many steps and stairs of his imaginings, into all the rooms that were there, that only had other doors behind the ones he knew. He tried not to go wit-wandering. He tried not to think of questions.

He sat down at the study table, in the old chair that was most comfortable, except for Maurylʼs. He opened the book and smoothed flat the stiff pages. His own copywork, scattered all around him, was wearing the parchments down by layers in attempts at such orderly rows as this: he copied Maurylʼs mouse-track writing and his fingers found ways to ink not only the parchment but himself, the quills, and other parchments. His quills threw ink into small spots he never suspected existed until he put his hand on them. He could write Tristen and keep it straight. But line after line, this marched straight and true, in masterful strokes of writing so heavy and dark it drew the eye straight to it and did not let it go.

This was wonderful in itself. Writing held Words, and one never knew when one might encounter such a powerful thing: writing like this was to fear, and hold carefully, and puzzle over, because some shapes were like Maurylʼs writing and many had tails and straight, strong lines where Maurylʼs had twists; and more had shapes he could not quite tell apart, or where one letter stopped and another began.

Certainly it was not Maurylʼs writing.

Someone elseʼs. Someone — of strong and straight strokes, lacking those whips and tails heʼd thought were part of the letters, which heʼd copied in his shaky attempts that turned the quill in wrong directions and spattered ink, or left a bead of ink that took sometimes a day to dry.

Another wizard? he asked himself. Mauryl said he was a wizard, and he, Tristen, was a boy, and that being a wizard, Mauryl knew what a boy needed to know.

Had he never heard what Mauryl had said? Not, The wizard; but, A wizard. Of course there was more than one of everything. Mauryl had always implied so. Mauryl had never told him there was only one.

Mauryl had said there were dangers and they came from outside. As the shadows did. And there was more than one of them. There were many more things in the world than one of each.

Mauryl spoke of this book as if it were a Word, filled with more and greater meanings than other books. This book was, Mauryl said, the source of what he needed. The Book itself might come from elsewhere and tell him what those other things were. Mauryl had said he need not go away if he could find the answers in this Book.

But try as he would to hook the letters together into words, puzzling out the strange ones, and trying them as this letter and that — he found not one word in it he could read.

The pigeons held the floor of the loft, and the doves held the highest rafters, up by the roof, in nooks the pigeons couldnʼt fit, living on different levels of the loft and filling it with their soft voices. The loft was a wonderful, dusty place. Shingles covered part of it. Slates covered one wing. Thatch covered some of the holes, but the birds that stole the blackberries stole the straw for nests, which they tucked into inaccessible nooks along the other rafters, and squabbled and flapped their wings along the dusty boards when they both wanted the same place.

All the birds of whatever sort had learned that he brought crumbs. So had a furtive few mice, which dared the owl — oh, the owl! — that held sway in the west end of the loft. But an inside wall divided the two, and the owl, which ruled the sunset side alone and grumpy, seemed not to hunt among the mice and the pigeons on this side, although, Mauryl said, owls ate mice.

That seemed cruel.

But the owl would take nothing that he brought and was a sullen and retiring bird, solitary on his side. He wanted not, evidently, to be disturbed, and glared with angry yellow eyes at a boyʼs offerings, and let them lie. Mauryl said he slept by day and hunted by night, and he was probably angry, Tristen thought, at being waked.

The owl flew out among the shadows at night and came back safely to sleep in the loft. But that not one bird and not one mouse crossed into Owlʼs side, and that all the boards were bare of nests or straw, might tell a boy finally that Owl wanted no company.

It might tell a boy that Owl was, if not content, not a bird like the other birds, but rather a mover among the Shadows, and possibly a bird other birds feared. Perhaps, Tristen thought, Owl was their Shadow, and the reason they flew home at twilight to stay until the sunrise. Perhaps there was a Shadow that hunted wizards, and one that hunted boys, and one that wanted mice and birds, and heʼd stumbled on its daytime sleeping place — he supposed that, like Owl, Shadows had to have them. But if Owl was one of the dreadful things, he thought he should be glad Owl only flared his wings and glared at him.

Perhaps up in the rafters were other Shadows asleep, and if he waked them, theyʼd pounce on him. But there were rules for Shadows, as he could guess, that by day they had to sleep, and if one forbore to rouse them, then they forbore to wake.

So he went no more to Owlʼs side. He told Mauryl that he thought the Shadows might sleep in the loft: Mauryl said the Shadows slept in all sorts of places, but certainly he should be out of the loft well before the sun set, and he should be careful up there, Mauryl said, because the boards were rotten with age, and he might fall straight through and break his neck.

Mauryl was always thinking of disasters. That was what wizards did, Tristen thought, and boys had to learn to read, so he took his Book there and sat in the sunlight.

The mice grew tame, and the birds (besides Owl) liked the bread he offered, and fluttered and fought for it quite rudely (at least the sparrows), while the pigeons (better-mannered, Mauryl would say) puffed their chests and ducked and dodged about. The sparrows were full of tricks. But the pigeonsʼ gray chests shone with green rainbows in the sun, and they learned to come close to him, and sit on his legs in the warm sunlight, and take bread from his fingers. The doves tried the same, but were far more timid, and the sparrows hung back and squabbled, thieves, Mauryl called them. Silly birds.

But the pigeons grew rather too bold in a very few days, and would land on his head, or fight over room on his shoulders, and he discovered there were disadvantages to birds. Mauryl said then that they were taking advantage of him, which was what creatures did if one gave and asked nothing — like some boys, Mauryl said. So perhaps he could learn to be thoughtful and to think ahead, which birds didnʼt do, which was why they had birdsʼ wits, and not the wisdom of wicked Owl.

Be stern with them, Mauryl advised him. Bid them mind their manners.

So he became like Mauryl with them, well, most times. He shrugged them off his shoulders; he swept them off his knees. He tolerated one or two polite and careful ones and, he discovered, once the bread ran out, most were far less interested in his company. So he grew wiser about birds.

He said to Mauryl that the mice were more polite. But Mauryl said the mice were only smaller, and afraid of him because he might step on them by accident. Mauryl said that if they had the chance they might be rude, too, which was the difference between mice and boys; boys could learn to be polite because they should be polite, but mice were polite only because they were scared, and might be dangerous if they were as big as boys, being inherently thieves.

That saying made him unhappy. He lay on his stomach on the floor and tried to coax the mice out to him, but they were afraid of him and came only so far as they ever had. So he thought that Mauryl was right and that they expected harm of him, when he had never done any. He wondered why that was, and thought that Mauryl might be right about their character.

He read his Book in the intervals of these matters, or at least he studied it. He grew angry sometimes that he could understand nothing of it. Sometimes he found little words that he thought he knew. Sometimes he made notes to himself in the dust with his fingers.

And the silly pigeons came and walked on them, so they never lasted long.

Pigeons had no respect for writing, nor for boys. They feared him not even when he swept them off. They thought of him, he began to think, not as a boy, but like the other pigeons, flapping their wings to secure a place. And his wing-flapping, like theirs, did nothing but overbalance a pigeon. It never drove one away for good, not so long as there was the chance of more bread crumbs.

— Mauryl, the Wind breathed.

Mauryl stopped, seized up his staff and sprang up from the table in his tower room, parchments and codices tumbling in all directions.

Laughter came from the empty air, more clearly than its wont.

— You are weaker tonight, said the Wind. Mauryl, let me in.

He banged his staff on the wooden floor, tapped the gold-shod heel of it against the sealed shutters. The seal remained firm.

— Mauryl, the Wind said again. Mauryl Gestaurien. I saw him today. I did.

He scorned to answer. To answer at all opened barriers. He leaned on his staff, eyes shut, remaking his inner defenses, while the sweat beaded cold on his forehead.

— Once it was no trouble at all for you to keep me out. It must have been the Shaping that weakened you, Gestaurien. Do you think? — And was he worth the cost?

— You cannot read him, Mauryl thought, not meaning that to be his answer, but the Wind heard, all the same. He clenched the next thought tightly in his defenses, wove it firmly and strongly inside, armored as his own memory. The sense of presence faded for a moment.

— Come, let me in. The voice came from another direction, rich and soft and chilling. You are failing, Gestaurien. Harder and harder now for you to shut me out. — And what is he to do for you, this flesh-clothed Shaping of yours?

Dangerous to answer. Think nothing, do nothing.

— Ah, Gestaurien, Kingsbane, — What do you call him?

Tristen, he thought, and wished in vain not to have made that slip.

Laughter circled the tower room, rattling one shutter after another. Tristen, Tristen, Tristen. Is he a peril to me, Gestaurien? This puling innocent? I think not.

— Begone, wretch!

Shutters rattled, one after another. The wind chuckled, howled, roared, and stirred the shadows in the corners.

— Ah, secrets. The Wind sniggered, a mild rattling at a window latch. Perhaps the great, the awesome secret is that you failed. So great a magic. So ambitious. And all so useless.

— Begone, I say!

The shadows flowed back. The wind fell suddenly. The shutters were quiet. It had ventured too arrogantly, too soon.

Mauryl sank into his chair, bowed his head against trembling hands.

And then upon a dreadful thought—

— leapt to his feet, seized his staff in one hand, the candlestick in the other, tottering with the weakness in his knees. With his staff he ventured onto the creaking balconies, by flickering, precarious light that left the depths all dark.

He took the stairs much too fast for a lame old man and came down, aching and short of breath, feeling about him constantly with his magic, as far as the next balcony, and to Tristenʼs sealed door. He opened it and leaned against the door frame, breathless.

The boy was safely asleep, his breathing gentle and undisturbed. He could have heard nothing. The shutters of this room had never rattled, never attracted the wind.

With a shaking hand he set the candle down on the small table, next to the watch-candle, a candle pungent, like the one he carried from above, with rowan and rue, rosemary and golden-seal.

He tipped the cup on Tristenʼs bedside and found it empty, delayed to draw the coverlet over Tristenʼs bare arm.

Tristen stirred, a mere breath. The boyish face was always cold and severe in sleep, so stern, for such young features. But—

There was the shadow of beard on the smooth skin. When, he wondered, had that begun — in only so little time? Just tonight?

The magic was still Summoning, still working in him. Still — Summoning, that was the unexpected thing.

Mauryl dipped into the boyʼs dreams, precautionary on this night of strange intrusions. He found them nothing more violent than the memory of rain, circles in puddles, scudding clouds above the trees.

He took his candle again, softly closed the door as he left, renewed the seal with a Word.

The wind sighed about the towers, but it seemed a natural wind, now, and he climbed the creaking stairs back to his tower study, while the candlelight and candle smoke chased the shadows into momentary retreat, beneath and below and around and around the wooden stairs and balconies of the keep.