Fortress in the Eye of Time

CHAPTER 3

Once a thought began it might go anywhere and everywhere. Tristen despaired of better mastery of himself. His thoughts were not like Maurylʼs thoughts, all orderly, hewing to one purpose. His leapt, jumped, flitted, wandered about so many idle matters, like the pigeons above hunting for dropped crumbs, pecking here, pecking there, in complete disorder. He found complete distraction in a candle flame or a butterfly, or, just after he skinned his elbow, the thought that elbows were very inconvenient to look at, and that there were parts of him he couldnʼt see, like his face, which was a curious way to arrange things.

It happened on that pesky step, and a fall right onto the stones of the lower floor with, fortunately, nothing in his hands. He gathered himself up, sitting on the stones, trying to look at his elbow, and finding red on his fingers. It hurt a great deal. He got up and went to Mauryl, fearing some permanent damage, but, no, Mauryl said, it was only a little Wound, and Mauryl told him to watch where he put his feet, and worked that tingling cure and put a salve on it. Wound was a Word, a scary one, that occupied his thoughts with dreadful images of red and ruin, and made him sick at his stomach, and made him remember how his elbow hurt.

But — he learned, too, that the skittering of oneʼs thoughts could be a useful thing, to take oneʼs mind off trouble — he still couldnʼt see his elbow.

So he went back to Mauryl, who was in the yard cutting herbs, and asked him if he could see his elbow.

“Not likely,” Mauryl said. “Nor wished to, lately.”

He began to walk away, rubbing his chin. Then he thought how, lately, heʼd felt his chin grown rough, and it itched, and he couldnʼt see that, either.

“Mauryl, can you see your face?”

“No more than my elbow,” Mauryl said curtly. The air smelled strongly of bruised herbs. “Stupid question, of course not.”

He went away, noticing, not for the first time, but for the first time that he had ever wondered about it, all the stone faces set in the walls: some large, some small, grimacing visages that had sometimes frightened him on uneasy nights, when Mauryl was angry for some reason and when he sought his room alone; or when the wind was up and creaking in the roofs and the loft, and he was alone, lighting the sconces on the landings. The faces seemed to change with the candlelight when he walked past them, but Mauryl had said they were only stone, and harmless to him.

Some of them had pointed teeth and pointed ears. He had felt his teeth with his tongue and his ears with his fingers, so he was certain enough boys looked nothing like the images of that sort. Some of the stone faces had beards, and looked like Mauryl. Some were smooth-faced. Some looked more afraid than angry. Maurylʼs face went through such changes of expression, and such changes portended important things to him — but the changing statues, Mauryl assured him, portended nothing.

He had been aware, too, in this growing curiosity about faces, that his hair was dark, where Maurylʼs was silver, that Mauryl had a long beard and his face was, until lately, smoother than the statueʼs stone; that Maurylʼs hands were wrinkled and his were not — his hands looked more like the stone hands that in places reached from the wall, not the clawed ones, but the hands with fingers. He was aware, now that he thought about it, that his face must be changing in some way, and different than Maurylʼs in more than the beard.

He was thinking about such things when, the next day, he leaned over the rain barrel out by the scullery and saw just a shadow of a boy, hardly more than a shadow, but not, surely, a wicked and dangerous Shadow, as Owl was to the birds.

The shadow was his, true, but he could see in it no reason for his face to be rough or whether it was a good face or a frightening face. He thought that the sun was wrong, and his hair was shading the water, so he moved, and held his hair back at the nape of his neck — but it hardly helped. It was a dark barrel and the sun did little to light it.

But it did seem, looking critically, that his nose was straighter, and his skin was smoother, and his brows were thinner than Maurylʼs. It was like and not like the stone faces. He made faces at the water-shadow. The shadow changed a little, where light reached past his shoulder.

The kitchen door opened. Mauryl looked out. He looked up.

“What are you doing?” Mauryl asked.

“Looking at my face,” he said, which sounded strange. “Looking at the shadow of my face,” he said, instead.

“Clever lad.” But Maurylʼs voice was not pleased. “Do you see all this wood?”

He looked in the direction Mauryl looked, at the large jumbled pile of timbers that had always stood by the door.

“Being such a clever lad,” Mauryl said, “do you see this axe?”

The axe stood by the door inside. Mauryl came out with it in his hand. He thought Mauryl would cut wood, as Mauryl did now and again: Mauryl had always said the axe was too dangerous. Mauryl found it hard to work without his staff, but he would lean on it and pull out the smallest pieces and chop them into kindling.

So he stood and watched as Mauryl set one small piece of wood over the bigger one he used for a supporting piece and set to work, leaning on his staff with one hand, chopping with the other.

“You see,” Mauryl said, “first to this side and then to that side.” Chips flew. He liked to watch. The wood that came out of the gray beams was lighter, and the newest chips were always bright among those that littered the area around about. Mauryl made faces when he worked. The small piece became two pieces. “Do you see?”

“Yes, master Mauryl.”

“You try a bigger one, if youʼre such a strong young man, with so much time to spare.”

He took a fair-sized one. He set it where Mauryl said; he took the axe in his hand. Mauryl showed him how to hold it in both hands, where to set his feet, and showed him how to be careful where the axe swung. His heart was beating faster with the mere notion that Mauryl trusted him with Maurylʼs own work. The axe handle he held was smooth and warm from Maurylʼs hands. When he lifted it and when he swung very slowly at Maurylʼs order, he felt the weight of it as something trying to weigh down on him.

“Very good,” Mauryl said. “Now, always minding where you put your feet and mind the path of the axe, swing it faster this time and aim true. Never chase the wood. If the wood moves, stop and put it back. Never, ever chase it with the axe. That way you keep your feet out of the way of the blade. It will take your foot otherwise. Do you hear me, Tristen?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, certain that was good advice. Mauryl stepped back and let him try in earnest.

It was far, far easier with the axe moving freely. He struck two strokes, to this side and to that side, and then Mauryl nodded, so he kept swinging, one pair of strokes after another, until the axe seemed to fly like a bird and he tugged it back, faster and better aimed with every stroke.

Mauryl watched him cut his piece through. Then Mauryl nodded approval and said, “Stack it against the wall. And fill the kitchen pan with water when you come inside. And wash before you come in.”

Mauryl went inside again, and he pulled the rest of the beam along the supporting piece and set to work, making the whole courtyard ring to the strokes, because he liked to hear them. The feeling of the axe swinging had become almost like a Word, strength running through him with his breaths and with the strokes. The chips flew wide and stuck to his clothing. He chose bigger pieces, which were no trouble at all for him to lift, and none for him to chop, having two sound feet, both hands to use, and the knowledge in his heart that he was going to please Mauryl by doing far more than Mauryl expected, far faster than Mauryl imagined.

He chopped only thick pieces, after that. He grew completely out of breath. The sweat ran down his face and sides, but he sat and let the breeze cool him, then attacked the pile again, until it made a taller stack than he had imagined he could make.

By then, though, it was toward time to be making supper. He washed the dust and the sweat off him; he washed his shirt, too, hung it out to dry, and flung the wash water away from the kitchen door as Mauryl had told him he should.

Then he filled the kitchen pan, and he ran upstairs to get his other shirt in time to run down again and help Mauryl stir up their supper.

It was the first time he had ever, ever, ever done so many things right in succession. Mauryl came out into the courtyard while the cakes were baking in the oven Maurylʼs small kindling had fed, and truly seemed pleased with his huge stack of very thick wood. Mauryl had him carry a stack of both big and little pieces inside before supper, and after supper he took the dishes and washed them, and came back to sit at the fire and read until Mauryl sent him up to bed.

He was happy when he went to bed, happy because Mauryl was happy with him — he thought that as Mauryl gave him his bedtime cup and sat by him on the edge of his bed, saying how — but he was very sleepy — he was becoming strong, and clever, and he had to study hard to be not just clever, but wise.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Do you practice every day with the Book?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, feeling his wits gone to wool. “I read every word I can.”

Mauryl smoothed his hair. Maurylʼs hand was smooth and cooler than his forehead.

“Good lad,” Mauryl said.

It was the most perfect day he remembered, despite the storm that threatened them, late, with lightning and thunder. But Mauryl seemed sad as he lingered, sitting there, and that sadness was the only trouble in the world.

Then Mauryl said, “If only you could read more, lad, if only you could do more than read words.”

He didnʼt know what more Mauryl wanted him to do than he had done. He felt suddenly desperate, but Mauryl rose from the edge of the bed as sleep was coming down on him thick and soft and dark, and Mauryl shut the door.

He heard the wind rattling at the shutters. He heard Maurylʼs steps creak and tap up the stairs.

It had been a fierce storm, he knew that by the puddle under the kitchen door in the morning.

And when, after breakfast and morning chores, he went up to the loft with his Book and a napkin of crumbs — he opened the door and saw shafts of sunlight where no sunlight had been before. It was bright and beautiful. Pigeons and doves and sparrows were flying in and out of the openings.

But he saw the sodden straw and knew the storm had blown rain through the sheltered places. The little birds were all fledged and flying, but it had been a hard night for the nests.

And, worse, a glance toward the other wall showed a board down between the pigeon loft and Owlʼs domain.

That would not do, Mauryl would say. That would simply not do. He feared what might already have happened, and if it had not happened yet, because of the storm raging, it would happen tonight.

He could come and go safely with Owl. The board was not on this side of the dividing wall, it had fallen on the other, so he tucked his Book into his shirt for safekeeping, unlatched the door and came through into the huge barren loft that was Owlʼs alone.

There was a hole in the roof, a rib of the roof was down, and slates lay broken on the loft floor. Owlʼs den had become drafty and lighter, which he thought would not at all please Owl.

Owl sat puffed and sullen on his perch.

He picked up the fallen board. The pegs were still in their holes, and a little effort put it where it belonged and set the pegs back in their sockets, though not so far as they should sink. He took up a roof slate and pounded with it, and finally pounded the pegs with his fist on a piece of the slate, after it had broken, and the board settled where it had been.

Owl had ruffled up at the clatter and the thumping. Owl refused to look at him, perhaps because he had liked the hole into the pigeon loft.

But there was nothing to do for the hole in the roof, which Tristen found far beyond his skill. He went and looked out, and found the hole a new window, on a side of the keep he had never seen, a view of forest that went on and on, and, as he stepped closer, a view of a parapet of the keep he had never seen.

He wondered how one reached it.

He stepped up on the fallen beam, worked higher, with his arm on the roof slates, and from that vantage, with his head and shoulders out the hole in the roof, he saw a gate in the wall that ringed the keep, looking down on it from above. He saw a dark band of water lapping at the very walls of the fortress and, spanning that, a series of arches. From those arches outward into the woods that lined the far shore, he saw an aged stonework which vanished in among the trees.

He was astonished and troubled. He could imagine the course of the stonework thereafter. He saw a trace of a line among the treetops, where trees preserved just a little more space than elsewhere through the forest.

A Bridge and a Road, he thought, in the breathless way of Words arriving out of nowhere. A Road suggested going out, and then—

Then it came to him that if Mauryl went away then the Road was the way Mauryl would go, through the gate and over that dark water and through the woods.

He felt the Book weighing against him as he climbed down, reminder of a task on which Mauryl had hung so very, very much, and in which he had so far failed. But the Road was out there waiting to call Mauryl away and the Book could prevent Mauryl going, so he held it secret that he had seen the Road, as he feared that he had, by accident, seen something Mauryl had never told him, and which, perhaps, Mauryl would tell him only if he could not solve the matter Mauryl set him to do.

It was not in his power to patch the hole the wind had made. He put up a few boards, but for the most part the holes were out of reach. He had at least, for the pigeons, patched the one that would have let their Shadow in, and the pigeons and the doves as well as Owl would have to bear with the rain when it came.

He said nothing of the hole in the roof when he came down from the loft. He thought Mauryl might be angry that he had seen the Road, and it would make Mauryl talk of going away again: that was what he feared. He studied very hard. He thought that he read Maurylʼs name in the Book, and came and asked him if that was so.

Mauryl said he would not be surprised. And that was all. So when he had studied the codex so long his eyes swam, he read the easy writings that Mauryl had made, and he copied them.

Some things, however, came much easier than others.

“Sometimes,” Tristen said, one evening, brushing the soft-stiff feather of the quill between his lips, while his elbows kept his much-scraped study parchment flat on the table, “sometimes I know how to do things you never taught me. How is that, Mauryl?”

Mauryl looked up from his own work, at least to the lifting of a shaggy brow, the pause of the quill tip above the inkpot. The pen dipped, then, wrote a word or two. “What things?” Mauryl asked him.

“How to write letters. How to read.”

“I suppose some things come and some things donʼt.”

“Come where, Mauryl?”

“Into your head, where else? The moon? The postern tower?”

“But other things, too, Mauryl. I donʼt know that I know Words. I see something or I touch something, and I know what it is or what to do with it. And sometimes it happens with things I see every day, over and over, only suddenly I know the Word, or I know how words fit together that I never understood before, or I know thereʼs more to a thing. And some of them scare me.”

“What scares you?”

“I donʼt know. Only Iʼm not certain I have all the parts. I try to read the Book, Mauryl, and the letters are there, but the words…I donʼt know any of the words.”

“Magic is like that. Maybe thereʼs a glamor on the Book. Maybe thereʼs one over your eyes. Such things happen.”

“Whatʼs magic?”

“Itʼs what wizards do.”

“Do you sometimes know Words that way, by touching them?”

“Iʼm very old. I find very little I donʼt know, now.”

“Will I be old?”

“Perhaps.” Mauryl dipped the pen again. “If youʼre good. If you study.”

“Will I be old like you?”

“Plague on your questions.”

“Will I be old, Mauryl?”

“Iʼm a wizard,” Mauryl snapped, “not a fortune-teller.”

“Whatʼs a—”

“Plague, I say!” Mauryl frowned and jerked another parchment over the first, discarded that one and lifted the corner to look at the one below, and the one below that. He pulled out one from the depths of the pile.

“Mauryl, I donʼt ever want you to go away.”

“I gave you the Book. What does the Book say?”

He was ashamed. And had nothing to say.

“The answer is there, boy.”

“I canʼt read the words!”

“So you have a lot to do, donʼt you? Iʼd get busy.”

Tristen rested his chin against his arm, rubbed it, because it itched, and it felt strange under his fingers.

“Mauryl, can you read the Book?”

“You have no patience for your studies today, is that it? You worry at this, you worry at that — how am I to finish this?”

“Are you copying?”

“Ciphering. Gods, go outside, youʼve made me blot the answer. Enjoy the air. Give me peace. But mind—” Mauryl added sharply as he sprang up and his chair scraped the stone. He stayed quite still. “Mind you stay to the north walk, and when the shadows fall all the way across the courtyard—”

“I come inside. I always do. — Mauryl. — Why the north walk? Why never the south?”

“Because I say so.” Mauryl waved a dismissive hand. “Go, go, and leave an old man to his figures.”

“What figures? What do you—”

“Go, gods have mercy, take yourself and your questions to the pigeons. They have better answers.”

“The pigeons?”

“Ask them, I say. Theyʼre patient. Iʼm not, young gadfly. Buzz elsewhere.”

Another wave of the fingers. Tristen knew he would gain nothing more, then, and started away.

But he remembered his copywork and put it safely on the shelf, far from Maurylʼs flood of parchments, which drowned the table in cipherings, with the orrery weighting the middlemost pile.

He hastened up the stairs, then, rubbing at the ink stains on his fingers, searching for wet spots that might find their way to his clothing or, unnoticed, to his chin, which still itched. He supposed he could ask Mauryl to make it stop, but Mauryl was busy, and besides, Maurylʼs work felt stranger than the itch, which went away of its own accord when he was busy.

— Mauryl, said the Wind, and rattled at the tower shutters, rattle, bang, and thump-thump-thump.

Mauryl hardly glanced at the sealed shutters this time. It had been a shorter respite than he expected, and a far more surly Wind. There was no laughter about it now at all.

— Gestaurien, let me in. Let me in now. We can reason about this foolishness of yours.

It was worried, then. Mauryl drank it in and, still sitting, reached for his staff, where it leaned against the wall.

— You know you can ruin yourself. This is entirely uncalled-for, entirely unnecessary.

It tried another window. But that was simply habit, Mauryl thought, and thought nothing else, resisted nothing, like grass in a gale.

— Heʼs asleep, the Wind murmured through the crack in the shutter nearest. I passed up and down his window. Do you truly think thereʼs any hope for you in this young fool? He knows nothing. Iʼve drunk from his dreams, I have, Mauryl. You wish me to believe him formidable? I think not. I do think not. Not deep, not deep waters at all, this boy. Heʼs all so innocent.

— Sweet innocence, Mauryl said. But out of your reach. Long out of your reach, poor dead shadow. Poor shattered soul.

— Youʼve given me a weapon, you know. Thatʼs all he is. A shutter went bump-bump, and Mauryl looked up sharply, feeling the ward loosen, seeing the latch jump. If you had had the stomach to join me, Gestaurien, we might have raised the Sihhë kings to power they never dreamed of. The new lords would never have risen, and you and I would not be haggling over this rotting fortress.

It was more self-possessed than before, more reasoning. That was not good.

— Mauryl Gestaurien? Are you worried?

— No. Simply not hurried. Patience I have in abundance. I shanʼt enumerate your failings, or tell you what they are. Let them be mysteries to you, like the counsel that I gave.

— Your mystery went walking on the wall. I saw him there. Such a little push it would take, if I wanted to.

— If you had a body, isnʼt that the pity, Hasufin? Youʼd do this, youʼd do that. Youʼre a breath of air, a meandering malaise, a flatulence. Go bother some priest.

— What was his name, Gestaurien?

The spell-flinging startled him and disturbed his heart, but he turned it with a thump of his staff, rose and thumped the staff against the shutter. Go away, thou breath of wind. Go, go, even the pigeons are weary of you.

Softly the wind blew now, prowling, trying this and that window, for a long time.

Far longer than on any night previous.

And the stars…the stars were moving toward ominous congruency.