Fortress in the Eye of Time

CHAPTER 4

After a dry spell, the rain built in the north and rolled up in a great, towering fortress of cloud, flickering in its belly with lightnings. Tristen saw it from the wall, and knew immediately that it was a dark and dangerous kind of storm, no sun-and-puddles shower.

He said as much to Mauryl, who said, gruffly, So stay indoors, — and went back to his scribing and ciphering. Mauryl had been scraping parchments all morning in preparation for whatever was so urgent, and had just scraped part of one he wanted by accident. Mauryl was not in his best humor on that account, and Tristen walked softly about his chores in the hall.

By evening the storm was crashing and thumping its way across the forest. Tristen made their supper as Mauryl had taught him, managed not to burn the barley cakes, and set a platter of them and a cup of ale at Maurylʼs elbow in hopes of pleasing Mauryl; but Mauryl only muttered at him and waved his fingers, which meant go away, he was busy.

So Tristen had a supper of barley cakes and honey by himself, beside the fire, and since Mauryl evidenced no attention to him whatever, he left the pots for morning, when the rain barrel would certainly be full.

He decided nothing would happen in the evening. Then, Mauryl being so occupied he never had touched his supper, he took a candle, went up the stairs, lighting the night candles at each landing, so if Mauryl did come upstairs to his chamber, weary as he was apt to be, he should not have to deal with a dark stairway: that was Tristenʼs thought, and probably Mauryl would complain about the early extravagance of candles, but Mauryl would complain more if he failed to light them.

And he was bound for bed early, which gave him no chance at all of doing something to annoy Mauryl, when Mauryl was in such a mood.

So he opened the door to his room, lit the watch-candle on his bedside, sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off his boots and his shirt, disposing the latter on the pegs behind the door and laying the Book which he carried on the table beside his bed.

The double candlelight leapt and jumped with the draft from under the door; Mauryl had said that was why the fire moved. It gave him two overlapped shadows and made them waver about the stonework. The floor creaked — it always did that when the wind blew strongly from the north. He had observed that mystery — Mauryl had called him quite clever — on his own.

And while he was undressing, he heard the rain begin to spatter the horn window, as the thunder came rumbling.

He stepped out of his breeches, and was turning down the covers when a great crack of thunder sent him diving into the safety of his bed and drawing up the covers about his ears, in the protection of the cool sheets. A second clap of thunder sounded right over his room as he shivered, letting his body make a comfortable warm spot.

The candles both still burned, the watch-candle and the one that sat always at his bedside. Beside them sat the cup that he was to drink — Mauryl made it for him every evening. But when he had blown out the candle he had brought, and by the light of the fat, dim watch-candle reached out an arm and picked up the cup to drink it — he found it empty.

Well, so, Mauryl had been preoccupied. Mauryl was very busy and bothered whenever he was at his ciphering, which involved lines and circles and a great many numbers that made no sense at all to his eyes. He wondered if he should take the cup down to Mauryl and ask him how to make it himself, since there had never been a night he had not had it, but he supposed that one night would not make all that great a difference. It was a comfortable thing, and Mauryl said he was supposed to drink it all, every night, but he was supposed to have breakfast every day, too, and there had certainly been mornings when Mauryl had quite forgotten, before he had learned to make it for himself.

So he gave a sigh and decided it was like the breakfasts, and that if Mauryl did chance to remember it, and if it were important enough, Mauryl would wake him and have him drink it. He lay back, abandoned and forgotten, and listened to the beating of the rain against the horn window.

But just then he saw lightnings making patterns in the rough horn panes, droplets crawling and racing across the fractured yellow surface, and he realized that the shutters that had turned up shut and latched every evening in his room — as the cup had always been waiting — were not shut. He had not seen it: the light from the candles had blinded him to anything so far as the end of his bed. The lightnings showed it plainly now that he was down only to the watch-candle.

And he knew that he ought to get up in the chill air and fold the shutters across the window and latch them tight, but the thunder frightened him, and the rain did, and the unguarded window did. He was safe in bed. He had always thought that if he stayed abed the thunder could not reach him and the Shadows had to stay away…but he knew better now: he was certain he should get up and shutter that window, and do it now…

If his eyelids were not suddenly so heavy and his breaths so deep and easy, the mattress gone soft, soft, soft as the water splashed off the window, which was a snug window, and latched, he knew that. He never unlatched it. Water ran down the gutters and down and down to…

To the cistern, he thought, then, and dreamed of the buckets he had to draw, and how the cistern smelled cool and damp when he took off the wooden lid…how it was dark and secret and he liked casting the bucket down, not knowing how deep the cistern really was, because the rope for the bucket was not nearly long enough to touch the bottom. He let it drop down and down, with a splash…

The rain barrel was for the kitchen. The rain barrel was for washing. The cistern, deep and dark, was a place of shadows…

…shadows that moved and flowed up like water overflowing, running along the stones the way water ran, flowing up the step and seeping, with the puddle, under the kitchen door.

He waked, in total dark, heart thumping in his chest.

The second candle had gone out.

It might have been the sudden plunge into darkness that had wakened him. He thought so. He heard no change in the rush of rain. The wind skirled about the perilous window; the lightning through the horn cast strange shapes, accompanied by thunder.

Something groaned, as if the timbers of the keep were shifting.

Wind sounds. Night sounds. The fortress was full of creaks and groans and scurryings that seemed loudest at night.

That was because the fortress was old; Mauryl had said so when he had come to Mauryl afraid. Old, well-settled timbers creaked with the changes in weather, and the mice came and went as they pleased in the walls. Owl flew out on better nights.

But he tried not to think of Owl, or Owlʼs fierce eyes glaring at him.

Again came that deep wooden groaning, which made him think the wind must be blowing from some direction it never had before. He lay shivering beneath his covers, warm enough, wondering why he was afraid, wishing that he dared jump out of bed very quickly and fling the shutter closed, but he imagined something at the window at just that moment, and himself standing too close…

He could run out onto the balcony and go looking for Mauryl, but he saw no light under his door, beside his bed. Light always showed far across the floor if the wall sconce on the balcony outside was still lit. It was dark outside his room, and he had no idea whether Mauryl was upstairs abed or down at the table.

The very walls groaned, and the groaning became a bellow that shocked the air.

“Mauryl!” he cried, and flung the covers off and bolted for the door, naked as he was, with that bellowing going up and down the hollow core of the keep. He flung the door open onto dark.

No light shone up from the great hall below: the heart of the keep was dark all the way to the depths and the nook of Maurylʼs study, where lights burned latest. The candles were all out, even the watch-candles at the turnings of the stairs, and that bellowing echoed up from the depths and down from the rafters. He felt his way in panic along the wooden balcony, his hands following the cold stone of the wall, and he reached the turn where three faces were set together. He felt their open mouths and their pointed stone teeth, and groped out into utter blackness for the railing that should come before the steps.

His foot found the edge of the steps instead: he seized the railing for balance. The stairs went both up above and down to the depths from there, and he trusted nothing below. The safe place had to be Maurylʼs room — if it was dark below, then Mauryl could not be there. Mauryl had gone to bed upstairs. Mauryl would tell him it was nothing, just a sound. Mauryl would call him foolish boy and calm his heart and tell him that nothing could get inside.

He ran stumbling up the steps, felt his way around and around the railing with the whole keep echoing and bellowing about him as if every mouth in every face in the walls had found a tongue at once.

His head topped the steps and he could see, by the light under Maurylʼs door, the floor of the balcony above his. He climbed the last steps, he ran to that door, seized the handle and pulled — but it was barred from inside, and the bellowing hurt his ears, drowned his heart, smothered his breath.

“Mauryl!” he cried, and beat on Maurylʼs door with his clenched fist. The dark was all around him, and he felt the balcony creak and shake as if something else were walking on it, something shut out, too, in the dark outside Maurylʼs room. That thing was coming toward him.

“Mauryl!”

Something banged, inside, something shattered, steps crossed the floor in haste and the bolt crashed back. The door swung abruptly inward, then, and Mauryl stood, a shadow against the bright golden light that shone through the wild silver of his hair, the cloth of his robe.

The place was all parchments and vessels, charts and bottles on the unmade bed, the smell of ale and old linen and sulfur so thick it took the breath. The groaning was around them, deep and terrible, and Mauryl waved his arm in a fit of rage, shouted a Word—

The sudden silence was stifling, leaving his pulse hammering in his ears — his heart pounding. “You fool!” Mauryl shouted at him, and in utter fright he tried to leave, but Mauryl snatched at his arm and wanted him inside, where he was afraid to go.

Then somehow between the two of them the night table went bump and scrape and toppled over as Maurylʼs hand left his arm, as pottery crashed, as parchments slid heavily out the door.

“Come back here!” Mauryl raged after him.

He fled in terror for the stairs, stumbled against the upward steps before he knew where he was, landed on his hands and knees on the steps and heard the furious taps of Maurylʼs staff as Mauryl hastened down the balcony after him.

“Fool!” Mauryl shouted, and he clambered up the steps half on hands and knees before he even thought that it was the way to the loft.

“Tristen!” he heard Mauryl shout. He gained his feet and ran up and up the turns of the stairs, up the last rickety steps to the last precarious balcony and the highest secrecies of the fortress, dark steps that were always dark — except the light under the door.

It was lightning-lit, now; but the loft was his refuge, his place, full of creatures he knew. He fled to the door and burst into the wide space. Lightning lit his way, gray flashes through the broken planks and missing slates and shingles. Wind howled and wailed through the gaps, rain blew into his face from the missing boards, and rain fell down his neck as he felt his way among the rafters. All around him was the flutter of disturbed pigeons and doves.

The door he had left open blew shut with a bang, making him jump. But he reached the nook he most used, soaked and exposed as it was, and he dared catch his breath there, thinking Mauryl would never, ever chase him this far. His flight would not please Mauryl at all. But in a while Mauryl would be less angry.

So he sat in the dark at the angle of the roof, with his heart thumping and his side hurting. The birds could fly away from danger. If they stayed and settled, surely it was safe. The loft was a safe place, there was nothing to fear…and they were settling again. Lightning showed him rafters and huddled, feathery lumps, the blink of an astonished pigeon eye and the gray sheen of wings.

Thunder bumped, more distantly than a moment ago. The stifling feeling, like the sound, now was gone. His heart began to settle. His breathing, so harsh he could hardly hear the rain, quieted so that he was aware of the patter of rain on the slates just above his head, then the drip of a leak into straw, and the quiet rustling of wings, the pigeons jostling each other for dry perches.

A door shut, downstairs, echoing.

Then the stairs creaked, not the dreadful groaning and bellowing of before, but a sound almost as dreadful: the noise of Mauryl walking, the measured tap of Maurylʼs staff coming closer, step-tap, step-tap, step-tap.

Dim light showed in the seam above the door: Mauryl carrying a candle, Tristen thought on a shaky breath, as he listened to that tapping and the creaking of the steps. The door opened, admitting a glare of light, and the wind fluttered the candle in Maurylʼs hand, sending a fearsomely large shadow up among the rafters above his head.

Tristen clenched his arms about himself and wedged himself tightly into the corner, seeing that shadow, seeing that light. Mauryl was in the loft, now. His shadow filled the rafters and the pigeons made a second flutter of shadowy wings, a second disarrangement, a sudden, mass consideration of flight.

But he — had no way out.

“Tristen.”

Maurylʼs voice was still angry, and Tristen held his breath. Thunder complained faint and far. Slowly Maurylʼs self appeared out of the play of shadows among the rafters, the candle he carried making his face strange and hostile, his shadow looming up among the rafters, disturbing the pigeons and setting them to darting frantically among the beams. The commotion of shadows tangled overhead and made something dreadful.

“Tristen, come out of there. I know youʼre there. I see you.”

He wanted to answer. He wanted the breath and the wit to explain he hadnʼt meant to be a fool, but the stifling closeness was back: he had as well have no arms or legs — he was all one thing, and that thing was fear.

“Tristen?”

“I—” He found one breath, only one. “I — heard—”

“Never—never run from me. Never, do you understand? No matter what you heard. No matter what you fear. Never, ever run into the dark.” Mauryl came closer, looming over him with a blaze of light, an anger that held him powerless. “Come. Get up. Get up, now. Back to your bed.”

Bed was at least a warmer, safer place than sitting wedged into a nook Mauryl had very clearly found, and if sending him to bed was all Mauryl meant to do, then he had rather be there, right now, and not here. He made a tentative move to get up.

Mauryl set his staff near to let him lean on it, too — he was too heavy for Mauryl to lift. He rose to his feet while Mauryl scowled at him; and he obeyed when, his face all candle-glow and frightening shadows, Mauryl sent him toward the stairs and followed after. His knees were shaking under him, so that he relied first on the wall and then on the rail to steady him as he went down the steps.

The measured tap of Maurylʼs staff and Maurylʼs boots followed him down the creaking steps. As Mauryl overtook him, the light made their shadows a single hulking shape on the stone and the boards, and flung it wide onto the rafters of the inner hall, across the great gulf of the interior, a constant rippling and shifting of them among the timbers that supported all the keep. The faces, the hundreds of faces in the stone walls, above and below, seemed struck with terror as the light traveled over their gaping mouths and staring eyes — and then, the light passing to the other side, some seemed to shut those eyes, or grimace in anger.

“Go on,” Mauryl said grimly when they reached the balcony of Maurylʼs room, and Tristen took the next stairs. Beyond the outward rail, Maurylʼs light drowned in the dark and failed, and Tristen kept descending as Maurylʼs step-tap, step-tap, pursued him down and around and onto his own balcony.

It pursued him likewise toward his own open and abandoned door, as the light in Maurylʼs hand chased the dark ahead of him, and in sudden dread of the dark in his own room, he let Maurylʼs light overtake him.

“The candle blew out,” he said.

“To bed,” Mauryl said with the same unforgiving grimness, and Tristen got in under the cold bedclothes, shivering, glad when Mauryl, leaning his staff against the door, used his candle to light the remaining candle at his bedside, the watch-candle having burned down to a guttered stub.

“I didnʼt mean to make you angry,” Tristen said. “I heard the noise. Iʼm sorry.”

Mauryl picked up the cup from beside the candle and wiped the inside with his finger, frowning, not seeming so angry, now. Tristen waited, wondering if Mauryl would go away, or scold him, or what. The bedclothes were cold against his skin. He hoped for a more kindly judgment, at least a fairer one, by the look on Maurylʼs face.

“My fault,” Mauryl said. “My fault, not yours.” Mauryl tugged the quilts up over his bare shoulder. So, Tristen thought, Mauryl had forgiven him for whatever he had done by leaving his room. He wished he understood. Words that came to him with such strange clarity — but the danger tonight, and why Mauryl was angry — it seemed never the important things that came easily and quickly, only the trivial ones.

Then Mauryl sat down on the side of his bed, leaned a hand on the quilts the other side of his knee, the way Mauryl had sometimes talked to him at bedtime, a recollection of comfortable times, of his first days with Mauryl. “You put us both in danger,” Mauryl said, and patted his knee so that the sting of the words was diminished. “It was foolish of you to run. You startled me. Next time…next time, stay where you are. I know the dangers. Iʼve set defenses around us. You attracted attention, most surely, dangerous attention — as dangerous as opening a door.”

“Canʼt it get in the holes?” he asked. “The pigeons do.”

“Itʼs not a pigeon. It canʼt, no. It has to be a door or a window.”

“Why?”

Mauryl shrugged. The candlelight seemed friendlier now. It glowed on Maurylʼs silver hair and gave a warmer flush to his skin. “It must. Thereʼs a magic to doors and windows. When the foundations of a place are laid down, they become a Line on the earth. And doors and windows are appointed for comings and goings, but no place else. Masons know such things. So do Spirits.”

They were Words, tasting, the one, of stone and secrets, but the other—

He gave a shiver, knowing then, that it was a spirit they feared. Other Words poured in — Dead, and Ghost, and Haunt.

He thought, Mauryl fears this spirit. Thatʼs why we latch the doors and windows. It wants in.

“Why?” he asked. “Why does it want to come in?”

“To do us harm.”

“Why?”

“Itʼs a wicked thing. A cruel thing. One day it will have you to fear, boy, but for now it fears me. Go to sleep. Go to sleep now. There will be no more noises.”

“What were they? Was it the Shadows?”

“Nothing to concern you. Nothing you need know. Go to sleep, I say. Iʼll leave the candle.” Mauryl stood up, reached toward his face and brushed his eyelids shut with his fingertips. “Sleep.”

He couldnʼt open them. They were too heavy. He heard Mauryl leave, heard the door shut and heard the tap of Maurylʼs staff against the door.

After that was the drip of the rain off the eaves, the soft groanings of the timbers of the keep as Mauryl climbed the stairs and walked the floor above.

It was back, and stronger.

Much stronger, Mauryl thought to himself, feeling chill in the moist air of the night.

There was no immediate touch. He waited, still weak from the latest encounter. Anger welled up in him. But he gave it no foothold. Anger, too, became a weakness.

— Your Shaping is helpless, the Wind whispered, nudging the shutter.

— Of course he is, Mauryl said to the Wind. Are you ever wrong?

— Wasted, Gestaurien, all your years were wasted. This Shaping is not enough. You work and you work; you mend your poor failed mannequin, but to what advantage? Where is your vaunted magic, now? All spent. All squandered. What a threat you pose me!

— Come ahead, then. Do your fingers still sting? — But there are no fingers, are there? No fingers, no heart,…no manhood. Mere food for carnal worms, a repast for maggots. A beetle has his home in your skull. He has your eyes for windows…A fat, well-fed beetle, a fine, upstanding fellow. I like him much better.

— The end of your strength, Gestaurien. Words, words, words, all vacuous breath. Shall I be wounded? Shall I flee in terror? I think not. — I see a loose latch. I do…

Bang! went the shutter, and kept rattling.

— Tristen, is it? Tristen. A boy. And careless, in the way of boys. He might forget a latch, the way you forgot his cup — and the shutter — tonight. Was that accident? Do you suppose it was accident?

The air seemed close, full of menace. The shutter rattled perilously. Mauryl rose up, seized his staff, and it stopped.

Thump, went the next shutter, making his heart jump.

— Worried? asked the Wind.

— Come ahead, I say. Why donʼt you? How many years did it take you to recover the last time you misjudged me? Twenty? More than twenty? Intrude into my keep again. Come, try again, thou nest for worms. You might be lucky. Or not.

It made no reply. It rolled in on itself with none of its accustomed mockery. It nursed secrets, tonight. It restrained something it by no means wanted to say.

Mauryl bowed his head against his staff and put forth all his guard, wary of a sudden reversal. But nothing came. He reached not a breath, not a whisper of presence.

He sent his thoughts further still, around the rock of the fortress, and through its cracks and crevices.

But no further than that. He found limits to his will that had never been there, perhaps the limits of his own defenses — or perhaps not his construction at all, but a prisoning so subtly constructed he had had no suspicion of it until now.

Sweat stood on his brow with the effort to catch the wind in his nets. But there was, no matter how fine he made them, not a breath within his reach.

He might believe, then, that the prison was illusory, that, as in the long, long past, he still found no limit but himself. But he feared not. He feared, that was the difficulty. Fear slipped so easily toward doubt — and doubt to the suspicion that his old enemy had no wish for encounter, not on his terms.

He would not be so fortunate, this time, in choosing the moment.

He had known as much, in his heart of hearts. His old student knew it, and sought as yet no direct contest.