Fortress in the Eye of Time

CHAPTER 6

Tristenʼs ears still rang. His flesh still was chilled by the wind. But the Shadow had gone, and broken straw prickled against his face and through his shirt and his breeches — prickled until he was, first, aware of lying on the dusty boards, and second, aware that one knee had gone through a second gap in the boards, and third, aware that he still held the Book safe beneath his body.

Holes were everywhere about the roof, letting in large, dusty shafts of sunlight. Pigeons murmured, a handful going about their ordinary business on the rafters and on the central beam which upheld the roof. A quiet breeze stirred through the loft.

The trouble was past, Tristen thought, and dragged himself from his precarious position, gathered his knees under him and sat up, holding the Book against him — Mauryl would be pleased that he had saved it. Mauryl would have sent the wind away. Mauryl would have held everything safe downstairs…

But Mauryl would be in no good mood.

He decided he should present himself very quietly downstairs, and straighten up the parchments and blot up the ink before Mauryl saw it and lost his temper. He had had thunders and screams and ragings enough: he wanted to please Mauryl, and he most of all wanted calm and peace and Maurylʼs good humor.

He gathered himself up and crossed the creaking boards, causing a quiet, anxious stir among the pigeons. He dusted himself as he went, raked random straws from his hair, wanting to have no fault Mauryl could possibly find. But when he went out and down the narrow stairs, and down again to the balcony, the light was shining into the hall from holes in the roof of the keep itself, which it had never done, and the balcony he walked had settled to a precarious, twisted tilt among the rafters.

“Mauryl?” he called out, wanting rescue.

But there was not a sound.

“Mauryl? Iʼm upstairs. Can you hear me?”

Rain would get in, at the next storm, and fall where it never had, on the parchments and the books in Maurylʼs study. They had to do something about that, surely — someone must climb up on the roof.

The balcony settled under him, a jolt, and a groan, sending his heart into his throat. He darted for the stairs, hearing little creaks and groans the while, which wakened other groans and creaks in the rafters.

He went down and down, as quickly as he could. The railing of the stairs shook under his hand, and the creaking boards on Maurylʼs balcony roused a fearsome shriek of settling timbers; the triple stone faces at the turning of his balcony seemed changed, frozen in some new horror — or maybe it was the shadows from the myriad shafts of dusty sunlight that never before had breached the lower hall.

From overhead came another fearful thump and groaning. A roof slate fell past him and smashed on the stones below.

Tristen caught a breath and ran the steps, trailing his free hand down the banisters, clutching the Book in the other. He reached the study, where a chaotic flood of parchments from off the shelves lay crushed under fragments of slate.

Slates had fallen on the table and smashed the overset inkpot. He bent and gathered up an armful of parchments, laid them on the table, then sought more, arranging them in stacks, making them, stiff and of varying sizes as they were, as even-edged as he could.

There was a fearsome jolt. An unused balcony came loose, one of the rickety ones on the far side, where they never walked — it groaned, and distorted itself, and fell in great ruin, taking down other timbers, jolting the masonry and raising a cloud of dust.

“Mauryl?” he called out into the aftermath of that crash. “Mauryl?” Mauryl should know; Mauryl would not abide it; Mauryl should prevent the timbers falling.

But light fell on him from his right since that crash, and turning his head, he saw a seam of sunlight, saw doors open, or half-open, near him, down the short alcove mostly cluttered with Maurylʼs parchments.

He had never seen those doors ajar — had asked Mauryl once did those doors go anywhere, and Mauryl had said, Doors mostly do.

Anywhere in the world, Mauryl had said, is where doors go.

Another slate crashed on the stones, and another. He ducked under the kitchenward arch for safety as a third and a fourth fell.

Mauryl had never opened that south door, nor let him lift the bar. He had never guessed that sunlight was at the other side.

But the door was thrown from its metal hinges, and the bar was thrown down, one end against the stones, with the sun flooding through the crack — the sun, the enemy of the Shadows.

It seemed safer than where he was. He ventured a dash across the slate-littered floor to the arch of the alcove and, finding the gap almost wide enough to let him out, pushed and scraped his way through.

He stood on low steps in a place he had never seen — a stone courtyard within high walls, and a white stone path which led off at an angle through weeds and vacancy, as far as the gate that — he knew all too well — was the start of the Road that led through the encircling woods, the Road that Mauryl had said he must find and follow.

He had thought Mauryl would go before him. He had hoped Mauryl meant him to follow him when he went away.

And perhaps Mauryl had indeed gone, and expected him to have the wits to know that.

“Mauryl?” he called out to the emptiness around him. Sometimes Mauryl did amazing things, things he never expected, and perhaps, even in this circumstance, Mauryl could speak to him out of the sun or the stones, or give him a stronger hint what he should do next.

Mauryl? — Mauryl? — Mauryl? was all the echoes gave him, his own question back again, the way the walls echoed with the axe.

He could not bear to call aloud again. The courtyard sounded too frighteningly empty.

But the Road was more frightening to him still, and unknown, and he did not want to leave by mistake, too soon: he was prone to mistakes, and it was far too great a matter to risk any misunderstanding at all.

So he sat down on that step in front of the door; he pressed his Book close against him, and told himself that Mauryl was surely still somewhere about, and that it was not time yet for him to go. He should only wait, and be certain.

Mauryl was not, at least, inside; the sun was high, and he was, he said to himself, far safer out here than inside where the roof slates were crashing down, and where the balconies were creaking and falling.

Mauryl could make the balconies stay still if Mauryl were not busy. Mauryl said that making things do what they did naturally was easy, and surely it was natural that things be the way they had always been.

Pigeons came down and walked about on their own errands, expecting grain, perhaps, but he dared not go in again under the chance of falling slates and cross the study to get it for them, not until the slates stopped coming down, or until Mauryl turned up to make everything right again — which he wished most of all.

“Please,” he said faintly. “Mauryl? Mauryl, please hear me?”

It was the same as in his room, when the fear came. And no, Mauryl did not always arrive at the moment one would wish. Mauryl did not have every answer; Mauryl had tasks to do that a boy could not understand, and Maurylʼs silence could well mean that Mauryl was busy. There had been a danger, but Mauryl had overcome it, and Mauryl would pay attention to him as soon as Mauryl found the time. He should wait patiently and not take hasty action, that was what Mauryl would advise him.

So he sat on the low steps, and he sat, and he sat, until the sun was behind the far tower and the shadow of that tower touched the courtyard.

While he sat, he tried earnestly, fervently, to read his Book, telling himself that now, perhaps, once the moment called for it, Words might come to him and show him everything Mauryl had wanted of him in his command to read this Book, things which would prevent Mauryl going on the Road, and which would prevent his having to go, as well.

But hours passed in his efforts, and in his fear. The shadow of the walls joined the shadow of the tower and grew long across the courtyard stones.

At last the shadow touched the walls, complete across the courtyard, and he knew that on any ordinary day he should be inside and off the parapets and out of the courtyard by now. He was thinking that when the wind suddenly picked up, skirled up the dead leaves from a corner of the wall, and those leaves rose higher and higher, dancing down the paving stones toward the tower.

And back again. That was odd for a wind to do. It was a chill wind as it touched him. The pigeons, while he read, had deserted the courtyard stones, seeking their towers for the night. The shadows, while he read, had come into nooks where no shadows had been at noon. The faces in the stone walls seemed more ambiguous, more ghostly and more dubious than they appeared by day.

Be certain, Mauryl had always said, that the shutters and the doors are bolted every night.

Be afraid of the dark. When the sky shadows, be under stone and have the shutters closed and the doors well shut. Have I not said this before?

He shivered, with the Book folded in his hands, his hands between his knees as the wind danced back again. He looked up at the color stealing across the sky. The faces set in the walls changed their expressions with the passage of shadow. Now they seemed to look down in horror.

He looked up at the walls above his head — and saw Maurylʼs face above him, stone like the others, wide-mouthed and angry.

He stumbled off the middle step, fell on the bottom one and picked himself up, staring at the face in horrid surmise — backed farther and farther across the courtyard stones, with Maurylʼs face among the stone faces he had seen in the walls from the beginning of his existence here, wide-mouthed and wide-eyed as if Mauryl could at any moment scream in anger or in terror, either one.

“Mauryl?” he said faintly, and somewhere within the hall timbers fell with a horrific crash and splintering. Another balcony, he thought. “Mauryl?” he cried aloud, daring not admit he still could not read the Book. There must be an exception. There must be a way out. “Mauryl, what shall I do, Mauryl? Please tell me what to do!”

He heard slates fall inside, a lighter, sharper-edged ruin.

A cold skirl of wind went past him.

An immense mass of something crashed inside and knocked the door shut, as if someone had slammed it in his face. He stared in shock, terrified.

He had no recollection, then, of turning away, except he was walking toward the gate. Reaching it, he tried not the heavy bar but the lesser one, which closed a gate within the gate; that was enough to let him out. He shut it once he was through, and asked himself foolishly how he should bar it, and then — against what should he bar it? and protecting what? Mauryl had set great importance on locking and latching doors, but it was far beyond his ability to seal this one against harm. He turned and faced the bridge and the river, and the forest beyond it, already shadowing toward dark — and could only set out walking on the Road. Go where you see to go, Mauryl had said. Take the Road that offers itself. And he did, over the rotten boards and stonework of the Bridge that spanned the river Lenúalim.

The water was dark beneath the gaps over which he walked, clinging fearfully to the stones along the edge of the high-arched bridge. The river looked murky green in the deep shadow and made patterns on its surface, swirls and ripples which on another day might tempt him to linger and wonder; but haste and dread overwhelmed all curiosity in him — haste — clinging to an ancient, crumbling stone railing, and with old mortar sifting from under his feet. If he should fall, he said to himself, he would slip beneath that surface, where it must be as cold and as dark as the rain barrel or the cistern, and where all that Mauryl had done with him and all that Mauryl had told him would come to nothing: he could not be so foolish.

A moaning sounded behind him, as if the gate had opened. He cast a look over his shoulder and saw it still shut. It might be the wind keening through some board up in the towers — if there were a wind, which there was not. He looked about again just as a stone left the railing ahead of him and dropped from the Road, for no cause that he could tell. It splashed into the water, making a plume, and it was gone, as he himself might be, without a trace, should the road give way.

He hurried feverishly, then, holding to the stones, and heard another fall of stones behind him: one, two, three splashes. He dared not waste a moment to look. It was the solid ground ahead that beckoned him, a shadowed shore where the Road went over safe earth, under deep-rooted trees, and his feet were very glad to feel that solidity under them as he left the bridge behind.

The moaning came to the trees then, making them toss their heads and whisper around him in a rush of sound he had never heard the forest make even in storm. Chill came with that wind, as leaves and fine grit went flying around him, stinging his eyes. The wind shouted around him, until twigs and then small branches flew like leaves. The whole forest seemed to shiver, and then—

Then it grew very quiet, no leaf stirring — a dank and breathless air as frightening in its lifelessness as all the previous fury of the wind. He hesitated to move at all, and when he hesitated, it seemed more difficult than before simply to move, or breathe, as if some soundless Word bade him stand still, and wait, and wait.

But, heart in his throat, he obeyed Mauryl. It seemed more important than ever to honor Maurylʼs instruction, in the failing of all substantial refuges he knew. Dark was gathering in this dank hush, a convocation of Shadows that as yet had done him no harm, but he had no defense against them here, no stone to shelter him, no Mauryl to send them away, no light against the coming dark.

— Tristen, the Shadows mocked him, calling his name in tones that Mauryl might use. But Mauryl had never trusted them and he refused. He walked not because he knew where he was going but because that was what Mauryl had said to do. No harm had yet come to him doing what Mauryl said.

A shape glided after him, dark and silent. He felt it pass near. But when he looked straight at it, he saw nothing.

Shadows were like that, treacherous and evasive of the eye. But there was no Mauryl tonight to set a seal on his sleep, and no door, and no bed, no supper, no cup, and no means of having one — forever, so far as he knew.

The Road appeared and disappeared by turns in the dark. It seemed to meander aimlessly, but, Tristen thought, he had nowhere to go, except as his Road led him; it seemed to have no reason for itself, but then, he had none, so that seemed apt. If he had the wish of his heart all through the weary night it would be only to go back to Mauryl, and to have his room and his supper and to do forever what Mauryl told him — but it was not his wishes things obeyed, it was Maurylʼs; and without Mauryl, he had to take what came to him and do as wisely as he could.

If, he thought, if he could have read the Book Mauryl had given him, he might have prevented the ruin that had taken Mauryl from him. But he had not been able. Mauryl had known his inability. He was certain now that Mauryl had always known that he would fail in that most important task, and he was certain that that had always been Maurylʼs unhappiness with him — for Mauryl had been unhappy. He had sensed, quite strongly at times, Maurylʼs unhappiness and dissatisfaction in his mistakes, and, latest of all, Maurylʼs despair and Maurylʼs acceptance of his shortcomings. He should have been more able, he should have been quicker to understand, he should have understood Maurylʼs lessons and done better. But he had not been good enough.

Follow the Road, Mauryl had said.

But Mauryl had also warned him to be under stone when the sun set, and as this one set and the world went gray, he saw no stone to be under. Mauryl had said avoid the Shadows, but he walked through constant shadow, and darker shadow — limped, finally, in a darkness deeper than any the fortress had held except in its blackest depths.

He was bruised through his thin shoes. His right ankle ached, and he had not remembered exactly where that pain had started, until he recalled his flight off the steps, and his fall off the edge of the step. Body as well as spirit, Mauryl had warned him, and the very hour that Mauryl had left him on his own in the keep, he had forgotten the first lesson he had ever learned, and fallen and done himself harm, exactly as Mauryl had warned him not to do.

He walked and walked, unhappy with himself, following the ancient stonework until the trees grew so close he could no longer find the next white stone to guide him.

So he had made another mistake. He had lost the Road. He was afraid, standing alone in the dark and trying to know what to do in this place where the path ran out. But it seemed to him that, if there were no white stones, still a long track stretched ahead clear of trees, and that seemed indisputably the right direction to go.

And, true enough, when he had gone quite far on that treeless track he saw something in the starlight that he deluded himself was another of the white stones.

His heart rose. He went toward it as proof that he had solved the dilemma.

But it was only a broken tree, white inside, jagged ends of wood showing pale in the night.

Then he was truly frightened, and when he looked about him he saw nothing even to tell him which way he had come. He might have made, he thought, the worst mistake of all the mistakes he had ever made and lost the Road once for all, Maurylʼs last, Maurylʼs most final instruction — beyond which he had no idea in the world what to do.

At that moment a shadow brushed his cheek, substantial enough to scare him. It settled on a branch of that dead tree, hunched up its shoulders and waited.

“Owl?” Tristen said. “Owl, is it you?”

Owl, a sullen bird, only spread his wings and ruffled his feathers with a sound very loud in the hush of the woods.

“Do you know the way?” Tristen asked him, but Owl did nothing.

“Have you come on the same Road?” Tristen asked then, since they came from the same place perhaps at the same moment, and Mauryl had set great importance on his being here. “Did Mauryl tell you to come?”

Owl gave no sign of understanding.

He had never trusted Owl. He had never been certain but what the smallest birds disappeared down Owlʼs gullet, and he was all but certain about the mice.

But he felt gladder than he had ever thought he should be of Owlʼs presence, simply because Owl was a living creature as well as a Shadow, and because Owl was a force whose behavior he knew — and because he was despondent and lost.

“Do you know where the Road is?” he asked Owl.

Owl spread his wide blunt wings and, Shadow that he was, flew through the darkness to another tree and perched there. Waiting, Tristen thought, and he followed Owl in desperate hope that Owl knew where he was going. Owl flew on again, which he also followed. A third time Owl took wing, and by now he had no hope else but Owl, because he had no notion as he looked back where he had come from, or where his last memory of the Road might lie.

Owl kept flying in short hops from tree to tree, never leaving his sight — and by now he feared that he might have done something Mauryl would never have approved, and trusted a bird that Mauryl had never told him was acceptable to trust. One of the pigeons he might have relied upon, never questioning its character or its intentions; but Owl was the chanciest of creatures he knew, and he knew no reason Owl should go to such great difficulty to guide him to the Road. Certainly he would have helped Owl. That was a point: creatures should help one another, and perhaps Owl was constrained once there was such calamity.

He had never apprehended Owl to have great patience with him. He knew no reason Owl should not lead him far astray and then fly away from him. But Mauryl was often peevish himself, and yet Mauryl had never failed him or done him harm.

So he kept tracking Owlʼs flights through the woods, fending branches aside, scratching himself and snagging his clothing on thorns and twigs all the while. His ankle hurt. His hands hurt. Owl traveled farther at each flight now, and sometimes left his sight. He struggled to keep up and called out, “Owl! Wait! Iʼm not so fast as you!” but Owl only took that for encouragement to make his next flight through a low spot filled with water and to lure him up a muddy bank.

He was altogether out of breath now. “Owl, wait,” he called out. “Please wait!”

Owl flitted on.

He tried to run, and caught his foot on a stone in the tangle of brush and fell to his knees, bruising them and his hands and sticking his left palm with thorns.

But the stone on which he had fallen was pale, a tilted, half-buried paving of the Road, and he sat there catching his breath, seeing other stones before him.

“Who?” he heard a strange voice calling. “To-who?” He had never heard Owlʼs voice, but something said to him that that was indeed Owl speaking his question into the night.

And it struck him that it was like Maurylʼs questions, and that he had no answer, since the world was far wider and the Road was far longer than he had ever imagined.

“Come back,” he said to Owl, rising to his feet. He tried to follow Owl further, but Owl left the pale trace that was the Road, and he gave up the chase, out of breath and sweating in the clammy night air.

But he could have no complaint of Owl. He kept walking, comforted that he was not alone in the woods, and hearing from time to time Owlʼs lonely question.

In the black, branch-woven sameness of the woods, the Road seemed finally to acquire a faint glow in the night, a glow against which Tristen could see the detail of branches in contrast. And slowly thereafter the whole world of black branches and pale stone Road widened around him until, looking up, he could tell the shadow of the trees from the gray sky. It was the dawn creeping through, not with a bright breaking of the sun, but a stealthy, furtive dawn that took a long, long time to insinuate itself into the black and gray of the woods. He might not have made any progress at all. Nothing looked different from where he had lost the light.

He had walked the night through without resting, and he supposed that since he had somehow reached the dawn unharmed he had done something difficult that Mauryl would approve, but he felt no comfort in his situation. He was very thirsty, there was no breakfast, he was bruised from his falls, and he missed Maurylʼs advice and asked himself whether Mauryl had ever given any hint, any remote hint if, after Mauryl had gone away, he might ever find him again — because without Mauryl, he had no idea what to do next, or what he should be thinking of doing.

Use your wits, Mauryl was wont to say, but one had to know on what question to use oneʼs wits in the first place — like wondering how long his ankle and his knees would hurt when there was no Mauryl to make the pain stop, and wondering how long and how far the Road went, and wondering where Owl was and why Owl had followed him, out of all the birds he liked far better.

His thinking had become merely a spate of like questions with nothing to suggest the answers, and long as he walked, the sights around him never changed, one tree being very much like another to his opinion.

Sitting down, which he did when his legs were utterly exhausted, offered him only time to think up more questions, so he proceeded slowly and steadily, in pain that was more persistent than acute, pain that might, for what he knew, go on forever, as the Road might — in his worst imaginings.

But after a measureless time he found a little trickle of water running down from rocks beneath the roots of trees, at the side of the Road, a trickle that ran away and lost itself beneath a layer of leaves, but where it emerged from the rocks it was bright and clear.

And the mere fact it existed made this a Place, not just a part of the endless Road. It was not more trees and more Road; it existed as a difference in his condition, it offered relief from thirst, and he bent down by it and drank — then washed his face and his hands to the elbows and then his head and hair in the good, clear water, not caring that it chilled him through. He scrubbed and scrubbed until he began to shiver in the light breeze that blew, because Mauryl had taught him to love being clean.

He knew a Place along the Road, then, that offered him water, if he began to be desperate — clean water, as pure as that from the cistern at Ynefel, and it occurred to him that he could stay by it and not be thirsty today; at the very least, he could sit for a while and rest. He could let his head down against the mossy stones. He could shut his eyes a moment in the sunlight, knowing he could drink again any time he wished.

He found a dark gray nothing behind his eyelids. It shadowed with wings like the wings of his birds, quiet, dizzy movements, like their gliding in the sky, and he rode that for a precious few moments, content to be rocked in it, absorbed in it.

“Owl?” he asked then of that vision, remembering that Owl had followed him; and he saw the loft again, but they were only silly pigeons that came and went, and their voices lulled him deeper into sleep.

How strange, he thought, to dream of falling asleep. That was twice asleep. And very, very deep this sleep within a sleep seemed to be, layer upon layer of it folding him over like thick quilts on a chill night.

He looked for Mauryl in the grayness of the loft, then. He looked for Mauryl, but he saw only birds walking to and fro. He saw only dust on the boards, and there was a gap in the boards of the dividing wall that the storm had made, toward which he knew he ought not to look. He did not know why he ought not now, when he had ventured to explore the other side of that gap back at Ynefel. But it seemed to him that the gap in that barrier was a source of dreadful harm.

He hid in the loft, instead, and something came searching for him, something he could not put a shape to, or understand. He thought it was a Shadow. He tucked himself deep within the nook he had found between the rafters and hoped for it to go away.

It brushed by him. It came back again. It seemed he was not in the loft at all, but lying on moss-covered stone, among the leaves, and for some reason a deep leaf-shadow was on him, protecting him from the presence that paced along the Road. Looking for him, it was, he thought. He did not know what else it might be looking for.

The Book burned the skin of his waist where he had tucked it, as that presence paused beside his broad daylight hiding-place. It was not at all the loft now that sheltered him, and it was not the birds coming to and fro that made that strange sound, it was a patter of rain drops falling on the forestʼs discarded leaves.

And in the awareness of that sound the presence he had felt so strongly had ceased to be there.

Something loomed above him instead, spreading wings between him and the sky. It was Owl, out by daylight, perched on a leafless branch and peering fiercely off into the distances up the Road as Owl would do — Owl suspected things, and he seemed to suspect this one intensely.

“What do you see, Owl?” he asked, awake, as he thought, with his heart beating harder than a dream warranted. “What was it?”

But Owl flew off down the Road with a sudden snap of his wings and gave him not a second glance.

He was still afraid, then — of what, he had no idea, but the Place no longer seemed safe. Neither did the Road behind him, now that Owl had fled it in such haste. But he gathered himself up immediately and set out walking, following Owl.

The notion of danger behind him in the endless woods — and the notion of Ynefel also lying behind him and at the heart of the woods — was a new thought to him: the Road had at least one end, and he had come from there. The water was a Place. So he began to form in his mind then the notion that the Road might equally well go to Places, as doors did, and that to must be at least as important as from.

Then he thought that tomorrow or this evening must at least be at least as substantial as yesterday — and that tomorrow and toward a yet-to-find Place was where Mauryl had wanted him to go. Owl had gone, showing him the way in great urgency.

So there was somewhere to be, and somewhere to have been, and somewhere yet urgently to go, which Mauryl had assigned him. And his slowness had made him almost fall into the Shadow. It was another mistake to have delayed at all to rest — a mistake to have been wandering as much as walking, not knowing he had a place to be, not, he had to admit to himself, really wanting to follow Maurylʼs instruction, not wanting to be anywhere but Ynefel, because he had conceived of nowhere else despite the Names that Mauryl had told him. Of course there were other Places. Mauryl had tried to tell him, but like rain off the shingles, it had slid right off his mind, as everyday sights did, until the Word was ready to come. Or — and this one had done that — a Word would come partway, and he would go on attaching more and more pieces of it all day or for days after, until a new and startling idea came to him with all its various pieces attached.

Now he feared that other Place he was going as possibly one that would take him in and close off to him forever the Place that he had been. He refused to imagine a world in which Mauryl was gone for good. It terrified him, such a Place, which could exist, now that he began to think about such things as tomorrow, and tomorrow after that.

Owlʼs precipitate flight frightened him. It drove him to desperate haste, far beyond his ordinary strength.

And when the dark came down again in his walking on the Road he was afraid to sit down and sleep, hungry and thirsty and miserable as he was, because the shadows were abroad. He kept walking until he was staggering with exhaustion and light-headed with hunger.

“Owl?” he begged of the formless dark. “Owl, can you hear me?”

It was the hour for Owl to be abroad. But perhaps Owl was busy. Or ignoring him, as obstinately as Mauryl would, when he interrupted Mauryl at his ciphering, and if he persisted, then Maurylʼs next answer — and, he suspected, Owlʼs — would not be polite at all.

But he wished, oh, he wished Owl would come back. There were clearly sides to the Road which went on unguessably far, forest into which Owl could go, but he dared not venture. The air as he walked grew cold and the woods grew frightening. There were stirrings and movements in the brush where by day he had heard nothing. The place felt bad, the way the stairs and balconies of the keep, safe and familiar by day, had felt dangerous when the Shadows were free to move about.

No Owl, no Mauryl, no shelter and no door to lock. There was no safety for him tonight, and nowhere to stop. He sat down only when morning came sneaking into the woods, and he sat and hugged his knees up to his chest for warmth, his head both light and aching. He had no idea where he was, except beside the Road. He had no idea yet where he was going, or how far he had already come. The world remained measureless to him on all sides now.

And when he waked he was so light-headed and so miserable he tried eating a leaf from the bushes that sheltered him, but its taste was bitter and foul and made his mouth burn. He wished he had the water he had found yesterday, but there was no food there, he knew that for very certain. So he ate no more leaves, and after a long time of walking his mouth quit burning.

Then his stomach seemed to give up the idea of food at all. He was not quite hungry. He told himself he could keep going — he had gone farther than he had ever thought he could, he was stronger than he had ever thought he was, and miserable as he was, nothing had laid hands on him, nothing had stopped him, nothing had daunted him from Maurylʼs instructions.

“Who?” came from overhead. Owl was back. Owl flew off from him with no time for questions.

Owl intended, perhaps, encouragement, since of Words there were, Owl was not profligate, and Owl asked his question without an answer.

Who? indeed. “Tristen! Tristen is my name, Owl! Do you hear me?”

“Who?” came from the distance now, beckoning him, a known voice, if not a friendly voice.

“Owl, did you eat the mice?”

“Who?” came again.

Owl denied everything, and flew away from him, too distant now for argument. Tristen saw him, a feathered lump, far, far through the branches.

But Owl guided him. Owl seemed to hold some secret, and constantly flitted out of his reach — but Mauryl had done that, too, making him learn for himself: he knew Maurylʼs tricks.

He called out: “Are you Maurylʼs, Owl? Did he send you?”

“To-who?” said Owl, and flew away out of sight.

But the mere sound of voices, Owlʼs and his own, had livened the leaden air, an irreverent fracture of the silence, and once the deathly silence was broken, from seeing for days now only the gray and the black of dead limbs, he began to see shafts of sunlight, green moss growing, and green leaves lit by the passage of sunbeams.

Perhaps the sunbeams had always been there, working their small transformations, but Marna, when it had first come to him as a Word, had seemed a name for darkness and loss; his eyes until this moment might have been seeing only the dark. But now that he looked without expecting gloominess, Marna showed itself in a new and livelier way — a tricky and a changeable place, as it seemed.

But then, Ynefel itself ran rife with terror and darkness, so long as the Shadows ruled it — and, again, Ynefel shone warm with firelight and smelled of good food, and Mauryl sat safe by the fireside, reading. Were not both…equally…Ynefel, to his mind? And were not both…equally and separately…true?

So perhaps Marna Wood could be fair and safe at one time and have another aspect altogether when the Shadows were abroad.

And if he could think — as he had — one way and then the other about its nature, and if the forest could put on an aspect according to his expectations, then it seemed to him much wiser to think well instead of ill of the place, and to expect sunlight here to shine brightly as the sunlight came to the loft at home, to fall as brightly here as it fell on the pages of his Book when he read his lessons among the pigeons.

And perhaps other things came from expecting the best of them as hard as he could.

So immediately he drew his Book out of his shirt, stopped in the full middle of a sunbeam, and opened it and looked at the writing, hoping that if one thing had changed, if he fully, truly, with all his heart expected to read the Book, then the Words might come to him — just a few Words, perhaps, so he turned from page to page.

But the letters remained only shapes, and even the ones he had thought he understood now looked different and indecipherable to his eye. His expectation, he thought, must not be great enough, or sure enough, in the way that Mauryl expected bruises not to hurt, or Shadows not to harm them. He clearly had not Maurylʼs power — but then—

But, was the inescapable conclusion, then Mauryl had never expected him to read the Book — or had not expected it enough. That was a very troubling point. Mauryl could expect his hand to stop hurting, and it would. Mauryl could expect that the rain would come, and it would. Mauryl could expect the Shadows to leave his room alone, and Mauryl could bar the door against them, and bang his staff on the stones and bid them keep their distance; the Shadows would obey Mauryl, if not him.

Yet Mauryl had doubted that he would read the Book?

Mauryl had doubted him and doubted his ability, but all else, including very difficult things for him to do, Mauryl had seemed so certain of. He no longer knew what Mauryl had thought of him, or what Mauryl had expected.

So he tucked his Book away fearfully and kept walking; and when the sun was at its highest overhead, he sat down on a fallen log in a patch of sunlight, took out his Book and tried again to read, tried, mindful of Maurylʼs doubt, tried until his eyes ached and until his own doubt and his despair began to gray the woods around him.

But then the sun, which had faded around him, shone brightly and clearly in a new place farther down the Road.

So it seemed to him that the sun might be saying, as Owl had said, Follow the Road, and he rose up, tucked away his Book, and walked further, relying on the sun, relying on Owl, and hoping very much for an end of this place.

Came another nightfall, and the sky turned mostly gray again and the woods went back to their darkness. Tristen was growing more than tired, he was growing weak and dizzy and wandering in his steps.

He had begun, however faintly, to promise himself that at the end of the Road might lie a place like Ynefel, a place with walls of strong stone, and, he imagined, there might be a fireplace, and there might be a warm small room where he could sleep safe at night — that was what he hoped for, perhaps because he could imagine nothing else outside of this woods, and he wanted the woods to end.

Perhaps, in this place he imagined, there would be someone like Mauryl, since there surely would be someone to keep things in order. There would be someone like Mauryl, who would be kind to him and teach him the things he needed to know.

“Why did you go?” he asked that grayness inside him, speaking aloud and hoping faintly that Mauryl might be simply waiting for a question.

“What am I to do, Mauryl? Where are you sending me?”

But nothing answered him, not even the wind.

“Owl?” he asked at last, since Owl at least had been visible. It occurred to him that he had not seen Owl in a very long time, and he would at least like Owlʼs company, however surly Owl could be.

But Owl might be sleeping still, despite the dark that had fallen. Owl also failed to arrive.

So he followed his faintly visible path of fitted stones, which disappeared under forest earth, which reappeared under a black carpet of rotten leaves, which found ways along hillsides and threatened to disappear under earth and leaves altogether and forever. He was afraid. He kept imagining that Place like Ynefel. He kept thinking…of that fireside and a snug room where the candles never went out.

The Road lost itself altogether in nightbound undergrowth, where trees had grown and dislodged the stones.

“To-who?” a voice inquired above him.

“There you are,” Tristen exclaimed.

“Who?” said Owl, and flew up the hill.

He followed, trying to run as Owl sped ahead, but he had not the strength to keep his feet. He slipped at the very top, among the trees, and tumbled downhill to the Road again, right down to the leaf-covered stones.

“To-who?” said Owl.

He brushed leaf mold from his fall-stung hands and his aching knees. He was cold, and sat there shaking from weakness.

“Are you different than the other Shadows?” he asked Owl. “Are you Maurylʼs? — Or are you something else?”

“To-who?” quoth Owl. And leapt out into the dark.

“Wait for me!” Now he was angry as well as afraid. He scrambled to his knees and to his feet, and followed as he could.

But always Owl moved on. He had caught a stitch in his side, but he followed, sometimes losing Owl, sometimes hearing his mocking question far in the distance.

His foot turned in a hole in the stones, and he landed on his hand and an elbow, quite painfully. He could not catch breath enough to stand for two or three painful tries, and then succeeded in setting his knee under him, and rose and walked very much more slowly.

“Who?” Owl called in the distance. The fall had driven the anger out of him and left him only the struggle to keep walking. But he could do no more than he was doing. He hurt more than he had ever hurt in Ynefel, but that seemed the way of this dreary woods: pain, and exhaustion. He walked on until he had hardly the strength to set one foot in front of another.

But as he reached that point of exhaustion, and thought of sitting down and waiting for the dawn to come, whatever the hazards and in spite of Maurylʼs warnings, he rounded the shoulder of a hill and heard Owl calling. And in scanning the dark for Owl, he saw a triple-spanned stonework with an arch at either end.

It looked to be a Bridge like that at Ynefel. His spirits were too low by now for extravagant hope, but it was a faint hope, all the same, that he had come to some Place in the dark. A lightless, cheerless Place it might be, but it was surely stone, and the arched structure offered shelter of a kind Mauryl had told him made the dark safe.

So he walked, wavering and shaking as he was, as far as let his eyes tell him the arch let through not into a building but into utter dark — and reaching the second arch, and seeing planks between, he could see that the dark to the other side of the rail was no longer the woods but the glistening darkness of water.

A Bridge for certain, he thought. An arch and a Bridge had begun his journey; and now, with a lifting of his heart, he remembered Mauryl saying that Lenúalim was at the start of his journey and that Lenúalim should meet him on the far side of Marna Wood. Amefel was beyond, and Amefel was a Word of green, and safety.

He pressed forward to reach that span, and when he stood on it, beneath the arch, he saw faint starlight shining on the water beyond the stone rail, and saw to his astonishment a living creature leap and fall with a pale splash in the darkness.

“Who?” said Owl, somewhere above him.

This bridge was not so ruined as the one at Ynefel. The second arch, looking stronger than the first, stood above the edge of the shore where the reflective surface of the water gave way to the utter dark of forest on the far side. He stood beneath the first arch with his knees shaking, and with all that water near at hand — and was acutely thirsty. He could see the stars — truly see the stars for the first time in his life, for there were neither clouds nor treetops between him and the sky. He saw the Moon riding among them — a knife-sharp sliver. He had seen it only by day, in its changes. Its glory at night was unexpected and wonderful, a light that watched over him.

He did not leave the Road to go down beside the river. He sat down where he stood, his legs folding under him. He leaned against the stone. He knew it was not wise to leave the Road where he was, even to venture down to the river he could see. In the limited way the starlight showed it to him, it looked broad, and uncertain at the edges. Fool, Mauryl would say to him, if he fell in, after all this, and had not the strength to get out again.

Owl came and perched on the stone rail of the bridge. Owl came and went from there, and once brought back something which he swallowed with some effort. Tristen had no idea what it was nor wanted to know. Owl was a fierce creature, but Owl was all he had, so he tried not to think ill of him.