Fortress in the Eye of Time (11 page)

If those had not been polite or proper men, there must be better ones. Words had shown him Houses, and he had not found that sort of men that lived in Houses, not yet, and certainly not at that fireside. Words had shown him Fields, and this thicket was certainly not that place.

Most of all—the thought of Fields had shown him great Walls, and a keep very like Ynefel.

That
was what he looked to find. That was what he suddenly believed he was searching for.

He walked until he could scarcely keep his feet under him, rested and walked on. He smelled nothing more of men and heard nothing more of Owl, but he was looking to find Men of gentler kind, and most of all a Place and a Tower like Ynefel.

With a room and a soft clean bed, and a supper, and most of all a wizard who would know what to do next.

M
orning came as the frogs predicted, with a sprinkling of rain through the leaves, a gray dim dawn, at first, with a slight rumbling of thunder. He ate most of the bread, fearing it might be ruined if the skies opened and poured as they had a habit of doing at Ynefel.

But before he was quite through, the sun was breaking through the clouds and shining through the leaves, dappling the gray stone of the roadway in patterns of light and shadow. Rain dripped at every breath of wind.

The birds sang, his clothing dried on his body and his hair began to blow lightly in the wind as he plucked the leaves and twigs from it.

And before he quite realized what he was seeing, with the cresting of another hill the trees grew thinner, gave way to brush, and then—a vision fraught with Words—to broad Meadows, where the Road ran, mostly overgrown with grass. The sky was dotted with gray-bottomed clouds that occasionally obscured the sun and sent patterns of shadow wandering the smooth hillsides.

He had never seen a meadow. He only knew the Word. Everything he saw was marvelous and new. He walked the Road, picking his way along the grass-chinked stones, listening to new birds, Lark and Linnet, marking their flight across an open sky.

Then, as his Road crossed between two hills, he saw a different land spread before him—a patchwork like the quilt on his own bed, in green and brown. Fields, he thought, and knew he had come indeed to something different, and a Place where Men lived.

He walked down to that land until it became browns and greens around him. His Road in places became a muddy track
lined with fences some stones of which were white, like the Road—so the men had stolen them to make their own stoneworks, and he hoped they had not removed all the Road ahead.

Men were working in the fields. They stopped, mopped their brows and stared at him from a distance, but they came no closer.

In time he came to a Village that lay some distance from the Road. But his Road did not lead him toward it, so he decided that this was not the Place he was looking for. The houses were squat, and the color of their stonework matched the thatch of their roofs. He saw people very distantly, and a track did lead that way, but he had come to grief once from leaving the Road, so he did not let curiosity or hunger lead him aside.

He walked until dusk, and found green Apples on a tree and had two, leaving the Road just to cross a fence. He supposed that no one would mind. He slept by the roadside, under the shelter of that rough stone wall, as much shelter of stone as he had yet found on the Road, and in the morning had another apple, and one to take with him. They made his stomach hurt, but it was a different kind of hurt than having nothing at all to eat, and they eased his thirst.

He found berry bushes, and had a handful of berries. He found a brook, and drank.

He passed other villages, which never sat near the Road, as the fences never blocked it. He met a man on the Road, once, the only man he had seen on the Road at all. “Good day,” he said, and that man dropped his load of sticks and climbed over the rubble wall and ran away rather than pass him, so he thought that he had been in his proper Place, but the man had not been in his, and the man had run for fear of consequences. He was sorry. He would have liked to ask questions. But at least the man had flung nothing at him, nor brandished a knife, and he walked as quickly as he could to be away from the village toward which the man had run.

But no one chased him and no one else appeared on the Road.

He passed another night beneath a berry hedge, and smelled woodfires on the wind, until the stars were turned in their courses. Remembering the man running and now smelling bread baking made him feel lonely and hungry, and reminded him that a few apples and a handful or two of berries was a very small sort of supper. The bread he had had from the men by the fire now seemed a very fine thing despite the grit, but it was long gone, and he hoped for more apples or more berries.

He walked in the morning, hungry and finding nothing at all to eat. His clothes, he had noticed, hung loosely on him, and despite his washing, showed increasing mud stains. He shaved every day. He had the razor and the little mirror, and when he found water to drink, as he did find frequently now, daily he would shave and wash and make himself presentable as Mauryl had taught him. But his face was going more hollow about the cheeks and more shadowed about the eyes, and he knew he looked more desperate and more untidy than he had begun.

On the third day since the Bridge, he came to a high place from which he saw the fields divided up in a great circle about a hill and a sprawl of walls and higher walls.

Fortress, he thought, and in his experience of strangers by now, he stood in some dread and doubt what he ought to do next.

But his Road, now a straggle of white stones, went inexorably toward it and, that being what Mauryl had said, as the Road was going, he gathered his courage and kept walking.

 

The narrow grass-grown track among the fields gave way to a broader path by afternoon, as he came down into the valley: a rough, earthen, common road, it became, running across others, between stone fences. On either hand were fields of sorts he had seen before: he knew Barley and Oats, which one could eat raw, though not pleasantly; he knew Orchards and Apples. He saw Sheep wandering white on the hillsides. He
saw the walls in the distance ahead of him, wider and greater than he had imagined, vanishing behind low hills and rising again as he walked.

He saw other men in the fields, and he was anxious when he had to pass them working near the Road. But they were an occurrence more and more common, as if here the Road was permitted to them, or as if they had no fear of strangers.

In time he met a man who slogged along the road under a load of baskets slung on a stick. The man was coming toward him, and for very little persuasion he would have fled the meeting himself, over the fences and across the fields; but as the man came slowly, head bowed, he thought how the Road was his Place, and Mauryl had said go on it. So come what might, he kept walking and waiting for the approaching man to do or say something.

The man, white-bearded as Mauryl, just trudged past, with a glance or two toward him that said the man at least wondered at him, or suspected bad behavior in him, but over all the man with the baskets seemed no threat to him and did nothing.

Further along, he saw a man working and digging in the ditch beside the Road. That man stopped his work and looked at him in some evident surprise, as if he had expected him to do something remarkable.

He made a little bow, as Mauryl had told him was polite, and the man held his Hat in his hand and gazed curiously at him as he passed.

Nearer the walls, much nearer, he saw a double gate in the wall and slowly, the most dazzling, the strangest Word he had yet seen before him, he thought of Town, and then of People and Streets, of Walls and Defense, and gates and bars such as Ynefel had had. He saw a cart come out of those gates, a cart pulled by an Ox and accompanied by two men. It was piled high with straw and great clay jars. Its wheels wobbled and groaned with a squeal of wood on wood as, inevitably, they met and passed. He stepped off the track to give them room, anxious, because one man had a stick which
he had no hesitation to use on the ox, for no fault that Tristen could see. He did not like that man and gave that man a straight, steady stare, wary and ready to move away if that man should strike at him.

But that man shied away from him instead, and the men went their way away from the town, as he went his, for his Road took him toward the gates—gates which still stood open, it seemed, to anyone who cared to come in or out, though Ynefel's doors and windows had been locked and barred for fear of Shadows.

Here there must not be such a danger, he said to himself; and though men seemed to look askance at him, no one harmed him or threatened him, perhaps being better-behaved men, of a sort Mauryl would approve. He walked, fearful but unchallenged, up to the stone gateway beneath the arch.

But there he saw that men with Spears—a dreadful Word—sat there talking with each other. Guards, he thought: Soldiers. Weapons and Armor, defenses and locks and protections. He was afraid of the guards, though they paid him no attention at all, seeming too busy in their conversation.

And he was not exactly deceiving them when he saw no reason to put himself in the notice of men busy at other matters, especially while he was obeying Mauryl's instruction. There being a cart with tall stacks of baskets stopped at the side of the gate, it was not exactly dishonest of him to duck behind it and walk past into the town without bothering anyone.

And there—were Streets, exactly as he anticipated them, but, oh, so different. He was confused for a moment, seeing no order in his choices, and settled on walking straight ahead, since it was the direction he had been going. Men stared at him, some very few, but most jostled him in their own urgent haste to be somewhere. He stared after one and the other, wondering whether he should be going there, too—but he saw nothing to attract him. Walking uphill, he entered on a place with narrowing daylight, where buildings increasingly overhung, where men spread out racks and jars on the side of
the street and made those trying to pass dodge around the obstacles they posed.

Then his street opened out into a small level courtyard, in which he saw a Well, and men—no, Women—gathered there with buckets and jars.

Of course, women, and Children—
Children
…racing about the well, chasing and being chased.

His pulse became leaden, with a sense of profound wrongness into which he had no wish at all to question further. But wonder he must—as children dashed across his path, cutting him off a moment from his intended course. Two began to skip along beside him, singing some song of Words he failed entirely to understand, except the children in particular seemed to see an oddness in him which their elders ignored or failed to notice, and they sang about his oddness.

He dared not speak to them. They were creatures dangerous to him. He knew it as he knew that water would drown him and height would break him. He was glad when they gave up their game and dropped out of sight behind him, and gladder still when they gave up following. He walked as his street led him after that, with Names and Words ringing in his head: Wagon, Market, Carter, Blacksmith, Forge, Pieman, Pork and Chandler, Tinker, Aleman, Weaver and Warp and Weft—Youth and Age; Blindness; and Beggar and Ragman. Madness tumbled all about him, a confusion of images, of expectations. He had not realized at a distance how complex a Place a town was, how many dwellings it held, all narrowly separated by Streets and Alleys, none of which might ever see full sunlight, so closely they crowded together—and it was now late in the day, with shadows falling all across the streets and creeping up eastern walls, advising him day was ending. He should find a Place soon, but the town went on unfolding to him like a vast cloth spreading out with images and Words all about—Carpenter and Stonemason, Cobbler and Tailor, Fruitseller and Clerk and—

“Thief!” someone yelled, and Tristen jumped back as a Boy, shoving at him, darted past his elbow with a man in pursuit.
“Thief!” others shouted, and gave chase down a winding lane.

He stood and stared. Thief, it certainly was. Thief. And Stealing. Theft. And Larceny. Like the mice. Like the birds at Ynefel, stealing blackberries. He picked up a dropped chain of Sausages, and an angry woman snatched it back.

But it was far more serious here. They Hanged thieves…

Even a Boy, a Child…so small, and so mysterious…

The woman stalked back to a Butcher's stall, where dead things hung, strange to see, and frightening. Men walked around him as he stared. A man with a cart maneuvered on the cobbles, to have room to pass by him, the man saying not a word, but he realized he had made himself an obstacle, and he began to walk, wiping greasy hands on each other, that being all he had, since Mauryl had said, and most emphatically, never on his shirt.

He was shaky on his feet, after all the uphill walking, and he had found nothing to eat today. He had been hungry so often and so long it had become a condition, not a complaint. But hunger became acute as he smelled bread baking, and saw the basket of bread a woman carried, and saw where others were obtaining it. He saw it as a supper ready to be had—but as he walked closer and watched the exchange of Coin for bread, he realized that he had no Coin to give, and no prospect of having one. The Beggar down the street looked for Coins. He held out his hand as the beggar did, but no one seemed willing to give them to him for the asking. They shied away and looked afraid, and that warned him of harm to come, so he was quick to leave that place, and to dodge away through the narrow lanes.

It was now well toward that hour the Shadows came, and, supperless and desperate, he saw stone abundant, stone of the streets, stone of the gates, stone of the inmost walls of the Place, stone up and up about the great pale stone keep which dominated everything—all of which advised him that here Mauryl's warning about being indoors might hold true; but he saw nowhere yet to shelter him, no more than he had found anyone responsible to give him supper.

His path had wound steadily uphill, into narrow places where buildings on either side of the streets projected closer and closer in their second stories, plaster and beams above the stone, until they overhung most of the space between—giving Shadows ample refuge at this hour, the more so at the narrowest points of the side streets which extended on either hand. Some lanes were so dark they daunted him. The pavings underfoot were muddy and dirty, as Mauryl would never have permitted, the mortar-courses in many places running with water. He saw a man heave a bucketful out the door of a building—carelessly: children passing by skipped not quite out of the way, and shook their fists at the man, yelling wicked Words in high, thin voices.

The man slammed the door in their faces. The children threw stones at the door. It was not a happy sight.