Fortress in the Eye of Time (15 page)

“What is true, then?”

“Mauryl said to follow the Road.”

“And?”

“Nothing more, sir. Only to follow the Road. I thought—”

“Go on, Tristen with no name. You thought—”

“Thought, since the Road came here, through the gate, that this must be the place he meant me to be.”

Mauryl's student. Possibly. The young man could dice his reasons quite, quite finely, point by point, and say what he chose to say. A common villager did not do that. It came of courtly records. Priestly teaching.

And a prince could parse reasons down the list—I, thou, he, whence, why, and to what end—quite, quite well on his own.

“And for what purpose, Tristen of no name, did Mauryl Gestaurien send you—ah!—
bid
you to take to the Road?”

“He never told me that.”

“Did he say—go left or go right?”

“No, sir. It only—seemed—as the gate showed me.”

“And Mauryl is not well, at the moment.”

“No, sir.”

“In what way is he not well?”

“He—” Clearly they had reached an abrupt precipice of reason. Or a brutal wall of understanding. “I—saw his face above the door. In the wall, my lord. Like—like the other faces.”

From an improper ‘sir' to a presumptuous ‘my lord.' And on such a chilling declaration. There was consternation at various points about the hall. He hoped there was none from him—he tried at least to maintain calm. The matter of the faces was well-rumored, the work of the last Galasieni—or the succession of Mauryls all hight Gestaurien: accounts varied, none of which he had taken as truth, and he would not be daunted, not by the claim, not by the innocence in the voice.

“Like the other faces. Most remarkable. Or not, in that venue. Do casual strangers inhabit the walls? Or only outworn wizards?”

“I—have no idea, sir.”

“Are you a wizard yourself?”

“No, sir.”

“What are you, then? Beggar, servant,—priest of unwholesome gods?”

“No, sir.” The gray gaze was frightened, now, as if this Tristen were well aware of mockery and yet had no means to discern wherein he was mocked.

“Come,” Cefwyn said, “even the score, sir wayfarer. Ask a question of me.”

“Are you the master of this place?”

“Yes,” he said, as plainly as the youth asked, and ignoring the ducking of heads and hiding of expressions all about the hall, stood fast in this assault of the wizardous and incredible. “I am. Cefwyn. Prince of Ylesuin, for that matter, but, yes, master of this hall, this town, this province.—And if I give you welcome, you are indeed welcome, Tristen late from Ynefel.—Mauryl indisposed. Immured. This is astounding, even momentous news. Is there perchance more you should tell me?”

“I fear,” the youth said faintly, “I fear that Mauryl is lost. I think he would come back if he could. But he's in the wall.”

“What of the rest of Mauryl's books?” Emuin asked. Like a pebble in a still pond, that deftly-dropped wizardly concupiscence. Emuin was likewise refusing to be daunted. And the young man's eyes were at once wary and alarmed.

“I suppose inside, sir. Everything was falling. I sat on the step outside. I feared to go back inside. When it grew dark—I went to the Road.”

“I wager you did wisely,” Cefwyn said, keeping his voice quite sincere. “Mauryl was our neighbor for many years, vastly preceding my tenure here. Or my father's or my grandfather's, for that matter. He kept his own borders and stayed out of mine. One can hardly ask for more in a neighbor of long standing.—Idrys, perhaps instead of the blue room, which is doubtless musty—is the gray hall in good order for a guest?”

He himself doubted that was the case, but it signaled to Idrys the quality of hospitality he meant. “Cedrig's chamber,” Idrys suggested, “is far airier, Highness.”

Meaning to Idrys' knowledge it was clean, unoccupied,—and might have advantages as far as the guard being able to keep a close eye on things, being upstairs and at the end of a cul de sac hallway. That would far better satisfy Idrys' concerns—which were certainly not to ignore.

“See to it,” Cefwyn said lightly and, keenly aware Emuin wished the young man disposed otherwise, and that Emuin wished his own hands on the book, held out the book to their guest. The guards—simple men but no dullards—let him go then, and the young man set an intemperate foot on the second and the third step. Cefwyn held the offered book so he must ascend to claim it, not leaning forward to give it. It was a trap, and even as the youth laid hand to the book, Cefwyn did not let the book go, wishing the young man face to face and in privy conference with him.

“Did Gestaurien teach you his arts?” he asked in a low voice, not for other ears. He looked at close range at the prisoner, at the reality of grimed skin and tangled hair and those eyes that had no barriers in them. “The truth, Tristen from Ynefel, as you wish my hospitality. Are you a wizard?”

“No, sir.”

“And what is in this book?”

“He said I should read it. I make some sense of the letters, but I don't know the words.—Can
you
read it, sir?”

Trapper became trapped—in an earnestness, an expectation he had never met in anyone.

“A few words.” He by no means could do even that. “Surely Emuin knows more.—Perhaps he would teach you—if you asked.”

“I hope so, sir.”

“What did Emuin say to you regarding it?”

“He said I shouldn't answer the guards' questions any longer. He said I should come with him, and he would see you took care of me.”

“
Did
he?” He cast a look toward Emuin, standing, hands folded in his sleeves and looking like the fabled cat in the creamery. “And why would I take care of you?”

“I suppose because you're master here, sir.”

“If he said so, why, of course it must bind me, must it not, master Emuin?—Believe him, young traveler. Like Idrys, there, do you see? Idrys is a very grim fellow—a very dangerous fellow. But if he likes you well, and if I say so, nothing will ever come close to you in this hall that would harm you, do you follow me?”

Tristen looked briefly askance at Idrys, and seemed not in the least reassured. “Yes, sir.”

“I promise you.” He let go the book into Tristen's keeping, locked his hands across his lap. “Idrys, take our guest upstairs.—Aman, thank you, and thank your captain for the astuteness at last to call Emuin. Good night, gods attend, back to your posts, all.—And, Emuin,…”

Emuin was, ghostlike, halfway past the door he had not ordered opened. Emuin stopped still, and ebbed silently back into the audience chamber while Idrys took their guest and the guards away out the selfsame door and out of his immediate concern.

“I take it,” Cefwyn said as the door was shutting again, leaving himself and Emuin alone, “you do read somewhat of the book in question.”

“I say we should go riding tomorrow.”

Not to discuss within walls, Emuin meant.

“Not a word tonight, old master?”

“Not on this.”

“A caution?”

Emuin walked from the door to the dais and stopped, arms folded. “In specific? You are in danger.”

“From
him
?” He sprawled backward, legs apart, the calculated image of his student, sullen self. “Master Emuin, surely you jest.”

“I swore, no more students. I'll not have you acting the part. Gods, you affront me!”

“I affront you, good sir.
Whence
this midnight call, with no counsel, and now my decisions affront you? Now we have dire secrets? I am not fond of being led.” He thumped one booted ankle onto the other. “I am not fond of being hastened into conclusions, nor of having advice presented me on the trembling,
crumbling
verge of decision, nor of being a pawn of others' ambitions, which—” An uplifted finger, forestalling objection. “—of course the Teranthine Brotherhood does not possibly have, nor you within the brotherhood, nor Idrys toward me, nor, gods know, the captain of the night-guard, whatsoever, toward anyone. So I confess myself entirely nonplussed, master Emuin.
Why
the book, why the secrecy, why this midnight alarum out of the hearing of my more slugabed courtiers?”

“Ah, is that why you were so prodigal of your hospitality? To confound me?—I had rather thought it a glamor on the young man.”

It stung, that Emuin had seen that moment for what it was.

It warned him that others might have seen him bemazed.

And it made him ask himself what he had felt—still felt, when he thought about it: an affinity of the soul for an utter stranger, a young man linked, moreover, to a wizard of dubious repute and legendary antiquity. For a moment in that audience he had felt as though some misstep might take their visitor away from him, and felt as though, if he should by that chance let him go, forever after he would know he had lost the one friend his fate meant him to have.

Which was foolishness. Men were, among the chattels of which the Prince of Ylesuin had usage, the most fickle and the most replaceable. Let Emuin fall utterly from favor, as sometimes, hourly, seemed imminent, and two-score applicants would rise out of the hedges by sundown seeking Emuin's office and bearing their prince's humors far more philosophically.

So he told himself—hourly. But Emuin knew him, Emuin had no fear of him, and that, while a sin in a councillor (Emuin had been that in the court at Guelemara), was a virtue
in his privy counselor and a necessity in a tutor—which Emuin still was, when m'lord Prince needed a severe lesson read.

His fortunes
bound
to some wizard-foundling-apprentice with feckless trust writ all over his features?

“I've no
need
of him,” he protested to Emuin.

“Said I
ever
you had need of him?”

“I have
need
of advice, master grayfrock, from your ascetic and lofty height, doubtless superior to fornicating mortals. What
is
this creature, why at
my
doorstep, why in the middle of
my
night, why bearing grammaries of unreadable ill, and why in the name of the unnameable in
my
tenure in Amefel? He could have gone to the Elwynim. He could well have gone to the Elwynim. He may
be
Elwynim, for what we know—and needs must come to my gates begging supper? Damn the luck, sir tutor, if luck has anything to do with it!”

“There is no violence in him,” Emuin said. “Peace, Cefwyn. I do not yet know the cipher he is, but it would be well to treat him gently. I do much doubt he is the witless creature your men believe.
Ynefel
, he cried out, and
Mauryl
. And your guard in an access of wit roused their captain, who, after a candle's time lodging this boy in the prison's stench and squalor, became uneasy, roused the magistrate of the hour, and so quite rapidly they came to the staff, and to Idrys, who broke my sleep, and I, after much shorter interrogation, yours. But in all this time, save a disagreement with the gate-guards, no defense did he use, neither by hand nor by word.”

“What is he?”

“My suspicion?”

“I will take your chanciest and rarest guess at this point.”

“Mauryl's Shaping.”

Shaping was a word that belonged to dark ruins and forests…not arriving in a man's own downstairs hall, not standing at his feet, looking at him eye to eye.

But it did accord, he thought with a shiver, with a face without the lines that twenty-odd years of living should have
set into muscle and mouth. It could become anything—as it had varied quickly between apprehensive, or bewildered—but nothing stayed there.
That
was the innocence that attracted him.

And chilled his blood now.

“A revenant.”

“So the accounts say: the dead
are
the source of souls.”

He rested his chin against his hand, feeling an unstoppable roused-from-bed chill, a quivering of his skin, as if—he knew not what he felt. It was not a terrible face. It was not a cruel face. It had been—childlike, that was his lasting impression.

“Are such things evil, master grayrobe?”

“Not in themselves.”

“Why?” His arm came down hard on the arm of the throne. He was disturbed, not alone for the realm, and for the guest under his roof; he was—personally disturbed that the visitor had that much moved him.

More than moved him. He would not sleep tonight. He knew he would not sleep easy for days after meeting that intimate stare—and hearing what Emuin claimed.

“Why?” Emuin echoed his question. “Why would Mauryl call such a thing? Or why would it come here?”

“Why both? Why either? Why to Mauryl Gestaurien and his mouse-ridden hall? What did the old man want, living there as he did, when the Elwynim would have received him? What does this thing want here? And why did you let me give it hospitality?”

“I gave you my guess, lord Prince. Not my certainty.”

“A plague on your guesses, Emuin! This is, or this is not—a man. Is it a man—or not?”

“And I say that if I knew all about that matter that Mauryl Gestaurien might know, I should be a very dangerous man myself. I merely caution. I by no means know.”

“And counseled me take him in, allow him that cursed book, set him upstairs from my own apartments—”

“At least,” said Emuin, “if he takes wing and flies about the halls you should have earliest warning.”

There was no abating it. There was no more Emuin knew for certain, or, at least, no more that Emuin was willing to say. It was time for sober, direct questions.

“What do you advise?” he asked Emuin. “All recriminations aside, what do you advise me do, since you were so forward to bring him to me?”