Fortress in the Eye of Time (6 page)

He wanted to answer. He wanted the breath and the wit to explain he hadn't 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 Mauryl's staff and Mauryl's 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 Mauryl's room, and Tristen took the next stairs. Beyond the outward rail, Mauryl's light drowned in the dark and failed, and Tristen kept descending as Mauryl's
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 Mauryl's hand chased the dark ahead of him, and in sudden dread of the dark in his own room, he let Mauryl's 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 didn't mean to make you angry,” Tristen said. “I heard the noise. I'm 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 Mauryl's 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. I've set defenses around us. You attracted attention, most surely, dangerous attention—as dangerous as opening a door.”

“Can't it get in the holes?” he asked. “The pigeons do.”

“It's not a pigeon. It can't, no. It has to be a door or a window.”

“Why?”

Mauryl shrugged. The candlelight seemed friendlier now. It glowed on Mauryl's silver hair and gave a warmer flush to his skin. “It must. There's 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. That's 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?”

“It's 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. I'll leave the candle.” Mauryl stood up, reached toward his face and brushed his eyelids shut with his fingertips. “Sleep.”

He couldn't open them. They were too heavy. He heard Mauryl leave, heard the door shut and heard the tap of Mauryl's 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 don't 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
.

H
e could see Mauryl in the silver reflection, standing behind his shoulder. Mauryl waited, expecting him to cut himself, Tristen was well certain—
believing
he would cut himself. Mauryl had warned him the blade was sharp and showed him how to hold it.

He might grow a beard, Mauryl said, except Mauryl said that beards were for priests and wizards, that he was neither, and that, besides, it would not suit him. So Mauryl had given him the very sharp blade, a whetstone and, the wonder of the occasion, a polished silver Mirror.

Of course, he thought. Of course, and knew that men could, after all, see their own faces. Mauryl had said magic was what wizards did, and the mirror was clearly a magical thing. Tristen made small grimaces at himself, sampled his expressions to see if they were what he thought, and most of all noticed his imperfections: for one, that his mouth sulked if he frowned, and for another that his eyes had no clear color—unlike Mauryl's, which were murky blue.

But the beard Mauryl had set him to remove was only a few patchy spots, and a shadow of a mustache—that was the itching, and he agreed with Mauryl about having it off, seeing it looked in no wise like Mauryl's, no more than his dark, unruly mop of hair looked like Mauryl's silver mane.

There were virtues to his face, all the same, he thought, in such silver-glazed essence as the mirror showed him. It was a regular face, and he could make it pleasant. His skin was smooth where Mauryl's was not. His mouth—the mustaches shaded Mauryl's—seemed more full, his nose was indeed straight where Mauryl's bent, his brows were dark as his hair, with which he was well acquainted, since it swung this side and that when he worked, and fell in his eyes when he read.

There were certainly worse faces among the images in the walls. Far worse. He supposed he should be glad. He supposed it was a good face.

He guided a last flick of the bronze knife.

“Mauryl, it stings.” There was a dark spot. He wiped it with his fingers and found blood.

“Now does it?”

He rubbed his chin a second time, feeling not the sting of the knife but the tingle of Mauryl's cures.

“No,” he said, and washed his fingers and the knife in the pan, and looked again. His face seemed too…unexpressive. His hair was always in his way: Mauryl's behaved; but if he had as much beard as Mauryl, with such dark hair, he would be all shadows.

And Mauryl was shining silver.

He was vaguely disappointed, not knowing why he should care…but he had made up a face for himself out of the shadow in the water barrel, and he found his real one both more vivid and less like Mauryl's.

Maybe he should cut the hair, too, at least the part that fell in his eyes. But he doubted where, or with what effect.

“A clean face,” Mauryl said. And as he offered the knife back, with the whetstone: “A proper face.—No, keep them. I have no need. And you will have, hereafter.”

Mauryl had stopped talking lately about going away. But since the day Mauryl had threatened that, and given him the Book, every time he heard a hint of change, every time Mauryl talked about not needing this and not caring about that, no matter how small or foolish a matter, he felt a coldness settle on his heart.

He tried. He did try to read the writing Mauryl had said was his answer and their mutual deliverance from danger. But he made no gains. He had no swift answers, the way Mauryl's writing came to him. It had been days and days with no understanding at all, beyond what few words he thought he read, and he began to doubt those.

Most of all, Mauryl seemed weary with no reason, simply
weary and wearier as the days slipped by. Mauryl's eyes showed it most, and often Mauryl turned away from an encounter as if he carried some besetting thought with him. There was no spirit, no liveliness. Mauryl seemed to lose his thoughts, and to wander away from him in indirection.

“I have no need,” Mauryl said, as if he had forgotten whether he had said that.

“Mauryl,” he said, stopping him in his course to the study table, “Mauryl, what have I done? Have I done something wrong?”

Mauryl regarded him for a moment as if he had thoughts far elsewhere, saying nothing. Then he seemed to reach some resolution, frowned, and said, “No, lad. No fault of yours.”

“Then what fault, master Mauryl?”

“A question,” Mauryl said. “A deep question.—Someday, perhaps sooner than I would wish, Tristen lad, you must make choices for yourself. You must go where you see to go. Do you hear? You should go where you see to go.”

It was by no means the answer he had looked for, none of this ‘sooner than I would wish,' and ‘go where you see to go.' It was not the way Mauryl had promised him.

“You said if I should read the Book, master Mauryl, you said you would stay.”

“Have you read the Book?” A sharp, fierce look of Mauryl's eyes transfixed him. “Have you?”

“No,” he had to say. “I know the letters. I see the shapes. But they don't go together, master Mauryl.”

“Then it's very doubtful you can prevent my going, isn't it?”

“What am I supposed to do, master Mauryl? Tell me what I need to find. Tell me what I need to learn!”

“Something will occur to you. You'll know.”

“Mauryl, please!”

“Over some things in our lives we have no governance, Tristen lad. Magic works by a certain luck and sometimes it fails by lack of that luck. What we individually deserve isn't as much as what we collectively merit. That's a profound
secret, which few understand. Most people believe they live alone. That's very wrong.”

“I don't understand. I don't understand, Mauryl. What people? Where are they?”

“They exist. Oh, there's a wide world out there, Tristen. There's a before and a now and a yet to come. All this matters. But in order to know how it matters, one has to know—one has to know more than I can teach you. Tristen lad, you have to find for yourself.”

“Where? Where shall I look? If I found it, would you not go away?”

“Oh, I doubt that, Tristen lad.” Mauryl seemed disheartened and made less and less sense to him. “I should never have feared your Summoning. It was my failing, when I Shaped you. Doubt, I swear to you, is a fool's best ally, and a wise man's worst. The work of decades, and I flinched. But mending, such as I might, I have done.—And if I go away, doubt not at all: take the Road that offers itself.”

“But it goes south,” he said. “You said never go on the south side.”

“How do you know that it goes south?”

“Does it not?” It was the only Road he knew, a Word and a guilty secret that had troubled him ever since he had stepped up where he knew in his heart of hearts he was not supposed to venture. It was a Word that from that very moment had smelled of dust and danger and sadness. It was the way he thought Mauryl might go, if Mauryl made good his threat to leave.

Now he saw he had betrayed himself. He had thought because Mauryl had said what he had said that Mauryl might, after all, have meant him to discover it—but clearly not so, by Mauryl's quick and thunderous frown.

“And where, young sir, have you known about this Road?”

“From the loft,” he said, shamefacedly. “—But I didn't go on the parapet. I looked through the hole the storm made.”

“And said nothing of it to me?”

“I—saw it only once, Mauryl. I never looked again.”

Mauryl still frowned, but not so angrily. “And what else have you seen from this vantage?”

“Water. Woods.—Stones.”

“Ruins. Ruins of long ago. What more?”

“Mountains.” That Word tumbled onto his heart, when he remembered the horizon above the forest.

“Hills. The
foothills
of Ilenéluin, which stretch far up to the Shadow Hills in the north. There are far greater mountains in the world.—What more have you found, in this escapade?”

“The sky. The clouds. Only that.”

For a moment Mauryl stood with his arms folded, still seeming angry. “Names are power over a thing, for a wizard or for a man. This fortress has a name: Ynefel. The forest is Marna. A river lies between the walls of Ynefel and Marna Wood and it winds beyond Marna Wood again: Lenúalim is the river. These are their names. Do you take all of that, Tristen?”

They were not names. They were each of them Words—Words that came to him with dark, and cold, and terror; with trees and branches and depth and cold. They were Words that carried the world wider than he could see, and full of threats he did not guess, and animals and birds and creatures far more terrible than Owl.

Ilenéluin: stone and storm and ice.

Lenúalim: secrets and division, and dreadful dark.

Ynefel:—

He wanted not to know. He saw the stones around him, that was all, a place of rickety stairs and balconies spiraling up a stone-walled height, stone faces staring at them, stone hands reaching and never escaping the walls.

“Some things happen against our wishes,” Mauryl said, “and some things we desired come in ways we would gladly refuse.” Mauryl laid his hand on his shoulder. Mauryl wanted his strict attention, and that frightened him more than all things else. “Tristen, there will come a day. Soon. You have all I could give you, all I could mend afterward. Beware of trust, boy, but most of all beware of doubt. Both are deadly to us.”

It was a stifling fear Mauryl laid on him. “I try to understand what you tell me, Mauryl. I do try.”

“Go to your studies. Go find your Book. It's upstairs, is it not?”

“Yes. But—” He became convinced of secrets, of some deception Mauryl played at his expense. He knew his questions wearied Mauryl and his mistakes vexed Mauryl, and his slowness was Mauryl's despair. “Can you not help me a little, Mauryl, only a little? Show me just a word or two. Other things come to me without my even trying. This—that I most want to learn—I make no sense of it. It will not come.”

“It will. In its own time, it will. Magic is like that.” Mauryl's fingers squeezed his arm. “Be clever. Be no fool, boy. Tristen. Go.”

He was disheartened at that. He took his gifts from Mauryl, the little mirror, the razor and the stone to sharpen it, he bowed politely, and went toward the stairs.

A sound rattled off the walls—a strangely muffled thunder that made him glance away to the study wall. Thunder, he thought. Rain would make the loft untenable. He would have to come downstairs to study, then, and perhaps, after all, Mauryl would take pity and give him at least a hint.

He laid his hand on the banister. And it was not thunder that made the banister tremble. He looked up in alarm as that rumbling came again.

“Go,” Mauryl said.

“There's a sound, Mauryl. What is it?”

“Go upstairs.”

“But—” He had almost protested it came from upstairs. But it came then from all about, and it rattled and thundered like nothing he had ever heard. Mauryl left him and stood staring toward the farther hall—it seemed to be coming from there, at the moment. It shook at the doors they never opened, never unbarred. It hammered. The thunder echoed through the stones.

“Mauryl!”

“Upstairs!” Mauryl slammed a heavy codex shut, and dust
flew out in a cloud. “These are no threat to me. A petty nuisance. A triviality.—Get upstairs, I say!”

The hammering had become a steady, regular thumping. The huge book had overset the inkpot as Mauryl shut it, and a trail of ink ran over the table, snaked among the parchments, and dripped on the floor as Tristen wavered between saving the parchments and obeying Mauryl—but then Mauryl shouted at him a Word without a sound to his ears, and a stifling fear came over him, a fear that left him no thought but to do what Mauryl had told him, while the hammering and banging racketed through the lower hall and shook the walls and the wooden steps.

He ran up the stairs faster than he had ever climbed. He reached his own balcony and ran for his own room—flung open the door and shut it again, trembling as he leaned against it, thinking then, by Mauryl's mastery of things, to have safety. But the hammering downstairs seemed to shake the wooden floor under his feet. The room felt dank and precarious—it smothered, it held him prisoner.

No safety, no hiding place, something said to him, and he felt a sense of peril so imminent he felt he had to have the door open again or suffocate. Mauryl had said no. Mauryl had said be
here
, but the thundering in the stone walls seemed to come from right below his window. He saw a crack run up the wall. To his horror he saw it advance rapidly along the mason-work and right up to the wooden frame of the horn-paned window itself—then around the latched side of the frame. The latch parted, the gap grown too wide, and white daylight came through.

He hardly knew what he was thinking, then, in that stifling terror, except of the Book, Mauryl's Book, that Mauryl had said was what he had to know, and he had to have—he snatched it from the table and thrust it into his shirt and grasped the door latch.

But after that nothing could stay the panic. He fled the room, sped down the balcony as the wooden supports quaked to the hammering at the doors—up, Mauryl had said,
go upstairs, and his room was not safe. He ran the stairs that spiraled up and up past Mauryl's balcony, as the whole structure of the balconies creaked and groaned—he raced up into the high, mad reach of braces and timbers, and the narrow, low-ceilinged stairs that led into the shadow of the loft.

He could scarcely get his breath. He went to the boarded division of the loft, seeking a place sheltered from the holes and gaps in the shingles, a hidden place, a stable place. He clambered out under the eaves, guarding his head from the rafters, an arm braced against the dust-silked wood. Cobwebs, the work of determined spiders, tangled across his face and hair; he brushed them away, while all about him the fortress resounded to the hammering and the air tingled and rumbled.