He thought not, in Mauryl’s current displeasure.
“I cannot begin,” Mauryl said slowly, “cannot begin to foresee the things you invent to do. From waking to sleeping, from one moment to the next, boy, what will you do next?”
“I don’t know, Mauryl. I haven’t thought of that.”
“Can you not think of consequences, Tristen?”
“I try,” he said faintly. “I tried, master Mauryl, I did try to think.”
“You great—”—fool, he thought Mauryl was about to say. But Mauryl shook his head, and hugged his arms about himself, cold, too, Tristen decided. Mauryl on his own, without the necessity of bringing him inside, didn’t want to be cold, or dripping wet. So Mauryl hadn’t noticed the wonder of the rain or seen the veils blow along the walls. Perhaps if he explained…
“The rain made curtains,” he said. “The air smelled different.
I went up to feel it.”
“And the lightning could strike you Dead. Dead, do you hear?”
“Dead,” he said. Sometimes Mauryl spoke Words he could hear and meanings came to him. This one did, with a shock of cold: Dead was a dark room with no candle, no floor, no wall, no ceiling. It drank his warmth, and wrapped him in, and took his breath. He couldn’t get another. Then he found himself sitting on the floor across the room, and the fire crackling with more than usual sound in the hearth next to him. He saw the light on the stones and it proved he could see, it proved there was warmth.
He had blinked and he was here by the fireside, and 18
Mauryl was squatting in front of him, touching his face with a hand worn as smooth as the stones and the dusty boards, a hand as gentle as Mauryl’s hand could be, sometimes, for reasons as strange as Mauryl’s angers.
“Boy,” Mauryl said, as if he were sleeping in his bed and Mauryl were telling him to wake up. “Tristen.” Mauryl touched his cheek, traced the line of it, brushed his wet hair back behind his shoulder. The stone under him was warm from the fire. He didn’t know why he was sitting there, but it seemed Mauryl had again said a Word, one of the soundless ones.
He had been standing in the rain, watching the lightnings flash. Mauryl had said lightning could strike him dead, but Mauryl had said a Word and sent him to that dark place. Then another Word had brought him back here to the fireside.
Nothing so remote as lightning would have harmed him. It was Mauryl—only Mauryl he had to fear.
And to obey, not to make Mauryl angry again.
Thunder cracked, and he jumped, overwhelmed afterward with a shiver, hugging his knees against him until Mauryl pried one hand loose, clenched it in his, and wished him to stand up; but he was shivering too much of a sudden to straighten his legs. Thunder boomed out again above the towers and shocked the breath out of him, but Mauryl kept pulling at him until he found the strength at least to get his knee under him.
Then, clumsily, helping Mauryl, too, he could gain his feet and unwind himself out of the tangle of his cloak. But it was Mauryl who found him a place to go, taking him as far as the bench beside the fire and making him sit down, when he had no such wit left in him. Mauryl sat down by him and took his hand in his lap, clenched it tight, tight, while somewhere in the heights above them something suddenly banged.
He looked up, heart pounding in his chest.
“Only a shutter loose,” Mauryl said, holding his hand. “Only the wind blowing it. Foolish boy, look at me.” Mauryl caught his shoulders and, when a further crash distracted him, took his face between his hands, compelling his attention.
19
He shivered, teeth all but chattering, while the wind banged and hammered to get inside the towers, but Mauryl’s eyes claimed his, Mauryl’s whisper was more present than the thunder.
“Listen, boy. Listen to me. It’s an empty wind. It’s only rain.
There are hazards in the storm, and you run such dreadful risks, boy, but not all in the storm. Be afraid of the dark. When the sky shadows, always be under stone, and always have the shutters closed, and the doors well shut. Have I not said this before?”
His teeth did chatter. “I took off my clothes,” he said, deciding perhaps he had done that matter right. “I’m sorry yours got wet.
I’m sorry you had to come into the rain.”
He wasn’t right. He hadn’t understood. Mauryl’s look said so.
“You were Naked,” Mauryl said, and that Word came to him, and he felt Mauryl’s keen disappointment in his mistakes.
The wind hammered and banged at the tower. The whole world was angry and dark, and confounded by him, who blundered clumsily from mistake to foolishness and back again to everything that made Mauryl angry with him. He wished again that Mauryl would hit him and be done. He didn’t want more such Words, just the quick sting of Mauryl’s hand, after which Mauryl would say he was sorry and talk to him in his softer voice again. Mauryl’s blows were like the tingle in his skin when Mauryl made the tea taste sweet and he was holding the cup. Mauryl’s blows stung, and tingled, and afterward, brought him that quiet certainty Mauryl could give him, of all things made right with the world.
But now Mauryl would not let him look away. Mauryl frightened him and made him look him straight in the eyes a long, long time.
“You know Words,” Mauryl said, then. He didn’t want Mauryl to know that. He was afraid of the Words. They came out of nowhere, and struck him in the heart, and made it hard to get his breath. He didn’t know the Words Mauryl had.
20
Mauryl took them out of somewhere and said them and they were real, some making things sweet, some taking away pain.
Some struck him with understanding, and fear, or shame.
“Tristen. You know that you were naked.”
“Yes, master Mauryl.” He knew now he was wrong to be naked out of doors. He didn’t know why. It was wrong to ruin his clothes. But he shouldn’t have been outside without them.
Mauryl had worn his. He thought he understood the bits and pieces of Mauryl’s anger. It was, after all, about ruined clothes.
He had been mistaken.
“You know there was danger.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you know you were in danger?”
“No, master Mauryl. And I’m sorry you got wet.”
Mauryl shook at him. So it still wasn’t the right answer.
“Boy. Tristen. Forget the cursed clothes. It’s not the point.
Fecklessness is the point. Putting yourself in danger is the point, boy. You’re safe in here, inside. Whenever you’re outside, you’re not completely safe. Be careful. Watch your feet. Watch your head, don’t forget what I’ve told you, and don’t forget to think.
Gods, every move, every breath, every foolish butterfly on the wind does not deserve your rapt attention!”
He remembered the butterfly. It was how he’d skinned his elbow on the stairs outside. He remembered everything, even the sting, and the tingle of Mauryl’s fingers on his skin, and the way the sun lay on the stones when they were dry.
“Boy.” Mauryl’s fingers popped against his cheek, lightly, startling him into seeing Mauryl again. Mauryl’s eyes were black-centered. Mauryl’s face was grim and bitterly unhappy. “I won’t be here forever, boy. You can’t look to me for all the answers, or to tell you what to do.”
“Why?” That was very unsettling to hear. It frightened him.
“Where will you be?”
“I won’t be here, boy. And you had better know what to do.”
“I don’t know what to do!” He was trying to be straightforward with Mauryl, as Mauryl demanded. But he was 21
beginning to be scared, now. “How long will you be gone, sir?
Where will you go?” He did not conceive a place outside this place. He couldn’t think of one.
“Things end, boy. People go away.”
“No.” He caught at Mauryl’s hands. “Don’t go away, Mauryl.”
He had never thought before that there was anywhere to go, or any o
ther place to look down from, at the woods, or up from, at the sun and the clouds. But there must, then, be other places.
“I’ll go, too.”
“Not by my choice,” Mauryl said. “Not now. And if you’re good, if you think hard, if you study—maybe I won’t have to go at all. I could be wrong. I might stay after all. If you’re very, very good. If you study.”
“I will study.” He snatched at Mauryl’s hands. “I will. I’ll try not to make mistakes.”
“Do you know, boy, that your mistakes could open the keep to the Shadows, that you could leave a door unlatched, that you could be outside enjoying the breeze and the rain, and do something so utterly foolish by your inattention to the hour, that they could get you while you’re outside,—and then what could I do, can you say? I had to come out in the rain just now to get you, foolish lad, and what if it were something worse than rain, what if it only looked good and felt good to touch, and what if it only felt good for the moment, boy, eh? What if it opened the doors and opened the windows and left you nowhere to run, then what would you do? Can you answer me that?”
“I don’t know, Mauryl!”
Mauryl freed his own hands and captured his instead. “Well, you’d do well to figure it out before you do something so foolish, wouldn’t you, boy?”
“I want to! I want to, Mauryl!”
“Wanting to won’t be enough. Trying won’t be enough. After it’s got you is far too late. Before is the only time you own, lad, the only before you can trust is now, and you don’t even know how long before is, do you, foolish boy?”
“No.” He thought that Mauryl was telling him his answer, 22
maybe the very means to assure that he would never go away, but he could by no desperate reach of his wits comprehend what Mauryl was saying. “I don’t know, Mauryl. I want to know, but I’m a fool. I don’t understand anything!”
Mauryl bumped his chin with his finger, and made him look up.
“Then until you do understand, pay very close attention to doors and windows. Don’t do stupid things on the parapets.
Don’t risk your safety. Don’t go out in storms, don’t let the sun sneak behind the walls when you’re not paying attention.”
“I won’t, Mauryl!”
“Go practice your letters while the storm lasts. Read and write.
These are useful things.” Mauryl stood up and rummaged among parchments on the table, sending several off onto the dusty floor, along with a tin plate and a dirty spoon. Tristen dived down and rescued them, and put them up on the table again; but three and four more hit the floor immediately after, and Mauryl caught his sleeve, compelling his attention to a small codex Mauryl had pulled from among the parchments. Mauryl pressed it into his hands and folded his fingers over the aged leather.
“Here is the answer, boy. Here is your answer to all your questions. Here is the way. Learn it. Study it. Become wise.”
Tristen opened the book to its center. Its pages were thick with copywork, a bold and heavy hand that was not at all like the writing on the parchments Mauryl trampled underfoot, not written in the delicate, rapid letters Mauryl used.
Someone else copied this, Tristen thought, and although that
‘someone else’ was not the thunderstroke of a Word, it was a thought he had never framed in his mind, a thought that there could be someone else, or anyone else, now, or ever.
But there had been. There were, in the same way there were, Mauryl hinted, other places. There must be other someones.
There must be, in those other places, as naturally as there must be a sun over those places and a wind to rattle their shutters, someone like Mauryl and someone like himself.
23
There was more than one dove, was there not, that lived in the loft?
There was more than one mouse in the lower hall. There were at least six, that Mauryl called sneaking little thieves, and yet put out bits of bread for them, because Mauryl said they were old, too, and moving more slowly now than they had.
So things had greater numbers than one, and mice grew old, and doves flew out over the woods Mauryl said to fear—and yet came back safe to their roosts in the loft, which had no shutters to bolt. There were many, many of them.
And someone other than Mauryl had written the copywork in this book, using straight, black letters that crossed the page in rigid dark masses, when Mauryl’s flowed like the tracks of mice across the dust.
“Boy!”
He had walked straight ahead, thinking of the precious book in his hand, not the stairs before him. He had forgotten, first of lessons, the single step down. He caught himself, at Mauryl’s voice, and made the little step safely, feeling shame burn in his face as he looked back.
Mauryl shook his head, out of patience with a fool.
So, shamefaced, he took his little book down to the table where the wall sconces were. He took the waxed straw from the holder and carried fire from the watch-candle, which was his task to renew every night and every morning, and lit the three candles.
Candles don’t come like dewdrops, Mauryl had said, when once he left the drafty kitchen door open and the watch-candle had burned out. Mauryl had been out of sorts and had him light his straw instead off the embers in the hearth, which ate up half the straw at once, Mauryl grumbling all the while about fools leaving doors unlatched, and saying candles were hard come by, and they should be burning knots of straw by winter if his husbandry was so profligate.
Winter was a Word, howling white and bitter cold. Straw was a little one, yellow and dusty and hot. Dewdrops he 24
knew from spiderwebs on the shutters, and the old keep had many spiders.
But where did candles come from, that they were at once so scarce, and yet vanished every handful of days for new ones to fill their holders?
They were like the little book, written in another hand, evidence of something outside, and of things more than one. Once he began chasing that thought, it seemed clear to him that candles came from somewhere.
And where then did their clothes come from, when Mauryl said, Mauryl had said it just this morning, that it was one thing to conjure something to do what it would do anyway, and one thing to make things seem better than they were, and quite another, Mauryl had said disgustedly, to conjure a new shirt, which had to come of a good many herb bundles, and which he’d torn on a splinter in the loft.
Mauryl had taught him how to patch it, and made him do it many times until he made it right.
Mauryl gave him such an important thing as this book, on which Mauryl said everything rested, and he thought only about shirts and candles, his thoughts skittering about as they always did, chasing down so many, many steps and stairs of his imaginings, into all the rooms that were there, that only had other doors behind the ones he knew. He tried not to go wit-wandering. He tried not to think of questions.
He sat down at the study table, in the old chair that was most comfortable, except for Mauryl’s. He opened the book and smoothed flat the stiff pages. His own copywork, scattered all around him, was wearing the parchments down by layers in attempts at such orderly rows as this: he copied Mauryl’s mouse-track writing and his fingers found ways to ink not only the parchment but himself, the quills, and other parchments. His quills threw ink into small spots he never suspected existed until he put his hand on them. He could write Tristen and keep it straight. But line after line, this marched straight and true, in masterful strokes of writing so heavy and dark it drew the eye straight to it and did not let it go.
25
This was wonderful in itself. Writing held Words, and one never knew when one might encounter such a powerful thing: writing like this was to fear, and hold carefully, and puzzle over, because some shapes were like Mauryl’s writing and many had tails and straight, strong lines where Mauryl’s had twists; and more had shapes he could not quite tell apart, or where one letter stopped and another began.
Certainly it was not Mauryl’s writing.
Someone else’s.
Someone—of strong and straight strokes, lacking those whips and tails he’d thought were part of the letters, which he’d copied in his shaky attempts that turned the quill in wrong directions and spattered ink, or left a bead of ink that took sometimes a day to dry.
Another wizard? he asked himself. Mauryl said he was a wizard, and he, Tristen, was a boy, and that being a wizard, Mauryl knew what a boy needed to know.
Had he never heard what Mauryl had said? Not, The wizard; but, A wizard. Of course there was more than one of everything.
Mauryl had always implied so. Mauryl had never told him there was only one.
Mauryl had said there were dangers and they came from outside. As the shadows did. And there was more than one of them.
There were many more things in the world than one of each.
Mauryl spoke of this book as if it were a Word, filled with more and greater meanings than other books. This book was, Mauryl said, the source of what he needed. The Book itself might come from elsewhere and tell him what those other things were.
Mauryl had said he need not go away if he could find the answers in this Book.
But try as he would to hook the letters together into words, puzzling out the strange ones, and trying them as this letter and that—he found not one word in it he could read.
The pigeons held the floor of the loft, and the doves held the highest rafters, up by the roof, in nooks the pigeons couldn’t fit, living on different levels of the loft and filling it with their 26
soft voices. The loft was a wonderful, dusty place. Shingles covered part of it. Slates covered one wing. Thatch covered some of the holes, but the birds that stole the blackberries stole the straw for nests, which they tucked into inaccessible nooks along the other rafters, and squabbled and flapped their wings along the dusty boards when they both wanted the same place.
All the birds of whatever sort had learned that he brought crumbs. So had a furtive few mice, which dared the owl—oh, the owl!—that held sway in the west end of the loft. But an inside wall divided the two, and the owl, which ruled the sunset side alone and grumpy, seemed not to hunt among the mice and the pigeons on this side, although, Mauryl said, owls ate mice.
Fortress in the Eye of Time Page 3
