Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  That seemed cruel.

  But the owl would take nothing that he brought and was a sullen and retiring bird, solitary on his side. He wanted not, evidently, to be disturbed, and glared with angry yellow eyes at a boy’s offerings, and let them lie. Mauryl said he slept by day and hunted by night, and he was probably angry, Tristen thought, at being waked.

  The owl flew out among the shadows at night and came back safely to sleep in the loft. But that not one bird and not one mouse crossed into Owl’s side, and that all the boards were bare of nests or straw, might tell a boy finally that Owl wanted no company.

  It might tell a boy that Owl was, if not content, not a bird like the other birds, but rather a mover among the Shadows, and possibly a bird other birds feared. Perhaps, Tristen thought, Owl was their Shadow, and the reason they flew home at twilight to stay until the sunrise. Perhaps there was a Shadow that hunted wizards, and one that hunted boys, and one that wanted mice and birds, and he’d stumbled on its daytime sleeping place—he supposed that, like Owl, Shadows had to have them. But if Owl was one of the dreadful things, he thought he should be glad Owl only flared his wings and glared at him.

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  Perhaps up in the rafters were other Shadows asleep, and if he waked them, they’d pounce on him. But there were rules for Shadows, as he could guess, that by day they had to sleep, and if one forbore to rouse them, then they forbore to wake.

  So he went no more to Owl’s side. He told Mauryl that he thought the Shadows might sleep in the loft: Mauryl said the Shadows slept in all sorts of places, but certainly he should be out of the loft well before the sun set, and he should be careful up there, Mauryl said, because the boards were rotten with age, and he might fall straight through and break his neck.

  Mauryl was always thinking of disasters. That was what wizards did, Tristen thought, and boys had to learn to read, so he took his Book there and sat in the sunlight.

  The mice grew tame, and the birds (besides Owl) liked the bread he offered, and fluttered and fought for it quite rudely (at least the sparrows), while the pigeons (better-mannered, Mauryl would say) puffed their chests and ducked and dodged about.

  The sparrows were full of tricks. But the pigeons’ gray chests shone with green rainbows in the sun, and they learned to come close to him, and sit on his legs in the warm sunlight, and take bread from his fingers. The doves tried the same, but were far more timid, and the sparrows hung back and squabbled, thieves, Mauryl called them. Silly birds.

  But the pigeons grew rather too bold in a very few days, and would land on his head, or fight over room on his shoulders, and he discovered there were disadvantages to birds. Mauryl said then that they were taking advantage of him, which was what creatures did if one gave and asked nothing—like some boys, Mauryl said. So perhaps he could learn to be thoughtful and to think ahead, which birds didn’t do, which was why they had birds’ wits, and not the wisdom of wicked Owl.

  Be stern with them, Mauryl advised him. Bid them mind their manners.

  So he became like Mauryl with them, well, most times. He shrugged them off his shoulders; he swept them off his knees.

  He tolerated one or two polite and careful ones and, he 28

  discovered, once the bread ran out, most were far less interested in his company. So he grew wiser about birds.

  He said to Mauryl that the mice were more polite. But Mauryl said the mice were only smaller, and afraid of him because he might step on them by accident. Mauryl said that if they had the chance they might be rude, too, which was the difference between mice and boys; boys could learn to be polite because they should be polite, but mice were polite only because they were scared, and might be dangerous if they were as big as boys, being inherently thieves.

  That saying made him unhappy. He lay on his stomach on the floor and tried to coax the mice out to him, but they were afraid of him and came only so far as they ever had. So he thought that Mauryl was right and that they expected harm of him, when he had never done any. He wondered why that was, and thought that Mauryl might be right about their character.

  He read his Book in the intervals of these matters, or at least he studied it. He grew angry sometimes that he could understand nothing of it. Sometimes he found little words that he thought he knew. Sometimes he made notes to himself in the dust with his fingers.

  And the silly pigeons came and walked on them, so they never lasted long.

  Pigeons had no respect for writing, nor for boys. They feared him not even when he swept them off. They thought of him, he began to think, not as a boy, but like the other pigeons, flapping their wings to secure a place. And his wing-flapping, like theirs, did nothing but overbalance a pigeon. It never drove one away for good, not so long as there was the chance of more bread crumbs.

  — Mauryl, the Wind breathed.

  Mauryl stopped, seized up his staff and sprang up from the table in his tower room, parchments and codices tumbling in all directions.

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  Laughter came from the empty air, more clearly than its wont.

  — You are weaker tonight, said the Wind. Mauryl, let me

  in.

  He banged his staff on the wooden floor, tapped the gold-shod heel of it against the sealed shutters. The seal remained firm.

  — Mauryl, the Wind said again. Mauryl Gestaurien. I saw

  him today. I did.

  He scorned to answer. To answer at all opened barriers. He leaned on his staff, eyes shut, remaking his inner defenses, while the sweat beaded cold on his forehead.

  — Once it was no trouble at all for you to keep me out.

  It must have been the Shaping that weakened you, Gestauri-

  en. Do you think?—And was he worth the cost?

  — You cannot read him, Mauryl thought, not meaning that to be his answer, but the Wind heard, all the same. He clenched the next thought tightly in his defenses, wove it firmly and strongly inside, armored as his own memory. The sense of presence faded for a moment.

  — Come, let me in. The voice came from another direction, rich and soft and chilling. You are failing, Gestaurien. Harder

  and harder now for you to shut me out.—And what is he

  to do for you, this flesh-clothed Shaping of yours?

  Dangerous to answer. Think nothing, do nothing.

  — Ah, Gestaurien, Kingsbane,—What do you call him?

  Tristen, he thought, and wished in vain not to have made that slip.

  Laughter circled the tower room, rattling one shutter after another. Tristen, Tristen, Tristen. Is he a peril to me, Gestauri-

  en? This puling innocent? I think not.

  — Begone, wretch!

  Shutters rattled, one after another. The wind chuckled, howled, roared, and stirred the shadows in the corners.

  — Ah, secrets. The Wind sniggered, a mild rattling at a window latch. Perhaps the great, the awesome secret is that

  you failed. So great a magic. So ambitious. And all so

  useless.

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  — Begone, I say!

  The shadows flowed back. The wind fell suddenly. The shutters were quiet. It had ventured too arrogantly, too soon.

  Mauryl sank into his chair, bowed his head against trembling hands.

  And then upon a dreadful thought—

  —leapt to his feet, seized his staff in one hand, the candlestick in the other, tottering with the weakness in his knees. With his staff he ventured onto the creaking balconies, by flickering, precarious light that left the depths all dark.

  He took the stairs much too fast for a lame old man and came down, aching and short of breath, feeling about him constantly with his magic, as far as the next balcony, and to Tristen’s sealed door. He opened it and leaned against the door frame, breathless.

  The boy was safely asleep, his breathing gentle and undisturbed. He could have heard nothing. The shutters of this room had never rattled, never attracted the wind.

  With a shaking hand he set the candle down on the small
table, next to the watch-candle, a candle pungent, like the one he carried from above, with rowan and rue, rosemary and golden-seal.

  He tipped the cup on Tristen’s bedside and found it empty, delayed to draw the coverlet over Tristen’s bare arm.

  Tristen stirred, a mere breath. The boyish face was always cold and severe in sleep, so stern, for such young features. But—

  There was the shadow of beard on the smooth skin. When, he wondered, had that begun—in only so little time? Just tonight?

  The magic was still Summoning, still working in him.

  Still—Summoning, that was the unexpected thing.

  Mauryl dipped into the boy’s dreams, precautionary on this night of strange intrusions. He found them nothing more violent than the memory of rain, circles in puddles, scudding clouds above the trees.

  He took his candle again, softly closed the door as he left, renewed the seal with a Word.

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  The wind sighed about the towers, but it seemed a natural wind, now, and he climbed the creaking stairs back to his tower study, while the candlelight and candle smoke chased the shadows into momentary retreat, beneath and below and around and around the wooden stairs and balconies of the keep.

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  C H A P T E R 3

  O nce a thought began it might go anywhere and everywhere. Tristen despaired of better mastery of himself. His thoughts were not like Mauryl’s thoughts, all orderly, hewing to one purpose. His leapt, jumped, flitted, wandered about so many idle matters, like the pigeons above hunting for dropped crumbs, pecking here, pecking there, in complete disorder. He found complete distraction in a candle flame or a butterfly, or, just after he skinned his elbow, the thought that elbows were very inconvenient to look at, and that there were parts of him he couldn’t see, like his face, which was a curious way to arrange things.

  It happened on that pesky step, and a fall right onto the stones of the lower floor with, fortunately, nothing in his hands. He gathered himself up, sitting on the stones, trying to look at his elbow, and finding red on his fingers. It hurt a great deal. He got up and went to Mauryl, fearing some permanent damage, but, no, Mauryl said, it was only a little Wound, and Mauryl told him to watch where he put his feet, and worked that tingling cure and put a salve on it. Wound was a Word, a scary one, that occupied his thoughts with dreadful images of red and ruin, and made him sick at his stomach, and made him remember how his elbow hurt.

  But—he learned, too, that the skittering of one’s thoughts could be a useful thing, to take one’s mind off trouble—he still couldn’t see his elbow.

  So he went back to Mauryl, who was in the yard cutting herbs, and asked him if he could see his elbow.

  “Not likely,” Mauryl said. “Nor wished to, lately.”

  He began to walk away, rubbing his chin. Then he thought how, lately, he’d felt his chin grown rough, and it itched, and he couldn’t see that, either.

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  “Mauryl, can you see your face?”

  “No more than my elbow,” Mauryl said curtly. The air smelled strongly of bruised herbs. “Stupid question, of course not.”

  He went away, noticing, not for the first time, but for the first time that he had ever wondered about it, all the stone faces set in the walls: some large, some small, grimacing visages that had sometimes frightened him on uneasy nights, when Mauryl was angry for some reason and when he sought his room alone; or when the wind was up and creaking in the roofs and the loft, and he was alone, lighting the sconces on the landings. The faces seemed to change with the candlelight when he walked past them, but Mauryl had said they were only stone, and harmless to him.

  Some of them had pointed teeth and pointed ears. He had felt his teeth with his tongue and his ears with his fingers, so he was certain enough boys looked nothing like the images of that sort. Some of the stone faces had beards, and looked like Mauryl.

  Some were smooth-faced. Some looked more afraid than angry.

  Mauryl’s face went through such changes of expression, and such changes portended important things to him—but the changing statues, Mauryl assured him, portended nothing.

  He had been aware, too, in this growing curiosity about faces, that his hair was dark, where Mauryl’s was silver, that Mauryl had a long beard and his face was, until lately, smoother than the statue’s stone; that Mauryl’s hands were wrinkled and his were not—his hands looked more like the stone hands that in places reached from the wall, not the clawed ones, but the hands with fingers. He was aware, now that he thought about it, that his face must be changing in some way, and different than Mauryl’s in more than the beard.

  He was thinking about such things when, the next day, he leaned over the rain barrel out by the scullery and saw just a shadow of a boy, hardly more than a shadow, but not, surely, a wicked and dangerous Shadow, as Owl was to the birds.

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  The shadow was his, true, but he could see in it no reason for his face to be rough or whether it was a good face or a frightening face. He thought that the sun was wrong, and his hair was shading the water, so he moved, and held his hair back at the nape of his neck—but it hardly helped. It was a dark barrel and the sun did little to light it.

  But it did seem, looking critically, that his nose was straighter, and his skin was smoother, and his brows were thinner than Mauryl’s. It was like and not like the stone faces. He made faces at the water-shadow. The shadow changed a little, where light reached past his shoulder.

  The kitchen door opened. Mauryl looked out. He looked up.

  “What are you doing?” Mauryl asked.

  “Looking at my face,” he said, which sounded strange.

  “Looking at the shadow of my face,” he said, instead.

  “Clever lad.” But Mauryl’s voice was not pleased. “Do you see all this wood?”

  He looked in the direction Mauryl looked, at the large jumbled pile of timbers that had always stood by the door.

  “Being such a clever lad,” Mauryl said, “do you see this axe?”

  The axe stood by the door inside. Mauryl came out with it in his hand. He thought Mauryl would cut wood, as Mauryl did now and again: Mauryl had always said the axe was too dangerous. Mauryl found it hard to work without his staff, but he would lean on it and pull out the smallest pieces and chop them into kindling.

  So he stood and watched as Mauryl set one small piece of wood over the bigger one he used for a supporting piece and set to work, leaning on his staff with one hand, chopping with the other.

  “You see,” Mauryl said, “first to this side and then to that side.”

  Chips flew. He liked to watch. The wood that came out of the gray beams was lighter, and the newest chips were always bright among those that littered the area around about. Mauryl made faces when he worked. The small piece became two pieces. “Do you see?”

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  “Yes, master Mauryl.”

  “You try a bigger one, if you’re such a strong young man, with so much time to spare.”

  He took a fair-sized one. He set it where Mauryl said; he took the axe in his hand. Mauryl showed him how to hold it in both hands, where to set his feet, and showed him how to be careful where the axe swung. His heart was beating faster with the mere notion that Mauryl trusted him with Mauryl’s own work. The axe handle he held was smooth and warm from Mauryl’s hands.

  When he lifted it and when he swung very slowly at Mauryl’s order, he felt the weight of it as something trying to weigh down on him.

  “Very good,” Mauryl said. “Now, always minding where you put your feet and mind the path of the axe, swing it faster this time and aim true. Never chase the wood. If the wood moves, stop and put it back. Never, ever chase it with the axe. That way you keep your feet out of the way of the blade. It will take your foot otherwise. Do you hear me, Tristen?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, certain that was good advice. Mauryl stepped back and let him try in earnest.

  It was far, far easier with the axe moving freely. He
struck two strokes, to this side and to that side, and then Mauryl nodded, so he kept swinging, one pair of strokes after another, until the axe seemed to fly like a bird and he tugged it back, faster and better aimed with every stroke.

  Mauryl watched him cut his piece through. Then Mauryl nodded approval and said, “Stack it against the wall. And fill the kitchen pan with water when you come inside. And wash before you come in.”

  Mauryl went inside again, and he pulled the rest of the beam along the supporting piece and set to work, making the whole courtyard ring to the strokes, because he liked to hear them. The feeling of the axe swinging had become almost like a Word, strength running through him with his breaths and with the strokes. The chips flew wide and stuck to his clothing. He chose bigger pieces, which were no trouble at all for him to lift, and none for him to chop, having two sound feet,

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  both hands to use, and the knowledge in his heart that he was going to please Mauryl by doing far more than Mauryl expected, far faster than Mauryl imagined.

  He chopped only thick pieces, after that. He grew completely out of breath. The sweat ran down his face and sides, but he sat and let the breeze cool him, then attacked the pile again, until it made a taller stack than he had imagined he could make.

  By then, though, it was toward time to be making supper. He washed the dust and the sweat off him; he washed his shirt, too, hung it out to dry, and flung the wash water away from the kitchen door as Mauryl had told him he should.

  Then he filled the kitchen pan, and he ran upstairs to get his other shirt in time to run down again and help Mauryl stir up their supper.

  It was the first time he had ever, ever, ever done so many things right in succession. Mauryl came out into the courtyard while the cakes were baking in the oven Mauryl’s small kindling had fed, and truly seemed pleased with his huge stack of very thick wood. Mauryl had him carry a stack of both big and little pieces inside before supper, and after supper he took the dishes and washed them, and came back to sit at the fire and read until Mauryl sent him up to bed.