Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  He was happy when he went to bed, happy because Mauryl was happy with him—he thought that as Mauryl gave him his bedtime cup and sat by him on the edge of his bed, saying how—but he was very sleepy—he was becoming strong, and clever, and he had to study hard to be not just clever, but wise.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Do you practice every day with the Book?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, feeling his wits gone to wool. “I read every word I can.”

  Mauryl smoothed his hair. Mauryl’s hand was smooth and cooler than his forehead.

  “Good lad,” Mauryl said.

  It was the most perfect day he remembered, despite the storm that threatened them, late, with lightning and thunder.

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  But Mauryl seemed sad as he lingered, sitting there, and that sadness was the only trouble in the world.

  Then Mauryl said, “If only you could read more, lad, if only you could do more than read words.”

  He didn’t know what more Mauryl wanted him to do than he had done. He felt suddenly desperate, but Mauryl rose from the edge of the bed as sleep was coming down on him thick and soft and dark, and Mauryl shut the door.

  He heard the wind rattling at the shutters. He heard Mauryl’s steps creak and tap up the stairs.

  Trying wasn’t enough, he thought as sleep came tumbling over him. Nothing but doing more than he was asked could ever satisfy Mauryl at all.

  It had been a fierce storm, he knew that by the puddle under the kitchen door in the morning.

  And when, after breakfast and morning chores, he went up to the loft with his Book and a napkin of crumbs—he opened the door and saw shafts of sunlight where no sunlight had been before. It was bright and beautiful. Pigeons and doves and sparrows were flying in and out of the openings.

  But he saw the sodden straw and knew the storm had blown rain through the sheltered places. The little birds were all fledged and flying, but it had been a hard night for the nests.

  And, worse, a glance toward the other wall showed a board down between the pigeon loft and Owl’s domain.

  That would not do, Mauryl would say. That would simply not do. He feared what might already have happened, and if it had not happened yet, because of the storm raging, it would happen tonight.

  He could come and go safely with Owl. The board was not on this side of the dividing wall, it had fallen on the other, so he tucked his Book into his shirt for safekeeping, unlatched the door and came through into the huge barren loft that was Owl’s alone.

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  There was a hole in the roof, a rib of the roof was down, and slates lay broken on the loft floor. Owl’s den had become drafty and lighter, which he thought would not at all please Owl.

  Owl sat puffed and sullen on his perch.

  He picked up the fallen board. The pegs were still in their holes, and a little effort put it where it belonged and set the pegs back in their sockets, though not so far as they should sink. He took up a roof slate and pounded with it, and finally pounded the pegs with his fist on a piece of the slate, after it had broken, and the board settled where it had been.

  Owl had ruffled up at the clatter and the thumping. Owl refused to look at him, perhaps because he had liked the hole into the pigeon loft.

  But there was nothing to do for the hole in the roof, which Tristen found far beyond his skill. He went and looked out, and found the hole a new window, on a side of the keep he had never seen, a view of forest that went on and on, and, as he stepped closer, a view of a parapet of the keep he had never seen.

  He wondered how one reached it.

  He stepped up on the fallen beam, worked higher, with his arm on the roof slates, and from that vantage, with his head and shoulders out the hole in the roof, he saw a gate in the wall that ringed the keep, looking down on it from above. He saw a dark band of water lapping at the very walls of the fortress and, spanning that, a series of arches. From those arches outward into the woods that lined the far shore, he saw an aged stonework which vanished in among the trees.

  He was astonished and troubled. He could imagine the course of the stonework thereafter. He saw a trace of a line among the treetops, where trees preserved just a little more space than elsewhere through the forest.

  A Bridge and a Road, he thought, in the breathless way of Words arriving out of nowhere. A Road suggested going out, and then—

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  Then it came to him that if Mauryl went away then the Road was the way Mauryl would go, through the gate and over that dark water and through the woods.

  He felt the Book weighing against him as he climbed down, reminder of a task on which Mauryl had hung so very, very much, and in which he had so far failed. But the Road was out there waiting to call Mauryl away and the Book could prevent Mauryl going, so he held it secret that he had seen the Road, as he feared that he had, by accident, seen something Mauryl had never told him, and which, perhaps, Mauryl would tell him only if he could not solve the matter Mauryl set him to do.

  It was not in his power to patch the hole the wind had made.

  He put up a few boards, but for the most part the holes were out of reach. He had at least, for the pigeons, patched the one that would have let their Shadow in, and the pigeons and the doves as well as Owl would have to bear with the rain when it came.

  He said nothing of the hole in the roof when he came down from the loft. He thought Mauryl might be angry that he had seen the Road, and it would make Mauryl talk of going away again: that was what he feared. He studied very hard. He thought that he read Mauryl’s name in the Book, and came and asked him if that was so.

  Mauryl said he would not be surprised. And that was all. So when he had studied the codex so long his eyes swam, he read the easy writings that Mauryl had made, and he copied them.

  Some things, however, came much easier than others.

  “Sometimes,” Tristen said, one evening, brushing the soft-stiff feather of the quill between his lips, while his elbows kept his much-scraped study parchment flat on the table, “sometimes I know how to do things you never taught me. How is that, Mauryl?”

  Mauryl looked up from his own work, at least to the lifting of a shaggy brow, the pause of the quill tip above the inkpot.

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  The pen dipped, then, wrote a word or two. “What things?”

  Mauryl asked him.

  “How to write letters. How to read.”

  “I suppose some things come and some things don’t.”

  “Come where, Mauryl?”

  “Into your head, where else? The moon? The postern tower?”

  “But other things, too, Mauryl. I don’t know that I know Words. I see something or I touch something, and I know what it is or what to do with it. And sometimes it happens with things I see every day, over and over, only suddenly I know the Word, or I know how words fit together that I never understood before, or I know there’s more to a thing. And some of them scare me.”

  “What scares you?”

  “I don’t know. Only I’m not certain I have all the parts. I try to read the Book, Mauryl, and the letters are there, but the words…I don’t know any of the words.”

  “Magic is like that. Maybe there’s a glamor on the Book.

  Maybe there’s one over your eyes. Such things happen.”

  “What’s magic?”

  “It’s what wizards do.”

  “Do you sometimes know Words that way, by touching them?”

  “I’m very old. I find very little I don’t know, now.”

  “Will I be old?”

  “Perhaps.” Mauryl dipped the pen again. “If you’re good. If you study.”

  “Will I be old like you?”

  “Plague on your questions.”

  “Will I be old, Mauryl?”

  “I’m a wizard,” Mauryl snapped, “not a fortune-teller.”

  “What’s a—”

  “Plague, I say!” Mauryl frowned and jerked another parchment over the first, discarded that
one and lifted the corner to look at the one below, and the one below that. He pulled out one from the depths of the pile.

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  “Mauryl, I don’t ever want you to go away.”

  “I gave you the Book. What does the Book say?”

  He was ashamed. And had nothing to say.

  “The answer is there, boy.”

  “I can’t read the words!”

  “So you have a lot to do, don’t you? I’d get busy.”

  Tristen rested his chin against his arm, rubbed it, because it itched, and it felt strange under his fingers.

  “Mauryl, can you read the Book?”

  “You have no patience for your studies today, is that it? You worry at this, you worry at that—how am I to finish this?”

  “Are you copying?”

  “Ciphering. Gods, go outside, you’ve made me blot the answer. Enjoy the air. Give me peace. But mind—” Mauryl added sharply as he sprang up and his chair scraped the stone. He stayed quite still. “Mind you stay to the north walk, and when the shadows fall all the way across the courtyard—”

  “I come inside. I always do.—Mauryl.—Why the north walk?

  Why never the south?”

  “Because I say so.” Mauryl waved a dismissive hand. “Go, go, and leave an old man to his figures.”

  “What figures? What do you—”

  “Go, gods have mercy, take yourself and your questions to the pigeons. They have better answers.”

  “The pigeons?”

  “Ask them, I say. They’re patient. I’m not, young gadfly. Buzz elsewhere.”

  Another wave of the fingers. Tristen knew he would gain nothing more, then, and started away.

  But he remembered his copywork and put it safely on the shelf, far from Mauryl’s flood of parchments, which drowned the table in cipherings, with the orrery weighting the middlemost pile.

  He hastened up the stairs, then, rubbing at the ink stains on his fingers, searching for wet spots that might find their way to his clothing or, unnoticed, to his chin, which still 42

  itched. He supposed he could ask Mauryl to make it stop, but Mauryl was busy, and besides, Mauryl’s work felt stranger than the itch, which went away of its own accord when he was busy.

  — Mauryl, said the Wind, and rattled at the tower shutters, rattle, bang, and thump-thump-thump.

  Mauryl hardly glanced at the sealed shutters this time. It had been a shorter respite than he expected, and a far more surly Wind. There was no laughter about it now at all.

  — Gestaurien, let me in. Let me in now. We can reason

  about this foolishness of yours.

  It was worried, then. Mauryl drank it in and, still sitting, reached for his staff, where it leaned against the wall.

  — You know you can ruin yourself. This is entirely un-

  called-for, entirely unnecessary.

  It tried another window. But that was simply habit, Mauryl thought, and thought nothing else, resisted nothing, like grass in a gale.

  — He’s asleep, the Wind murmured through the crack in the shutter nearest. I passed up and down his window. Do you

  truly think there’s any hope for you in this young fool? He

  knows nothing. I’ve drunk from his dreams, I have, Mauryl.

  You wish me to believe him formidable? I think not. I do

  think not. Not deep, not deep waters at all, this boy. He’s

  all so innocent.

  — Sweet innocence, Mauryl said. But out of your reach.

  Long out of your reach, poor dead shadow. Poor shattered

  soul.

  — You’ve given me a weapon, you know. That’s all he is.

  A shutter went bump-bump, and Mauryl looked up sharply, feeling the ward loosen, seeing the latch jump. If you had had

  the stomach to join me, Gestaurien, we might have raised

  the Sihhë kings to power they never dreamed of. The new

  lords would never have risen, and you and I would not be

  haggling over this rotting fortress.

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  It was more self-possessed than before, more reasoning. That was not good.

  — Mauryl Gestaurien? Are you worried?

  — No. Simply not hurried. Patience I have in abundance.

  I shan’t enumerate your failings, or tell you what they are.

  Let them be mysteries to you, like the counsel that I gave.

  — Your mystery went walking on the wall. I saw him

  there. Such a little push it would take, if I wanted to.

  — If you had a body, isn’t that the pity, Hasufin? You’d

  do this, you’d do that. You’re a breath of air, a meandering

  malaise, a flatulence. Go bother some priest.

  — What was his name, Gestaurien?

  The spell-flinging startled him and disturbed his heart, but he turned it with a thump of his staff, rose and thumped the staff against the shutter. Go away, thou breath of wind. Go, go,

  even the pigeons are weary of you.

  Softly the wind blew now, prowling, trying this and that window, for a long time.

  Far longer than on any night previous.

  And the stars…the stars were moving toward ominous congruency.

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  C H A P T E R 4

  A fter a dry spell, the rain built in the north and rolled up in a great, towering fortress of cloud, flickering in its belly with lightnings. Tristen saw it from the wall, and knew immediately that it was a dark and dangerous kind of storm, no sun-and-puddles shower.

  He said as much to Mauryl, who said, gruffly, So stay indoors,—and went back to his scribing and ciphering. Mauryl had been scraping parchments all morning in preparation for whatever was so urgent, and had just scraped part of one he wanted by accident. Mauryl was not in his best humor on that account, and Tristen walked softly about his chores in the hall.

  By evening the storm was crashing and thumping its way across the forest. Tristen made their supper as Mauryl had taught him, managed not to burn the barley cakes, and set a platter of them and a cup of ale at Mauryl’s elbow in hopes of pleasing Mauryl; but Mauryl only muttered at him and waved his fingers, which meant go away, he was busy.

  So Tristen had a supper of barley cakes and honey by himself, beside the fire, and since Mauryl evidenced no attention to him whatever, he left the pots for morning, when the rain barrel would certainly be full.

  He decided nothing would happen in the evening. Then, Mauryl being so occupied he never had touched his supper, he took a candle, went up the stairs, lighting the night candles at each landing, so if Mauryl did come upstairs to his chamber, weary as he was apt to be, he should not have to deal with a dark stairway: that was Tristen’s thought, and probably Mauryl would complain about the early extravagance of candles, but Mauryl would complain more if he failed to light them.

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  And he was bound for bed early, which gave him no chance at all of doing something to annoy Mauryl, when Mauryl was in such a mood.

  So he opened the door to his room, lit the watch-candle on his bedside, sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off his boots and his shirt, disposing the latter on the pegs behind the door and laying the Book which he carried on the table beside his bed.

  The double candlelight leapt and jumped with the draft from under the door; Mauryl had said that was why the fire moved.

  It gave him two overlapped shadows and made them waver about the stonework. The floor creaked—it always did that when the wind blew strongly from the north. He had observed that mystery—Mauryl had called him quite clever—on his own.

  And while he was undressing, he heard the rain begin to spatter the horn window, as the thunder came rumbling.

  He stepped out of his breeches, and was turning down the covers when a great crack of thunder sent him diving into the safety of his bed and drawing up the covers about his ears, in the protection of the cool sheets. A second clap of thunder sounded right over his room as he shiver
ed, letting his body make a comfortable warm spot.

  The candles both still burned, the watch-candle and the one that sat always at his bedside. Beside them sat the cup that he was to drink—Mauryl made it for him every evening. But when he had blown out the candle he had brought, and by the light of the fat, dim watch-candle reached out an arm and picked up the cup to drink it—he found it empty.

  Well, so, Mauryl had been preoccupied. Mauryl was very busy and bothered whenever he was at his ciphering, which involved lines and circles and a great many numbers that made no sense at all to his eyes. He wondered if he should take the cup down to Mauryl and ask him how to make it himself, since there had never been a night he had not had it, but he supposed that one night would not make all that great a difference. It was a comfortable thing, and Mauryl said he

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  was supposed to drink it all, every night, but he was supposed to have breakfast every day, too, and there had certainly been mornings when Mauryl had quite forgotten, before he had learned to make it for himself.

  So he gave a sigh and decided it was like the breakfasts, and that if Mauryl did chance to remember it, and if it were important enough, Mauryl would wake him and have him drink it. He lay back, abandoned and forgotten, and listened to the beating of the rain against the horn window.

  But just then he saw lightnings making patterns in the rough horn panes, droplets crawling and racing across the fractured yellow surface, and he realized that the shutters that had turned up shut and latched every evening in his room—as the cup had always been waiting—were not shut. He had not seen it: the light from the candles had blinded him to anything so far as the end of his bed. The lightnings showed it plainly now that he was down only to the watch-candle.

  And he knew that he ought to get up in the chill air and fold the shutters across the window and latch them tight, but the thunder frightened him, and the rain did, and the unguarded window did. He was safe in bed. He had always thought that if he stayed abed the thunder could not reach him and the Shadows had to stay away…but he knew better now: he was certain he should get up and shutter that window, and do it now…