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That was because the fortress was old; Mauryl had said so when he had come to Mauryl afraid. Old, well-settled timbers creaked with the changes in weather, and the mice came and went as they pleased in the walls. Owl flew out on better nights.
But he tried not to think of Owl, or Owl’s fierce eyes glaring at him.
Again came that deep wooden groaning, which made him think the wind must be blowing from some direction it never had before. He lay shivering beneath his covers, warm enough, wondering why he was afraid, wishing that he dared jump out of bed very quickly and fling the shutter closed, but he imagined something at the window at just that moment, and himself standing too close ...
He could run out onto the balcony and go looking for Mauryl, but he saw no light under his door, beside his bed. Light always showed far across the floor if the wall sconce on the balcony outside was still lit. It was dark outside his room, and he had no idea whether Mauryl was upstairs abed or down at the table.
The very walls groaned, and the groaning became a bellow that shocked the air.
“Mauryl!” he cried, and flung the covers off and bolted for the door, naked as he was, with that bellowing going up and down the hollow core of the keep. He flung the door open onto dark.
No light shone up from the great hall below: the heart of the keep was dark all the way to the depths and the nook of Mauryl’s study, where lights burned latest. The candles were all out, even the watch-candles at the turnings of the stairs, and that bellowing echoed up from the depths and down from the rafters. He felt his way in panic along the wooden balcony, his hands following the cold stone of the wall, and he reached the turn where three faces were set together. He felt their open mouths and their pointed stone teeth, and groped out into utter blackness for the railing that should come before the steps.
His foot found the edge of the steps instead: he seized the railing for balance. The stairs went both up above and down to the depths from there, and he trusted nothing below. The safe place had to be Mauryl’s room—if it was dark below, then Mauryl could not be there. Mauryl had gone to bed upstairs. Mauryl would tell him it was nothing, just a sound.
Mauryl would call him foolish boy and calm his heart and tell him that nothing could get inside.
He ran stumbling up the steps, felt his way around and around the railing with the whole keep echoing and bellowing about him as if every mouth in every face in the walls had found a tongue at once.
His head topped the steps and he could see, by the light under Mauryl’s door, the floor of the balcony above his. He climbed the last steps, he ran to that door, seized the handle and pulled—but it was barred from inside, and the bellowing hurt his ears, drowned his heart, smothered his breath.
“Mauryl!” he cried, and beat on Mauryl’s door with his clenched fist.
The dark was all around him, and he felt the balcony creak and shake as if something else were walking on it, something shut out, too, in the dark outside Mauryl’s room. That thing was coming toward him. “Mauryl!”
Something banged, inside, something shattered, steps crossed the floor in haste and the bolt crashed back. The door swung abruptly inward, then, and Mauryl stood, a shadow against the bright golden light that shone through the wild silver of his hair, the cloth of his robe.
The place was all parchments and vessels, charts and bottles on the unmade bed, the smell of ale and old linen and sulfur so thick it took the breath. The groaning was around them, deep and terrible, and Mauryl waved his arm in a fit of rage, shouted a Word- The sudden silence was stifling, leaving his pulse hammering in his ears—his heart pounding. “You fool!” Mauryl shouted at him, and in utter fright he tried to leave, but Mauryl snatched at his arm and wanted him inside, where he was afraid to go.
Then somehow between the two of them the night table went bump and scrape and toppled over as Mauryl’s hand left his arm, as pottery crashed, as parchments slid heavily out the door. “Come back here!” Mauryl raged after him.
He fled in terror for the stairs, stumbled against the upward steps before he knew where he was, landed on his hands and knees on the steps and heard the furious taps of Mauryl’s staff as Mauryl hastened down the balcony after him.
“Fool!” Mauryl shouted, and he clambered up the steps half on hands and knees before he even thought that it was the way to the loft.
“Tristen!” he heard Mauryl shout. He gained his feet and ran up and up the turns of the stairs, up the last rickety steps to the last precarious balcony and the highest secrecies of the fortress, dark steps that were always dark—except the light under the door.
It was lightning-lit, now; but the loft was his refuge, his place, full of creatures he knew. He fled to the door and burst into the wide space.
Lightning lit his way, gray flashes through the broken planks and missing slates and shingles. Wind howled and wailed through the gaps, rain blew into his face from the missing boards, and rain fell down his neck as he felt his way among the rafters. All around him was the flutter of disturbed pigeons and doves.
The door he had left open blew shut with a bang, making him jump.
But he reached the nook he most used, soaked and exposed as it was, and he dared catch his breath there, thinking Mauryl would never, ever chase him this far. His flight would not please Mauryl at all. But in a while Mauryl would be less angry.
So he sat in the dark at the angle of the roof, with his heart thumping and his side hurting. The birds could fly away from danger. If they stayed and settled, surely it was safe. The loft was a safe place, there was nothing to fear.., and they were settling again. Lightning showed him rafters and huddled, feathery lumps, the blink of an astonished pigeon eye and the gray sheen of wings.
Thunder bumped, more distantly than a moment ago. The stifling feeling, like the sound, now was gone. His heart began to settle. His breathing, so harsh he could hardly hear the rain, quieted so that he was aware of the patter of rain on the slates just above his head, then the drip of a leak into straw, and the quiet rustling of wings, the pigeons jostling each other for dry perches.
A door shut, downstairs, echoing.
Then the stairs creaked, not the dreadful groaning and bellowing of before, but a sound almost as dreadful: the noise of Mauryl walking, the measured tap of Mauryl’s staff coming closer, step-tap, step-tap, step-tap.
Dim light showed in the seam above the door: Mauryl carrying a candle, Tristen thought on a shaky breath, as he listened to that tapping and the creaking of the steps. The door opened, admitting a glare of light, and the wind fluttered the candle in Mauryl’s hand, sending a fearsomely large shadow up among the rafters above his head.
Tristen clenched his arms about himself and wedged himself tightly into the corner, seeing that shadow, seeing that light. Mauryl was in the loft, now. His shadow filled the rafters and the pigeons made a second flutter of shadowy wings, a second disarrangement, a sudden, mass consideration of flight.
But he—had no way out.
“Tristen.”
Mauryl’s voice was still angry, and Tristen held his breath. Thunder complained faint and far. Slowly Mauryl’s self appeared out of the play of shadows among the rafters, the candle he carried making his face strange and hostile, his shadow looming up among the rafters, disturbing the pigeons and setting them to darting frantically among the beams. The commotion of shadows tangled overhead and made something dreadful.
“Tristen, come out of there. I know you’re there. I see you.”
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.