Fortress in the Eye of Time

Again.

His feet were numb with cold. He bent his toes in his boots, deciding he deserved to be cold, and maybe he could have fallen off the wall, but he did look where he was putting his feet, he truly did. Or he was quick enough to stop himself. He remembered slipping. He stood very respectfully in the archway, awaiting invitation to approach the fire, wondering if he should tell Mauryl how he’d saved himself.

He thought not, in Mauryl’s current displeasure.

“I ca

“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 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.

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. 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 ski

“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 begi