“Go on,” Mauryl said grimly when they reached the balcony of Mauryl’s room, and Tristen took the next stairs. Beyond the outward rail, Mauryl’s light drowned in the dark and failed, and Tristen kept descending as Mauryl’s step-tap, step-tap, pursued him down and around and onto his own balcony.
It pursued him likewise toward his own open and abandoned door, as the light in Mauryl’s hand chased the dark ahead of him, and in sudden dread of the dark in his own room, he let Mauryl’s light overtake him.
“The candle blew out,” he said.
“To bed,” Mauryl said with the same unforgiving grimness, and Tristen got in under the cold bedclothes, shivering, glad when Mauryl, leaning his staff against the door, used his candle to light the remaining candle at his bedside, the watch-candle having burned down to a guttered stub.
“I didn’t mean to make you angry,” Tristen said. “! heard the noise.
I’m sorry.”
Mauryl picked up the cup from beside the candle and wiped the inside with his finger, frowning, not seeming so angry, now. Tristen waited, wondering if Mauryl would go away, or scold him, or what. The bedclothes were cold against his skin. He hoped for a more kindly judgment, at least a fairer one, by the look on Mauryl’s face.
“My fault,” Mauryl said. “My fault, not yours.” Mauryl tugged the quilts up over his bare shoulder. So, Tristen thought, Mauryl had forgiven him for whatever he had done by leaving his room. He wished he understood. Words that came to him with such strange clarity—but the danger tonight, and why Mauryl was angry—it seemed never the important things that came easily and quickly, only the trivial ones.
Then Mauryl sat down on the side of his bed, leaned a hand on the quilts the other side of his knee, the way Mauryl had sometimes talked to him at bedtime, a recollection of comfortable times, of his first clays with Mauryl. “You put us both in danger,” Mauryl said, and patted his knee so that the sting of the words was diminished. “It was foolish of you to run. You startled me. Next time ... next time, stay where you are. I know the dangers. I’ve set defenses around us. You attracted attention, most surely, dangerous attention—as dangerous as opening a door.”
“Can’t it get in the holes?” he asked. “The pigeons do.”
“It’s not a pigeon. It can’t, no. It has to be a door or a window.”
“Why?”
Mauryl shrugged. The candlelight seemed friendlier now. It glowed on Mauryl’s silver hair and gave a warmer flush to his skin. “It must.
There’s a magic to doors and windows. When the foundations of a place are laid down, they become a Line on the earth. And doors and windows are appointed for comings and goings, but no place else. Masons know such things. So do Spirits.”
They were Words, tasting, the one, of stone and secrets, but the other- He gave a shiver, knowing then, that it was a spirit they feared. Other Words poured in—Dead, and Ghost, and Haunt.
He thought, Mauryl fears this spirit. That’s why we latch the doors and windows. It wants in.
“Why?” he asked. “Why does it want to come in?”
“To do us harm.”
“Why?”
“It’s a wicked thing. A cruel thing. One day it will have you to fear, boy, but for now it fears me. Go to sleep. Go to sleep now. There will be no more noises.”
“What were they? Was it the Shadows?”
“Nothing to concern you. Nothing you need know. Go to sleep, I say.
I’ll leave the candle.” Mauryl stood up, reached toward his face and brushed his eyelids shut with his fingertips. “Sleep.”
He couldn’t open them. They were too heavy. He heard Mauryl leave, heard the door shut and heard the tap of Mauryl’s staff against the door.
After that was the drip of the rain off the eaves, the soft groanings of the timbers of the keep as Mauryl climbed the stairs and walked the floor above.
It was back, and stronger.
Much stronger, Mauryl thought to himself, feeling chill in the moist air of the night.
There was no immediate touch. He waited, still weak from the latest encounter. Anger welled up in him. But he gave it no foothold. Anger, too, became a weakness.
—Your Shaping is helpless, the Wind whispered, nudging the shutter.
—Of course he is, Mauryl said to the Wind. Are you ever wrong?
—Wasted, Gestaurien, all your years were wasted. This Shaping is not enough. You work and you work; you mend your poor failed mannequin, but to what advantage? Where is your vaunted magic, now? All spent. All squandered. What a threat you pose me!
—Come ahead, then. Do your fingers still sting? —But there are no fingers, are there? No fingers, no heart,.., no manhood. Mere food for carnal worms, a repast for maggots. A beetle has his home in your skull.
He has your eyes for windows ... A fat, well-fed beetle, a fine, upstanding fellow. I like him much better.
You are atthe end of your strength, Gestaurien. Words, words, words, all vacuous breath. Shall I be wounded? Shall I flee in terror? I think not.
—I see a loose latch. I do ...
Bang! went the shutter, and kept rattling.
—Tristen, is it? Tristen. A boy. And careless, in the way of boys. He might forget a latch, the way you forgot his cup—and the shutter—tonight. Was that accident? Do you suppose it was accident?
The air seemed close, full of menace. The shutter rattled perilously.
Mauryl rose up, seized his staff, and it stopped.
Thump, went the next shutter, making his heart jump.
—Worried? asked the Wind.
—Come ahead, I say. Why don’t you? How many years did it take you to recover the last time you misjudged me? Twenty? More than twenty? Intrude into my keep again. Come, try again, thou nest for worms. You might be lucky. Or not.
It made no reply. It rolled in on itself with none of its accustomed mockery. It nursed secrets, tonight. It restrained something it by no means wanted to say.
Mauryl bowed his head against his staff and put forth all his guard, wary of a sudden reversal. But nothing came. He reached not a breath, not a whisper of presence.
He sent his thoughts further still, around the rock of the fortress, and through its cracks and crevices.
But no further than that. He found limits to his will that had never been there, perhaps the limits of his own defenses—or perhaps not his construction at all, but a prisoning so subtly constructed he had had no suspicion of it until now.
Sweat stood on his brow with the effort to catch the wind in his nets.
But there was, no matter how fine he made them, not a breath within his reach.
He might believe, then, that the prison was illusory, that, as in the long, long past, he still found no limit but himself. But he feared not. He feared, that was the difficulty. Fear slipped so easily toward doubt—and doubt to the suspicion that his old enemy had no wish for encounter, not on his terms.
He would not be so fortunate, this time, in choosing the moment.
He had kn. own as much, in his heart of hearts. His old student knew it, and sought as yet no direct contest.
Chapter 5
He could see Mauryl in the silver reflection, standing behind his shoulder. Mauryl waited, expecting him to cut himself, Tristen was well certain—believing he would cut himself. Mauryl had warned him the blade was sharp and showed him how to hold it.
He might grow a beard, Mauryl said, except Mauryl said that beards were for priests and wizards, that he was neither, and that, besides, it would not suit him. So Mauryl had given him the very sharp blade, a whetstone and, the wonder of the occasion, a polished silver Mirror.