Fortress in the Eye of Time

�Have you,� Mauryl asked, �no thought of your own? Have you no question? Do you feel, Tristen? Do you feel at all? Do you want? Do you desire? Do you think of anything?�

For a moment the lips looked as if they might frame a thought. The brow acquired the least small frown, but nothing�nothing followed.

In the collapse of hope, Mauryl snatched his hand away, slid aside from the boy, fumbled after the staff that, rebel object, slid away from his hand away the wall.

Arm reached. Young fist closed on the ancient wood, flesh and bone certain as youth, quick as thought. Mauryl caught a breath, put out an insistent and demanding hand and clenched it on the staff, fearful of the omen.

He tugged gently, all the same, and the youth yielded the staff back to his grip, seeming as confused as before.

�You reflect,� Mauryl said, holding his staff protected in his arms, regarding the Shaping with despair, �you only reflect, like still water. I was much too cautious. I restrained what I called, and it crippled you, poor boy. Youʼve nothing, nothing of what I want.�

There was no response at all but acute distress, mirrored maddeningly back at him. Mauryl turned his face from the sight, and for a moment there was silence in the hall.

A whisper of the cloak lining warned him, and the movement of a bare arm toward the fire�Tristen reached, and in a fit of anger Mauryl grasped the hand, hard.

�No.�No, you witling! Do you at all understand pain? Fire burns. Water drowns. Wind chills you.� He shoved the young man, he flung him from the bench, scattered embers as the boy fell, his hand against the fire-bricks.

The boy cried out, recoiled, made a crouched knot of pain, rocking like a child, while smoke went up about the cloak edge that lay smoldering within the fire.

�Fool!� Mauryl shouted in rage, and snatched the boy away from the leap of fire, stepped on the hem of his own robe and, betrayed in balance, clenched his arms about the youth to save himself as he fell to his knees.

Young arms clenched about his frail bones, young strength hugged tight, young body trembled as his trembled, in a stench of smoking cloth, a burning pain where a cinder burned his shin. His own arms locked. He had no power to let go. The boy had no will to. That was the way they were, creator and creature, for the space of breath and breath and breath.

Maybe it was pain that brought water seeping from beneath his tight-shut lids. Maybe it was some motion of the heart so long ago lost he had forgotten what it was, after so long without a living, breathing presence but himself.

Maybe it was even remorse. That�was much longer lost.

Undo what I have done? Unmake this Shaping?

I might have strength enough. But it would finish me.

The boy grew quiet in his arms. The stray ember had branded his shin and quenched itself in singed cloth. The pain of the burning and the pain of everything lost became one thing, as if it had always been, as if there had been, in all his planning and preparation, no choice at all. It was foolish for an old man to sit on the floor in the ash and cinders, it was foolish for him to cling to a hope � most foolish of all, perhaps, for him to plan beyond so signal and absolute a failure.

With gnarled fingers, he lifted the boyʼs face. The tears had ceased, leaving reddened eyes, reddened nose. The face was no longer quite smooth. Something had been written there. The eyes were no longer blank. Awareness flickered, lively though pained, within that gray and open gaze.

There was before and after, now. There was then and now.

There was time to come. There was question and there was need, aching need, for some order in remembrance.

�I know,� Mauryl said, �I know, a rude welcome � and you have everything to learn, everything to find.� He lifted the boyʼs hand, passed his thumb over the reddened palm, working a small, soothing illusion. �The hurt is gone now, is it not?�

Tristen blinked. Tears spilled, mere aftermath. Tristen looked down, rubbing pale, smooth fingertips against each other.

�It will mend,� Mauryl said, and felt with only mild foreboding � perhaps a fey, wicked magic lingered � a net settling over the net-caster as well. All his anger was pointless against the youth, all his long solitude was helpless against the spell of warm arms, the quickening�not of understanding, but of youthful expectations; the centering of them � on an old man long past answering his own. But he told the lie. He said in an unused, gruff voice, a second time, because the sound of it was strange to him, �It will mend, boy.� He reached for his fallen staff, he struggled with it to bring his aching knees to bear, and stumbled his way to his feet.

Tristen also stood up � and let slide the singed cloak, as if such things in no wise mattered.

Mauryl smothered anger, caught the robe with his staff, patiently adjusted it again about the boyʼs bare shoulders. Tristen held it and moved away, his attention drawn by something else, the gods knew what � perhaps the clutter of vessels and hanging bunches of herbs in the room beyond.

�Stop!� Mauryl snapped, and Tristen halted and looked back, all unwitting.

Mauryl reached his side and with his staff tapped the single step to draw his attention downward, to the hazard he had never looked down to see.

�Tristen,� he said, �now and forever remember: you are flesh as well as wishes, body as well as spirit, and whenever you let one fly without the other, then look to suffer for it. Do you understand me, Tristen?�

�Yes,� Tristen said faintly. Tears welled up again, as if the rebuke and the burning were of equal pain.

�Tristen, thou��

He discovered something long lost, long ago relinquished, and it swelled larger and larger in his heart until his heart seemed about to burst with pain. He tried to laugh, instead, who had neither wept nor laughed since�since some forgotten change, some gradual slipping away of the inclination. He made a sound, he hardly knew of what sort, knew not what to do next, and cleared his throat, instead � which left a silence, and the young man still staring at him. In the absence of all understanding, he put out a hand and wiped an unresisting face.

�An unwritten tablet, are you not? And a perilous, perilous one to write. But write I shall. And learn you will. Do you say so, Tristen?�

�Yes,� the boy said, tears gone, or forgotten, cloud passed. There was tremulous expectation, as if learning should happen now, at once, in a breath.

And perhaps it should. Perhaps he dared not wait so long as a night.

�Come sit at the table,� he said. �No, no, gods, thou silly, hold the cloak, mind your feet�� Calamity was a constant step away: unsteadiness threatened at every odd set of time-worn stones, so age must take the hand of youth, infirmity must guide strength that went wit-wandering in the search for a fallen cloak � and dropped the cloak again in utter startlement as a chair leg scraped across the stones.

Age found itself hungry, then, and warmed yesterdayʼs supper in the pot. Shadows lurked and flickered about the edges of the room. The thunder of a passing rain wandered away above the roof. But such things the Shaping more easily ignored, perhaps as a natural part of the world.

Waiting, between his stirrings of the iron pot, he came back to the table, where the youth hung on every word he offered, eyes fixed with rapt attention on him when he spoke � though gods knew how many bits and pieces of that flotsam a foolish boy could store away, or how he understood them at all.

He poured ale, that being the best he had. The youth first tasted it with a grimace and a puzzlement. He served yesterdayʼs beans � and the youth ate with a childʼs grasp of the spoon, then, with the bowl unfinished, upon one cup to drink, fell quite sound asleep, head propped against his hand.

Mauryl took the spoon away, took the bowl, moved the arm, left him sleeping with his forehead pillowed on his arm on the tabletop, wrapped in an ill-pinned cloak.