Кэролайн Черри - Fortress in the Eye of Time

But Mauryl would be in no good mood.

He decided he should present himself very quietly downstairs, and straighten up the parchments and blot up the ink before Mauryl saw it and lost his temper. He had had thunders and screams and ragings enough: he wanted to please Mauryl, and he most of all wanted calm and peace and Maurylʼs good humor.

He gathered himself up and crossed the creaking boards, causing a quiet, anxious stir among the pigeons. He dusted himself as he went, raked random straws from his hair, wanting to have no fault Mauryl could possibly find. But when he went out and down the narrow stairs, and down again to the balcony, the light was shining into the hall from holes in the roof of the keep itself, which it had never done, and the balcony he walked had settled to a precarious, twisted tilt among the rafters.

“Mauryl?” he called out, wanting rescue.

But there was not a sound.

“Mauryl? Iʼm upstairs. Can you hear me?”

Rain would get in, at the next storm, and fall where it never had, on the parchments and the books in Maurylʼs study. They had to do something about that, surely — someone must climb up on the roof.

The balcony settled under him, a jolt, and a groan, sending his heart into his throat. He darted for the stairs, hearing little creaks and groans the while, which wakened other groans and creaks in the rafters.

He went down and down, as quickly as he could. The railing of the stairs shook under his hand, and the creaking boards on Maurylʼs balcony roused a fearsome shriek of settling timbers; the triple stone faces at the turning of his balcony seemed changed, frozen in some new horror — or maybe it was the shadows from the myriad shafts of dusty sunlight that never before had breached the lower hall.

From overhead came another fearful thump and groaning. A roof slate fell past him and smashed on the stones below.

Tristen caught a breath and ran the steps, trailing his free hand down the banisters, clutching the Book in the other. He reached the study, where a chaotic flood of parchments from off the shelves lay crushed under fragments of slate.

Slates had fallen on the table and smashed the overset inkpot. He bent and gathered up an armful of parchments, laid them on the table, then sought more, arranging them in stacks, making them, stiff and of varying sizes as they were, as even-edged as he could.

There was a fearsome jolt. An unused balcony came loose, one of the rickety ones on the far side, where they never walked — it groaned, and distorted itself, and fell in great ruin, taking down other timbers, jolting the masonry and raising a cloud of dust.

“Mauryl?” he called out into the aftermath of that crash. “Mauryl?” Mauryl should know; Mauryl would not abide it; Mauryl should prevent the timbers falling.

But light fell on him from his right since that crash, and turning his head, he saw a seam of sunlight, saw doors open, or half-open, near him, down the short alcove mostly cluttered with Maurylʼs parchments.

He had never seen those doors ajar — had asked Mauryl once did those doors go anywhere, and Mauryl had said, Doors mostly do.

Anywhere in the world, Mauryl had said, is where doors go.

Another slate crashed on the stones, and another. He ducked under the kitchenward arch for safety as a third and a fourth fell.

Mauryl had never opened that south door, nor let him lift the bar. He had never guessed that sunlight was at the other side.

But the door was thrown from its metal hinges, and the bar was thrown down, one end against the stones, with the sun flooding through the crack — the sun, the enemy of the Shadows.

It seemed safer than where he was. He ventured a dash across the slate-littered floor to the arch of the alcove and, finding the gap almost wide enough to let him out, pushed and scraped his way through.

He stood on low steps in a place he had never seen — a stone courtyard within high walls, and a white stone path which led off at an angle through weeds and vacancy, as far as the gate that — he knew all too well — was the start of the Road that led through the encircling woods, the Road that Mauryl had said he must find and follow.

He had thought Mauryl would go before him. He had hoped Mauryl meant him to follow him when he went away.

And perhaps Mauryl had indeed gone, and expected him to have the wits to know that.

“Mauryl?” he called out to the emptiness around him. Sometimes Mauryl did amazing things, things he never expected, and perhaps, even in this circumstance, Mauryl could speak to him out of the sun or the stones, or give him a stronger hint what he should do next.

Mauryl? — Mauryl? — Mauryl? was all the echoes gave him, his own question back again, the way the walls echoed with the axe.

He could not bear to call aloud again. The courtyard sounded too frighteningly empty.

But the Road was more frightening to him still, and unknown, and he did not want to leave by mistake, too soon: he was prone to mistakes, and it was far too great a matter to risk any misunderstanding at all.

So he sat down on that step in front of the door; he pressed his Book close against him, and told himself that Mauryl was surely still somewhere about, and that it was not time yet for him to go. He should only wait, and be certain.

Mauryl was not, at least, inside; the sun was high, and he was, he said to himself, far safer out here than inside where the roof slates were crashing down, and where the balconies were creaking and falling.

Mauryl could make the balconies stay still if Mauryl were not busy. Mauryl said that making things do what they did naturally was easy, and surely it was natural that things be the way they had always been.

Pigeons came down and walked about on their own errands, expecting grain, perhaps, but he dared not go in again under the chance of falling slates and cross the study to get it for them, not until the slates stopped coming down, or until Mauryl turned up to make everything right again — which he wished most of all.

“Please,” he said faintly. “Mauryl? Mauryl, please hear me?”

It was the same as in his room, when the fear came. And no, Mauryl did not always arrive at the moment one would wish. Mauryl did not have every answer; Mauryl had tasks to do that a boy could not understand, and Maurylʼs silence could well mean that Mauryl was busy. There had been a danger, but Mauryl had overcome it, and Mauryl would pay attention to him as soon as Mauryl found the time. He should wait patiently and not take hasty action, that was what Mauryl would advise him.

So he sat on the low steps, and he sat, and he sat, until the sun was behind the far tower and the shadow of that tower touched the courtyard.

While he sat, he tried earnestly, fervently, to read his Book, telling himself that now, perhaps, once the moment called for it, Words might come to him and show him everything Mauryl had wanted of him in his command to read this Book, things which would prevent Mauryl going on the Road, and which would prevent his having to go, as well.

But hours passed in his efforts, and in his fear. The shadow of the walls joined the shadow of the tower and grew long across the courtyard stones.

At last the shadow touched the walls, complete across the courtyard, and he knew that on any ordinary day he should be inside and off the parapets and out of the courtyard by now. He was thinking that when the wind suddenly picked up, skirled up the dead leaves from a corner of the wall, and those leaves rose higher and higher, dancing down the paving stones toward the tower.

And back again. That was odd for a wind to do. It was a chill wind as it touched him. The pigeons, while he read, had deserted the courtyard stones, seeking their towers for the night. The shadows, while he read, had come into nooks where no shadows had been at noon. The faces in the stone walls seemed more ambiguous, more ghostly and more dubious than they appeared by day.