Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  And perhaps other things came from expecting the best of them as hard as he could.

  So immediately he drew his Book out of his shirt, stopped in the full middle of a sunbeam, and opened it and looked at the writing, hoping that if one thing had changed, if he fully, 86

  truly, with all his heart expected to read the Book, then the Words might come to him—just a few Words, perhaps, so he turned from page to page.

  But the letters remained only shapes, and even the ones he had thought he understood now looked different and indecipher-able to his eye. His expectation, he thought, must not be great enough, or sure enough, in the way that Mauryl expected bruises not to hurt, or Shadows not to harm them. He clearly had not Mauryl’s power—but then—

  But, was the inescapable conclusion, then Mauryl had never expected him to read the Book—or had not expected it enough.

  That was a very troubling point. Mauryl could expect his hand to stop hurting, and it would. Mauryl could expect that the rain would come, and it would. Mauryl could expect the Shadows to leave his room alone, and Mauryl could bar the door against them, and bang his staff on the stones and bid them keep their distance; the Shadows would obey Mauryl, if not him.

  Yet Mauryl had doubted that he would read the Book?

  Mauryl had doubted him and doubted his ability, but all else, including very difficult things for him to do, Mauryl had seemed so certain of. He no longer knew what Mauryl had thought of him, or what Mauryl had expected.

  So he tucked his Book away fearfully and kept walking; and when the sun was at its highest overhead, he sat down on a fallen log in a patch of sunlight, took out his Book and tried again to read, tried, mindful of Mauryl’s doubt, tried until his eyes ached and until his own doubt and his despair began to gray the woods around him.

  But then the sun, which had faded around him, shone brightly and clearly in a new place farther down the Road.

  So it seemed to him that the sun might be saying, as Owl had said, Follow the Road, and he rose up, tucked away his Book, and walked further, relying on the sun, relying on Owl, and hoping very much for an end of this place.

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  Came another nightfall, and the sky turned mostly gray again and the woods went back to their darkness. Tristen was growing more than tired, he was growing weak and dizzy and wandering in his steps.

  He had begun, however faintly, to promise himself that at the end of the Road might lie a place like Ynefel, a place with walls of strong stone, and, he imagined, there might be a fireplace, and there might be a warm small room where he could sleep safe at night—that was what he hoped for, perhaps because he could imagine nothing else outside of this woods, and he wanted the woods to end.

  Perhaps, in this place he imagined, there would be someone like Mauryl, since there surely would be someone to keep things in order. There would be someone like Mauryl, who would be kind to him and teach him the things he needed to know.

  “Why did you go?” he asked that grayness inside him, speaking aloud and hoping faintly that Mauryl might be simply waiting for a question.

  “What am I to do, Mauryl? Where are you sending me?”

  But nothing answered him, not even the wind.

  “Owl?” he asked at last, since Owl at least had been visible.

  It occurred to him that he had not seen Owl in a very long time, and he would at least like Owl’s company, however surly Owl could be.

  But Owl might be sleeping still, despite the dark that had fallen. Owl also failed to arrive.

  So he followed his faintly visible path of fitted stones, which disappeared under forest earth, which reappeared under a black carpet of rotten leaves, which found ways along hillsides and threatened to disappear under earth and leaves altogether and forever. He was afraid. He kept imagining that Place like Ynefel.

  He kept thinking…of that fireside and a snug room where the candles never went out.

  The Road lost itself altogether in nightbound undergrowth, where trees had grown and dislodged the stones.

  “To-who?” a voice inquired above him.

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  “There you are,” Tristen exclaimed.

  “Who?” said Owl, and flew up the hill.

  He followed, trying to run as Owl sped ahead, but he had not the strength to keep his feet. He slipped at the very top, among the trees, and tumbled downhill to the Road again, right down to the leaf-covered stones.

  “To-who?” said Owl.

  He brushed leaf mold from his fall-stung hands and his aching knees. He was cold, and sat there shaking from weakness.

  “Are you different than the other Shadows?” he asked Owl.

  “Are you Mauryl’s?—Or are you something else?”

  “To-who?” quoth Owl. And leapt out into the dark.

  “Wait for me!” Now he was angry as well as afraid. He scrambled to his knees and to his feet, and followed as he could.

  But always Owl moved on. He had caught a stitch in his side, but he followed, sometimes losing Owl, sometimes hearing his mocking question far in the distance.

  His foot turned in a hole in the stones, and he landed on his hand and an elbow, quite painfully. He could not catch breath enough to stand for two or three painful tries, and then succeeded in setting his knee under him, and rose and walked very much more slowly.

  “Who?” Owl called in the distance. The fall had driven the anger out of him and left him only the struggle to keep walking.

  But he could do no more than he was doing. He hurt more than he had ever hurt in Ynefel, but that seemed the way of this dreary woods: pain, and exhaustion. He walked on until he had hardly the strength to set one foot in front of another.

  But as he reached that point of exhaustion, and thought of sitting down and waiting for the dawn to come, whatever the hazards and in spite of Mauryl’s warnings, he rounded the shoulder of a hill and heard Owl calling. And in scanning the dark for Owl, he saw a triple-spanned stonework with an arch at either end.

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  It looked to be a Bridge like that at Ynefel. His spirits were too low by now for extravagant hope, but it was a faint hope, all the same, that he had come to some Place in the dark. A lightless, cheerless Place it might be, but it was surely stone, and the arched structure offered shelter of a kind Mauryl had told him made the dark safe.

  So he walked, wavering and shaking as he was, as far as let his eyes tell him the arch let through not into a building but into utter dark—and reaching the second arch, and seeing planks between, he could see that the dark to the other side of the rail was no longer the woods but the glistening darkness of water.

  A Bridge for certain, he thought. An arch and a Bridge had begun his journey; and now, with a lifting of his heart, he remembered Mauryl saying that Lenúalim was at the start of his journey and that Lenúalim should meet him on the far side of Marna Wood. Amefel was beyond, and Amefel was a Word of green, and safety.

  He pressed forward to reach that span, and when he stood on it, beneath the arch, he saw faint starlight shining on the water beyond the stone rail, and saw to his astonishment a living creature leap and fall with a pale splash in the darkness.

  “Who?” said Owl, somewhere above him.

  This bridge was not so ruined as the one at Ynefel. The second arch, looking stronger than the first, stood above the edge of the shore where the reflective surface of the water gave way to the utter dark of forest on the far side. He stood beneath the first arch with his knees shaking, and with all that water near at hand—and was acutely thirsty. He could see the stars—truly see the stars for the first time in his life, for there were neither clouds nor treetops between him and the sky. He saw the Moon riding among them—a knife-sharp sliver. He had seen it only by day, in its changes. Its glory at night was unexpected and wonderful, a light that watched over him.

  He did not leave the Road to go down beside the river. He sat down where he stood, his legs folding under him. He leaned against the stone. He knew it was not wise to leave th
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  Road where he was, even to venture down to the river he could see. In the limited way the starlight showed it to him, it looked broad, and uncertain at the edges. Fool, Mauryl would say to him, if he fell in, after all this, and had not the strength to get out again.

  Owl came and perched on the stone rail of the bridge. Owl came and went from there, and once brought back something which he swallowed with some effort. Tristen had no idea what it was nor wanted to know. Owl was a fierce creature, but Owl was all he had, so he tried not to think ill of him.

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  C H A P T E R 7

  T he water was brownish green and fast-running beneath him, as Tristen crossed the Bridge in the earliest glimmer of dawn, not trusting the middle of the boards—the loft had taught him that wisdom. Stone felt far safer, and he kept to the rim with the railing to hold to, where the planks lay on the stonework.

  Owl had left him at some time last night and he had no guide in this crossing. But no stones fell. That heartened him. And oh, the other side of the river beckoned him, greener than Marna and lit in dawn sun. He was shaky with hunger, but he wanted to run, to rush whole-heartedly toward that green, bright place.

  Instead, he proceeded as carefully as he was certain Mauryl would advise him, all the way to the endmost span.

  But only the width of the arch from a sunnier, younger forest, he asked himself, looking back, what if there were no way back, or what if he were, after leaving the bridge, at the end of all Mauryl’s instructions?

  He went. He saw no choice. The Road led him onto solid ground and up to a forest that smelled of life. The wan sunlight itself seemed greened by the leaves through which it came. The Road vanished momentarily beneath a thick blanket of gold-colored leaves, but beckoned reassuringly further on.

  Marna Wood had indeed stopped with the bridge, every sense told him so as he walked onto that solid ground, and smelled a fresher, warmer wind. He heard a bird singing to the rising sun, and another Word flickered into memory, Wagtail, although it flitted just far enough he could not see it.

  And desperately thirsty as he had been since last night, his first venture in this new feeling of safety was down to the 92

  water, among green reeds, where, having reached that edge, he stood and looked back a second time at the far side of the river.

  Marna stood as gray and as black as it had felt when he had traveled it last night.

  Then he saw a lump in a tree branch on that other side, down where the woods met the water.

  “Owl!” he called, loudly, so Owl could hear across the river.

  He waved his arm. “Owl? Do you hear me? I’m here!”

  There was no answer, and he was disturbed at the thought of leaving Owl. He hoped Owl knew he had crossed the bridge.

  He hoped Owl could find him tonight where he was going, wherever the Road would lead him.

  He sank down then on the water’s edge to drink, dry-shod on a spot of grass between two clumps of water-weed. In the shal-lows he saw brown and yellow stones. And before he could drink, a living creature swam up and looked at him from under the water surface.

  Fish, the Word came to him. That had been the leaper in the river last night. It was brown and speckled and he sat very still as he would with the mice, until with a flip of a tail it sped away across the stones, free and very much in its own element.

  One ate fish. That came to him, too, and he was repelled by the thought. He had no wish to be like Owl, who gulped down his neighbors.

  The river as he drank made one sound, a hoarse voice of strength. The trees sighed with another. But those were not the only sounds. The air hummed with bees and a thicket by him twittered quite happily. He washed his head and hands and looked up to find the source of the commotion.

  Birds had gathered about a bush, just up the bank, birds scolding and chasing one another, as he thought at first—but he saw when he came closer that berries were thick on the bush, and ripe berries had fallen on the ground, where birds lay, too, hale and well, but quite silly and flopping about, or sitting with feathers puffed, like pigeons on a chill morning.

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  The birds, though unacquainted with him, did not all flee him, being much too eager for the berries, and those birds lying and sitting about the bush scarcely evaded his feet, so he was careful where he trod. He took a handful of berries for himself—they were sweet, overripe, and stained his fingers, and he ate a double handful of them before the birds that had fled ventured back to take the ones he dropped.

  He was sorry to take their breakfast. He sat on the bank and shared with them, tossing berries out where they dared snatch them. Some squabbled and fought over the ones he threw, while others, full-fed, scarcely reached after the ones he set in front of them. One let him pick it up, and he smoothed its feathers and set it on a branch, but it swung upside down, hung from one foot, and fell into his hands again. So he set it on the ground.

  It was quite puffed and quite silly, and very full, seeming completely healthy, except the sleepiness. He left some berries on the bush for the birds, and walked with something in his belly for the first time in days, feeling quite giddy, but very much better, thanks to the water he had drunk and the berries he had eaten.

  He could have made cakes, he thought, if he had had flour and oil and fire. Cakes with berries. He had made them for Mauryl very often.

  And the instant he thought of flour and oil and fire he thought of Mill, and Fields, and when he thought of Fields, then he thought of Men and Houses, Oxen, and Fences, recognitions that tumbled in on him disorderly as the squabbling birds, one thought chasing the other, one seizing a perch and fleeing or falling off in its turn, so chaotic that he struggled not to wonder about anything, and tried not to think beyond the necessity to place his feet one in front of the other and to keep moving, light-headed as he was.

  But this morning, on this Road, the thoughts refused to stop coming. The whole woods chattered and rang with birdsong.

  It was full of Words for him, and Words brought thinking that conjured more Words. His wits wandered, his feet strayed. He turned an ankle painfully in a hidden hole in the pavings, 94

  which did nothing to stop the dizzying spate of Words—trees, mosses, leaves, stones, sky, directions, the names of birds and the track of a Badger—all these things crowded into his head until it ached, and he might have wandered in complete confusion if not for the stone Road that came and went beneath the leaves.

  Long and long before the supply of Words seemed exhausted—before each had confounded the last—he knew Oak from Ash, knew Acorn and leaf and every sound that came and went. The knowing poured in on him more abundant than the recognition—but he could not, it seemed, exhaust the forest’s store of Words.

  In weariness of knowing things, in a muddle of sights and sounds, he sat down to rest and slept without intending to, until he blinked at a sky that had dimmed toward dark.

  He had come through so much that was difficult and let his eyes close when the going became safer. Now he set out on another night of walking—he dared not sleep when the Shadows came, and he followed the Road as he had before.

  Meanwhile the jumble of Words, though less than the rush by day, wanted to come back again, clamoring within that grayness in his mind, where Mauryl was, or might be. He knew Moon and Stars, and now he learned Marten and Fox.

  But he tried to still the tumult and to hear only Mauryl, if Mauryl should send a Word to him out of that grayness.

  He tried to hear Owl, who had not appeared all day long, but the creature that was singing now was, the song said to him, Frog, saying that it might soon rain.

  He was thinking that when a wayward breeze brought the scent of smoke wafting down the Road—smoke, and the smell of something that might possibly be supper: he was not quite convinced that it was, but it smelled so like supper cooking that the hunger the berries had wakened in the morning became more and more urgent as he walked.

  Fire was warmth and light, and fire also
meant Men, his awareness informed him. Whatever seemed to be cooking—or 95

  burning, he thought from moment to moment—it might be good to eat. It smelled like that, although it certainly seemed overdone.

  But he was still fearful, and not knowing how to call out to men who might themselves be afraid of Shadows in this woods, he decided it would be safer to go up soft-footed, as Mauryl’s tempers had taught him, and to know them first, whether they were in a good mood or otherwise, or whether it was in fact supper they were about, and not just wood or rubbish afire.

  He left the Road, and followed that smell of smoke up the wind as quietly and stealthily as he could over the dry leaves.

  He spied firelight shining through the brush and branches, and treading now with greatest caution, he slipped up to spy on the place.

  They were indeed men. They had a small fire going in a spot cleared of leaves. They were not old like Mauryl. They were not young like himself. They went clothed in brown cloth and leather, clothes rougher than his own white shirt and breeches.

  They had beards, dark and full; they were cooking something on a stick above the fire, he had no notion what, but it struck the edges of a Word, and at once dismayed him and advised him that eating living things…was permissible. It was something men did by their nature—that he should perhaps do, if they offered him a share of their supper.

  “Sirs,” he said, stepping into the light, and instantly all four men were on their feet. Metal flashed—they had knives, and drew them and threatened him with them, with anger and fear on their faces.

  “Sirs,” he said, quietly, “please, sirs, I’m very hungry. May I have supper?”