Fortress in the Eye of Time Read Free

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.
    â€œYou 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. You’ve 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.
    â€œNo. 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.
    â€œFool!” 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 cinderburned 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 boy’s 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.
    â€œI know,” Mauryl said, “I know, a rude welcome—and you have everything to learn, everything to find.” He lifted the boy’s 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