Fortress in the Eye of Time Read Free Page B

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.
    It was a minuscule beginning of wizardry. Mauryl stood, hugging his staff, asking himself in a small fluttering of despair what he had done and what he was to do to mend it.
    Wrap a blanket about the boy, he supposed, condemnednow, to simple, workaday practicalities. Ale had done its work. Magic had done what it could, and flesh and bone slumbered at peace, stirring forgotten sentiment in a wizard who had nothing to gain by it…nothing at all to gain, and all the world to lose.

CHAPTER 2
    S patters of rain on the dust.
    Trees whispering and nodding and giving up leaves, twigs sent flying. Smell of stone, smell of bruised leaves, smell of lightnings and rain-washed air.
    Taste of water. Chill of wind. Flash of lightning that hurt the eyes. Boom of thunder that shook heart and bone.
    It was like too much ale. Like too much to eat. Like too much heat and too much cold. Everything was patterns, shapes, sounds, light, dark, soft, sharp, rough, smooth, stone-cold, life-warm, and all too much to own and hold at once. Sometimes he could hardly move, the flood of the bright world was so much and so quick.
    Tristen stood on the stone parapet, watched the lightning flashes fade the woods and sky and watched the trees below the wall bow their heads against the stone. Thunder rumbled. Rain swept in gray curtains against the tower, spattered the surface of the puddles and cascaded in streams off the slate of the many roofs. Tristen laughed and breathed the rain-drenched wind, raised hands and face to catch the pelting drops. They stung his palms and eyelids, so he dared not look at them. Rain coursed, cold and strange sensation, over his naked body, finding hollows and new courses, all to the shape of him.
    It was delight. He looked at his bare feet, wiggled his toes in puddles that built in the low places of the stonework and made channels between the stones in the high places. Water made all the dusty gray stonework new and shiny. Rain made slanting veils across the straight fall off the eaves and played music beneath the thunder-rumble. Tristen spun on the slick stones and slipped, recovering himself against the low wall of the parapet and laughing in surprise as he saw, below him,where the gutters made a veritable flood, brown water, where the rain was gray. A green leaf was stuck to the gray stone. He wondered why it stayed there.
    â€œ Tristen! ”
    He straightened back from his headlong dangle, arm lingering to brace himself on the stone edge as he looked toward Mauryl’s angry voice. He blinked water from his eyes, saw Mauryl’s brown-robed figure. Mauryl’s clothes were soaked through, Mauryl’s gray hair and beard were streaming water, and Mauryl’s eyes beneath his dripping brows were blue and pale and furious as Mauryl came to seize him by the arm.
    He had clearly done something wrong. He tried to cipher what that wrong thing was as Mauryl took him from the wall. Mauryl was hurting his arm, and he resisted the pull, only enough to keep Mauryl’s fingers from bruising.
    â€œCome along,” Mauryl said, and held the harder, so he thought saving his arm was wrong, too. He let Mauryl hurt him as he hurried him back along the parapet, Mauryl’s black boots and his bare feet splashing through the puddles. Mauryl’s robes dripped water. Mauryl’s hair made curling ropes and water dripped off the ends. Mauryl’s shoulders were thin and the cloth stuck to him and flapped about his legs and leather boots. The staff struck crack, crack-crack against the pavings, but Mauryl hardly limped, he was in such an angry hurry.
    Mauryl took him to the rain-washed door, shoved up the outside latch with the knob of his staff, and drew him roughly inside into the little, stone-floored room. Light