—You’ve given me a weapon, you know. That’s all he is. A shutter went bump-bump, and Mauryl looked up sharply, feeling the ward loosen, seeing the latch jump. If you had had the stomach to join me, Gestaurien, we might have raised the Sihhé kings to power they never dreamed off The new lords would never have risen, and you and I would not be haggling over this rotting fortress.

It was more self-possessed than before, more reasoning. That was not  good.

—Mauryl Gestaurien? Are you worried?

—No. Simply not hurried. Patience I have in abundance. I shan’t enumerate your failings, or tell you what they are. Let them be mysteries to you, like the counsel that I gave.

—Your mystery went walking on the wall I saw him there. Such a little push it would take, if I wanted to.

—If you had a body, isn’t that the pity, Hasufin? You’d do this, you’d do that. You’re a breath of air, a meandering malaise, a flatulence. Go bother some priest.

—What was his name, Gestaurien?

The spell-flinging startled him and disturbed his heart, but he turned it with a thump of his staff, rose and thumped the staff against the shutter.

Go away, thou breath of wind. Go, go, even the pigeons are weary of  you.

Softly the wind blew now, prowling, trying this and that window, for a long time.

Far longer than on any night previous.

And the stars.., the stars were moving toward ominous congruency.

Chapter 4

After a dry spell, the rain built in the north and rolled up in a great, towering fortress of cloud, flickering in its belly with lightnings. Tristen saw it from the wall, and knew immediately that it was a dark and dangerous kind of storm, no sun-and-puddles shower.

He said as much to Mauryl, who said, gruffly, So stay indoors, —and went back to his scribing and ciphering. Mauryl had been scraping parchments all morning in preparation for whatever was so urgent, and had just scraped part of one he wanted by accident. Mauryl was not in his best humor on that account, and Tristen walked softly about his chores in the hall.

By evening the storm was crashing and thumping its way across the forest. Tristen made their supper as Mauryl had taught him, managed not to burn the barley cakes, and set a platter of them and a cup of ale at Mauryl’s elbow in hopes of pleasing Mauryl; but Mauryl only muttered at him and waved his fingers, which meant go away, he was busy.

So Tristen had a supper of barley cakes and honey by himself, beside the fire, and since Mauryl evidenced no attention to him whatever, he left the pots for morning, when the rain barrel would certainly be full.

He decided nothing would happen in the evening. Then, Mauryl being so occupied he never had touched his supper, he took a candle, went up the stairs, lighting the night candles at each landing, so if Mauryl did come upstairs to his chamber, weary as he was apt to be, he should not have to deal with a dark stairway: that was Tristen’s thought, and probably Mauryl would complain about the early extravagance of candles, but Mauryl would complain more if he failed to light them.

And he was bound for bed early, which gave him no chance at all of doing something to annoy Mauryl, when Mauryl was in such a mood.

So he opened the door to his room, lit the watch-candle on his bedside, sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off his boots and his shirt, disposing the latter on the pegs behind the door and laying the Book which he carried on the table beside his bed.

The double candlelight leapt and jumped with the draft from under the door; Mauryl had said that was why the fire moved. It gave him two overlapped shadows and made them waver about the stonework. The floor creaked—it always did that when the wind blew strongly from the north. He had observed that mystery—Mauryl had called him quite clever—on his own.

And while he was undressing, he heard the rain begin to spatter the horn window, as the thunder came rumbling.

He stepped out of his breeches, and was turning down the covers when a great crack of thunder sent him diving into the safety of his bed and drawing up the covers about his ears, in the protection of the cool sheets. A second clap of thunder sounded right over his room as he shivered, letting his body make a comfortable warm spot.

The candles both still burned, the watch-candle and the one that sat always at his bedside. Beside them sat the cup that he was to drink-Mauryl made it for him every evening. But when he had blown out the candle he had brought, and by the light of the fat, dim watch-candle reached out an arm and picked up the cup to drink it—he found it empty.

Well, so, Mauryl had been preoccupied. Mauryl was very busy and bothered whenever he was at his ciphering, which involved lines and circles and a great many numbers that made no sense at all to his eyes. He wondered if he should take the cup down to Mauryl and ask him how to make it himself, since there had never been a night he had not had it, but he supposed that one night would not make all that great a difference. It was a comfortable thing, and Mauryl said he was supposed to drink it all, every night, but he was supposed to have breakfast every day, too, and there had certainly been mornings when Mauryl had quite forgotten, before he had learned to make it for himself.

So he gave a sigh and decided it was like the breakfasts, and that if Mauryl did chance to remember it, and if it were important enough, Mauryl would wake him and have him drink it. He lay back, abandoned and forgotten, and listened to the beating of the rain against the horn window.

But just then he saw lightnings making patterns in the rough horn panes, droplets crawling and racing across the fractured yellow surface, and he realized that the shutters that had turned up shut and latched every evening in his room—as the cup had always been waiting—were not shut. He had not seen it: the light from the candles had blinded him to anything so far as the end of his bed. The lightnings showed it plainly now that he was down only to the watch-candle.

And he knew that he ought to get up in the chill air and fold the shutters across the window and latch them tight, but the thunder frightened him, and the rain did, and the unguarded window did. He was safe in bed. He tain he shout& get up an~ sY, x~xtet xY~x m’xxx~Xt)x~ ~ ~xx~x ~x~’xt xxt~x~ ...

If his eyelids were not suddenly so heavy and his breaths so deep and easy, the mattress gone soft, soft, soft as the water splashed off the window, which was a snug window, and latched, he knew that. He never unlatched it. Water ran down the gutters and down and down to ...

To the cistern, he thought, then, and dreamed of the buckets he had to draw, and how the cistern smelled cool and damp when he took off the wooden lid.., how it was dark and secret and he liked casting the bucket down, not knowing how deep the cistern really was, because the rope for the bucket was not nearly long enough to touch the bottom. He let it drop down and down, with a splash ...

The rain barrel was for the kitchen. The rain barrel was for washing.

The cistern, deep and dark, was a place of shadows ...

... shadows that moved and flowed up like water overflowing, running along the stones the way water ran, flowing up the step and seeping, with the puddle, under the kitchen door.

He waked, in total dark, heart thumping in his chest.

The second candle had gone out.

It might have been the sudden plunge into darkness that had wakened him. He thought so. He heard no change in the rush of rain. The wind skirled about the perilous window; the lightning through the horn cast strange shapes, accompanied by thunder.

Something groaned, as if the timbers of the keep were shifting.

Wind sounds. Night sounds. The fortress was full of creaks and groans and scurryings that seemed loudest at night.