The howling hurt his ears, dust choked him—there were voices upon voices, rumbling, deep ones, and shrill and piercing: the stone faces everywhere about the keep, open-mouthed, might have come alive—stones might scream like that. He might have. He shook. He clenched his arms and legs up close, as the howling and the shrieking and the rumbling quivered through the boards.

The birds must have fled. They had wings. He had none. He could only stop his ears with his hands and endure it as long as he could.

Then the light he could perceive began to fade. He squinted through the wind, fearing if the sun was going it might never come back. A gust in that moment ripped planks loose from the facing, planks that fell and let in the howling of a stronger wind.

He recoiled and caught hold of a rafter, blinded by the flying straw and grit and dust. He felt the Book slip from his shirt, reached for it, saw, with tears running on his face, its pages whipped open by the wind. A crack opened in the floor, the dusty planks separating as the stones had parted in his room, and the gap spread beside the Book as the pages flipped wildly toward the opening. The Book began to go over-    He let go the beam to seize it, bending pages haphazardly with his fingers. He held it against him as the very timbers of the loft creaked and moaned in the blasts.

“Mauryl!” he cried, having reached the end of his courage. “Mauryl!

Help me!”

But no answer came.

There was no more strength. Mice perished, poor surrogate victims, sorry vengeance for Galasien. Birds flew in the high reaches of the tower and battered themselves against the stone, falling senseless and dying to the floor far below ....

The wind roared, and Mauryl shuddered at the chaos that poured through the rents in the walls.

—Gods, he murmured, gods, thou fool, Hasufin.

—The gods are gone, the Wind said. The first to flee us were all such gods as favored us, did you mark that, Gestaurien? But I may Summon thee back to my service. What do you think of that?

—Ludicrous, Mauryl said, and slipped, perilously so, toward the horror always thick about the fortress. The imprisoned spirits wailed, mindless in their despair, wailed and raveled in the winds, powerless now.

—So where is your Shaping, old Master? asked the Wind. Where is your defender, this champion of your poor crumbling hall? Cowering amongst the pigeons? Hiding from me?

—I thought you knew. Ask wiser questions. I wait to be astonished.

—Mock what you like. Banish me this time, old fool. Tell me this time who’s the greater.

—Time, Mauryl said, and drew a breath laden with dust. He cracked his staff against the stones, once, twice, three times, and the towers quaked, sifting down dust. Time is ripped loose, fool, it is undone: we exist, thou and I, only for what will be; we dream, you and I, we dream, but no band have we on the world. All is done, Hasufin, all for us is past, and failed, our candle is out, and worms are the issue of our long contention. Have done, thou arrant, prating fool, and let it rest here.

The wind breathed in sudden hush between the gusts, sported about the courtyard, whirled among dead leaves that.., for a moment ... showed a dust-formed cloak and cowl.

—Destroy the Shaping, the man of dust said. Do that, my old mentor, and, aye, we might together sleep the sleep. Will that content thee?

Come, take my band, let us kiss like brothers. Destroy him. And we shall sleep in peace.

—Wboreson liar. Worms, I say, worms for your bed, Hasufin, thou braggart, thou frail, mistaken fool I weary of the war.  —Lies for lies, thou lord of delusion.

The dust whipped away, stung the face, blinded the eyes. Mauryl flung it back, and Hasufin struck in kind.

The stones, the former inhabitants of Galasien, screamed with all their voices.

Chaos closed around. The thunder of the staff kept rolling, echoing, cracking stone.

Then came silence. Long silence.

Chapter 6

Tristen’s ears still rang. His flesh still was chilled by the wind. But the Shadow had gone, and broken straw prickled against his face and through his shirt and his breeches—prickled until he was, first, aware of lying on the dusty boards, and second, aware that one knee had gone through a second gap in the boards, and third, aware that he still held the Book safe beneath his body.

Holes were everywhere about the roof, letting in large, dusty shafts of sunlight. Pigeons murmured, a handful going about their ordinary business on the rafters and on the central beam which upheld the roof. A quiet breeze stirred through the loft.

The trouble was past, Tristen thought, and dragged himself from his precarious position, gathered his knees under him and sat up, holding the Book against him. Mauryl would be pleased that he had saved it.

Mauryl would have sent the wind away. Mauryl would have held everything safe downstairs ...

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 Mauryl’s 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? I’m 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 Mauryl’s 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 Mauryl’s 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 ink pot. 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 Mauryl’s parchments.