He had never seen those doors ajar—had asked Mauryl once did those doors go anywhere, and Mauryl had said, Doors mostly do.

Anywhere in the world, Mauryl had said, is where doors go.

Another slate crashed on the stones, and another. He ducked under the kitchenward arch for safety as a third and a fourth fell.

Mauryl had never opened that south door, nor let him lift the bar. He had never guessed that sunlight was at the other side.

But the door was thrown from its metal hinges, and the bar was thrown down, one end against the stones, with the sun flooding through the crack—the sun, the enemy of the Shadows.

It seemed safer than where he was. He ventured a dash across the slate-littered floor to the arch of the alcove and, finding the gap almost wide enough to let him out, pushed and scraped his way through.

He stood on low steps in a place he had never seen—a stone courtyard within high walls, and a white stone path which led off at an angle through weeds and vacancy, as far as the gate that—he knew all too well—was the start of the Road that led through the encircling woods, the Road that Mauryl had said he must find and follow.

He had thought Mauryl would go before him. He had hoped Mauryl meant him to follow him when he went away.

And perhaps Mauryl had indeed gone, and expected him to have the wits to know that.

“Mauryl?” he called out to the emptiness around him. Sometimes Mauryl did amazing things, things he never expected, and perhaps, even in this circumstance, Mauryl could speak to him out of the sun or the stones, or give him a stronger hint what he should do next.

Mauryl?-Mauryl?-Mauryl? was all the echoes gave him, his own question back again, the way the walls echoed with the axe.

He could not bear to call aloud again. The courtyard sounded too frighteningly empty.

But the Road was more frightening to him still, and unknown, and he did not want to leave by mistake, too soon: he was prone to mistakes, and it was far too great a matter to risk any misunderstanding at all.

So he sat down on that step in front of the door; he pressed his Book close against him, and told himself that Mauryl was surely still somewhere about, and that it was not time yet for him to go. He should only wait, and be certain.

Mauryl was not, at least, inside; the sun was high, and he was, he said to himself, far safer out here than inside where the roof slates were crashing down, and where the balconies were creaking and falling.

Mauryl could make the balconies stay still if Mauryl were not busy.

Mauryl said that making things do what they did naturally was easy, and surely it was natural that things be the way they had always been.

Pigeons came down and walked about on their own errands, expecting grain, perhaps, but he dared not go in again under the chance of falling slates and cross the study to get it for them, not until the slates stopped coming down, or until Mauryl turned up to make everything right again—which he wished most of all.

“Please,” he said faintly. “Mauryl? Mauryl, please hear me?”

It was the same as in his room, when the fear came. And no, Mauryl did not always arrive at the moment one would wish. Mauryl did not have every answer; Mauryl had tasks to do that a boy could not understand, and Mauryl’s silence could well mean that Mauryl was busy.

There had been a danger, but Mauryl had overcome it, and Mauryl would pay attention to him as soon Mauryl found the time. He should wait patiently and not take hasty action, that was what Mauryl would advise him.

So he sat on the low steps, and he sat, and he sat, until the sun was behind the far tower and the shadow of that tower touched the courtyard.

While he sat, he tried earnestly, fervently, to read his Book, telling himself that now, perhaps, once the moment called for it, Words might come to him and show him everything Mauryl had wanted of him in his command to read this Book, things which would prevent Mauryl going on the Road, and which would prevent his having to go, as well.

But hours passed in his efforts, and in his fear. The shadow of the walls joined the shadow of the tower and grew long across the courtyard stones.

At last the shadow touched the walls, complete across the courtyard, and he knew that on any ordinary day he should be inside and off the parapets and out of the courtyard by now. He was thinking that when the wind suddenly picked up, skirled up the dead leaves from a corner of the wall, and those leaves rose higher and higher, dancing down the paving stones toward the tower.

And back again. That was odd for a wind to do. It was a chill wind as it touched him. The pigeons, while he read, had deserted the courtyard stones, seeking their towers for the night. The shadows, while he read, had come into nooks where no shadows had been at noon. The faces in the stone walls seemed more ambiguous, more ghostly and more dubious than they appeared by day.

Be certain, Mauryl had always said, that the shutters and the doors are bolted every night.

Be afraid of the dark. When the sky shadows, be under stone and have the shutters closed and the doors well shut. Have I not said this before?

He shivered, with the Book folded in his hands, his hands between his knees as the wind danced back again. He looked up at the color stealing across the sky. The faces set in the walls changed their expressions with the passage of shadow. Now they seemed to look down in horror.

He looked up at the walls above his head—and saw Mauryl’s face above him, stone like the others, wide-mouthed and angry.

He stumbled off the middle step, fell on the bottom one and picked himself up, staring at the face in horrid surmise—backed farther and farther across the courtyard stones, with Mauryl’s face among the stone faces he had seen in the walls from the beginning of his existence here, wide-mouthed and wide-eyed as if Mauryl could at any moment scream in anger or in terror, either one.

“Mauryl?” he said faintly, and somewhere within the hall timbers fell with a horrific crash and splintering. Another balcony, he thought.

“Mauryl?” he cried aloud, daring not admit he still could not read the

Book. There must be an exception. There must be a way out. “Mauryl, what shall I do, Mauryl? Please tell me what to do!”

He heard slates fall inside, a lighter, sharper-edged ruin.

A cold skirl of wind went past him.

An immense mass of something crashed inside and knocked the door shut, as if someone had slammed it in his face. He stared in shock, terrified.

He had no recollection, then, of turning away, except he was walking toward the gate. Reaching it, he tried not the heavy bar but the lesser one, which closed a gate within the gate; that was enough to let him out.

He shut it once he was through, and asked himself foolishly how he should bar it, and then—against what should he bar it? and protecting what? Mauryl had set great importance on locking and latching doors, but it was far beyond his ability to seal this one against harm. He turned and faced the bridge and the river, and the forest beyond it, already shadowing toward dark—and could only set out walking on the Road. Go where you see to go, Mauryl had said. Take the Road that offers itself.

And he did, over the rotten boards and stonework of the Bridge that spanned the river Lenfialim.

The water was dark beneath the gaps over which he walked, clinging fearfully to the stones along the edge of the high-arched bridge. The river looked murky green in the deep shadow and made patterns on its surface, swirls and ripples which on another day might tempt him to linger and wonder; but haste and dread overwhelmed all curiosity in him-haste—clinging to an ancient, crumbling stone railing, and with old mortar sifting from under his feet. If he should fall, he said to himself, he would slip beneath that surface, where it must be as cold and as dark as the rain barrel or the cistern, and where all that Mauryl had done with him and all that Mauryl had told him would come to nothing: he could not be so foolish.