Read Online Fortress in the Eye of Time by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online

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 had always thought that if he stayed abed the thunder could not reach him and the Shadows had to stay away…but he knew better now: he was certain he should get up and shutter that window, and do it now…
    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…
    â€¦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.
    That was because the fortress was old; Mauryl had said so when he had come to Mauryl afraid. Old, well-settled timbers creaked with the changes in weather, and the mice came and went as they pleased in the walls. Owl flew out on better nights.
    But he tried not to think of Owl, or Owl’s fierce eyes glaring at him.
    Again came that deep wooden groaning, which made him think the wind must be blowing from some direction it never had before. He lay shivering beneath his covers, warm enough, wondering why he was afraid, wishing that he dared jump out of bed very quickly and fling the shutter closed, but he imagined something at the window at just that moment, and himself standing too close…
    He could run out onto the balcony and go looking for Mauryl, but he saw no light under his door, beside his bed. Light always showed far across the floor if the wall sconce on the balcony outside was still lit. It was dark outside his room, and he had no idea whether Mauryl was upstairs abed or down at the table.
    The very walls groaned, and the groaning became a bellow that shocked the air.
    â€œ Mauryl! ” he cried, and flung the covers off and bolted for the door, naked as he was, with that bellowing going up and down the hollow core of the keep. He flung the door open onto dark.
    No light shone up from the great hall below: the heart of the keep was dark all the way to the depths and the nook of Mauryl’s study, where lights burned latest. The candles were all out, even the watch-candles at the turnings of the stairs, and that bellowing echoed up from the depths and down from the rafters. He felt his way in panic along the wooden balcony, his hands following the cold stone of the wall, and he