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

reached the turn where three faces were set together. He felt their open mouths and their pointed stone teeth, and groped out into utter blackness for the railing that should come before the steps.
    His foot found the edge of the steps instead: he seized the railing for balance. The stairs went both up above and down to the depths from there, and he trusted nothing below. The safe place had to be Mauryl’s room—if it was dark below, then Mauryl could not be there. Mauryl had gone to bed upstairs. Mauryl would tell him it was nothing, just a sound. Mauryl would call him foolish boy and calm his heart and tell him that nothing could get inside.
    He ran stumbling up the steps, felt his way around and around the railing with the whole keep echoing and bellowing about him as if every mouth in every face in the walls had found a tongue at once.
    His head topped the steps and he could see, by the light under Mauryl’s door, the floor of the balcony above his. He climbed the last steps, he ran to that door, seized the handle and pulled—but it was barred from inside, and the bellowing hurt his ears, drowned his heart, smothered his breath.
    â€œMauryl!” he cried, and beat on Mauryl’s door with his clenched fist. The dark was all around him, and he felt the balcony creak and shake as if something else were walking onit, something shut out, too, in the dark outside Mauryl’s room. That thing was coming toward him.
    â€œMauryl!”
    Something banged, inside, something shattered, steps crossed the floor in haste and the bolt crashed back. The door swung abruptly inward, then, and Mauryl stood, a shadow against the bright golden light that shone through the wild silver of his hair, the cloth of his robe.
    The place was all parchments and vessels, charts and bottles on the unmade bed, the smell of ale and old linen and sulfur so thick it took the breath. The groaning was around them, deep and terrible, and Mauryl waved his arm in a fit of rage, shouted a Word—
    The sudden silence was stifling, leaving his pulse hammering in his ears—his heart pounding. “You fool! ” Mauryl shouted at him, and in utter fright he tried to leave, but Mauryl snatched at his arm and wanted him inside, where he was afraid to go.
    Then somehow between the two of them the night table went bump and scrape and toppled over as Mauryl’s hand left his arm, as pottery crashed, as parchments slid heavily out the door.
    â€œCome back here!” Mauryl raged after him.
    He fled in terror for the stairs, stumbled against the upward steps before he knew where he was, landed on his hands and knees on the steps and heard the furious taps of Mauryl’s staff as Mauryl hastened down the balcony after him.
    â€œFool!” Mauryl shouted, and he clambered up the steps half on hands and knees before he even thought that it was the way to the loft.
    â€œTristen!” he heard Mauryl shout. He gained his feet and ran up and up the turns of the stairs, up the last rickety steps to the last precarious balcony and the highest secrecies of the fortress, dark steps that were always dark—except the light under the door.
    It was lightning-lit, now; but the loft was his refuge, his place, full of creatures he knew. He fled to the door and burstinto the wide space. Lightning lit his way, gray flashes through the broken planks and missing slates and shingles. Wind howled and wailed through the gaps, rain blew into his face from the missing boards, and rain fell down his neck as he felt his way among the rafters. All around him was the flutter of disturbed pigeons and doves.
    The door he had left open blew shut with a bang, making him jump. But he reached the nook he most used, soaked and exposed as it was, and he dared catch his breath there, thinking Mauryl would never, ever chase him this far. His flight would not please Mauryl at all. But in a while Mauryl would be less angry.
    So he sat in the dark at the angle of