Fortress in the Eye of Time by C. J. Cherryh Page B

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 hewas 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