Chapter 2
Spatters of rain on the dust.
Trees whispering and nodding and giving up leaves, twigs sent flying.
Smell of stone, smell of bruised leaves, smell of lightnings and rain-washed air.
Taste of water. Chill of wind. Flash of lightning that hurt the eyes.
Boom of thunder that shook heart and bone.
It was like too much ale. Like too much to eat. Like too much heat and too much cold. Everything was patterns, shapes, sounds, light, dark, soft, sharp, rough, smooth, stone-cold, life-warm, and all too much to own and hold at once. Sometimes he could hardly move, the flood of the bright world was so much and so quick.
Tristen stood on the stone parapet, watched the lightning flashes fade the woods and sky and watched the trees below the wall bow their heads against the stone. Thunder rumbled. Rain swept in gray curtains against the tower, spattered the surface of the puddles and cascaded in streams off the slate of the many roofs. Tristen laughed and breathed the rain-drenched wind, raised hands and face to catch the pelting drops.
They stung his palms and eyelids, so he dared not look at them. Rain coursed, cold and strange sensation, over his naked body, finding hollows and new courses, all to the shape of him.
It was delight. He looked at his bare feet, wiggled his toes in puddles that built in the low places of the stonework and made channels between the stones in the high places. Water made all the dusty gray stonework new and shiny. Rain made slanting veils across the straight fall off the eaves and played music beneath the thunder-rumble. Tristen spun on the slick stones and slipped, recovering himself against the low wall of the parapet and laughing in surprise as he saw, below him, where the gutters made a veritable flood, brown water, where the rain was gray. A green leaf was stuck to the gray stone. He wondered why it stayed there. ...Tristen ....
He straightened back from his headlong dangle, arm lingering to brace himself on the stone edge as he looked toward Mauryl’s angry voice. He blinked water from his eyes, saw Mauryl’s brown-robed figure. Mauryl’s clothes were soaked through, Mauryl’s gray hair and beard were streaming water, and Mauryl’s eyes beneath his dripping brows were blue and pale and furious as Mauryl came to seize him by the arm.
He had clearly done something wrong. He tried to cipher what that wrong thing was as Mauryl took him from the wall. Mauryl was hurting his arm, and he resisted the pull, only enough to keep Mauryl’s fingers from bruising.
“Come along,” Mauryl said, and held the harder, so he thought saving his arm was wrong, too. He let Mauryl hurt him as he hurried him back along the parapet, Mauryl’s black boots and his bare feet splashing through the puddles. Mauryl’s robes dripped water. Mauryl’s hair made curling ropes and water dripped off the ends. Mauryl’s shoulders were thin and the cloth stuck to him and flapped about his legs and leather boots. The staff struck crack, crack-crack against the pavings, but Mauryl hardly limped, he was in such an angry hurry.
Mauryl took him to the rain-washed door, shoved up the outside latch with the knob of his staff, and drew him roughly inside into the little, stone-floored room. Light came only through the yellowed horn panes, storm-dimmed and strange, and the rain was far quieter here.
Mauryl let go his arm, then, still angry with him. “Where are your clothes?”
Was that the mistake? Tristen wondered, and said, “Downstairs. In my room.”
“Downstairs. Downstairs! What good do they do you downstairs?”
He was completely bewildered. It seemed to him that Mauryl had said not to spoil them. Mauryl’s were dripping wet. So were Mauryl’s boots, and his were downstairs, dry. It had seemed very good sense to him, and still did, except Mauryl lifted his hand in anger and he flinched.
Mauryl reached for his shoulder, instead, and shook him, deciding, he hoped, not to hit him. Mauryl would indeed strike him, sometimes when Mauryl was angry, at other times Mauryl said he had to remember. It was hard to tell, sometimes, which was which, except Mauryl would seem satisfied after the latter and far angrier than he had started after the former, so he wished Mauryl had simply hit him and told him to remember.
Instead, Mauryl beckoned him to the wooden stairs, and led him down and down the rickety steps. The soaked hem of Mauryl’s robe made a trail of rain drops on the wood, in the wan, sad light from the horn panes set along the way.
Clump, tap, clump, tap, clump-tap, downward and down. Tristen’s bare feet made far less sound on the smooth, dusty boards. He supposed rain didn’t spoil the clothes after all, and that he had guessed wrong. The water on the dust beneath his feet felt smooth and strange. He wasn’t sorry to feel it. But he supposed he was wrong.
And confirming it, when Mauryl reached the walkway that led to his room, Mauryl banged his staff angrily on the floor. His robe shook off more drops and made a puddle on the boards.
“Go clothe yourself. Come down to the hall when you’ve done. I want to talk to you.”
Tristen bowed his head and went to his own room, where he had left his clothes on his bed. The puddles he left on the board floor showed faintly in the light from the unshuttered horn panes. His hair streamed water down his back and down his shoulders and dripped in his eyes. He wiped it back and tried to squeeze the water out. It made dark tangles on his shoulders, and his clothes stuck to his body and resisted his pulling them on. So did the boots. His hair soaked the shoulders of his shirt, and he combed the tangles out, to look as presentable as he could.
Maybe Mauryl would forget. Maybe Mauryl would forget he had asked him to come downstairs and tell him to go away. Sometimes Mauryl would, when he was lost in his books.
The thunder was still booming and talking above their heads, and the water was still running down the horn panes—the horn was yellowed and sometimes brown: it had curious circles and layers and fitted together with metal pieces. The horn colored the light it let in, and the shadow of raindrops crawled down its face, which he loved to see. A puddle had formed on the sill, where a joint in the horn let raindrops inside. Sometimes he made patterns with the water on the stone.
Sometimes he let it stand until it spilled down off the sill and he waited and waited for the moment.
But he was cold now, and with his hair making his shoulders wet, he began to be cold all over. He took his cloak from the peg and slung it about his shoulders, hugged it about him as he went out into the wooden hall and clumped down the wooden steps, down and down to the study, making echoes that Mauryl couldn’t help but notice. He was here. He was obeying, as Mauryl said.
Mauryl was standing by the fire. Mauryl had changed his clothes and wrapped himself in his cloak, too. Mauryl’s hair had begun to dry, a silver net around his ears, not combed, and Mauryl had his arms folded, so he looked like a bird puffed up in its feathers, cold and cross.
“Sir,” he said. Mauryl seemed not to notice him. He waited what seemed a long while for Mauryl to look at him, and wondered if Mauryl would after all forget he was angry. Or change his mind.
Then abruptly, fiercely, Mauryl turned his shoulder to the fire and looked him over, head to foot and back again, searching, perhaps, for another disappointment—disappointment was in the set of Mauryl’s shoulders. Fault was in that stare. Tristen stood, hands clasped before him, downhearted, too, that he had so failed Mauryl’s expectations.
Again.
His feet were numb with cold. He bent his toes in his boots, deciding he deserved to be cold, and maybe he could have fallen off the wall, but he did look where he was putting his feet, he truly did. Or he was quick enough to stop himself. He remembered slipping. He stood very respectfully in the archway, awaiting invitation to approach the fire, wondering if he should tell Mauryl how he’d saved himself.