Mordant's Need

  ‘But I do not waste my time’ – he was growing deliciously ready for her – ‘I assure you that I do not waste my time on hate.’

  She continued to gaze at him with her curious blend of absence and hunger. She had her back to the windows and the sunlight; perhaps that was what made her eyes look so dark, her beauty seem so fatal.

  Huskily, bringing the words up from far down her throat, she said, ‘Let me show you what I can do.’

  With one hand, she reached out and gently touched her fingertips to the unmistakable bulge in the front of his cloak.

  He felt like crowing.

  Frantically, Artagel fought to prolong his life, keep himself on his feet for one more moment, just one, then another if he could do it. He was the best swordsman in Mordant, wasn’t he? Surely he could keep himself alive one more moment at a time?

  Maybe not. The pain in his side had become a fire that filled his lungs, so that he seemed to snatch each raw breath through a conflagration. His sword kept turning in his hands; blood and sweat ruined his grip. His legs had lost their spring; he had no more strength to do anything except shuffle his boots over the stone. Sometimes his heavy lurching from side to side dashed water and blood off his brows, cleared his vision; most of the time, however, he had trouble seeing.

  How had the corridor become so narrow? He couldn’t seem to get a full swing, no matter what he did.

  Gart, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be experiencing any difficulty. His brief, wild fury had faded. In fact, the pace of his attacks was slower now, more deliberate; more malicious. He was toying with his opponent. Yellow glee shone in his eyes, and he grinned as if he were crowing inside.

  What a way to die. No, worse than that: what a way to be beaten. Artagel was a fighter; he had lived most of his life in the vicinity of death. For him, it was at once so familiar and so unimaginable that he couldn’t be afraid of it. But to be beaten like this, utterly, miserably—

  Oh, Geraden, forgive me.

  If only, he thought dumbly, if only he hadn’t been hurt the last time. If only he hadn’t spent so much time in bed.

  Terisa, forgive me.

  But it was stupid to wish for things like that. Foolish regret: a waste of time and energy and life. Gart had beaten him the last time, too. And the time before that.

  I will regret nothing.

  He retreated down the passage, past more doors than he could count; stumbling, barely on his feet. By bare will, he kept his sword up for Gart to play with.

  If anybody thinks he can do better than this, let him try.

  That was enough. As unsteady as a drunk, he stopped; he locked both hands around his wet swordhilt.

  I will regret nothing.

  Almost retching for air, he jerked forward and did his absolute best to split Gart’s head open.

  Negligently, Gart blocked the blow.

  Artagel’s eyes were full of blood: he couldn’t see what happened. But he knew from the sound, the familiar echoing clang after his swing, and from the sudden shift of balance, that he had broken his sword.

  One jagged half remained in his fists; the other rang away across the floor, singing metallically of failure.

  ‘Now,’ Gart breathed like silk. ‘Now, you fool.’

  Involuntarily, Artagel went down on one knee, as if he couldn’t stay on his feet without an intact weapon.

  The High King’s Monomach raised his sword. Between streaks of Artagel’s blood, the steel gleamed.

  For some reason, a door behind Gart opened.

  Nyle came into the passage.

  He looked like Artagel felt: abused to the bone; exhausted beyond bearing. But he held the chains of his manacles clenched in his fists, and he swung the heavy rings on the ends of the chains at Gart’s head.

  The instincts which had made Gart the High King’s Monomach saved him. Warned by some visceral intuition, some impalpable tremor in the air, he wrenched himself aside and started turning.

  The rings missed his head, came down on his left shoulder.

  They hit him hard enough to strike that arm away from his sword. But he did most of his fighting one-handed anyway, despite his weapon’s weight. While his left arm fell numb – maybe broken – his right was already in motion, bringing his blade around to sever Nyle’s neck.

  Nyle!

  In that moment, a piece of time as quick and eternal as a translation, Artagel brought up the last strength from the bottom of his heart and lunged forward.

  With his whole body, he drove his broken sword through the armhole of Gart’s armor.

  Then he and Nyle collapsed on Gart’s corpse as if they had become kindred spirits at last.

  He had the peculiar conviction that he needed to prevent Gart from rising up after death and shedding more blood. A long time seemed to pass before he recovered enough sanity to wonder whether Nyle was still alive.

  The crash and burn of Master Gilbur’s storm seemed to blot out Geraden’s senses, smother his will. He couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a breath. On the other hand, air wasn’t especially important to him at the moment. Lightning struck the stone so close-by that it nearly scorched him; he could feel the shock like a tingle in the floor. Darkness swept the sunlight away: thunder tried to crush him.

  Well, the storm daunted the wolves, held them at bay. That was some consolation. And if it continued to mount in this enclosed space, it would begin to topple the mirrors.

  Master Gilbur didn’t appear to care any longer what might happen to his mirrors. He was roaring like the blast, and his hunched back strained to lift his head as high as possible, gnash his jaws at the ceiling.

  With a massive concussion, all the windows blew out. At once, the pressure around Geraden eased, and he started breathing again.

  Too bad: the loss of the windows might save the mirrors. Unless the roof came down.

  Gilbur had to be stopped. Geraden had the distinct impression that the Imager was going mad, transported by power. A storm like this, constricted like this, could conceivably level the whole building.

  Geraden had done it once. Could he do it again?

  Forget the thunder that deafened him, stunned his mind. Forget the lightning, the near-miss of fire hot enough to incinerate his bones. Forget wind and wolves and violence.

  Think about glass.

  Despite the storm, Gilbur’s only real weapon was the mirror itself, a piece of normal glass. It had a particular hue blended of sand and tinct; a particular shape created by molds and rollers and heat. His talent had made it what it was. His talent opened it like a blown-out window between worlds. But Geraden also had talent. He could feel the mirror, see its Image in his mind as if by the simple intensity of his perception, his imagination, he made it real.

  He didn’t know how to halt the translation. But he could shift the Image.

  No. Gilbur was resisting him. Forewarned by what had happened to the mirror of the wolves, the Imager clung to this glass grimly, forced the translation.

  Don’t give up. Don’t get confused. No matter how it felt, this wasn’t a contest between lightning and flesh, thunder and hearing, wind and muscle. Those things were irrelevant. The struggle was one of will and talent. Gilbur may have been mad, exalted by hate, but he had no experience with this kind of battle; none of the Masters had ever been trained to fight for control of their translations in this way.

  And Geraden had gone wrong so often in his life that it had become intolerable. He loved too many people, and they had been too badly hurt.

  In one moment briefer than a heartbeat, the Image shifted.

  Severed in midpassage, the storm blasted the glass to powder.

  Geraden couldn’t hear anything: the abrupt silence seemed louder than thunder. He saw Master Gilbur cursing him, spitting apoplectic fury at him, but the oaths made no noise. The sprinkling fall of glass-dust was mute. The wolves bared their fangs, and their chests heaved, but their snarling was voiceless.

  While Geraden struggled to his
feet, Gilbur moved to another mirror.

  For one stunned instant, Geraden gaped at the Image and didn’t understand. What power did Gilbur see there? The glass showed an empty landscape, nothing more: a barren stretch of ground riddled with cracks, tossed with boulders, but devoid of anything that breathed or moved or could attack.

  Then, as Master Gilbur got his hands on the frame and began to snarl his concentration-chant as if it were fundamentally obscene, Geraden saw the ground in the Image jumping.

  The boulders rocked and heaved, lifted from the dirt; the edges of the landscape vibrated.

  Earthquake.

  Gilbur’s mirror showed a place in a state of ongoing cataclysm, of almost perpetual orogenic crisis – the kind of crisis that built and broke mountains, shouldered oceans aside, shattered continents.

  He was translating an earthquake.

  ‘No!’ Geraden cried through the mounting tectonic rumble. ‘You will not do this!’

  ‘Stop me!’ bellowed back the Imager, impervious to authority, or reason, or self-destruction. ‘Stop me, you puny bastard!’

  The stronghold would go down in moments: it hadn’t been built to withstand an earthquake. That would end the translation. As soon as the ceiling fell, Gilbur would be crushed; his mirror would be crushed.

  But in the meantime everyone else inside would die. Terisa and Eremis. Artagel and Gart. Nyle. Geraden himself. And the tremor might trigger the collapse of the surrounding hills. The devastation might spread for miles before it faded.

  Yes! Geraden had no idea whether or not he shouted aloud. I will stop you! He ignored the accelerating tremble under his boots, the deepening, rocky groan in the air; he accepted Gilbur’s challenge. You will not do this!

  With all the force he possessed, he took control of the glass, arrested the translation.

  This time, Master Gilbur was ready for him; braced and powerful; completely insane. The virulence of the Imager’s will to open the mirror shocked through Geraden, burned him like fire, nauseated him like poison. The mirror itself was merely held, locked between opposing talents; but everything Gilbur brought to the battle seemed to strike straight into Geraden.

  Rages he had never felt, needs he had never understood, lusts he had never imagined; loathsome things, destructive things; fears so inarticulate and consuming that they deformed the Master’s essential being.

  Long years ago, before King Joyse brought him to the Congery, Gilbur had been an Imager living alone in the Armigite hills, interested only in his own researches. But he had been attacked; and in the struggle the roof of his cave had fallen on him, pinning him under a block of stone. He had lain there for hours or days until Eremis had rescued him.

  During that time, he had suffered like the damned.

  Excruciating pain in the long, lonely dark; a horror of death elevated to agony by every terrible fear he could imagine; screams no one would ever hear, even though they went on for the rest of his life.

  He had come through that experience mangled in spirit as well as in body. It had made him who he was: hungry and violent; eager for power; devoted to Eremis. Many times since joining the Congery, he would have gone amok, if he hadn’t been restrained by Eremis’ presence – or crippled by the suspicion that it was Eremis who had attacked him in the first place. Now he hurled all his twisted needs and desires into his translation; hurled them all at Geraden.

  They should have been enough to make Geraden quail. But they weren’t. In an odd, unforeseen way, he was prepared for them.

  He, too, had once been buried alive, under the rubble of Darsint’s escape from Orison. He had tasted pain and horror, hopeless suffocation. And now, as then, other people’s needs were more important to him than his own.

  If Gilbur’s translation succeeded, Terisa and Artagel and Nyle would die. Everyone in and around the stronghold would probably die. Without the help Geraden and Terisa could give, King Joyse might die, taking Mordant and eventually Alend with him.

  So Geraden ignored the harsh anguish Gilbur sent at him. He closed his mind to his visceral fear of trembling stone. He shut the wolves out of his awareness.

  Will-to-will, he met Master Gilbur’s madness and held the mirror, sealing the glass in the onset of translation, keeping the earthquake back.

  That was Gilbur’s chance. If he had let go of the mirror then and used his dagger, he could have killed Geraden almost without effort.

  But he didn’t let go. Maybe he couldn’t. Or maybe somewhere down at the bottom of his heart he wanted to be stopped. Whatever the reason, he clung to the glass frame, clung to his translation, and tried to make his hate stronger than Geraden’s determination.

  In the end, it wasn’t his hate that failed him: it was his body. Without warning, while he strained and raged, a pain as heavy as a spear drove through the center of his chest.

  He blanched; his hands slipped from the mirror; involuntarily, he clutched at his heart. Slowly, his jaw dropped, and his eyes began to gape. Reaching for air he could no longer find, he stumbled to his knees as if the ground had been cut out from under him.

  His whole face twisted as if he wanted to curse Geraden before he died. But he had lost his chance. He was already dead as he toppled to the stone.

  The wolves would have killed Geraden then. He was too shaken to defend himself, too deeply shocked. Artagel and Nyle arrived in time to save him, however. Artagel was exhausted, of course, hardly able to lift his arms; but he had Gart’s sword, and it seemed to give him strength. And Nyle swung his chains crazily, which made one or two of the wolves hesitate, giving Artagel the opportunity to dispatch them.

  The three brothers hugged each other long and hard before they went to look for Terisa.

  ‘No.’ Master Eremis caught her by the wrist and pulled her hand away from him. ‘Not yet. I am not ready to trust you.’ But he was ready to do everything else to her. ‘I have not forgotten that you once kicked me.’

  She continued to gaze at him as if he hadn’t spoken. The combination of hunger and absence in her eyes didn’t change.

  Again, he wondered what she had hidden away in the secret places of her heart. Was that where she kept her fear? Or did she still have surprises left in her?

  He was ready for everything about her, ready to take away everything she had. Before he was done, she would confess her secrets, all of them, she would give him everything about herself, hoping that it would save her. But nothing would save her. He was going to take all she had and leave her empty.

  Now, however, she wasn’t looking at him any longer. Her attention had returned to the mirror.

  Kragen still held his ground, blocked the right side of the valley with more success than Eremis had expected from him; but the defense to the left continued crumbling. The forces of Alend and Mordant seemed to dissolve under the Cadwal charge. Hurrying to take advantage of this opportunity, the Cadwals gathered speed.

  High King Festten followed them, bringing all his reinforcements to that side. In moments, Festten himself rode past the dead length of the slug-beast, entering the valley at a hard canter.

  As soon as the High King was in reach, Joyse struck. With the third portion of his army, he came down the valley like a hammer and smashed into the front of the charge.

  At the same time, Kragen abandoned his position. Leaving behind only enough men to keep his side of the valley closed for a short time, he brought the rest of his strength against the Cadwal incursion.

  And the Termigan did the same from the other side.

  He was retreating, his men were scrambling for their lives, they were already beaten – and suddenly they turned and became a coherent force again and attacked. Backed by the rampart wall, they drove into the Cadwals near the narrowest point of access to the valley—

  — hit so hard, so unexpectedly, that they cut Festten off.

  With four or five thousand of his men still outside the valley, out of reach, the High King found himself facing his old enemy in battle.

 
Here for a short time at any rate the conditions of combat were almost even: the numbers of the armies were nearly equal. Nevertheless there was nothing equal about the way the men fought.

  The Cadwals had been taken by surprise, outmaneuvered; their greatest weapon, the slug-beast, was dead; they couldn’t retreat. Their consternation was obvious through the mirror, as vivid as a shout. And the forces of Mordant and Alend struck as if they knew that while King Joyse led them they could never be defeated.

  They didn’t know that Joyse was as good as dead, that Eremis could translate him to madness at any time. They only knew that he was leading them again, and fighting mightily, that no one had ever seen him lose. His spirit seemed to sweep them with him, carry them all to power.

  Almost immediately, what should have been an even fight began to look like a victory for the King.

  Terisa cleared her throat. Softly, but precisely, so that each word was unmistakable, she asked, ‘Do you hear horns?’

  Horns?

  Eremis studied her narrowly. He didn’t care about the battle, not anymore; the fire in him needed a different outlet. No matter what happened in the valley, Joyse’s doom was here: this mirror would ruin him. And if Festten was beaten first, so much the better. Eremis was done with that alliance. It had served its purpose.

  But she wasn’t looking at him.

  He wanted her to look at him. He wanted to see fear in her eyes.

  With his hands on her shoulders, he turned her.

  Still she wasn’t afraid. The hunger she had revealed earlier was gone. Blankness filled her gaze.

  No, Terisa, he promised, there is no escape that way. There is no part of you so secret that I cannot find it and hurt it.

  To get her attention, he unclasped his cloak and let it drop, then undid his trousers so that she could see the size of his passion against her.