Mordant's Need

  ‘So here it is,’ he commented distinctly. ‘The truth at last. Geraden’s seducer and a renegade Imager, together. And poor Quillon dead in the corridor. Did he try to stop you? I thought it was him helping her escape, but I must have been wrong. The light isn’t very good.

  ‘You’re lucky you’re alive. If she hadn’t thrown that glass, my men would have cut you down.’

  Master Gilbur’s face twisted with laughter.

  Terisa was past caring what the Castellan thought of her. She took another small step toward the mirror she wanted. Despite the intervening layer of dust, the sand in the Image seemed real to her, more solid than she was herself.

  ‘Drop that pigsticker,’ Lebbick growled at Master Gilbur. ‘It isn’t going to help you. Lie down. Put your face on the floor. I’m going to tie you up. I’d rather kill you, but King Joyse will want you alive. Maybe he’ll let me question you.

  ‘Do it now. Before I change my mind.’

  As if the provocation had become too great to be endured, Gilbur let out a harsh guffaw. ‘My lady,’ he said, scowling thunderously, ‘tell Lebbick why we are not going to let him take us prisoner.’

  She started to retort. The suggestion that she really was an ally of his nearly broke her careful hold on fading. Her anger had come out of hiding, and she wanted to scathe the Master’s skin from his bones.

  Unfortunately, his ploy had already accomplished its purpose: it had tricked Castellan Lebbick into glancing at her again.

  During that brief glance, Master Gilbur pitched a handful of dust into the Castellan’s face.

  Cursing, the Castellan recoiled; he swung his blade defensively. His balance and reflexes were so good that he almost saved himself. Without sight, however, he couldn’t counter Gilbur’s quickness; he couldn’t prevent Gilbur from picking up one of the guard’s swords and clubbing him senseless.

  Terisa paused in front of the mirror she had chosen. Her only rational hope was gone. Now nothing stood between her and whatever the Master might do. She should have been terrified. Yet she wasn’t. Her capacity for surrender protected her. The hope she had placed in the Castellan hadn’t been hope for herself, but only hope against Gilbur. She hadn’t lost anything crucial. Inside herself, she was on the verge of extinction, and Master Gilbur had no way to stop her. When he looked up from Lebbick’s body, she asked, ‘Why don’t you kill him?’

  ‘I have a better idea,’ he snarled, feral with glee. ‘I will take you with me. When he comes back to consciousness, he will report that we are allies. Joyse and his fools will have no conception of their real danger until we destroy them.’

  He was right, of course. The Castellan would be believed. Master Quillon was dead – her sole witness to Master Eremis’ admission of guilt. And Quillon certainly hadn’t had time to tell anyone what he had learned. Gilbur would come after her in a moment. She might be able to slow him down by breaking a few more mirrors, but that would only postpone the inevitable. He had won. If he called this winning.

  Deliberately, she began to let go.

  Nevertheless on the outside she continued to challenge him. ‘Someone will stop you,’ she said as if she were accustomed to defiance. Defiance was what led to being locked in the closet. ‘If Geraden doesn’t do it, I will. You’re going to be stopped.’

  ‘Geraden?’ spat Gilbur. ‘You?’ He really was remarkably quick. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, he ducked under the trestle table and came upright again, bringing his knife toward her. Every knot and fold of his expression promised butchery. ‘How are you going to stop me?’

  How?

  Like this.

  She didn’t need to say it aloud. He was still bearing down on her with his bloody hands when he seemed to run into a wall. Surprise wiped the violence from his face: his eyes sprang wide as he saw what was happening to the mirror behind her.

  ‘Vagel’s balls,’ he muttered. ‘How did you do that?’

  She didn’t look. The last time she had done this, she had done it entirely by accident, without knowing what she was doing; she didn’t try to coerce it now. In any case, at the moment she didn’t care whether she lived or died. She only cared about escape.

  Still astonished, but recovering his wits, Master Gilbur reached for her.

  Gently, Terisa closed her eyes and drifted backward into the dark.

  THIRTY-TWO

  THE BENEFIT OF SONS

  She lay still for a long time. The fact was that she went to sleep. Two nights ago, the lady Elega had poisoned the reservoir of Orison. Last night, Geraden had faced Master Eremis in front of the Congery, and she, Terisa, had become the Castellan’s prisoner. And tonight— She was exhausted. Master Gilbur reached for her, but he must have missed. Even though her eyes were closed, she knew the light was gone. And as the light vanished, she felt herself enter the zone of transition, where time and distance contradicted each other. It was working: she was being translated. Somewhere.

  That was enough. The sensation that she had taken a vast, eternal plunge in no time at all sucked the last bit of her out of herself, completed her self-erasure; and she slept.

  The cold wasn’t what awakened her. The dungeon had been as cold as this. No, it was the faint, damp smell of grass, and the breeze curling kindly through the tear in her shirt, and the high calling of birds, and the impression of space. When she opened her eyes, she saw that she was covered from horizon to horizon by the wide sky. It was still purple with dawn, but already the birds had begun to flit through it everywhere, looking as swift and keen as their own songs against the heavens.

  Then she heard the rich chuckle of running water.

  She raised her head and looked down the hillside toward a fast stream. The melted snow of spring filled its banks and made it hurry, eager to go on its downland journey. In that direction, the water ran toward a valley still shrouded by the receding night; upstream, it came from a high, dark silhouette piled against the purple sky, a sense of mountains.

  The air was as cold as the dungeon, but not as dank, as oppressive; the life hadn’t been squeezed out of it by Orison’s great weight and overloaded ventilation. She took a deep breath, put her hands into the new grass to push herself onto her feet, and stood up.

  Almost at once, the mountains in the distance took light. The sun was rising. For no reason except that it was morning and the air was clear and she was alive, her heart started to sing like the birds, and she knew what she was going to see before the sun reached the massed shadow from which the stream emerged.

  The Closed Fist.

  There.

  Starting from the west, sunshine caught the heavy stone pillar which guarded the stream’s egress from the hills on that side. Then it touched the eastside pillar, and the defile between them came clear, the narrow, secret cut from which the Broadwine River ran toward the heart of the Care of Domne.

  The Closed Fist. Geraden had played here as a boy. The jumble of rocks inside the defile must have been wonderful for children, a source of endless climbing games and cunning hideaways.

  And she had brought herself here. Against all the odds. Despite her utter ignorance of Imagery – and despite Master Eremis’ best efforts to confuse her. She had translated herself to safety using a flat glass. And she hadn’t lost her mind.

  Abruptly, her eyes filled with tears, and she wanted to cry out in relief and joy.

  ‘Terisa.’

  She heard feet running over the grass. Through her tears, she glimpsed a shape, a man blurred by weeping. She turned to face him – to face the sun – and as its clean, new light shone through her, she found herself in Geraden’s arms.

  ‘Terisa.’

  Oh, Geraden. Oh, love.

  ‘Thank the stars! I thought I was never going to see you again.’

  You’re here. You made it. You made it.

  Then he pulled back. ‘Let me look at you.’

  She blinked her sight clear and saw him gazing at her hungrily through his own tears.

&nbsp
; ‘I’ve been watching for you, waiting, almost ever since I got here. It was the only hope I had. I just went in to Houseldon to tell my family what’s going on. They didn’t want me to come back alone, but I couldn’t bear it any other way. I couldn’t bear having somebody watch me wait. I left you there – with Eremis and Lebbick – and I thought I was never going to see you again.’

  She wanted to say, Did you think they could keep me away? The delight of him shone like the sun in front of her. He was the same Geraden he had always been – openhearted, vulnerable, dear. His tears made him look hardly older than a boy. His chestnut hair curled in all directions, full of possibilities above his strong forehead; his bright gaze and his good face were like birdsong in the spring air. I fought Eremis and the Castellan and Master Gilbur for you. Did you think they could keep me away?

  But then he took in her rent shirt, her battered appearance, the strain impacted around her eyes; and his face changed.

  The bones underlying his features seemed to become iron; his eyes seemed to catch and reflect light like tempered and polished iron. As completely as if he had been translated, the boy was gone, and in his place stood a man she hardly knew, a man who resembled Nyle more than Artagel – Nyle when he had set himself to do something which would both humiliate him and hurt the people he cared about. The metal of Geraden’s character had been tempered by bitterness, polished by dismay. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with muffled strength – and veiled threats.

  ‘Why didn’t Eremis kill you? It looks like he tried.’

  Terisa put out her arms to him; she wanted to hug him again, embrace him, bring back the Geraden she had first learned to love. The Geraden who had willingly taken on so many different kinds of pain for her. But he only gripped her hands and held them still, requiring her to stand before him with all her sufferings exposed.

  So she had to try to match him, to meet him where he was. She shook her head – not contradicting him, but denying her desire for comfort – and said, ‘Oh, he tried. Or Master Gilbur tried for him. But the Castellan did this.’

  Distinctly, like the sound of a breaking twig, he said, ‘Lebbick.’ The skin of his face was tight over his iron bones. His threats weren’t directed at her. ‘Tell me.’

  Involuntarily, she faltered. She wanted to be equal to him – to be worthy of him – but she couldn’t do it. Tears filled her eyes again. ‘There’s so much—’

  ‘Terisa.’

  At least he could still be reached. He put his arms around her again and let her cling to him as hard as she was able. Then he murmured, ‘You’re cold. And you look like you could use some food.’ He hadn’t become softer: he was simply holding himself back. Turning her with his arm on her waist, he started her moving up the hillside in the direction of the pillars. ‘My camp is over there.’

  She nodded, unable to speak – unable to separate the joy and the grief of seeing him.

  ‘When I first came through the mirror,’ he explained distantly, ‘when I discovered I was still alive, I planned to hide up here. It’s the best place I could think of. And I didn’t want to put Houseldon in danger, if Eremis tried to get me again. And I’d already lost you. I thought I would go crazy if anybody else got hurt trying to protect me.

  ‘But we finally figured out what Nyle is doing. There’s no way I can keep my family out of danger. So there’s no point in hiding. I just came back here because somebody had to do it – in case you managed to get through somehow and then couldn’t find Houseldon – and it might as well be me because I was going to spend all my time waiting for you anyway.’

  The sun had risen farther. The valley below the Closed Fist would remain in shadow for some time; but now there was enough light to reveal two horses tethered near the rocks ahead. One of them looked up at Terisa and Geraden. The other went on cropping grass unconcernedly. With an effort, she cleared her throat. ‘It sounds like you’ve figured out a lot of things.’

  He snorted sardonically. ‘After that last day we spent together, I knew Eremis was a traitor. When I finally realized I do have a talent for Imagery – an unprecedented talent – it wasn’t too hard to start drawing conclusions. Then all I had to do was hope you really have a talent, too – and you would find it – and you would be able to get at a mirror.

  ‘On the whole, it seemed more plausible that Eremis would just fall down dead and save us that way, but I didn’t have anything else left.’

  There were a couple of packs on the ground near the horses, and a small jumble of blankets – Geraden’s bed. As he and Terisa entered the shadow of the rocks, he dropped his arm and hurried ahead to pick up one of the blankets. At once, he draped it over her shoulders. ‘I don’t have a fire,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t want to be exposed, in case the wrong people came after me.’

  She shrugged: the blanket was enough. Grateful for its warmth, she asked, ‘What did you figure out about Nyle?’ She dreaded everything she would have to say to him about Nyle.

  Without meeting her gaze, he squatted to his packs and began pulling out foodskins, a jug, some fruit. His tone was harsh as he replied, ‘Falling in love with Elega and letting her talk him into betraying Mordant for Prince Kragen – that was bad enough, but it sort of makes sense. Quiss – that’s Tholden’s wife – she says Nyle has been unhappy enough to do something like that for years. Not everybody agrees with her’ – he grimaced – ‘but I do. The Domne does.

  ‘But faking his own murder to ruin me and help Master Eremis, right after he heard us prove Eremis was the only man in Orison who could have been working with the High King’s Monomach— That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t sound like him. He came back and saved my life, remember? Right after he rode away to betray Mordant. Helping a known traitor isn’t something he would do of his own free will.

  ‘He must have been pushed.’

  Geraden put cheese, dried apples, and a hunk of mutton on a plate of flat bread. Terisa accepted it and sank to the grass to start eating. Nevertheless her attention was fixed on him.

  ‘Pushed how?’ he went on. ‘What kind of threat or bribe would make him do something like that? What does he value that Eremis could give him – or take away?’ Again, Geraden grimaced. He got out food for himself, but didn’t eat it. ‘His family. What else? Eremis must have a mirror that gives him access to the Care of Domne – to Houseldon. He can send those insects here – or creatures with red fur and too many arms – or even Gart. He must have threatened Nyle with something like that.’

  A pang seized Terisa’s heart, and she nearly dropped her food; she stared at him through the shadow. ‘Then they’re still in danger. Your home – your whole family – He might attack any time. Especially now – now that I got away from him.

  ‘He knows where you are.’ She had told Eremis that, she had told him that herself.

  Geraden jerked up his head.

  ‘He can guess I’m here,’ she rushed on. ‘He saw that mirror change – the day you tried to find away for me to go home. Master Gilbur saw what I was doing. How can they protect themselves? What are they doing to protect themselves?’

  He met her alarm squarely. Gloom veiled his eyes, but his voice was iron. ‘Everything they can.’

  His tone halted her panic. She was still afraid, however, and there were so many things she had to say which might hurt him. Trying to swallow her shame, she said, ‘He really does know where you are. I’m sorry – that’s my fault. I never told you—’ His gaze made it hard for her to speak, but she forced herself. ‘That day you tried to get me back to my apartment. When you translated me into your mirror. You never asked where I went. I didn’t go to the champion – but I didn’t go to my apartment, either. I came here.’ She felt like she was confessing to an essential infidelity. ‘I never told you, but I told him.’

  Keeping himself clenched and neutral, he asked, ‘Why?’

  Despite his restraint, he put his finger on the sore place. She could have made excuses. He hypnotized me. He was the first man
I knew who ever wanted me. But Geraden deserved better than that. And she was responsible for what had happened. No one else.

  ‘I was wrong,’ she said. ‘I thought I wanted him.’

  Geraden was silent until she looked up at him again. She still wasn’t able to read his expression, but he didn’t seem angry. His voice only sounded sad as he murmured, ‘I wish you’d told me the mirror didn’t take you to the champion. I would have had an easier time doing what I did. I would have felt less like I was throwing myself away.’

  She felt the pain he didn’t express more acutely than the regret he did. In an effort to make amends somehow, she offered, ‘But Nyle is still alive. I’m sure of that. Eremis admitted it.’

  As coherently as she could, she described what had happened to the physician and guards who had been left with Nyle’s supposed corpse. The thought of their devoured bodies twisted in her belly; she forced herself to concentrate on her reasoning.

  Geraden listened without showing any reaction. He was too tight to react. When she was finished, he said absently, ‘Poor Nyle. Right now he probably wishes he actually were dead. Being used like that must be horrible for him. As long as Eremis has him, he can be hurt again. He can be used against us again.

  ‘It’s my fault, of course. If I hadn’t stopped him from going to the Perdon – if I hadn’t tried to make his decisions for him, he never would have been vulnerable to this. He wouldn’t have been in the dungeon, where Eremis could get at him.’ Geraden sighed as if blame were a part of what made him strong. ‘I don’t know how much of it he can stand.’

  Must be horrible. That was true. She knew the feeling. She had come this far herself so that she wouldn’t be used against the people she cared for.

  Softly, she asked, ‘What’re you going to do, when you try to fight him, and he tells you to surrender or he’ll kill Nyle?’

  Unexpectedly, Geraden snorted again. If he hadn’t been so angry, he might have laughed. ‘I’m not going to fight him.’