A Man Rides Through

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.

  “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, “Failing 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 a way for me to go home. Master Gilbur saw what I was doing. How can they protec
t 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.”

  You’re what? She stared at him through the shadow as if he had struck her. Not going to fight him? The world was full of different kinds of pain, ways of being hurt – more than she had ever suspected. The wrenching sensation she felt now was new to her. I’m not going to fight him. Just for a second, her own anger began to blaze, and she wanted to rage at him.

  He hadn’t looked away, however. He was facing her like a hard wall; anything she hurled might simply hit him and fall to the ground. He had been that badly hurt himself: she seemed to see the sources of his pain as if the gloom were full of them. He had been hurt by the desperation which had made him translate himself away from Orison with no clear hope of ever being able to return – or to control where he was going. And by all the implications of what he had discovered about Master Eremis. By the fact that no one in Orison trusted or valued him enough to believe him – not one of the Masters, not Castellan Lebbick, not even King Joyse.

  By the threat to his home.

  And everything else he had ever tried to do with his life had failed. He was even responsible for Nyle’s plight. How could she be angry at him now? What gave her the right?

  She had to swallow the thick sensation of grief in her throat before she was able to ask, “What are you going to do?”

  Her quietness seemed to ease him in some way. His posture became marginally less rigid; his features relaxed a bit. With a faint echo of his former humor, he said, “First I’m going to get you to tell me what happened to you. Then I’m going to take you back to Houseldon for a decent shirt.”

  Involuntarily, she winced. “You know that isn’t what I meant.”

  “All right.” The iron came back into his voice. “I’m going to make a mirror. Any mirror, it doesn’t matter – as long as it’s big enough – as long as it isn’t flat. I’m an Imager now. I know how to do it. I always went wrong before because I was trying to do the wrong thing, trying to use my talent wrong. Now I know better.

  “I’m going to make a mirror. And I’m going to kill any son of a whore who comes here and tries to hurt my family.”

  Terisa held her breath to keep herself still.

  He shrugged stiffly. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  Oh, Geraden.

  She didn’t know what to do for him – but she had to do something. She couldn’t bear to see him like this. He needed a better way to deal with what had been done to him.

  That realization gave her the strength to start talking herself.

  “You asked what happened to me. I think I better tell you.”

  It was easier than she had expected: she was able to leave so much out. On a practical level, she discreetly excised the information that both the Tor and Artagel had asked her to betray him. He didn’t need any more of that kind of hurt. And emotionally she could talk as if the Castellan’s fury and her own terror hadn’t touched her. In any case, she had no language for such things – or for the way they had changed her. Instead, she concentrated on Master Eremis.

  “He has them fooled, Geraden,” she said after she had described her time in the dungeon, her visits from the Castellan and Eremis and Master Quillon, her escape with Quillon – after she had told him about Gilbur and Havelock, and about Quillon’s murder. “What he did with Nyle is just an example. That physician, Underwell, is dead, and everybody thinks you’re a butcher, and the only person in Orison who looks innocent is Master Eremis. He’s making himself a hero by refilling the reservoir – but that’s only an excuse, he’s just doing that so he can sneak around while everyone thinks he’s busy. He’s in league with Gart and Cadwal, and he’s just waiting until his plans are ready.”

  Policy, my lady. If it succeeds, I succeed with it. If it fails, I remain to pursue my ends by other means. In spite of her determination to be detached, the memory made her shudder.

  “He’s going to spring some kind of terrible trap, and no one knows he’s the one behind it all. Master Quillon is my only witness, and he’s dead. Since the Castellan saw me with Master Gilbur, he thinks I killed Quillon.”

  Her own anger gathered as she spoke; she was full of accumulated outrage. She didn’t want to put pressure on Geraden, she wanted to persuade him. But she simply couldn’t think about Eremis without trembling.

  “Geraden, he’s going to destroy them all, and they don’t even know it’s him. What King Joyse is trying to do is crazy anyway, but it’s hopeless if nobody knows who his enemy is. Everything he ever fought for, everything he ever made, Mordant and the Congery, all his ideals,” everything that made you love him, “Eremis is going to destroy them all.”

  Out of the mountains’ dusk, Geraden made a cutting gesture, silencing her. His face might have been stone. “ ‘Eremis is going to destroy them all.’ Of course. And you want me to stop him. You think there’s something I can do to stop him.”

  She tightened her grip on herself, forced herself to speak softly. “Somebody has to warn them. Otherwise they don’t stand a chance.”

  What about the augury? What about Mordant’s need?

&
nbsp; Abruptly, he surged to his feet. For a moment, he stalked away as if he never intended to come back; then he swung around harshly and returned to confront her over the new grass and the neglected food.

  “You want me to warn them,” he rasped. “Do you think I haven’t already considered that? Talk is easy. Do you know how far Orison is from here? Do you know how long it would take me to get there? The siege has already started. Cadwal is already marching. Everything he wants to destroy will be in ruins before I get halfway there. I’ll arrive like a good boy, panting and desperate, wanting something to save, and he’ll just laugh at me.

  “He’ll just laugh at me.

  “Terisa” – he was controlling himself with a visible effort, holding down a desire to yell at her – “I am very, very tired of being laughed at.”

  All her insides ached as she watched him; he made her so sad that her anger faded, at least temporarily. She didn’t know what to say. What could she have said? She understood: of course she understood. He was beaten, and he was trying to accept it. But what she did or didn’t understand changed nothing. It didn’t help him – or Mordant. Yet she had to give him something. If she didn’t, she was going to start crying again.

  Quietly, stifling her unhappiness, she asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  He had considered that as well. “You’re an arch-Imager,” he said promptly. “Like Vagel. You’ve just proved that. You can pass through a mirror without changing worlds. And without losing your mind. But you’re more than that, too. You can change the Images themselves. You can do the same thing with flat glass that I do with a normal mirror. Together, we’re two of the most powerful people in Mordant. All we need is practice. And mirrors. I want you to stay here and help me defend the only thing left that’s worth fighting for.”

  In the same tone, she asked, “Do you have any glass at all?”

  “No, not yet. We’ve got a bit of equipment and tinct my father confiscated from some sort of hedgerow Imager back in the early days of Mordant’s peace, but we’ve never used it.

  “I was worried while you were back in Orison, where Eremis could attack you – or put pressure on you by attacking me. But after what you’ve just told me, I don’t think we need to hurry. We aren’t much of a threat to him right now. He’s got us out of Orison, and he still looks innocent. We can’t hurt him where we are. And he’s got a lot of other things on his mind. He’s got to spring this trap of his – whatever it is. I think he’ll leave us alone until he’s done with Orison. He won’t worry about cleaning up minor problems like us until afterward.”