Lebbick nodded as if he hadn’t heard the question.
“Speaking of things you’re in command of, how’s the defense going?” continued Artagel. “I heard a rumor that Kragen hasn’t so much as thrown a rock at us since the first day. Is that true?”
The Castellan nodded again. “Margonal’s whoreson,” he growled, “is just sitting out there staring at us.”
“Why? What makes him think he can get away with that? Isn’t he afraid of Cadwal?”
“I can only think of two explanations.” As if by accident, some of the tension in Lebbick’s face loosened. On some level, Artagel had distracted him. “He knows Festten isn’t coming – for some reason – and we don’t because he doesn’t let the news get to us. Or Alend and Cadwal have made an alliance.”
There: that was an improvement. Castellan Lebbick still had some lucidity left in him. Carefully, Artagel said, “Then I guess Cadwal isn’t coming. If Festten and Margonal had an alliance, Kragen wouldn’t have tried to attack us alone.”
“That’s probably true,” agreed the Castellan morosely. “Festten wouldn’t have made an alliance unless he could be sure Margonal wouldn’t get to the Congery ahead of him.”
Artagel nodded. After a moment, he went on, “Speaking of the Congery—”
Lebbick interrupted him balefully. “Were we?”
Artagel frowned. “Were we what?”
“Speaking of the Congery. Or were you just prying?”
“I was prying.” Artagel grinned. “And I’m going to keep prying until you say three sentences in a row that make sense. If you don’t pull yourself together, you will rot.
“Speaking of the Congery, what’re they doing about poor Master Quillon?”
Castellan Lebbick studied his visitor as if at last he had begun to wonder why Artagel was here. “Nothing,” he articulated. “As far as I can tell, the only thing they do all day is sit around wiping each other’s bums. By which I mean to say, of course” – he began to sound like he was quoting scornfully – “that they are dedicating all their efforts night and day toward discovering how Gilbur and Geraden and that woman are able to use flat glass without going mad.
“That blind lump Barsonage has suddenly” – Lebbick’s tone was savage – “figured out King Joyse is right. He’s gone all virtuous and noble about it. Mirrors don’t create their own Images. The places they show are real. So we don’t have the right to take anything that can tell the difference out of them. Which is a dogshit way of saying they aren’t going to help defend us. They refuse to touch the only things that might do us some good.”
The Castellan barked humorlessly. “It’s actually funny. They discovered purity just when King Joyse gave it up. The only real reason we haven’t been overrun already is, Kragen can’t use his catapults. Whenever he tries, Havelock destroys them with some kind of smoke-bird from one of his mirrors.”
Artagel began to hope that he was on the right track. Castellan Lebbick seemed to be recovering his self-command. Maybe it was time to risk—
Because he was the sort of man who took chances, Artagel said conversationally, “That’s better. You’re doing much better. Any minute now, you’re going to be your old self again. There’s just one thing I still want to know.
“Castellan” – he took a deep breath – “what in the name of sanity is the connection between Saddith and Nyle? Why does the fact that she showed up in your bed prove Geraden didn’t kill him?”
For a long moment, the Castellan glowered as if he meant to explode. A muscle in his cheek twitched. His gaze burned red, drawing the darkness of the room around him; his expression was full of doom.
Like a man chewing iron pellets, he said, “Not Saddith and Nyle. Saddith and Eremis. She’s his whore.”
Artagel waited.
“He sent her. That’s what I was trying to get her to admit. That’s why I kept hitting her. Why I didn’t stop.”
Still Artagel waited.
“He did that to me.” Without warning, Lebbick’s eyes began to spill tears. They ran down into his dirty beard, leaving streaks through the grime on his cheeks. “I was already so close to the edge. That woman was trying to tell me the truth, and I didn’t know how to believe her. And he did that to me. He sent his whore to give me the last push. Because I’m the only one King Joyse has left. Even though he doesn’t trust me.
“Master fornicating Eremis,” the Castellan said through his loss, “wouldn’t have sent his whore to my bed if everything that woman said about him wasn’t true. He was trying to distract me.”
With difficulty, Artagel resisted the temptation to whistle through his teeth. This time, he found the Castellan’s reasoning comprehensible. He had always appreciated Saddith’s frank lust; but at the moment he wasn’t thinking about her. He was thinking that her appearance in Lebbick’s bed was the worst thing Eremis could have done to the Castellan.
It was almost as if Eremis and King Joyse were conspiring together to destroy him.
Gruffly, Artagel said, “That makes sense.” Words seemed to stick in his throat; he had to force them out. “What did Terisa actually tell you about our hero, Eremis?”
The Castellan scrubbed his face with his hands, grinding his tears into the dirt. “The same thing you did.” On the cot beside him, he found a rank piece of rag and used it to blow his nose. “They must have switched the bodies. If Underwell really wanted Nyle dead, he could have made it happen without the stupid risk of all that bloodshed. But if Geraden was innocent, Underwell must have discovered right away that Nyle wasn’t hurt. So Underwell had to be killed. To protect Eremis.
“Nyle is probably still alive. Unless Eremis doesn’t need him anymore.
“Eremis is busy acting like the hero of Orison because his plans aren’t ready. Cadwal isn’t ready to attack. That’s obvious – Cadwal isn’t even here. Or he’s waiting for something else to happen. He doesn’t want Kragen to get the Congery.”
Artagel was right on the edge of asking, So why don’t you stop him? Go cut his heart out. Instead of holing up here like a beaten dog? Fortunately, he halted himself in time. As soon as the question occurred to him, he caught a glimpse of how Castellan Lebbick would react to it. They want me to come out so they can jump me. He wants to break me. He doesn’t trust me.
Artagel liked to live dangerously, but he wasn’t willing to risk pushing Lebbick back into turmoil.
He couldn’t grasp what King Joyse was doing. But that wasn’t his problem: someone else would have to figure it out. Eremis was another matter, however. Artagel was very sure that he wanted to oppose or hinder the Master in any way possible.
Gazing around the room in search of inspiration, he grabbed the first idea that came to him.
“You know, Castellan, if your wife saw this pigsty she’d spit granite.”
Artagel was probably the only man in Orison who would have dared mention Lebbick’s wife to his face.
By luck or intuition, however, Artagel had found the right approach. Instead of erupting, the Castellan looked chagrined. “I know,” he muttered. “I’m going to clean it up. I’ll get around to it soon.”
The sorrow in his face wrung Artagel’s heart. Without premeditation or forethought, he said quietly, “Don’t bother. Leave it. I’ve got an extra room. I’ve even got an extra bed. Come stay with me.”
Castellan Lebbick stared dumbly. His mouth worked as if Artagel had asked him to give up his link to the only thing that held him in one piece.
“She’s dead,” Artagel said as gently as he could. “It can’t be helped. She doesn’t need you anymore.
“We’re the ones who need you.”
Roughly, fighting collapse, the Castellan rasped, “ ‘We’? Who is ‘we’?”
“Me.” Artagel didn’t hesitate. “Geraden. Terisa. Anybody who thinks King Joyse is still worth trying to save, even though he does act like he’s got his head stuck up his ass.”
Lebbick thought for a long time, gazing away into the gloom around
him. He looked like a man lost in memories – lost in love, in old instances of violence; a man who might never find his way back. But then his shoulders sagged, and he sighed.
“All right.”
“Good.” Artagel sighed as well, let the suspense exhale from him so hard that the release made him shudder. “It’s time.”
Without suspense and sorrow to keep him tight, however, his muscles went slack, and his limbs turned to rubber. Ruefully, he added, “You can start by helping me get back there. I’m afraid I overdid it coming here.”
“Idiot,” Lebbick growled. Slowly, he got to his feet. “You’re supposed to be resting. I’ve seen shrubbery with better sense than you’ve got.”
“That’s easy.” Artagel made a determined effort not to fall out of his chair. “I’ve seen shrubbery with better sense than any of us.
“Just tell me one more thing.” He paused to collect his fraying thoughts. “Why Ribuld? I didn’t know you had such a good opinion of him.”
Almost gently, Castellan Lebbick helped Artagel to his feet. Supporting Artagel with his shoulder, he started toward the door.
“I need somebody I can trust. He likes Geraden. That’s all I’ve got to work with.”
Artagel couldn’t help himself: he had to ask, “Are you really in that much trouble? Just because of Eremis and Saddith?”
The muscles along Lebbick’s jaw knotted. His eyes were full of gloom. “Wait and see.”
On the way back to his rooms, Artagel found himself positively aching with the intensity of his desire to see Geraden again. He wanted somebody to tell him what was going on.
THIRTY-FIVE: AN OLD ALLY OF THE KING
That same day, Terisa and Geraden rode out of the southwestern hills of the Care of Termigan and began to approach Sternwall, the Termigan’s Seat and his Care’s principal city.
The relatively direct road from Houseldon – and the lack of rain, atypical at this time of year – had made the journey an easy one, at least for Geraden. He was accustomed to horses, acquainted with roadside comfort, experienced at camping. And he seemed to have become sure of himself. For the first time in his life, he knew exactly what he was doing. The only thing that reduced his eagerness to get where he was going was the pleasure he had with Terisa along the way.
Terisa’s eagerness to reach Sternwall was completely different. In a visceral sense, she had lost interest in Orison – in Master Eremis and King Joyse. Her concerns were more immediate. She was aching in every joint, bone-weary, sick of horses. She wanted a hot bath and clean sheets. Thanks to the otherwise-much-desired way Geraden used his weight at night, the hard ground had given her bruises from her shoulder blades to her tailbone. At times, she felt she would have killed for a pillow under her hips. After a day or two in the saddle, every jolt of the bay’s gait seemed to grind her bones together. After another day or two, she could hardly keep from groaning whenever Geraden embraced her.
Nevertheless she hugged him back as hard and as often as possible; she locked her legs over his and held him on top of her despite the pain. She was so full of love that she could hardly take her eyes off him, hardly bear to let her skin be out of contact with his. If necessary, she could endure a few bruises.
She had to admit, however, that she had learned to hate horses. Any culture which couldn’t devise a better way to travel than this really ought to let itself die out. When Geraden announced that they were within reach of Sternwall, she said, “Thank God!” with such sincerity that he burst out laughing.
“You think it’s funny,” she groused. “I’ve never been so miserable in my entire life, and you think it’s hilarious. I swear I don’t know what I see in you.
“Of course,” she added considerately, “if I did know I’d probably want to put my eyes out.”
“Be careful, my lady,” he replied in an aggrieved tone. “I have a sensitive nature. If you give me any excuse – any excuse at all – I’ll have to start apologizing.”
“Oh, great,” she growled, trying to sound bitter even though she was grinning with her whole body. “The last time you did that, we didn’t get to sleep until after midnight.”
She made him laugh again. Then he leaned out of his saddle and kissed her dramatically. “Ah, Terisa,” he sighed when he had subsided, “you do me good. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. After all those years serving the Congery and failing – after making the wrong choice and stopping Nyle instead of concentrating on Prince Kragen – after botching our chance to stop Elega – after being made to look like my own brother’s murderer, and then having to just hurl myself into a mirror without any idea what would happen—” His list of disasters was really quite impressive when he toted it up like that. “I wouldn’t have believed it was actually possible to feel this good.”
“How much farther do we have to go?” she asked because she didn’t have anything better to say. “I want a bed.”
Geraden grinned and gave her the best answer he had.
This was their fourth day on the road, and since they had left behind the smoking ruins of Houseldon they hadn’t seen the slightest indication that Mordant was at war. Heading almost directly northeast, they had crossed the Broadwine on its way east-northeast toward the Demesne, and had followed the road in the direction of the Care of Termigan. “The Termigan will help us,” Geraden had said confidently. “He’s an old ally of the King’s. There’s a story that he saved King Joyse’s life in the last of the big battles against Alend – roughly thirty years ago.”
Terisa had nodded without taking her eyes off the surrounding landscape. She had met the Termigan: she had the impression that he was a man who could be trusted absolutely – but only on his own terms.
North and east of Houseldon, the Care of Domne seemed to be composed almost entirely of the kind of fertile hills which made cultivation difficult, but which provided abundant rich grass for sheep. Toward the south and the west, mountains remained visible, but they became steadily harder to descry as the road wound out of the Care. Geraden explained that the border of Domne stretched from the eastmost point of the spur of mountains on the north – a point called Pestil’s Mouth because there the Pestil River came out of the spur – along a relatively straight line toward a distinctive peak in the southern range, a mighty and unmistakable head of rock named, for no known reason, Kelendumble. That line divided Domne from both the Care of Termigan to the north of the Broadwine and the Care of Tor to the south.
Although the border was purely theoretical, the countryside did appear to change after Terisa and Geraden entered Termigan. The edges of the landscape became flintier; the grasses and shrubs, the wildflowers and stands of trees all had an air of toughness, as if they endured in ungiving dirt against unkind weather. “The soil is good for grapes,” Geraden explained, “and not bad for hops. But it isn’t much use for corn, or wheat, or worren.” Worren was one of the few grains – in fact, one of the few foods – that she found strange in this world. “In Domne, they joke that everybody who lives here develops a permanent case of dyspepsia from eating the food – and then from trying to feel better by drinking too much.
“On the other hand, I’ve heard it said that High King Festten won’t drink anything except Termigan wine.”
As the soil changed, so did the hills: they began to look less rumpled, more ragged, as if they had been cut by erosion rather than raised by the ground’s underlying bones. The road twisted through ravines and gullies rather than along shallow vales and hollows. In contrast, however, the weather turned increasingly spring-like – warm in the sun despite the cool nights and shadows; full of green and flowering scents; hinting at moisture.
Terisa wanted a bath so badly that the mere idea made her scalp itch.
Forcing herself to think about other things, she occasionally reflected that ravines and gullies were ideal places for ambushes. Such things seemed entirely unreal, however. After all, Alend had sent its strength to the siege of Orison. And the forces of Cadwal were on the
far side of Mordant to the east. So the only real danger came from Imagery. And any attack that struck by Imagery wouldn’t need to rely on ravines and gullies for success.
She reasoned that Master Eremis probably didn’t know where they were. He couldn’t know, unless they happened to pass through a place that showed in one of his mirrors – and he happened to look during the brief time they were visible.
She couldn’t bring herself to worry about the possibility.
In fact, she didn’t even remember what the Termigan had said about trouble in his Care until Geraden brought her in sight of Sternwall itself, late in the afternoon of their fourth day on the road.
The sight made her wonder how she could have forgotten.
Pits of fire in the ground, the Termigan had said.
Sternwall was a fortified stone city. It had a buttressed wall built of quarried granite; and within the wall all the houses and other edifices were of stone. From this distance, the basic style of construction seemed to be mud-plaster pointed with cement. The Termigan’s people could have laughed at the attack which had destroyed Houseldon.
Nevertheless Terisa was sure they weren’t laughing.
Even from several hundred yards away, she could sense the heat of the glowing liquid rock which seethed and bubbled in long pools outside the walls. There were half a dozen of them, all set in higher ground which sloped down toward the city, all shaped as if they were flowing slowly, inexorably toward the walls. Eremis had said, Pits of fire appear in the ground of Termigan – almost within the fortifications of Sternwall. He must have had a hard time restraining his mirth. Fed by translation, the pits melted the earth between them and the city. She didn’t know how long this had been going on, but she guessed that it wouldn’t continue much longer. Already, the granite wall had begun to slump like heated wax at four different points; wide sections of the city’s outward face reflected the magma redly, as if they were slick with sweat. The people of Sternwall were eventually going to be burned out of their homes. Orange-red glared into the sky like a presage of sunset.