A Man Rides Through

  Geraden scowled at the sight bitterly. “Glass and splinters!” he murmured. “Oh, Eremis. No wonder the Termigan doesn’t trust Imagers.”

  “I don’t understand.” Terisa had to swallow hard to make her throat work. “Why? I mean, why do it this way? Why not put this – this lava? – why not translate this lava right into the city and be done with it?”

  “It’s more fun this way,” grated Geraden. Then he shook his head. “No, that’s not it. Sternwall itself probably isn’t in the Image. The mirror they’re using probably shows a place up the hill somewhere. This is as far as they can adjust the focus.”

  Guards paced the wall without getting too close to the heat. Terisa saw two men stop, point toward her and Geraden; one of them left the wall. She supposed that under the circumstances Sternwall didn’t get many visitors. Trying to force down the taste of bile, she nudged her horse into motion.

  Grimly, she and Geraden rode past the pits toward the gate on the far side of the city.

  Near the lava, she could hear it seething, a deep, almost inaudible rumble that seemed to echo in the marrow of her bones: the sound of the earth being eaten away.

  As quiet as that noise was, however, it seemed to deafen her. She hardly heard the lonely cry of a bugle rising from the walls of the city. She hardly heard Geraden say, “Looks like the Termigan is sending men out to meet us. Maybe he doesn’t want to risk letting us in until he knows who we are.”

  She should have been ready. She was near an Image: she should have understood that she and Geraden were in danger of being spotted. Unfortunately, she wasn’t thinking that clearly. She was too full of Sternwall’s plight to think clearly.

  She was taken completely by surprise when a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel slid straight through the center of her abdomen.

  Yet the surprise itself may have been what saved her. She had no time to be frightened, paralyzed. Instead, she yelped a warning and flung herself to the side, out of the saddle, out of the way.

  The fangs missed her. They came so close, however, that they snagged her shirt at the shoulder, nearly tore it off her body.

  She hit the ground awkwardly, wrenched her knee, fell flat on her face. Desperately, she scrabbled her legs under her and pitched to her feet—

  —just in time to see a gnarled black spot the size of a puppy get up on its limbs and come scrambling toward her. Its savage jaws took up more than half its body: they stretched for her, ravening.

  At her yell, Geraden had wheeled his mount. Bounding from an invisible perch on the other side of a translation, a black, round shape flipped past him. With all four limbs, it caught the appaloosa by the head.

  Its jaws ripped the horse’s skull apart. Fountaining blood, the appaloosa went down as if it had crashed into a wall. Geraden landed hard: he was momentarily stunned. Before he could recover, his mount’s convulsions rolled the horse over onto his legs.

  Munching brains and bone, the black creature began to eat its way through the horse toward him.

  Another fierce shape appeared out of nowhere – and another – struck the ground – rolled to a stop—

  One of them went for Geraden. The other rushed at Terisa.

  She had no choice, no time: when the nearest creature sprang at her, she ducked, flinched aside. Geraden had given her a knife – for cooking, he had said, teasing her because he did all the cooking – and she groped for it while she dodged; she jerked it from its sheath, hacked blindly at her assailant.

  Her blow caught nothing but air. Off balance, barely able to support her weight with her twisted knee, she stumbled directly into the path of the second attacking shape.

  Its fangs were curved and jagged, made for rending. In a mirror, she had seen a creature like this tear a man’s heart out. It was going to rip her to tatters. And there was another one turning to jump her from behind.

  Geraden had a few more seconds to live than she did. The red meat of his horse had distracted both of his attackers: they were feeding voraciously. He was safe until they reached his trapped legs.

  Wildly, he struggled to open his mount’s saddlebags.

  The blade he had given Terisa was little more than a filleting knife; a hunter might have used it to skin a rabbit. It was the only thing she had to fight with, however; she didn’t question it. Since she was off balance anyway, she thrust her weight in the direction she was falling, so that her arm and the knife came around in a wide, sweeping slash.

  Somehow, this blow found the creature before the creature reached her face. The black shape tumbled to the side, spattering green blood everywhere.

  She tried to catch herself, but her knee gave out. She toppled with a cry just as the second attacker leaped at her back.

  Geraden’s assailants were working on the appaloosa’s shoulders.

  From the nearest saddlebag, he pulled out a sackful of corn meal and flung it.

  The sack burst open on the first creature’s teeth.

  With a sound like thick fabric being shredded, the shape sneezed.

  Like its jaws and its appetite, its sneeze was too big for its body. The blast knocked it backward, off the dead horse; tucking its legs around itself, it rolled away.

  Another sneeze: another roll.

  Geraden searched frantically for something else to throw.

  Terisa was down. She couldn’t get back up. Her legs shoved at the ground as if her back were broken, but she couldn’t bring them under her.

  One of the black shapes moved toward her.

  As if sensing her helplessness, it stopped hurrying: its steps were almost dainty as it approached. Its huge jaws opened delicately. Each one of its teeth was sharp for her flesh.

  Then the quarrel from a crossbow struck the creature so hard that it skipped off the ground and sailed through the air as though it had been kicked by a giant. A few drops of its green blood splashed into her hair as it flew past.

  Like a spike driven by a sledgehammer, another quarrel nailed the feeding beast to the appaloosa’s carcass. Without a sound, the creature gaped and died, gushing rank fluids around its fangs.

  One of the Termigan’s men pounded the last black shape into a pulp under the shod hooves of his mount.

  A moment later, the three men halted in front of Terisa and Geraden. They peered down from their high seats. Snarling, one of them demanded, “What in the name of goatshit and fornication are those things?”

  Geraden didn’t seem to notice that he had been rescued. He continued thrashing through the, saddlebag, hunting uselessly for a weapon. “That bastard,” he panted between his teeth. “That bastard. If I had a mirror—” His whole face was wet with sweat or tears. “If I just had a mirror—”

  Terisa still couldn’t get her legs under her. Her knee felt numb, dead. She. wanted to say, insist, Help me, is he all right, did you kill them all? The only thing her throat and stomach agreed to do, however, was retch. She had green blood in her hair, and it stank – it smelled like corpses rotting in sewage. The head and most of the shoulders of Geraden’s horse had been chewed away, devoured—Like the Castellan’s two guards and Underwell. She kept gagging, but nothing came up.

  Maybe Mordant wasn’t at war. But she and Geraden were.

  Oh, yes.

  The Termigan’s men dismounted. Two of them heaved the appaloosa’s carcass off Geraden; the third lifted Terisa to her feet. They were hard men with grim mouths and red eyes: they had spent too much time staring into the destruction of Sternwall, watching it boil closer. “All right,” one of them said harshly, “you’re safe. We’ve saved you. Who are you? What’re those things?”

  “Imagery,” Geraden gasped. He still seemed unaware of the men. His attention was on Terisa. “There could be more. He could translate them right now. We’ve got to get out of range.”

  The men wanted answers – but they also understood Geraden. Just for a second, they glanced at each other, hesitating. Then the man who had helped Terisa off the ground picked her up
and leaped for his horse.

  The other two mounted instantly; one of them pulled Geraden up behind him. The horses stretched into a gallop back toward the city’s gates, putting as much distance as possible between the riders and the point of translation.

  Terisa still had her knife clenched in her fist. Her hand and the knife were covered with foul, green blood.

  “Relax!” the man holding her gritted into her ear. “We can keep your balance better if you relax.”

  She couldn’t relax. She couldn’t stop trying to retch.

  “How far?” one of the other men asked Geraden. “How far do we have to go to be safe?”

  At last, Geraden began to respond to his rescuers. “Can’t be sure.” The pounding of hooves muffled his voice. “Depends on the size of the mirror. And how far the focus was adjusted to reach us.” A moment later, he added, “A hundred yards should be enough.”

  “Right!”

  The Termigans drove their mounts up to the gates of Sternwall. There they risked stopping.

  Terisa didn’t feel anything sharp or cold in her stomach. She didn’t feel anything except nausea. No more of the gnarled, black shapes jumped out of the air.

  Now instead of wanting to throw up she began to think it would be nice to faint.

  She didn’t get the chance. The man carrying her dropped her to the ground, then slid down beside her. The pressure of his grip made it clear he had no intention of letting her go. One of the other men held onto Geraden as he dismounted.

  There was sunset in the air now, as well as the glare of lava. The heavy timbers of the gate were tinged crimson; red ran in streaks along the edges of the buildings. The faces of the men hinted at bloodshed.

  “All right,” one of them repeated. “Now tell us who you are. Before we decide to close the gate and leave you outside.”

  Terisa could still hear the deep, visceral boiling of the lava. That noise seemed to undermine everything around her; it made the Termigans sound malign, full of coiled malice.

  But Geraden nodded to them. “We’ve just come from Domne,” he panted. “I’m Geraden, the Domne’s son. One of his sons, anyway. Houseldon has been burned to the ground.”

  The men stood motionless, caught between who he was and what he said. A crowd began to gather in the gate: more of the Termigan’s men, hostlers to take care of the horses, merchants, passersby. They all had the same red light in their eyes.

  After a moment, one of the men said noncommittally, “You better tell us who the woman is. And why you were attacked.”

  Instinctively, Terisa put a hand on Geraden’s arm, reaching out for protection against a threat she couldn’t identify.

  He also seemed to feel the menace. His arm was tight; he held himself poised. His gaze searched the faces around him. Carefully, he said, “My father has been a good and loyal neighbor to the Termigan all his life. The last time I was here, I slept in the Termigan’s house as a welcome guest.”

  No one wavered; no eyes dropped. The man who appeared to be the leader of the guards rested a hand deliberately on his sword. “I’m sure that’s true,” he growled. “You’ll probably be a guest there tonight again. But not until you tell me who she is and why you were attacked.”

  The man’s tone nettled Geraden. He straightened his shoulders; his voice gave off hints of authority, as if he were accustomed to command respect. “She is the lady Terisa of Morgan, arch-Imager and augured champion. For that reason, the foes of Mordant wish to destroy—”

  He didn’t get any further. Or if he did she didn’t hear him. Somebody hit her on the back of the neck so hard that the ground seemed to flip over and rush away into the sky.

  As she lost consciousness, she grasped that the Termigan was also at war.

  Later, the war seemed to be taking place somewhere between the back of her neck and the front of her skull. There was a contest of pain going on. Her forehead hurt as if someone on the inside belabored it with a cudgel; the back of her neck ached stiffly. But which was winning? She didn’t want to think about it.

  Then she remembered Geraden.

  Groaning, she tried to roll out of bed.

  At once, both sides of the war joined forces against her. Every movement anywhere in her body took on a dimension of agony.

  She sat up anyway and pushed her feet over the edge of the bed.

  Her knee commemorated the occasion with a throb as sharp as a howl. She gave an inarticulate gasp. For a moment, she had to sit without moving, hold herself stationary while she tried to regain some measure of control.

  She still had the smell of green blood in her hair. It was still nauseating.

  Geraden, she thought.

  Who hit me?

  Despite the pain, she forced her eyes into focus.

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed in a large but rather austere bedchamber. A number of candles lit the stone walls and wooden ceiling; the mats of woven reeds on the floor; the massive chairs, so heavy that they might have been designed to accommodate the Tor; the dark planks of the door. Compared to the places she had slept recently, the bed was luxurious.

  She wasn’t alone.

  A man sat across the room from her, in a chair beside the door. He wore a plain brown shirt and breeches, simple boots; he had no weapons that she could see. His eyes were flat; his hair seemed to have no color. The lines of his face and the edges of his features were rough, crudely shaped. His arms were folded across his chest as if he were prepared to wait for her indefinitely.

  She recognized him.

  The Termigan. The lord of the Care.

  “So,” he said after scrutinizing her for a while. “You turn up unexpectedly, my lady.”

  She stared back, trying to fight down the pain so that she could think.

  “The last time I saw you,” he went on, “you were there for no good reason except to demonstrate that things went wrong when the Congery tried to obey King Joyse. We were supposed to believe you were just an accident, a nothing – only a woman. Now you’re here, and Geraden says you’re an arch-Imager.

  “I want an explanation.”

  His posture suggested that he would never let her leave this room until she satisfied him.

  Terisa made an effort to clear her throat. “Where’s Geraden?”

  The Termigan shrugged slightly. “Next door. My men didn’t have the nerve to hit a son of the Domne, so he’s been struggling and shouting ever since I had you taken away from him. But he’s bolted in, and he won’t get out until I decide to let him see you.”

  “When is that going to happen?”

  The lord shrugged again. His flat gaze didn’t shift from Terisa’s face. “I’ll make up my mind when I hear what you’re going to tell me.”

  She couldn’t keep her voice from shaking. “Your men didn’t hit Geraden. Why did they hit me? Do you beat up women as a matter of general policy, or have I done something personally to offend you?”

  Sarcasm had no effect on the Termigan. “My men,” he explained evenly, “didn’t know I knew you. They just heard Geraden say you’re an Imager. I don’t like Imagers, my lady. When my father was killed in the wars, and I became the Termigan, I fought beside King Joyse for years because I don’t like Imagers. All my life, most of the people I value have been killed by Imagers. Or Alends. I’ve never let Havelock inside these walls. Even when he wasn’t crazy.

  “Now we’re under attack by Imagery. Sternwall is going to fall soon, and there’s nothing we can do to defend ourselves. My men have standing orders to make any Imager who comes here helpless first and ask questions later.

  “My lady, how did you become an Imager? Or how did you convince Eremis and Gilbur you weren’t an Imager? Or” – his tone sharpened – “why did they lie to us about you?”

  The Termigan was definitely at war.

  She looked away. Searching for the means to control her anger and pain – and her nausea at the stink in her hair – she scanned the room. I don’t like Imagers. Almost immediately, sh
e spotted a decanter of wine and a pair of goblets on a table near the bed, beside a tray that held what appeared to be a cold collation. Carefully, moving her head and neck as little as possible, she stood up, limped to the table, poured some wine. Helpless first and ask questions later. On the other hand, he didn’t mean to starve her. Tremors ran down her arms from her shoulders, but she was able to keep most of the wine in the goblet. Lifting it with both hands, she drained it.

  Just for a second, her stomach heaved and her head pounded; she thought she’d made an idiotic mistake. Then, however, she began to feel a little better.

  Deliberately, she faced the Termigan. In effect, he had taken Geraden prisoner. Geraden was probably worried sick about her. And he, too, was an Imager. What would the Termigan do if he knew that the son of the Domne was also an Imager? He might keep them locked up for the rest of the war – until Sternwall fell, and Mordant was destroyed, and Master Eremis had slaughtered everybody who stood in his way. Anger gave her the strength she needed.

  “My lord, they were lying to both of us. Practically everything they said to us was a lie.”

  The Termigan didn’t move; he hardly blinked. “Why would they lie to you? You’re one of them.”

  She gaped at him. Her brain was sluggish; a moment passed before she was able to say, “No, I’m not.

  “I didn’t even find out I’ve got a talent until” – she counted backward quickly – “five days ago. How could I be ‘one of them’? They didn’t want me to know I had any talent. That’s why they were lying to me. That’s why they’ve been trying to kill me. That’s why Houseldon got burned. They were trying to kill us. They think I’m some kind of threat to them.”

  “What kind of threat?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted bitterly. She wanted Geraden with her. She didn’t like the risk of talking to the Termigan by herself. “But we’re trying to find out. In the meantime, we want to make as much trouble for Eremis and Gilbur as we can. That’s why we’re here.”