He was alarmed because during the afternoon his scouts had intercepted two hacked and dying men who were apparently the last survivors the Perdon would ever send to Orison.
They weren’t actually sure of their lord’s fate. When he sent them away, he still had several hundred men around him, was still fighting. But he knew he was finished. He sent these two soldiers to warn King Joyse.
They were too badly hurt to last the night; but Prince Kragen pieced their story together from their confused and feverish babblings. What had apparently happened was that High King Festten had suddenly changed his tactics. He had halted his unexplained march into the Care of Tor: for a while, he had even stopped striking at the Perdon. Instead, he had camped his huge army as if he had gained his goal, as if his only real purpose had been to capture the ground where he now stood – a relatively uninhabited region of complex hills and thin rivers no closer to Marshalt than to Orison.
And then, while the Perdon was still trying to figure out what Festten was doing, the High King had sent out nearly five thousand soldiers to encircle and trap the lord. In the end, only the terrain had enabled these two wounded men to escape. They had hidden in a tree-clogged ravine until darkness allowed them to creep away northward.
How many days ago? Prince Kragen wanted to know. How far exactly? In fact, he wanted to know so badly that out of raw frustration he was tempted to resort to some of the harsher forms of questioning. But it was obvious that the Perdon’s men, in effect, had already been tortured past the point where they were able to think or speak coherently. Prince Kragen was left with very little idea when they had left their lord, or where Festten was.
So he attacked Orison’s gates at night, despite the losses he knew he was going to incur. He was afraid: he could feel a kind of doom stalking him through the dark. An enemy who would march at least twenty thousand men that far into the middle of nowhere – in this case, the middle of the Care of Tor – for no discernible purpose except to make camp was capable of anything.
Through the hours of darkness, Kragen listened to the flat, dull booming of the ram against the gates, to the shouts of the defenders and the cries of his own forces – listened, and ground his teeth to restrain his rage at a war he couldn’t either avoid or understand.
Castellan Lebbick appeared to be in a completely different mood. If he felt any desire to rage, he didn’t show it. From the battlements above the gate, he watched the massive Alend ram at work with a twisted expression on his face, as if something inside him were being torn; yet he didn’t so much as raise his voice or curse. He didn’t even grin. For no very clear reason, he muttered in disgust words that sounded to the guards around him like, “Fool woman.” Then he called for ropes and began mustering men to fight for the gates.
He didn’t stay to watch the struggle, however. A number of his captains knew what to do in a situation like this. Wandering away like a shadow of the man he used to be, he went to spend as much of the night as possible drinking with Artagel.
Unfortunately, ale – even in that quantity – did nothing to quench the hot, dry sensation in his mind. He was full of foreboding; his brain chewed anticipations of disaster. So he was grimly amazed when he woke up the next morning and learned that something good was happening.
It was raining.
A hard rain, so thick that it blinded the castle and turned the dirt of the courtyard into immediate soup; what the people where Lebbick had grown up called a real gully-washer. And long overdue: Mordant expected rain like this in the spring.
Of course, it made Orison impossible to defend. The guards above the gates wouldn’t have known if the entire Alend army had come within a stone’s throw of their noses.
On the other hand, the rain also made attack impossible.
The Alends had no footing. They could bring up battering rams until they broke their hearts; but they couldn’t swing them effectively. The gates would stand forever against any pounding they might receive in this rain. And other siege engines were equally useless.
The rain didn’t cheer Castellan Lebbick up. He was past the point where anything could have cheered him. But it did give him a breathing space, a bit of time in which to get a better grip on himself.
It also helped Terisa and Geraden.
That surprised her. She got so wet and so cold so quickly that she felt defeated before the day had well begun. She soon realized, however, that she and Geraden were in next to no danger of being spotted or captured through this downpour. If she had let him get more than ten feet away, she wouldn’t have been able to spot him herself.
Now the trick had nothing to do with being stopped. The trick was to know where they were going.
“How do you know we’re not lost?” she shouted into the deluge.
“The rain!” Despite the water streaming down his face, he grinned. “At this time of year, it always comes from the west! We’re going south, so all we have to do is cut across the wind!”
She would have been impressed if her whole body hadn’t felt so miserable.
Nevertheless she kept going; she and Geraden kept each other going. While their enemies were blinded was the best time for them to go forward. The rain might make it impossible for Torrent to follow her mother; but Terisa was too cold and soaked to worry about something that far out of her control. She concentrated solely on Geraden and motion until the storm finally blew away an hour or two before sunset, and he had an opportunity to find his bearings.
“Tomorrow.” There was relief in his voice; yet she had never heard him sound so tired. “We’ll be in the Demesne tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon or evening we’ll reach Orison.”
Just for something to say, she muttered, “If Prince Kragen doesn’t give me some dry clothes, I’m going to spit right in his face.”
Geraden nodded his approval. “Just don’t kick him. I’ve heard princes tend to get cranky when they’re kicked.”
“I don’t care,” she retorted. “I’ve been on a horse for as long as I can remember, and my whole body hurts. I’m going to kick anybody I want.”
Again, he nodded. “You may have to.” It was obvious that his thoughts were elsewhere. “We’ve been carrying a lot of questions around for a long time. Tomorrow we’ll start getting answers. You may have to kick everybody we meet.”
Terisa refused to worry about that. All she wanted at the moment was to be warm and dry.
The inhabitants of Orison had the opposite reaction: they prayed for more rain.
Unluckily, they didn’t get it. By the next morning, the ground was dry enough for Prince Kragen to resume his attack.
The mud was still thick: a sea of it surrounded Orison. But decades or centuries of use had packed the roadbed hard; it gave the Alends enough footing to put some heft into the swing of their ram.
Protected by shields and shells, nearly a thousand men edged close to the walls to ward the ram as it hammered the gates. Every blow seemed to carry through the stone to the tops of the towers, the bottoms of the dungeons.
In response, Castellan Lebbick’s guards cranked up mangonels powerful enough to dent iron and splinter wood. The mangonels shattered Alend shields almost effortlessly, reduced the flesh under the shields to pulp and crushed bone. Lebbick didn’t have many of the ponderous crossbows, however. And his men had to fire scores of lead bolts in order to damage the shell protecting the ram.
Slowly, inevitably, one blow at a time, the gates began to fail.
The wood started to compress and crack; stress showed along the iron strutwork; mortar sifted from between the stones which held the gates in the wall; bolts began to work loose.
At the moment, Prince Kragen was paying for this success with dozens and then hundreds of his men. Inside the castle, Orison’s defenders suffered no losses. But that imbalance would shift as soon as the gates broke.
“Tomorrow,” Lebbick muttered, inspecting their timbers with an expert eye. “Those shitlickers’ll be in here tomorrow. We’ve got that long to
live.”
He didn’t sound upset. He didn’t even sound angry.
He sounded satisfied.
Dutifully, he sent a report to King Joyse. Then he reduced Orison’s defenders to a minimum. Every guard who could be spared he ordered away to spend as much time as possible with whatever friends or family the man had left.
His wife would have approved of that.
Amiably, Artagel asked him, “What do you suppose King Joyse will do to save us?”
Entirely without warning, Castellan Lebbick recovered his rage. “The way our luck’s going” – he was clenching his teeth so hard his forehead felt like it might crack – “he’ll challenge Prince fornicating Kragen to a duel.”
With fury crackling in every muscle, he left the gates and the courtyard. While he was angry, at least, he couldn’t bear to watch what was happening.
Like the Prince, he had no way of knowing that Terisa and Geraden were already in the Demesne.
Late that afternoon, they rode as if they were fearless straight up to the first Alend patrol they met and demanded to be taken to the lady Elega.
Swords and distrust surrounded them promptly. Terisa’s mount showed a distressing inclination to shy in all directions; she had to fight to keep the beast under control. She was conscious that the weather had turned chilly since the previous day’s rain. Alends? she wondered. Not Cadwals? Does that mean Orison is still standing? But she had no intention of asking those questions aloud. After all, these soldiers were dressed and armored just like the men who had taken Queen Madin.
The leader of the patrol snapped, “What makes pigslop like you two think you’ve got a reason to see the Prince’s lady?”
Geraden’s mouth smiled, but his eyes were hard. “We’re servants,” he answered with a hint of danger in his voice. “Our parents have served her family since before we were born. We grew up with her.
“We’ve come from Romish. The Queen sent us to see her.”
The Alend leader snarled a curse. “The Queen? Madin, that shithole Joyse’s wife?”
The effort of controlling her horse disguised Terisa’s face as effectively as a mask. Geraden’s expression was positively serene: only his eyes threatened to betray him. “So you’ve heard of her,” he said blandly. “Good. Then you’ll understand that the lady Elega won’t take it kindly if you prevent us from delivering our messages.”
“Queen Madin?” the Alend repeated in a voice congested with hostility. “You’ve got messages from Queen Madin?”
Geraden’s mouth smiled again. “My, you are quick.” Then, softly, he said, “Take us to see the lady Elega.”
A little thrill touched Terisa’s heart as she heard the authority in his tone.
The leader of the patrol hesitated; he was taken aback – a fact which seemed to surprise him. To compensate, he growled an obscenity. Then he said, “I think the Prince is going to want to hear your messages.”
“As long as we get to talk to her,” replied Geraden, “I don’t care who else hears us. Take us to see them both.
“Just do it.”
To his own obvious astonishment, the Alend leader turned and organized his men to escort Geraden and Terisa toward the encampment. A pair of the Alends galloped ahead; the rest formed a knot around the travelers.
Suddenly giddy with relief – perhaps because her horse had stopped shying – she took the risk of giving Geraden a wink. He pretended not to notice it.
They were closer to the siege than she had realized. In only a short time, they came in sight of the Alend army and Orison.
She was surprised by how small the castle looked under these circumstances, invested by ten thousand soldiers, half a hundred siege engines, and an uncounted number of servants and camp followers. Orison’s bluff gray stone, which should have appeared impregnable, bore an unexpected resemblance to cardboard; tiny flags fluttering from the towers gave the place the air of a child’s plaything.
At the same time, the breach partially covered by the curtain-wall seemed to gape unnaturally wide, as if it were bigger than it used to be, darker; a fatal wound.
The men who had ridden ahead had already caused a commotion: Terisa could see the army and its adherents shifting to receive her and Geraden. People ran forward to stare; questions were called which the Alend leader either ignored or shouted down. The attack on the gates used only a fraction of Prince Kragen’s forces; the rest had nothing to do at the moment except wait and worry. Some of the soldiers only wanted news. But others offered jokes and insults that turned Geraden’s eyes as sharp as bits of glass. He preserved his expression of serenity, however, and followed the patrol in through the camp.
They passed an area of tattered and scruffy tents where the poorest of the camp followers lived, ankle-deep in the overflow of their own squalor. Then the order and cleanliness of the encampment began to improve, according to the increasing status of its occupants. In minutes, the patrol brought Terisa and Geraden to an open area like an imitation of a courtyard, around which were pitched several tents so large and luxurious that she felt sure she and Geraden had reached their goal.
Their immediate goal, at any rate. In order to enter Orison, they first had to get past Prince Kragen.
He came out of one of the tents into the evening shadows before anyone had a chance to dismount. He moved as if he intended to approach the riders directly; but as soon as he saw them he stopped. He planted his fists on his hips when Terisa met his gaze; his black eyes flashed as if she had given him a slap. For a moment, forcing himself to be thorough, he turned his head and considered Geraden; then he faced Terisa again.
“ ‘Servants of the Queen’?” he demanded of his men in a tone that might have been jesting or bitter. “They said that, and you believed them? Did not one of you louts think to ask them their names?”
He didn’t give the leader of the patrol a chance to respond, however. “Oh, let it pass. They would have lied about their names as well, and then you would have been worse fooled than before.
“At least have the common sense to disarm them. Then go.”
Stung, the leader of the patrol snatched away Terisa’s and Geraden’s weapons, the swords the Termigan had given them. Then the men withdrew.
Prince Kragen gave the impression that the patrol had already ceased to exist as far as he was concerned. He was concentrating exclusively on Terisa.
“My lady Terisa of Morgan.” He spoke slowly, drawling in a way which suggested humor or scorn. “You astonish me entirely. And your companion must be the infamous Apt Geraden, the butt alike of mirth and augury. I can think of no other possibility.
“However, you may amaze me there as well. Since you are out here” – he released one fist from his hip to gesture at the ground between the tents – “when it is obvious that you ought to be in there” – he indicated Orison – “I conclude that you have a remarkable story to tell me.
“You will tell it” – gradually, his tone convinced Terisa that he wasn’t in a happy mood – “now.”
“My lord Prince,” Geraden put in steadily, as if he weren’t interrupting the Alend Contender, “where is the lady Elega?”
“I am here, Geraden.”
Terisa turned in her saddle and saw the King’s daughter.
Elega stood between the flaps of one of the tents. A streak of sunset caught her face, so that her usual paleness was covered with an orange-gold blush, and light muffled the vividness of her eyes. In that way, she looked like she had become an entirely different woman since Terisa had last seen her.
“So it is true, my lady Terisa,” she said clearly, lifting up her voice as though this were a formal occasion. “It was always true. You are an Imager.”
Prince Kragen’s mouth moved under his moustache, swearing. When he spoke, however, he kept his tone neutral. “How do you reach that conclusion, my lady Elega?”
Elega’s gaze didn’t shift from Terisa; she studied Terisa through the failing beams of the sun. “As you said, my lord P
rince, they are not in Orison. It is doubtful that they were able to creep out through your siege. Therefore they must have removed themselves by Imagery.”
“Or someone else removed us,” Geraden put in acerbically. “Don’t forget that possibility. You don’t think Gart does his own translations, do you?”
An unexpected silence fell over the tents. Elega half raised a hand to her mouth, then dropped it. A glint of white teeth showed between Prince Kragen’s lips. From somewhere in the distance, Terisa heard a methodical booming, a deep thud at once so hard and so far away that it seemed to come through the ground rather than the air. Men shouted faintly. Her presence there, and Geraden’s, must have come as a complete surprise to Elega and the Prince. Now the idea Geraden suggested appeared to shock them further, as if it made the whole situation incomprehensible.
Well, Terisa thought, this was better than being tied up – or cut down. She felt an off-center, almost loony desire to give Geraden a round of applause. The men who had taken Queen Madin were Alends. And Terisa and Geraden had so many questions—And they wanted to get into Orison. If Kragen really had ordered the Queen’s abduction, their only hope was to keep him off balance and pray for something unexpected to happen.
Trying to make a contribution, she asked, “My lord Prince, may we get down? I’ve been on this horse ever since I can remember.”
A small shudder seemed to pass through Prince Kragen, a brief convulsion of will. At once, he became calmer, as if his self-possession had been tightened a notch.
“Of course, my lady Terisa.” He moved toward her. “Where other matters are concerned, I have said that the debts between us are settled. Yet you are a friend of the lady Elega’s, and so you are welcome among us. Permit me to offer you the Alend Monarch’s hospitality.”