“At the cost of much hardship and privation and danger” – his eyes hinted at pride – “my demure and retiring daughter saved her mother. She enabled me to find the Queen and set her free.
“Her abductors defended themselves as well as they could – well enough to prevent the Fayle’s men and me from capturing or questioning them – but at last they fell.” The state of his gear testified that the battle hadn’t been easy. “When I had taken Queen Madin and Torrent to safety in Romish, Havelock’s friend brought me here as quickly as possible.”
Geraden absorbed this account without obvious surprise or appreciation. When King Joyse had finished, Geraden asked noncommittally, “And you didn’t stop in Orison? You don’t have any news from there?”
The King was losing patience. “Do I look like a man who has spent time on social amenities and conversation? I knew that if I did not find you here I could return to Orison at my leisure. But if I had stopped there first and failed to find you, the delay might have made me too late to join you. I have learned nothing, heard nothing, since the moment I left the hall of audiences.
“Geraden,” he concluded warningly, “I must know what has happened in my absence. I must hear the tale you brought to Orison with Prince Kragen. I cannot go into battle without that knowledge.”
“My lord King,” Geraden responded as if he were immune to Joyse’s impatience, “Eremis is holding my brother Nyle hostage somewhere near here – a stronghold of some kind, probably. Eremis is going to use him against us. Against me. And it’s my doing. If I hadn’t been so determined to stop him from betraying you for Elega and Prince Kragen, he never would have been vulnerable to Eremis. He wouldn’t have been locked up where Eremis could get at him.
“But it’s your doing, too. You’ve always been such a friend of the Domne. You welcomed Artagel. You went out of your way to draw me to you. And yet you always ignored Nyle.
“His yearning was as great as mine. He has plenty of ability. And he was raised from the beginning on Artagel’s stories about you, the Domne’s stories. He would have been willing to kill for you by the time he was six.”
“Geraden,” King Joyse growled.
Nevertheless Geraden went on, “Why didn’t you value him at all? Why didn’t you give him something to save him while he was still young enough to save?”
“You exceed yourself,” snapped the King. “I have not come all this way to answer such questions.”
“But you’re going to answer this one,” Geraden replied as if he were sure – as if he had the capacity to make King Joyse do what he wanted. The hint of authority in his voice was so subtle that Terisa scarcely heard it. He meant to wrest some kind of truth from his King.
And the King did answer. To her astonishment, he retreated visibly, with a crestfallen air, a look of embarrassment; Geraden had touched an odd shame. “Yes,” he muttered, “all right. You are right: I always did ignore him. There was always a quality in his dumb need which I disliked. He pitied himself before I could pity him – and so I had no desire to pity him.
“But that is not the reason.
“Artagel was another matter altogether. His talent with the sword was obvious. Anyone would have welcomed him. But you, Geraden—” The King’s gaze was angry and hurt at once, as if his own sense of culpability baffled him. “I did not choose you out of a desire to give you precedence over Nyle. I would not have done that to the son of a friend. No, I drew you to me because I had already seen your importance in Havelock’s augury.”
Geraden hissed a breath; but King Joyse didn’t stop.
“The glass which he broke when I was an infant showed you exactly as you appear in the Congery’s augury” – for a moment, the King’s voice sounded as raw as splintered wood – “surrounded entirely by mirrors in which Images of violence reflected against you. How could I let you be? I had to save you, if that were possible. And if it were not, I had to give you the chance to save me.
“Geraden,” King Joyse admitted in frank pain, “on your father’s love, I swear to you that I slighted Nyle’s yearning only because I was not wise enough to see where it would lead him. The Domne has given me nothing but love and loyalty. In the matter of his son Nyle I failed him.”
For a long moment, Geraden didn’t speak. When he did, his throat was tight with emotion. “We all failed, my lord King. For my part – I swear to you on my father’s love that I’ll save you if I can. No matter how many people you’ve hurt. You haven’t been honest with us for a long time, and I hate that. But you’re still my King. Nobody can fill that place but you.”
Terisa couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Castellan Lebbick is dead,” she put in cruelly to get the King’s attention. She needed answers of her own. “Gart killed him. All he managed to do before he died was save the Tor.”
That made Geraden turn toward her, made King Joyse face her again.
The two men looked unexpectedly like a match for each other, suited to meet each other’s demands.
“I defended you,” she said with Lebbick’s body vivid in her mind, and the Perdon’s; with the Tor’s hurt displayed under the light of the lanterns. “I stood up in front of everybody and told them what Master Quillon told me. You made yourself the only reasonable target. So the enemies you hadn’t been able to identify would attack you instead of someone else, somewhere else. I told them. That’s why we’re all here. We decided to trust you even after you abandoned us.
“But Master Quillon is dead. Castellan Lebbick is dead. The Perdon is dead. The Tor is dying.” Her distress accumulated as she spoke. She thought that she would never be reconciled to all the different kinds of pain King Joyse had exacted from his friends. “Nyle is a hostage, and Houseldon has been burned to the ground, and Sternwall is sinking in lava, and the Fayle doesn’t even have enough men left to rescue his own daughter, and now we’re probably going to be slaughtered because we don’t know where Eremis’ stronghold is,” oh, curse you, curse you, you crazy old man, “and I want to know how you stand it. How do you live with yourself.? How do you expect us to trust you?
“You can’t help us now!” Overwhelmed by unpremeditated bitterness, Terisa cried, “You can’t even beat Havelock at hop-board!”
Despite her outburst, however, King Joyse faced her gently. Her accusation hurt him less than Geraden’s had: maybe he was readier for it. His face softened while she protested against him; his gaze was blurred by compassion. He waited until she was finished. Then, incongruously, he pulled an old handkerchief out of the seam of his breastplate and handed it to her so that she could wipe her eyes.
Geraden stood now at the King’s shoulder as if he had been won over. “Terisa—” he began; but King Joyse touched his arm, stopped him.
“No, Geraden. I must answer her.
“My lady, I have already proved myself to you, after a fashion. You have seen atrocities in Mordant. Yet it was not I who perpetrated them. If I had not, as you say, made myself a target, if I had not risked those I love most in the name of my weakness, those atrocities would be everywhere. Without the lure of my weakness, Eremis might have had great difficulty forging an alliance with High King Festten – and so he would have had no choice except to afflict Cadwal and Mordant and Alend with vile Imagery until all things were destroyed. At the cost of Quillon’s life, and Lebbick’s, and the Perdon’s – at the cost, yes, of my own wife’s indignation, my own daughter’s betray – I have procured my enemy’s name as well as his attention, so that for Cadwal and Mordant and Alend there is still hope. I have given us the opportunity to fight for our world.
“But that is not what you wish to know, is it?”
His voice searched her, and his eyes seemed to probe her bitterness. When he looked at her like that, she felt an unaccountable desire to tell him about being locked in the closet, as if it were his fault in some way, as if there were something he could have done about it. Until this moment, he had cut himself off from her – as her father had cut himself off. What made King Jo
yse a better man than her father?
“You dislike what I have done,” the King said, “but you are able to grasp the necessity of it. Otherwise you would not have supported me. No, my lady, what you want from me is a more immediate hope. You wish me to be greater than you can imagine. You wish me to justify myself with power. You wish me to tell you that I have the means to save you.”
Involuntarily, she ducked her head, unable to meet his steady blue scrutiny.
“Terisa,” he said softly, “my lady, I cannot save you. I do not have the means.
“You know that already,” he continued at once. “As you have observed, I cannot so much as defeat the Adept at hop-board. It is only a game, of course, a mere exercise – but I cannot forget that the pieces live and breathe, with names and spouses, children and bravery and fear. I am an unreasonable man. When Quillon told me that Myste went to you before her disappearance, I risked myself and all my plans in order to challenge you, even though Havelock’s augury had given me reason to think I knew where she had gone. When my wife was threatened, I did not ask whether any larger need should outweigh her peril in my mind. I lack Havelock’s particular sanity.
“And the same unreason weakens me everywhere. Shall I tell you a thing which shames me? When I learned that you had fled to Havelock after Quillon’s death, that you had gone to him for rescue with Master Gilbur hot behind you, and that he had refused you—My lady, Havelock is my oldest friend. It was he who put me on the path to become what I am. But when I learned that he had refused you, I struck him—”
Geraden’s eyes widened at that revelation; but he said nothing.
“Nevertheless,” the King went on as if mere shame couldn’t hold him back, “I am here. When Quillon was killed – Quillon, who had served me so long with such courage and cunning – I knew that this battle was mine to wage, rather than only to command. The blood must be on my hands. I will not have my pieces so contemptuously used. I will not allow Master Eremis to tilt the board, to remake the world in his own image.” Terisa could have sworn that he was growing taller, rising to power in front of her. “Do you believe I care nothing for Lebbick’s suffering, or the Tor’s? Do you believe I have not felt your distress – or Geraden’s – or Elega’s?
“My lady, you have not seen me fight.”
Curse you. Oh, curse you completely. I’ll do anything you want. Just tell me what it is.
“I have seen you fight, however,” put in Prince Kragen as he came between the tentflaps. “Though it galls me to say so, my lord King, I am glad that you have come.”
The Prince had Ribuld with him, and Castellan Norge. Master Barsonage entered the tent on the Castellan’s heels. And with them came a slim figure cloaked from head to foot in dark satin, face and shape and even hands hidden. As Prince Kragen strode forward to confront the King, as both Master Barsonage and Norge stopped and stared as if they couldn’t believe their eyes, the cloaked figure slipped back along the tent wall, trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible.
“My lord Prince.” King Joyse swung away from Terisa and Geraden; the keenness in his stance intensified. “Master Barsonage.” He looked ready to leap in any direction, haul out his sword at a moment’s notice. “Captain Norge.
“I have said it before, but I will gladly say it again. We are well met.”
“My lord King.” The Tor tried to reach his feet against the physician’s restraining hands. His voice sounded as thin as a light breeze in cornshucks. “I must speak.”
At once, King Joyse turned toward the Tor; but he kept his back to the tent wall, away from Prince Kragen. “Speak sitting, my lord,” he commanded. “And speak as little as possible. Your life is precious to me.”
Muffling a groan, the Tor sagged.
“If we are here wrongly, the fault is mine alone,” he said in a deathbed whisper. “Master Geraden and the lady Terisa have discovered their talents. Already they have worked miracles of Imagery. Norge has become your Castellan, at my command. He leads the forces of Orison.”
With a visceral shiver, Terisa realized that the Tor was struggling to prepare King Joyse for his encounter with the Prince.
“Master Barsonage and the Congery have devised means of supply and defense, in accordance with your strictures. We would not have come so far without them.
“Prince Kragen is here with six thousand Alend soldiers because he is an honorable man.”
King Joyse put a hand on the Tor’s naked shoulder, mutely urging the old lord to conserve his strength. “ ‘An honorable man,’ ” he echoed distinctly, as if he had doubts on that point. Almost without transition, he appeared to become someone different – a figure of barely suppressed anger, spoiling for conflict. Facing the Prince again, and speaking mildly, but with a bright threat in his eyes, he asked, “Does my old friend mean that he and the Alend Monarch have formed an alliance?”
“No.” Prince Kragen studied the King warily. The excitement which had brought him here was alloyed with a long-standing distrust; but his posture made it clear that he wouldn’t back down from his own desires. “He means that he has explained to the Alend Monarch his intention to place his head on Eremis’ cutting-block and die rather than submit to a war of attrition he cannot win. And the Alend Monarch sent me to accompany him with the bulk of our force because we have no other way to determine whether the Tor’s intention is mad or brilliant. My instructions from my sovereign are to join the Tor or to flee, according to the things I learn here.”
“Margonal is crafty,” commented King Joyse with deceptive nonchalance, “and apparently he has grown in courage. Well, now you are here, my lord Prince. What have you learned?”
Prince Kragen allowed himself a noncommittal shrug. “I have learned that we are indeed trapped. All our heads are on the cutting-block, and Alend will stand or fall with Mordant, regardless of my instructions.”
“I think not,” King Joyse retorted with the air of a man pouncing. “I think you will turn against us at the last and join Cadwal, to preserve your father’s true cowardice.”
At that, Kragen’s head jerked back; a flush of fury darkened his cheeks; he closed his fist on his swordhilt.
In response, both Ribuld and Norge braced themselves to draw their blades. The cloaked figure against the tent wall started forward, then retreated. Geraden edged closer to Terisa, moving to protect her from the danger of swords.
No, she thought urgently, you don’t understand, Prince Kragen is here with us, with us.
The Tor repeated hoarsely, “He is honorable. Honorable.”
“My lord King,” the Prince said between his teeth, “because you are the King, and because I have been told at length why I must trust you, I will assume you have reason to accuse me of such a betrayal.”
“I have reason,” snapped King Joyse. “During my absence, I saved Queen Madin from her abductors. It will not surprise you to hear that when at last I found her she was across the Pestil. In Alend, my lord Prince. Her abductors were Alends, and she was being taken by the most direct route toward Scarab.”
Prince Kragen’s mouth tightened under his moustache. His dark, eyes burned with old enmity, with decades of violence, generations of bloodshed. He looked willing to gut King Joyse on the spot.
Yet he contained his outrage. And he didn’t draw his sword. “And you persist,” he demanded, “in the mad belief that I am capable of such a vile act?”
“No!” Terisa protested. “Eremis did it. He told me so.” What was the matter with King Joyse? How could he suddenly be so wrongheaded? “It’s just a trick to keep you and the Prince from joining forces.”
Before she could go on, King Joyse pointed a forbidding finger at her. “That proves nothing.” The command in his stance forced her to be still. “Master Eremis has a pact with Cadwal. Why not with Alend?”
“Because,” the cloaked figure cried, “he is honorable!
“You do not trust him.” Elega swept the hood back from her head as she advanced, and her vivid eyes flashe
d in the lantern-light. “Is the Tor wrong? Are Terisa and Geraden?” She called every gaze to herself, a cynosure of indignation and passion. Bright as a flame, she challenged her father. “He held Orison in the palm of his siege for days and days. He could have taken you apart stone from stone. Yet he withheld. Does that mean nothing to you? He allowed you time to prove yourself. And you dare accuse him of dishonor? You dare that to my face?”
King Joyse looked at her as if he were stunned.
“No, Father!” she raged. “The only dishonor in this tent is yours! It was you who refused to support the Perdon, you who refused to hear the Fayle. It was you who humiliated Prince Kragen in the hall of audiences, you who allowed Terisa’s attacker to roam Orison freely, you who drove Myste away. You have no right to doubt the Prince. There is no alliance between Alend and Mordant because no one is able to trust you!”
Emotions throbbed under the King’s old skin: outrage; alarm; disbelief. And vindication? She carries my pride with her wherever she goes. For a moment, no one moved; he didn’t move. Elega met his stare as if she were prepared to outface the world.
All at once, King Joyse burst out laughing.
“Oh, very well, my lord Prince,” he chortled while the people around him stared. “You are honest, and your father is honest, and I must apologize. If I do not, she will take the skin from my bones.”
Geraden’s mouth hung open. Prince Kragen clenched his jaws as if he didn’t dare speak.
“It was not wise to bring her with you,” King Joyse went on, “a woman in battle, a useful hostage if Eremis should capture her. But it was honest. If you intended treachery, you would have left her with Margonal. And she would not love you if you had such treachery in you. I know that about her.