Broken rock in tons; hundreds and thousands of tons; enough rock to build a castle, a mountain; all slamming down out of the sky directly above the chasm, all howling torrentially into the Masters’ crevice.
Enough rock to fill the rift. Plug it. Make it passable.
And behind the translated collapse of the mountainside came High King Festten’s men, pressing forward to breach the valley as soon as the rockfall ended.
The avalanche moved along the chasm, distributing rubble as evenly as possible.
Then, while the whole valley watched in shock, the plunge of stone began to thin. Quickly, too quickly, the tons of rock became dirt and pebbles; the dirt and pebbles changed to dust; the dust billowed everywhere, as light and swirling as snow.
Raising their battle howl, High King Festten’s men charged.
The crevice wasn’t perfectly filled: in some places, the rock piled too high; in others, the dirt sank too low. Nevertheless at least a third of the chasm could be crossed now. Cadwal’s troops rushed forward while Castellan Norge and Prince Kragen were still straining to rally their forces.
Within the valley, Festten’s men split into two groups, curving around the inside of the chasm to attack the Masters hidden in the ends of the walls.
The Tor saw the Cadwals come as he rode, lashing his horse for more speed than it could give him. He had forgotten his pain: he had forgotten loss. He only knew that he was too late to help break the first shock of the assault. Norge had hundreds of archers and bowmen hidden around the Masters. And the Masters had mirrors. That would have to be enough, until help could come.
It wasn’t enough; it was never going to be enough. Already there were a thousand Cadwals in the valley, two thousand. More came as fast as they could cross the chasm.
Forgetting all the things he couldn’t do, the Tor unsheathed his longsword.
In the rocks ahead, he saw Master Barsonage. The mediator had climbed to his signaling-place above the mirrors. He looked small and doomed there, his chasuble fluttering. As if he had lost his mind, he yelled through the Cadwal battle howl, waved a blue cloth wildly at the opposite wall.
The Tor didn’t understand what happened next until it was over; but somehow, by luck or inspiration, Master Barsonage achieved his aim.
Both Masters ceased their translation at the same moment.
The chasm blinked out of existence.
Now there was solid ground where the avalanche had fallen. Stone and soil occupied the space which the rockfall had filled.
In the convulsion, the Tor’s horse stumbled, nearly lost its footing. With a spasm like an eruption, the closed earth spat the entire rockfall straight into the air.
Without transition, the battle howl changed to screams and chaos. Hundreds of Cadwals died in the blast while they tried to cross the vanished chasm; hundreds more were crushed by the rejected rock as it plunged back to the ground, blocking the valley from wall to wall. Granite thunder and groaning swallowed the sound of war drums.
Unfortunately, the High King still had as many as two thousand men inside the valley – men still charging to kill the Masters, shatter the mirrors. And King Joyse’s reinforcements were still too far away.
The Castellan’s archers recovered their wits enough to begin shooting. But their arrows were too few, and the Cadwals were well armored. Men with swords swarmed up into the rocks, fighting to reach the Masters.
Master Barsonage had scuttled downward, vanished into a gap the Tor couldn’t see. That movement told the Cadwals exactly where their target was. Spared the necessity of searching, they surged ahead.
With Ribuld beside him, the Tor crashed against the rear of the Cadwal force.
His sword was heavy: his whole body was heavy, weighted with pain and bereavement. He hacked at the Cadwals from side to side, once on the left, once on the right, back and forth; and each blow seemed to shear helmets and heads, breastplates and leather. His horse plunged, stumbled, scrambled forward – somehow he kept his balance. His sword was his balance, his life: up and down, side to side, hacking with all its strength, while his belly filled up with blood.
Above him, the Cadwals who reached the Masters’ position seemed to be disappearing.
In their gap among the rocks, the Imagers concentrated grimly, working their translations against impossible odds.
That is to say, Master Barsonage concentrated grimly, grinding his courage into focus with such urgency that sweat stood on his skin and a dangerous flush darkened his face. For all the distress Master Harpool showed, he might as well have been performing translations in his sleep. Standing mostly behind his glass, with his eyes closed and an old man’s mumble on his lips, he kept his mirror open and simply let everything that came near it fall into the Image – trusting, no doubt, that the haste and frenzy of the Cadwals would spare him from a direct attack on his person.
The young Master wasn’t doing anything at all. He had slumped to the snow-packed floor; his glass leaned over him, useless. Something in him, some essential fortitude or will, had snapped. He had kept his translation open for the chasm until Master Barsonage had called for him to let it go; then his eyes had rolled back in his head, and he had crumbled.
The mirrors were vital: the Congery had nothing else to contribute to Mordant’s defense. Ignoring the young Imager, Master Barsonage forced himself to translate and translate, on and on, when every nerve in his body wailed to flinch away from the swords and blows and curses coming at him.
Unhappily, from where he stood he could see clearly that reinforcements were still too far away. He could see that the Tor and Ribuld didn’t stand a chance.
The Tor went on fighting anyway, long after he had lost his strength and his balance and even his reason. A blow for his son. A blow for his Care. And now a blow for King Joyse. Then back to the beginning again. A blow for everyone he had ever loved, everyone who had ever died.
For some reason, there was a knife stuck in his leg. It was a big knife; really, quite a big knife. He couldn’t tell whether it hurt him or not, but it seemed to catch his leg in a way he couldn’t escape, so that he had no choice except to fall off his horse.
He dreaded that fall. It was a long way to the ground, and his swollen side couldn’t endure an impact like that. Luckily, however, he managed to land on the man who stuck him; that was one less Cadwal to worry about. Now all he had to do was roll onto his back. He knew he didn’t have the strength to stand again; but from the ground he would be able to cut at the legs of the men around him.
He rolled onto his back.
Unluckily, he had lost his sword. He didn’t have anything left to fight with.
Ribuld stood over him.
Gripping his own blade in both fists, the guard fought for both of them: blows on all sides; spurts and splashes of blood; chips of armor, iron sword-shards. Ribuld’s scar burned as if his life were on fire in his face, and his teeth snapped at the air.
Someone shouted, “My lord Tor! Watch out!”
The voice was familiar, but the old lord couldn’t place it. It was too recent: it belonged to someone he hadn’t known long enough to remember.
Then a swordpoint came right through the center of Ribuld’s chest, driven like a spear from behind.
Oh, well. The stars had granted the Tor his last wish. And King Joyse had said, You have not betrayed me. That was enough.
A moment later, someone slammed a rock down on his head and brought all his losses to an end.
But when Master Barsonage cried, “My lord Tor! Watch out!” the young Imager sprang to his feet as if he had been galvanized.
Like Ribuld’s, the young Master’s home was in the Care of Tor, in Marshalt. In fact, he was distantly related by marriage to the Tor himself. That familiar name – and the mediator’s alarm – wrenched him out of his stupor, brought him to his feet crying madly, “The Tor? The Tor? Oh, my lord!”
He had no idea what was going on: his eyes held nothing but exhaustion and distress. The broken part
of him only made him urgent; it didn’t make him sane.
Sobbing, “Save the Tor!” he grabbed up his mirror.
Master Barsonage was too slow. He was watching the Tor, watching the reinforcements; he didn’t react in time.
The young Imager was hardly more than a boy, pushed past his limits. Facing his mirror in the general direction of the opposite glass, he began translating his chasm straight into the huge ridge of rock left by the avalanche; the rock which sealed the valley.
But of course the Master holding the other mirror didn’t know what was about to happen. In any case, the two mirrors were no longer properly aligned. There was nothing to stop the tremendous and convulsive tremor which split the ridge and the ground and went on until it hit the end of the other wall and tore apart all that old stone, reducing the opposite glass and everyone near it to rubble.
Under the circumstances, it was probably a good thing that the young Master didn’t live long. There was no way to tell how much damage his chasm might have done, if the translation had continued unchecked. And there was no way to tell how he would have endured the consequences of his action.
As matters fell out, however, he was saved by a particularly stubborn Cadwal, who already had his sword up to chop open Master Harpool’s oblivious face when an Alend arrow nailed him between the shoulder blades. Falling forward, his upraised arms hit the top of Harpool’s mirror. That impact made his fingers release his sword.
As if it had been thrown deliberately, the hilt of the blade snapped the young Master’s neck. He, in turn, fell forward onto his glass, shattering it completely.
Full of terrible defeat, Master Barsonage hardly noticed that Master Harpool had somehow contrived to keep his own mirror from being broken. And the mediator’s was undamaged. That was less than no consolation; it was almost an insult in the face of the general ruin. Every other glass which the Congery had prepared for this battle was destroyed.
He half expected another violent recoil as the chasm ceased to exist for the second time; but that didn’t happen. The previous convulsion had been caused by reversing the translation. This translation, on the other hand, was only stopped, not undone. Vast portions of the piled ridge were engulfed; most of the end-rock of the opposite wall disappeared into the new crevice. Then the rending and splitting of the earth was over.
As a result, the High King’s forces once again had access to the valley – a ragged and constricted access, treacherous to cross, like the spaces between rotting teeth, but access nonetheless.
When he saw that there were already men riding at full career in through one of the farther gaps, Master Barsonage covered his face with his hands.
FORTY-NINE: THE KING’S LAST HOPES
Standing near the King’s pennon with Terisa, Geraden, and her father, the lady Elega didn’t know where to look, or what to feel.
She could watch the struggle down at the end of the valley wall, off to her right, where the Tor had fallen, and where Castellan Norge and his men fought to save what they could of the Masters and their mirrors. Or she could watch the breach where the other Masters used to be, the gap which had been made in the piled ridge of the avalanche by translating the Congery’s chasm from only one side.
Riders were coming in through that gap, driving their horses hard. And Prince Kragen was there. From this distance, he appeared to be doing everything at once: rallying his men; finishing off the incursion of Cadwals; searching over the new jumble of rocks for survivors. To her eyes, each of his actions seemed as quick as a thrust, as decisive as a sword; the precision with which he used his men made Norge look like a blundering lout by comparison.
He was worthy – oh, he was worthy! Surely King Joyse could see that. Surely her father in this new manifestation could see and appreciate the qualities which made the Alend Contender precious to her. Prince Kragen deserved—
He deserved to be right.
Almost as an act of self-mortification, to humble herself so that she wouldn’t hope so hard, fear so much, Elega forced her eyes to stay on the right side of the valley foot, not the left.
The question of what to feel was more difficult. She couldn’t resolve it by an act of will.
Pride and panic: vindication and alarm. Suddenly, as much “out of nowhere” as if translation were involved, the King had proved himself. He had made real the interpretations of himself which until now had been only ideas – concepts put forward by people like Terisa and Geraden for reasons of their own. He had shown that he merited the risks she had taken in his name, arguing for him against reason, common sense; he had justified the forbearance she had won from Prince Kragen and the Alend Monarch. In the privacy of her own thoughts, she understood why he had found it necessary to use her like a hop-board piece in his plans, rather than to hazard the truth with her. She was proud of him, there beside his standard, blue eyes blazing; as ready as a hawk to strike or defend.
She was proud of him – and afraid that she had failed him.
In a sense, she was playing his own game against him. At her urging, Prince Kragen and the Alend Monarch had made decisions concerning this war on the basis of knowledge and speculation which they hadn’t shared with any representative of Orison.
Her purpose – as distinct from Kragen’s or Margonal’s – had been twofold: to make the forces of Alend wait, withhold their siege, long enough for King Joyse’s plans to ripen; and to put pressure on the King, pressure which would force him to accept an alliance with Alend. By keeping secrets from her father, she reinforced Prince Kragen’s position.
Now, today, here, what she had done came to the test. She would be right, as the Prince deserved – if for no other reason than because he had trusted her. Or she would be wrong.
Mordant itself might stand or fall on the outcome.
She could choose to keep her eyes away from Prince Kragen, away from the riders boiling into the valley on the left; but she couldn’t choose to ignore her fear. The more pride she felt in King Joyse and the Prince, the more she dreaded the possibility that she had helped bring them both to ruin.
Maybe that was why she looked her worst in sunlight. The sun couldn’t expose her secrets, of course; but it seemed to lay bare the fact that she had them.
Under the circumstances, she considered it fortunate that no one was paying much attention to her.
Unconscious of himself, Geraden muttered, “Get up. Get up.” Everyone had seen the Tor go down; no one had seen the old lord regain his feet. For that matter, no one had seen any of the Masters emerge from the rocks. “Get up. We need you.”
Terisa held his arm with both hands, clung to him. Nevertheless she kept her eyes averted as if she couldn’t bear to watch what he was seeing. Facing to the left of the valley’s foot, she asked softly, “Who is that?”
Geraden apparently had no idea what she meant. And Elega was determined not to look. She needed a way to live with her fear, a way to endure her failure when it came.
Abruptly, it became obvious that Castellan Norge was done with the Cadwals attacking the Masters. Shouts were raised, and some of the men relaxed. Bowmen hurried out of the rocks to retrieve their shafts; riders sped away, some to deliver messages, others to help the Prince. Master Barsonage appeared, holding a glass nearly as tall as himself. Behind him came Master Harpool, doddering painfully. Two guards carried the old Imager’s mirror for him.
Together, five or six men picked up the Tor’s corpse; as gently as they could, they set it in a rude litter. Then they lifted the litter to other men on horseback. Ribuld’s body also was put in a litter to accompany the Tor’s. Castellan Norge mounted his horse, placed himself at the head of his riders.
In procession, like a cortege, the Castellan and his men came up the valley toward King Joyse.
“My lord,” Geraden sighed – an exhalation with his teeth clenched down on it hard enough to draw blood. “My poor lord.”
Terisa shook his arm; maybe she was trying to distract him. “Geraden, look. Who is tha
t?”
Involuntarily, the lady Elega turned.
At once, she saw that the horsemen attempting to enter the valley were fighting for their lives—
—fighting for their lives against the forces of Cadwal outside. She had assumed that they, too, were Cadwals; but she was wrong. High King Festten opposed them bitterly: seen through the breaches in the piled ridge, it appeared that he had sent his entire mounted strength to destroy them.
She saw Prince Kragen spur his charger into a gallop, leading several hundred Alends to the defense of the riders; headlong against thousands of Cadwals.
At the same time, King Joyse shouted to the nearest captain, “Get archers down there! I want bows up in those rockpiles! I want an ambush in each of those gaps! We cannot keep Cadwal out, but we can make the High King cautious. We must not allow him to mass his men inside those piles!”
Cupping his hands on either side of his mouth to make his voice ring, he added, “Support the Prince!”
With her jaw hanging down like a madwoman’s, Elega saw that one of the riders Prince Kragen was risking himself to help bore the dull grape-on-wheat colors of the Termigan.
The Termigan?
What in the name of all sanity was he doing here?
“The Termigan!” Geraden breathed to Terisa. “I don’t believe it. He came after all.”
Elega was too surprised to notice that the catapults were ready to throw again. And she certainly didn’t notice that one of them behind her had been reaimed toward King Joyse’s pennon. She hardly heard the flat thudding of the arms, or the thin, high scream of scattershot through the air. At the moment, her only concern was that none of the engines could strike at Prince Kragen or the Termigan.
She didn’t know how lucky she was when the catapult behind her failed to throw.
Instead of attacking, it leaned forward and toppled crookedly off the rampart, tearing itself to scrap on the rocks as it fell. From the valley rim, a group of Prince Kragen’s climbers raised an inaudible cheer, then turned to defend themselves from Cadwals arriving too late to save the engine.