A Man Rides Through

TWENTY-SEVEN: THE PRINCE’S SIEGE

Early the next morning, the siege of Orison began.

The huge, rectangular pile of the castle stood on slightly lower ground, surrounded by bare dirt and straggling grass – and surrounded, too, by the Alend army, with its supporting horde of servants and camp followers. From Prince Kragen’s perspective, Orison looked too massive – and the ring of attackers around it too thin – for the siege to succeed. He understood sieges, however. He knew his force was strong enough to take the castle.

Nevertheless the Prince didn’t risk any men. He felt the pressure of time, of course: he could almost taste High King Festten’s army marching out of Cadwal against him, a sensation as disturbing as a stench borne along on the edges of the raw wind. And that army was large – the Prince knew this because he had captured a number of the Perdon’s wounded men on their way to Orison and had taken the information from them. Composed half of mercenaries, half of his own troops, the High King’s troops numbered at least twenty thousand. And of the Alend Monarch’s men there were barely ten thousand.

So Kragen had to hurry. He needed to take Orison and fortify it before those twenty thousand Cadwals crossed the Broadwine into the Demesne. Otherwise when the High King came he would have no choice but to retreat ignominiously. Unless he was willing to lose his entire force in an effort to help Joyse keep the Congery out of Cadwal’s hands. The lady Elega’s plan to paralyze Orison from within had failed, and now time was not on the Alend Contender’s side.

Still he didn’t risk any men. He was going to need them soon enough.

Instead, he ordered his catapults into position to heave rocks at the scant curtain-wall which protected the hole in the side of the castle.

He had seen that wound from a similar vantage point the day after the Congery’s mad champion had blasted his way to freedom, the day when, as the Alend Monarch’s ambassador, he had formally departed Orison: a smoking breach with a look of death about it torn in one face of the blunt stone. The damage had been impressive then, seen against a background of cold and snow, like a fatal hurt that steamed because the corpse was still warm. The sight of it had simultaneously lifted and chilled Prince Kragen’s heart, promising as it did that Orison could be taken – that a power which had once ruled Mordant and controlled the ancient conflict between Alend and Cadwal was doomed.

In some ways, however, King Joyse’s seat looked more vulnerable now. The inadequacies of the curtain-wall were so simple that a child could measure them. Considering his circumstances, Castellan Lebbick had done well – quite well, in fact. But circumstantial excuses wouldn’t help the wall stand against siege engines. The Prince’s captain of catapults was privately taking bets as to whether the curtain-wall could survive more than one good hit.

No, the obvious question facing Prince Kragen was not whether he could break into Orison, but rather how hard the castle would defend itself. The lady Elega had failed to poison Lebbick’s guards – but she had poisoned the reservoir, putting the badly overcrowded castle into a state of severe rationing. And as for King Joyse—He wasn’t just the leader of his people: he was their hero, the man who had given them identity as well as ideals. Now he had lost his mind. Leaderless and desperate, how fiercely would the Mordants fight?

They might find it in themselves to fight very fiercely, if Joyse kept his word. He had certainly lost his mind, there was no doubt about that. Yet he had met Alend’s demand for surrender with the one threat which might give heart to his followers: King Joyse intends to unleash the full force of the Congery against you and rout you from the Earth!

Elega didn’t believe that, but the Prince lacked her confidence. If Joyse did indeed unleash the Congery, then what happened to Alend’s army might be worse than a rout. It might be complete ruin.

So Prince Kragen held his troops back from the walls of Orison. Wearing his spiked helmet over his curly black hair, with his moustache waxed to a bold gloss that matched his eyes, and his longsword and breastplate exposed by the negligent way he wore his white fur robe, he was the image of assurance and vitality as he readied his forces, warned back the army’s camp followers, discussed weights and trajectories with his captain of catapults. Nevertheless every thought in his head was hedged with doubts. He didn’t intend to risk any men until he had to. He was afraid that he might soon need them all.

The terrain suited catapults. For one thing, it was clear. Except for the trees edging the roads, the ground was uncluttered: virtually all the natural brush had been cut away, and even the grass struggling to come out for the spring was having a hard time because of the chill and the lack of rain. And the roads weren’t in Kragen’s way: they met some distance outside Orison’s gates to the northeast of the castle, and the wound in the wall faced more toward the northwest. For another, Orison’s immediate setting was either level with or slightly lower than the positions of Alend’s army. As Prince Kragen’s military teachers and advisors had drummed into him for years, it was exceptionally difficult to aim catapults uphill. Here, however, the shot which actually presented itself to his siege engines was an easy one.

The lady Elega came to his side while the most powerful of the catapults was being loaded. His mind was preoccupied; but she had the capacity to get his attention at any time, and he greeted her with a smile that was warmer than his distracted words.

“My lady, we are about to begin.”

Clutching her robe about her, she looked hard at her home. “What will happen, my lord Prince?” she murmured as if she didn’t expect an answer. “Will the curtain-wall hold? The Castellan is a cunning old veteran. Surely he had done his best for Orison.”

Prince Kragen studied her face while she studied the castle. Because he loved her, even admired her – and because he was reluctant to acknowledge that he didn’t entirely trust a woman who had tried so hard to betray her own father – it was difficult for him to admit that she wasn’t at her best under these conditions. Cold and wind took the spark out of her vivid eyes, turning them sore and puffy; stark sunlight made her look wan, bloodless, like a woman with no heart. She was only lovely when she was within doors, seen by the light of candles and intrigue. Yet her present lack of beauty only caused the Prince to love her more. He knew that she did indeed have a heart. The fingers that held her robe closed were pale and urgent. Every word she said, and every line of her stance, told him that she was mourning.

“Oh, the wall will fall,” he replied in the same distracted tone. “We will have it down before sunset – perhaps before noon. It was raised in winter. Let Lebbick be as cunning and experienced as you wish.” Kragen didn’t much like the dour Castellan. “He has had nothing to use for mortar. If he took all the sand of the Congery – and then butchered every Imager for blood – he would still be unable to seal those stones against us.”

The lady winced slightly. “And when it comes down?” she asked, pursuing an unspoken worry. “What then?”

“When this blow is struck,” he said, suddenly harsh, “there will be no turning back. Alend will be at war with Mordant. And we cannot wait for thirst and fear to do our work for us. The Perdon is all that stands between us and High King Festten. We will make the breach as large as we can. Then we will fight our way in.” A moment later, however, he took pity on her and added, “Orison will be given every conceivable opportunity to surrender. I want no slaughter. Every man, woman, and child there will be needed against Cadwal.”

Elega looked at him, mute gratitude on her chafed and swollen face. She thought for a while, then nodded. “Castellan Lebbick will never surrender. My father has never surrendered in his life.”

“Then they must begin here,” snapped the Prince.

He believed that. He believed that the curtain-wall couldn’t hold – that apart from Imagery, Orison didn’t have the resources to withstand his assault. Yet doubts he could hardly name tightened their grip on his stomach as he ordered the captain to throw the first stone.

In unison, two brawny men swung mallets against the hooks on either side of the catapult; the great arm leaped forward and slammed against its stops; a boulder as heavy as a man arced out of the cup. The throw raised a shout of anticipation from the army, but Prince Kragen watched it go grimly. The flat smack of the mallets, the groan of stress in the timbers, the thud of the stops and the protest of the wheels: he seemed to feel them in his chest, as if they were blows struck against him – as if he could tell simply by the sound that the stone was going to miss.

It did.

Not entirely, of course: Orison was too big a target for that. But the boulder hit high and to the left, away from the curtain-wall.

The impact left a scar on the face of the castle. That was trivial, however: the projectile itself shattered. The plain purple swath of the King’s personal banner continued to snap and flutter, untouched, unconcerned.

Under his breath, Kragen cursed the wind, although he knew it had nothing to do with the miss. In fact, a miss was normal: a hit would have been uncommon. The captain of catapults needed a few throws to adjust his engine, get the range. Yet Prince Kragen felt an irrational pang, as if the miss were an omen.

Perhaps it was. Before the captain’s men could start hauling on the tackle which pulled back the arm of the catapult, the entire besieging force heard the cry of a trumpet.

It wasn’t one of the familiar fanfares, announcing messengers or defiance. It was a high, shrill wail on one note, as if the trumpeter himself didn’t know what he was doing, but had simply been instructed to attract attention.

Kragen glanced at the lady Elega, implicitly asking for an explanation. She shrugged and nodded toward Orison.

From his present position, the Prince couldn’t see the castle gates. They must have been opened, however, because a man on a horse came around the corner of the wall, riding in the direction of the catapult.

He was a small man – too small for his mount, Prince Kragen gauged automatically. And not accustomed to horses, judging by the precarious way he kept his seat. If he carried any weapons or armor, they were hidden under his thick mantle.

But over his shoulders, outside his mantle, he wore the yellow chasuble of a Master. The wind made the ends of the chasuble flap so that they couldn’t be missed.

The Prince cocked a black eyebrow, but didn’t let anything else show. Conscious that everything he said would be heard and reported throughout the army, he murmured calmly, “Interesting. An Imager. A Master of the Congery. Do you know him, my lady?”

She waited until there was no possibility of mistake. Then she responded softly, “Quillon, my lord Prince.” She was frowning hard. “Why him? He has never been important, either to the Congery or to my father.”

Prince Kragen smiled toward the approaching Master. So that only Elega could hear him, he commented, “I suspect we will learn the answer shortly.”

Master Quillon came forward, red-faced and laughable on his oversized mount. His eyes watered as if he were weeping, though there was no sorrow in his expression. His nose twitched like a rabbit’s; his lips exposed his protruding teeth. But as the Master brought his horse to a halt in front of Prince Kragen and the lady Elega – as Quillon dismounted almost as if he were falling, blown out of his seat by the wind – the Alend Contender had no difficulty suppressing his mirth. Regardless of what Quillon looked like, he was an Imager. If he had a mirror with him, he might be able to do considerable damage before he was taken prisoner or killed.

“My lord Prince,” he said without preamble – without a glance at King Joyse’s daughter or a bow for the Alend Monarch’s son – “I have come to warn you.”

The men around the Prince stiffened; the captain of catapults put his hand on his sword. But Prince Kragen’s demeanor gave no hint of offense.

“To warn us, Master Quillon?” His tone was smooth, despite the piercing glitter of his gaze. “That is an unexpected courtesy. I distinctly heard Castellan Lebbick threaten to ‘unleash the Congery’ against us. Have I misunderstood your King’s intent? Have I not already been warned? Or” – he held Quillon’s eyes sharply – “is your warning different in some way? Does your presence here imply that the Congery is no longer under Joyse’s rule?”

“No, my lord Prince.” The Imager had such an appearance of being frightened that the assertion in his voice sounded unnatural, unexpectedly ominous. “You rush to conclusions. That is a dangerous weakness in a leader of men. If you wish to survive this war, you must show greater care.”

“Must I?” replied the Prince, still smoothly. “I beg your pardon. You have misled me. Your own incaution in coming to speak to me inspired my incautious speculations. If you mean merely to repeat the Castellan’s threats, you could have spared yourself an uncomfortable ride.”

“I mean nothing of the kind. I came to warn you that we will destroy this catapult. If you remain near it, you may be injured – perhaps killed. King Joyse does not wish you killed. This war is not of his doing, and he has no interest in your death.”

A cold, unfamiliar tingle ran across Kragen’s scalp and down the back of his neck. We will destroy— Like everyone else he had ever known, he was afraid of Imagers, afraid of the strange power to produce atrocities out of nothing more than glass and talent. One consequence of this was that he had distorted the shape of his siege to avoid the crossroads because he knew from Elega that the Perdon had once been attacked by Imagery there. And Quillon’s manner made his words seem mad – unpredictable and therefore perilous. King Joyse does not wish you killed.

At the same time, Margonal’s son was the Alend Contender: he occupied a position, and carried a responsibility, which no one had forced on him. In other lands, other princes might become kings whether they deserved the place or not; but the Alend Monarch’s Seat in Scarab could only be earned, never inherited. And Kragen wanted that Seat, both because he trusted his father and because he trusted himself. More than anyone else who desired to rule Alend, he believed in what his father was doing. And he felt sure that none of his competitors was better qualified than himself

So there was no fear in the way he looked at Quillon, or in the way he stood, or in the way he spoke. There was only watchfulness – and a superficial amusement which wasn’t intended to fool anybody.

“What, no interest at all?” he asked easily. “Even though I have taken his daughter from him and brought the full strength of the Alend Monarch to the gates of Orison? Forgive me if I seem skeptical, Master Quillon. Your King’s concern for my life appears to be – I mean no offense – a little eccentric.” As if he were bowing, he nodded his head; but his men understood him and closed around Quillon, blocking the Imager’s retreat. “And you risk much to make me aware of his regard for me.”

Master Quillon’s gaze flicked from side to side, trying to watch everything at once. “Not so much,” he commented as if he hadn’t noticed his own anxiety. “Only my life. I prefer to live, but nothing of importance will be lost if I am killed. This catapult will still be destroyed. Every catapult which you presume to aim against us will be destroyed. As I say, King Joyse has no interest in your death. If you insist on dying, however, he will not prohibit you.

“The risk to my life is your assurance that I speak the truth.”

“Fascinating,” drawled the Prince. “From this distance, you will destroy my siege engines? What new horror has the Congery devised, that you are now able to project destruction so far from your glass?”

The Master didn’t answer that question. “Withdraw or not, as you choose,” he said. “Kill me or not.” The twitching of his nose was unmistakably rabbitlike. “But do not make the error of believing that you will be permitted to enter or occupy Orison. Rather than surrender his Seat and his strength, King Joyse will allow you to be crushed between the hammer of Cadwal and the anvil of the Congery.”

The lady Elega couldn’t restrain herself. “Quillon, this is madness.” Her protest sounded at once angry and forlorn. “You are a minor Imager, a lesser member of the Congery. You admit that your life has no importance. Yet you dare threaten the Alend Monarch and his son. How have you gained such stature, that you claim to speak with my father’s voice?”

For the first time, Master Quillon looked at her. Suddenly, his face knotted, and an incongruous note of ferocity sharpened his tone. “My lady, I have been given my stature by the King’s command. I am the mediator of the Congery.” Without moving, he confronted her as if he had abruptly become taller. “Unlike his daughter, I have not betrayed him.”

Loyal to their Prince, the Alend soldiers tensed; a number of them put their hands on their swords.

But Elega met the Master’s reply squarely. She had a King’s daughter’s pride, as well as a King’s daughter’s commitment to what she was doing. “That is unjust,” she snapped. “He has betrayed all Mordant. You cannot be blind to the truth. You cannot—”

Deliberately, Master Quillon turned away as if she had ceased to exist for him.

Unheeded, her protest trailed into silence. In the chill spring wind she looked like she might weep.

With difficulty, Prince Kragen checked his anger. The Master’s attitude infuriated him because he understood it too well. Nevertheless he resisted the impulse to have Quillon struck down. Instead, he murmured through his teeth, “You risk more than you realize, Master Quillon. Perhaps you do not consider death to be of great importance, but I assure you that you will attach more significance to pain.”

At that, Elega’s head jerked, and her gaze widened, as if she were shocked. The Prince and the Imager faced each other, however, ignoring her reaction.

Master Quillon’s eyes flicked; his nose twitched. He might have been on the verge of panic. But his tone contradicted that impression. It cut fearlessly.

“Is that your answer to what you do not understand, my lord Prince? Torture? Or do you inflict pain for the simple pleasure of it? Be warned again, son of the Alend Monarch, you are being tested here, as surely as you were tested in Orison, at the hop-board table – and elsewhere. I do not advise you to prove unworthy.”

Without Prince Kragen’s permission, Quillon left. He mounted his horse awkwardly, gathered up the reins. He was surrounded by Alends; yet when he pulled his mount’s head toward Orison the soldiers seemed to open a path for him involuntarily, without instructions from their captain or their Prince, as if they were ruled by the Imager’s peculiar dignity.

Looking slightly ridiculous – or perhaps valiant – on his big horse, he rode back the way he had come. In a short time, he rounded the corner of Orison and disappeared from sight.

Kragen chewed his lips under his moustache as he turned to the lady. You are being tested here— He would have asked, What was the meaning of that? but the darkness in her eyes stopped him.

“Elega?” he inquired softly.

Her jaw tightened as she met his gaze. “ ‘Pain,’ my lord Prince?”

Her indignation made him want to shout at her. We are at war here, my lady. Do you believe that we can fight a war without hurting anyone? He restrained himself, however, because he was also a little ashamed of having threatened Master Quillon.

It was certainly true that in the old days of the constant struggle between Alend and Cadwal, no supporter or adherent of the Alend Monarch would have hesitated to twist a few screams out of any Mordant or Cadwal. And the barons of the Lieges still tended to be a bloodthirsty lot. But since his defeat at King Joyse’s hands, Margonal hadn’t failed to notice that his opponent was able to rule Mordant with considerable ease by winning loyalty rather than extorting it. Never a stupid man, the Alend Monarch had experimented with techniques of kingship other than those which hinged upon fear, violence, and pain, and had been pleased with the results. Even the barons were becoming easier to command.

That was one of the things Margonal had done which Prince Kragen believed in. He wanted to make more such experiments himself.

So despite the fact that he was angry and alarmed and full of doubt, he lowered his guard enough to offer Elega a piece of difficult honesty.

“I said more than I meant. The Imager affronted you, my lady. I do not like it when you are affronted.”

His explanation seemed to give her what she needed. Slowly, her expression cleared; moisture softened her gaze until it looked like a promise. “I should not be so easily offended,” she replied. “Surely it is obvious that anyone who still trusts my father will be unable to trust me.” Then, as if she were trying to match his candor, she added, “Yet I thank you for your anger, my lord Prince. It is a comfort that you consider me worth defending.”

For a moment, Prince Kragen studied her, measuring his hunger for her against the exigencies of the situation. Then he bowed and turned away.

The wind seemed to be getting colder. Spring had come early – therefore it was possible that winter would return. That, the Prince thought bitterly, would be just what he and his army needed: to be encamped and paralyzed by winter outside Orison like curs outside a village, cold and hungry, and helpless to do anything except hope for table scraps. Yes, that would be perfect.

But he kept his bile to himself. To his captain of catapults, he said briskly, as if he were sure of what he was doing, “We will heed the Imager’s warning, I think. Withdraw all who are unnecessary, and prepare the rest to retreat. Then resume the attack.”

The captain saluted, began to issue orders. Men obeyed with nervous alacrity, artificially quick to demonstrate that they weren’t concerned. Taking Elega with him, Prince Kragen walked in the direction of his father’s tents until he had put nearly a hundred yards between himself and the catapult. There he turned to watch.

He didn’t have to wait long for Master Quillon’s threat to be carried out. The mediator of the Congery must have given the signal almost as soon as he entered the courtyard of the castle. Moments after the Prince began to study Orison’s heavy gray profile for some hint of what was coming, he saw a brown shape as imprecise as a puff of smoke lift off the ramparts of the northwest wall.

It looked like it would dissipate like smoke; yet it held together. It looked like it was no bigger than a large dog, no more than twice the size of a buzzard; yet the way it rose seething and shifting into the sky made it seem as dangerous as a thunderbolt. A bit of brown smoke—Like nearly ten thousand other men and virtually all his army’s adherents, Prince Kragen craned his neck and squinted his eyes to trace the shape’s movement against the dull background of the clouds.

So high that it was almost certainly beyond arrow range, even for the iron-trussed crossbows some of the Alends carried, the brown shape sailed out toward the catapult and over it and away again, back in the direction of the castle. The Prince thought he heard a faint, thin cry, like the wail of a seabird.

And from out of the smoke as it passed overhead came plummeting a rock as big as the one which the catapult had pitched at Orison.

Powerful with the force of its fall, the rock struck the catapult and shattered the wood as easily as if the engine had been built of kindling. Splinters and bolts burst loose on all sides; chunks of timber arced away from the impact and hit the ground like rubble. Two of the men fleeing from the catapult went down, one with a ragged stave driven through his leg, the other with his skull crushed by a bit of the engine’s iron. The rest were luckier.

The vague brown shape had already dropped out of sight beyond the parapets of the castle.

A shout went up from the army – anger and fear demanding an outlet, calling for blood. But Prince Kragen stood still, his face impassive, as if he had never been surprised in his life. Only the white lines of his mouth hidden under his moustache betrayed what he felt.

“My lady,” he said to Elega in a tone of grim nonchalance, “you have lived for years in the proximity of Imagers. Surely Orison has always been full of rumors concerning the Congery. Have you ever heard of or seen such a thing before?”

She shook her head dumbly and studied the wreckage of the catapult as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“It is possible,” he muttered for her ears alone, “that during King Joyse’s peace we have forgotten too much of the abomination of Imagery. Clearly the Masters have not been inactive under his rule.

“My lady” – he closed his eyes just for a moment and allowed himself to be appalled – “the Congery must not fall into the hands of High King Festten.”

Then the Prince took command of himself again and left her. First he ordered the captain of catapults to bring forward another siege engine and try again, taking whatever precautions were necessary to protect the men. After that, he went to talk to his father.

The Alend Monarch’s tents were sumptuous by his standards. Margonal liked to travel in comfort. Also he knew that upon occasion a grand public display was good for morale. Nevertheless High King Festten would have considered the Monarch’s quarters a hovel. Alend lacked the seaports and hence the trade of Cadwal. Compared to Festten, Margonal was no wealthier than one of his Lieges. If Mordant hadn’t lain between Cadwal and Alend – and if the Cares of Mordant hadn’t been so contentious, so difficult to rule – a quality which made them an effective buffer – the High King and the forces which his wealth could procure would long since have swallowed up his ancient enemy.

Prince Kragen was conscious of this, not because he was jealous of the High King’s riches, but because he felt acutely vulnerable to Cadwal, as he pushed the canvas door-flap aside and was admitted to his father’s presence. He could feel Alend’s peril in the cold wind that curled about his neck like a garrote.

The Alend Monarch sat in the fore-tent where he held councils and consultations. The Prince could see him well enough: braziers intended for warmth gave off a flickering illumination that danced among the tentpoles and around the meeting chairs. But there was no other light. The seams of the tent were sealed with flaps, and Margonal didn’t permit lamps or torches or even candles in his presence. Privately, Prince Kragen considered this arbitrary prohibition a vestige of the tyranny to which his father had formerly been accustomed. Nevertheless he accepted it without question. As anyone who looked on the Alend Monarch’s face in good light could see, Margonal was stone blind.

It was unimaginable that any vision could penetrate the white film which covered his eyes like curtains.

Obviously, his battles with King Joyse hadn’t been his only losses in life. And it had been when he had begun to lose his sight that he had first started to search for surer ways to rule, safer means of preserving the kingship for himself and his successor. As he had repeated until everyone near him was sick of it, “Loss teaches many things.” Again privately, however – and without any disrespect – Prince Kragen dropped loss and substituted fear. A man who couldn’t see his enemies couldn’t strike at them. For that reason, he had to find new ways to protect himself. Kragen understood his father’s fear and honored it. A lesser man than Margonal would have retreated into terror and violence.

Old and no longer strong, the Alend Monarch sprawled in the most comfortable of the meeting chairs and turned his head toward the sound of his son’s entrance. Because he was punctilious, he didn’t speak until the Alend Contender had been announced, and had greeted him in the formal manner prescribed by custom. Then he sighed as if he were especially tired. “Well, my son. My guards have already been here, whispering lurid reports which they were unable to explain. Perhaps you will tell me something comprehensible.”

“My lord,” Prince Kragen replied, “I fear I can only increase the range of your incomprehension.” Succinctly, he described Master Quillon’s visit and the destruction of the catapult. When he was done, he told his father what he was thinking.

“The Imager’s actions were strange, unquestionably. But to my mind the great mystery is that King Joyse behaves as if he had not made himself weak – as if we were nothing more than an annoyance to a sovereign in an invulnerable position. And he is able to command men such as Castellan Lebbick and Master Quillon to preserve that illusion.

“Yet we know it is an illusion. Cadwal marches against him. He has a hole in his wall, few men to defend it, and no water for them to drink. Despite his control over the Congery, the Imagers who serve his enemies are more powerful. They are able to strike him at will anywhere in Mordant or Orison, passing through flat glass as if they were immune to madness. In addition, there are Masters on the Congery who would abandon his cause if they could. Men such as Eremis may be loyal to Mordant, but they are no longer committed to their King.

“His lords will not help him. The Armigite is a coward. The Termigan values nothing but his own affairs. And the Perdon resists Cadwal, not for King Joyse, but for his own survival. Of the Cares, only Domne, Tor, and Fayle are truly loyal. Yet the Domne does not fight. The Tor is old, sodden with wine – and here, where he is unable to muster his people. And the Fayle cannot come to Orison’s aid because we stand in his way.

“And still King Joyse treats us as if we lack the means to harm him.”

The more he thought about it, the more unsure the Prince became. For a moment, he chewed on his moustache while his doubts chewed on him. Then he concluded, “In truth, my lord, I cannot decide in my own mind whether his audacity constitutes raving or deep policy.”

Again, the Alend Monarch sighed. With apparent irrelevance, he murmured, “I suffered an uncomfortable night. The loss of sight has sharpened my powers of recollection. Instead of sleeping, I saw every trick and subterfuge he has ever practiced against me. I felt every blow of our battles. Such memories would curdle the blood of a young sovereign with his eyes clear in his head. For me, they are fatal.”

Facing his son as if he could see, Margonal asked in a husky voice, “Can you think of anything – anything at all – that a king such as Joyse might gain by feigning weakness – by allowing Imagers to bring atrocities down on the heads of his people – by permitting us to invest him when his defenses are so poor?”

“No.” Prince Kragen shook his head for his own benefit. “It is madness. It must be madness.”

“And the lady Elega? She is his daughter. Her knowledge of him is greater than yours – greater even than mine. Can she think of anything that he might gain?”

Again, the Prince said, “No.” He trusted her, didn’t he? He believed what she believed about her father, didn’t he?

Abruptly, the Alend Monarch raised his voice. “Then he is a madman, a madman. He must be rooted out of his stronghold and made to pay for this. Do you hear me? It is insufferable!”

As if he didn’t know what they were doing, his fists began to beat on the arms of his chair.

“I understand his desire to take Mordant from us and rule it as his own. He was able to do it – therefore he did it. Who would not? And I understand his desire to gather all the resources of Imagery for himself. Again he was able to do it – therefore he did it. Who would not? And perhaps I understand also his restraint when he had created the Congery, his refusal to use his power for conquest. That is not what Festten would have done. It is not what I would have done. But perhaps in that he was saner than we.

“But this—! To create all he has created, and then abandon it to destruction!” Now the Alend Monarch was shouting. “To forge such a weapon as the Congery, and then make himself vulnerable to attack, neglect responsibility, turn his back on those who serve and trust him, so that his enemies have no choice but to attempt to wrest his weapon from him for their own survival!” Margonal half rose from his seat, as if he intended to go to demand sense from King Joyse in person. “I say it is insufferable! It must not continue!”

As quickly as it had come up, however, his passion subsided. Sinking back, he wiped his hands across his face.

“My son,” he whispered hoarsely, “when I received your message asking us to march, a chill went into my heart. I cannot warm it away. I know that man. He has beaten me too often. I fear that he has lured us here to destroy us – that his weakness is a pose to bring us and Cadwal within reach, so we can be crushed at his ease, instead of met in honest battle. You say this cannot be true. The lady Elega says it cannot be true. My own reason says it cannot be true – if only because in fifty years he has never shown any desire to crush us. And yet I fear it.

“He has witched me. We have come here to our doom.”

Prince Kragen stared at what his father was saying and tried not to shudder. Fear teaches many things, he thought. Have all the rest of us been blind? Why have we never believed that Joyse is malign? Softly, he answered, “My lord, say the word, and we will retreat. You are the Alend Monarch. And I trust your wisdom. We will—”

“No!” Margonal’s refusal sounded more like pain than anger or protest. “No,” he repeated almost at once, in a steadier tone. “He has witched me, I say. I am certain of only one thing – I cannot make decisions where he is concerned.

“No, my son, this siege is yours. You are the Alend Contender. I have given our doom into your hands.” A moment later, he added in warning, “If you choose retreat, be very certain that you can answer for your decision to the others who seek my Seat.”

Mutely, the Prince nodded. He had caught Margonal’s chill much earlier: long before this conversation, the cold of the wind had crept into his vitals. But the Alend Monarch had named his doubt for him – and the name seemed to make the doubt more palpable, more potent. We have come here to our doom. When his father asked, “What will you do?” he chewed his lip and replied, “I do not know.”

“Choose soon.” Now Margonal spoke to him harshly, as he himself had spoken harshly to the lady Elega. “Festten will not be patient with your uncertainty.”

In response, Kragen stiffened his spine. “Perhaps not, my lord. Nevertheless our doom will be Cadwal’s as well. Until the issue is proven, I will do my best to teach the High King better uses for his impatience.”

Slowly, the Alend Monarch relaxed until he was sprawling in his chair once again. Unexpectedly, he smiled. “Festten, I have heard, has many sons. I have only one. I am inclined to think, however, that I have already bested him in the matter.”

Because he didn’t know what else to do, Prince Kragen bowed deeply. Then he withdrew from his father’s presence and went to watch a vague brown shape rise above the walls of Orison and wreck another of his best catapults.

Fortunately, his men escaped without injury this time.

His face showed nothing but confidence as he went to consult with all his captains.

TWENTY-EIGHT: A DAY OF TROUBLE

Castellan Lebbick stood with the three Imagers on the ramparts of the northwest wall and watched as the brown shape which Adept Havelock had translated reduced the second Alend catapult to firewood and splinters. At this elevation, behind the defensive parapet built into Orison’s outward face, he had a good view despite the distance.

Judging by the old scowl cut into the lines of his face, the knot of his jaw muscles, the bleak glare in his eyes, he wasn’t impressed.

He ought to have been impressed. He had had no idea that this mirror existed – or that a creature with no more definition than dense smoke could be translated and controlled, could be made to carry rocks as heavy as a man anywhere the Adept commanded. And that wasn’t all. In plain fact, he had had no idea that Havelock was still sane enough to cooperate in Orison’s defense – that plans could be designed on the assumption that the Adept would carry out his part in them. In some way, the Castellan’s warrior spirit probably was impressed. Unquestionably he ought to have been.

He wasn’t conscious of it, however. He certainly didn’t show it. The truth was that only a harsh act of will enabled him to keep his mind on what he was doing, pay any attention to the situation at all.

“Well done,” Master Quillon breathed as the airborne shape returned to Havelock’s glass, gusting easily across the wind. “You surpass yourself, indeed you do.” And he actually patted the Adept’s shoulder like an old friend – which would have surprised Lebbick under other circumstances, since Havelock’s lunacy had made friendship with him impossible for everyone except King Joyse. Who was himself, the Castellan thought sourly, no longer particularly sane.

“Fornication,” Adept Havelock replied negligently, as if he normally performed such feats of Imagery standing on his head. “Piss on the slut.” In spite of his tone, however, he was concentrating so hard that his misaimed eyes bulged slightly.

“Of course,” murmured Master Eremis. “My thought exactly.” He was the only other man near the mirror, although a number of guards and several Apts were clustered a short distance away, watching raptly. “Yet it occurs to me that you have been a bit too coy with your talents, Adept Havelock.”

Nominally, Eremis was here only because the Castellan wasn’t done with him. Too many questions remained to be answered. Nevertheless his interest in what happened was intense: his wedge-shaped head followed everything, studied every movement; his eyes gleamed as if he were having a wonderful time. “If the Congery had known of your resources, we might have made different decisions entirely.”

Master Quillon glanced rapidly at the taller Imager. “Is that so? Such as?”

In response, Master Eremis smiled distinctly at the Castellan. “We might have decided to defend Mordant ourselves, rather than waiting politely for our beloved King to fall off the precarious perch of his reason.”

Lebbick really should have replied to that jibe. Eremis intended to provoke him – and provocation was his bread and meat. It fed the fires of dedication and outrage which kept him going, sustained him so that he could continue to serve his King past the point where his own common sense rebelled and his instinct for fidelity turned against him. In addition, he had work to do where Master Eremis was concerned – issues to resolve, explanations to obtain. But this time the Master’s sarcasm didn’t touch him. His heart was elsewhere, and without it he wasn’t able to think clearly.

His heart was in the dungeon, where he had left that woman.

Curse her, anyway, curse her. She was the source of all the trouble, all the harm. He was even starting to think that she was the reason for King Joyse’s weakness, even though the King had been walking that path for years before her first appearance. But now Lebbick would get the truth out of her. He would tear her limbs off if necessary to get the truth out of her. He would take the soft flesh of her body in his hands—

He would do anything he wanted to her. He had permission.

Now you’ve done it, woman. You’ve done something so heinous that nobody is going to protect you. That was true. The Tor had tried – and failed. You’ve helped a murderer escape.

Now you are mine.

Even though he had been warned.

Mine.

If only he could control the way he trembled whenever he thought of her.

He answered Master Eremis for no reason at all except to mask what was happening to him, disguise the tremors in his muscles.

But he wasn’t thinking about what he said. He couldn’t. He was too busy remembering the way her arms felt when he ground his fingers into them.

“No,” he heard her whisper. Her protest was like the horror in her soft brown eyes, like the quivering of her delicately cleft chin. She was afraid of him, deeply afraid. His anger touched a sore place in her – he could see that vividly, even though she had stood up to him in the past, had lied to him, forced him to swallow his passion against her time and again. She feared him as if she deserved to be terrified, as if she already knew that anything he might do to her was justified. “No,” she whispered, but it wasn’t his accusations she denied; it was him, the Castellan himself, his authority and violence.

“Yes,” he replied through his teeth, smiling at her fiercely as if she made him happy for the last time in his life.

Holding her as hard as he wished, without regard for her pain – or for the way the Masters and guards looked at him despite the chaos of Nyle’s murder and Geraden’s disappearance – he escorted her to the dungeon himself.

Along the way, she babbled.

“No, you don’t understand, it’s a trick, Geraden didn’t kill Nyle, please listen to me, listen to me, Eremis did this somehow, it’s a trick.”

He liked that. He liked her fear. He wanted her prostrate in front of him. At the same time, however, her reaction disturbed him. For some reason, it reminded him of his wife.

For no good reason, obviously, since his wife hadn’t been a babbler. In fact, she hadn’t been afraid of anything, not since King Joyse had rescued them from the Alend garrison commander who was having her raped so imaginatively. Not since he, Lebbick, had ripped that dogshit Alend apart with his teeth.

But before that she had been afraid. Yes, he remembered her fear as well. She babbled. Yes. He heard her – watched her – was forced to watch her – and couldn’t do anything about it, anything at all. He heard and saw her do every desperate and terrible thing she could think of to try to make those men stop.

Castellan Lebbick wasn’t going to stop. Never. Let her babble to her heart’s content, cry out, scream if she wanted to. She was his.

Yet it disturbed him.

When he thrust her into her cell so that she nearly sprawled on the cot against the far wall, he had no intention of stopping. But he didn’t start right away. Instead, he closed the iron door behind him without bothering to lock it, folded his arms across his chest to keep them from shaking, and faced her past the light of the single lamp. Its wick needed trimming; the flame guttered wildly, making shadows dance fright over her pale features.

Still smiling through his teeth, he demanded, “How?”

“I don’t know.” Babbling. “Somehow. To get rid of Geraden. Geraden is the only one who doesn’t trust him.” Terrified. “Eremis and Gilbur are working together. And Vagel. He lied to the Congery.” Trying to distract him. “Eremis brought Nyle to the meeting of the Congery. He said Nyle would prove Geraden is a traitor, but that was a lie. They set this up together. They planned it.” Trying to create the illusion that she made sense. “It’s a fake. They staged it. They must have.”

Deaf to the illogic of her own defense, she insisted, “Nyle is still alive.”

Watching her, the Castellan wanted to crow for joy. “No, woman.” His jaws throbbed with the effort of not sinking his teeth into her. “Tell me how. How did he escape? How did you help him escape?”

Finally she caught hold of herself, closed her mouth on her panic. Shadows flickered in and out of her eyes; she looked as desirable as an immolation.

“He’s no Imager,” Lebbick went on. “And there isn’t any way he could have left those rooms except by Imagery. So you did it. You translated him somewhere.

“Where is he, woman? I want him.”

She stared at him. Her dismay seemed to become a kind of calm; she was less frantic simply because she was so afraid. “You’ve gone crazy,” she whispered. “You’ve snapped. It’s been too much for you.”

“I won’t hurt him.” The Castellan’s face felt like it was being split apart by the stress of restraint. “It isn’t really his fault. I know that. You seduced him into it. Until you arrived, he was just another son of the Domne – too clumsy for his own good, but a decent boy. Everybody liked him, even though he couldn’t do anything right. You changed that. You involved him in treachery. When I get my hands on him, I won’t even punish him. I just want him to tell me the truth.”

Suddenly, like dry brush on a smoldering blaze, Lebbick yelled at her, “Where IS he?”

She flinched, cowered. Just for a second, he believed that she was going to answer. But then something inside her stiffened. She raised her head and faced him squarely.

“Go to hell.”

At that, he laughed. He couldn’t help himself: he laughed as if his heart were breaking. “You little whore,” he chortled, “don’t try to defy me. You aren’t strong enough.”

At once, he began to speak more precisely, more formally, tapping words into her fear like coffin nails. “I’m going to start by taking off your clothes. I might do it gently, just for fun. Women are especially vulnerable when they don’t have any clothes on.

“Then I’ll begin to hurt you.” He took a step toward her, but didn’t release his arms from his chest. “Just a little at first. One breast or the other. Or perhaps a few barbs across your belly. A rough piece of wood between your legs. Just to get your attention.” He wished she could see what he saw: his wife being stretched out in the dirt by those Alends, her limbs spread-eagled and staked so that she couldn’t move, the delicate things the garrison commander had done to her with small knives. “Then I’ll begin to hurt you in earnest.

“You’ll beg me to stop. You’ll tell me everything I desire, and you’ll beg me to stop. But it will be too late. Your chance will be lost. Once I begin to hurt you, I will never stop. I will never stop.”

She was so vividly appalled – the fright on her face was so stark – that the sight of it cost him his grip on himself. His arms burst out of his control; his hands caught her shoulders. Snatching her to him, he covered her mouth with his and kissed her as hard as a blow, aching to consume her with his passion before it tore him to pieces. Then he hugged her, hugged her so urgently that the muscles in his shoulders stood out like iron.

“Tell me the truth.” His voice shook, feverish with distress. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

She had her arms between them, her hands against his chest. But she didn’t struggle: she surrendered to his embrace as if the resistance had been squeezed out of her. If he had released her without warning, she would have fallen.

Nevertheless when she spoke all she said was, “Please don’t do this. Please.” The way he held her muffled her words in his shoulder, but he could still hear them. “I’ll beg now, if that’s what you want. Please don’t do this to me.”

For a moment, the gloom in the cell grew unexpectedly darker. It rose up around the Castellan, swept over his head; it made a roaring noise like a black torrent in his ears. Then it cleared, and the back of his hand hurt. The woman was slumped on the floor; the wall barely braced her up in a sitting position. Blood oozed like midnight from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes seemed glazed, as if she were scarcely conscious.

“The lady Terisa is too polite,” someone else said. “I will not speak so courteously. The next blow will be your last. If you strike her again, I will not rest until you are sent to the gallows.”

Staggering, Castellan Lebbick turned and saw the Tor at the entrance of the cell.

“My lord Tor—” The Castellan croaked as if he were choking. “This isn’t your concern. Crimes committed in Orison are my responsibility.”

The old lord was as fat as a holiday goose and as pasty-faced as poorly kneaded dough. Yet his small eyes glinted in the lamplight as if he were capable of murder. Under his fat, there was strength which enabled him to support his immense weight. “Then,” he shot back, “you will be especially responsible for crimes you commit yourself. What if she is innocent?”

“ ‘Innocent’?”

Lebbick was ashamed to hear himself cry out the word like a man who was about to start weeping. With a savage effort, he regained control of himself.

“ ‘Innocent’?” he repeated more steadily. “You weren’t there, my lord. You didn’t see Geraden kill his brother. I caught her helping him escape – helping a murderer escape, my lord Tor. You have strange ideas of innocence.”

“And your ideas of guilt have cost you your reason, Castellan.” The Tor’s outrage sounded as acute as Lebbick’s own. “You accuse her of helping a murderer escape, not of shedding blood herself. When I heard that you had brought her here, I could hardly believe my ears. You have no right and no reason to punish her until King Joyse has judged her guilt for himself and given you his consent.”

“Do you think he’ll refuse me?” countered Castellan Lebbick, fighting to shore up his self-command. “Now, when Orison is besieged, and all his enemies are conspiring against him? My lord, you misjudge him. This” – he made a slapping gesture in that woman’s direction – “is one problem he’ll leave to me.”

Without hesitation, the Tor snapped, “Shall we ask him?”

The Castellan had no choice; he couldn’t refuse. In spite of the way his bones ached and his guts shook, so that he seemed to be dying on his feet, he turned his back on that woman and went with the Tor to talk to King Joyse.

When Lebbick demanded an audience, the King answered in his nightshirt.

Instead of admitting the Castellan and the Tor to his presence, he opened the door of his formal rooms and stood there between the guards, blinking his watery old eyes at the lamplight as if he had become timid – as if he feared he might not be safe in his own castle in the middle of the night. He hadn’t been asleep: he had come to the door too promptly for that. And he neglected or forgot to close it behind him. The Castellan saw that King Joyse already had company.

Two men sat in front of his hearth, looking over their shoulders toward the door.

Adept Havelock. Of course. And Master Quillon, the recently designated mediator of the Congery.

Master Quillon, who had accidentally contrived to help Geraden escape by tripping Lebbick. Master Quillon, who had mistakenly given that woman time to help Geraden by sending the guards away from the rooms where the mirrors were kept.

The Castellan ground curses between his teeth.

King Joyse gaped at Castellan Lebbick and then the Tor with a foolish expression on his face. His beard was tangled in all directions; his white hair jutted wildly around the rim of his tattered and lumpy nightcap – a cap, Lebbick happened to know, which Queen Madin had given him nearly twenty years ago. His hands were swollen with arthritis, and his back stooped for the same reason. The result was that he looked small and a little silly, too much reduced in physical and mental stature to be a credible ruler for his people.

And yet the Castellan loved him. Looking at him now, Lebbick found that what he missed most wasn’t Joyse’s former leadership – or his former trust. It was the Queen: blunt, beautiful, pragmatic Madin. She had done everything in her power to keep King Joyse from becoming so much less than he was. She wouldn’t have let anybody see him in this condition.

That recognition surprised Castellan Lebbick out of the fierce speech he was primed to make. Instead of spitting his bitter demands in Joyse’s face, he muttered almost gently, “Forgive the intrusion, my lord King. Couldn’t you sleep?”

“No,” King Joyse assented in a vague tone. “I meant what I told you to tell Kragen. I want to use the Congery. But I didn’t know how. It was keeping me awake. So I sent for Quillon.” As if he believed this to be the reason Castellan Lebbick had come to him, he asked distractedly, “If you were them, what would you do tomorrow?”

Involuntarily, Lebbick exchanged a glance of incomprehension with the Tor. “ ‘Them,’ my lord King? The Masters?”

“The Alends,” King Joyse explained without impatience. “Prince Kragen. What’s he going to do tomorrow?”

That question didn’t require thought. “Catapults. He’ll try to break down the curtain-wall.”

King Joyse nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He seemed too sleepy to concentrate well. “Quillon and Havelock are going to do something about it.” As an afterthought, he added, “They’ll need advice. And you need to know what they’re doing. Meet Quillon at dawn.

“Good night.” He turned back toward his rooms.

“My lord King.” It was the Tor who spoke.

The King raised his eyebrows tiredly. “Was there something else?”

“Yes,” the Tor said sharply before Castellan Lebbick could break in. “Yes, my lord King. Lebbick has put the lady Terisa of Morgan in the dungeon. He struck her. He means to question her with pain. And he may” – the Tor looked at Lebbick and fought to contain his anger – “may have other intentions as well.

“He must be stopped.”

The Castellan started to protest, then caught himself. To his astonishment, King Joyse was glaring at the Tor as if the old lord had begun to stink in some way.

“What difference does it make to you, my lord Tor?” retorted the King. “Nyle was killed. Maybe you didn’t realize that. The son of the Domne, my lord Tor – the son of a friend.” He spoke as if he had forgotten why the old lord had come to Orison in the first place. “Lebbick is just doing his job.”

In response, the Tor’s expression turned to nausea; his mouth opened and closed stupidly. He was so appalled that a moment passed before he was able to breathe; then he said as if he were suppressing an attack of apoplexy, “Do I understand you, my lord King?” His lips stretched tight, baring his wine-stained teeth. “Does Castellan Lebbick have your permission to torture and rape the lady Terisa of Morgan?”

A muscle in King Joyse’s cheek twitched. Suddenly, his eyes were no longer watery: they flashed blue fire. “That’s enough!” Echoes of the man he used to be rang off the walls as he articulated distinctly, “You fat, old, useless sot, you’ve interfered with me enough. I’m sick of your self-righteousness. I’m sick of being judged. Castellan Lebbick has my permission to do his job.”

Behind his constant scowl, inside his clenched heart, Lebbick felt like cheering.

The Tor’s face swelled purple; his eyes bulged. His fists came up trembling, as if he were in the throes of a seizure – as if he had finally been provoked to strike his King. When he lowered them again, the act cost him a supreme effort. As the blood left his face, his skin became waxen.

“I do not believe you. You are my King. My friend.” His voice rattled in his throat; his gaze was no longer focused on anything. “I, too, have lost a son. I will not believe you.

“Be warned, Castellan. You will suffer for it if you believe him.”

His flesh seemed to slump on his bones as he moved away and went slowly down the stairs, carrying himself as if his years had caught up with him without warning and made him frail.

Softly, so that he wouldn’t betray his jubilation, Castellan Lebbick murmured, “My lord King.”

At once, King Joyse turned on him. The King’s blue eyes continued to burn, but now they were unexpectedly rimmed with red. “That woman must be pushed,” he rasped under his breath. “She must be made to declare herself – or to discover herself.” Then he thrust a crooked finger into Lebbick’s face and snarled, “Be ready to answer for everything you do.”

Without allowing Lebbick time to reply, he reentered his rooms and slammed the door.

Since the guards were studiously not looking at him, Castellan Lebbick glowered at them to conceal his satisfaction. He hadn’t forgotten the rest of his job: Master Quillon, Master Eremis, Nyle; the organization and defense of Orison. But those things carried no emotional weight with him now; he would deal with them simply to get them out of his way. King Joyse had given him permission. His King trusted him to discover that woman’s secrets.

His King’s trust was the only answer he needed. The answer for everything.

Deliberately postponing the pleasure he desired most, he didn’t return to the dungeon. Instead, he went looking for Master Eremis – and Nyle’s body. Nyle is still alive. He had time before dawn to give himself the luxury of confirming that that woman had lied.

He found the Imager in the corridor leading away from the section of Orison where all the Masters had their quarters. Eremis was striding purposefully in Lebbick’s direction, and he greeted the Castellan by saying without preamble, “Nyle is still alive.”

Castellan Lebbick halted, braced his fists on his hips, faced the Imager fiercely. Now that Eremis had his attention, he remembered why he hated the tall, lean Master so much. He hated the lively and sardonic superiority in Eremis’ gaze, the combination of intelligence and ridicule in Eremis’ manner. Most of all, however, he hated Eremis’ success with women. Women whose faces wore an implicit sneer for the Castellan spread their legs for Eremis whenever the Master simply lifted an eyebrow at them. It probably wasn’t surprising that the sluttish maid Saddith was eager for the prestige she could get from a Master. But it knotted the Castellan’s guts to recollect the mute yearning he had occasionally seen in his prisoner’s expression at the mere mention of Master Eremis.

Lebbick himself would have been tempted to kill any woman who acquiesced to him without being his wife.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to hate Eremis at the moment. Too much was happening; the Master’s words seemed to open an abyss under his feet. “Alive?” he snapped. “What’re you talking about?”

“I hoped this was possible,” replied Master Eremis as if the Castellan had asked his question politely. “That is why I rushed him to my rooms. I have never seen Geraden do anything well, so I hoped that he might find it impossible to murder his brother successfully. Apparently, his knife missed Nyle’s heart.”

At once, relief reeled through Lebbick’s head. That woman was lying. She still belonged to him. For a moment, he was so giddy that he couldn’t pull his thoughts together enough to speak.

“Underwell is with him,” continued Eremis. Underwell was one of the best physicians in Orison. In fact, he was the physician Castellan Lebbick himself would have chosen to take care of Nyle. “If he can be saved, Underwell will do it.

“In addition, I took the liberty of making a few demands on your guards.” The Master’s eyes glittered with mirth or malice, as if he could read Lebbick’s confusion plainly. “If Geraden wants his brother dead badly enough, he may try again. It seems clear that he is in league with Gilbur as well as Gart – and almost certainly with the arch-Imager also. You may recall that they are apparently able to come and go in Orison as they wish. So I insisted on being obeyed by four of your men. Two of them are with Underwell and Nyle. The other two guard my door.

“Do you approve of my arrangements” – Master Eremis smiled amiably – “good Castellan?”

With some difficulty, the Castellan imposed a bit of order on his inner riot. He did approve of Eremis’ arrangements. They were right. No, more than that: they were so right that they made that woman’s accusations against Master Eremis look ludicrous. Just for a second, he found himself wondering whether Eremis had jilted her, whether her behavior could be explained by jealousy. But speculations like that only led him back into turmoil. What he needed at the moment was to forget about her for a while.

“They’ll do for now,” he replied, speaking roughly because he resented the necessity of giving Eremis even that much satisfaction. “In the meantime, I want you to come with me. I want some answers, but I haven’t got time to stand here talking.”

Master Eremis frowned, although his eyes continued smiling. With a hint of acid, he said, “My time is valuable also, Castellan. Our brave King threatened the Alend army with the strength of the Congery, did he not? And yet we have made no plans to back up his threat. It seems likely that our new mediator will call a second meeting of the Congery before this night ends.” The Imager’s tone gave nothing away. “If he does, I must attend.”

Lebbick consulted his mental hourglass and retorted, “I don’t think so. There isn’t time.” His anger matched Eremis’. “I’ve been commanded to meet Quillon at dawn. You can talk to him then.

“Come on.”

He almost hoped that Eremis would refuse. The Castellan would have enjoyed having the insolent Imager tied up and dragged along behind him. On the other hand, he had too much else on his mind and wouldn’t be able to give an experience like that the attention it deserved. So he waited until Master Eremis acceded; then he strode away.

His questions were the same ones which had come up during that ill-fated meeting of the Congery earlier in the evening. How did Eremis account for the fact that he was the only man in Orison who had been consistently able to know where that woman was when the High King’s Monomach attacked her? And why was Gart trying to kill her anyway, if he and Geraden were plotting together and Geraden loved her? And what had the lords of the Cares and Prince Kragen said to each other when they had treacherously met at Eremis’ instigation? And what was that story about an attack of Imagery on Geraden – translated insects trying to kill him? With or without Eremis’ knowledge?

Of course, Master Eremis had replied to all those questions during the meeting. But Castellan Lebbick hadn’t liked the answers. Taken together, they all contained one fatal flaw: they all presupposed that Geraden was a smooth and expert traitor; that he not only possessed but concealed unprecedented talents; that he had allied himself with Gart and Cadwal long before that woman’s translation into Orison; that all his clumsiness, his appearance of being a confused puppy, was a sham.

Lebbick found the whole idea incredible.

He believed that Geraden had tried to kill Nyle: he had seen it with his own eyes. But Geraden secretly plotting Mordant’s downfall? Artagel’s brother in league with Gart? The son of the Domne seducing that woman to crimes she wouldn’t otherwise have committed? Those things Castellan Lebbick didn’t believe. No, the crimes and the plotting and the seduction were hers, not Geraden’s.

And Eremis was a fool for blaming him. Or else the Master hadn’t started to tell the truth yet.

So while he went about readying Orison to meet the dawn, Castellan Lebbick made Master Eremis go through all his explanations again, with more care, in greater detail. After a day without water, the castle was already experiencing considerable distress. Strict rationing created hundreds of hardships; dozens of people cheated – or tried to cheat – and had to be dealt with. On the other hand, the difficulties were much less now than they would be soon. Severity was Orison’s only hope. Therefore Lebbick dispensed severity everywhere he went. And Eremis watched him. Answered his questions. Betrayed nothing.

Perhaps that was why Castellan Lebbick couldn’t think of a good retort when Eremis goaded him about his loyalty to the King, on the ramparts of Orison after Adept Havelock had demonstrated the effectiveness of his defense against catapults. The Master had betrayed nothing. We might have decided to defend Mordant ourselves, rather than waiting politely for our beloved King to fall off the precarious perch of his reason. Some reply was essential: Lebbick knew that. But he couldn’t seem to pull his yearning spirit this far away from the dungeon. Without paying much attention to what he said, he muttered, “Prove it. Get me water.”

Then he didn’t want to look at Eremis anymore. The tall Master’s smile had become abruptly intolerable: it was too bemused, too secretly triumphant. Instead, he did his best to concentrate on what Havelock and Quillon were doing.

At first glance, the Adept seemed to be in a state of unnatural self-possession, even though the obscenities he muttered as he worked were so extravagant that they would have earned him a round of applause from any squad of the Castellan’s guard. Lebbick wasn’t used to seeing him do what was asked of him. The mad walleyed old goat who capered and jeered in the hall of audiences – or who incinerated important prisoners before they could be questioned – was the Havelock Lebbick knew: the man working with Master Quillon was a relative stranger. A throwback to the potent and cunning Imager who had helped King Joyse found and secure Mordant. Only the Adept’s appearance seemed unchanged. He wore nothing but an ancient, unclean surcoat; what was left of his hair stuck out from his skull in wild tufts. Between the craziness of his imperfectly focused eyes and the trembling, sybaritic flesh of his lips, his nose jutted fiercely.

But a closer look showed the cost of Adept Havelock’s self-possession.

He was sweating, despite the chill of the breeze. His whole body shook as if he were in the grip of a fever – as if he stood where he was and worked his Imagery by an act of will so harsh that his entire frame rebelled against it. With an unexpected pang, Lebbick noticed that there was blood running down Havelock’s chin. The Adept had chewed on his lower lip until he had torn it to shreds.

For all practical purposes, he was Orison’s only defense against catapults. Master Quillon had made it clear that the Congery possessed no other mirrors which could meet this particular need. Everything the Castellan had ever served or cared about depended on Havelock – and Havelock obviously wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Dogswater!” Roughly, Castellan Lebbick took hold of Quillon’s arm, demanded the Master’s attention. “How much longer can he keep going?”

Before Quillon could answer, the Adept swung away from his glass, cackling like a demented crone.

“Long enough! Hee-hee! Long enough!” Havelock brandished a mouth full of bloody teeth toward Lebbick, but neither of his eyes succeeded at aiming itself at the Castellan. His voice scaled higher, tittering on the verge of hysteria. “They’re throwing rocks at him, rocks rocks rocks rocks rocks! And we’re the only friends he has left! We’re the only friends he has left!”

Moving too quickly to be stopped, he wiped blood from his chin onto his hands and slapped them across Lebbick’s cheeks, smearing red into the grizzled stubble of the Castellan’s whiskers. “And you’ve lost your mind!”

Suddenly wild, Castellan Lebbick knocked Havelock’s arms away. He snatched at his sword, barely stopped himself from sweeping it out and gutting the Adept where he stood. Trembling as badly as Havelock, he jammed his blade back into its scabbard, then clamped his arms across his chest. “Whelp of a slut,” he muttered through his teeth. “You should have been locked up years ago.”

For a moment, Adept Havelock grinned blood at the Castellan. Then he turned to Master Quillon. Jerking a thumb at Lebbick, he whispered as if no one but Quillon could hear him, “Did you ever know his wife?” Havelock stressed the word know suggestively. “I did.” Without warning, he started to cackle again. “She was a better man than he’ll ever be.”

Still laughing, he returned to his mirror.

Master Eremis also was laughing; his eyes sparkled with mirth. “Master Quillon,” he chuckled to the pained consternation in Quillon’s face, “we are well and truly fortunate that only one of the King’s last friends has lost his mind.”

The Alend forces wheeled a third catapult into position. Adept Havelock, the King’s Dastard, caused it to be destroyed also. After that, no more catapults were advanced against the castle for a while. Prince Kragen had apparently decided to reconsider his options.

But Castellan Lebbick didn’t stay to watch. The mention of his wife made him so angry that he could barely endure it – and in any case his guards were perfectly capable of reporting whatever happened to him. While the blood dried on his cheeks, he stormed back into Orison and headed toward the dungeon, taking Master Eremis with him.

After a moment, of course, he realized that the last thing he wanted was to have the leering Imager with him when he confronted that woman again. Luckily, he was able to deflect his course before Eremis could guess where he was going. Instead of exposing his obsession, he led Eremis toward the Masters’ quarters to check on Nyle.

“A good thought,” Master Eremis commented when it became clear where Lebbick was headed. “I wish for news of Nyle’s condition myself.”

“I’m sure you do,” rasped the Castellan. “He’s the one who was going to prove your innocence. He was going to prove his own brother is the real traitor. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Indeed.” Obviously, Eremis wasn’t afraid of Lebbick at all. “You find it impossible to believe that I am concerned about him for his own sake. I understand perfectly. Considering your attitude toward me, I am gratified that you believe I wish him well for my own reasons.” The Master’s sarcasm seemed to contain an undercurrent of hilarity; he sounded like he was trying to conceal his enjoyment of a good joke. “As I said, he is my proof that I am innocent of Geraden’s accusations.”

Lebbick kept on walking. When he replied, he hardly cared whether Eremis heard him or not. Primarily for his own benefit, he muttered under his breath, “Laugh now, you goat-rutting bastard. Someday I’m going to learn the truth about you. When I do, I’ll have an excuse to feed you your balls.”

He was so clenched inside himself, so obsessed with his own thoughts, that he didn’t expect a retort. After Master Eremis spoke, the Castellan wasn’t sure that he had heard his companion correctly.

“Try it.”

Behind his bland smile, Eremis looked as eager as an axe.

Grinding his teeth, Castellan Lebbick strode down the corridor toward the Imager’s quarters.

They were reached by a short hall like a cul-de-sac, with servants’ doors on either side and the main entrance at the end. Master Eremis’ ostentatious rosewood door made Lebbick sneer: it was carved in a bas-relief of the Imager himself, representing clearly his sense of his own superiority. But the door itself wasn’t important; it changed nothing. No, what mattered – Castellan Lebbick clung to what mattered with both fists – was that the door was properly closed, and that two reliable guards were on duty in the hall, controlling access to Master Eremis’ chambers.

The guards saluted, and Lebbick demanded a report.

“Underwell and two of our men have been in there all night, Castellan,” the senior guard said. “Nyle must still be alive, or Underwell would have come out. But we haven’t heard anything.”

Master Eremis said, “Good,” but the Castellan ignored him. Brushing past the guards, Lebbick jerked the door open.

Then for a long moment he just stood there and stared dumbly into the room, trying as if all his common sense and reason had evaporated to figure out why the guards hadn’t heard anything. That much carnage should have made some noise.

Behind him, his men stifled curses. Master Eremis murmured, “Excrement of a pig!” and began whistling thinly between his teeth.

There were three men in Eremis’ sitting room, the two guards and Nyle. All three of them had been slaughtered.

Well, not slaughtered, exactly. Lebbick’s brain struggled to function. The dead men hadn’t actually been cut to pieces. The damage didn’t look like it had been done with any kind of blade. No, instead of being victims of slaughter, human butchery, the men resembled carcasses on which predators had gorged. Huge predators, with jaws that took hunks the size of helmets out of the chest and guts and limbs of his guards, his guards. The bodies lay in a slop of blood and entrails and splintered bones.

As for Nyle—

In some ways, he was in better condition; in some ways, worse. He hadn’t been as thoroughly chewed on as the guards. But both his arms were gone, one at the elbow, the other at the shoulder. And his head had been bitten open to the brain: his whole face was gone. He was recognizable only by his general size and shape, and by his position on Eremis’ sumptuous divan.

The Castellan started grinning. He wanted to laugh. He couldn’t help himself: despair was the only joke he understood. Almost cheerfully, he said, “You aren’t going to be seducing any women here for a while, Imager. You won’t be able to get all this blood out. You’ll have to replace everything.”

Eremis didn’t seem to hear. He was asking softly, “Underwell? Underwell?”

Of course, there should have been four men here: Lebbick knew that. His two guards. Nyle. And Underwell. With a feral smile, he sent a guard to search the other rooms. He still had that much self-possession. But he was sure the physician was gone. Why would Underwell want to stay and get caught after committing treachery like this?

For some reason, the fact that what had happened should have been impossible didn’t bother Lebbick.

“Castellan,” the senior guard said in a constricted voice, as if the air were being squeezed from his chest, “nobody went in or out. I swear it.”

“Imagery.” Castellan Lebbick relished the word: it hurt so much that he seemed to enjoy it. “They must have been hit too hard, too fast. Maybe it was that firecat. Or those round things with teeth the Perdon talked about.” The desire to at least chuckle was almost unsupportable. “They didn’t even have a chance to shout. Imagery.”

“I fear so.” Master Eremis’ manner was unusually subdued, but his eyes shone like bits of glass. “Our enemies have been able to do such things ever since the lady Terisa of Morgan was brought here.”

“And in your quarters, Imager.” Lebbick kept on grinning. “In your care. Protected by arrangements you made.”

At that, Eremis’ eyes widened; he blinked at the Castellan. “Are you serious? Do you blame me for this?”

“It was done by Imagery. You’re an Imager. They’re your rooms.”

“He was alive when I left him,” Master Eremis protested. “Ask your guards.” For the first time, Lebbick saw him look worried. “And I have spent all the rest of my time with you.”

The Master’s point was reasonable, but Castellan Lebbick ignored it. “You’re an Imager,” he repeated. As he spoke, his voice took on a slight singsong tone, as if deep inside himself he were trying to rock his hurt like a sick child. “You think you’re a good one. Do you expect me to believe ‘our enemies’ have a flat glass that shows your rooms and you don’t know about it? They made it and then never used it, never gave you any kind of hint, never did anything that might possibly have made a good Imager like you aware of what they had? Are you serious?”

To his astonishment, Lebbick discovered that he was almost in tears. His men had never had a chance to defend themselves, and there was nothing he could do to help them now, no way he could ever bring them back. Grinning as hard as he could, he twisted his voice down into a snarl. “I don’t like it when my men are slaughtered.”

“An admirable sentiment.” Master Eremis’ face was tight; the concern in his eyes had become anger. “It does you credit. But it has no relevance. Our enemies appear to have flat glass which admits them everywhere. If I knew how that trick is done, I would do it myself. But that also has no relevance. Nyle was alive when I left him. A blind man could see that I was with you when he was killed. I am not to blame for this.”

“Prove it,” retorted the Castellan as if he were recovering his good humor. “I know you didn’t do this yourself. The traitors you’re in league with did it. But you set it up. All you did” – with difficulty, he resisted a tremendous impulse to hit Eremis a few times – “all you did was bring Nyle here so that Gart and Gilbur and the rest of your friends could get at him.”

He wanted to roar, All you did was have my men slaughtered! But the words caught in his throat, choking him.

“Castellan Lebbick, listen to me. Listen to me.” Master Eremis spoke as if he had been trying to get Lebbick’s attention for some time – as if Lebbick were in the grip of delirium. “That makes no sense.

“If you believe I am responsible for Nyle’s death, then you must believe he would not have defended me from Geraden’s accusations. Therefore you must believe I had no reason to take him to the meeting of the Congery. What, so that he could speak against me? I say that makes no sense.

“And if you believe I am responsible for his death, you must also believe I have the means to leave Orison whenever I wish – by the same glass which enabled Gilbur to escape. Then why do I remain? Why did I go to face Geraden before the Congery, when I could have fled his charges so easily? Why have I submitted myself to this siege? Castellan, that makes no sense.

“I am not a traitor. I serve Mordant and Orison. I am not to blame for Nyle’s death.”

Unable to think coherently, Lebbick rasped again, “Prove it.” He wanted to howl. Eremis’ argument was too persuasive: he didn’t know what was wrong with it. “Talk doesn’t mean anything. You can say whatever you want.” And yet there had to be something wrong with it. There had to be, because he needed that so badly. He needed to do something with his despair. “Just prove it.”

Unfortunately, Master Eremis had recovered his confidence. The Imager’s expression was again full of secrets – hidden facts or intentions which made Eremis want to laugh, restored his look of untarnished superiority.

Smiling amiably, hatefully, he remarked, “You said that once before. Out on the battlements. Do you remember?”

The gentle suggestion that Lebbick might not remember – that he might not have that much grasp on what he was doing – infuriated him enough to restore some of his self-command. “I remember,” he shot back, relieved to hear himself sound trenchant and familiar. “You didn’t do anything about it then, either.”

“No,” the Master agreed. “But a possibility occurred to me. I was about to discuss it when the Adept treated us to another of his fits. That distracted me, and I forgot my thought until now.

“You mentioned water.”

Involuntarily, Castellan Lebbick froze. Water! Complex pressures seized his heart: he could hardly breathe.

“I can provide it.”

Orison was desperate for water. The lack of water hurt a lot of people. And it was Lebbick’s job to supervise that hurt. Because of his duties, he was responsible, culpable, as if he caused the hurt himself.

But he would have preferred to be gutted by whores than to accept any vital help from Master Eremis.

“I have a glass,” Eremis explained, “which shows a scene in which the rain is incessant. The Image is always in a state of torrential downpour. I can take that mirror to the reservoir and translate rain to replenish our supply of water.” He shrugged slightly. “The process may take some time. The volume of rain that I can bring out at any given instant will be limited. But surely I can ease the need for rationing. Perhaps in a few days I can refill the reservoir.”

Deliberately, he smiled as if he knew precisely how much distress he was causing Lebbick. “Will that prove my loyalty, good Castellan? Will that demonstrate the sincerity of my desire to serve Orison and Mordant?”

Castellan Lebbick made a rattling noise far back in his throat. Eremis’ offer was so bitter to him that he was in danger of strangling on it. He couldn’t refuse it, he knew that. It was just what King Joyse had always wanted from the Congery, from Imagery: the ability to heal wounds, solve problems, rectify losses without doing any injustice – real or theoretical – to the Images themselves. And it was just what Orison needed.

With enough water to keep them going, the castle’s defenders might prove strong enough to repulse Alend, even if that bastard Kragen’s catapults succeeded at tearing down the curtain-wall.

The offer had to be accepted. There was no way around it. The Castellan had to swallow it somehow, had to sacrifice that much more of himself for the sake of his duty. But he could not, could not choke down such a mortification directly. Instead of replying to Master Eremis, he turned on the senior guard so savagely that the veteran flinched.

“Pay attention,” he snapped unnecessarily. “You were supposed to protect these people, and you did a great job of it. This is your chance to redeem yourself.

“Take this Imager to the King. Make him tell the King what happened here. Make sure he tells the King everything he just told me. Beat it out of him if you have to. Then take him to get that mirror of his. Take him up to the reservoir. Make him do what he promised.

“Use as many men as you need. He’s your problem until that reservoir is full.

“Do it now.”

“Yes, Castellan.” Shock, fear, and anger made the guard zealous. Glad for something specific and physical to do, he clamped a fist around Master Eremis’ arm. “Are you coming, or do I have to drag you?”

In response, the expression on Master Eremis’ face became positively blissful.

He had more strength than Lebbick suspected – and better leverage. A twist freed his arm: a nudge knocked the guard off balance: a strategically placed knee doubled the man over. With sarcastic elegance, Eremis adjusted his jet cloak, straightened his chasuble. Then, in an excessively polite tone, he commented, “Good Castellan, I fear that your men are not trained well enough for this siege.”

Before Lebbick could find words for his fury, the Master turned to the guard. “Shall we go? I believe the Castellan wishes me to speak to King Joyse.”

Flourishing his arms, he left the hallway.

Paralyzed by pain and consternation, the guard stayed where he was. After a moment, however, the murder in Castellan Lebbick’s glare sent him hobbling after Master Eremis with his comrade.

Lebbick remained alone. He didn’t look at Nyle’s mutilated corpse again, or at the bodies of his men. Slowly and steadily, unconscious of what he was doing, he beat his forehead against the wall until he had regained enough self-possession to call for more guards without howling. Then he had the dead carried out and gave orders for the sealing of the rooms, in case Geraden or his allies wanted to use this way into Orison again.

Geraden wasn’t just a murderer. He was a butcher, crazy with hate for his own brother, and nothing made sense anymore.

For the rest of the day, Castellan Lebbick concentrated on keeping himself busy, so that he wouldn’t go down to the dungeon. Eremis’ innocence seemed to weaken him in ways he couldn’t explain, cut the ground out from under his rage. He was afraid that if he saw that woman now he would end up begging her to forgive him.

Keeping himself busy was easy: he had plenty of duties. While he heard reports about the state of the siege, however, while he settled disputes among Orison’s overcrowded population, or discussed tactical alternatives in case Adept Havelock became ineffective against the Alend catapults, he didn’t say anything about water to anyone. He didn’t want to raise any hopes until Master Eremis proved himself. Nevertheless he sent men to adjust all the valves of the water system and incurred the outrage of hundreds of thirsty people by using the little water which the castle’s spring had accumulated to flush any possible residue of the lady Elega’s poison out of the pipes.

And when one of his men finally brought him word that Master Eremis was at work in the reservoir, he went to watch.

The Imager was doing what he had said he could do. In the high, cathedral-like vault of the reservoir, he stood on the stone lip of the empty pool and held his mirror leaning out over the edge. The glass was nearly as tall as he was, and set in an ornate frame; therefore it was heavy: even a man with his unexpected strength wouldn’t be able to support its weight in that position for any length of time. He had solved the problem, however, by bringing two Apts to help him. One braced the bottom of the mirror to keep it steady; the other held the top of the mirror by means of a rope looped over one of the timbers which propped up the network of pipes and screens above the pool. The assistance of the Apts enabled Master Eremis to concentrate exclusively on his translation.

As he stroked the frame and murmured whatever invocations triggered the relationship between his talent and the glass, rain came gushing from the uneven surface of the mirror.

He was right: the process was going to take time. However torrential the rain was, the amount which could be translated through the mirror was small compared to the size of the pool and Orison’s need. Nevertheless Castellan Lebbick could see that the glass gave significantly more water than the spring. If Master Eremis was able to keep going – and if the water was good—

Lebbick tested one worry by requiring the Imager to drink two cups of the rainwater himself – which Master Eremis did with no discernible hesitation. But a close look at him only increased the Castellan’s other concern.

Master Eremis was sweating in the cool air of the reservoir. His breathing was deep and hard, and his features had the tight pallor of clenched knuckles. His expression was uncharacteristically simple: for once, what he was doing required him to concentrate so acutely, exert himself so fully, that he had no energy to spare for secrets.

He had been at work for only a short time, and already the strain had begun to tell on him. To keep his translation going, he would need more than unexpected strength. He would need the stamina of an iron bar.

Castellan Lebbick didn’t bother to curse. He could feel something inside him failing: the Imager was beating him. This was just perfect. Eremis was going to save Orison – but that wasn’t enough for him, oh, no, not enough at all. He was going to save Orison heroically, exhausting himself with a translation which would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about where his loyalties lay.

A curious weakness dragged at Lebbick’s muscles. He had trouble keeping his back straight. His cheeks felt unnaturally stiff; when he rubbed them, dried blood came off on his fingers. Maybe Havelock was right about him. Maybe he had lost his mind. Two of his men and Nyle had been slaughtered, and it was his fault, not because he had trusted Eremis, whom he hated, but because he had refused to believe that bright, clumsy, likable Geraden was sick with evil. Geraden had translated atrocities to butcher his own brother. Or he had made someone else do it for him.

The Castellan wanted his wife. He wanted to hide his face against her shoulder and feel her arms around him. But she was dead, and he was never going to be comforted again.

Master Eremis wasn’t cold now, but he would be chilled as soon as he stopped for rest. Mortifying himself further, Castellan Lebbick ordered a cot and food, warmer clothes, a fire on the edge of the pool, brandy. Then, when he had done everything he could think of for Orison’s savior, he went back to his duties.

During the afternoon, the Alends brought up a catapult against Orison’s gates – the only other part of the castle which might prove vulnerable without a prolonged assault. Master Quillon roused Havelock from a loud snooze, and the two Imagers took the Adept’s mirror around to Orison’s long northeast face to protect the gates. Castellan Lebbick, however, remained out of sight above the curtain-wall. When several hundred Alends rushed forward suddenly, carrying scaling ladders, the Castellan was ready for them. His archers forced them to retreat.

That success relieved some of his weakness. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough anymore. To keep himself from foundering, he fell back on the one distinct, comprehensible instruction he had received from his King.

To do his job.

That woman must be pushed.

After dark, when the loss of light alleviated the threat of catapults, allowing the guards to concentrate on defending Orison from simpler forms of attack, Castellan Lebbick went back to the dungeon to do what King Joyse had told him.

TWENTY-NINE: TERISA HAS VISITORS

After the Castellan hit her and left, Terisa Morgan remained against the wall for a long time, held up in a sitting position more by the blank stone than by any desire to keep herself from crumpling.

It’s a trick. She told him that, didn’t she? Eremis did this somehow. Yes, she told him. To get rid of Geraden. She told him all that. She even tried to beg – tried to call on the part of herself which had babbled and pleaded with her parents, her father. No, I didn’t do it, it isn’t my fault, I’ll never do it again, please don’t do this. Don’t lock me in the closet. That’s where I fade. It’s dark, and it sucks me away, and I stop existing. Nyle is still alive.

But the Castellan didn’t listen to her. He took hold of her shoulders and kissed her like a blow. Then he did hit her; she staggered against the wall and fell. It was the second time he had hit her. The first time, she had been full of audacity. She had told him that his wife would have been ashamed of him. She could almost have foreseen that he would hit her. But this time she was begging. Please don’t do this to me. And he hit her anyway. Like her father, he didn’t stop.

The third time was going to be the end of her. She felt sure of that. He had promised to hurt her, and he was going to keep his promise. Just a little at first. One breast or the other. Or perhaps a few barbs across your belly. A rough piece of wood between your legs. He was going to hit and hurt her until she broke.

She didn’t understand why he kissed her. She didn’t want to understand. Go to hell. All she wanted was to fade. The cell was cold, and the lamp was afflicted with a ghoulish flicker like a promise that it might go out at any moment, plunging her into blackness. When she was a child, the prospect of fading had always terrified her. It still did. But soon being locked in the closet had reminded her of the safety of the dark, had taught her again that she could fade to escape from being alone and unloved, scarcely able to breathe. If she didn’t exist, she couldn’t be hurt.

If she didn’t exist, she couldn’t be hurt.

Go to hell.

But now, when she needed it most, it was taken away from her. She couldn’t fade: she had lost the trick of letting go. The Castellan was going to hurt her in a way she had never experienced before. That wasn’t like the relatively passive violence of being locked in a closet. It wasn’t like being left alone to save herself or go mad. It was a new kind of pain—

And Geraden—

Oh, Geraden!

She needed to fade, had to escape, in order to protect him, just in case he was still alive, just in case he had somehow succeeded at working another impossible translation. Fading was her only defense against the pressure to betray him. If she were gone, she wouldn’t be able to tell the Castellan where he was.

And yet he was the other reason she couldn’t let go. She was too afraid for him. She couldn’t forget the way she had last seen him, the poignant mixture of anguish and iron in his face, the fatal authority in his voice and movements. The sweet and openhearted young man she loved wasn’t gone. No. That would have been bad enough, but what had happened to him was worse. He had been melted and beaten to iron without losing any of his vulnerabilities, so that the strength or desperation which led him to cast himself into a mirror wasn’t a measure of how hard he had become, but rather of how much pain he was in.

She had cried, I’m not an Imager! I can’t help you! And he had turned away from her because he didn’t have any other choice. She wasn’t the answer to his need. He had flung himself into the glass and was gone, unreachable, so far beyond hope or help that he didn’t even appear in the Image of the mirror. Even an Adept couldn’t have brought him back.

That was how she knew where he was.

If he were still alive at all. And if the translation hadn’t cost him his sanity.

She should have gone with him.

Yes. She should have gone with him. That was another reason she couldn’t fade: she couldn’t forget that she had already failed him. And failed herself at the same time. She loved him, didn’t she? Wasn’t that what she had learned in their last day together? – that he was more important to her even than Master Eremis’ strange power to draw a response from her body? that she believed in him and trusted him no matter what the evidence against him was? that she cared about him too much to take any side but his in the machinations and betrayals which embroiled Mordant? Then what was she doing here? Why had she stood still and simply watched him risk his life and his mind, without making the slightest effort to go with him?

She should have gone.

She was blocked from escaping inside herself by her fear of the Castellan. By her fear for Geraden. And by shame.

After a while, the wall began to pain her back. Imperfectly fitted pieces of granite pressed against her spine, her shoulder blades. Cold seemed to soak into her from the floor, despite the warm riding clothes Mindlin had made for her, despite her boots. Perhaps it would be wiser if she got up and went to the cot. But she didn’t have the heart to move, or the strength.

Now you are mine.

Geraden, forgive me.

“My lady.”

She couldn’t see who spoke. Nevertheless his voice didn’t frighten her, so after a while she was able to raise her head.

The Tor stood at the door of her cell. His voice shook as he murmured again, “My lady.” His fat fists gripped the bars of the door as if he were the one who had been locked up – as if he were imprisoned and she were free. Dully, she noticed the lamplit tears spreading across his cheeks.

“My lady, help me.”

His appeal reached her. He was her friend, one of the few people in Orison who seemed to wish her well. He had saved her from the Castellan. More than once. Biting back a groan, she shifted onto her hands and knees. Then she got her feet under her and tottered upright.

Swaying and afraid that she might faint, she moved closer to the door. For the moment, that was the best she could do.

“My lady, you must help me.” The old lord’s voice shook, not because he was urgent, but because he was fighting grief. “King Joyse has given Lebbick permission to do anything he wants to you.”

She didn’t understand. Like the Castellan’s kiss, this was incomprehensible. Somehow, she found herself sitting on the floor again, hunched forward so that her graceless and untended hair hid her face. Permission to do anything. King Joyse had smiled at her, and his smile was wonderful, a sunrise that could have lit the dark of her life. She could have loved that smile, as she loved Geraden. But it was all a lie. Anything he wants to you. It was all a lie, and there was no hope left.

“Please,” the Tor breathed in supplication. “My lady. Terisa.” He was barely able to contain his distress. “In the name of everything you respect – everything you would find good and worthy about him, if he had not fallen so far below himself. Tell us where Geraden has gone.”

Involuntarily, her head jerked up. Her eyes were full of shadows. You, too? Nausea closed around her stomach. You’ve turned against him, too? She couldn’t reply: there weren’t any words. If she tried to say anything, she would start to cry herself. Or throw up. Not you, too.

“You will not hurt him, my lady.” The Tor was pleading. He was an old man and carried every pound of his weight as if it were burdensome. “I care nothing for his guilt. If he lives, he is far from here, safe from Lebbick’s outrage. We are besieged. Lebbick cannot pursue him. And no one else can use his glass. It will cost him nothing if you speak.

“But King Joyse—” The lord’s throat closed convulsively. When he was able to speak again, his voice rattled in his chest like a hint of mortality. “King Joyse has trusted the Castellan too long. And he is no longer himself. He does not understand the permission he has given. He does not know that Lebbick is mad.

“My lady, he is my friend. I have served him with my life, and with the lives of all my Care, for decades. Now he is not what he was. I acknowledge that. At one time, he was the hero of all Mordant. Now it is the best he can do to defend Orison intelligently.

“But he has only become smaller, my lady, not less good. He means well. I swear to you on my heart that he means well.

“If you defy Lebbick, the Castellan will do his worst. And when King Joyse understands what his permission has done to you, he will lose the little of himself that remains.

“Help me, my lady. Save him. Tell us where Geraden has gone, so that Lebbick will have no excuse to hurt you.”

Terisa couldn’t focus her eyes. All she seemed to see was the light reflecting on his cheeks. He was asking her to rescue herself. After all, he was right: if she revealed where Geraden was, the Castellan would have no more excuse to harm her. And in the process King Joyse would be saved from doing something cruel. And the Tor himself – the only one of the three she cared about – might be able to stop crying.

With more strength than she knew she had, she got to her feet. “King Joyse is your friend.” To herself, she sounded dry and unmoved, vaguely heartless. “Geraden is mine.” Then, trying to ease the old man’s distress, she murmured, “I’m sorry.”

“ ‘Sorry’?” His voice broke momentarily. “Why are you sorry? You will suffer – and perhaps you will die – out of loyalty to a man who has killed his own brother, and it will do him no good. Perhaps he will never know that you have done it. You will endure the worst Lebbick can do to you and accomplish nothing.” His hands struggled with the bars. “You have no cause to be sorry. In all Orison, you alone will pay a higher price for your loyalty than King Joyse will.

“No, my lady. The sorrow is mine.” The rattle in the Tor’s chest made every word he said painful to hear. “It is mine. You will meet your agony heroically, and you will either speak or hold still, as you are able. But I am left to watch my friend bring to ruin everything he loves.

“I did not come to you with this at once. Do not think that. Since King Joyse gave his orders, I have been in torment, wracking my heart for the means to persuade him, move him – to understand him. I have begged at his door. I have bullied servants and guards. Do not think that I bring my pain to you lightly.

“But I have nowhere else to turn.

“My lady, your loyalty is too expensive.

“Whatever I have done, I have done in my King’s name. He is all that remains to me. I beg of you – do not let him destroy himself.”

“No.” Terisa couldn’t bear the sight any longer, so she turned her back on the Tor’s dismay. “Geraden is innocent. Eremis set this all up.” She spoke as if she were reciting a litany, fitting pieces of faith together in an effort to build conviction. “He faked Nyle’s death to make Geraden look bad, because he knew Nyle was never going to support his accusations against Geraden. If the King lets me be hurt” – a moment of dizziness swirled through her, and she nearly fell – “he’s going to have to live with the consequences. Geraden is innocent.”

“No, my lady,” the Tor repeated; but now she heard something new in his voice – a different kind of distress, almost a note of horror. “In this you are wrong. I care nothing for Geraden’s guilt. I have said that. Only the King matters to me. But you have placed your trust in someone evil.”

She stood still, her pulse loud in her ears and doubt gathering in her gut.

“Nyle is unquestionably dead.” The lord sounded as sick as she felt. “I have seen his body myself.”

Unquestionably dead. That made her move. Groping, she found her way to the cot. It smelled of stale straw and old damp, but she sat down on it gratefully. Then she closed her eyes. She had to have a little rest. In a minute or two, when her heart had stopped quaking, she would answer the Tor. Surely she would be able to think of an answer? Surely Geraden was innocent?

But a moment later the thought that Nyle really had been murdered cut through her, and everything inside her seemed to spill away. Unconscious of what she was doing, she stretched out on the cot and covered her face with her hands.

Eventually, the Tor gave up and left, but she didn’t hear him go.

At noon, the guards brought her a meal – hard bread and some watery stew. She panicked at their approach because she thought they might be the Castellan; her relief when she saw who they were left her too weak to get off the cot.

In fact, she felt too weak to eat at all, to take care of herself in any way. As soon as Castellan Lebbick spoke to her, she would tell him anything he wanted. But that wouldn’t stop him. She could see his face in her mind, and she knew the truth. He didn’t want to stop. Now that he had King Joyse’s permission, nothing would stop him.

Where were the people who had shown her courtesy or kindness, the people who might be supposed to have some interest in her? Elega had gone with Prince Kragen. Myste had left Orison on a crazy quest to help the Congery’s lost and rampaging champion. Adept Havelock was mad. Master Quillon had become mediator of the Congery because that was what King Joyse wanted – and King Joyse had given the Castellan permission to do whatever he wished to her. Saddith? She was only a maid, in spite of her ambitions. Maybe she had inadvertently betrayed Terisa to Eremis. That didn’t mean there was anything she could do to correct the situation. Ribuld, the coarse veteran who had fought for Terisa more than once? He was only a guard – not even a captain.

She couldn’t lift the whole weight of Mordant’s need by herself. She was hardly able to lift her head off the lumpy pallet which served as her mattress. The Tor had seen Nyle’s body. Geraden’s brother was unquestionably dead.

Why should she bother to eat? What was the point?

Maybe if she got hungry enough, she would regain the ability to let go of her own existence.

She tried to sleep – tried to relax so that the tension and reality would flow out of her muscles – but another set of boots stumbled toward her down the corridor. Just one: someone was coming in her direction alone. A slow, limping stride, hesitant or frail. Deliberately, she closed her eyes again. She didn’t want to know who it was. She didn’t want to be distracted.

For the first time, he called her by her name.

“Terisa.”

It wasn’t a good omen.

Startled, she raised her head and saw Geraden’s brother at the door of her cell.

“Artagel?”

He wore a nightshirt and breeches – clothes which seemed to increase his family resemblance to Geraden and Nyle because they weren’t right for a swordsman. His dress and his way of standing as if someone had just stuck a knife in his side made it clear that he was still supposed to be in bed. He had been too weak yesterday – was it really only yesterday? – to support Geraden in front of the Congery. Obviously, he was too weak to walk around in the dungeon alone today.

Yet he was here.

It was definitely not a good omen that he had called her Terisa.

Forgetting her own lack of strength, she swung her legs off the cot and went toward him. “Oh, Artagel, I’m so glad to see you, I’m in so much trouble, I need you, I need a friend, Artagel, they think Geraden killed Nyle, they—”

His pallor stopped her. The sweat of strain on his forehead and the tremor of pain in his mouth stopped her. His eyes were glazed, as if he were about to lose consciousness. Gart, the High King’s Monomach, had wounded him severely, and he drove himself into relapses by struggling out of bed when he should have been resting. The fact that Gart had beaten him; Nyle’s treasonous alliance with Prince Kragen and the lady Elega; the accusations against Geraden: things like that tormented the Domne’s most famous son, goading him to fight his weakness – and his recovery.

“Artagel,” she groaned, “you shouldn’t be here. You should be in bed. You’re making yourself sick again.”

“No.” The word came out like a gurgle. With one arm, he clamped his other hand against his side. “No.” Because he was too sick to remain standing without help, he leaned on the door, pressing his forehead against the bars. The dullness in his eyes made him look like he was going blind. “This is your doing.”

She halted: pain went through her like a burn. “Artagel?” There were, after all, more kinds of pain in the world than she would ever have guessed. Except for Geraden, Artagel was the best friend she had. She would have trusted him without question. “You don’t mean that.” He thought she was responsible? “You can’t.”

“I didn’t mean to say it.” He was having trouble with his respiration. His breath seemed to struggle past an obstruction in his chest. “That isn’t why I’m here. Lebbick is going to take care of you. I just want to know where Geraden is.

“I’m going to hunt him down and cut his heart out.”

Suddenly, she was filled with a desire to wail or weep. It would have done her good to cry out. But this was too important. Somehow, she kept her cry down. Panting because the cell was too small and if she didn’t get more air soon she was going to fail, she protested, “No. Eremis did this. It’s a trick. I tell you, it’s a trick. The Tor says he’s seen the body and Nyle is really dead, but I don’t believe it. Geraden didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Ah!” Artagel gasped as if he were hurt and furious. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to me anymore.” Now his eyes were clear and hot, bright with passion or fever. “I’ve seen the body myself.”

And while she reeled inside herself he continued, “After Geraden stabbed him, he was still alive. That much is true. Eremis rushed him to his own rooms and got a physician for him. That was his only chance to stay alive. Eremis got him that chance. Then Eremis put guards on him – inside the room and outside the door. In case Geraden tried again.

“It didn’t work.” Artagel’s forehead seemed to bulge between the bars; he might have been trying to break his skull. “Lebbick found them. The guards were killed. Some kind of beast fed off them. Geraden must have translated something into the room – something they couldn’t fight.

“Nyle was killed. It chewed his face off.”

Just for a second, that image struck her so horribly that she quailed. Oh, Nyle! Oh, my God. Visceral revulsion churned inside her, and her hands leaped to cover her mouth. Geraden, no!

She should have gone with him. To prevent all this.

But then she saw iron and anguish, and Geraden came back to her. She knew him. And she loved him. Terisa, I did not kill my brother. Without warning, she was angry. Years of outrage which she had stored away in the secret places of her heart abruptly sprang out, touching her with fire.

“Say that again,” she breathed, panted. “Go on. Say it.”

Artagel was beyond the reach of surprise. Baring his teeth in a snarl, he repeated, “Nyle was killed. The beast chewed his face off.”

“And you believe Geraden did that?” She lashed her protest at him. “Are you out of your mind? Has everybody in this whole place gone crazy?”

He blinked dumbly; for one brief moment, he seemed to regard her in a different light. Almost at once, however, his own horror returned. His legs were failing. Slowly, he began to slip down the bars.

“I saw his body. I held it. I’ve still got his blood on my clothes.”

That was true. Her lamp was bright enough to reveal the dried stains on his nightshirt.

“I don’t care.” She was too angry to imagine what the experience had been like for him – to hold his own brother’s outraged corpse in his arms and have no way to bring the body back to life. “Geraden is your brother. You’ve known him all his life. You know him better than that.”

Artagel continued slipping. His side hurt too much: apparently, he couldn’t use his hands. She reached through the bars and grabbed his nightshirt to support him somehow; but, he was too heavy for her. Finally he bent his legs and caught his weight on his knees. “I tell you I’ve seen his body.”

He pulled her down with him until she was on her knees as well. Raging into his face, she gasped, “I don’t care. Geraden didn’t do it.”

“And I tell you I’ve seen his body.” In spite of weakness and fever, Artagel met her with the unflinching passion which had twice led him to hurl himself against the High King’s Monomach. “You deny it, but it isn’t going to go away. An Imager did it. Translation is the only way a beast could get into that room and out again. But it wasn’t Eremis. He was with Lebbick the whole time.

“Right now, he’s up in the reservoir translating a new water supply. He’s the only reason we’ve got any hope at all. I took Geraden’s side against him” – Artagel’s voice seemed to be thick with blood – “and I was wrong. He’s saving us.

“Geraden killed Nyle. I’m going to track him down whether you tell me where he is or not. The only difference it’s going to make is time.”

“And then you’re going to cut his heart out.” Terisa couldn’t bear any more. He made her want to shriek. With an effort of will, she let go of his shirt, drew back from him. “Get out of here,” she muttered. “I don’t want to hear this.” The image of what had happened to Nyle sucked at her concentration. She thrust it away with both hands. “Just get out of here.”

Then the sight of him – fierce and in pain on his knees against her bars – touched her, and she relented a little. “You really ought to be in bed. You aren’t going to be hunting anybody for a while. If the Castellan doesn’t tear it out of me – and if he lets me live – I promise I’ll tell you everything I can when you’re well enough to do something about it.”

He didn’t raise his head for a long time. When he finally looked up, the light had gone out of his gaze.

Tortuously, like an old man whose joints had begun to betray him, he pulled himself up the bars, regained his feet. “I always trusted him,” he murmured as if he were alone, deaf and blind to her presence. “More than Nyle or any of the others. He was so clumsy and decent. And smarter than I am. I can’t figure it out.

“You came along, and I thought that was good because it gave him something to fight for. It gave him a reason to stop letting those Masters humiliate him. So then he kills Nyle, kills” – Artagel shuddered, his eyes focused on nothing – “and you’re the only explanation I can think of, you must be evil in some terrible way I don’t understand, but you want me to go on trusting him. I can’t figure it out.

“I saw his body.” Like an old man, he turned from the door and began shuffling down the corridor. “I picked it up and held it.” Brushing at the dried stains on his nightshirt, he passed beyond Terisa’s range of vision. His boots scuffed along the floor until she couldn’t hear them anymore.

She stood rigidly and watched the empty passage for a while, as erect as a witness testifying to what she believed. Like the Tor, he said that Nyle was dead. And he could hardly be wrong. He ought to be able to identify his own brother’s body. And yet she didn’t recant. Unexpectedly, she found that she was supported by a lifetime’s anger. A childhood of punishment and neglect had taught her many things – and she was only now starting to realize what some of those things were.

Her hands shook. She steadied them as well as she could and began to eat the bread and stew she had been brought, pacing back and forth across the cell as she ate. She needed strength, needed to pull all her resources together. King Joyse had told her to think, to reason. Now more than at any other time in her life, she needed the stamina and determination to think clearly.

To the extent that it was possible for anyone to do so, she intended to defy the Castellan.

When he came at last – several hours and another meal later – she was almost glad to see him. Waiting was no doubt much easier to bear than rape or torture, but it was harder than defiance. Solitude eroded courage. Half a dozen times during those hours, she quailed, and her resolution ran out of her. Once she panicked so badly that afterward she found herself on the floor in the corner with her knees hugged against her chest and no idea how she got there.

But she was brought back from failure of nerve by the fact that she knew how to survive waiting alone in a cold, ill-lit cell. She had recovered her ability to blank out the dark and the fear. Paradoxically, the decision to meet her danger head on restored her capacity for escape. And when she surrendered to fading, she rediscovered the safety hidden in it and felt better.

For this she didn’t need a mirror. Mirrors helped her fight the erosion of her existence; they weren’t necessary if she wanted to let go. And it was letting go, not desperate clinging, which had kept her sane when her parents had locked her in the closet.

Nevertheless the time and the waiting, the cold and the inadequate food exacted their toll. There were limits to how far she could stretch her determination. She was almost glad to see him when the stamp of boots announced his coming and Castellan Lebbick appeared past the stone edge of her cell.

Now he would hurt her as much as he could. And she would find out what she was good for.

But the sight of him shocked her: it wasn’t what she had expected. She was braced for rage and violence, for the intensity like hate in his glare and his knotted jaws, for the potential murder tightly coiled in all his muscles. She wasn’t ready for the distracted man, noticeably shorter than she was, who entered her cell with no swagger in his shoulders and no authority on his face.

The Castellan looked like someone who had suffered an essential defeat.

Dully, he let himself into the cell. Again, he didn’t bother to lock the door behind him. He was enough of a bar to her escape. And if she got past him and out of her cell, where could she go? She could run the corridors like a trapped rat, but she couldn’t get out of the dungeon without passing through the guardroom. Castellan Lebbick didn’t need to lock the door.

For a moment, he didn’t meet her gaze; he glanced around the cell, glanced up and down her body without quite looking at her face. Then he murmured as if he were speaking primarily to himself, “You’re better. The last time I saw you, you were about to fall apart. Now you look like you want to fight.” Without sarcasm, he commented, “I had no idea being thrown in the dungeon was going to be good for you.”

Terisa shrugged, studying him hard. “I’ve had time to think.”

At last, he raised his eyes to hers. The smolder she was accustomed to seeing in them had been extinguished – or tamped down, at any rate. He seemed almost calm, almost stable – almost lost. “Does that mean,” he asked quietly, “you’re going to tell me where he is?”

She shook her head.

In the same tone, the Castellan continued, “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been plotting? Are you going to tell me why he did it?”

Once more, she shook her head. For some reason, her throat had gone dry. Lebbick’s uncharacteristic demeanor began to frighten her.

“That doesn’t surprise me.” He seemed to have no sarcasm left. Turning away, he started to walk back and forth in front of the bars. His manner was almost casual; he might have been out for a stroll. “King Joyse told me to push you. He wants you to declare yourself. Does that surprise you?” The question was rhetorical. “It should. It isn’t like him. He was always able to get what he wanted without beating up women.

“I’ve been looking forward to it all day.

“But now—” He spread his hands in a way that almost gave the impression he was asking her for help. “Everything is inside out. Clumsy, decent, loyal Geraden has turned rotten. Crazy Adept Havelock spent most of the day protecting us from catapults. Master Eremis is busy refilling the reservoir.” Apparently, he didn’t know that she had been visited by both the Tor and Artagel, that she was already aware of the things he told her. “And King Joyse wants me to hurt you. He wants me to find out who you are – what you are.”

A suggestion of yearning came into Lebbick’s voice, a hint of wistfulness. “Sometimes – a long time ago – he used to let me get even with his enemies. Sometimes. Men like that garrison commander—But he’s never given me permission to hurt someone like you.”

Then the Castellan faced her – and still he seemed almost casual, almost lost. “He must be afraid of you. He must be more afraid of you than he’s ever been of Margonal or Festten or Gart or even Vagel.

“Why is that? What are you?”

Meeting his extinguished, unreadable gaze, Terisa swallowed roughly. She didn’t understand what had happened to him, what had taken the fire out of him or stifled his hate; but this was the best chance she would ever get to distract him, deflect his intentions against her.

“I don’t know,” she said as steadily as she could. “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

“The wrong questions?”

“I can’t tell you why King Joyse is afraid of me. If he’s afraid of me. And I won’t tell you where Geraden is. Because he didn’t do it. I’m not going to give him away.

“But I’ll tell you anything else.”

“Anything else?” Castellan Lebbick sounded no more than mildly interested in the idea. “Like what?”

His manner gave her a moment of panic. She was afraid that he had become unreachable – that whatever was happening to him had taken him beyond the point where anybody could talk to him, argue with him, guess what he would do next. Breathing deeply to shore up her courage, she replied, “Like how did I survive when Gart tried to kill me the first night I was here. Like what was I using that secret passage in my rooms for. Like what really happened the night Eremis had his meeting with the lords and Prince Kragen. Like what happened the first time Geraden was attacked.” Her own passion mounted against the Castellan’s blankness. “Like how I can be sure Eremis is lying.”

At that, something like a spark showed in Lebbick’s eyes. His posture didn’t shift, but his whole body seemed to become unnaturally still. “Tell me.”

“It all fits together,” she answered. King Joyse had told her to reason, and reason was the only weapon she had. “I can even tell you why they’re afraid of Geraden – Vagel and Eremis and Gilbur – why they’re trying so hard to get him out of their way.”

Lebbick didn’t blink. “Tell me,” he repeated.

So she told him. As clearly as she could, she told him how Adept Havelock had saved her from the High King’s Monomach. She described how Havelock and Master Quillon had used the passage hidden behind her wardrobe. She related every detail she could remember about Eremis’ clandestine meeting with the lords of the Cares, including Artagel’s role in saving her. And then she told the Castellan what conclusions she drew.

“The first time Gart tried to kill me, he obviously didn’t know about that secret passage. The last time, he did. How did he find out? You knew it was there. Myste and Elega knew.” Lebbick didn’t react to this revelation. “Quillon and Havelock, of course. Geraden knew. And Saddith, my maid. But Myste and Elega and Havelock and Quillon all knew about it long before I came here. They could have told Gart that first night. Forget them. What about Geraden? He didn’t know when I first moved into those rooms. You think he’s in with Gart. Well, I told him about it the next morning. After I talked to you. Why did he wait all that time before letting Gart know the best way to kill me?

“On the other hand” – she was determined to hold back nothing that might help her – “Saddith and Eremis are lovers. She could have told him about the passage – and she could have taken a long time to do it.

“She could have told him where I was that first night.”

“I know all that,” the Castellan murmured without inflection. “Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me why Eremis rescued you. Gart came through the passage, and Eremis could have gotten rid of you both at the same time. How do you explain that?”

Because she was only guessing, Terisa did her best to sound plausible. “There were witnesses. If Gart just killed me, Geraden would see that Eremis let it happen. And if Gart tried to get both of us, the guards outside might catch him at it. All they had to do was open the door. Either way, everyone would know Eremis is a traitor.

“What he thought he was going to do” – she forced herself to say this also – “was make love to me. And then while I was asleep or distracted Gart would sneak in and kill me. And no one would ever know Eremis had been there.

“He wasn’t expecting Geraden to interrupt.”

Still the Castellan didn’t show what he was thinking. All he said was, “Go on.”

Grimly, Terisa continued.

“Eremis controlled every detail of that meeting with the lords. He arranged the location, the time, who was going to be there. He arranged where I would be afterward. Geraden couldn’t have known any of his plans. The only thing Eremis didn’t arrange was Artagel. He didn’t arrange for me to be saved.

“When Gart attacked, he obviously came and went through a mirror. I don’t know how he did that without losing his mind – but Artagel and I figured out where the point of translation was, the place in the Image. He and Geraden and I went to look at the place again, and the same mirror translated those insects. Artagel told you about that. They almost killed all three of us.

“Eremis says it was a feint, a trick to make Geraden look innocent, but that’s nonsense. If Havelock hadn’t rescued him, he would have died. And no one could have predicted that the Adept would show up there to help us. And Eremis knows all about it, even though he wasn’t there and no one told him. He says I did, but I didn’t. He must have been on the other side of the glass, watching.”

Lebbick had begun to scowl. His eyes gave out glints of dark fire. For better or worse, Terisa was bringing the banked heat in him to flame. If that was a mistake, she was sealing her own doom. Nevertheless she kept going.

“They want Geraden dead or ruined because he really is an Imager – a kind of Imager no one has ever seen before.”

Obliquely, it occurred to her that she should have grasped this before. But she hadn’t forced herself to think until now. And because of that Geraden was paying a fearful price. At the moment, however, she had no time for regret. She was too busy defending herself from the Castellan.

“That’s why he isn’t able to recognize what he is for himself. He can do translations that don’t have anything to do with the Image in his mirror. He got me out of a glass that showed the champion the Congery wanted. And Eremis knew that was going to happen. Or Gilbur did, anyway. He taught Geraden how to make that mirror. He must have seen Geraden wasn’t making it right. When the mirror was made wrong and it still showed the Image with the champion, Gilbur must have realized what Geraden can do.

“If he ever figures out what his power is or how to use it, he’ll be the strongest Master there ever was. And he’s loyal to King Joyse. Even though it’s breaking his heart. Gilbur and Vagel and Eremis have to get rid of him before he learns how to fight them.

“That’s why they attacked him with insects, tried to kill him. And that’s why they set him up to look like he killed Nyle. They’re afraid of him. And he’s trying to expose them. They need to get rid of him in a way that makes them look innocent.

“Nyle isn’t really dead. He can’t be. Eremis couldn’t have used him like that without his cooperation – and he wouldn’t have cooperated if he thought he was going to be killed.”

Distinctly, the Castellan said, “Pigshit.” The muscles bunched along his jaw; his eyes glared balefully. “My men are dead, and I saw his body. His entire face was eaten through to the brain.” She had succeeded at restoring his outrage. “Eremis is at the reservoir right now saving us. He’s the hero of Orison. No one will believe a word you say.” His raised his fists in front of her face, hammered them at the unresisting air. “That whoreson physician betrayed us, and two of my men are dead!”

Now it was her turn to stare at him, stunned with surprise. “Physician?” Artagel hadn’t mentioned a physician.

“Underwell, you bitch! The best physician in Orison. Eremis did everything perfectly. He got Nyle to his rooms fast. He got Underwell. He set guards. While you were out helping Geraden escape and that pisspot Quillon was getting in my way, Eremis was actually trying to save Nyle.”

She should have been afraid of his new rage, but she wasn’t. “Physician?” Instead, she was astonished by the sudden clarity of her thoughts. “What happened to him? Didn’t he see what attacked your men and Nyle?”

“Escaped!” snarled Lebbick. “What do you think? Did you expect him to wait around and let us catch him?” Rage swelled the cords of his neck. “He was translated away the same way Geraden’s bloody creature was translated in.”

“But why?”

“How should I know? I’ve never looked inside his head. Maybe he just hated Nyle. Maybe Festten offered to make him rich. Maybe Gart took his relatives hostage. I don’t know and I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, he just did it.”

“No,” Terisa said as if now she had nothing to fear. “That isn’t what I meant. Why did he do it that way? Why have the guards killed? Why—?” Why do that horrible thing to Nyle? “They might have been interrupted. They might have been caught. What about the noise? Wouldn’t being attacked by some kind of beast make noise – warn the guards outside? Why take the chance?”

Fuming, the Castellan started to spit an explanation at her. But she didn’t want to hear him say anything more against Geraden. She ignored him.

“He’s a physician,” she said. “ ‘The best physician in Orison.’ He didn’t need any help getting rid of Nyle. And he didn’t need to make himself look like a traitor. Don’t you understand?” Lebbick’s slowness to grasp the implications surprised her almost as much as her own certainty. “All he had to do was fail. Let Nyle die. Put something toxic in the wound and cover it with bandages. No one would ever know. No one would even suspect.

“Why take the stupid, stupid risk of all that bloodshed?”

Castellan Lebbick stared at her as if she were growing noxious in front of him. “So maybe he didn’t do it.”

“Then where is he?” shot back Terisa.

“He wouldn’t let them kill Nyle without trying to stop them – without trying to get help.” Lebbick was making a visible effort to understand her. “Maybe they killed him, too, and took the body with them.”

“Why?” she repeated. “Why bother? To create the illusion they had a confederate they didn’t need? To make you think Underwell is guilty when he really isn’t? What does that accomplish? What would be the point?”

“Right!” The Castellan clenched his fury in both fists. “What would be the point?”

And still she wasn’t afraid. His entire face was eaten—Calmly, she asked, “What did Underwell look like?”

Lebbick made a strangling noise. “ ‘Look like’?”

“Compared to Nyle,” she explained. “Were they about the same height? The same weight? About the same coloring?”

“NO!” the Castellan yelled as if she had gone too far, as if this time she had finally pushed him past the point where he could hold back his hands. And then, an instant later, what she was getting at hit him, and he stopped.

In a thin voice, he said, “Yes. About the same.”

Quietly, as if she didn’t mean anything personal, she pursued her argument. “If you put Underwell in Nyle’s clothes, would you still be able to recognize him? If you gave him wounds to match the ones Nyle was supposed to have – and if you disfigured him – and if you covered the rest of him with blood – would you still be able to recognize him?”

Castellan Lebbick stared at her with apoplexy on his face.

“I think Nyle is alive,” she finished, not because she thought the Castellan still didn’t understand her, but simply because she had to say something to control the silence, keep him from exploding. “I think the poor man who got butchered was Underwell.”

With an effort, Lebbick pulled a breath between his teeth. “All that,” he chewed out distinctly, “you think all that, and you haven’t set foot outside this cell. Sheep-rut! How do you do it? What do you use for reasons? What do you use for proof?”

Now that she had arrived at her conclusion, she lost her invulnerability. He was beginning to scare her again. “I’ve already explained it.” She was determined not to let her voice shake. “Eremis wants to shift the blame onto Geraden. Partly to get him out of the way, so he can’t understand his talent and start using it. And partly because Eremis isn’t ready to betray you yet. Maybe his plans aren’t finished. If he sprang his trap now, Prince Kragen would get Orison. Alend would get the Congery. Isn’t that right? But Eremis is in with Gart – with High King Festten and Cadwal. He wants to keep us all safe until Cadwal gets here – until Alend is out of the way.

“If Geraden is working with Gart – if he really does serve Cadwal – he wouldn’t have done any of this. He wouldn’t have risked accusing Eremis, he wouldn’t have done anything to undermine Orison. Until Cadwal got here. He wouldn’t have ruined his own position by killing his brother.”

She would have gone on, trying to build a wall of words between herself and the Castellan, but he cut her off. “That’s enough!” he snapped fiercely. “It’s just talk. It isn’t a reason. It isn’t proof. You’ve been in this cell all day. What makes you think you know what’s going on? You say he’s doing everything because he’s guilty – but he would do exactly the same things if he was innocent. I want proof. If you expect me to go arrest the ‘hero of Orison,’ you’ll have to give me proof.”

Just for a second, Terisa nearly failed. Proof. Her mind went dark; a lid closed over her courage. What kind of proof was there, in a world like this? If Underwell had been stretched out naked in front of her, she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between him and Nyle. She didn’t know men. Only the crudest physical characteristics would have enabled her to distinguish between him and, say, Eremis. Or Barsonage.

Then, abruptly, the answer came to her. In sudden, giddy relief, she said, “Ask Artagel.”

“Artagel?” demanded the Castellan suspiciously. “Geraden’s brother?”

“And Nyle’s,” she countered. “Make him look at the body. Take the clothes off and make him look. He ought to be able to recognize his own brother’s body.”

Lebbick glared at that idea as if he found it offensive. Under one eye, a muscle twitched, giving his gaze a manic cast. She had gone too far, said something wrong, accidentally convinced him her arguments were false. He was going to do what he had come for in the first place. He was going to hurt her.

He didn’t. He said, “All right. I’ll try that.

“It’s too bad Underwell doesn’t have any family here. It would be better to look at this from both sides. But I’ll try Artagel.”

Terisa felt faint. She wanted to sit down. The Castellan’s scowl was still fixed on her, however. He made no move to leave. After a moment, he said, “While I’m gone, remember something. Even if that is Underwell’s corpse, it doesn’t prove Nyle is alive. It doesn’t prove anything about Geraden or Eremis. All it proves is that some shit-lover is still plotting something. If you want me to arrest the whore-bait ‘hero of Orison,’ don’t show me Underwell is dead. Show me Nyle is alive.”

Then he left. The cell door banged; the key scraped in the lock; hard bootheels echoed away on the stone of the passage.

Terisa sat down on the cot, leaned her back against the wall, and let herself evaporate for a while.

THIRTY: ODD CHOICES

The bars of the cell were of old, rough iron, crudely forged and cast. Little marks of rust pitted the metal like smallpox; it looked ancient and corrupt. Nevertheless the bars were still intact, despite their age. Against the gnawing of rust, which the rude workmanship and the damp atmosphere aggravated, the iron was defended by generations of human oil and fear. Since the dungeons were first constructed, dozens or hundreds of men and women and perhaps children had stood in this cell, holding the bars because they didn’t have anything else to do with their need. And now the ooze of sweat and dirt left behind by their knotted, aching, condemned hands protected the metal from its accumulated years. Sections of iron could be brought to a dull shine, if Terisa rubbed them with the sleeve of her new shirt.

So. He was right. It didn’t prove Nyle was alive. She couldn’t argue with that.

So the Castellan would be coming back.

She wondered whether the places where people suffered were always made stronger by the residue of pain. And – not for the first time – she wondered how many different kinds of pain it was possible to feel.

When he came back, whatever he did would be out of her control. She had used up all her weapons. She wasn’t Saddith: she couldn’t use her body to protect her spirit, even though he apparently desired her. Even if she had been willing to make the attempt – a purely theoretical question – she lacked the knowledge, the experience. And somewhere between the poles of love and violence Castellan Lebbick had lost his way. He might no longer be able to distinguish between them.

She should have gone with Geraden.

She should have come to her own conclusions about him earlier, much earlier.

She should have stuck a knife in Master Eremis when she had the chance. If, in fact, she had ever had the chance.

The Castellan would be coming back.

What hope was there for her now? Only one: that Artagel might look at the body and be sure it wasn’t Nyle’s. If that happened – if she were proved right on that point – the Castellan might doubt his own rage enough to treat her more carefully. He might. She had to hope for something, now that she couldn’t hope to be left alone.

She had to hope that Geraden’s talent was strong enough to save him. Somehow, he had bent his mirror away from its Image in order to appear in her apartment and translate her to Orison. That was one thing. But to bend the same mirror so that it functioned as if it were flat – that was something else. A more hazardous attempt altogether. And yet she had reason to think it was within his abilities. With that same glass, he had put her partway into a scene which bore no resemblance to the Image, a scene which he called “the Closed Fist” in the Care of Domne, and she hadn’t gone mad. If he could do that for her, surely he could do it for himself?

Surely?

Oh, Geraden.

The truth was that she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She wasn’t accustomed to the confidence she had projected in front of Castellan Lebbick: it was easier to forget than to sustain. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything inevitable about the explanation of events she had urged on him. Like her capacity for love, it was purely theoretical. She knew how Master Eremis would laugh, if anyone told him what she had said. At bottom, her defense of herself rested entirely and exclusively on the conviction that Geraden was innocent. If she were wrong about that—

The implications were intolerable, so she tried to close her mind to them. Because she didn’t know whether the Castellan would come back soon or late – and either way it could mean anything, good or bad – she made an effort to distract herself by counting the granite blocks which formed the walls of the cell.

Both of the end walls had been built in the same way. At a glance, the construction looked careless: ill-fitting blocks had simply been piled on top of each other. So it might be possible to work some of them loose, especially up near the ceiling. But time and use had worn off the rough edges, leaving a surface that couldn’t be hurt. In contrast, the back of the cell was flat, seamless stone – cut, not built. No doubt the work had been done by the Mordant-born slaves of Alend or Cadwal, during the long years of conflict between those powers.

And now she was a prisoner of the same conflict. In a sense, dungeons never gave up their victims. The faces and the bodies changed – died and were dragged away – but the old stone clung to its purpose, and the anguish of the men and women locked within it never changed. King Joyse hadn’t gone far enough when he had altered Orison to make it a place of peace. Much of the extensive dungeons had been given over to the Congery for a laborium: that was good – but not good enough. The whole place should have been put to some other use. Then perhaps the Castellan wouldn’t have spent so many years thinking about the things he could do to people who offended him.

She didn’t know what to say to him.

She had never known what to say to her father, either. So far, however, she had had better luck with the Castellan. But that was finished. She had done everything she could think of. Now she was at the mercy of events and attitudes she couldn’t control, men who were losing their minds, men who hated, men who—

“Deep in thought, I see, my lady,” said Master Eremis. “It makes you especially lovely.”

She turned, her heart thudding in her throat, and saw him at the door of her cell. With one hand, he twirled the ends of his chasuble negligently. His relaxed stance suggested that he had been watching her for several minutes.

“You are quite remarkable,” he continued. “Ordinarily, cogitation in a woman produces only ugliness. Were you thinking of me?”

She opened her mouth to say his name, but she couldn’t swallow her heart; it was beating too hard. Staring at him as if she had been stricken dumb, she took an involuntary step backward.

“That would explain this increased beauty – if you were thinking of me. My lady” – he smiled as if she were naked in front of him – “I have certainly been thinking of you.”

“How—?” She fought to regain her voice. “How did you get in here?”

At that, he laughed. “On my legs, my lady. I walked.”

“No.” She shook her head. Slowly, her immediate panic receded. “You’re supposed to be up at the reservoir. Saving Orison. Castellan Lebbick wouldn’t let you just walk in here.”

“Unfortunately, no,” the Master agreed. His tone became marginally more sober. “I was forced to resort to a little chicanery. Some cayenne in my wine to produce a sweat, so that he would be impressed by the strain of my exertions. A gentle potion in the brandy I offered to the men he set to guard me, so that they would sleep. A passage which has been secretly built from my workrooms in the laborium into an unused part of the dungeons – tremendous forethought on my part, do you not agree? considering that it was never possible for me to be certain Lebbick would arrest you.”

Terisa ignored the cayenne and the potion; they meant nothing to her. But a secret passage out of the dungeon—A way of escape—She had to take hold of herself with both hands to keep her sudden, irrational hope under command.

Struggling to muffle the tremor in her voice, she said, “You went to a lot of trouble. What do you want? Do you expect me to tell you where Geraden is?”

Again, Master Eremis laughed. “Oh, no, my lady.” She was beginning to loathe his laugh. “You told me that a long time ago.”

When he said that, a sting of panic went through her – a fear different than all her other frights and alarms. She forgot about the secret passage; it was secondary. She wanted to shout, No, I didn’t, I never did that! But as soon as he said it she knew it was true.

She had refused the Tor and Artagel and Castellan Lebbick – but Eremis already knew.

“Then why?” she demanded as though she were genuinely capable of belligerence. “Have you come to kill me? Do you want to keep me from talking to the Castellan? You’re too late. I’ve already told him everything.”

“ ‘Everything’?” The Imager’s dark gaze glinted as if he were no longer as amused as he sounded. “Which ‘everything’ is that, my lady? Did you tell him that I have held your sweet breasts in my hands? Did you tell him that I have tasted your nipples with my tongue?”

The recollection twisted her stomach. More angrily, she retorted, “I told him you faked Nyle’s death. You and Nyle set it up as an attack on Geraden. So no one would believe the things he said about you.

“I told him Nyle is still alive. You ambushed Underwell and those guards so everyone would think Geraden came back and killed him, but he’s still alive. You’ve got him hidden somewhere. You talked him into being on your side somehow – maybe he hates Geraden for stopping him when he tried to help Elega and Prince Kragen – and now you’ve got him safe somewhere.

“That’s what I told the Castellan.”

In the uncertain lamplight, Master Eremis’ smile seemed to grow harder, sharper. “Then I am glad it was never my intention to harm you. If I were to hurt you now, everyone would assume that there is some justice in your accusations.

“But I do not hold a grievance against you. I will demonstrate,” he said smoothly, “the injustice of those accusations.”

“How?” she shot back, trying to shore up her courage – trying not to think about the fact that she had betrayed Geraden to the Imager. “What new lies have you got in mind?”

His smile flashed like a blade. “No lies at all, my lady. I will not lie to you again. Behold!” Flourishing one hand, he produced a long iron key from the sleeve of his cloak. “I have come to let you out.”

She stared at him; shock made her want to lie down and close her eyes. He had a key to the cell. He wanted to let her out, help her escape – he wanted to get her away from the Castellan. She was too confused, she couldn’t think. Start over again. He had a key to the cell. He wanted—It didn’t make any sense.

“Why?” she murmured, asking herself the question, not expecting him to answer.

“Because,” he said distinctly, “your body is mine. I have claimed it, and I mean to have it. I do not allow my desires to be frustrated or refused. Other women have such skin and loins as yours, such breasts – but they do not prefer a gangling, stupid, inept Apt after I have offered myself to them. When I conceive a desire, my lady, I satisfy it.”

“No,” she said again, “no,” not because she meant to argue with him, but because he had given her a way to think. “You wouldn’t risk it. You wouldn’t take the chance you might get caught here. You want to use me for something.”

Then it came to her.

“Does Geraden really scare you that badly?”

Master Eremis’ smile turned crooked and faded from his face; his eyes burned at her. “Have you lost your senses, my lady? Scare me? Geraden? Forgive my bluntness – but if you believe that Geraden fumble-foot frightens me in any way, you are out of your wits. Lebbick and his dungeon have cost you your mind.”

“I don’t think so.” In a manner that strangely resembled the Castellan’s, she clenched her fists and tapped them on the sides of her legs as if to emphasize the rhythm of her thoughts, the inevitability. “I don’t think so.

“You know what he can do. You pretend you don’t, but you know what he can do better than anybody – better than he does. Gilbur watched him make that mirror. You knew something unexpected was going to happen when the Congery decided to let him go ahead and try to translate the champion. That’s why you argued against him. You weren’t trying to protect him. You wanted to keep him from discovering who he is.

“The reason you tried to get him accepted into the Congery was just to distract him, confuse him – make it harder for him to understand.

“When Gilbur translated the champion” – she swung her fists harder, harder – “you left Geraden and me in front of the mirror, directly in front of the mirror. You probably pushed him. You wanted the champion to kill him.” To kill both of us. The Master had been trying to take her life as well for a long time. But that was the only flaw in her convictions, the only thing which didn’t make any sense: why anybody would want to have her killed. “There isn’t any doubt about it. You’re definitely afraid of him.”

This time, the bark of Master Eremis’ laugh held no humor, no mirth at all. “You misjudge me, my lady. You misjudge me badly.”

She didn’t stop; it was too late to draw back. “That’s why you’re here,” she said, beating out the words against her thighs. “Why you want to let me out. You want me to be your prisoner. You know he cares about me,” cares about me, oh, Geraden! “and you want to use me against him. You think if you threaten to hurt me he’ll do whatever you want.”

“You misjudge me, I say. It is not fear. Fear that puppy? I would rather lose my manhood.”

She heard him, but she didn’t slow down. “The only thing” – which was already a lie, but she had no intention of telling him the truth – “the only thing I don’t understand is why you didn’t just send Gart to kill the lords of the Cares and Prince Kragen. Why else did you get them all together? You didn’t want any alliance – you knew that meeting would fail. You were just trying to undermine all of Cadwal’s enemies at the same time.

“Why didn’t you finish the job? With the lords and Prince Kragen dead, Alend and Mordant and even Orison would be in chaos. What were you afraid of?”

Abruptly, Master Eremis swung his own fists and hit the bars so hard that the door clanged against its latch. “It was not fear. Are you deaf? Do you have the arrogance to ignore me? It was not fear!

“It was policy.”

Terisa stared at him past the bars, past the stark conflict of lamplight and shadows on his face, and murmured softly, in recognition, “Oh.”

“I did not send Gart against the lords and Kragen,” he said harshly, “because it was impossible to be sure that he would succeed. The Termigan and the Perdon and Kragen are all fierce fighters. Kragen had bodyguards. And any man who killed the Tor might drown in all his blood. Also it was much too soon to risk revealing my intentions. The gamble I chose to take was safer.

“When Gilbur performed his translation, the champion came to us facing the direction we wanted him to go – in toward the most crowded parts of Orison, the rooms and towers where his havoc would be most likely to bring the lords and Kragen to ruin. That was why I wanted him, the only reason I permitted his translation to take place.

“Of course,” the Master said in digression, “once he had been translated, it was necessary to preserve him from Lebbick. I could not allow some bizarre happenstance to bring him into alliance with Orison and Mordant. Let him rampage now and do harm as he wishes, without friends or understanding. That also serves me. But my chief intent was more immediate.

“I wanted him to gut Orison, destroying all my principal enemies at once. If he had gone that way – if you had not turned him, my lady – my gamble would have brought a rich return.

“Policy, my lady. If it succeeds, I succeed with it. If it fails, I remain to pursue my ends by other means.

“And what I have done where Geraden is concerned is also policy, not fear. He is my enemy – and he appears to possess a strange talent. Therefore I will destroy him. But I will destroy him in a way that serves my ends rather than risks them. I do not” – vehemence bared his teeth – “fear that ignorant and impossible son of a coward.”

So he admitted it. She was right about him – she had reasoned her way to the truth. That discovery simultaneously relieved and terrified her. She was right about him, right about him. Geraden was innocent, and she had reached the truth alone, without anyone to help or rescue her. It was an intense relief just to recollect that he had never been able to finish anything he started with her: that he hadn’t gotten her killed – or into his bed; hadn’t gotten her confused enough to turn her back on Geraden.

On the other hand, there were no witnesses; no one else had heard him. She was alone with her knowledge – alone with him.

And he had a key to her cell.

Without meaning to do it, she had stripped herself of her only protection – the appearance of incomprehension that let him think she wasn’t a threat to him, led him to believe he could do anything he wanted with her.

In quick panic, she tried to fake a defense. “Prove it,” she replied, groaning inwardly at the way her voice shook. “Leave me here. Go back to the reservoir and save Orison from Alend. If you aren’t afraid of him, you don’t need me.”

Her own alarm was too obvious: it seemed to restore his humor, his equanimity. He began to smile again, voraciously.

“Tush, my lady,” he said in deprecation, “you do not truly wish that. I have touched you in places you will never forget. No man will ever treasure the ardor of your loins or the supplication of your breasts as I do – most assuredly not that lout Geraden, whose clumsiness will make his every caress a misery to you. If you consult your heart, you will accompany me willingly.

“If you should prove useful to me, how does that harm you? You will still be my lady. And you will be rewarded. I am going to win this contest. King Joyse considers it a mere game, an exercise in hop-board, and that is one of many reasons why Mordant will be defeated. Alend will be defeated, and Cadwal will be consumed. When I am done, there will be no power left in all this world which is not mine. Then the woman who stands with me will have riches and indulgence beyond her wildest imaginings.

“You would look well in that place, my lady. If you accompany me willingly, it will be yours.”

Terisa studied him hard. She didn’t listen to what he was saying; his offer meant nothing to her. But the fact that he made it meant something. It meant something. When he stopped, she muttered, “Take Saddith. She wants the job,” speaking aloud for her own benefit, so that the sound of the words would help her think. “I’m still trying to figure out why you bother pretending to seduce me. You’ve got a key. You’re bigger than I am. Why don’t you just come in here, rape me, club me over the head, and let Gilbur or Vagel translate me to some other dungeon where you can use me without having to be nice about it?”

“Because” – he had recovered from the unpleasant surprise she had given him; now he was very sure of himself – “that is not what you truly wish, my lady. Your deepest desire is not to defy me, but to open yourself so that I may teach you the joy of your body – and mine.”

She shook her head, hardly hearing him. Any explanation he gave was automatically false. Still for her own benefit, she went on, “You’re not just afraid of Geraden. You’re afraid of me.” She felt a growing sense of wonder and dismay. “You’re trying to trick me for the same reason you’ve been trying to have me killed. You’re afraid of me.”

This time when Master Eremis laughed his amusement was unforced and unmistakable. “Oh, my lady,” he chortled, “you are a wonderment. You flatter yourself beyond recognition. If you were not so earnest, I would believe you drunk with pride.

“Nevertheless I will respect what you say. Perhaps you desire a little force. Perhaps that will add spice to your eventual surrender. Since you suggest it—”

With a final chuckle, he pushed the key into the lock and turned it.

Without a second’s hesitation, Terisa reared back and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Guards!”

Master Eremis froze. His gaze flicked away down the passage, then sprang back to her in instant fury.

She put her whole heart into it:

“Guards!”

A door clanged in the distance. A rumor of boots ran along the corridor.

The Imager snarled a curse. “Very well, my lady,” he hissed savagely. “That was your last chance, and you have lost it.” In a swirl of darkness, he turned to leave. “Now you will face the consequences of your foolishness. When Lebbick is done with you” – he spoke sharply enough to raise echoes after him, so that she could hear him as he left – “expect worse from me.”

Then he was gone.

His departure was so abrupt – and the approach of the guards sounded so ominous – that just for an instant she thought she had made a mistake.

That concern evaporated almost immediately, however: it was burned away by the swift, hot awareness that she preferred being left to the Castellan’s mercy. He was unpredictable and violent, capable of almost any atrocity when his loyalties were outraged. Yet he was faithful – far more trustworthy than the people in whom he had placed his faith. In fact, that discrepancy was what drove him wild. She would rather fight a man like him, who was at least true to his king, than be seduced by a man like Master Eremis, who was false to everybody.

The guards arrived at her cell, demanded an explanation threateningly because Castellan Lebbick might take them to task for anything they did in regard to her. For a moment, she was right on the edge of telling them what had happened. Master Eremis was here. He’s got a secret entrance to the dungeons. He’s a traitor. But her instinct for subterfuge made her swallow the words. No. She might need them. The Castellan would be back: she might need everything she could possibly tell him.

Facing the guards as if she had become bold, she replied, “I want to see him.”

The two men gaped at her. One of them asked stupidly, “Who? The Castellan?”

She nodded.

The other leered. “Waste of effort. Last time a woman wanted to see him, he had her stripped and flogged and thrown out of Orison.” He grinned at the memory. “Had nice tits, too. Would have done better to come to me.”

Terisa closed her eyes to control an upswelling of disgust. “Tell him,” she demanded. “Just tell him.”

The guards looked at each other. The first one said, “He isn’t going to like it.” But the other shrugged.

Walking loudly, they went away.

She sat down on her cot and tried to believe that she knew what she was doing.

She didn’t have much time to prepare herself. Scant moments after the guards left, she heard Castellan Lebbick’s rage echoing along the corridor.

“I don’t give a trough of horseshit who she wants to see! You irresponsible sons-of-sheep are going to be cleaning latrines before morning! You’re going to clean latrines until everything you eat tastes like piss and your wives and even your children stink as bad as you do! Who gave you the fornicating permission to let her have visitors?”

Then the door between the guardroom and the dungeons rang viciously against its frame; and boots came, as hard as hate, along the damp stone corridor.

Shocked, she found herself murmuring helplessly, Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, on the verge of panic.

The Castellan stamped to the front of her cell like a man with murder on his mind. The glare in his eyes was fierce enough to wither what little courage she had left; his jaws were knotted with violence. Like a blow, he rammed the key into the lock, turned it, and slammed the door open. The door hit the bars so hard that they belled like a carillon.

“You heartless slut!” He came into the cell, came straight at her. “I’ve been tearing my guts out over you all day, and you’ve been having visitors!”

Involuntarily, she flinched back onto the cot, cowered against the wall. “The Tor!” she cried out, trying to keep him from hitting her. “Artagel! They came here. I didn’t ask to see them.”

“You didn’t have to!” His fists caught her shirt, wrenched her off the cot so fiercely that the seam at one shoulder parted and the fabric ripped like a wail. “Artagel is still too sick to get out of bed, and King Joyse personally told the Tor to let me do my job with you. So instead they both came to see you.

“What are you plotting? Did they tell you what to say to me? They must have. I half believed that dogpiss story about Eremis and Gart. You couldn’t make that up yourself – you don’t know enough. No, you’re all doing this together. Those riders with the red fur came from the Care of Tor. Artagel is Geraden’s brother.” Convulsive with anger, he twisted her shirt so that it tore down one seam to the hem. “What are you plotting?”

“Nothing.” She ought to be able to resist him, but her strength had deserted her. “Nothing.” His fury was thrust so closely into her face that she could hardly focus her eyes on it, hardly see him at all; he was a darkness roaring in front of her, clawing at her – too much hate to be endured. She couldn’t do anything more than whimper in protest. “Nothing.”

“You’re lying!” His intensity seemed to strangle him. “You’re lying to me!” His voice was like a howl stuck in his throat, too congested for utterance. “You’ve got friends, allies. Even when you’re locked in the dungeon, I can’t stop you from plotting. You’re going to destroy us! You’re going to destroy me!”

She felt him gathering force as if he rose up to consume her; he blotted out her vision. A spasm of his grip nearly dislocated her shoulders. Then he caught his arms around her and began to kiss her as if he had been starving for her so long that the pressure of his need had snapped his self-command.

She sank into his embrace, into the dark. She let herself fall limp, so that she scarcely felt the violence of his kisses, scarcely felt the iron of his breastplate against her chest. The darkness sucked her away, out of herself, out of existence – out of danger. It took her to a place where he couldn’t touch her and she was safe—

No. Fading wasn’t the answer. She had to do better than this. It accomplished nothing. Oh, it kept her safe, kept her spirit hidden among the secrets of her heart – but her body would still be harmed. And no one would be left to help Geraden. No one would be left to stop Master Eremis. No one would be left to champion Orison against the real enemy, against Master Eremis and his dire alliance with Master Gilbur and the arch-Imager Vagel, with Gart and Cadwal. It came down to her in the end. Myste had said, Problems should be solved by those who see them. There wasn’t anybody else.

She was terrified – but the fact that she was capable of escape gave her courage. She remained limp, lifeless, until the Castellan eased his embrace and shifted his hands to the waistband of her pants, bending her backward over the cot. Then she opened her eyes and looked at him.

She could see him clearly now, the distress bulging along the line of his jaw, the pale intensity on either side of his nose, the darkness like mania in his eyes. He scared her down to the bottom of her soul, where her fear of her father still lived and burned, distorting her. Nevertheless she caught at his wrists and held them as hard as she could, trying to stop him.

As if his kisses had made her lucid and crazy, immune to fright, she said, “You didn’t ask them why they came to see me. You didn’t bother. You didn’t ask Artagel to look at Nyle’s body. You didn’t even try to find out the truth. You just want to hurt me more than anything else in the world, and they finally gave you an excuse.”

Roaring almost silently behind the constriction in his chest, he let go of her and drew back his arm. He was going to hit her hard enough to crush her skull against the wall.

“They came to see me,” she said – lucid and completely out of touch with the reality of her plight – “because they want me to tell you where Geraden is.”

While his arm rose and his teeth flashed, he stopped. Surprise or doubt or self-disgust seemed to seize hold of him, cramp all his muscles. Hoarsely, he panted, “You’re lying. You’re still lying.”

“No.” She shook her head calmly. It was madness to be so calm. “Is it true that you didn’t ask Artagel to look at Nyle’s body?”

The Castellan was going to hit her. Or else he was going to break down right there in front of her. Precariously balanced between the extremes, he choked, “I asked. He’s had another relapse. Too sick to understand the question.”

Steady and unafraid, she shrugged away her disappointment as if it were trivial. “Never mind,” she murmured. She might have been trying to console Castellan Lebbick. “I had another visitor. One you don’t know about.

“Master Eremis was here.

“Now I can prove he’s a traitor.”

Lamplight flickered in the Castellan’s gaze. He straightened his back and stood over her as though his body had become stone; he held himself back from bloodshed with an effort of will so savage that it made him gasp for air.

“How?”

Unnatural quiet and clenched wildness, Terisa and the Castellan spoke to each other.

“He put cayenne in his wine to make himself sweat, so you would think he was exhausted.”

“You’ll never prove that.”

“He gave your guards a potion to make them sleep, so he could get away.”

“If they’re awake when I check on them, you’ll never prove that, either.”

“He has a secret way into the dungeon. It comes from his workroom in the laborium. You ought to be able to find it without too much trouble.”

When she said that, Castellan Lebbick flinched backward. He didn’t loosen his grip on himself, but his eyes betrayed a vast accumulation of pain.

“If he came here,” he asked, still breathing hard, “why didn’t you go with him? Why didn’t you escape?”

For some reason, that question cracked her mad calm. She seemed to feel herself shattering, like an eggshell. Without transition, she went from lucidity to the edge of hysteria.

“Because—” Her voice broke, and her heart hammered as if it couldn’t bear the strain any longer. “Because he wanted to use me against Geraden. The same way he used Nyle.”

A muscle began to twitch in the Castellan’s right cheek. The twitch spread until the whole side of his face felt the spasm. He was losing control.

“So if you’re telling the truth” – for the first time since she had met him, he sounded like a man who might weep – “Geraden has always been true to King Joyse. True, when almost nobody else is. And you’re true to Geraden. And I’ve been hurting my King by distrusting you – by trying to protect him from you.”

Dumbly, Terisa nodded.

Without warning, the Castellan whirled away. “I’ve got to see this ‘secret way’ for myself.” Slamming the cell door so hard that flakes of rust scattered to the stone, he started down the corridor.

Almost at once, he broke into a run. His voice echoed across the sound of his boots as he shouted as if he were calling farewell to her – or to himself – “I am loyal to my King!”

Stricken numb and hardly able to care what happened to her at the moment, Terisa pulled the torn seam of her shirt closed as well as she could. Grief threatened to overwhelm her: her own; the Castellan’s; the hurt and sorrow of anyone who had to bear the consequences of King Joyse’s decline. No, decline wasn’t the right word. He still knew what he was doing. He had brought Mordant and Orison to this dilemma deliberately. Dully, she thought about that to keep herself from considering how close she and Castellan Lebbick had come to destroying each other.

When she finally looked up from her futile attempt to make her shirt decent – or at least warm – she saw Master Quillon inexplicably standing outside the bars of her cell.

“That was bravely done, my lady,” he said in a distant tone. “Unfortunately, it was a mistake.”

She looked at him, gaped at him; her mouth hung open, and there was nothing she could do about it.

“Master Eremis lied to you. He has no passage from his workroom into the dungeon. He came to you by translation.

“When the Castellan learns that no passage exists, he will not believe another word you say. His rage will be so great that I fear he will be unable to hold himself back from killing you.”

It was too much. Fear and loneliness filled Terisa’s chest, and she started crying.

THIRTY-ONE: HOP-BOARD

After a while, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

She was crying hard; but the touch was unexpected, and it startled her. She looked up to find Master Quillon beside her. His nose was twitching, and his eyes were gentle; clearly, he intended to comfort her.

“My lady,” he murmured, “it has been painful for you, I know. And it must seem unjustified. You asked for none of this. And though we did not choose you, we have not hesitated to use you. I will give you all the help I can.”

Help, she thought through her tears. All the help I can. It was too late. The Castellan was too strong. He had too much power. She couldn’t prove anything against Master Eremis. Nobody was going to be able to help her.

But Master Quillon was standing beside her. With his hand on her shoulder. Inside her cell. When she blinked her eyes clear, she saw that the door was open.

The Imager glanced where she was looking and commented like a shrug, “Fortunately, the Castellan was in such dudgeon that he forgot to lock it. I doubt that any of the guards would be willing to open it for us when he is at this level of outrage.”

By degrees, the open door and Master Quillon’s unexplained presence fixed her attention. The pressure of sobs receded in her chest; her breathing grew steadier. Without meeting the Master’s gaze, she muttered, “Did Havelock send you this time?”

“Indirectly,” Quillon replied. “I am here for his benefit – and for the King’s. To save all Mordant. But primarily” – his grip on her shoulder tightened a bit – “I have come to let you out of this prison.”

Let me out—? Her eyes jerked to his: she stared at him, unable to control the way her face suddenly burned with yearning and hope. Her mouth shaped words she couldn’t find her voice to say out loud: You’re going to set me free?

Abruptly, Master Quillon took his hand from her shoulder and sat down next to her on the cot. Now his gaze studied the floor instead of meeting hers. “My lady,” he said to the stones, “it pains me to see you so surprised. And it pains me even more to know that we deserve your surprise. I do not like some of the things we have done to you. And I lack King Joyse’s talent for risks. We deserve any recrimination you might make against us.”

Then his tone became more sardonic. “The truth is that we deserve to be betrayed – by you as well as by Geraden, if by no one else. But a blind man could see now that you are faithful to him, and so you will not betray us. In that we are exceptionally fortunate. Perhaps our good fortune is as great as our need.”

Because she was too confused to follow what he was saying, she asked, “Is this going to be another lecture?”

He winced; perhaps he thought she was being sarcastic. But he didn’t back down. “Not if you do not wish it, my lady. If you wish me to keep my mouth shut, I will simply take you away from here and let you do whatever you choose without argument – or explanation. But I tell you plainly” – then he did look at her, letting her see the pain on his face – “that you will wound me if you do not permit me to explain. And I think you will increase the difficulty of your own decisions.”

She could hardly believe what she heard. To be helped, to be offered explanations, to be offered freedom—! Far from resenting him, as he apparently expected, she was hard pressed to restrain herself from weeping again in gratitude.

But she had to have more self-command than this. Otherwise it would all be wasted on her. She would go wrong. So she didn’t jump to accept his offer. Instead, she did her best to think again, to make her brain resume functioning. Tentatively, groping for what she wanted to understand first, she asked, “How do you know Master Eremis doesn’t have a secret way in here? How do you know what he said to me?”

“I heard him,” Master Quillon retorted with sudden sharpness. He didn’t seem to like what he had heard. “I have been secreted down here since noon, when Prince Kragen stopped bringing up catapults against us. I heard your conversations with both the Castellan and Eremis – and with the Castellan again.” He made an effort to speak more softly. “That is how I became certain of your loyalty to Geraden.”

As if he thought she wasn’t asking the right questions – not being hard enough on him – he said almost at once, “You will ask why I did not intervene when the Castellan threatened you. My lady, please believe that I would have done so. You found your own answer to his violence, however. Because he must not know my part in all this, if that can be avoided, I left you to deal with him alone.”

“No,” she said reflexively, abstract with concentration. He was right: that was something she wanted to ask him, a subject she wanted to pursue. But not yet. “Tell me about that later.” First things first. She had to pull her mind into some kind of order. “He said he built a secret way from his workroom into the dungeon. How can you be sure that isn’t true?”

The Master rubbed his nose to make it stop twitching. “It would be impossible to do such work secretly, with so many Apts everywhere in the laborium. Regardless of that, however, I know Eremis did not use a passage to come here. I saw him arrive and depart. He was translated.”

“You mean—” He can pass through flat glass, too, and not lose his mind? Can everybody do it? “You mean he has a mirror with this dungeon in its Image?”

How is it possible to fight people who can pass through flat glass without going mad?

“I fear so, my lady. I suspect it is the same mirror which translated those hunting insects against Geraden. The passages of Orison are confusing, I know, but actually we are not far from the translation point they used – and Gart used when he attacked you and the Prince. There is considerable stone between this cell and that corridor, but of course stone would be no obstacle to an Image, if the focus of its glass could be shifted that far.

“Incidentally, you may wonder why your enemies do not send more of those insects against you while you are here and helpless.” Actually, she hadn’t wondered anything of the kind, but Master Quillon went on anyway, “It is the Adept’s opinion that they must be given the scent of their victim before they will hunt. For anyone associated with the Congery, it would be easy to obtain something belonging to Geraden – a small possession, a piece of clothing. But opportunities to loot your rooms or wardrobes have been kept as near to nonexistent as possible. Without your scent, the insects cannot be sent against you.”

Involuntarily, Terisa shuddered. She didn’t want to think about those hideous—

Master Quillon saved her. He continued talking.

“Considering that Eremis wants you – perhaps as a hostage, perhaps as a lover – wants you enough to risk coming here, it is an interesting question why he has not used his mirror to translate you away. You would be entirely in his power then. But I suspect that the focus of his mirror has already been shifted as far as it will go.

“He must find it quite exasperating that the perfect solution to his dilemma is denied him by the small fact that you are here rather than eight cells farther down the corridor. As I say, we have been more fortunate than we deserve.”

The Master had done it again, gone off at a tangent, distracted her. Sudden frustration welled up in her. “Then why don’t you stop him?” She turned toward Quillon, demanding an answer with her whole body. “Get the Castellan to arrest him. Lock him up somewhere safe. He’s going to betray everybody. You’ve got to stop him.”

“My lady” – Master Quillon’s voice was soft, and his eyes studied her as if he wondered how much of the truth she would be able to bear – “it is too soon.”

Too soon? Too soon? She gaped at him, unable to speak.

“We do not know where his strength is located. We do not know how this trick of translation is done. We do not know how far his alliances extend, or how many powers he is prepared to bring out of his mirrors against us. We do not know what his plans are – how he means to destroy us. Until his trap is sprung, we have no effective way to strike back at him.”

Still she gaped at him. Her head was spinning. With an effort, she asked thinly, “ ‘We’?”

The Master smiled slightly, sourly. “Yes, my lady. King Joyse, for the most part. And Adept Havelock, when he is able. I follow their instructions.” He paused while she went pale with shock; then he admitted, “Not a very impressive cabal, I fear. There is no one else.”

A moment later – perhaps because she couldn’t stop staring at him – he seemed to take pity on her. “We cannot afford allies,” he explained. “It is the essence of the King’s policy to appear weak. Confused in his priorities. Unable to achieve decisions. Careless of his kingdom. And it would be impossible to create that appearance if his intentions were not kept secret. If Queen Madin knew the truth, would she turn her back on her husband in his time of gravest peril? If the Tor knew the truth, how well would he play the part of the forlorn and hectoring friend? If Castellan Lebbick knew the truth—No, it would be disastrous. He has no subterfuge in him. And no one would believe that King Joyse had lost his will or his wits, while Lebbick remained confident.”

We, she murmured to herself, King Joyse, as if the words made no sense, We cannot afford allies. It was all deliberate.

“The fact is,” said Quillon, “that everyone who loves the King would behave differently if they understood him. And so it would all come to nothing. I am trusted only because throughout Orison I am so easily taken for granted – and because King Joyse must have one friend and Imager who is more reliable than the Adept.”

“But why?” The words burst from Terisa. “Why? Mordant is falling! Orison is under siege! Everybody who loves him or is loyal to him has been hurt!” All deliberate. Of course. She knew that. But the reason—! “He’s destroying his whole world, the world he created. Why would he do such a terrible thing?”

Abruptly, the Imager jerked to his feet. He was suddenly angry: he bristled with indignation. Quietly, but with such intensity that he shocked her to silence, he replied, “So that he would attack here.”

What—?

“We did not know who he was, my lady. Remember that. We did not know who he was until last night, when he erred by trying to make us believe that Geraden had killed Nyle. Before that, we had few suspicions – and less proof. We did not know who he was.” Red spots flamed on the Master’s cheeks. “We knew only that he was powerful – that he had the ability, unprecedented in the history of Imagery, to inflict his translations wherever he chose. We had no way to find him, no way to combat him. No way to protect Mordant from him.

“But worse than the danger to Mordant was the threat to Alend and Cadwal, that had no Imagers to defend them. That King Joyse had accomplished with his ideal of the Congery and peace, that Cadwal and Alend were more helpless than Mordant against the enemy. That he was responsible for. His past victories have left Alend and Cadwal at the mercy of his new foes.

“Therefore” – Master Quillon gritted his teeth to keep from shouting – “King Joyse set himself to save the world.

“His weakness is an ambush. He lures the enemy to strike here rather than elsewhere – to inflict their peril and harm here rather than on the people he has made vulnerable – to attack Mordant and Orison rather than first swallowing Cadwal and Alend and thereby growing too strong to be defeated. We did not know who he was.”

Roughly, Quillon shrugged, trying to restrain his anger. “That is the reason for everything King Joyse has done. That – and the Congery’s augury – and Geraden’s strange translation, which brought you here. When you came among us, your importance was obvious at once. Clearly, it was vital to make you aware of the world you had entered, so that you could choose your own role in Mordant’s need. Even a good person may do ill out of ignorance, but only a destructive one would do ill out of knowledge. The augury made it clear that we had to trust you or die.

“But Geraden was also at risk – and his importance was also plain in the augury. His only protection lay in King Joyse’s weakness. If Geraden were granted the ability to elicit intelligent, decisive action from his King, the enemy would surely kill him. In addition, the belief that you were ignorant was a form of protection for you. So it was vital also to spurn Geraden’s loyalty – and then to make you aware of Mordant’s history in secret.

“My lady, I argued against that decision. From the beginning, I found it difficult to trust you – a woman of such passivity. What hope did you represent to us? But King Joyse insisted. That is why Adept Havelock and I approached you and spoke to you, giving you in secret the knowledge which both the Congery and the King had denied to you publicly.”

Oh, of course, now I understand. Terisa felt herself smiling into the quagmire of her own stupidity. Had she really spent her entire life like this – helpless, passive, unable to think?

“The translation of the Congery’s champion,” rasped Quillon, “presented a similar problem in a different guise. Again, the champion’s importance in the augury is plain. Therefore King Joyse must oppose that translation, in order to appear determined on his own defeat. And yet he must be too weak to oppose the translation successfully. And I was at risk there, in addition to Geraden and yourself. My loyalties had to be concealed. So King Joyse had no choice but to refuse to hear the Fayle’s warnings – and to ensure that Castellan Lebbick did not learn what transpired until the translation could no longer be stopped.

“My lady” – now Master Quillon faced her squarely, and Terisa saw that some of his anger was directed at her – “it will be easy for you to be outraged at what we have done. You have already said that everybody who loves King Joyse or is loyal to him has been hurt – and you are right. His policy is dangerous. Therefore the only way he can save those who love him is to drive them away – to make them distance themselves from the seat of peril he has chosen for himself. He succeeded with Queen Madin. But his failure with such men as the Tor and Geraden haunts him. If harm comes to them, he will carry the fault on his own head, even though they have chosen to do what they do.

“Nevertheless you should understand what he does before you protest against it. He hazards himself so that thousands of men and women from the mountains of Alend to the coast of Cadwal will be spared. He tears his own heart so that the people he loves may be spared. He places the kingdom that he built with his own hands in danger so that his traditional enemies can be spared.

“If you cannot trust him or serve him, my lady, you must at least respect him. He created his own dilemma, and he accepts its consequences. He does what he is able to do, so that the harm his enemies do will be suffered by a few instead of by many.”

Because the Imager was angry at her – and because she was angry herself and didn’t know how to conceal it – she turned away. The light seemed to be failing; maybe the lamp was running out of oil. Darkness gathered in all the corners: fatal implications spilled past the bars from the corridor into the cell. You must at least respect him. A man whose idea of wise policy was to twist a knife in his friends’ hearts and leave his enemies unscathed. Of course she had to respect that. Sure.

She could hear Castellan Lebbick crying like a farewell, I am loyal to my King!

With more bitterness than she had realized she contained, more indignation than she had ever been aware of possessing, she asked softly, “What about the Castellan?”

“What about him?” returned Master Quillon. Perhaps he was too irate to guess what she meant.

“Maybe the Tor and Geraden have made their own choices. They’re more stable than he is. What choice did you ever give him? If he tried to quit serving, King Joyse would have to stop him. This whole policy” – she sneered the word – “depends on the Castellan. If he doesn’t stay faithful – if he doesn’t do his utter best to keep Orison strong while King Joyse is busy being weak – then the whole thing collapses. When King Joyse finally decides to fight, he won’t have anything to fight with. Unless the Castellan stays faithful.”

Master Quillon nodded. “That is true. What is your point?”

“He doesn’t have any choice, and it’s killing him.” Sudden pity surged up through her bitterness. The man Lebbick had once been would probably have treated her with nothing more terrible than detached sarcasm or kindness. But the entire weight of King Joyse’s policy had come down on his shoulders, and now he could hardly refrain from raping or murdering her. “Don’t you see that? What you’re doing is expensive, and you’re making him pay for all of it.” Without warning, she began to weep again. Her distress and the Castellan’s were too intimately interconnected. “You and your precious King are destroying him.”

She expected Master Quillon to yell at her. She was ready for that: she didn’t care how angry he got, what he said. Somehow she had gone past the point where mere outrage could threaten her. She had anger of her own, and it was no longer hidden away. If her father had appeared before her there and lost his temper, she would have known how to respond.

The Imager didn’t yell at her, however. He didn’t raise his voice. Slowly, he moved to the door of the cell. Perhaps he intended to leave, give up on her: she didn’t know – and didn’t care. But he didn’t do that, either. He waited until she looked up at him, lifted her head defiantly and glared at him through her tears. Then he said quietly, “We didn’t know this was going to happen. We thought he was stronger.”

Just for a second, she almost stopped crying in order to laugh. Imagine it. An aging King and a madman and a minor Imager got together to save the world – and the best plan they could come up with required them to drive the only man in Orison who knew how to fight for them out of his mind. It was funny, really. The only thing she didn’t understand was, what made them think it would work? How could they possibly believe—?

The sound of a door rang down the passage: iron hit stone with such savagery that the echo seemed to carry a hint of snapped hinges.

“Lying slut!” howled the Castellan. “I’ll have you gutted for this!”

His boots started toward her from the guardroom.

Terisa froze in shock. Castellan Lebbick was coming to get her. He was coming to get her, and there was nothing she could do. Master Quillon said something, but she didn’t hear what it was. In her mind, she saw the corridor from the guardroom: one turn; another; then the long line of the cells. The Castellan was coming hard, but he wasn’t running; he might run as he drew closer, but he wasn’t running yet; he was at the first turn – on his way to the next. He would reach her cell in half a minute. Her life had that many seconds left. No more.

“Are you deaf?” Quillon grabbed her wrist and hauled her off the cot. “I said, Come on.”

She didn’t have a chance to think, to choose. He wrenched her through the open door out into the passage. But he was pulling on her too hard, away from the guardroom: she staggered against the far wall and fell; her weight twisted her wrist from his grasp.

As she scrambled to her feet again, she saw Castellan Lebbick come into view past the second turn.

He saw her as well. For an instant, their eyes met across the distance, as if they had become astonishing to each other.

Then he let out a roar of fury – and she skittered in the opposite direction, her boots slipping on the rotten straw.

She could hear him coming after her. That was impossible; her feet and breathing and Master Quillon’s shouts made too much noise. Nevertheless her sense of his overwhelming rage, his ache for destruction, made his pursuit loud in her mind. She could feel his hate reaching out—

And ahead of her the Imager was losing ground. He slowed his flight; took the time to turn and beckon frantically.

A second later, he whipped open the door to another cell, dashed inside.

She followed without thinking. She had no time to think. Deflecting her momentum against the bars, she flung herself into the cell faster than Master Quillon was moving and nearly ran him down when he stopped.

Quickly, he opened a door in the side wall.

It was well hidden: the spring that released it was so cunningly concealed that she would never have found it for herself; and until he hit the spring she couldn’t see the door itself. Then it swung wide, moving smoothly, as if it were counterbalanced on its hinges and controlled by weights. It must have been built in when this cell was first constructed.

That was how Master Quillon had gained access to the dungeon. How he had been able to listen to her conversations with Eremis and Lebbick. Another secret passage. But she didn’t have time to be surprised. As soon as the door opened, Quillon caught at her arm again and thrust her forward, into the unlit passage.

He followed on her heels. Trying to make room for him without advancing into the dark, she found a wall and put her back to it. He was only a silhouette against the dim reflection from the dungeon lamps. At once, he tripped the mechanism that moved the weights to close and seal the door—

—and Castellan Lebbick burst into the cell.

He was too late: he wasn’t going to be able to prevent the door from shutting. And once it was shut he would have to find the spring to open it again.

Nevertheless he was fast, and his sword was already in his hands. Driving wildly to spit Terisa through the closing of the door, he plunged forward, hurled himself headlong toward her.

The door’s weight swept his thrust aside. His swordtip missed her by several inches.

Then his sword was caught in the crack of the door. The iron held, jamming the stone so that it couldn’t seal.

His body thudded against the door; he recoiled, staggering.

A moment later, his voice came, muffled, into the dark. “Guards! Guards!”

“Come on!” hissed Master Quillon. He took Terisa by the wrist once more and tugged her away from the thin slit of illumination. “Curse him! As soon as his men arrive, he will be able to open that door. We must escape now.”

Struggling for balance, she hurried after her rescuer into a blind passage.

Stone seemed to whirl about her head like a swarm of bats, probing for some way to strike at her. There was no light – no light of any kind. Except for his grip, Master Quillon had ceased to exist. Her shoulders kept hitting the walls as if she were reeling. She couldn’t keep up this pace; she had no idea where the passage went, or how it got there. “Slow down!” she panted. “I can’t see.”

“You do not need to see,” Quillon snapped. “You need to hurry.”

Still trying to make him slacken speed, she protested, “How long?”

Without warning, he halted. At the same time, he let go of her. She collided with him, stumbled against the wall again, flung up her arms to protect her head.

“Not long,” he muttered acerbically. “This passage was put in when the dungeons were rebuilt to provide room for the laborium. In other words, it is relatively recent. So it does not connect to the more extensive passage systems.”

Unseen beside her, he tripped another release, and the wall she had just hit opened, letting cold air wash over her. Her torn shirt couldn’t keep the chill out.

The space into which the door gave admittance was dim, almost black; but after a moment her eyes adjusted, and she saw ahead of her a truncated bit of hall leading to a wider corridor. Lanterns out of sight along the corridor in one direction or the other supplied just enough reflected glow to soften the gloom.

When she caught her breath to listen, the sound which came to her was the delicate spatter of dripping water.

Cold and wet. And a side passage too short to be worth lighting with a lantern of its own. A passage that seemed to go nowhere, as long as this door was closed and hidden.

Despite the distractions of fear, exertion, and surprise, her nerves turned to ice as if she had been here before.

“Now, my lady,” whispered Master Quillon, “we must be both quick and quiet. These are the disused passages beneath the foundations of Orison, where twice you were attacked. They are back in use now, housing our increased population, but that is not our chief worry. Those people will be asleep – or too confused to hinder us. No, the difficulty is that these halls are now guarded to keep the peace – regularly patrolled. Somehow, we must avoid the Castellan’s men.”

No, she thought dumbly. That isn’t right. Her brain felt like rock, impermeable to understanding. She had never seen the hall from this side, but it looked the same; the hairs on her forearms lifted as if the hall were the same. When Master Quillon started forward, she managed to reach out and stop him.

“No,” she whispered, almost croaking. “This is the place. I’m sure of it.”

He stood motionless and studied her narrowly. “What place?” The air grew colder on her skin while he stared at her.

“The translation point.” The cold made her shiver. Long tremors seemed to start in her bones and build outward until her voice shook. “Where those insects came through – to get Geraden. And Gart—”

Closing her arms across her chest, she hugged herself to silence.

“What, here?” the Imager asked in surprise. “Exactly here?”

She nodded as well as she could.

“We did not know that,” he muttered; he appeared to be thinking rapidly. “We knew the general area, of course.” His quick eyes studied the passage. “But the Adept did not observe the actual translations. And we could hardly afford to betray our interest by asking you or Artagel to show us specifically where the attacks took place.”

Terisa ignored what he was saying; it didn’t matter. What mattered was the mirror which brought people who wanted to kill her into Orison. “We can’t go there,” she breathed through her shivers. “I can’t go there. They’ll see us.”

They’ll come after us.

“A good point, my lady.” Master Quillon’s nose twitched as though he were trying to sniff out a way of escape. “If they saw us in the Image – and if they were ready for us—”

A grunting noise, a sound of strain or protest, carried along the passage from the entrance to the dungeons behind them.

The Master and Terisa froze.

“Put your backs into it, shit-lickers.” Castellan Lebbick’s voice was obscured by stone and distance, but unmistakable. “Get that door open before we lose them completely.”

Terisa wanted to groan, but she couldn’t stop shivering.

“Glass and splinters!” Quillon swore under his breath. “This is a tidy predicament.”

An instant later, however, he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her to get her attention. “My lady, listen.

“The focus of that glass was shifted. I saw Eremis translated into the dungeon. I saw him depart. He must have used the same mirror which brought your attackers here. Why else was I permitted to eavesdrop on him – to hear him reveal his intentions? Had his allies seen me enter the passage this way, they would have had no difficulty in disposing of me. Therefore they did not see me. Therefore the translation point of that mirror has been shifted.”

“They could shift it back,” she objected.

“They could be watching us right now,” he retorted. “But if that is true, why are we still unharmed?”

The groan of stressed ropes and counterbalances came quietly out of the dark. A man gasped, and Castellan Lebbick barked, “That does it!”

“We must take the risk!” Master Quillon hissed.

Again, Terisa nodded. But she remained still, caught between fears. Gart was there somewhere, the High King’s Monomach. And from that translation point had come four lumbering assailants who had themselves been eaten alive from the inside by the most terrible—

“You must go first!” Urgency made Quillon’s rabbity face slightly ludicrous. “First is safest. Any man will need a moment to react when he sees us.

“Go.”

He shoved her, and she went.

Two stumbling steps toward the main corridor; three; four. For some reason, the strength had gone out of her legs. She felt like a woman in a nightmare, frantic to run, but powerless to do anything except ache with fright while her enemies rushed toward her.

Master Quillon caught up with her and shoved her again to keep her going.

For the second time, she felt a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel slide straight through the center of her abdomen.

Running now, but hardly aware of it, hardly conscious of what she was doing at all, she reached the main passage and the light and turned, whirled around in time to see Master Quillon following her and a black shape with a face full of hate and glee rising behind him, clutching a long dagger to strike him down.

No, Quillon! Quillon!

The shape rose and swept after him while she tried to cry out a warning and couldn’t do it fast enough: black arms rose and then plunged down viciously, driving the dagger into the joining of his shoulders with such fury that blood burst from his mouth and the blade came through his chest and he was crushed to the floor as if he had been hit with a sledgehammer.

“Got you, you insipid rodent!” Master Gilbur barked in guttural triumph. “That is the last time you will interfere with anything we wish to do!”

When he wrenched his blade out of Quillon’s back, blood ran from his hands like water.

Oh, Quillon!

Terisa remembered Master Gilbur’s hands. They looked strong enough to bend iron bars; strong enough to grind bones. Their backs were covered with black hair – hair that contrasted starkly with his white beard. The hunch in his spine only seemed to increase his physical power; the flesh of his face was knotted with murder.

Gloating, he looked up from Quillon’s corpse. “My lady,” he coughed like a curse, “this is fortuitous. I had not expected the pleasure of killing you. That was intended to be Gart’s task, after Eremis had finished with you. But my vigilance has been rewarded. Neither Festten’s dog nor cocksure Eremis were with me when I found you in the Image.”

She watched him as if he were a snake, waited for him to strike.

“It is a delight to rid the world of Quillon at last” – Gilbur licked spittle from his thick lips as he stepped over the body at his feet – “but to twist my knife in your soft flesh will be plain ecstasy.”

Reaching out with his blade and his bloody hands, he started toward her.

She turned and fled.

She ran with all her heart this time, pushed all her strength through her legs. In spite of his crooked back, Master Gilbur was fast. His first blow nearly caught her. The gap she opened between them as she sped was less than a stride; then two; then three and a bit more. Instinctively, she had run to the left; she was taking the same direction she and Geraden had taken when they had fled from the insects.

Black arms rose and then plunged down—

Now she would have been glad – delirious with relief – to encounter a guard. An old codger hunting for the public lavatories. A servant. Anyone to witness what was happening, distract Gilbur. But the corridor was deserted. Master Gilbur spat curses as he pursued her. She was young, and running for her life; slowly, she widened the gap. But the air had already become fire in her lungs, and he didn’t seem to be tiring.

Plunged down—

In one way, she had no idea where she was going. She didn’t know these passages, had never been down here without a guide. The only thought in her mind was to find help. Before she faltered. She could feel her strength ebbing now. In another way, however, her instinctive sense of direction was sure, and she followed it unhesitatingly. To escape the fierce Imager, she tapped resources in herself that she didn’t know she possessed.

She took the route to Adept Havelock’s quarters.

There: the side passage. A thick wooden door, apparently the entrance to a storeroom. Yes, the entrance to a storeroom. A storeroom which hadn’t been appropriated to help house Orison’s increased population. She heaved the door open, pulled it shut behind her. It had a bolt. Didn’t it have a bolt? It had to have a bolt – had to have – but she couldn’t find it, couldn’t see, there was no light in the storeroom, no illumination except thin yellow slivers from the cracks around the door.

Master Gilbur’s bulk blocked even that light—

—and her fingers found the bolt, slapped it home just as he crashed against the door, trying to crush her with the weight of the wood and his own momentum.

The bolt twisted against its staples. But it held.

It wasn’t going to hold for long. Gilbur hit the door again, raging at it and her. She couldn’t see the bolt – but she could hear the metallic screaming noise as iron rusted into wood was forced out. The staples were going to give. It was only a matter of time.

Ignoring her frantic need for air and rest, she groped across the storeroom toward the door hidden at the back – the entrance to Adept Havelock’s secret rooms.

Because she was moving by instinct rather than conscious thought, she didn’t remember the possibility that the hidden door might be bolted until she found it open. Master Quillon had probably left it that way. He had probably intended to bring her here himself. Weak with relief and need, she opened the door and hurried into the lighted passage which led to Havelock’s domain.

The first room she came to was cluttered with mirrors.

Nothing had changed since her last visit here. The disarray was composed of full-length mirrors so uneven in shape and color that they showed Images she couldn’t begin to interpret; bits of flat glass that would have fit in her pocket; mirrors the right size for a dressing table, but piled on top of each other and scattered as if to keep anyone from seeing what they showed. All of them had been gleaned by King Joyse during his wars and never restored to the Congery; all of them were set in rich or loving frames which belied the neglect of their present circumstances. And all of them were useless. The Imagers who had made them were dead.

They didn’t have anything to do with her. She rushed past them.

The passage took two or three turns, but she didn’t lose her way. In a moment, she reached another door. She thought she could hear Master Gilbur still pounding to get into the storeroom – or perhaps the sound was simply caused by panic beating in her ears – so she pulled the door open and stumbled into the large, square chamber which Adept Havelock used as a study, and which gave him access to Orison’s networks of secret passages.

The air was musty, disused – something had gone wrong with the ventilation. There were too many people in the castle. Smoke from lamps with wicks that needed trimming curled lazily around the pillar which held up the center of the ceiling.

The Adept was there, lurking in his madness like a spider.

Master Quillon had asked Terisa to believe that Havelock had helped King Joyse plan the destruction of Mordant. Quillon had expected her to believe it – expected her to believe that the old Adept’s insanity didn’t prevent him from wisdom or cunning. And perhaps her dead rescuer was right. Perhaps only a madman like Havelock could have conceived a strategy which relied for its sole chance of success on Castellan Lebbick’s stability.

Nevertheless Terisa had nowhere else to turn now. Surely Quillon would have brought her here, if he had lived. The Adept had to help her. He had helped her in the past. He had tried to answer her questions. And Master Gilbur might catch up with her at any moment. He might kill the Adept as well, if he got the opportunity. And the Castellan was still after her.

“Havelock!” she gasped, wracking her lungs to force out words, “Gilbur killed Master Quillon. He’s after me. I need help. You’ve got to help me.”

Got to. As soon as she stopped running, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to stay on her feet much longer.

The Adept stood beside his hop-board table, hunching over it as if he had a game in progress, studying the board intently even though there were no men on it. He didn’t look up until she spoke; then, however, he raised his head and smiled amiably. Smoke eddied around him. One eye considered her casually; the other began a scrutiny of the wall behind her.

“My lady Terisa of Morgan,” he said in a tone of loopy mildness. “What a pleasant surprise. Fornicate you between the eyes. I trust you are well?”

“Havelock,” she insisted. “Listen to me. I need help. Gilbur killed Master Quillon. He’s right behind me.”

The Adept’s smile showed his teeth. “I’m glad to hear it,” he replied as if she had just indulged in a pleasantry. “You certainly look well. Rest and peace do wonders for the female complexion.

“Now, tell me what you would like to know. I’m completely at your service today.”

Horror welled up in her; she could hardly control it. The strain of defending Orison had finished him. He was gone, entirely out of touch with sanity. The air was too thick to give her lungs any relief. Quillon had been killed, and she was going to be killed, and the Adept himself was probably going to be killed. She didn’t know how to get through to him. Nearly weeping, she cried, “Don’t you understand? Can’t you hear me? Gilbur just killed Master Quillon. He’s coming here.”

Abruptly, he switched eyes, regarded her with the orb which had been staring at the wall. His nose cut the air like the beak of a hawk. On the other hand, his fleshy smile didn’t waver.

“My lady Terisa of Morgan,” he said again, “it would be my very great pleasure to rip the rest of your clothes off and throw you in a pigsty. Today I can answer questions. Ask me anything you want.

“But,” he commented as if this particular detail were trivial, “I can’t help you. Not today.”

She stopped and stared at him, almost retching for air and aid. I can’t help you. Not today.

Oh, Quillon!

“Almost everybody,” he went on in the same tone of relaxed good cheer, “wants to know why I burned up that creature of Imagery who tried to get Geraden. Timing, that’s the answer. Good timing. It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t even matter what you smell like. Anybody will lick your ass if you’ve got good timing. We weren’t ready. If Lebbick found out who our enemies are from that creature, it would all collapse. We wouldn’t be weak enough to defend ourselves.”

“Havelock!” Terisa wanted to hit him, curse at him, tear her hair. “Master Quillon was your friend! Gilbur just killed him! Don’t you even care?”

Without transition, Adept Havelock passed from amiable lunacy to wild fury. “Cunt!” With a roar, he brandished his right hand, pinching the fingers together as if he held a checker. “This is you!” Wheeling to the table, he banged his hand down on the board several times, jumping imaginary pieces; then he mimed flinging his checker savagely into the corner of the room. “Gone! Do you understand me? Gone!

“Don’t you think I want to be sane? Don’t you think I want to help? He was the only one who knew how to help me. But I used it all up! This morning – against those catapults! I used it all up!”

Dumb with shock, Terisa gaped at him. He was too far gone. She didn’t know how to reach him.

An instant later, however, his rage disappeared as suddenly as it had come. Both his eyes seemed to grow glassy with sorrow, and he turned his back on her slowly. “Today I can’t help you,” he murmured to the blank checkerboard. “Go deal with Gilbur yourself.”

He lowered himself into a chair near the table. His shoulders began to shake, and a high, small whine came from his clenched throat. After a moment, Terisa realized that he was sobbing.

Lost and numb, she left him alone there and went to deal with Gilbur herself.

She was so sick with dread and dismay and grief that she didn’t even wince when she heard the Adept bolting his door after her, locking her away from any possibility of escape.

Like a sleepwalker – like a woman trying to locate herself, discover who she was, in a glass made from the pure sand of dreams – she returned to the room where Havelock kept his mirrors.

Master Gilbur was already there.

He didn’t notice her. He was too full of wonder at what he had found: mirrors he had never known existed, dozens of them; a priceless treasure for any Imager with the talent to use them, any Adept. She could have tried to hide. The look on his face made her think that it might even be possible to sneak past him. He was so caught up in what he was seeing—

With a forlorn shrug, she took one of the small mirrors stacked on a trestle table near her and tossed it to the floor so that it shattered in all directions.

A cloud of dust billowed from the impact, softening the sound. The whole room was thick in dust; the mirrors apparently hadn’t been cleaned in decades.

Nevertheless the sound of breakage got his attention. He jerked around to face her, raised his massive fists. His eyes burned; fury seemed to fume from his beard. “You dare!” he coughed. “You dare to destroy such wealth, such power! For that, I will not simply kill you. I will hack you apart.”

“No, you won’t.” To her astonishment, her voice was steady. Perhaps she was too numb to be afraid any longer. As if she did this kind of thing all the time, she put the trestle table between them so that it blocked his approach. “If you take one step toward me, I’ll break another mirror. Every time you do anything to threaten me, I’ll break another mirror. Maybe I’ll break everything here before you get your hands on me.”

Numbness was a good start. It led to fading. She could stand here and confront Master Gilbur with all his hate like a woman full of courage – and at the same time she could go away, evaporate from in front of him. Give up her existence and follow mist and smoke to safety. By the time he got his hands on her – she knew he was going to get his hands on her somehow – she would be gone.

And in the meantime she might delay him long enough—

“You would not!” protested Gilbur, momentarily surprised out of his rage.

Terisa picked up another mirror and measured the distance to the Master’s head. “Try me.”

Numbness. Fading.

Time.

“No, my lady.” His features gathered into their familiar scowl. He was breathing heavily, as if his back pained him. “You try me. All this glass is beyond price – in the abstract. In practice, it is useless. A mirror can only be used by the man who made it. There are new talents in the world, and mine is one of them. I can make mirrors with a speed and accuracy which would astound the Congery, if those pompous fools only knew of it. But only an Adept has the talent to work translations with a glass he did not make.

“If you believe I will not kill you, you are stupid as well as foolish.”

He took a step toward her.

She threw the glass at him and snatched up another.

The delicate tinkling noise of broken glass shrouded by dust filled the room.

He halted.

“Maybe nobody except Havelock actually has that talent,” she said, nobody except Havelock, for all the good that did her, “but you think you might be able to learn it. It might be a skill, not a talent. You’ve never had a chance to find out the truth because other Imagers won’t let you experiment with their mirrors. With these, you could do all the experimenting you want. You could learn anything there is to learn.”

Fading. Time. With her peripheral vision, she picked out the mirror she wanted – a flat glass in a rosewood frame, nearly as tall as she was. Through a layer of dust, its Image showed a bare sand dune, nothing else. Somewhere in Cadwal, she guessed. One of the less hospitable portions of High King Festten’s land. In the Image, the wind was blowing hard enough to raise sand from the dune like steam.

Carefully, she edged toward it.

“But I’m not going to let you have them,” she continued without pausing. “Not if you try to get me.”

Master Gilbur faced her as if he ached to leap for her throat. One hand clutched his dagger; the other curled in anticipation. He restrained himself, however. “A clever point,” he snarled. “You are cleverer than I thought. But it is futile. You cannot leave this room without coming within my reach. Or without moving out of reach of the mirrors. In either case, I will cut you down instantly. What do you hope to gain?”

Time. It was amazing how little fear she felt. Her substance was leaching away before his eyes, and he was blind to it. Now she could ease herself into the dark whenever she wished, and then there would be nothing he could do to hurt her. Nothing that would make any difference. All she wanted was time.

She took another small step toward the glass she had chosen.

Then she went still because she thought she heard boots.

“I’m not greedy.” Now her voice tried to shake, but she didn’t let it. Instead, she began to speak louder, doing what she could to hold the Master’s attention. “I don’t want much. I just want to frustrate you.

“You and Eremis are so arrogant—You manipulate, you kill. You don’t have the slightest interest in what happens to the people you hurt. You’re sick with arrogance. It’s worth breaking a few mirrors just to upset you.”

Suddenly, she saw movement in the passage behind him.

Trying to gain all the time she could – trying to strike some kind of blow in Master Quillon’s name, and Geraden’s, and her own – she flung the mirror she held at Gilbur’s head.

He dodged her throw effortlessly.

And even that went wrong for her. Her life had become such a disaster that she couldn’t even throw something at a man who hated her without saving him. Dodging, he pivoted and leaped toward the table to close on her. As a result, the first guard charging into the room missed his swing.

Before the man could recover, Master Gilbur hammered him to the floor with a fist like a bludgeon.

The second guard had the opposite problem: he had to check the sweep of his sword in order to avoid his companion. That took only an instant – but an instant was all the time Gilbur needed to plant his dagger in the guard’s throat.

Castellan Lebbick entered the room behind his men alone.

He held his longsword poised; the tip of the blade moved warily. He glanced at Terisa, then returned his gaze to the Master. He was coiled to fight, ready and dangerous. She thought that she had never seen him look so calm. This was what he needed: a chance to do battle for Orison and King Joyse.

“So here it is,” he commented distinctly. “The truth at last. Geraden’s seducer and a renegade Imager, together. And poor Quillon dead in the corridor. Did he try to stop you? I thought it was him helping her escape, but I must have been wrong. The light isn’t very good.

“You’re lucky you’re alive. If she hadn’t thrown that glass, my men would have cut you down.”

Master Gilbur’s face twisted with laughter.

Terisa was past caring what the Castellan thought of her. She took another small step toward the mirror she wanted. Despite the intervening layer of dust, the sand in the Image seemed real to her, more solid than she was herself.

“Drop that pigsticker,” Lebbick growled at Master Gilbur. “It isn’t going to help you. Lie down. Put your face on the floor. I’m going to tie you up. I’d rather kill you, but King Joyse will want you alive. Maybe he’ll let me question you.

“Do it now. Before I change my mind.”

As if the provocation had become too great to be endured, Gilbur let out a harsh guffaw. “My lady,” he said, scowling thunderously, “tell Lebbick why we are not going to let him take us prisoner.”

She started to retort. The suggestion that she really was an ally of his nearly broke her careful hold on fading. Her anger had come out of hiding, and she wanted to scathe the Master’s skin from his bones.

Unfortunately, his ploy had already accomplished its purpose: it had tricked Castellan Lebbick into glancing at her again.

During that brief glance, Master Gilbur pitched a handful of dust into the Castellan’s face.

Cursing, the Castellan recoiled; he swung his blade defensively. His balance and reflexes were so good that he almost saved himself. Without sight, however, he couldn’t counter Gilbur’s quickness; he couldn’t prevent Gilbur from picking up one of the guard’s swords and clubbing him senseless.

Terisa paused in front of the mirror she had chosen. Her only rational hope was gone. Now nothing stood between her and whatever the Master might do. She should have been terrified. Yet she wasn’t. Her capacity for surrender protected her. The hope she had placed in the Castellan hadn’t been hope for herself, but only hope against Gilbur. She hadn’t lost anything crucial. Inside herself, she was on the verge of extinction, and Master Gilbur had no way to stop her. When he looked up from Lebbick’s body, she asked, “Why don’t you kill him?”

“I have a better idea,” he snarled, feral with glee. “I will take you with me. When he comes back to consciousness, he will report that we are allies. Joyse and his fools will have no conception of their real danger until we destroy them.”

He was right, of course. The Castellan would be believed. Master Quillon was dead – her sole witness to Master Eremis’ admission of guilt. And Quillon certainly hadn’t had time to tell anyone what he had learned. Gilbur would come after her in a moment. She might be able to slow him down by breaking a few more mirrors, but that would only postpone the inevitable. He had won. If he called this winning.

Deliberately, she began to let go.

Nevertheless on the outside she continued to challenge him. “Someone will stop you,” she said as if she were accustomed to defiance. Defiance was what led to being locked in the closet. “If Geraden doesn’t do it, I will. You’re going to be stopped.”

“Geraden?” spat Gilbur. “You?” He really was remarkably quick. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, he ducked under the trestle table and came upright again, bringing his knife toward her. Every knot and fold of his expression promised butchery. “How are you going to stop me?”

How?

Like this.

She didn’t need to say it aloud. He was still bearing down on her with his bloody hands when he seemed to run into a wall. Surprise wiped the violence from his face: his eyes sprang wide as he saw what was happening to the mirror behind her.

“Vagel’s balls,” he muttered. “How did you do that?”

She didn’t look. The last time she had done this, she had done it entirely by accident, without knowing what she was doing; she didn’t try to coerce it now. In any case, at the moment she didn’t care whether she lived or died. She only cared about escape.

Still astonished, but recovering his wits, Master Gilbur reached for her.

Gently, Terisa closed her eyes and drifted backward into the dark.

THIRTY-TWO: THE BENEFIT OF SONS

She lay still for a long time. The fact was that she went to sleep. Two nights ago, the lady Elega had poisoned the reservoir of Orison. Last night, Geraden had faced Master Eremis in front of the Congery, and she, Terisa, had become the Castellan’s prisoner. And tonight—She was exhausted. Master Gilbur reached for her, but he must have missed. Even though her eyes were closed, she knew the light was gone. And as the light vanished, she felt herself enter the zone of transition, where time and distance contradicted each other. It was working: she was being translated. Somewhere.

That was enough. The sensation that she had taken a vast, eternal plunge in no time at all sucked the last bit of her out of herself, completed her self-erasure; and she slept.

The cold wasn’t what awakened her. The dungeon had been as cold as this. No, it was the faint, damp smell of grass, and the breeze curling kindly through the tear in her shirt, and the high calling of birds, and the impression of space. When she opened her eyes, she saw that she was covered from horizon to horizon by the wide sky. It was still purple with dawn, but already the birds had begun to flit through it everywhere, looking as swift and keen as their own songs against the heavens.

Then she heard the rich chuckle of running water.

She raised her head and looked down the hillside toward a fast stream. The melted snow of spring filled its banks and made it hurry, eager to go on its downland journey. In that direction, the water ran toward a valley still shrouded by the receding night; upstream, it came from a high, dark silhouette piled against the purple sky, a sense of mountains.

The air was as cold as the dungeon, but not as dank, as oppressive; the life hadn’t been squeezed out of it by Orison’s great weight and overloaded ventilation. She took a deep breath, put her hands into the new grass to push herself onto her feet, and stood up.

Almost at once, the mountains in the distance took light. The sun was rising. For no reason except that it was morning and the air was clear and she was alive, her heart started to sing like the birds, and she knew what she was going to see before the sun reached the massed shadow from which the stream emerged.

The Closed Fist.

There.

Starting from the west, sunshine caught the heavy stone pillar which guarded the stream’s egress from the hills on that side. Then it touched the eastside pillar, and the defile between them came clear, the narrow, secret cut from which the Broadwine River ran toward the heart of the Care of Domne.

The Closed Fist. Geraden had played here as a boy. The jumble of rocks inside the defile must have been wonderful for children, a source of endless climbing games and cunning hideaways.

And she had brought herself here. Against all the odds. Despite her utter ignorance of Imagery – and despite Master Eremis’ best efforts to confuse her. She had translated herself to safety using a flat glass. And she hadn’t lost her mind.

Abruptly, her eyes filled with tears, and she wanted to cry out in relief and joy.

“Terisa.”

She heard feet running over the grass. Through her tears, she glimpsed a shape, a man blurred by weeping. She turned to face him – to face the sun – and as its clean, new light shone through her, she found herself in Geraden’s arms.

“Terisa.”

Oh, Geraden. Oh, love.

“Thank the stars! I thought I was never going to see you again.”

You’re here. You made it. You made it.

Then he pulled back. “Let me look at you.”

She blinked her sight clear and saw him gazing at her hungrily through his own tears.

“I’ve been watching for you, waiting, almost ever since I got here. It was the only hope I had. I just went in to Houseldon to tell my family what’s going on. They didn’t want me to come back alone, but I couldn’t bear it any other way. I couldn’t bear having somebody watch me wait. I left you there – with Eremis and Lebbick – and I thought I was never going to see you again.”

She wanted to say, Did you think they could keep me away? The delight of him shone like the sun in front of her. He was the same Geraden he had always been – openhearted, vulnerable, dear. His tears made him look hardly older than a boy. His chestnut hair curled in all directions, full of possibilities above his strong forehead; his bright gaze and his good face were like birdsong in the spring air. I fought Eremis and the Castellan and Master Gilbur for you. Did you think they could keep me away?

But then he took in her rent shirt, her battered appearance, the strain impacted around her eyes; and his face changed.

The bones underlying his features seemed to become iron; his eyes seemed to catch and reflect light like tempered and polished iron. As completely as if he had been translated, the boy was gone, and in his place stood a man she hardly knew, a man who resembled Nyle more than Artagel – Nyle when he had set himself to do something which would both humiliate him and hurt the people he cared about. The metal of Geraden’s character had been tempered by bitterness, polished by dismay. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with muffled strength – and veiled threats.

“Why didn’t Eremis kill you? It looks like he tried.”

Terisa put out her arms to him; she wanted to hug him again, embrace him, bring back the Geraden she had first learned to love. The Geraden who had willingly taken on so many different kinds of pain for her. But he only gripped her hands and held them still, requiring her to stand before him with all her sufferings exposed.

So she had to try to match him, to meet him where he was. She shook her head – not contradicting him, but denying her desire for comfort – and said, “Oh, he tried. Or Master Gilbur tried for him. But the Castellan did this.”

Distinctly, like the sound of a breaking twig, he said, “Lebbick.”

The skin of his face was tight over his iron bones. His threats weren’t directed at her. “Tell me.”

Involuntarily, she faltered. She wanted to be equal to him – to be worthy of him – but she couldn’t do it. Tears filled her eyes again. “There’s so much—”

“Terisa.”

At least he could still be reached. He put his arms around her again and let her cling to him as hard as she was able. Then he murmured, “You’re cold. And you look like you could use some food.” He hadn’t become softer: he was simply holding himself back. Turning her with his arm on her waist, he started her moving up the hillside in the direction of the pillars. “My camp is over there.”

She nodded, unable to speak – unable to separate the joy and the grief of seeing him.

“When I first came through the mirror,” he explained distantly, “when I discovered I was still alive, I planned to hide up here. It’s the best place I could think of. And I didn’t want to put Houseldon in danger, if Eremis tried to get me again. And I’d already lost you. I thought I would go crazy if anybody else got hurt trying to protect me.

“But we finally figured out what Nyle is doing. There’s no way I can keep my family out of danger. So there’s no point in hiding. I just came back here because somebody had to do it – in case you managed to get through somehow and then couldn’t find Houseldon – and it might as well be me because I was going to spend all my time waiting for you anyway.”

The sun had risen farther. The valley below the Closed Fist would remain in shadow for some time; but now there was enough light to reveal two horses tethered near the rocks ahead. One of them looked up at Terisa and Geraden. The other went on cropping grass unconcernedly. With an effort, she cleared her throat. “It sounds like you’ve figured out a lot of things.”

He snorted sardonically. “After that last day we spent together, I knew Eremis was a traitor. When I finally realized I do have a talent for Imagery – an unprecedented talent – it wasn’t too hard to start drawing conclusions. Then all I had to do was hope you really have a talent, too – and you would find it – and you would be able to get at a mirror.

“On the whole, it seemed more plausible that Eremis would just fall down dead and save us that way, but I didn’t have anything else left.”

There were a couple of packs on the ground near the horses, and a small jumble of blankets – Geraden’s bed. As he and Terisa entered the shadow of the rocks, he dropped his arm and hurried ahead to pick up one of the blankets. At once, he draped it over her shoulders. “I don’t have a fire,” he muttered. “I didn’t want to be exposed, in case the wrong people came after me.”

She shrugged: the blanket was enough. Grateful for its warmth, she asked, “What did you figure out about Nyle?” She dreaded everything she would have to say to him about Nyle.

Without meeting her gaze, he squatted to his packs and began pulling out foodskins, a jug, some fruit. His tone was harsh as he replied, “Failing in love with Elega and letting her talk him into betraying Mordant for Prince Kragen – that was bad enough, but it sort of makes sense. Quiss – that’s Tholden’s wife – she says Nyle has been unhappy enough to do something like that for years. Not everybody agrees with her” – he grimaced – “but I do. The Domne does.

“But faking his own murder to ruin me and help Master Eremis, right after he heard us prove Eremis was the only man in Orison who could have been working with the High King’s Monomach—That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t sound like him. He came back and saved my life, remember? Right after he rode away to betray Mordant. Helping a known traitor isn’t something he would do of his own free will.

“He must have been pushed.”

Geraden put cheese, dried apples, and a hunk of mutton on a plate of flat bread. Terisa accepted it and sank to the grass to start eating. Nevertheless her attention was fixed on him.

“Pushed how?” he went on. “What kind of threat or bribe would make him do something like that? What does he value that Eremis could give him – or take away?” Again, Geraden grimaced. He got out food for himself, but didn’t eat it. “His family. What else? Eremis must have a mirror that gives him access to the Care of Domne – to Houseldon. He can send those insects here – or creatures with red fur and too many arms – or even Gart. He must have threatened Nyle with something like that.”

A pang seized Terisa’s heart, and she nearly dropped her food; she stared at him through the shadow. “Then they’re still in danger. Your home – your whole family—He might attack any time. Especially now – now that I got away from him.

“He knows where you are.” She had told Eremis that, she had told him that herself.

Geraden jerked up his head.

“He can guess I’m here,” she rushed on. “He saw that mirror change – the day you tried to find a way for me to go home. Master Gilbur saw what I was doing. How can they protect themselves? What are they doing to protect themselves?”

He met her alarm squarely. Gloom veiled his eyes, but his voice was iron. “Everything they can.”

His tone halted her panic. She was still afraid, however, and there were so many things she had to say which might hurt him. Trying to swallow her shame, she said, “He really does know where you are. I’m sorry – that’s my fault. I never told you—” His gaze made it hard for her to speak, but she forced herself. “That day you tried to get me back to my apartment. When you translated me into your mirror. You never asked where I went. I didn’t go to the champion – but I didn’t go to my apartment, either. I came here.” She felt like she was confessing to an essential infidelity. “I never told you, but I told him.”

Keeping himself clenched and neutral, he asked, “Why?”

Despite his restraint, he put his finger on the sore place. She could have made excuses. He hypnotized me. He was the first man I knew who ever wanted me. But Geraden deserved better than that. And she was responsible for what had happened. No one else.

“I was wrong,” she said. “I thought I wanted him.”

Geraden was silent until she looked up at him again. She still wasn’t able to read his expression, but he didn’t seem angry. His voice only sounded sad as he murmured, “I wish you’d told me the mirror didn’t take you to the champion. I would have had an easier time doing what I did. I would have felt less like I was throwing myself away.”

She felt the pain he didn’t express more acutely than the regret he did. In an effort to make amends somehow, she offered, “But Nyle is still alive. I’m sure of that. Eremis admitted it.”

As coherently as she could, she described what had happened to the physician and guards who had been left with Nyle’s supposed corpse. The thought of their devoured bodies twisted in her belly; she forced herself to concentrate on her reasoning.

Geraden listened without showing any reaction. He was too tight to react. When she was finished, he said absently, “Poor Nyle. Right now he probably wishes he actually were dead. Being used like that must be horrible for him. As long as Eremis has him, he can be hurt again. He can be used against us again.

“It’s my fault, of course. If I hadn’t stopped him from going to the Perdon – if I hadn’t tried to make his decisions for him, he never would have been vulnerable to this. He wouldn’t have been in the dungeon, where Eremis could get at him.” Geraden sighed as if blame were a part of what made him strong. “I don’t know how much of it he can stand.”

Must be horrible. That was true. She knew the feeling. She had come this far herself so that she wouldn’t be used against the people she cared for.

Softly, she asked, “What’re you going to do, when you try to fight him, and he tells you to surrender or he’ll kill Nyle?”

Unexpectedly, Geraden snorted again. If he hadn’t been so angry, he might have laughed. “I’m not going to fight him.”

You’re what? She stared at him through the shadow as if he had struck her. Not going to fight him? The world was full of different kinds of pain, ways of being hurt – more than she had ever suspected. The wrenching sensation she felt now was new to her. I’m not going to fight him. Just for a second, her own anger began to blaze, and she wanted to rage at him.

He hadn’t looked away, however. He was facing her like a hard wall; anything she hurled might simply hit him and fall to the ground. He had been that badly hurt himself: she seemed to see the sources of his pain as if the gloom were full of them. He had been hurt by the desperation which had made him translate himself away from Orison with no clear hope of ever being able to return – or to control where he was going. And by all the implications of what he had discovered about Master Eremis. By the fact that no one in Orison trusted or valued him enough to believe him – not one of the Masters, not Castellan Lebbick, not even King Joyse.

By the threat to his home.

And everything else he had ever tried to do with his life had failed. He was even responsible for Nyle’s plight. How could she be angry at him now? What gave her the right?

She had to swallow the thick sensation of grief in her throat before she was able to ask, “What are you going to do?”

Her quietness seemed to ease him in some way. His posture became marginally less rigid; his features relaxed a bit. With a faint echo of his former humor, he said, “First I’m going to get you to tell me what happened to you. Then I’m going to take you back to Houseldon for a decent shirt.”

Involuntarily, she winced. “You know that isn’t what I meant.”

“All right.” The iron came back into his voice. “I’m going to make a mirror. Any mirror, it doesn’t matter – as long as it’s big enough – as long as it isn’t flat. I’m an Imager now. I know how to do it. I always went wrong before because I was trying to do the wrong thing, trying to use my talent wrong. Now I know better.

“I’m going to make a mirror. And I’m going to kill any son of a whore who comes here and tries to hurt my family.”

Terisa held her breath to keep herself still.

He shrugged stiffly. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Oh, Geraden.

She didn’t know what to do for him – but she had to do something. She couldn’t bear to see him like this. He needed a better way to deal with what had been done to him.

That realization gave her the strength to start talking herself.

“You asked what happened to me. I think I better tell you.”

It was easier than she had expected: she was able to leave so much out. On a practical level, she discreetly excised the information that both the Tor and Artagel had asked her to betray him. He didn’t need any more of that kind of hurt. And emotionally she could talk as if the Castellan’s fury and her own terror hadn’t touched her. In any case, she had no language for such things – or for the way they had changed her. Instead, she concentrated on Master Eremis.

“He has them fooled, Geraden,” she said after she had described her time in the dungeon, her visits from the Castellan and Eremis and Master Quillon, her escape with Quillon – after she had told him about Gilbur and Havelock, and about Quillon’s murder. “What he did with Nyle is just an example. That physician, Underwell, is dead, and everybody thinks you’re a butcher, and the only person in Orison who looks innocent is Master Eremis. He’s making himself a hero by refilling the reservoir – but that’s only an excuse, he’s just doing that so he can sneak around while everyone thinks he’s busy. He’s in league with Gart and Cadwal, and he’s just waiting until his plans are ready.”

Policy, my lady. If it succeeds, I succeed with it. If it fails, I remain to pursue my ends by other means. In spite of her determination to be detached, the memory made her shudder.

“He’s going to spring some kind of terrible trap, and no one knows he’s the one behind it all. Master Quillon is my only witness, and he’s dead. Since the Castellan saw me with Master Gilbur, he thinks I killed Quillon.”

Her own anger gathered as she spoke; she was full of accumulated outrage. She didn’t want to put pressure on Geraden, she wanted to persuade him. But she simply couldn’t think about Eremis without trembling.

“Geraden, he’s going to destroy them all, and they don’t even know it’s him. What King Joyse is trying to do is crazy anyway, but it’s hopeless if nobody knows who his enemy is. Everything he ever fought for, everything he ever made, Mordant and the Congery, all his ideals,” everything that made you love him, “Eremis is going to destroy them all.”

Out of the mountains’ dusk, Geraden made a cutting gesture, silencing her. His face might have been stone. “ ‘Eremis is going to destroy them all.’ Of course. And you want me to stop him. You think there’s something I can do to stop him.”

She tightened her grip on herself, forced herself to speak softly. “Somebody has to warn them. Otherwise they don’t stand a chance.”

What about the augury? What about Mordant’s need?

Abruptly, he surged to his feet. For a moment, he stalked away as if he never intended to come back; then he swung around harshly and returned to confront her over the new grass and the neglected food.

“You want me to warn them,” he rasped. “Do you think I haven’t already considered that? Talk is easy. Do you know how far Orison is from here? Do you know how long it would take me to get there? The siege has already started. Cadwal is already marching. Everything he wants to destroy will be in ruins before I get halfway there. I’ll arrive like a good boy, panting and desperate, wanting something to save, and he’ll just laugh at me.

“He’ll just laugh at me.

“Terisa” – he was controlling himself with a visible effort, holding down a desire to yell at her – “I am very, very tired of being laughed at.”

All her insides ached as she watched him; he made her so sad that her anger faded, at least temporarily. She didn’t know what to say. What could she have said? She understood: of course she understood. He was beaten, and he was trying to accept it. But what she did or didn’t understand changed nothing. It didn’t help him – or Mordant. Yet she had to give him something. If she didn’t, she was going to start crying again.

Quietly, stifling her unhappiness, she asked, “What do you want me to do?”

He had considered that as well. “You’re an arch-Imager,” he said promptly. “Like Vagel. You’ve just proved that. You can pass through a mirror without changing worlds. And without losing your mind. But you’re more than that, too. You can change the Images themselves. You can do the same thing with flat glass that I do with a normal mirror. Together, we’re two of the most powerful people in Mordant. All we need is practice. And mirrors. I want you to stay here and help me defend the only thing left that’s worth fighting for.”

In the same tone, she asked, “Do you have any glass at all?”

“No, not yet. We’ve got a bit of equipment and tinct my father confiscated from some sort of hedgerow Imager back in the early days of Mordant’s peace, but we’ve never used it.

“I was worried while you were back in Orison, where Eremis could attack you – or put pressure on you by attacking me. But after what you’ve just told me, I don’t think we need to hurry. We aren’t much of a threat to him right now. He’s got us out of Orison, and he still looks innocent. We can’t hurt him where we are. And he’s got a lot of other things on his mind. He’s got to spring this trap of his – whatever it is. I think he’ll leave us alone until he’s done with Orison. He won’t worry about cleaning up minor problems like us until afterward.”

Terisa sighed softly. “We’re ‘two of the most powerful people in Mordant,’ but we’re only a ‘minor problem.’ ”

“All we need is practice,” he repeated as if that would reassure her. “By the time he gets around to us, we’ll be ready for him. If he tries to touch Domne, we’re going to tear his hand off at the wrist.”

After a pause, he concluded like a man affirming an article of faith, “There isn’t anything else.”

Maybe that was true – she didn’t know. She had gone as far as she could at the moment. He assumed she would do what he wanted: that was enough. It would give her time to think. Time to rest. She needed rest badly. With everything still unresolved, she looked up at him and said, “Speaking of Domne, I think you ought to take me to Houseldon. I want to meet your family.”

She couldn’t be sure in the dim light, but she thought she saw him almost smile.

For some reason, however, her acquiescence – and the idea of returning home – didn’t improve his mood. If he did smile, he did so in a way which denied laughter. His bitterness may have lifted a bit, but the dour humor which replaced it was equally iron and ungiving.

With a crisp accuracy entirely unlike the eager, accident-prone manner she remembered, he repacked his supplies, then watered the horses and saddled them. “Take the bay,” he said, indicating one of the mounts. “Quiss had her trained to carry pregnant women. Quiss has been pregnant a lot. I think Tholden wants to have seven sons, too.” His tone seemed gentler when he talked about such things, but that impression may have been created by what he was saying rather than by the way he said it. “But so far he only has five children, and two of them are daughters.”

The air was warmer now; nevertheless Terisa kept the blanket over her shoulders as she climbed onto the bay. This was only her second experience with a horse, and the saddle seemed dangerously high. The blanket was awkward to hold closed – but not as awkward as her torn shirt. The last thing she wanted at a time like this was to ride into Houseldon with her chest exposed.

When she was seated, he adjusted her stirrups. Then he swung up onto his own mount, an appaloosa with a look of harmless lunacy in its eyes, and led her away.

The hillside sloped downward from the Closed Fist for some distance, then became rumpled, like a rucked-up skirt. Even in the shadow of the mountains, the light was strong enough now so that she could see wildflowers scattered across the grass; but she didn’t realize how bright they were – how much brighter they were than she remembered them – until she and Geraden reached the direct sunshine. Then color seemed to burst from the grass wherever she looked: blue and lavender; mauve; yellow shot with orange; the rich, rich red of poppies. There were trees on the hillsides, too, but most of them grew down in the folds of the terrain, along the river. Mountains with snow still on them ranged north and east as well as south of her, so that she and Geraden seemed to be riding out from between their arms. As far as she could see toward the northeast, however, toward the Care of Domne, the hills were primarily covered with open grass and wildflowers.

Geraden was right: the bay was easy to ride; her gait instilled confidence. He and Terisa were soon down among the low hills, and she began to feel secure enough to attempt a trot. The whole sensation – the horse, the morning sunshine, his presence beside her – was so much more pleasant than the time she had gone riding with him and Argus that she couldn’t hold in a smile.

“Yes,” she heard him murmur as if he were answering a question. “The Care of Domne is beautiful. It’s always beautiful, no matter what happens to it – or to Mordant. No matter who lives or dies, no matter what changes. Some things—” He looked around in an effort to see everything at once. “Some things remain.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “Maybe that’s why the Domne was never willing to fight. And why King Joyse loved him anyway.”

“I don’t understand.”

Geraden shrugged. “In a way, my father is the Care of Domne. The things he values most don’t need to be fought for because they can’t be hurt.”

Terisa concentrated on her seat while the horses worked their way up a steeper hillside. After that, the ground seemed to have been smoothed out by the hand of the sun. It wasn’t level, but the slopes were long and comfortable, and the grass appeared to flow all the way to the horizon.

She probably should have been thinking about her strange talent for Imagery. After any number of denials, she had discovered that her talent was real. Surely that changed her situation, her responsibilities? But she didn’t feel that anything had changed. She had already chosen her loyalties in the struggle for Mordant, committed herself. And without glass there was nothing she could do to explore or define her abilities – whatever they actually were.

At the moment, she wasn’t interested in herself. She was interested in Geraden.

“Tell me about your family,” she suggested. “You’ve talked about them before, but it feels like a long time ago. I’d like to know who I’m going to meet.”

“Well, you won’t meet Wester,” Geraden answered absently, as if his family had nothing to do with what he was thinking. “He’s away rallying the farmsteads. That’s probably just as well. He’s the handsome one. Women fall in love with him all the time. But he’ll break your heart. The only thing he cares about is wool. If wool were glass, he’d be the greatest Imager in the world. We aren’t sure he knows women even exist.

“Tholden is the oldest, of course. He’s the heir – he’ll be the Domne when our father dies – and he takes that very seriously. He wants to be the Care the same way our father is. And he’s good at it. But he’d be better if he trusted himself enough to relax.

“He and the Domne can be pretty funny sometimes. He’s a compulsive fertilizer – he wants everything to grow like crazy. So he goes around shoveling manure onto anything that has a root system. And my father follows him with a pruning saw, muttering about waste and cutting back everything Tholden just encouraged to grow.”

In the distance, Terisa saw a flock of sheep, moving gently like foam rolling on the green sea of the grass. Two small dogs and a shepherd kept the flock together without much difficulty: the day was untroubled, and the animals were placid. Geraden and the shepherd waved at each other, but neither of them risked disturbing the flock with a shout.

“The sheep are still out,” Geraden commented. “We could drive them into Houseldon, but what good would that do? They’re probably safer as far away as they can get.”

He rode for a while in silence before returning to her question. “Anyway, you’ll meet Tholden’s wife, Quiss. And their children. She’ll make you comfortable in Houseldon, or die trying.

“Minick is the second son. He’s married, too, but you probably won’t see his wife. She hardly ever leaves the house. That’s too bad – I like her. But she’s so shy she gets in a flutter when you just smile at her. Once she ruined her best gown by curtseying to the Domne in a mud puddle.

“I like Minick, too, but he’s a little dim. He’s the only man I know who thinks shearing sheep is fun. He and his wife are perfect for each other.

“That leaves Stead, the family scapegrace. He’s in bed right now with a broken collarbone and several cracked ribs. He just couldn’t keep his hands off the wife of a traveling tinker, and the tinker expressed his disapproval with the handle of a pitchfork.

“The strange thing is that Stead means well. He works hard. He’s generous. Every day is a new joy. He simply adores women – and he can’t imagine why any man doesn’t make love to every woman there is. They’re too precious to belong to anyone. He isn’t jealous of the husbands he cuckolds. Why should they be jealous of him?

“Other than that, only about three hundred people live in Houseldon. It’s the Seat of the Domne. What serves as government in this Care is there. Anywhere else, Houseldon would be just another village, but in Domne it’s the marketplace as well as the counting house and the court of justice.

“Also the military camp. The Domne maintains six trained bowmen, mainly in case a bear or two or a pack of wolves comes out of the mountains and starts raiding sheep. But it’s also their job to do things like rescue Stead from that tinker, or sit on people who get belligerent when they’ve had too much ale. On the rare occasions when the Domne decides he has to fine somebody for something, they collect it.

“That’s what we have to defend ourselves with,” Geraden concluded as if this were the question Terisa had asked. “Six bowmen, plus farmers with hoes and shepherds with crooks – as many as Wester can talk into it.

“That’s why Houseldon needs us.”

The way he drifted from his subject disturbed her. She had always liked hearing him talk about his relatives. Sometimes, the contrast to her own family had saddened her; today it was a pleasure. She was looking forward to meeting his father and brothers. She wasn’t ready to start thinking again about the trouble which had driven her here.

And what he suggested didn’t sound right, coming from him. To give up everything to which he had ever aspired in order to do nothing more than fight for his home: that didn’t sound like him. Like Artagel and Nyle in their different ways, he had never been able to stay at home. He had too much itch for the rest of the world, too much sense of possibility: he couldn’t contain himself in Domne. She didn’t question his love for Houseldon and the Care, for his father and brothers. But she felt strongly that he was the wrong man for the job he had chosen. He had chosen it as much out of bitterness as out of love: it didn’t fit him.

She saw another flock of sheep. Then the ground became more level; fields appeared, watered by ditches from the river and streaked with the delicate green shoots of new corn; the horses reached a road. She and Geraden were the only people on it, but that came as no surprise to her. Everyone except the shepherds was probably busy preparing for the defense of Houseldon.

Then she saw Houseldon itself ahead.

She had forgotten that Geraden had called it a stockade.

The whole village was walled by timbers taller than she was; from horseback, she was barely able to see the thatched roofs of the houses past the top of the stockade. The timbers had been set into the ground and then lashed together with vines of some kind. To her, the idea of a stockade didn’t sound especially impressive; she had grown up with concrete and steel. But when she actually saw that timber wall, she thought it looked remarkably sturdy. Mere men on horses wouldn’t be able to break it down. Red-furred creatures armed with scimitars and hate wouldn’t be able to break it down. They would need a catapult or a battering ram.

Or fire.

Thinking about fire, she clutched the blanket around her shoulders and shivered.

The gate, a massive shutter of timbers trussed with strips of iron, stood open. The men guarding it hailed Geraden in a way that suggested they knew where he had gone, and why. Houseldon wasn’t a place for people who liked secrets.

As he and Terisa rode through the gate, Geraden asked the guards, “Where’s the Domne?”

One of them shrugged. “At home? With that leg, he doesn’t get around as easily as he used to.”

Geraden nodded and led Terisa down the main street of the village.

She wanted to ask what was wrong with the Domne’s leg, but she was too busy looking around. The dirt street was little more than a lane; yet it served as a thoroughfare for wagons and cattle as well as people. If the street had been busy, she and Geraden would have had trouble getting through. This morning, however, they caused most of the traffic themselves: it was composed almost entirely of people who came out to see Geraden – and her.

In contrast to the lane, the square-fronted buildings on either side were substantial: solidly erected as well as large. They had stone foundations, deep porches, windows covered with oiled sheepskins. Working with rough planks and mud plaster, the inhabitants of Houseldon had constructed homes and shops meant to endure; and the characteristic thatch of the roofs was apparently used because it was practical – cool in summer, warm in winter, easy to replace – rather than because it was cheap. In that way, the houses were like the people, who were dressed primarily in tough fabrics and simple styles, intended to last.

The spectators looked at Geraden and studied Terisa with unabashed curiosity. One rowdy spirit – she didn’t see who it was – shouted unexpectedly, “Looks like you made a good choice, Geraden!” but Geraden didn’t react.

He certainly didn’t need to defend himself. Several voices muttered imprecations at the rowdy spirit on his behalf, and one old man said clearly, “Hold your tongue, puppy. If you had his problems, you would drown yourself in the Broadwine.”

Just for a second, the gloom in the background of Geraden’s expression lifted, and his eyes sparkled a little.

Terisa was abashed by the realization that she was blushing.

For several minutes, he steered her horse past a number of intersecting lanes and paths – past public watering troughs, a granary or two, a shop that sold foodstuffs and utensils, at least six merchantries which dealt in wool and sheepskins, and one tavern rendered unmistakable by a huge sign over the door that announced succinctly: TAVERN. Then, without warning, he stopped in front of a house and swung off his mount.

This building was somewhat larger than its neighbors. Apart from its size, however, its only distinguishing feature was the plain, brown-and-russet pennon that fluttered from a pole jutting out of its thatch. Geraden tossed his reins over the porch rail, then turned to offer Terisa a lift down, muttering, “This is it.”

There was a woman on the porch. A line of rope ran from one end of the porch to the other, and over it hung a large rug, rag-woven from scraps of wool. The woman held a short flail in one hand, and the air around her was dim with dust: apparently, she had been beating the rug. Terisa was immediately struck by her corn silk hair and sky blue eyes, by the flush of exertion on her cheeks and the strength in her hands. She had the bosom of an Earth Mother and the shoulders of a stonemason, and she propped her fists on her hips to greet Geraden as if she weren’t entirely ready to let him enter her house.

A child only a little bigger than a toddler peered from behind her skirts, then ducked into hiding.

“You took long enough,” she said in a voice that directly contradicted the severity of her manner. “Da’s been fretting.”

“Quiss,” he replied like a man who had forgotten how to laugh and didn’t want to get angry, “this is Terisa. The lady Terisa of Morgan. She’s an arch-Imager.” He seemed to fear that Quiss wouldn’t take his companion seriously enough. “After Vagel, she’s the most powerful Imager in the country.”

Quiss raised her blue eyes to Terisa’s face. She didn’t smile, but her gaze felt as friendly as sunshine. All at once, Terisa forgot to be self-conscious.

“She’s also cold and tired, and probably hungry,” Quiss pronounced, “and she isn’t used to horses. What are you waiting for? Bring her in.”

Terisa smiled helplessly.

Geraden reached up for her hand. His eyes gave away nothing: he was too iron to be dented by Quiss’ manner. Terisa included him with her smile, then lost it because she suddenly began to ache for the Geraden who would have chuckled happily at Tholden’s wife. When he didn’t respond, either to her smile or to her sadness, she took a deep breath for courage and let him help her off the bay.

Her legs began to shake as soon as her feet hit the ground – a consequence of her unfamiliarity with horseback riding – but after she took a step or two the trembling eased. Geraden might have wanted to withdraw his hand, but she didn’t give him the chance; she clung to him as she went up the steps onto the porch.

Still without smiling, Quiss unexpectedly took hold of Terisa’s shoulders and gave her a quick hug, a kiss on the cheek. “Welcome, Terisa of Morgan,” she said. “I don’t know anything about Imagery – but I know Geraden. You are very welcome here.”

Terisa had no reply. An awkward moment passed while she groped for a way to explain how glad she was to be here. Then the child hiding behind Quiss’ skirts broke the silence.

“Ma, the lady don’t smell good.”

Quiss started to turn. “ ‘Doesn’t,’ Ruesha. Not ‘don’t.’ And that’s no way to talk to a lady.”

Geraden was faster, however. “Imp!” he barked. “Come here. I’m going to paddle your behind until you can’t walk for a week.”

Squealing with an obvious lack of fright, the child sprinted into the house. Geraden followed, thundering his boots on the floorboards as he pretended to run.

This time, Quiss did smile, half in apology, half in pleasure. “Ruesha says what she thinks,” she said, “like too many of her uncles.” Then she wrinkled her nose humorously. “But it’s true, you know. You don’t smell good. They must have treated you pretty badly after Geraden got away.”

Terisa was smiling herself; a small trill of music ran around her heart. There was hope for Geraden yet. Perhaps just for a second, he had been surprised out of his defeat. She sounded incongruously happy as she replied, “They put me in the dungeon.”

Quiss’ eyes resumed their sky blue sobriety. “A dungeon they haven’t cleaned for decades, apparently.” The bare idea affronted her. “Come. I’ll introduce you to the Domne. Then we can go get you a bath. And some clean clothes. That will give his father a chance to try to make sense out of Geraden.”

With one strong arm wrapped companionably around Terisa’s shoulders, Quiss steered her into the house.

The room they entered was so dark that she could hardly see. The only light came from the coals in the hearth, the barely translucent window covers, and the reflection of daylight through the doorway. As her eyes adjusted, however, shapes began to emerge from the dimness: a bulky cast-iron stove beside the fireplace, several doors into other rooms, a rectangular wooden table long enough to seat ten or twelve people.

At the head of the table sat a man with one leg propped on a stool.

“Did you see Geraden, Da?” Quiss asked.

“He went through here,” a warm voice rumbled. “He was too busy trying to beat the spit out of your youngest to talk to his mere father. But he’s back in one piece – and he’s got a woman with him. I gather something good has happened.”

“I think so,” said Quiss briskly. “Da, this is Terisa – the lady Terisa of Morgan. As soon as you tell her how welcome she is, I’m going to take her and get her a bath and clothes and food. In the meantime—” She paused significantly before saying, “Now that she’s here, maybe he’ll unbend enough to tell you what’s going on.

“My lady Terisa of Morgan, this is the Domne.”

Through the gloom, Terisa saw that the Domne was a tall man, as lean and curved as an axe handle. He had Geraden’s face, and Artagel’s, and Nyle’s, but more so in some way, as if they were attractive yet inaccurate copies of him. The hair on his head was thick, but he had no beard. The silver streaks at his temples were the only obvious signs of his age. Perhaps because the light was weak, he didn’t appear to be more than half as old as King Joyse.

The leg propped on the stool was plump with bandages. He had a pair of canes nearby, but he made no attempt to rise when Quiss introduced him. Instead, he said, “My lady,” in a voice as warm as a hug, “you’re welcome in Houseldon – and in my house. If we could do it, we would put on a feast for you, a celebration. But I’m afraid we’re a little too busy. Geraden seems to think we might be attacked. That doesn’t happen every day, and we have to brace ourselves.

“But don’t worry about that right now. I’ve wanted him to bring a woman home with him for a long time. That’s the benefit of sons. When they marry – or only fall in love – or merely feel like flirting a bit – they bring their women home with them. Quiss is a good example. If she were my daughter, and Tholden was someone else’s son, she would have left to go with him, and we would have been lost without her.”

At that, Quiss snorted affectionately. “Sons, is it? Is that why you treat Ruesha like she’s worth the weight of her three brothers in fine brandy?”

The Domne didn’t deign to acknowledge this jibe. Noticing the direction of Terisa’s gaze, he explained, “A hunting accident. I’m afraid I finally have to admit that I’m not a young man. Occasionally, packs of wild pigs wander into Domne from the Care of Termigan. I’d be willing to let them wander, but unfortunately they can trample an entire cornfield overnight, so we’re forced to hunt them. This time, one of my sons had the bad sense to suggest that I was getting too old to hunt wild pig. The truth must be told, Quiss, it was Tholden. Naturally, I insisted on leading the hunt myself.

“When the boar charged, my thrice-cursed horse panicked and threw me. Then at last I had to admit that indeed I have put on a few years since my youth. I simply wasn’t spry enough to prevent the pig from sticking his tusk in my leg.

“It heals slowly, alas,” he sighed. “Another sign of age.”

Almost at once, Terisa found that she liked the Domne. The relaxed way he talked put her at ease, made her feel more welcome than any elaborate speech or feast; made her feel at home. “My lord,” she said impulsively because she didn’t have any other words for her gratitude, “I’m very glad to be here.”

“ ‘My lord’?” the Domne returned humorously. “I hope not. The last time a woman insisted on calling me ‘my lord,’ I had to marry her to make her stop.”

Smiling, Terisa asked, “What should I call you?”

“ ‘Da,’ ” he answered without hesitation. “It’s probably presumptuous of me, but I like it. My sons refuse, of course. Another benefit of sons – they keep me humble. In the name of my dignity. If I have any – which I doubt, sitting here half crippled because I wasn’t able to get out of the way of a pig. But the rest of my family won’t call me anything else.”

“Da,” she murmured experimentally. It had a nice sound. She had never called her own father anything except Father.

“Thank you,” said the Domne as if she had done him a favor.

“Come, Terisa.” Quiss put an arm on Terisa’s shoulders again. “If I let you stay, he’ll keep you talking until lunchtime. That’s a ‘benefit of sons’ he doesn’t mention. When they were small, he always had someone to listen to him. They taught him bad habits. Any daughter with sense in her head would have known better.”

The Domne nodded gravely. “We can talk later, Terisa, when you’ve had a chance to rest and refresh yourself.

“If you find Geraden,” he added to Quiss, “tell him I want to see him. I refuse to be ignored all morning merely because Ruesha wants to play.”

“Yes, Da,” Quiss replied in a tone of gently mocking subservience. With her arm, she took Terisa out of the room.

Almost immediately, they encountered a serving girl in the hall. Quiss instructed her to bring hot water for a bath, then to fetch Geraden for the Domne. The girl bobbed an acknowledgment, and Quiss and Terisa walked on.

The house was big – bigger than Terisa had realized. Behind its wide front, it seemed to sprawl for a considerable distance. Beyond the room where the Domne sat, the windows were open, letting light and spring air into the hall, and she found that she could see the grain in the polished hardwood of the floor, the fitted planks of the walls. Here she realized for herself how strong the odor of the dungeon was on her – realized it because everything around her smelled of soap, beeswax, and old resin. Years of wear and polish had brought out a glow from the floorboards down the center of the hall, and that warmer hue seemed to mark the way ahead like a path, a way of making sure that no one got lost.

Quiss took her past a door that stood slightly ajar. As they crossed the opening, a plaintive voice called out, “Quiss! In the name of decency!” The tone of the appeal was both lugubrious and funny. “I’m dying.”

“And about time, too,” muttered Quiss without stopping – or letting Terisa pause.

“Who was that?” Terisa asked in surprise.

Then she was surprised even further to see Quiss’ entire face turn red.

“Stead. One of the sons Da seems to value so highly. He hasn’t had a woman since a tinker broke his collarbone, and he wants me to bed him. As soon as he learns you’re here, he’ll get the same idea about you.

“Take my advice,” Quiss continued primly. “Have nothing to do with him. He’s the only one of the Domne’s sons who has no sense at all. Personally, I won’t even let the serving girls go in his room. A groom and one of the shearers are taking care of him.”

Terisa made an effort to keep from laughing. “What does he think he can do – with a broken collarbone?”

Quiss stopped in the hall and gave Terisa the full force of her bright blue eyes. Softly, she said, “You must not have much experience with men. It isn’t what he thinks he can do. It’s what he thinks you can do.”

Her expression, however, suggested that she wasn’t listening to herself – that her own thoughts had gone in a different direction. She had become grave, almost somber; perplexity knotted her brows. “Before yesterday,” she murmured, “none of us knew you existed. Then Geraden arrived out of nowhere, breathing fire about a possible attack and at the same time acting like all the heart and hope had been beaten out of him. He said he left a woman behind who was probably being tortured because she was his friend. Now that I see you, it seems astonishing how little he actually told us about you.

“He never mentioned that you could have any man you wanted.”

Terisa bit back an impulse to ask, Is that really what you think? She wanted to believe that she was pretty; and Quiss’ opinion seemed to have tremendous value. But Tholden’s wife obviously wanted to get reassurance, not give it. She wanted to believe that Geraden wouldn’t be hurt anymore. Deliberately, Terisa put her questions aside.

“They put me in the dungeon,” she said, “because I wouldn’t tell them where he was. He rescued me when my old life was going nowhere. He’s risked himself for me any number of times. He even tried to fight the High King’s Monomach for me once.” Quiss was impressed; but Terisa didn’t stop. “He’s the only reason I’m alive – the only reason I’m here. Even if I didn’t like him so much, I wouldn’t be interested in anybody else.”

Certainly not Stead, who sounded suspiciously like Master Eremis.

That was what Quiss wanted to hear. She didn’t smile – apparently, she rarely smiled when she was happy – but warmth shone from her. “Then I’ll stop worrying about him and leave him to you. If anybody can get him out of the pig wallow he’s in, you can.”

Briskly, she moved Terisa again in the direction of a bath.

Three turns, two doorways, and another long hall brought them to a bedroom with a low, flat cot that contrasted strangely with the rest of the furnishings: the heavy armchairs and the sturdy washstand. “This is Artagel’s room,” Quiss explained. “It’s relatively private, but I can get you a softer bed if his cot is too hard. I don’t know how he sleeps on it. Sometimes I think he may actually be as tough as he thinks he is.”

“I’ll try it and let you know,” said Terisa. The bed in her former apartment had had the firmest mattress she could find.

“The advantage,” Quiss went on, “is that you get your own bathroom.” She pointed at the other door to the room. “Why don’t you get started? There’s water – and the hot water should be here in a minute. I’ll go find you some clothes.”

Terisa agreed gratefully. As soon as Tholden’s wife left, she closed the bedroom door, pulled off her boots, and went into the bathroom.

It had no running water – apparently the Care of Domne didn’t know as much about plumbing as Orison did – but clay pipes had been set in the floor to carry bathwater and waste away. Which explained, now that she thought about it, why she hadn’t seen water, not to mention sewage, standing in the ditches alongside Houseldon’s streets: underground drains. And that perception, in turn, made her laugh softly at herself. Her time in Orison, and Elega’s attempt on the reservoir, had taught her some strange lessons. The woman she used to be would never have noticed plumbing or drains unless they didn’t work.

As Quiss had said, however, there was water, plenty of it in a vat beside the wooden bathtub.

Instead of filling the tub right away, however, Terisa went back into the bedroom, sat down on Artagel’s hard cot, closed her eyes, and tried to absorb the fact that she was here and safe; that she had finally made her way to a place where she could feel the sun’s warmth in the wood of the wall beside the bed, and where the people around her were moved by simple things like family and friendship and wool, rather than by treachery, ambition, and revenge.

She sat there, soaking up the peace of the house, until two serving girls arrived with four buckets of hot water between them. Then she gave herself what felt like the most luxurious bath she had ever had in her life.

Some time later, she dried her scrubbed body and her now-lustrous hair, drained the tub, and tried on the clothes Quiss had left for her.

The undergarments were of fine linen; the shirt and skirt, of unlined sheepskin, supple and delicate against her skin, yet remarkably tough. The long skirt was wide around the hem, and had been slit to the knees both in front and in back, so that it could be worn on horseback; the shirt was decorated only by its buttons, which appeared to be polished pieces of obsidian. Both the shirt and the skirt went well with her winter boots.

Now all she needed was earrings to match the buttons. And a mirror, so that she could do something with her hair.

Of course, she didn’t really want a mirror – not for something as simple as vanity. What she actually desired was a chance to see what she looked like, so that she might begin to believe in herself – to believe that Geraden would notice her enough, and care enough about what he saw, to let her reach him.

Get him out of the pig wallow—

She didn’t trust any of the conclusions he had reached. And she couldn’t bear to see him like that.

When Quiss came to take her back to the Domne, she went both hesitantly and eagerly, unsure of herself, and yet sure that what she wished to do was worth doing.

“Da likes an early lunch,” Quiss explained, “and he doesn’t like to admit that he’s too impatient to wait while you eat, so he asks you to eat with him. Also Tholden is here, and I’m sure he wants to question you. If you don’t mind.”

Terisa couldn’t think of a quick way to describe how important the Domne and his concerns were to her, so she replied simply, “I don’t mind.”

In the front room, the light had been improved by the raising of the window covers and the altered angle of the sun. Two men sat at the table, and as Terisa entered the room she had no difficulty seeing that one of them was the Domne – or that his companion was huge.

“Ah, Terisa,” said the Domne in his warm, comfortable voice, “I’m glad you could join us. I want someone to share my lunch. And Tholden thinks he can’t wait to talk to you.” Gesturing toward the huge man, he went on, “Terisa, this is Tholden, my eldest. Another of the benefits of sons is that one of them is bound to be the right man to inherit their father’s place. Tholden is the right man for mine.

“That’s fortunate, since he’s also” – the Domne laughed softly – “the only one of my sons who wants the responsibility.”

Tholden stood beside his father like a bear; his stiff hair nearly brushed the beams of the ceiling; his beard was so long and wild that it made his chest seem even thicker – and his chest was already thick enough to create the illusion that his shoulders were round and stooped. When he sketched a bow toward her, Terisa saw that his hands were ridged with calluses: they looked more like gardening implements than normal hands.

She also noticed that he had straw and a few twigs caught in his beard. Involuntarily, she smiled. Then, trying to recover her manners, she said, “I’m glad to meet you. Geraden talks about you a lot.”

Tholden grinned – a smile which lifted his beard, but didn’t soften his expression. “I’m sure he does.” His voice was unexpectedly high and gentle; he sounded like a man who wasn’t able to shout. “Quiss and I had the doubtful pleasure of raising him after our mother passed away. He probably remembers every beating he deserved in agonizing detail.”

Quiss went to the stove and began pulling a meal together. Politely, Terisa replied, “No, nothing like that. He has a higher opinion of you than you think.” Then she asked, “Where is he, by the way?”

“He was here,” said the Domne. “We talked for a while—”

“Then I sent him to help Minick.” Tholden let his smile drop. “Minick is trying to explain to an assortment of farmers, shepherds, merchants, and servants how we want them to defend the walls. He’s the most meticulous man in Houseldon, and he’s certainly thorough, but he can be a bit slow, and his explanations have a tendency to confuse people. Geraden will get more done in less time, even if he has lost his sense of humor.”

Terisa glanced at the Domne, then looked up at Tholden again. “In other words, you want to talk to me alone.”

The Domne began chuckling to himself.

From the stove, Quiss said, “I warned you subtlety would be wasted on her.” Her tone made it clear that she wasn’t laughing at Terisa.

“Silence, upstart woman.” Without so much as glancing in his wife’s direction, Tholden swung his arm and managed to slap her across the bottom. “Don’t be pert. Women should be seen and not heard. As much as possible.”

Rather than retorting, Quiss looked at Terisa and rolled her eyes in mock-despair.

Terisa herself wasn’t amused, however. Holding herself still, she asked in a neutral tone, “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust him?”

Tholden opened his mouth as if he had been stung; the Domne waved him silent. “Terisa,” the older man said quietly, and this time she could hear his years in his voice, “I would sell my soul at the word of any of my sons. Even Nyle, who seems to have forgotten who he is. But this Geraden who came storming into Houseldon only yesterday, warning of imminent destruction – who is he? He isn’t the Geraden who left us for Orison with more hope in his heart than most simple flesh and blood can hold. It’s not just that he has become hard. I know him better than that, Terisa. He has become closed. He talks about defending his home as if the mere idea was terrible.

“A change like that” – the Domne spread his hands – “it could mean anything.”

“And you want me to explain it,” said Terisa stiffly.

The lord and Tholden nodded together. Quiss watched mutely from the stove. “I will sell my soul for him now, if I must,” murmured the Domne, “without another word from you – or from him. But I would prefer to understand what I’m trusting.”

Without warning, Terisa found that she wanted to say, It isn’t your fault. It isn’t anything you did. He’s just been so badly beaten—He’s failed you, he’s failed Artagel and Nyle, he’s failed Orison and King Joyse – and now, when it’s too late to do any good, he finds out he really is an Imager. He could have made a difference. He went through all those years of humiliation, and now it’s too late.

But the words refused to be spoken. They weren’t hers to say: they were his. She could feel it in the room that she couldn’t try to explain him without erecting a wall between him and his family – a wall with pity on one side and loneliness on the other. The more they knew about his pain, the more difficulty they would have confronting it, challenging it. She herself was almost paralyzed by knowing too much. If he didn’t speak for himself, he would never be whole again.

So she said, “I’m sorry. That’s between you and him. He’ll have to tell you himself.”

Then she said, “But I trust him.”

Tholden was scowling. Quiss concentrated on her pots and pans as if she were leery of what she might say if she spoke. But the Domne smiled at Terisa with sunlight in his eyes.

Distinctly, Tholden asked, “Do you consider yourself a friend of his?”

Almost without interrupting her preparations, Quiss swung an elbow into her husband’s ribs. Then, ignoring his muffled grunt, his sharp glare, she lifted two platters heaped with food and carried them to the table. “Sit down, Terisa,” she said, “eat,” placing one platter in front of the Domne, the other before the chair nearest Terisa. “If I’ve given you too much, don’t worry about it. I’m used to cooking for this great ox and the farmers he consorts with.”

A bland expression on her face, Quiss pulled out the chair and held it for Terisa.

On the platter, Terisa saw fried yams, panbread, greens, some kind of meat covered with gravy, and what looked like apple fritters. If she ate all that, she wouldn’t be able to move for two days.

“I’m sorry,” said Tholden. With a hand like a shovel, he gestured toward the chair. “Please sit down. Eat.”

When Terisa still didn’t move, he added, “I don’t mean to question your integrity. I’m just scared. I don’t like the way Geraden has changed. I don’t like the news from Orison. I don’t like what he says it means. Houseldon has never been very good at defending itself.”

“Good enough,” put in the Domne gently.

“So far,” countered Tholden. “But I don’t want to watch people I’ve known and worked with all my life get killed because something horrendous has happened to Geraden.”

The Domne pointed at the chair Quiss held. “Terisa, sit down. I haven’t heard him apologize that much in twenty years. In another minute, you’re going to hurt his feelings.”

Terisa sat down and let Quiss adjust the chair.

Now it was her turn. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m scared, too. And I’m groping. Quiss says Geraden didn’t tell you much about me. He didn’t tell you I’m new at all this. I’ve never been in a place like this. I’ve never met people like you.” I’ve never been important before. “And I’m not used to having enemies.

“I want to help. I’ll do anything I can. I just don’t want to talk about things that Geraden ought to tell you himself.”

Tholden studied her hard for a moment. Then he grinned – a new smile that brightened his whole face. Abruptly, he swept a chair out of his way and sat down opposite her. “When you’re done eating, push that plate over here. I could use a snack.”

From the stove, Quiss gave Terisa a look of grave, sky blue gladness. Then, wiping her hands on her apron, she turned to the Domne. “Da, I’ve heard a rumor that some of the women are panicking. They don’t know where to hide their daughters – or themselves. With your permission, I’ll go try to talk some sense into them.”

The Domne nodded. “Of course.”

“Tell them to come here if we’re attacked,” said Tholden. “This house will be our last bastion, if everything else goes down. We’ll put the women and children down in the beer cellar, and the rest of us will protect them as long as we can.”

With one hand, Quiss placed a brief touch of affection on her husband’s shoulder. Nodding to Terisa, she left the room and the house.

Calmly, as if everything were normal, the Domne picked up his knife and fork, and began to eat.

Terisa was moderately hungry, but she couldn’t force herself to tackle all that food. These people were seriously considering the necessity of hiding their women and children in a beer cellar while Houseldon was destroyed. Facing Tholden, she said, “Ask me something. Let me help.”

Tholden met her gaze squarely. “When Geraden got here yesterday, he thought we were going to be attacked almost immediately. Now he says we’ve got time to plan our defense. As long as you’re here, he thinks Master Eremis doesn’t have any reason to attack us right away. What do you think?”

Without hesitation, she said, “I think he’s wrong.”

The Domne cocked an eyebrow. His mouth full of yams, he asked, “Why?”

“I don’t think he realizes how dangerous he is. Or how dangerous Eremis thinks he is. Eremis has been working hard for a long time now to keep him from understanding his own talent. And he’s tried to have him killed. I don’t think Eremis will believe he’s safe until Geraden is dead.”

“That’s speculation,” murmured Tholden.

“This isn’t.” Terisa spoke with the confidence of a woman who had been able to outthink Castellan Lebbick. “Eremis can’t possibly know how Geraden’s feeling. And he can’t possibly know there aren’t any mirrors here. Now that Geraden knows what his talent is, Eremis has to be afraid of being attacked himself.

“And that’s not all. Geraden thinks Eremis will postpone attacking Houseldon until after he’s done with Orison. But the last thing he was doing in Orison was refilling the reservoir. That doesn’t sound like a man with a trap ready to spring. It sounds like a man who wants to help Orison fight off Prince Kragen until Cadwal is in position.

“If I’m right, Eremis has time to strike at you right now.

“And he knows I’m here.” This had to be said, although it was difficult for her. The Domne and his son needed to know the extent of their danger. “Master Gilbur saw the mirror change. He knows I’ve discovered my talent, too. He knows I can go anywhere in Mordant – or Cadwal or Alend, for that matter – if I just know what it looks like. If I just know how to visualize it. I could show up in his rooms some night when he’s asleep and nail him to the bed.

“He’s not just afraid of Geraden. He’s afraid of me.”

He needs to be afraid of me. I’m going to make him afraid of me. Somehow.

The Domne continued to eat without any obvious concern; but Tholden watched Terisa with growing chagrin on his face. When she was done, he muttered as if no one were listening to him, “Sheepdung. I’m not used to this myself. I’m not Artagel – I never wanted to be a soldier. What am I supposed to do?”

The Domne put down his knife and fork. “What are you doing?”

Tholden made a dismissive gesture. “You know what. Wester is sending farmers and their families here as fast as he can talk them into it. Every empty hogshead and barrel we’ve got is being filled with water and positioned around the stockade, in case of fire. Every pitchfork and scythe and axe in Houseldon is being sharpened.” Slowly, a frantic look came into his eyes, and his hands knotted on the table in front of him; but he kept his voice steady. “Banquettes are being knocked together inside the wall, so that anyone with a bow will have a place to stand. Minick – and Geraden, I hope – are laying out lines of retreat. They’re trying to explain to the men with bows how to retreat – how to use the houses for cover, how to set ambushes.

“What good is that going to do against Imagery?”

Listening to him, Terisa understood how he felt.

The Domne was undismayed, however. “Who knows?” he said calmly. “I don’t. I can’t see the future.

“But I can see you’re the right man for the job. You’ve already thought of things that wouldn’t have occurred to me. You’ll think of more. If Artagel were here, he wouldn’t be able to defend Houseldon any better.”

Tholden wasn’t convinced. With a sour snort, he asked, “Is this what you call selling your soul at the word of one of your sons?”

At that, the Domne sat up straighter in his chair; his eyes flashed. “Tholden, I know you think you’re a grown man, but you still aren’t too old to be punished for disrespect. Maybe I’m only your father, and half crippled as well, but I’m still man enough to prune your apricots within an inch of their lives. Consider that before you risk being pert with me.”

Involuntarily, Tholden smiled. His beard rustled on his chest. Nevertheless his eyes remained full of trouble, and his smile didn’t last long. Too worried to sit where he was, he pushed himself up from the table. “Excuse me, Terisa,” he murmured. “I’m afraid you’ll have to eat lunch without my help. I’ve lost my appetite.”

With the hunched gait of a man who was accustomed to ducking under doorways and low ceilings, he left the house.

The Domne watched him go and sighed. “You don’t know it, Terisa,” he commented after Tholden was gone, “but those are the saddest words anyone has said in my house for a long time. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’ I hope you aren’t planning to tell me the same thing.”

Terisa meant to say, Yes. The pile of food on the platter daunted her. The size and consequences of the danger she and Geraden had brought to Houseldon daunted her. Yet the way the Domne looked at her seemed so warm and companionable, so willing to accept whatever she represented, that when she opened her mouth the word which came out was, “No.”

He smiled approvingly as she lifted her fork to sample Quiss’ panbread and gravy.

For several minutes while she ate a little of everything on the platter, he sat in silence, gazing out into the sunshine through the nearest window. She had the impression that he was waiting for her to finish; but he didn’t seem impatient. In fact, he appeared quite content to look out on the street and nod amiably at anyone who caught his eye. If war was coming to Houseldon, it didn’t show on the face of the Domne. Geraden had said of him, The things he values most don’t need to be fought for because they can’t be hurt. Yet Terisa wasn’t sure that was accurate. Despite his look of contentment, she thought he cared deeply about a number of things which could be hurt very easily.

When she put down her utensils to indicate that she was done, he glanced over at her, then returned his gaze to the window. In a relaxed way, as if he were continuing an earlier conversation, he asked, “What was your impression of Nyle?”

Her stomach knotted around the food she had just eaten. Cautiously, she countered, “What did Geraden tell you?”

The Domne’s manner disarmed anxiety. “That you think Nyle is still alive. That this Master Eremis still wants to use him against us. That’s not what I want to know. What did you think of him? How is he?”

Because the answer was painful, she said shortly, “He’s miserable.”

“Ah,” sighed the Domne as if he had both expected and feared her reply.

This time, she let herself say, “I don’t blame him. Everything he believed that got him into trouble – everything about King Joyse and Orison and Elega and Prince Kragen – it was all plausible. King Joyse has been working for years, setting himself up to be betrayed. Nyle was just unlucky enough to fall into the trap – the same trap Elega fell into herself. He believed what his King wanted him to believe.”

Ignoring the Domne’s reputation as one of the King’s dearest friends, she went on, “He’s really just a victim. Eremis probably would never have been able to get his hands on Nyle if Nyle hadn’t been stuck in the dungeon with nowhere to turn for hope.”

If anything she said offended the Domne, however, he didn’t show it. “Families,” he murmured mildly. “They are endlessly interesting. Elega and her father. Geraden and Nyle. Sometimes I think the fate of the world depends on how people feel about their families.

“What sort of family do you come from, Terisa? Did you have sisters? Not six sisters, by any chance?”

The idea was so absurd that she almost laughed aloud. “No, Da. I was an only child.”

He looked at her again, more sharply this time. “Do you mean to say that after you your parents were able to restrain their enthusiasm for children? Were you that bad? Or were you so good that any other child would be a disappointment?”

“No,” she answered as candidly as she could. “I was an accident. My father sure didn’t have time for children. And he didn’t want my mother to have time either.”

“ ‘Didn’t have time’?” Abruptly, the Domne pushed his sore leg off the stool. Grimacing, he shifted the position of the stool so that he could face her more directly, then heaved his leg back onto it. Propped straight with his elbows on the table, he asked, “What vital and consuming work did your father do, that he ‘didn’t have time for children’?”

Unsure of where the discussion was headed – and uncomfortable because she was always uncomfortable when she talked about her parents – Terisa replied briefly, “He made money.”

Odd how both she and the Domne were speaking of her father in the past tense. But she thought about him in the past, as part of something which wasn’t true anymore.

“For what purpose?” inquired the Domne.

She shrugged. “To make more money. I don’t think he had any other reason for doing it. He did it because that was what he was good at.” She thought about conversations she had overheard from the dining room while she sat out of sight on the stairs, listening when her parents thought she had gone to bed. “Money was the best way to get things that weren’t his. Social standing. Political influence.” Then she remembered some of the valets her father had hired. “Muscle.

“He made money because he believed if you can do that you can buy everything else.”

“Very strange,” pronounced the Domne. “He would have flourished in Cadwal.

“And what did your mother do while your father made money?”

With an understated vehemence which unsettled her, Terisa said, “I think she practiced.”

“ ‘Practiced’?”

“Being ornamental. So my father could show her off whenever he was in the mood.”

“ ‘Women should be seen and not heard’?” The Domne couldn’t restrain a burst of laughter. “That explains where you got your beauty. Terisa, I don’t know how to tell you this – but I think you’ve already met High King Festten. Even though you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him.”

Terisa tried to smile, but she didn’t succeed.

The Domne studied her; sunlight from the windows reflected in his eyes. “However, that raises a fascinating question. How did you get here from there? How did the daughter of parents like that become the kind of woman my youngest son – perhaps my best son – would kill for?”

She wanted to answer him. At the same time, she wanted to stop talking about her parents. Roughly, she told him something that she hadn’t revealed to anyone else in Mordant, not even to Geraden.

“When I did something my father didn’t like, he used to lock me in a closet until I got scared enough to stop crying.”

For a long moment, the Domne stared at her without expression, as if the energy of life had been wiped off his face. Then, slowly, carefully, he turned away. He took his leg from the stool in order to put it back in its former position, toward the window. He settled himself again with his leg up and his spine stretched against the back of the chair; he might have been getting comfortable for a nap.

After that, one at a time, he picked up his canes and flung them out the window. The first sailed clear; the second clattered against the frame and fell just outside.

So fiercely that she winced, he whispered, “What are you doing to me, Joyse? Everybody who is worth anything in your entire kingdom is being hurt, and I’m sitting here crippled. What are you doing?”

There was nothing she could say. Geraden had surely told his father what she knew about the King’s intentions. There was nothing else.

Briefly, the Domne put his hands over his face, and his shoulders clenched. Almost at once, however, he rubbed his cheeks briskly, as if he were scrubbing passion off his features; with a long, slow exhalation, he let his anger go.

“It’s remarkable, don’t you think,” he murmured, “that we’re such good friends, King Joyse and I?

“Of course, that isn’t the reason our friendship is famous. It’s famous because I refused to fight in any of his wars. I refused to let him make me into one of his soldiers. People consider that strange. Don’t I think Mordant is worth fighting for? Of course I do. Don’t I think his ideal of a Congery that turns Imagery into something benign is worth fighting for? Of course I do. Then why don’t I fight? What’s the matter with me?

“But I think our friendship is more remarkable than anything I have or haven’t refused to do in my life.”

“What do you mean?” Terisa asked, wanting him to go on.

“Well—” The Domne spread his hands. “We have next to nothing in common. For one thing, he has little sense of humor. He’s not incapable of seeing the funny side. He just thinks on such an heroic scale. Everything is serious – everything is a matter of life and death. You don’t have much time for jokes when you’re busy saving the world.

“Terisa, it would never occur to me to save the world. I don’t object to the world being saved. In fact, I want it to be saved. I just can’t imagine that it has anything to do with me.

“There’s a cottonwood tree down by the river. It lost a branch in a heavy snowfall this winter, and now sap is starting to leak from the wound. If someone doesn’t go down there soon, trim the stump, and cover it with pitch, that tree is going to die. Blights or parasites will get in through the wound.

“That has something to do with me.

“One of our shepherds has a ewe that keeps dropping stillborn lambs. That has something to do with me. There’s a woman in a farmstead a few miles away who suffers from a strange fever, and the only thing that helps her is a brew made from the bark of a tree that doesn’t grow in Domne. It grows in the Care of Armigite. That has something to do with me.

“If you asked me to save the world, I wouldn’t know how.

“King Joyse knows how. Or he thinks he does, anyway.”

Terisa thought that perhaps King Joyse and his old friend had more in common than the Domne appeared to realize. Problems should be solved by those who see them. But she preferred the Domne’s way of doing it. Controlling her tendency to get angry whenever she thought about the King, she inquired, “Then why are you friends?”

“I’m not sure I can explain it,” he said musingly. “We need each other.

“When I first met him – when he chased away the minor Cadwal prince who had been using the Care of Domne as his private vassalage for the better part of a decade and set us free – I hadn’t thought to refuse anything. I had as much fire in my blood as any young man who had just been released from a servitude he hated, and I seem to recall that I was perfectly willing to start learning how to use a sword.

“But when I actually met him—

“Terisa, that smile of his went right through my heart. As if it came down to me from the sky, I knew that I loved him. And I knew that the Care of Domne was never going to be what I wanted it to be if he didn’t protect it. And I knew that he needed something from me – something he wasn’t going to be able to get from anybody else.”

“Like what?”

“Balance,” replied the Domne distinctly. “He needed balance. He wanted to save the world. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Men who want to save the world – and who make a few mistakes – become tyrants. The things they really want and love slip out of their fingers, and they end up clinging to the power because it’s all they have left. The possibility was written all over him. He was the brightest and keenest man I had ever met – the kind of man who just naturally makes you want to lie down in the dirt for him – and I simply couldn’t bear the idea that he might go too far and turn all the good in him rotten.

“It all came to me in a burst, like a sunrise. And it terrified me, because if I refused him he might just ride away and leave the Care of Domne to fend for itself. But it was necessary. We needed each other.

“He rode into Houseldon, as bright as a new day, but I stood my ground as if I had the right to it. ‘Well, my lord Domne,’ he said with that smile, wringing my heart because until he came I’d never believed that I would be lord of my own land, ‘you’re free. At least for a while. How many men can you give me?’

“ ‘None, my lord King,’ I said.

“ ‘What, none?’ He stopped smiling. I seem to remember he put his hand on his sword.

“I was terrified, but I said, ‘This is the foaling season. I need every man I have.’

“He was angry, furious. But he was also perplexed. ‘Let me understand you,’ he said. ‘Domne has been butchered back and forth between Alend and Cadwal for generations. You’ve been a vassal yourself your entire life until today. And all you care about is your sheep?’

“I swear to you, Terisa, his anger nearly blinded me. And I was getting a crick in my neck from staring up at him. ‘I didn’t say that, my lord King,’ I replied. ‘You asked how many men I can send away to be killed in your wars. The answer is, none. I need help with my foals.’

“He really has very little sense of humor. But he has a wonderful sense of joy. Or had. Instead of splitting my head open, he started to laugh.

“That night, we had one of the best feasts I’ve ever attended. I thought he was going to laugh for days. He kept saying, ‘Sheep. Sheep,’ and falling out of his chair.

“We’ve been friends ever since.”

Terisa was surprised to find that she felt like crying. She knew what King Joyse’s smile was like. From the first, she had wanted to like him, please him; she had wanted to serve him. The Domne reminded her of that – and of the fact that it was impossible. King Joyse himself had made it impossible.

In a soft voice, she asked, “And now? Are you still friends now?” After what he did to Nyle and Geraden and his own daughters? After what he’s doing to the Congery and Mordant?

Slowly, the Domne turned his head, shifted his gaze from the window to look at her. His eyes seemed partially blind – adjusted to the brightness outside and unable to make her out clearly.

“He isn’t responsible for Nyle’s choices. He isn’t even responsible for Castellan Lebbick’s sanity. Both of them could have trusted him. At the same time, he went to a lot of trouble to keep you and Geraden as safe as he could.

“He’s still my friend, Terisa. We need each other. Do you really want me to turn my back on him?”

After a while, she found that she was able to say, “No.” In spite of her anger, she had no intention of turning her own back on the King.

THIRTY-THREE: PEACE IN HOUSELDON

She was determined to do something for Geraden.

Unfortunately, she didn’t know what.

In an odd way, her conversation with the Domne had crystallized her resolve. At the same time, the things he had revealed about his family and King Joyse hadn’t shed any useful light. So she wanted to help Geraden. Good: so what? When she got right down to it, what could she actually say to him? Don’t be so hurt, it isn’t worth it? Nonsense. Snap out of it, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself? Ridiculous. I’m sure you can beat Master Eremis if you put your mind to it? Perfect.

Thinking about him wrung her heart, but she didn’t know what to do.

Soon the Domne became even less helpful. Gazing out the window with his arms folded over his lean chest, he slipped abruptly into a nap. He was older than he looked, after all. Terisa studied his posture for a moment to make sure that he wasn’t about to fall out of his chair. Then she got to her feet; she wanted to go outside and see more of Houseldon.

Before she reached the door, it opened, and a man came in off the porch.

He was brown: that was her first impression. Years of outdoor labor had left his skin the same deep color as his leather jerkin and breeches. His hair was the color of the new mud on his old boots. And his eyes were nearly the same hue as his skin and clothes; they seemed to get lost in his general brownness. In fact, most of the details of his face and expression were blurred. Behind the brown, he looked like a cross between a turnip and a fence post.

But then he smiled – shyly, almost deferentially – and his smile pulled his features into definition. Immediately, it became obvious that he was one of Geraden’s brothers.

He glanced at the Domne, saw that his father was asleep. Gesturing for silence, he put a hand on Terisa’s arm and drew her outside. As soon as they reached the porch, however, he let go of her as if he felt his touch was presumptuous and had only risked it to avoid disturbing the Domne. He even backed a step or two away from her.

“Hello, Terisa,” he said earnestly, without quite meeting her eyes. “I’m Minick. Geraden sent me to get you.”

“Hello, Minick,” she replied. “I’m glad to meet you.”

As if she had surprised him, he asked, “You are?”

She nodded. “I’m glad to meet Geraden’s family. I’m glad to be in Houseldon – in the Care of Domne.” This was so true that she didn’t know how to explain it. “I’ve wanted to meet all of you for a long time.”

Minick seemed to recognize the inadequacy behind her words. “Well, I’m glad to meet you, too. I wasn’t sure before. I don’t like it when Geraden’s unhappy. But now I am.”

He baffled her a bit. “What makes you sure?”

He indicated the house with a lift of one shoulder. “You were in the room with the Domne,” he explained, “and now he’s taking a nap. He trusts you. So you must be all right. You aren’t the reason Geraden’s unhappy.”

Minick’s confidence was so unjustified that Terisa felt compelled to say, “It’s probably more complicated than that. Sometimes I think I am the reason he’s unhappy – sort of. I have a lot to do with a lot of things that hurt him.”

“No.” Minick shook his head mildly. “It isn’t complicated. You’re like him. He always thinks things are complicated. But they aren’t. Important things are simple. He needs somebody to love him. That’s simple. The Domne trusts you. That’s simple. So now I can be glad to meet you, when I wasn’t sure before.”

Unexpectedly, she found herself relaxing. “I guess you’re right.” A world of difficulties apparently evaporated when Minick touched them. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Let’s go see Geraden.”

“Oh, no.” Minick became suddenly serious. “That isn’t what he wants. He’s too busy.” For a second, the brown man almost shuddered. “When he gets like this, he yells at people a lot. He thinks they’re fast. He’s fast, and he thinks they are, too. But they aren’t fast. They’re just farmers and shepherds. They’re like me. They like having things explained to them.”

The thought of Geraden ranting with impatience was so incongruous that Terisa nearly laughed aloud. At the same time, it gave her a pang. Poor man, he must be almost out of his mind. Deliberately, she controlled herself. “I don’t understand. I thought you said he sent you to get me.”

Minick nodded. “He did. I thought he was just making an excuse to send me away. But since you’re glad to be here I guess I was wrong.

“He sent me to show you around. The Domne can’t walk very far, and Tholden is too busy, and Quiss prefers to stay at home with Ruesha. Geraden said, ‘She likes tours. She might like a tour of Houseldon.’ So I came to get you.”

Terisa accepted the suggestion, despite the vexed spirit in which Geraden had probably made it. She understood how he felt. And she wanted to see more of Houseldon. She suspected – in an entirely uncritical way – that there wasn’t a great deal to see. On the other hand, if Master Eremis launched an attack soon, she might need to know everything she could learn about the Domne’s Seat.

Giving Minick a smile which would have astonished Reverend Thatcher – or her father – she went with him to explore Houseldon.

In fact, there was more to see in Houseldon than she had expected. At any rate, Minick thought there was a great deal to see. And he liked to see it all thoroughly, with an attention to detail which was both loving and analytical. For instance, Houseldon contained no less than three livery stables to accommodate the numbers of people who came here from all over the Care, as well as from other regions of Mordant. Each of these was exactly what it claimed to be: a place where horses were left and cared for while their masters transacted business, visited relatives, appealed for justice, pursued crafts or apprenticeships. Yet to Minick each was worth looking at closely; each had virtues and drawbacks which required evaluation; each prospered or declined according to factors which he took pains to understand.

And he was a motherlode of information. He knew exactly where all the drainage pipes had been laid, and when, and how many square yards of leachfield they required. He knew who had first conceived the idea of trussing the eaves-thatch of the roofs with that particular kind of binding, and why it was superior to the way eaves-thatch used to be trussed. He knew where Houseldon’s supplies of tallow came from, and how long they would last in an emergency. And he knew every child he saw by name, parentage, and predilection for mischief.

In a short time, Terisa realized that she had only two choices. She could cut off the tour now, before he drove her to distraction. Or she could relax and let him do whatever he wanted. With him there wasn’t any middle ground.

Well, that fit, she mused. In their separate ways, Geraden, Artagel, and Nyle were all intolerant of middle ground. Wester was said to be a fanatic about wool. Stead couldn’t keep his hands off women. Geraden had called Tholden a compulsive fertilizer. The Domne himself had given up on middle ground when he first met King Joyse. Why should Minick be any different?

Just for a minute, she considered stopping him – telling him that she had had enough, going her own way. But then she noticed that in his company she did very little except smile; he filled her alternately with amusement and affection. He was perfectly capable of distinguishing precisely between good workmanship and bad, sensible husbandry and careless, forethought and its absence; but he liked everybody around him; he loved the details he expounded for her. The more he talked, the more gentle and companionable he seemed. And the more she listened, the more she could feel her tensions and fears going to sleep.

Instead of stopping, she relaxed and let him give her the whole tour.

As a result, the day seemed to evaporate the way complexities did when he analyzed them. He began showing her around a little before noon – and then the shadows were slanting toward late afternoon, and her legs hurt gently with so much walking and standing, and her boots had rubbed a sore place onto one of her toes, and her heart was full of rest for the first time since she could remember. Minick wasn’t just amusing, likable, and meticulous: he was a healer. Somewhere in Houseldon, she knew, preparations were being made for battle – but they didn’t come near him; he seemed to carry peace with him wherever he went. Now, she thought, all she needed was one really good night’s sleep, and then she would be ready to start thinking again.

So when he brought her back to the Domne’s house and started to say good-bye, she didn’t want him to leave. “Where are you, going?” she asked to forestall him.

This time his grin was shy in a new way, self-conscious about things which hadn’t come up before. “I like to go home before supper,” he murmured, “and play with the children for a while. It gives their mother a chance to cook. And it uses up some of their energy so they go to bed more easily.”

The thought of this earnest brown man playing with his children delighted her – and reminded her that during the whole afternoon he hadn’t said anything personal about himself or his life. Maybe he would have considered it presumptuous to talk about himself. Impulsively, because he had done her so much good and hadn’t asked her for anything, she leaned forward and thanked him with a quick kiss.

His eyes widened; he stared at her for a moment. Then he ducked his head as if he were blushing.

“I think I’m not going to tell my wife you did that,” he said softly. “She might not be pleased.” It was obvious that he was enormously pleased. “I like her to be pleased. She’s the only other woman who’s ever been so patient with me.

“Good-bye, Terisa.”

After he left, she went up the steps, across the porch, and into the bustle of Quiss’ cooking. Her cheeks ached from smiling so much. Clearly, those muscles needed the exercise.

The scene in the front room stopped her as soon as she came through the doorway.

Quiss was stirring what looked like enough stew to feed half of Houseldon. Her cheeks were red from heat and exertion; sweat made her hair stick to the sides of her face in streaks. Behind her, servants clattered around the room, setting platters, utensils, and pitchers on the table, bringing pots and tureens and trays from a back kitchen Terisa hadn’t seen – and talking to each other loudly through the din. The Domne and Tholden sat together at the end of the table, discussing something intently, raising their voices to make themselves heard. In one corner of the room, a boy perhaps fifteen years old and a girl somewhat younger were arguing hotly; but the only part of their discussion Terisa could make out was the part that went: Did so. Did not. Did so! Did not! Another boy, this one no older than eight or nine, sat near Tholden trying to sharpen a wooden sword with a piece of tile for a whetstone. A third, still-younger boy used a stick the size of a club to experiment with the resonant qualities of a tin wash basin.

For a second, the clamor seemed so intimidating – so at odds with the peace inside her – that Terisa almost turned away. Nothing in her life with her parents, or in her life alone, had prepared her for a home where people acted like this.

But then Quiss raised her head, saw Terisa, and smiled.

Quiss’ pleasure changed the meaning of the din altogether. Or changed the way Terisa saw it. All this noise and activity wasn’t angry, distressed, or alarmed, didn’t represent pain: it was just loud. As soon as Quiss smiled, Terisa knew that Tholden’s wife was in her element, flourishing precisely because her family and her household were so busy, so noisy; so full of themselves and each other. And then Terisa understood that the tumult was just another form of peace – hot and hectic, of course; not particularly restful to a novice like herself; but completely without fear.

Smiling back at Quiss, she came forward to meet the noise.

“I understand you spent the afternoon with Minick.” Quiss was nearly shouting, but Terisa could hardly hear her. “The whole afternoon? Letting him show you around?”

Terisa nodded.

“Good for you. I knew I liked you as soon as I saw you. He’s your friend for life. Most people aren’t willing to listen to him that long.”

“They ought to give it a try.” Terisa tried to speak loudly enough to be audible. “He’s nice.”

It was Quiss’ turn to nod. “Fortunately, his nieces and nephews dote on him.” She indicated the children at the other end of the room. “I mean, fortunately for them.

“If his wife weren’t so shy, he’d be here tonight. I know it saddens him sometimes that he can’t spend more time with us. But I think the poor woman panics every time she sets foot outside her house.” Quiss started to laugh, but Terisa couldn’t hear what her laughter sounded like through the noise. “They must have had a rousing courtship.”

Terisa grinned again, then raised her hands to rub the muscles in her cheeks.

A serving woman appeared in front of her, carrying a foaming tankard on a tray. “Do you like ale? My husband brews for the Domne. You won’t find a better ale in the Care.”

“Thanks.” Terisa didn’t know anything about ale, but she knew she was thirsty; she accepted the tankard and sampled it. The serving woman watched her while she discovered that the ale had a bite which wasn’t quite sour, wasn’t quite bitter, but which seemed to be both. After a second taste, however, the flavor had improved dramatically. Soon it became wonderful. She beamed her approval, and the serving woman went away delighted.

“Terisa!” Tholden gestured to her. She went over to him, and he pulled out a chair for her. “Sit down. I want to tell you what we’re doing to get ready. Maybe you can think of something I’ve forgotten.”

The Domne looked a little skeptical; he may have been sensitive to her general bewilderment. Nevertheless he nodded as if he also wanted to hear what she might say. At once, Tholden began to describe his specific arrangements for the possibility of battle.

She couldn’t absorb them. In fact, she only heard every third word; the rest of his explanation was lost in a chorus directed at the Domne: Da, it’s her fault, No, it’s his fault, She did it first, He did it first! And she couldn’t help noticing that even the Domne appeared more interested in the bickering of the children than in Tholden’s preparations. Feeling vaguely irresponsible – but not enough to worry about it – she said once, “Maybe it’ll be quieter after supper,” then drank her ale and stopped trying to listen.

The chaos of getting supper ready seemed to approach a climax as an inner door burst open and a squall of children blew into the room. They were all about Ruesha’s size and age – too many of them too close together in age to belong to any one family. Or any three families. They were all buck naked, full of glee, and glistening with water. And they were followed by Geraden, dripping copiously. He had a couple of towels in his hands, but they were too wet to be much use.

“Come back here, you little monsters!” he roared. “I’m going to towel you until your heads fall off!”

Squealing with delight, small, naked bodies scattered in all directions.

Terisa hadn’t seen Geraden for most of the day. She looked at him eagerly, and saw at once that he was still clenched and dour, knotted inside himself. Perhaps for the sake of the children, however, he had pushed his hardness into the background. Or perhaps they elicited that response from him involuntarily: perhaps it was something they did for him, rather than he for them.

It was enough. She could wait for more until they had a better opportunity together. Giving him her best smile, whether he noticed it or not, she relaxed and let the clamor continue to grow on her, like a milling and vociferous form of contentment.

Quiss, Tholden, and the servants snatched up wet children indiscriminately; soon all of Geraden’s victims were caught in adult arms. Stifling a laugh, Quiss said to one of the serving women, “Your boys are responsible for this.”

“I beg your pardon,” the woman protested in tart amusement. “I’m sure Ruesha is the cause. She’s the most notorious truant in Houseldon. Ask anyone.”

“They’re all monsters!” growled Geraden. “They’re all going to suffer horribly when I get my hands on them!” Doing his best wild gorilla imitation, he began stalking children.

With the help of three or four servants, he succeeded in herding his fugitives from torture and cleanliness out of the room.

If he hadn’t been so busy – and if she hadn’t been so comfortably settled with her tankard of ale – Terisa would have gone after him. She felt an unaccountable desire to kiss him far more seriously than she had kissed Minick.

He came back after a while to join his family – and half a dozen men who arrived in the meantime – for supper. These men were the leaders of teams which had been organized to perform various functions during the defense of Houseldon. As soon as the meal was over, and the table had been cleared, the talk turned to the subject that seemed to be uppermost in everyone’s mind, except Terisa’s: what kind of attack was coming, and when, and how to meet it.

Geraden described a few of the uses of Imagery which Master Eremis had already made against Mordant; and the men quickly lost whatever self-confidence they had brought with them to the Domne’s house. Finally, one of them asked almost timidly, “Is there anything you can do?”

He shook his head. “Not until I get a chance to make a mirror.”

“But how can such things be fought?” another man inquired. “What can we do?”

“We’re already doing it,” the Domne said flatly, as if he were sure. “Everything that can be done. We’re doing it.”

Without looking at her, Geraden added, “Just hope the lady Terisa is wrong. Just hope he gives us a little time. Today we got ready. Tomorrow I’ll fire up a furnace and start mixing sand.”

To her own surprise as much as anyone else’s, Terisa got up and left the room.

She didn’t want to hear it, that was all: she just didn’t want to hear it. She was too recently come from Orison – from the Castellan’s distrust and Eremis’ cunning and Gilbur’s violence. She hadn’t had any sleep except for the short rest which had come over her unexpectedly in the grass below the Closed Fist. And the sense of peace inside her was fragile; it would collapse if she let herself get caught up in the anxiety of Houseldon’s defenders, if she let herself get caught up in her own concern for Geraden. Sleep, that was what she needed, not all this talk. In the morning, she would be readier – maybe braver.

Nodding to the servants she encountered along the way, she retreated to Artagel’s room.

It was dark. For a moment, she thought about asking someone for help; then she remembered where one of the room’s lamps was. On a small table at the head of the bed. She went to it by the light from the open door, picked it up and brought it back to the doorway. Another lamp hung on the wall outside; she used it to light the lamp in her hands. When it was burning brightly, she entered the room again and closed the door.

A second lamp lit from the first helped fill the room with a comforting yellow glow. Amazing how nice Artagel’s cot looked in that light. She visited the bathroom, then took off her clothes and doused the lamp she had set across the room. The early spring chill in the air encouraged her to get into bed immediately, cover herself with clean sheets and sweet blankets.

At once, she knew she was right: this was what she needed. As soon as her head reached the pillow, the peace inside her seemed to rise up and swell outward. It reached through the house growing quiet around her; it reached out to Geraden and the men trying to plan Houseldon’s survival; it reached up into the deep heavens and across the Care toward Domne’s mountains.

Silence and rest spread so far in all directions that they carried her away.

She went to sleep in such sudden contentment that she forgot to extinguish the lamp on the small table at the head of the bed.

That was what saved her from rousing the household and embarrassing herself unnecessarily, that forgotten lamp. In the dark, she might have lost her head; might have screamed.

For the second time in her life, after she had been asleep for a while she felt herself being kissed.

A strong mouth began to nibble on her lips; a tongue slipped between them, searching for hers. A hand just cool enough to call attention to itself found her hip under the blankets, then rose in a long caress across her belly to her breasts. While the tongue probed her mouth more deeply, the hand began to play with her nipples.

Her eyes flew open. In one quick glimpse, she saw the curly hair and intent brown eyes of the man kneeling beside the cot to embrace her; she saw that he wasn’t Master Eremis or Castellan Lebbick, wasn’t Gilbur or anyone else who terrified her. So she didn’t scream. Instead, she swung her arms with all her strength in an effort to fling him away.

One of her elbows caught him squarely on the collarbone.

With a muffled yelp, he fell off her, sprawled to the floor. His arms tried to protect the bandages over his ribs and around his shoulders, but the fall sent a jolt through his fractured bones. For a moment, his back arched in real pain. Then he went limp on the floorboards.

Looking up at her and panting carefully as the pain receded, he murmured, “Terisa,” in a wounded tone, “what’re you doing? I just want to make love to you. You don’t need to hurt me.”

Now that she could see his whole face, she couldn’t mistake his resemblance to the rest of the Domne’s sons. Judging by his bandages, his cracked or broken ribs and collarbone, his crooked features, he must be Stead.

Glaring down at him angrily, she said the first thing that came into her head. “I thought you had too many broken bones to get out of bed.”

He gave up sounding wounded and experimented with a smile instead. “So did I. But that was before I saw you in the hall – outside my door. So I waited until everyone was asleep. Then I gave it a try. I guess a man can stand almost anything if he wants to badly enough.”

When she didn’t reply, he asked, “Will you help me up? I really am hurt, and the floor is hard.”

Fortunately, he was wearing a pair of light cotton sleeping trousers below his bandages. If he had been naked, she might have had trouble keeping her composure. Under the circumstances, however, she was able to look at him squarely and say, “If you try to get up, I’m going to kick you until you wish you hadn’t.”

But as soon as she said that she nearly started laughing. She had once threatened to kick Geraden. In fact, she had kicked him. To make him stop apologizing.

“That isn’t kind,” Stead protested. His expression was lugubrious for a moment. But then another thought occurred to him, and he grinned. “On the other hand, it might be worth it. You won’t be able to get out of that bed to kick me without letting me see what you look like. The way you walk makes me think you must look glorious.” His grin sharpened. “I’ve never been turned down by a woman who let me catch even a glimpse of her breasts.”

“In that case” – her desire to laugh was getting stronger – “I won’t kick you. I won’t get out of bed at all.” Stead looked astonishingly like Geraden trying to do an imitation of Master Eremis – with limited success. Keeping herself carefully covered with her blankets, she sat up and indicated the lamp. “I’ll just throw burning oil at you.”

Stead didn’t appear to take this threat very seriously. “No, you won’t.”

In an effort to stifle her mirth, she glowered back at him. “What makes you think that?”

“You don’t really want to hurt me.” With no arrogance at all, he explained, “What you really want is a man.”

She stared at him. “I do?”

He nodded. “Every woman does. That’s what men and women are for. First they want each other. Then they get into bed and enjoy each other.”

That sounded dangerously plausible. She countered by asking, “What about Geraden? He’s your brother, after all. And I came here with him. Don’t you consider him a man?”

“Ah, Geraden.” Stead’s smile seemed genuinely affectionate. “Of course I consider him a man. If you want my opinion, he’s the best one of us all. Oh, he isn’t half the farmer Tholden is. He isn’t half the shepherd Wester is. He isn’t half the swordsman Artagel is. And he sure doesn’t know anything about women. But he’s still the best.

“But that’s not the point, is it?” he continued rhetorically. It was remarkable how little arrogance he had in him, how little assumption of superiority. He didn’t belittle anyone. “The point is, you don’t consider him a man.”

Terisa’s mouth fell open. She closed it with an effort. Suddenly, the situation wasn’t funny anymore. “I don’t?”

“You came here with him. He worships every inch of you. If you thought of him as a man, you’d be in his room right now.” Nothing in Stead’s tone suggested the slightest criticism of Geraden – or of her. His view of the situation was essentially impersonal.

“There must be someone else you want.”

Holding her gaze, he began to ease himself up from the floor. Every moment was obviously painful to him, but the pain only accentuated the appeal in his eyes.

“I think you want me,” he murmured. “I certainly want you.”

There was something of Master Eremis in the way he looked at her, an intensity of interest which hypnotized. And he had distinct advantages over the Master. He wouldn’t demean her. He wouldn’t do anything cruel.

“I started wanting you as soon as I saw you,” he said as he got his feet under him. “Your lips cry out for kisses. Breasts like yours should be fondled until they give you bliss. The place of passion between your legs aches to be pierced. Terisa, I want you. I want to revel in you until your joy is as great as mine.”

Upright despite the way his ribs and collarbone hurt, he moved gently toward her.

He had some of Master Eremis’ magnetism. And his desire was less threatening than the Master’s.

At the same time, he forced her to think of Geraden.

If you thought of him as a man—

She dropped the blankets. Stead’s eyes grew bright, and he reached toward her, but she ignored him. Fending his arms away, she left the bed and crossed the room to her clothes.

“Terisa?”

The shirt and skirt Quiss had given her weren’t warm enough to hold out the chill. They were warm enough for the time being, however; she didn’t want to spend time looking for an alternative. And the boots helped.

Stead came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. “Terisa?”

She turned to face him. “Take me to Geraden’s room.”

He frowned in puzzlement. “Geraden’s room? Why do you want to go there? He doesn’t want you. He thinks he does, but he doesn’t really. If he did, he would be here already.”

Terisa shook her head; she knew Geraden better than that. “Stead,” she said quietly, “I’m not going to threaten you. I’m not going to kick you – or set you on fire. I just don’t want you.

“Take me to Geraden’s room.”

Stead blinked at her. “You don’t mean that.”

Taking care not to hurt him, she moved around him toward the door. Outside, the lamps had been extinguished. She returned to the table at the head of the bed and took the lamp. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “You might as well sleep here. I won’t be back.”

She was out the door and had started to close it before she heard him pant, “Terisa, wait,” and come shuffling after her.

His injuries prevented him from walking quickly; he took a moment to catch up with her. Then he braced himself against the door and paused to rest. His expression didn’t make sense to her. Behind the strain of movement, he seemed sadder than she’d expected – and happier.

“Quiss always refuses me,” he said, breathing carefully. “I don’t understand that. I’ve tried to tell her how much I want her. That’s all that matters. But she always refuses.

“I have to admit, though” – by degrees, his happiness took over his face – “she certainly makes me think well of Tholden.

“Geraden’s room is that way.” Grinning, he pointed down the hall.

Now she found it easy to smile back at him. To help him walk, she slipped her arm through his. That appeared to confuse him – but of course he had no way of knowing how much he was improved by the comparison to Master Eremis. In any case, he let her assist him, and they went down the hall like old friends.

Past two corners and down a long passage, Stead stopped in front of another door. “Here,” he murmured softly. Then he put his arm around her waist and hugged her. Touching his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather come with me? No matter how much he worships you, he can’t want you more than I do.”

Gently, she disentangled herself. “Go away,” she replied as kindly as she could. “This is too important.”

He sighed; nodded; shook his head in bafflement. But he didn’t argue. A bit morosely, he turned and began to shamble down the hall, holding his arms protectively across his ribs.

She waited until he was out of sight around the corner. Then, before she had a chance to lose her nerve, she lifted the door latch and let herself into the room.

By the light of her lamp, she saw that Stead had brought her to the right place. In the wide bed against the far wall, Geraden sprawled among his blankets. Judging by appearances, he had lost a fierce struggle with his covers; now he lay outstretched in defeat, snoring slightly on the battlefield.

Asleep, his face gave up its bitter hardness, the iron of despair. He looked young and vulnerable, and inexpressibly dear. She wanted to go to him immediately and put her arms around him, hold him close to her heart, comfort away everything that hurt him. At the same time, she wanted to let him sleep – let him rest and dream until all his distress was healed. She shut the door behind her gently, so that he wouldn’t be disturbed.

But the lamp woke him. He didn’t flinch, or jerk himself out of bed; he simply opened his eyes, and yellow light reflected back at her. Without transition, he no longer looked young or vulnerable. He looked poised and deadly, like a wounded predator.

Master Eremis had understood from the beginning how dangerous Geraden was. All at once, the Master’s policy toward him made sense to her.

“Geraden,” she murmured in sudden confusion, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Or I guess I did. I don’t know why I came. I couldn’t stay away.”

Then, mercifully, he sat up, and the change in his position changed the way the light caught his eyes. He relapsed to the Geraden she knew: hard and hurt, closed like a fist around the sources of his pain; but nonetheless human, precious to her.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. “There’s so much we need to talk about.”

Like Stead, he was dressed only in a pair of sleeping trousers; apparently, he didn’t feel the cold as much as she did. He didn’t get up from the bed or reach out to her. Yet when he spoke his voice sounded like the voice she remembered: capable of kindness; accessible to pain or hope.

“After supper – after you left – I went to see Minick. I wanted to apologize for yelling at him. People shouldn’t yell at him, even though he never gets angry about it.

“Do you know what he said? He said, ‘I spent the afternoon with your Terisa. She’s nice. If you make her unhappy, you won’t be welcome in my house anymore.’ Minick said that, my mild brother who never gets angry.”

Geraden shrugged. “I didn’t tell him that I’ve already made you unhappy.”

“No,” she replied at once, “that’s not true,” reacting too quickly for thought. “How can you say that?”

He watched her impassively. “I look at you, Terisa. I see the way you look at me.”

“And what do you see?”

He held her eyes, but he didn’t answer.

“I like your family,” she protested. “I feel comfortable in Houseldon. Ever since you talked me into leaving my old life, you’ve done more to make me happy than anyone else I’ve ever known. How can you—?”

She stopped. It would have been nice if he’d had a fire in his room: she needed an external source of warmth. The darkness beyond the lamplight seemed full of sorrow. Making a special effort to speak calmly, she continued, “Geraden, I think I probably could have made that mirror translate me anywhere. Anywhere I could visualize – anywhere vivid enough in my mind.” And I just came from Stead. He touched my breasts. He wanted to make love to me. “Why do you think I’m here?”

His eyes didn’t waver. “You’re here because you think I’m wrong. You think I should have stayed in Orison to fight. You think there are still things I can do against Eremis.”

As he said that, she suddenly knew she had to be very careful with him. Maybe it was true that he had become iron. But iron was brittle; he might break. He was blaming himself—She wanted to cry out, Oh, Geraden, are you blaming yourself? For Eremis and Gilbur? For the Castellan? For Nyle and Quillon? Are you blaming yourself because some of the best minds around you worked so hard to keep you from understanding your talent? But she couldn’t say that to him. He would just turn away. More than ever, she couldn’t bear the idea that he would turn away.

Softly, she asked, “Why do you believe I think you’re wrong?”

“I told you.” The kindness was gone from his voice. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“What do you see?” she insisted. “What do you see in my eyes?”

For a long moment, he hesitated. Then he said roughly, “Pain.”

She thought she might feel better if she hit him. She might feel even better if she put her arms around him. Yet she stayed where she was, with her back to the door, holding the only light in the room.

“That’s how I know I’m real. Master Eremis says I was created by your mirror, but that can’t be true. If I didn’t exist, I couldn’t be hurt.”

“Terisa.” He swallowed hard. She had touched him: she thought she could see grief shifting behind the rigid lines of his face. “Nobody says you don’t exist. Not even Master Eremis. You’re here. You’re real. Everything you do has consequences. The question is, were you real before I translated you?”

Automatically, she wanted to ask, Have you changed your mind? Do you still think I was real – back where you found me? But she pushed that question down.

“I must have been,” she said. King Joyse had told her to reason. “If the place I came from was only created by the mirror you saw me in, then that must be true of every mirror, every Image. So when you look in a flat glass, you don’t actually see a real place. You see a created copy of a real place. So when I translated myself into the Image of the Closed Fist, I shouldn’t have arrived in a real place. I should have arrived in the copy – a different copy than the one you went to. I should have stopped being real myself until somebody translated me back out again.

“Isn’t that right?”

The light of the lamp was imprecise, but she seemed to see a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. The shadows there deepened as he listened to her. The sight caused her heart to accelerate a bit.

“That’s good,” he said. “I wish I’d come up with that argument myself. But I don’t think it’s enough. Eremis will just say, That’s why translations through flat glass produce madness. The only translation that can be done safely is one between the real world and a created Image. Reality is too powerful to tolerate the manipulations of Imagery.” In spite of his clenched condition, he began to sound more like his old self as he talked – more like he was interested in the discussion for its own sake. “So the closer a created Image gets to reality, the more dangerous it becomes. And when the Image actually copies reality, reality takes precedence. It rips the translation away from the Image, and the force of that distortion is what causes madness.”

She hung on the change in his tone, hoped for it to continue. Almost at once, however, he closed himself again. “Terisa, you didn’t come here in the middle of the night to debate the ethics of Imagery.”

“Is that right?” Pained to feel the side of him she wanted to nurture slipping away, she made a mistake. “To you it’s just a debate. To me it’s my life. I can’t make sense out of who I am unless I know the truth.”

Right away, she knew she’d gone wrong: his gaze dropped from hers; his eyes filled up with shadows. He didn’t need to be reminded that other people were suffering: he was already too sensitive to that; he already believed he had made her unhappy. But she refused to back down. She had come too far to retreat. Instead, she changed tactics.

“If I wasn’t real until you brought me out of that mirror of yours, how did I become an arch-Imager?”

He didn’t lift his head. In a muffled voice, he said, “You know I don’t believe that. That’s Eremis, not me.”

Unexpectedly angry, she retorted, “Wake up. What do you think we’re talking about here?” She put the lamp down on a nearby table to free her hands, as if she were getting ready to wrestle with him. “Why do you think who I am and where I come from matters? What he believes is going to affect everything he does to both of us.

“Tell me how I became an arch-Imager.”

Now Geraden raised his eyes. Studying her closely – and holding himself completely still, as though he feared what she might do if he moved – he replied, “I created you. When I shaped my glass, I made you.” Almost silently, he caught his breath in surprise and recognition; the implications took him aback. “I have the capacity to create arch-Imagers.”

“Not just arch-Imagers,” she amended for him. “Arch-Imagers who can shift glass the way you do, arch-Imagers who can work translations that are irrelevant to what you see in the Image.”

“I could create a whole army of them. A whole army of Imagers as powerful as Vagel. He wouldn’t stand a chance.” Staring at her – at the ideas she proposed – Geraden murmured, “No wonder he wants me dead.”

“And that’s not all.” Gripping her courage, Terisa took the risk. “How does he know you don’t have glass here?”

Geraden jerked his head back, glowered at her in astonishment or dismay. “What—?”

“How does he know” – she forced herself to complete the thought, even though Geraden’s expression made her feel that she was accomplishing the opposite of what she wanted – “you aren’t busy creating an army of arch-Imagers right now?”

She horrified him. What a pleasure. All she wanted was to help him – to comfort or encourage the Geraden who had gotten lost and become iron – and what did she achieve? Horror. For a moment, he was so shocked that the lamplight made him look as pale as bone. Then he sprang off the bed, rushed to her and caught her by the shoulders, groaned through his teeth as if he were stifling a wail, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

She stared at him dumbly.

“He’ll send everything he’s got after me. If he catches me here, he’ll reduce Houseldon to rubble to get at me.”

It had to be said. She had gone too far to turn back. And this was the point, wasn’t it? The reason she had brought the subject up in the first place? Distinctly, she remarked “He has to try that no matter what you do.”

He stared at her in dismay.

“He knows you’re here,” she said. “But he won’t know it when you leave. Unless he has a mirror that lets him see you here. If you run, he won’t know it until he’s destroyed Houseldon looking for you.

“I did that.” For a moment, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them back fiercely. “It’s my doing. When I told him about seeing the Closed Fist in your mirror, I set you up.

“You didn’t know you were coming here. I told him, but I didn’t tell you. You were just trying to escape – and hoping you wouldn’t end up somewhere you couldn’t get back from. He has to destroy Houseldon so that he can stop you, and I set you up for it.”

Geraden, it’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.

His face was thrust close to hers, his fingers ground into her arms; but she couldn’t seem to read his face. His passion was part of his skull, definitive under his features; yet the flesh over it was so tight and strict that she couldn’t distinguish between them.

When he spoke, however, his voice shook her as hard as if he had shoved her against the wall. It was strong, compulsory; it had the power to command her.

“Terisa, people I have known and loved all my life are going to die because I came here.”

I swore I was never going to let anybody I loved die ever again.

But there was nothing he could do. Houseldon was already as well prepared to defend itself as possible. He was helpless to save anything or anybody. Because he needed so much from her, she didn’t cry or apologize or defend herself or get angry. She faced him squarely and said, “I think I would probably feel better if you hit me.”

He looked like he might hit her: he was angry or desperate enough to hit something.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Slowly, she shook her head. At least he wasn’t closed anymore. She had achieved that much. And even fury was preferable to his rigid isolation, his mute hurt. “That’s not the point,” she countered. “It doesn’t matter. I just made a mistake, that’s all. I didn’t know how important all this is.” And later on she had been so embarrassed by her submission to Master Eremis that she found it impossible to speak.

“The point is, I had a choice.” It seemed loony to speak so calmly when he was in such distress. It seemed loony to prefer anyone’s anger. “I could have gone anywhere.” At the same time, her own misery inexplicably began to become something else, something that bore a crazy and astounding resemblance to joy. She could reach him – she could make him furious. Because of that, everything else was possible. “I chose to come here.

“Geraden, listen to me. Why do you suppose I chose to come here?”

He was so angry, so frightened for his home and family and friends, that he could hardly refrain from raging. Involuntarily, he bared his teeth. Yet he was still Geraden, still the man who had always done everything he could imagine for her. Panting at the effort he made to restrain himself, he said, “You tell me. Why?”

“No.” Again she shook her head. “Come on, think about it. Why did I come here?”

Through his passion, he rasped, “You didn’t know where else to go. To escape.”

“No. Come on, think. I could have gone anywhere. Prince Kragen would have been glad to have me. All I had to do was translate myself out of Orison. Anywhere outside the gates.”

Now she had him. It was strange how much power she had with him. Her mistakes might result in the complete destruction of his home and family: his reasons for outrage were that good. And yet he felt compelled to try to understand her.

He didn’t let go of her, but his fingers stopped grinding into her arms. With less fury, he said, “You wanted to warn me.”

“Yes.” She didn’t smile; yet the inexplicable joy in her started to sing. “I wanted to warn you.

“Why do you suppose I bothered? Why do you suppose I care what happens here? I didn’t know your family. I’d never been here before. Why do you suppose I was willing to come here and face you when I knew it was my fault you were in danger – when I knew you had every reason in the world to be angry at me or even hate me and there was nothing I could do to change any of it?”

Oh, she had him. She wanted to shout it out: she had him. He wasn’t iron now, closed and bitter. His fury had receded. He was scrutinizing her intently: perplexed, almost dumbfounded; fundamentally baffled by her; touched by hope.

“Think about it,” she murmured to keep herself from crowing aloud.

He opened his mouth, but no words came.

“You idiot. I did it because I love you.”

Then she reached her arms around his neck and pulled herself up to kiss him.

He took a moment to recover from the shock. Fortunately, he didn’t take too long. Before she could lose the elation singing through her, he clasped her to him and returned her kiss as if his answer came all the way up from the bottom of his soul.

The fabric of his sleeping trousers was so thin that she couldn’t mistake the way he felt about her, in spite of her inexperience. She kissed him for a long time while his arms strained around her. Then she eased back from his embrace and began to unbutton her shirt.

His eyes darkened, as if they were on fire with shadows. A bit awkwardly, she kicked off her boots. When she slipped the shirt from her shoulders and dropped her skirt, he caught his breath. Even the hair on his head seemed to burn with desire.

Abruptly, he jerked down his pants and took her to his bed.

He was almost devout in the way he kissed and touched her; torn between wonder and alarm, as if he wanted her so much that he didn’t trust himself. As a result, he was tentative when she most wished him to be sure. Master Eremis was right. During the Master’s brief stay in the dungeon after the summoning of the Congery’s champion, he had said to her, Whenever you think of another man, you will remember my lips upon your breasts. That was true: Geraden’s touch reminded her of the Imager – of his assurance, his willingness to take possession of her completely.

And yet Geraden conveyed an intensity that moved her deeply. She felt that she had spent most of her life waiting for this time in bed with him. She could do without assurance. They would learn what they needed to know together.

But it went wrong, the way everything went wrong for him. He had discovered his talent for Imagery too late, when he was no longer able to do anything with it. Now he discovered her love for him too late, he held her in his arms too late: he had lost the ability to do anything with her. Maybe his own inexperience made him too anxious. Maybe he couldn’t stop worrying about Houseldon and his family. She wasn’t sure what the reason was – and in a sense she didn’t care. She cared only that he swore under his breath and rolled away from her, lay on his back with his fists clenched at his sides and his muscles knotted, trying to withdraw into iron.

She watched him lock himself away from her, and her joy began to crumble. For a moment, she thought about weeping.

Then she got an idea.

With the tip of one finger, she stroked the hard line of his jaw. “Guess what,” she said as if they were engaged in a casual and even bantering conversation. “I’ve just thought of a reason to believe I’m really real.”

“I already believe it,” he muttered from the opposite side of the world. “You know that.”

“But you don’t know why,” she returned playfully. “That’s the trouble with you. You don’t have enough reasons. You just have your ‘strongest feelings’ – you do everything on faith.

“I’ll give you a reason.

“People like Eremis say I was created by Imagery. I came out of you and your talent when you made that mirror. But if that’s true, don’t you think you would have created a woman you could have an easier time making love with?”

She took him so entirely by surprise that he couldn’t stop himself. As unexpectedly as a shout, he burst out laughing.

And once he started to laugh he lost control.

“That’s perfect,” he gasped between gales of mirth. “I’m so confused I can’t figure out my own talent. I can’t help my family. Or my King. Or the woman I love. But that’s not enough for me. I’m not satisfied with just that.”

Briefly, she heard a note of hysteria in his laughter, and she nearly panicked. But the simple act of laughing seemed to clean the sorrow and self-pity out of him; the more he laughed, the more he relaxed.

“No, I’m so confused that when I create a woman to love I make her so perverse she accidentally betrays my whole life. Then she wants to bed me when I’m so scared I can hardly think.

“I don’t need enemies. As soon as I stop laughing, I’m going to kill myself.

“Oh, Terisa.”

He said her name as if it made him ache. Rolling back to her, he put his hands on the sides of her face to hold her and began kissing her again.

Unquestionably, his kisses lacked Master Eremis’ assured passion. But they were sweet and compelling, like the remembered call of horns. And when she remembered horns, the music came back into her.

This time, it went right.

It went right nearly until dawn. When she finally slept, she still clung to him like a promise that she was never going to let him go.

At dawn, the house stirred around them; but she and Geraden continued sleeping.

Fortunately, Houseldon wasn’t relying on Terisa and Geraden for vigilance. When the attack came, the men on watch spotted it immediately and raised the alarm.

Shouts echoed like wails among the houses and taverns, the livery stables and granaries. As fast as they could get out of bed, men spilled from their homes, clutching pitchforks and scythes, axes, shepherd’s crooks sharpened to resemble pikes, sledgehammers, knives and bucksaws, ordinary clubs, an occasional sword, and more than a few hunting bows. The Domne’s six trained bowmen took their command positions around the stockade almost instantly. Shouting for his canes, the Domne himself thrashed out of his twisted bedclothes.

Tholden was ahead of his father. The truth was that he had been too worried for sleep. After trying uselessly to rest until after midnight, he had gotten up, put on his clothes. If Quiss hadn’t restrained him, he would have gone to wear himself out pacing around the stockade to no purpose. But she had compelled him – almost by force – to sit down and drink a flagon of wine; she had kneaded the knots in his neck and shoulders and back until her hands ached; she had made love to him. After that, he pretended to sleep until she let down her guard. Then he got out of bed again.

He was in the front room stirring up the fire when he heard the alarm. Roaring in a voice that wasn’t made to convey anger or violence, he left the house. For a second, he wheeled, trying to find which direction the alarm came from. Then he set off at a run, his beard lifting in the dawn breeze.

Terisa groped awake, roused more by the way Geraden exploded out of bed than by the shouts. He seemed to jump unerringly into his clothes while she fumbled to follow him, catch up with him; he flung the door open before she had begun to button her shirt.

Nevertheless she did catch up with him. Out in the hall, he collided with Stead and had to stop to lift his injured brother off the floor. Stead clung to him for a moment. “Get me a knife,” he panted. “I can’t run anywhere. But I can fight here if I have to.”

“I’ll tell Quiss,” Geraden replied as he pulled away.

With Terisa beside him now, he reached the front room, shouted Stead’s message to Quiss, then dashed out of the house.

“Where?” he demanded of the first man he met.

The man looked too frightened to have any idea what he was doing. “West.”

“West,” Geraden muttered, thinking hard. “So it isn’t soldiers. Soldiers would come from the north. The northeast.”

Terisa saw what he was getting at; but her heart was pounding in her throat, and she couldn’t speak.

“Eremis is sending Imagery against us.”

She nodded. They ran west among the buildings.

Everyone was running west. Tholden’s instructions to Houseldon had been explicit: women and children, stay at home; anyone who was too young or too frail or too sick to fight, stay at home. Unfortunately, the folk of Domne had lost the habit of taking orders. The streets were crowded with people who shouldn’t have been there. Some of the men who were prepared or equipped or at least determined to fight had difficulty working their way through the throng.

But Tholden had replied to the alarm so quickly that he was ahead of the crowds; he didn’t know he was being imperfectly obeyed. He reached the guard post and climbed onto the platform where the man who had raised the alarm was on watch in time to see the whole attack clearly.

They came in without a sound except for the rush of their paws and the harsh murmur of their breathing: strange wolves with spines bristling down their curved backs, a double row of fangs in each slavering jaw, and something like intelligence in their wild eyes. Only a few dozen of them, Tholden thought when he first spotted them. Enough to ravage a herd of sheep. Or terrorize a farmstead. Not enough to threaten Houseldon. They won’t be able to get past the stockade.

Then the leader of the pack sprang at the wall.

The wolf seemed to come straight up at him. Leaping at least eight feet in the air, it got its forelegs over the wall. While its hind legs scrambled for a purchase on the wood, its jaws stretched toward his face.

For an instant more horrible than anything he had imagined, Tholden couldn’t move. He was a farmer, not a soldier: he didn’t know anything about fighting. Deep down in his heart, he had always believed there was something secretly crazy about people like Artagel, who went into battle with such fierce joy. The men standing on the platform with him had already flinched away. One of the bowmen rushed to bring up his bow. But Tholden just couldn’t move.

Then hot slaver splashed into his face as the fangs drew near, and something inside him shifted. Although he never thought about it, he was prodigiously strong, and his strength came to his rescue. He reached out, caught the wolf by the throat, and heaved it backward.

It fell among the pack, breaking the charge, preventing the wolves behind it from gathering themselves to spring. The pack burst into snarls – a raw, red sound, avid for blood. Jaws snapped. Then the wolves swirled around to regain their momentum so that they could leap.

“Bowmen!” the Domne’s son cried desperately, “get some arrows into those things! If they get over the wall—!”

Not fast enough. Already three wolves were leaping, four, six. And instead of attacking the guard post directly, they hurled themselves at a part of the wall where there were no immediate defenders.

He was appalled by the realization that these beasts knew what they were doing. They were at their most vulnerable while they tried to cross the top of the wall – so they moved out of reach.

But an arrow thudded into the chest of the nearest wolf. It fell away, coughing blood. While the bowman snatched up another shaft, someone below the platform threw a hatchet that buried itself between a pair of glaring, wild eyes. Someone else tried to use a pitchfork as if it were a javelin; the tines missed, but the wolf was forced to drop back.

Three down.

The other three got over the wall.

Tholden saw a farmer swing an axe and miss – saw him go down with his throat torn out by an effortless toss of the wolf’s head. Luckily, the next man struck a solid blow with a club, and the wolf wobbled. While the beast was still unsteady on its legs, one long sweep of a scythe disemboweled it.

Defenders arrived as quickly as the narrow streets and the crowds permitted. The second wolf over the wall ducked between two hostlers – who nearly brained each other trying to hit it – ripped open the best baker in Houseldon before he could raise his hands, then flung itself at a knot of young boys who had escaped from their mothers. But it went down when an ancient sword in the hands of an old man who remembered the wars struck between the spines protecting its back.

The third wolf took an arrow in its hindquarters from a terrified young apprentice bowman. As if it thrived on pain, it killed the young man, bit off another man’s hand at the wrist when the man tried to stab the creature with a knife, then raced down an alley toward the heart of Houseldon.

At the same time, more wolves sprang to the attack.

Only a few dozen of them, Tholden thought. He wanted to tear his hair.

A second bowman ran up from the guardpost where he had been stationed. Like his comrade, he began picking wolves off the top of the wall as fast as he could nock arrows to the string. But they were only two. Every time one of them reached for a new shaft, three or four beasts got into Houseldon.

Calling frantically for help, Tholden leaped off the platform.

The other bowmen were on their way, but hampered by the crowds. And the defenders at the scene of attack didn’t know how to fight an enemy like this; they got in each other’s way. In a sense, the wolves were losing. They would all be killed eventually. But if enough of them ran loose in the streets, they would do terrible carnage before they were hunted down.

And if they killed the bowmen—

Maybe the wolves wouldn’t lose.

Tholden snatched an axe from a man who obviously didn’t know how to use it effectively. Planting himself in the path of the wolves, he hewed at them as if they were nothing more than a stand of timber. He had no idea what else to do.

So he didn’t see what happened to the beasts that got past him. He didn’t see the arrival of the remaining bowmen, or the efforts they made to thin out the attack; he didn’t see the wall of defenders behind him crumble and fail as people panicked and fled and even men who knew how to wield their weapons went down.

On the other hand, he was one of the few people in a position to see that the wolves were only the vanguard of the attack.

No one else guessed that. No one else thought about it. The wolves were trouble enough. Cursing the folly which had taken them outside, women rushed back to their homes, hauling their children along behind them. Men dove into hiding. Flocks of chickens fled in a squall of feathers and fright, running crazily in all directions or battering their way heavily up to the rooftops. The whole west side of Houseldon was in disarray, instructions and defenses forgotten.

Suddenly, the street in front of Terisa and Geraden cleared, and they found themselves facing a beast with blood on its jaws and an arrow sticking out of its hindquarters.

The spines along its back made it look like a hedgehog of monstrous size. The double row of its fangs made it look like a great shark.

Terisa was reminded of riders with red fur and too many arms.

The wolf stopped, scented the air. Its eyes seemed to burn with the possibility of intelligence.

“It’s hunting us,” she said. At any rate, she thought she said that; she couldn’t tell whether she spoke aloud.

“When I push you,” Geraden whispered, “go for that house.” He nudged her slightly toward the nearest building. “Get inside. Close the door. Try to bolt it.”

The wolf began to snarl deep in his chest – a sound like a distant rumble of thunder.

“What’re you going to do?”

She must have spoken aloud. Otherwise he wouldn’t have answered.

“Same thing in the opposite direction.”

Automatically, she nodded, too frightened to do anything else.

As if her nod were a signal, the wolf sprang at them, slavering murderously.

Geraden hit her shoulder so hard that she stumbled and fell.

At least she fell out of the way of the beast’s charge. Trying frantically to bounce up from the ground, she jammed her legs under her, pounded up onto the porch of the house—

—whirled to see what was happening to Geraden.

He hadn’t made any attempt to do what she was doing. After pushing her aside, he had simply ducked. By the time the wolf checked its spring, landed, and came back at him, he was on his feet facing the creature, poised as if he intended to kick its brains out.

“Geraden!”

“Get in the house!”

So fast that she hardly saw it happen, he jumped sideways. The wolf flashed past him. She heard the savage click as jaws strong enough to crush bone tried to close on him. The sleeve of his jerkin burst into tatters.

But there was no blood. Yet.

Faster this time because its second charge had been less headlong, the wolf turned and went for him again.

If he had tripped, if he had missed his footing or misjudged the assault, he would have died. No one could do what he was doing, not for long. The arrow in the wolfs hindquarters wasn’t enough of a handicap. Nevertheless he dodged a third time – ripped himself out of the way, ducked and rolled, came to his feet to face the wolf again just as it gathered itself for another spring.

Blindly, stupidly, Terisa started back into the street to help him.

At that instant, a woman came out of the house in mortal terror. So scared that she could hardly control her limbs, she thrust a pitchfork into Terisa’s hands. Then she slammed the door behind her, slammed a bar into place against the door.

Terisa took the pitchfork without thinking. Wailing like a madwoman to distract the wolf, she leaped off the porch and did her utter best to spear the beast on the tines.

She missed. The wolf was too fast, too smart for her inexpert onslaught. When it came around at her, however, she was able to fend it off, almost by accident; it shied away from impaling itself on the pitchfork.

As if out of nowhere, the head of a cane whizzed through the air and cracked the wolf across the base of its skull.

Coughing a howl, the beast spun and hurled itself on the Domne.

Geraden yelped a helpless warning. Terisa froze, holding her weapon as if she had forgotten its existence.

The Domne couldn’t run or dodge. With his bad leg, he could scarcely hobble. But he had a cane in his other hand as well, and when the beast leaped at him he rammed the end of that stick down its throat.

At the same time, Geraden went past Terisa, tearing the pitchfork from her hands in one motion and hammering it into the wolf’s back with all his strength.

Spiked to the ground, the beast writhed for a moment, snarling horribly and spitting blood on the Domne’s boots. Then it lay still.

“Thank you, Father,” panted Geraden. “Glass and splinters! that was close. You shouldn’t take chances like that.”

The Domne balanced unsteadily on his feet. His face was white. Yet he contrived to speak calmly. “Someday,” he remarked, “you’re going to call me ‘Da.’ I think you’ll like it.”

Geraden shook his head as if he had lost his voice.

With one cane, the Domne prodded the body at his feet. “How many of them are there?”

“Enough to get past Tholden,” croaked Geraden.

Terisa had the vivid impression that she was about to faint. Fortunately, Geraden turned and caught her before her knees folded.

As the last wolf came over the stockade with an arrow in its heart, the bowman on the guardpost platform yelled, almost shrieked, “Tholden!” and Tholden gasped a curse because there was nothing else he could say while he retched for breath.

Half the pack had been slaughtered in front of him. Carcasses lay along the bottom of the wall, in piles on both sides of him, among the dead bodies of his people at his back. His axe was covered with blood; his hands and arms ran red; blood dripped from his beard and soaked his shirt. His eyes held a wildness of their own which bore no resemblance to the feral intelligence of the wolves. How many of them had gotten past him? He didn’t know. He didn’t know what the people of Houseldon were doing to defend themselves. He only knew that the bowman on the platform sounded frantic.

There was more. The wolves were only the vanguard.

Forcing himself into motion, he staggered to the guardpost, heaved his bulk up the ladder to the platform.

When he looked over the top of the stockade and saw what the bowman was pointing at, his first reaction was one of deflation, almost of disappointment.

Oh, is that all?

He was gazing across a hundred yards of open ground at a cat.

Just a cat. One cat. Nothing more.

The realization came to him slowly, however, that this cat was bigger than he was. It was at least as big as a horse. At least—

Then he noticed that wherever the cat put its paws the new grass and old leaves caught fire. It had already left a smoldering trail away into the distance, where the wolfpack had come from. And it was approaching – not rapidly, but without any hesitation – advancing as steadily and inevitably as a storm front.

“Tholden,” the bowman murmured like a prayer, “what is it?”

This was foolishness, really. Who was he to pretend that he could fill his father’s boots, that he could succeed as the next Domne? He didn’t understand anything about Imagery. The only real accomplishment of his life, from his point of view, was to figure out the best time of year and the best conditions to fertilize apricot trees. Unless he counted marrying Quiss, or having five children: his family was also an accomplishment that gave him pride.

“How many arrows do you have left?” he asked the bowman.

“None.” It was a question the man understood. “I’ll have to get them from the wolves.”

“Don’t bother. Go.” Tholden pushed him gently. “Get men for the water tubs. If that thing doesn’t just break the stockade, it’ll burn it down.”

The bowman clattered off the ladder, sped away. Tholden turned to the other bowmen, actually turned his back on the advancing firecat. “If you’re out of arrows,” he said as if he were speaking to a small circle of friends on an occasion of no great importance, “go rally Houseldon. We need help.

“If you’ve still got some left, come up here.”

No more than fifty yards away, the firecat brushed past a discarded corn shock. At once, the shock sprang into flame and withered to crisp ash.

The platform wobbled as two bowmen clambered up to join Tholden. Nodding toward the firecat, he said, “Aim for the eyes.”

“Will that kill it?” asked one of the men huskily.

“Who knows? You got any better ideas?”

The man shook his head. His face was taut with fear, but he didn’t back away.

The bowmen nocked their shafts, strained their bows. Almost simultaneously, they let fly.

The firecat flicked its head aside negligently. The arrows caught fire and became charcoal before their heads could pierce the cat’s hide.

“I think we need a better idea,” the second bowman muttered as he and his comrade readied more shafts.

As if he were losing his mind, Tholden turned again and shouted, “Geraden? Where’s Geraden?”

The first of his reinforcements had begun to arrive: men who hadn’t encountered the wolves; others who grasped that a greater danger was coming; some who were so frightened that the bowmen had to goad them along. No one had seen Geraden. A few of the defenders stared at Tholden as if he were speaking an alien tongue.

“All right,” he rasped. “We’ll do it ourselves.” The wildness in his eyes was getting worse. Suddenly furious, he roared, “Don’t just stand there! Get those watertubs up onto the banquette!”

Galvanized by the incongruous desperation in his high, kind voice, the men below him started hurrying.

The bowmen exhausted their shafts – to no purpose – and jumped out of the way of the watertubs. The firecat was so close now that Tholden thought he could feel its heat. Or maybe that was just the sun. The sky was clear and gorgeous to the horizons, and the air was growing warm. With blood running from his face like sweat, he helped several men boost a watertub into position.

Just in time – barely in time. The cat reached the stockade, paused, tested the wood with its nose. Instant flames swept upward, building swiftly from a small flicker to a savage blaze. The hands and arms supporting the watertubs were scorched. Tholden lost his beard and eyebrows; he nearly lost his eyes.

Then two half hogsheads went over the wall almost simultaneously, and water hit the flames and the heat with a roar like an explosion.

The fire in the timbers went out. But the concussion as that much water erupted into steam blasted the men off the platform, off the banquette.

Tholden landed on his shoulder and spent a stunned and useless moment staring paralyzed at the sky while all his muscles locked up around the jolt. It was possible that his shoulder was broken. It seemed possible to him that he would never breathe again. The hard, hot steam disappeared into the air almost immediately, leaving the heavens blue and perfect, untouched.

After a momentary delay, the wet wood of the stockade began to smolder.

Wrenching air into his lungs, Tholden rolled sideways, got his legs under him.

His shoulder was numb. He couldn’t move that arm.

Flames licked between the timbers. The lashings that held the timbers began to snap.

With a howl of heat, the wall caught fire again and blazed up like the blast of a furnace.

Tholden and his men staggered backward, stared as the timbers flamed – and the firecat thrust its way between the beams as if they were nothing more than charcoal twigs.

“Tholden!” people screamed.

“Help!”

“Tell us what to do!”

“We don’t know what to do!”

“Run,” he coughed weakly. He had never felt such intense fire in his life, never seen anything that terrified him as much as this firecat did. “Run.” The heat drew tears from his eyes as if he were weeping. Houseldon was built of wood. The whole place would burn. “Get out of the way.”

Automatically, without thought, he retreated to keep the heat at a distance. The firecat ambled after him with an indirect, even nonchalant gait, as if he were an especially tasty and helpless mouse.

Moving like a madman, he led the firecat in among the buildings.

The cat moved to the side of the lane while it followed him. Fire swept up the wall of a granary; then, with a detonation like a thunderclap, the grain itself took flame. Fire and smoke and blazing grain swirled a hundred feet into the air.

The merchant who owned the granary lived in a house beside it. He was an old man with a vast quantity of fat and no reputation whatsoever for valor; yet he ran raging out onto his porch and flung a washbasin full of water at the cat.

The cat didn’t notice his attack.

Almost instantly, the fire consumed him.

Tholden retreated as slowly as he could bear, bringing Houseldon’s destruction with him.

He nearly missed what had happened when the firecat abruptly let out a roar of vexation – perhaps even of pain – and flinched to the side. A bit of flame clung to the pads of one forepaw. The beast hunched over and licked its paw clean; its tail switched malevolently. When it started moving again, it appeared angrier, more determined; it looked like it intended to pounce on him without further delay.

Tholden gaped dumbly, transfixed by the incomprehensible fact that the creature had hurt itself by stepping in a small pile of sheepdung.

As if this information were too much for him, his eyes rolled in his head; his scorched and naked face stretched into a wail; his numb arm flapped against his side.

Awkwardly, he turned and dashed out of the firecat’s path, fled between the nearest houses as if he had vultures beating around his head. The people who saw him go believed that his mind had snapped.

The cat didn’t pursue him. It was after other prey.

Setting homes and shops ablaze almost casually as it went, it continued its malign stroll into the heart of Houseldon.

Toward Terisa and Geraden.

Terisa and Geraden and the Domne heard the screams; they saw fire and smoke blasting into the sky. “Glass and splinters!” Geraden hissed between his teeth. “What’s that?”

“Not wolves, I’m afraid,” muttered the Domne. He nudged the carcass at his feet. “Even wolves like that don’t set fires.”

Alarm cleared the giddiness out of Terisa’s head. She took her weight on her legs and tried to think.

“Where’s Tholden?”

Geraden glanced at her. He and the Domne didn’t look at each other.

One of the bowmen led the rout down the street. Waving people past him, he stopped in front of the Domne. “My lord,” he gasped, urgent for breath, “the wall is breached. Houses are burning.”

“I can see that,” replied the Domne with uncharacteristic asperity. “How did it happen?”

“A creature of Imagery. A cat as big as a steer. It sets fire to everything.

“It’s coming this way.”

Terisa felt a cold hand close around her heart. Sets fire to everything. “Castellan Lebbick told me about a cat like that. It killed his guards.” He sent out fifty men, and it killed them. “When they were trying to capture the Congery’s champion.”

Geraden nodded grimly. “Eremis hasn’t got enough men. Or enough men to spare. Or he can’t translate enough of them here without making them mad. So he’s using Imagery to attack us. Trying to slaughter us wholesale instead of murdering us individually.”

The fires came closer. A warehouse tossed flames in all directions as kegs of oil exploded. The destruction of Houseldon already seemed to be raging out of control.

The Domne watched his people flee past him as if the sight made him want to throw up. He kept his voice quiet, however. “You’re the only Imager in the family, Geraden. How do we defend ourselves?”

“With mirrors,” Geraden snarled. Terisa thought he looked exactly like his father at that moment – so hard and horrified that he wanted to throw up. “Which we haven’t got.”

Then she caught her first glimpse of the firecat. Involuntarily, she took a step backward.

“Where’s Tholden?” she asked again. She was suddenly afraid that he was already dead.

Tholden was running for his life.

His shoulder wasn’t broken. If it were broken, it would have started to hurt before this. Nevertheless it remained numb; he still couldn’t use it. It hampered his balance, his gait. Because of it, he ran like a hunchback.

Ran between the houses and along the lanes of Houseldon as if he were terrified.

He had forgotten the wolves – forgotten them completely. His desperation didn’t hold room for any other danger. One of the houses he passed had had its door torn off the hinges, but he didn’t notice that. He didn’t hear the dying whimpers from inside, didn’t see the beast munching flesh in the doorway. He had no idea what was happening when the wolf left the infant it was eating and leaped at his head.

Because of his lurching gait, it missed his head. Yet its claws raked his back as it went by him.

That pain got his attention. He and the wolf wheeled to meet each other; as fierce as the beast, he faced its charge.

Slobbering blood, it sprang again.

He had no time for fear or forethought. In fact, he had no time for the wolf. Striding forward as the beast leaped, he kicked it in the ribcage so hard that he ruptured its heart.

Then he ran on.

His back bled as if it were on fire. Coughing for help, he ran toward the nearest wastepit where Houseldon accumulated fertilizer for the orchards and fields.

He didn’t have much time. The people fleeing along the street had scattered; Terisa, Geraden, and the Domne could see the firecat clearly now.

And it could see them: that was obvious. Its eyes were fixed on them as if at last it had recognized its true prey.

Well, of course. Stunned with fright and helplessness, Terisa had been reduced to talking to herself. Eremis wouldn’t trust random violence to kill them. And he must be able to talk to that thing. Otherwise how could he get it to do what he wanted? It might have attacked the champion instead of the Castellan’s guards. He probably gave it a description of the people it was supposed to kill.

Uselessly, she wondered what kind of description the firecat would understand. Could Eremis really talk to it?

“Terisa.” Geraden had a hand on her arm; he shook her. “Terisa, listen to me. If that creature is after me, you can get away. You’ve got to get away. Get out of here – get out of Houseldon. Go north. To the Termigan. Maybe he’s got some glass you can use. At least you can warn him. He’ll protect you.

“I’ll try to give you as much time as I can.”

“Thanks.” What was she talking about? She had no idea. “I appreciate that.” Words seem to come out of her mouth without passing through her consciousness first. “What if it’s after me? How are you going to get away?”

“An interesting question,” the Domne put in dryly. “Let’s discuss it later, shall we? Start running, both of you. If it’s engrossed in destroying Houseldon, you might both get away.” Abruptly, he started to shout, cracking his command at them like a whip. “I said start running!”

Both Terisa and Geraden nodded.

Neither of them moved.

She began to feel the heat of the fire on her face. The firecat was so close now that she could have hit it with a rock. It wasn’t in any hurry – but it was definitely coming straight for them. Its eyes stared malice; its tail lashed the dust.

She and Geraden and the Domne stood their ground as if they had lost their minds.

And the firecat stopped. It regarded them warily. They acted like they weren’t afraid of it. Why was that? Terisa had the odd impression that she knew exactly what the cat was thinking. Why were they standing there as if fire and fangs couldn’t hurt them? What kind of danger did they represent?

Beyond question, she had lost her mind, even if the men with her were still sane. While the firecat studied them all, she waved her hand at it and said, “Scat. Go away.” She could feel her hair growing crisp in the heat. “We won’t hurt you. If you go away.”

Good. Brilliant. Instead of retreating, the creature crouched to spring.

Unexpectedly, Minick arrived at the Domne’s side. In spite of his apparent haste, he didn’t seem to be breathing hard – didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

Each of his strong, brown hands carried a large wooden bucket.

Water, Terisa thought. Good idea. Too bad it won’t work. The firecat certainly hadn’t been hindered by the snow when it had attacked Castellan Lebbick’s men.

Precisely, as if he were following an elaborate set of instructions, Minick set the buckets down beside him.

Gasping and blowing as though his chest were about to burst, Tholden came into the street. He nearly ran up against the firecat’s flank; the heat must have been tremendous.

He held one of the watertubs hugged in his arms.

Full of water, it must have been far too heavy for any one man to lift. Nevertheless he supported it alone, staggered out into the open without help; there he let the tub thud into the dirt.

That dull, hard sound distracted the creature. Dancing aside as daintily as a kitten, it turned to see what he was doing.

“Now!” Tholden croaked hoarsely.

Reaching into his watertub with both hands, he scooped a load of sheepdung into the firecat’s face.

The hard pellets hit the cat’s whiskers, cheeks, jaws, eyes.

Hit and stuck.

They were fuel: they burned hotly. But they didn’t fall away, as water and wood and even iron fell away. They clung to the creature’s fur and flesh.

With a scream, the firecat did a complete backflip. Immediately, it began to scrub at its face, trying to dislodge the fiery pellets.

In an instant, its forepaws were covered with fire.

Minick was a little slow; even in an emergency, he couldn’t act without his usual care. On this occasion, however, he was quick enough. Before the cat could turn, he stepped forward and splashed its back with the contents of his first bucket.

More sheepdung.

This time, the creature’s scream seemed to come from the marrow of its bones. It wrenched itself around in a circle and rammed its burning side into the dirt to extinguish the fire of the pellets.

Abruptly, five or six more men rushed into the street, carrying buckets and baskets and pots of sheepdung; they hurled more fuel into the cat’s flames. Stooping to his tub, Tholden shoveled up great handfuls of pellets. Minick emptied his second bucket at the mounting conflagration.

Then all the men had to stop, had to draw back. The creature had begun to burn so hotly that they couldn’t get near it. Terisa put up her hands to protect her face.

With a sizzling noise like the shriek of meat on a griddle, of hot iron in oil, the firecat died horribly, consumed by its own blaze.

Tholden staggered, stumbled to his knees; his scorched and beardless face gaped at the charred carcass.

Slowly, the Domne limped around the circle of heat to his eldest son. Minick, Geraden, and Terisa followed; they were there when the Domne put his arms around Tholden’s bloody back.

“As I said,” the Domne murmured in a voice congested with pride and pain. “The right man for the job.”

Before Terisa could think of it, Geraden left to go get Quiss.

Quiss took care of her husband grimly. Like the Domne’s, her emotions were too strong – and too mixed – to let her be calm about Tholden’s condition.

Standing in the street with his canes propped under his hands, the Domne rallied his bowmen and put them in charge of the hunt for the remaining wolves.

Gently, Minick helped Stead out of the Domne’s house. Together, the brothers set about organizing the evacuation of Houseldon.

The firecat’s blaze was too well established to be fought. Even without the distraction and damage of the wolves, with nothing on their minds except the safety of their homes, the Domne’s people might not have been able to beat this fire. But the truth was that they were seriously distracted, badly hurt. And there might be more attacks—When Minick suggested fighting the flames, the Domne forbade him flatly.

Instead of trying uselessly to save Houseldon, every man, woman, and child who could move himself, lift weight, or accept responsibility was put to work getting supplies and possessions, horses and livestock, infants and invalids out of the stockade.

Geraden ignored all this activity. Taking Terisa with him, he put together a breakfast for the two of them, then found a quiet corner in his father’s house where they could eat in peace.

Baffled, she asked him what he thought he was doing.

“Saving time,” he muttered through a cold chicken sandwich. “We’ve got to eat sometime. Better now than later.”

That didn’t shed any light. She tried again. “What’s going to happen?”

“They’ll go up to the Closed Fist and dig in. With all the stuff they have to carry, they won’t get there for two or three days. But I don’t think that matters. If Eremis had anything else ready to attack with, he would have used it by now. I think the first danger is over. And once they’re entrenched in those caves and rocks, he’ll need an army to root them out.”

Terisa didn’t understand him at all. Dimly, it occurred to her that the Closed Fist would be an impossible place in which to work glass. “You keep saying ‘they.’ Aren’t you going with them?”

He shook his head and tried to hide the gleam in his eyes.

She studied him as if she had become stupid. His home was in flames around him. Soon Houseldon would be reduced to ashes and cinders. The survivors were being forced into hiding. One of his brothers had been seriously hurt. People he had known all his life were dead. Really, it was astonishing how much his mood had improved.

He was hard and strong, she could see that; but the grim iron was gone, the bitterness. Last night, he had remembered how to laugh. The shine in his gaze promised that he would be able to laugh again.

Looking at him, the numbness which too much fear and destruction had imposed on her heart began to fade. Almost smiling, as if she already knew the answer, she asked, “Why not?”

He shrugged cheerfully. “I’ve been looking at everything backward. My usual instinct for mishap. In a sense, what happened today is good news. What Eremis did today is good news. It means he’s afraid of us – too afraid to wait until he can strike intelligently and be sure of killing us. He thinks there’s something we can do to hurt him.

“If he thinks that, he’s probably right. He’s too smart to scare himself over nothing. All we have to do is find it.”

Incongruously, while Houseldon burned, Terisa felt some of the past night’s joy come back. “Maybe his plans aren’t ready,” she said. “Maybe we still have time to warn Orison.”

“Right. And along the way we can try to warn some of the lords. When they know what’s going on, maybe the Fayle or even the Termigan can be persuaded to do something against him.”

She couldn’t help herself; she jumped up and kissed him, hugged him so hard she thought her arms would break.

“Come on, mooncalves,” Stead snorted from the doorway. “The fire’s already on the other side of the lane. This house is going next.”

In response, both Terisa and Geraden started to laugh.

They left Houseldon holding hands.

By midmorning, the Domne’s Seat was little more than a smoldering husk.

From his stretcher, Tholden watched the ruin and wept as if he had failed; but his father would have none of it. “Don’t be silly, boy. You saved all our lives. Houses can be built again. You saved your people. I call it a great victory. Nobody else could have done it.”

“That’s right, Da,” Quiss said because her husband was too emotional to reply. “He’ll agree with you when he’s had a little rest. If he knows what’s good for him.”

Ignoring embarrassment, Geraden kissed all three of them. Quiss and the Domne kissed Terisa. Then Terisa and Geraden went to their horses, the bay and the appaloosa which had brought them down from the Closed Fist.

“Now it’s your turn, Geraden,” the Domne announced in front of all the inhabitants of Houseldon. “Make us proud of you. Make what we’re doing worthwhile.” Then he added, “And, in the name of sanity, remember to call me ‘Da.’ ”

Helplessly, Geraden colored.

Terisa wanted to laugh again. “Don’t worry, Da. I won’t let him forget.”

When the Domne’s people began cheering, she and Geraden rode away to meet Mordant’s need.

THIRTY-FOUR: FRUSTRATED STATES

Toward the end of the first day of the siege – the day which eventually led to Master Quillon’s murder and Terisa’s escape – Prince Kragen indicated his ruined catapults and asked the lady Elega what she thought he should do.

“Attack,” she replied at once. “Attack and attack.”

Raising one eyebrow, he waited for an explanation.

“I am no Imager – but everyone knows that Imagery requires strength and concentration. Translations are exhausting. And in this” – she gestured at the catapults – “you have only one opponent. Only one Master can use the glass which frustrates you. He must be weary by now. Perhaps he has already worn out his endurance.

“If you apply enough pressure, he must fail. Then you will be able to bring down that curtain-wall. Orison will be opened to you.”

Despite his confident demeanor, his air of assurance, Prince Kragen couldn’t restrain a scowl. “My lady,” he asked softly, harshly, “how many siege engines do you think I have? They are difficult to move. If we had brought them from Alend, we would be on the road yet – and Cadwal’s victory would be unchallenged. We were forced to rely on what we could appropriate from the Armigite.” Thinking about the Armigite always made Kragen want to spit. “It seems likely to me that we will run out of catapults before that cursed Imager is exhausted.

“Then, my lady” – almost involuntarily, he wrapped his fingers around her arm and squeezed to get her attention, make her hear the things he didn’t say – “our first, quickest, and best hope will be lost.”

“Then what do you mean to do, my lord Prince?” demanded Elega. Apparently, she didn’t hear him. Perhaps she couldn’t. “Are you prepared to simply wait here until the High King arrives to crush you?”

Prince Kragen lifted his head. Too many of his people were watching. By an act of will, he smoothed his scowl, put on a sharp smile.

“I am prepared to do what I must.”

Bowing to conceal the grimness in his eyes, he walked away.

That night, covered by the dark, he sent a squadron of sappers to try to dig the keystones out of the curtain-wall.

Another failure. Scant moments after his men set to work, Orison’s defenders poured oil down the face of the wall and fired it. The flames forced the sappers back – and gave enough light for Lebbick’s archers. Less than half the squadron escaped.

The next morning, when he had had time to absorb the latest news, Prince Kragen announced that he would take no more risks.

He didn’t withdraw from his position. He spent all his time projecting confidence to his forces, or designing contingency plans with his captains, or consulting with the Alend Monarch. But he took no chances, incurred no losses. He might have been waiting for High King Festten to join him in some elaborate and harmless war game.

Elega understood why he did this. He told her why, publicly and privately. And his explanations made sense. Nevertheless his passivity drove her to distraction. At times, she couldn’t face him under the eyes of his troops; at times, she could hardly bring herself to be civil to him in bed. She wanted action – wanted the wall down, the battle joined; she wanted King Joyse deposed, and Prince Kragen in his place.

She wanted the fact that she had betrayed her own father to mean something. While the Alend forces spent their time in training or leisure – enjoying the suddenly beautiful spring – instead of in bringing Orison to its knees, everything she had done was pointless.

She kept track of the days; nearly kept track of the hours, gnawing them like a dry bone. It was late in the evening of the fifth day of Kragen’s inactivity, the sixth day of the siege, while she waited in her tent for the Prince to finish discussing his day and his plans with Margonal, that a soldier from one of the sentry posts brought her a visitor.

“Forgive the intrusion, my lady.” The soldier was a wary old veteran, and he appeared unsure that he was doing the right thing. “Wouldn’t trouble you with her, but she wasn’t trying to sneak into camp. Walked right up to the sentry and asked to see you. Isn’t carrying any weapons – not even a knife. I said I would take her to the Prince. Or at least the sentry captain. She said she didn’t think that was a good idea. Said if I brought her here you could decide what to do with her.”

Elega made an effort to be patient with all this explanation. “Who is she?”

The soldier shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Says she’s your sister.”

Elega blinked at him while the blood seemed to drain out of her heart.

Carefully, so that her voice wouldn’t betray her, she replied, “You did well. You can leave her with me. I’ll decide what to do with her when I hear what she has to say.”

The soldier lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. Pushing the tentflap aside, he ushered Myste into Elega’s presence.

The two sisters stood as if they were stunned and stared at each other. The soldier left them alone, closed the tentflap behind him; they stood and stared at each other.

Physically, Elega was in her element. She was wrapped in a gauzy robe the Prince liked. Lamps and candlelight brought out the lustre of her short, blond hair, the beauty of her pale skin, the vividness of her violet eyes. In contrast, Myste needed sunshine to look her best. Indoors, by the light of fires, she tended to appear sullen or dreamy, and her gaze had a faraway quality that gave the impression she was immersed in her own thoughts – less interested in events around her than Elega was; therefore less important. Her thick cloak had seen hard use.

Yet Myste had changed – Elega saw that at once. Her carriage had become straighter; the set of her shoulders and the lift of her chin made her look like a woman who had lost her doubts. A scar that might have been a healed burn ran from her cheekbone to her ear on the right side; instead of marring her beauty, however, it had the effect of increasing her air of conviction. She had earned whatever certainty she felt. For the first time in their lives, Myste’s simple presence caused Elega to feel smaller in some way, less sure of herself.

A quick intuition told her that Myste had done something that would make her own efforts to shape Mordant’s fate appear trivial by comparison.

Myste met Elega’s regard for a long moment. Then, slowly, she began to smile.

It was too much, that smile; it was the way their father used to smile, back in the days when he was still himself; a smile like a sunrise. She couldn’t bear it: her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Myste,” she breathed. “You scared me to death, disappearing like that. I thought you were dead long ago.”

Helplessly, she opened her arms and caught her sister in a tight hug.

“I am sorry,” Myste whispered while they clung to each other. “I know you were scared. I had no wish to do it that way. I had no other choice.”

Awkwardly, Elega stepped back, wiped her eyes, found a handkerchief and blew her nose. “You rotten child,” she said, smiling gamely.

Myste smiled back and borrowed the handkerchief when Elega was done with it.

“Do you remember?” Elega murmured. “I used to call you that. When we were little. When I did something forbidden and got into trouble, I used to try to blame it on you. Even when you were so small you could hardly walk, I used to try to convince Mother you tricked me into – whatever it was. I told her you were a rotten child.”

Lightly, Myste laughed. “No, I do not remember. I was too young. Anyway, I can hardly believe you ever tried to pass responsibility off on anyone else.” She sighed as if the sight of her sister gave her great pleasure. “And now after all these years I have proved that you were right.”

“Yes, you have.” Elega wanted to joke, and laugh, and yell at Myste, all at the same time. “Completely despicable.” She tried to pull some organization into her head, keep her thoughts from spinning out of control. “Sit down. Have some wine.” She pointed toward a pair of canvas camp chairs beside a small, brass table. “I really am delighted to see you. I have been so alone—” But she couldn’t do it; Myste’s unexpected appearance made her brain reel. “Oh, Myste, where have you been?”

A hint of self-consciousness touched Myste’s gaze. No, Elega realized almost at once, it was more than self-consciousness. It was caution. Slowly, Myste’s smile faded.

“That is a long story,” she replied quietly. “I have come to you because I must make a number of decisions. Among them is whether I should tell you where I have been and what I have been doing.”

More than self-consciousness. More than caution.

Distrust.

Elega felt like crying again.

At the same time, however, her own instinct for caution sprang awake. The Alend camp was a dangerous place in more ways than one; it was especially dangerous for a daughter of King Joyse who hadn’t demonstrated her loyalty to Prince Kragen.

“What is the difficulty?” she asked carefully. “I am your sister. Why should you not tell me?”

Whose side are you on?

“Thank you.” Myste’s manner was firm, unflawed. “I will have wine. As you see” – she dropped her cloak, revealing a battered leather jacket and pants which apparently had nothing in the world to do with lovers and bedchambers – “amenities have been few in my life for some time.”

But Elega couldn’t respond. She was too busy fighting down an impulse to demand, Whose side are you on?

“Elega,” sighed Myste, “I cannot tell you my story because I do not know why you are here. I do not know how an Alend army came to besiege Orison. I do not know” – for an instant, she blinked back tears of her own – “if our father still lives, or still holds his throne. Or still seems mad.

“I can decide nothing wisely without the answers to such questions.

“I knew that you were here,” she explained. “I saw you ride with Prince Kragen to meet Castellan Lebbick on the day Orison was invested. The distance was considerable,” she admitted, “but I was sure I saw you. It has taken me this long, however, to persuade” – she faltered oddly – “persuade myself to approach you.”

Obviously trying to defuse Elega’s tension, she asked pleadingly, “May I have some wine?”

“Of course. Surely.” Jerking herself out of her paralysis, Elega went to the brass table. It held a jug and two goblets. Despite the possibility that she might eventually have to explain to the Prince how his goblet came to be used in his absence, she poured wine for herself and Myste, then sat down and urged Myste to do the same.

Myste accepted the chair and the wine. Over the goblet’s rim as she drank, another sun dawned in her eyes. When she lowered the goblet, she grinned longingly past Elega’s shoulder. “That is good. I wish I could take a hogshead of it with me.”

A few swallows of wine helped restore Elega’s composure. With a better grasp on herself, she asked, “Why do you speak of going? You have only just arrived. And” – she attempted her best smile – “you have not yet said anything I can understand about why you came in the first place.”

Myste drank again, then held the goblet in both palms and gazed into its depths. “I came to ask the answers to questions, so that I can make my decisions with some hope that they will lead to good rather than ill.”

“In other words” – Elega kept her voice steady – “you wish me to trust you enough to help you decide whether you can trust me.” Her question refused to be stifled. “Myste, who has your allegiance now? Whom do you serve?”

Myste’s eyes darkened. All at once, the distance in them seemed poignant to Elega. Myste was the youngest of the King’s daughters, and in some ways the least respected; alone in her romantic dreams, her strange notion that there were no real limits to the lives of ordinary men and women. Only her father had ever listened to her with anything except kind contempt or outright mockery – and now his kingdom was in ruins, and the fault for it was his alone.

Yet here she was, clad more completely in her own courage than in the worn leather on her body. It was quite possible that she was out of her mind. How else to explain the fact that she was here, that she considered it reasonable to simply walk into the Alend camp and ask for answers? Even if she were sane, she had become something Elega didn’t know how to evaluate or touch.

On the other hand, what harm could she do, one brave, foolish daughter of a failed King? Was it conceivable that she had somehow gone over to Cadwal? No. The High King’s army was too far away – and the Perdon’s forces still intervened. Then what harm could she do?

Why, none.

She made no attempt to answer Elega’s question. After a long moment, Elega let it drop. Feeling an unexpected sympathy – and a hint of nameless admiration – toward her lonely sister, she decided suddenly, irrationally, to gamble. “Very well,” she said. After all, risks came to her more naturally than caution. Prince Kragen’s inaction had her at her wit’s end. “Ask me something specific.”

Her words lit a spark in Myste’s gaze.

Myste raised an unself-conscious hand to her cheek. “Again, thank you,” she murmured. “It will be a great service to me.”

Almost at once, she inquired, “Is Father well? Is he” – she swallowed quickly – “still alive?”

“To the best of my knowledge.” As soon as she heard the question, Elega’s throat went dry. “It has been some days since I spoke to him.” Now that she had decided to gamble, she realized that her own story would be hard to tell. Myste’s fundamental assumptions were so different. “Nevertheless emissaries and messengers such as the Castellan and Master Quillon make reference to him without hesitation. He remains King in his own castle, even though his rule over Mordant has collapsed.”

Myste let a breath of relief between her lips. “I am glad,” she said, nodding to herself.

“And Terisa? How is she?”

Elega muffled her discomfort with asperity. “I fear that the lady Terisa has fallen victim to Geraden’s instinct for mishap.”

“How so?” Myste’s tone conveyed a suggestion of alarm.

Remembering the reservoir, Elega drawled, “She has learned to make the same mistakes he does.”

Again, Myste nodded; she clearly didn’t understand what Elega meant – and didn’t want to pursue it. She thought for a moment, then asked slowly, as if she wanted better words, “Elega, why are you here? If our father still rules in Orison, how have you come to take the part of his enemies?”

There it was: the place where all their common ground fell away, the point on which they would never comprehend each other. If the truth hit Myste too hard, Elega might be forced to summon guards and have her sister delivered to Prince Kragen.

Nevertheless she was faithful to the risk she’d chosen. Dryly, she replied, “That is the wrong question, Myste. You should ask why the Prince and his forces are here. My reasons hinge on theirs.”

Myste studied her intently. “I suspected as much. That is why I feared for Father. I thought the Alends might have come because he was dead. But I had no wish to offend you by leaping to erroneous conclusions.

“When I left Orison, Prince Kragen had been insulted in the hall of audiences. Yet the fact that he remained made me think that he had not given up hope for peace.

“Why is he here, attempting to pull the King from his Seat?”

“Because,” Elega answered, bracing herself for Myste’s reaction, “I persuaded him to do it.”

In a sense, Myste didn’t react at all; she simply went still, like an animal in hiding. The change was so unlike her, however, that it seemed as vehement as a shout. Where had she learned so much self-possession – and so much caution?

“I made his acquaintance after his audience with the King.” Elega struggled to keep a defensive tone out of her voice. “He taught me to believe him when he said that Margonal’s desire for peace was sincere. Yet Alend faced a dilemma he must resolve. Cadwal has no desire for peace – and the King’s strength had become plainly inadequate to keep the Congery out of Festten’s hands. Alend must take some action, so that the High King would not gain all Imagery for himself.

“First I required of the Prince some indication of his good faith. He replied with the promise that if Orison fell to him he would make the Perdon King of Mordant – that Alend would keep nothing for itself if the Congery was made safe from Cadwal.

“Then I persuaded him that a siege was his best hope.”

“But, Elega,” Myste protested, “that is untrue. Father is the only man who has ever taken Orison by storm. A siege may well last for seasons. And High King Festten surely will not allow seasons to pass before he comes to prevent the Alend Monarch from claiming the Congery.”

“It is true,” insisted Elega. Honesty, however, forced her to admit, “Or it was. Two things made it so. First, the curtain-wall is fragile at best – and no one could have foreseen that one of the Masters would conceive a way to defend it.

“And second—”

Involuntarily, she wavered. This lay at the heart of her ache for action, her desire to see the siege succeed. It was her doing: she had convinced Kragen to attempt it.

If he held her to blame for her failure, he gave no sign of it. Perhaps he had accepted the hazards of what he did, and felt no recrimination. Or perhaps he found a new hope in the reasons for his present inaction. In either case, she blamed herself enough for both of them. Sure of herself, determined to save her world, she had taken Mordant’s fate in her own hands.

And she had dropped it.

“Second?” Myste prompted.

“Second,” said Elega, more harshly than she intended, “I promised to deliver Orison to him with little or no bloodshed.”

Myste sat completely still; not a muscle in her face shifted. Yet her eyes seemed to burn with outrage.

“How?”

Elega’s knuckles tightened on her goblet. “By poisoning the reservoir. Not fatally. But enough to indispose the defense until the castle could be taken.”

Without a flicker of expression, almost without moving her mouth, Myste said, “That should have sufficed. What went wrong?”

Deliberately, Elega permitted herself an obscenity which she knew Myste particularly disliked. Then she said, “Geraden and Terisa caught me. They were unable to stop me – or indeed capture me. But they warned the Castellan. No one was indisposed because no one drank the water. The defense holds – and I was forced to flee.”

Unable to contain her self-disgust, she concluded, “Does that answer your questions? Can you make your decisions wisely now?”

Gradually, Myste let herself move. Her gaze left Elega’s face; she lifted her goblet and drained it. Automatically, far away in her thoughts, she poured more wine and drank again.

“Ah, Elega. How terrible that must be for you – to attempt the betrayal of your own home and family, and to fail.”

“It is worse,” retorted Elega fiercely, “to do nothing – to let every good thing in the world go to ruin because the man who created it cannot be bothered to defend it.”

Still slowly, still peering into the distance, Myste nodded. “Perhaps. That is one of the decisions I must make.

“Please tell me. Why does the Prince ‘do nothing’? Since the first day of the siege, he has taken no action I can see. To all appearances, he is simply waiting for High King Festten to come and destroy him.”

Abruptly, as if a stunned part of her mind had just been kicked, Elega realized that Prince Kragen was overdue. Usually, he finished discussing the day with his father and came to her tent before this.

If he caught Myste here, he would have no real choice but to make her a prisoner. Her potential value as King Joyse’s daughter was too great to be ignored. But Myste was also Elega’s sister – and Elega wasn’t sure yet what her own decision would be. The only thing she was sure of was that Myste wouldn’t reveal any of her secrets as Prince Kragen’s prisoner.

Muttering, “Wait here,” Elega jumped up and hurried past the curtains into the back of the tent.

There she roused the Alend girl who served as her maid. “Hurry, child,” she hissed. “Find the Prince. He may still be with his father, or on his way here. Beg him to forgive me. Tell him I feel unwell. Tell him I am half blind with headache – but it will pass if I am allowed to sleep.

“Go quickly.”

She hustled the girl out into the night, paused to quiet the hammering of her heart, then returned to Myste.

Myste looked at her inquiringly. Elega explained what she had done – and was more relieved than she considered reasonable when she saw that Myste believed her. So Myste’s new caution, her distrust, had its limits. Despite the things Elega had already done, Myste didn’t expect her sister to betray her.

In the back of her mind, Elega began to wonder whose side she herself was on.

She sat down again, poured more wine. Myste was still waiting for an explanation of Prince Kragen’s inaction. Elega took a deep breath because for the first time what she was about to say might be interpreted as evidence of disloyalty. Then she asked, “Do you remember the day we first met Terisa? The day the Perdon came storming into Orison, demanding help, and King Joyse refused him?”

“Yes.” Once again, Myste’s sober gaze was fixed on Elega’s face.

“I think I told you about it.” Elega remembered the Perdon’s rage vividly. You tell him this, my lady, he had roared at her. Every man of mine who falls or dies defending him in his blind inaction, I will send here. “Well, he is doing what he said he would. In small groups and squadrons, injured or dead men and their families arrive almost daily from the Care of Perdon, sent to the purported safety of Orison – and as a reproach to King Joyse.

“They are Alend prisoners now – although it would be more just to say that they are under the care of the army’s physicians, and not permitted to leave. Being hurt, exhausted, or bereaved, few of them have the will to refuse when they are questioned.”

Myste watched Elega’s face and said nothing.

“From them,” Elega sighed, “we have learned that the High King’s army is not coming here.”

At that, Myste’s eyes widened. “Not?” she whispered as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Not?”

Elega nodded. “Not directly, in any case. That much is certain. Festten’s forces move with what speed they can manage through the hills of Perdon – through the Perdon’s resistance. But all recent reports agree that the High King’s movement brings him no nearer Orison.

“That is why Prince Kragen believes he can afford to wait.”

At last, Myste sounded like her self-control might slip. “Then where is High King Festten going?”

“South and west,” Elega answered. “Into the Care of Tor.

“The Perdon’s survivors say that the Cadwal army moves along the best route it can find toward Marshalt, the Tor’s seat.”

“But why?” demanded Myste. “Why go there? The Congery is here.”

Elega had no idea. “I have heard it rumored,” she said for the sake of hearing how Myste would reply, “that the Castellan considers the Tor a traitor.”

Myste’s head twitched. “The Tor? Nonsense.” She thought for a moment, then continued, “And if he is a traitor, that would be even less reason for High King Festten to invade Tor. It makes no sense.

“What is the Perdon doing?”

To preserve her composure, Elega put on a hard front. “Apparently, he is more dedicated to Mordant’s service than his King deserves.” The truth was that every thought of the Perdon made her chest ache – made her want to scream because there was nothing she could do. “Festten appears uninterested in Orison. But rather than taking this opportunity to flee – perhaps here, perhaps toward a dubious alliance with the Armigite, or a stronger one with the Fayle – the Perdon shifts his forces so that they are always in Cadwal’s way. He began with scarcely three thousand men against at least twenty thousand. If the reports are true, he has less than two thousand now, and every day he is whittled down. And yet he continues fighting. He spends every life in his command, merely to hinder Festten’s approach to whatever it is the High King wants.

“Clearly, he is engaged in a personal struggle against Cadwal. If King Joyse had not abandoned him long ago, he would have saved himself – and aided Orison – by coming here.

“Does that answer your questions?”

While Elega spoke, Myste’s expression changed. Her gaze turned toward Orison; her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Father,” she murmured thickly. “How have you been brought to this? How do you bear it?”

Elega’s urge to scream intensified. “If it does,” she snapped, “perhaps you will consent to answer mine. I have told you enough to get myself beheaded if I were not in the Prince’s favor. I would like some return for my risk.”

“Yes.” Suddenly, Myste rose to her feet, facing through the wall of the tent toward Orison as though Elega weren’t present. “I can make my decisions now. Thank you.

“I must go.”

Without a glance at her sister, she started toward the tentflap.

For an instant, Elega was stuck, caught between contradictory reactions. She was full of outrage; she wanted to make scathing demands which would rip Myste’s reticence aside. At the same time, the thought that her sister was about to leave her – without trusting her, without trusting her – went into her heart like a spike.

She was about to shout for a soldier when a new thought flashed through her, a bolt of illumination.

Before her sister reached the tent flap, she said, “Father sent me a message, Myste.”

Myste stopped immediately; she turned, came back toward Elega. As if involuntarily, she asked, “What was it?”

Too absorbed in Myste’s importance to be self-conscious, Elega answered, “Castellan Lebbick brought it. According to him, Father said, ‘I am sure that my daughter Elega has acted for the best reasons. She carries my pride with her wherever she goes. For her sake, as well as for my own, I hope that the best reasons will also produce the best results.” ’

Unexpectedly, Myste closed her eyes. Tears spread under her lashes and down her cheeks, but for a long moment she didn’t move or speak. Then she looked radiantly at her sister, smiling like a new day.

“Of course,” she breathed. “Why did I not see it for myself?” At once, she returned to her chair. Smiling so beautifully that she wrung Elega’s heart, she said, “Very well. Ask me something specific.”

Elega gaped at her – gaped like a fish until Myste started laughing.

Elega couldn’t help herself; she was suddenly so full of joy and relief and confusion that she laughed herself.

After a while, Myste subsided. “Ah, Elega, we have not done that together since we were girls.”

Mocking her own dignity, Elega replied primly, “Do not be arrogant, child. You are hardly old enough yet to be called a woman.”

Myste chuckled happily. For a moment, the only thing that prevented her from looking like the Myste Elega remembered – romantic and dear, vaguely foolish, not to be taken seriously – was the scar on her cheek.

But that scar changed everything. It made the new Myste impossible to ignore or forget. She inspired a rush of confusion in Elega.

“Myste, where were you? Where did you go? Why did you go? And those clothes. What have you been doing all this time?”

“Elega,” Myste protested humorously, “I said, ‘Ask me something specific.” But then she sighed, and slowly the laughter faded from her face. “Well, I will tell you.” Her expression became one Elega didn’t know how to interpret: sober and contemplative; a little sad; a little excited. “If you do not take it well, however, there will be trouble for us all.

“I left Orison to search for the Congery’s champion.”

Elega was so surprised that she cried, “You did what?“ before she could catch herself.

The Myste Elega used to know would have flinched or blushed; she might have hung her head or sounded defensive. The new Myste did none of these things. She only raised her head slightly, squared her jaw a bit, and repeated, “I left Orison to search for the Congery’s champion.”

A moment later, she added, “Terisa helped me.”

Take it well. Elega didn’t want to make a fool of herself, so she stared at her sister and said nothing.

“I went from her rooms through the secret passages down to the breach he made in the wall. It was not very well guarded then, so I was able to escape without being seen. From there, I followed his trail in the snow.”

Elega stared, waiting for Myste to say or do something that made sense.

“Eventually,” Myste continued, “I caught up with him. He was hurt, not able to move quickly. In fact, he was down in the snow, bleeding his life into his armor.

“I startled him – he thought he was being attacked again.” Myste’s tone remained mild and firm. “He fired at me.” She touched her cheek. “Fortunately, he did little harm. Then he saw that I was a woman, and dropped his weapon. I was able to approach him.”

Elega forced herself to blink her eyes, clear her throat, shake some of the astonishment out of her head. Carefully, she said, “Go back to the beginning. Tell me why.”

“Why?” Myste’s gaze drifted into the distance. “Why not? There were so many reasons. There was Father’s strange decline, his impulse to destruction – and our helplessness, which I enjoyed no more than you did. There was Terisa, who faced a world she did not know or understand with more courage and resourcefulness than I could find in myself. And there was the dishonesty of the Congery’s action.”

“ ‘Dishonesty’?” objected Elega. “The Masters were trying to defend Mordant. The translation of their champion was the only action they could have taken that might have aided us.”

“No.” Myste was certain. “I will not speak of the ethical question – whether it is ever permissible to impose an involuntary translation on any living thing. But the Masters were not honest with themselves. They claim that they translated their champion in response to Mordant’s need, trying to find the hope of their auguries – but how did they expect him to react to what they did? He was injured – he and all his men were embattled for their lives – and suddenly he found himself in another world.” Her voice took on a hint of passion. “What could he think? Surely he could think nothing except that this change was yet another attack by his enemies.

“If the Masters had been honest, they would have admitted that the only way such a champion could ever become an ally of theirs was if they approached him peacefully, unthreateningly, rather than playing upon his instinct for violence.”

In some ways, Elega found Myste’s argument as surprising as her previous revelations. What she said seemed perfectly clear, eminently logical. Elega wasn’t accustomed to hearing her sister reason in such terms.

“I never thought of it that way,” she admitted. Then she added almost accusingly, “But you did. And you decided to do something about it.”

Myste shrugged as if to dismiss the suggestion that she had shown bravery or initiative. “The Fayle attempted to warn Father of the Masters’ intention. When Father permitted that translation to take place, I realized that if I remained where I was and did nothing I would begin to hate him. And when I conceived the idea of trying to help the champion, my heart lifted.”

Speaking dryly to control herself, Elega said, “So you put on your warm clothes and went out into a hard winter for the sake of a warrior who might kill you as soon as he saw you. For no reason, really, except that you felt sorry for him.”

A small smile touched Myste’s lips.

“And you found him and helped him. How was that possible? Was he a man inside his armor?”

“Oh, yes. Different in little ways – but very much like us. Like us in everything that matters.”

To Elega’s renewed amazement, Myste blushed. Myste hurried on promptly, however.

“Like Terisa, he speaks our language – perhaps because of the translation. His name is Darsint,” she commented by the way. “His instructions enabled me to get him from his armor and tend his wound. His weapon made a fire for us easily, and I had food.

“Since then, we have been together, hiding when we can, fleeing when we must. Shelter and even food have been simple to find in abandoned villages and farms—”

“And since the army’s arrival,” Elega interrupted, speaking in a rush to catch up with the implications of what her sister revealed, “you have been watching us. Together – you and the Congery’s champion. You said it took you several days to persuade yourself to come to me. It was not you you had to persuade, it was him. You are his knowledge, his guide.”

Inspired by the fire of ideas in her head, she paused to say, “His lover.” The mind which aims the weapon. Then she sped on.

“That is the decision you have had to make. You are companion to the mightiest man in any of the kingdoms. He loves you – he is dependent on you. And you must decide how to use his power.”

Now it was Myste’s turn to stare. Unable to contain her sudden, urgent hope, Elega swept out of her chair to confront her sister. “Myste, you must help us.

“All that force, all that strength, only waiting to be used. Oh, my sister, why have you delayed? You can bring this siege to an end almost without effort. Do you not understand what must be done? We must take Orison. We must put an end to the King’s foolish resistance, so that the battle against Mordant’s true enemies can begin while the realm and the Congery remain intact.”

“No, Elega.” Myste came to her own feet swiftly, met Elega’s passion face to face. “It is you who do not understand.” Her scar made her look fiery and unanswerable. “The question I have sought to resolve is not whether I should help you, but whether I should help Orison against you.

“The Alend forces are too large for even a man with Darsint’s weapons to combat alone. Also his strength goes from him with every use. The word he uses is ‘recharged.’ His weapons cannot be ‘recharged’ in this world. For that reason, we must be cautious. Nevertheless I have been thinking long and hard about the damage he could do to the Alend Monarch’s army. The truth is that I have only held back because of your presence – and because of Prince Kragen’s inaction.”

Elega started to protest, but Myste cut her off.

“I must warn you, Elega. I am more certain now than ever that I must fight for Father and Mordant. If you require Darsint’s guns to be used, they will be used against you.”

“Myste,” Elega gasped in dismay, “are you mad?”

“Only if it is madness to trust our father.”

“Yes, that is madness! You said so yourself – you spoke of his ‘strange decline, his impulse to destruction.’ Were you not listening to yourself? You would not have left Orison and gone to help this Darsint if you trusted our father.”

“Yes.” Without warning, Myste’s intensity broke into a grin. She seemed at once sheepish and secure. “And no. I have spent days laboring through high snow. I have tended the wounds of an alien warrior and held him in my arms. And I have heard Father’s message to you. Fear and exhaustion teach many things. So does love. I have learned to think differently.

“It is hard to say that I trust his decline. But I have come to trust the fact that he allowed the Congery to work this translation. I have even come to think that he did it for me – in the same way that he insulted Prince Kragen for you. Do you not see how he has made us powerful? I can guide Darsint’s choices. I can ask his help. And you are in a place to affect the actions of Alend’s entire army.”

I am sure that my daughter Elega has acted for the best reasons. For her sake, as well as for my own, I hope that the best reasons will also produce the best results.

“Elega, we are doing what he intended us to do. He has plans for us. Perhaps his decline itself is only a goad to make us do what we can.”

Elega floundered in her sister’s smile. This optimistic interpretation of the King’s behavior was insane. “Myste, you are a fool,” she muttered as if she were speaking to herself. “A fool.” King Joyse had driven his own wife away rather than make the effort to defend his kingdom. Or to explain himself. Piece by piece, he had chipped the hope and trust out of Elega’s heart. “Are you not hurt? Do the things he has done not cause you any pain?”

“Of course they do.” Myste’s smile became fond and sad at the same time. “I only say that there is another way to look at what he has done. We ask ourselves whether he deserves our faith. But we do not have his burdens. He is the King. We should ask, I think, whether we deserve his faith.

“It appears to me that he has tried to let us know that he trusts us.

“Elega, do you never ask yourself what kind of man he must be, to place his trust in the people he has most hurt? Between us, we have the might to destroy him. Darsint’s weapons and the Prince’s army could accomplish that. And our father has pushed us into this position.

“Either his lunacy is complete, or his need for us is so desperate that he cannot explain what he wants without making what he wants impossible.”

Groping, Elega asked, “What do you mean? What can you possibly mean?”

Myste shrugged. “Oh, I mean nothing. I only speculate. But suppose” – her gaze came into focus on her sister – “it is in some way vital to Father’s defense of Mordant that you are trusted by the Prince. How can a trust like that be achieved between two such old and mortal enemies? Any attempt to trick or mislead the Prince would almost surely fail. You are – pardon me for saying this – not much of a liar. You could not persuade the Prince to believe anything you did not believe yourself.”

“No.” Elega shook her head, not in denial, but in exasperation. “You suppose too much too quickly. How can it possibly be ‘vital’ to Father that Prince Kragen trusts me?”

“Elega, think. You have already come so close to your own answer. What did Father accomplish by refusing to reinforce the Perdon, when the Perdon came to Orison and demanded help?”

“What did he accomplish?”

“Or put it another way. What would have happened when Cadwal marched if the Perdon had been supported by several thousand guards? As you have observed, the Perdon would have retreated here, to preserve his forces and defend his King. And High King Festten could not have permitted an enemy that strong to disengage, to maneuver freely. He would have been forced to follow.

“By refusing to reinforce the Perdon, Father made it possible that the Cadwals would not come here directly.

“Do you still not understand, Elega?”

“Time,” Elega breathed. At last, she seemed to be catching up. “Since Cadwal is not here, Alend can afford to wait. By refusing to support the Perdon, he gained time.”

“Yes!” Myste whispered.

“And by pushing us where we are, he also gained time. He made it possible that I might use my influence with the Prince to encourage inaction. But primarily” – Elega was amazed by how convincing she found this – “he pushed us to be where we are so that if the Prince attacked fiercely you would defend Orison – and so the Alend attack would be frustrated – and because you and I are sisters we might find a way to keep the violence between our forces to a minimum.”

“Yes,” repeated Myste. Her manner began to relax.

“But why?” Elega didn’t know whether to laugh or shriek. “Why does he need time? What is he doing? What is his plan? How can he believe that Mordant will be saved by the things he has done to destroy it?”

Apparently, Myste felt no need to shriek. Chuckling softly, she said, “If I knew that – if I could so much as make an intelligent guess – I would tell it to Prince Kragen myself.”

Unexpectedly, Elega also began chuckling. “So this is all talk? You can think of no reason why Father might need time – therefore no reason to believe he actually does need time – therefore no reason to trust any of your speculations?”

Myste shook her head cheerfully. “None.”

“Except,” Elega murmured after a moment, “for the fact that it all seems too tidy to be accidental.”

Myste’s smile was so complete that it made even the burn on her cheek look like a mark of beauty.

Elega sighed. Slowly, her inexplicable humor faded. “I must say, Myste,” she commented, “that I have a powerful wish to make you tell all this to Prince Kragen anyway. Unfortunately, he would take you prisoner. He would want to use you as a lever against Father – or against your champion.”

“In that case,” Myste replied, “Darsint would come for me. I doubt that he would be inclined to let me be used as a lever.”

“And Alends would be killed,” added Elega. “And the force in his weapons might be exhausted. And nothing would be gained.”

“That” – Myste grinned sharply, like a woman who had learned to enjoy risks – “is the reasoning I used to persuade him to let me come to you.”

As a final surprise in an evening full of surprises, Elega found that she had never liked her sister as much as she did at this moment. “In that case,” she drawled, “it behooves me, I think, to help you leave the camp before any word of your visit reaches Prince Kragen. Come, get your cloak. We will take a few skins of this wine with us and go out the back.”

Before they left, she and Myste shared a hug as if they had recognized each other for the first time.

The next morning, after he had received the night’s reports from his captains, Prince Kragen called Elega out of her tent.

She had never seen him so angry. Even his moustache seemed to have been waxed with outrage.

“My lady,” he said, “last night a woman entered the camp. She claimed to be your sister. She was taken to your tent.”

Elega faced him boldly, hiding the fright in her heart. “Yes, my lord Prince. My sister Myste.”

“The one who disappeared after the Imagers translated their champion.” That may have been all he knew about her. “Where is she now?”

Remembering that she was a bad liar, Elega held his gaze and replied, “We talked for a long time. Then I helped her to depart without bothering the sentries.”

“King Joyse’s daughter. One of the most valuable women in Mordant. You ‘helped her to depart.’ ” The Prince’s tone made every soldier within earshot avert his head. “Why?”

Elega did her best to smile the way Myste had smiled, as if she enjoyed risks. “Come into my tent, my lord Prince. I have a story to tell you that will make you doubt your reason.”

That was why she loved him. Despite the fact that she was the daughter of his enemy – that she had betrayed her own father and might therefore be capable of betraying anyone – that she had helped another of the King’s daughters escape – Prince Kragen went into her tent and heard her story.

At roughly the same hour, Artagel was given permission to leave his bed for the first time. His side was healing well, and he had been free of fever long enough to reassure his physician. In addition, ever since his delirious visit to the dungeons he had been a model patient. So he was advised to get out of bed for a little mild, repeat, mild exercise.

He smiled at his physician’s severe manner. He smiled at the gap-toothed kitchen maid who brought his meals. He smiled at the sweep who cleaned his rooms. But he didn’t actually try to stand and dress himself and walk until he was sure he wouldn’t be interrupted.

He didn’t want any witnesses while he tested himself to see how weak he was.

The effort of putting on a loose shirt and trousers made him sweat. Bending over to shove his feet into his boots made him lightheaded. Simply lifting the weight of his longsword made him tremble. With every movement, his injury pulled as if it were about to tear open.

Grinning unsteady defiance, he left his rooms – mild exercise, mild – and went to see Castellan Lebbick.

He had a number of reasons for wanting to talk to the Castellan. One was that Lebbick had tried to see him a few days ago, and had been turned away because of his fever. Another was that – if he could be persuaded to talk – the Castellan was the best available source of information about several subjects which interested Artagel keenly: the siege; King Joyse’s plans; the Congery’s preparations; the search for Geraden.

Thanks to the fact that most of his friends were guards, a number of whom had come to see him while he was ill, he knew that the siege had been passive since the first day. But that could mean almost anything; he wanted to know what it did mean. Of course, Master Eremis’ solution to the water problem was common knowledge. In addition, Artagel had heard that Master Quillon was dead, that Master Barsonage had resumed his place as mediator of the Congery. He had heard that Terisa was gone. He had even heard that there was a connection between Quillon’s death and Terisa’s disappearance. And just once someone – probably Artagel’s physician himself – had mentioned that questions were still being asked about Underwell.

Curiosity about such things might have been enough to make Artagel visit the Castellan. He and Lebbick were old friends, after all – to the extent that the Castellan could be said to have friends. In fact, he had been Artagel’s teacher and commander until Artagel had reached the point where it was no longer reasonable for anyone to tell him what to do. Because of this, he was widely believed – at least among the castle’s active defenders – to be the only man in Orison who could go to the Castellan and ask him questions and actually get answers.

As it happened, however, Artagel had two additional reasons for wanting a conversation with the Castellan, reasons more compelling than any of the others.

First, he had thought long and searchingly – not his favorite form of exertion – about his last conversation with the lady Terisa, and he didn’t like any of the conclusions he reached.

Second, he had heard from no less than six reliable friends that early in the morning after Terisa’s disappearance Castellan Lebbick had returned to his quarters and found a woman in his bed.

Terisa’s former maid, Saddith.

He had beaten her nearly to death.

Even now – what was it, five days later? – her physician wasn’t sure she would ever use her hands again. And as for her face—Well, no one wanted to describe her disfigurement.

Since then, the Castellan hadn’t been out of his rooms. He directed the defense of Orison entirely through an intermediary – through the one man he had chosen to bring him information and carry his instructions.

By a coincidence so odd that it made Artagel’s guts knot, the man Castellan Lebbick had chosen was Ribuld, the scarred veteran who had occasionally helped protect Terisa as a favor to Geraden, and who had lost his best friend, Argus, in a failed attempt to trap Prince Kragen.

Why Ribuld, of all people? Lebbick had never put him in a position of responsibility before. In fact, Ribuld would have said that the Castellan never noticed him except when he did something wrong.

Even though the effort of walking made his heart labor and his bones ache, Artagel was determined to confront Castellan Lebbick and get some answers.

He didn’t like remembering the way Terisa had cried at him, Are you out of your mind? Geraden is your brother. At the time, he hadn’t understood her. Well, he had been delirious, emotionally and morally sick at what had been done to Nyle. But now her words stuck in him like an accusation.

When he arrived at Lebbick’s quarters, he was a little surprised to find the door guarded. The Castellan had never felt the need for protection in his own rooms before. Nevertheless Artagel didn’t hesitate. He went up to the guard on duty, a man he had known for years, and asked, “He still refusing to see anybody?”

The man nodded. Despite his evident pleasure that Artagel was out of bed at last, he commented, “And he isn’t going to make an exception in your case, either.”

Artagel smiled. It was probably a good thing he hadn’t tried to bring his sword. He would have looked like a fool pulling it out – and then letting its weight stretch him flat on the floor. As if he’d never been ill, however, he said, “I want to go in there. You aren’t really going to stand in my way.”

“You’re going to get past me?” the guard snorted. “In your condition?” But then he put up his hands. “Well, since you force me—Somebody’s got to get sense out of him. Might as well be you. After what he did to that woman—If he doesn’t answer for it soon, we’re going to have trouble on our hands. Too many people who don’t have anything better to do are getting ugly about it.

“If he hits you, give a croak, and I’ll carry you back to your rooms.”

Artagel faked a bow with one arm. “Thanks ever so much. It always feels good to have a man like you behind me.”

“I know,” the guard replied. “As far behind you as possible.”

Chuckling, he opened the door.

Convinced that he really wasn’t going to be able to stay on his feet much longer, Artagel entered the Castellan’s quarters.

The front room was ill-lit, unswept, and undecorated – which hadn’t been the case when Artagel was last here, some time before Lebbick’s wife died. Although he wasn’t given to luxury, the Castellan had claimed an extensive suite for himself and his wife; he had insisted for decades that they meant to have children, regardless of the damage she had suffered as an Alend prisoner. And she had humored him by keeping up their quarters like a home where children would be welcome. But since her death he had stripped the walls and floor to the bare stone; he had moved a hard cot into the front room and sealed the rest of the doors – even in Orison’s overcrowded state, those rooms stood empty. And since Terisa’s disappearance he had obviously given up all pretense of housekeeping. The one lamp on the table beside his cot gave just enough light to show that the room was filthy.

So was he: he hadn’t shaved, or washed, or changed his clothes for days. His eyes were red with exhaustion and malice – or grief – and his hands curled in front of him as if he badly needed a sword.

Facing Artagel from the edge of his cot, he rasped distinctly, “I’m going to disembowel the man who let you in here.”

The air was foul with dirt, rancid sweat, food gone to maggots. Artagel stifled an impulse to gag. Pretending that his nauseated expression was a smile, he replied, “No, you won’t.” Deliberately, he found a chair and sat down. “If you want to get him, you’ll have to get me first. And you won’t do that. You won’t dare. I’m the most popular man in Orison.”

“Hog-puke.” The Castellan blinked malevolently. “Eremis is the most popular man in Orison.” In spite of his tone, however, he didn’t leave the bed. “You’re just an invalid who’s still alive because he got lucky the last time he met Gart.

“That’s probably why they sent you. They think I won’t hurt a man who’s so weak a woman could knock him over.”

Feigning nonchalance, Artagel inquired, “ ‘They’?”

“They. The Tor. King Joyse. Half the rutting dogs in this stink-hole. The bastard who let you in. The ones who think Eremis is the best thing since King Joyse invented sunshine. The ones who think I ought to be castrated because I slapped that rank whore a couple of times. They.

“They want me to come out so they can jump me. They want you to make me come out.”

“Sorry.” Artagel loathed dealing with Lebbick like this; he would have preferred to meet the High King’s Monomach without a sword. As a result, he sounded incongruously happy, as if he were having a wonderful time. “I hate to contradict you when you’re in such a good mood. But the truth is, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I just came to tell you Geraden didn’t kill Nyle.”

“I know that,” snapped Lebbick. “Don’t tell me. Tell them.”

“Wait a minute.” Artagel would have been less startled if the Castellan had started foaming at the mouth. “Wait. What do you mean, you know that? How do you know?”

“I know” – Castellan Lebbick glared at his visitor as if Artagel were hideous – “because that piss-drinking slut was in my bed. In my bed. ”

Now it was Artagel’s turn to blink. “Wait a minute,” he repeated. “Wait.”

Lebbick didn’t wait. “I came right through that door” – he pointed fiercely at the door – “and she was in my bed.” He pounded the cot. “Naked as shit. Smiling at me. Wagging her tits. Of course Geraden didn’t kill Nyle.”

Then his ferocity dimmed. “I would have believed anybody except that woman.”

Artagel held his breath and said nothing.

“She made me think about it over and over again. She kept making me go back to the beginning. But when she was wrong about that secret passage – I was sure. And I saw her escaping, I saw her. With Quillon. King Joyse’s friend. Then I found his body. I caught up with her. She was with Gilbur. I was sure. Gilbur told me they were allies. Of course I was sure. Of course Geraden killed Nyle. She must have escaped with Gilbur, not Quillon. She was a traitor, a murderer. That proved Geraden was guilty.

“Isn’t that what they told you?”

“No,” Artagel murmured. “They haven’t told me a thing.”

“Well, they will,” Lebbick snarled. “Give them a chance. They’re all talking about me. They whisper behind my back.” A wild grin stretched his mouth. “Eremis is a hero. Everything that woman said about him is a lie. Geraden killed Nyle. She put him up to it. She helped him escape. Then Gilbur helped her escape. They killed Quillon. I’m a monster. Nobody understands why King Joyse hasn’t had me gutted.

“Eremis is a hero.”

Groping for some measure of sanity in the conversation, Artagel drawled, “I doubt it. Terisa must have told you Nyle is still alive. She certainly tried to tell me.

“I didn’t believe her,” he admitted, “but I’ve been kicking myself for that ever since.” Generally, he wasn’t much inclined to regret; nevertheless he regretted intensely the things he had said to Terisa. He should have looked at that body more closely. “I finally figured out what must have happened.” Geraden is your brother. You’ve known him all his life. “They must have switched the bodies. Underwell and Nyle. That’s why they used Imagery – why they let creatures feed on the bodies. To disfigure them. So we would think Underwell was Nyle.

“Geraden wouldn’t do a thing like that. It’s impossible. I know him better than that.”

As if he were discussing the weather, Artagel added, “If he didn’t do it, that just leaves Eremis. We don’t have anybody else to blame it on.”

“I know that.” Grief twisted Castellan Lebbick’s features. Softly, he repeated, “I know that. Why do you think I hit her so hard? Why do you think I kept hitting her? I was trying to get her to tell me the truth.

“It was Quillon who helped that woman escape. That’s the truth. He did it because King Joyse told him to. To get her away from me. He ordered me to do my job, and then he tried to sneak her away from me. That’s why he leaves me alone now. He hasn’t sent for me in days. He knows I was just following orders.

“He wants to break me. He wants me to hide down here until I rot. Because he doesn’t trust me.”

Artagel felt frantically that he was getting nowhere. He was tempted to back out of the room, put some distance between himself and the Castellan’s lunacy. But his regret was stronger than his alarm. He had already let both Terisa and Geraden down.

Instead of retreating, he tried a different approach.

“Well, he must trust you some.” Artagel made an effort to sound hearty, without much success. “You’re still in command, aren’t you? You’re still the Castellan.”

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.

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, she 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.”

Abruptly, the lord nodded. “Now I’m beginning to believe you. They want to kill you. You want to cause trouble for them. All this” – his manner referred to more than just the pits of fire outside Sternwall – “is only another contest between Imagers. We’re the victims” – now he meant the people of his Care – “but we aren’t really the point.

“The point is power.”

He had misunderstood her. She made an effort to explain. “That isn’t what I meant. We’re trying to defend Mordant. It’s King Joyse that Eremis and Gilbur want to destroy. We’re secondary – Geraden and I are in the way, that’s all. It’s King Joyse who needs your help.”

Without a flicker of expression or inflection, the Termigan replied, “Pigslime.”

Terisa stopped and studied him, trying to see past his face into his mind. But he was as closed as a piece of flint. In an effort to pull herself together, she poured more wine for herself, then returned to the bed and sat down again.

Slowly, she said, “You don’t like Imagers. Is that it?”

“Joyse needs my help, I’m sure of that,” he retorted, “but not because you ask it. You don’t care about him. You want me to do something that will help you against Eremis and Gilbur. If that helps the King today, it will help destroy him tomorrow.”

“Is it because I’m an Imager?” Terisa asked, speaking mostly to herself. “It must be. Everybody who knows the Domne trusts his sons.”

“The one thing you all want is to get rid of him. That’s the one thing you’re all united on. He’s the only man who’s ever succeeded at controlling you.”

“I see.” Terisa had learned a lot from Castellan Lebbick: she had learned how to speak harshly to angry men. “You think an Imager can’t be honest. You think that talent – an accident of birth – precludes loyalty. Or compassion. Or even ethics.”

Still the Termigan didn’t shift in his seat; he didn’t raise his head or his voice. “In the end,” he articulated flatly, “no Imager is loyal to anyone but himself. That’s the nature of power. It seduces – it requires. An Imager can appear loyal only as long as his power and his loyalty don’t come into conflict. The only thing” – now just for a moment he did raise his voice – “my lady, the only thing which has saved us for the past ten years is Havelock’s madness. If Vagel hadn’t cost him his mind, he would have gotten rid of Joyse as soon as the Congery was complete. He would have established a tyranny in Mordant to make the atrocities of Margonal and Festten look like boys pulling wings off butterflies.”

The virulence, not of his tone, but of his belief, shocked her. “You think that? Even though Havelock was the King’s friend and counselor for – what was it? – more than forty years? Even though he gave up his sanity for his King?” Pain and the aftereffects of nearly being killed made her savage. “What would he have to do to make you trust him? Slaughter every Imager ever born? Exterminate talent from the world?”

With a small flick of his hand, the lord dismissed her protest. “Even that wouldn’t be enough. The Imager I trust is the one who kills himself.

“If you’re telling me the truth – which is always possible, I suppose – you haven’t known about your talent very long. You’ve only had a few days to discover what it does to you. My lady, I’ll tell you what it does.

“It teaches you – no, it forces you to believe you’re more important than other people. Because you can do more. If you’re smart enough, and strong enough, and nobody gets in your way, you can change the outcome of the world. You can remake Mordant in your own image. So how can you let anybody stand in your way? How can you let anybody tell you what to do? How can you submit to any kind of control?

“You can’t, my lady. You’ll find out that you can’t.

“And when you find that out, you’ll learn Joyse is your enemy. I’m your enemy. Even if you think you’re honest now, and loyal, and trustworthy, you’ll learn you want us all dead. You’ll learn it’s better to translate pits of fire to roast us out of our homes than to take the risk that we might get in your way.”

Terisa was more than shocked: she was appalled. How can you let anybody stand in your way? The Termigan was right: she knew Imagers who met his description. And more than that: she knew people who would meet his description if they became Imagers. Her father was one of them.

If she was her father’s daughter, she might be one of them herself.

“Now, my lady,” the Termigan said like a sharp stone, “tell me what you think I can do to help my King.”

Fortunately, she didn’t get a chance to answer. A knock at the door saved her from babbling incoherently. The Termigan turned his head, rasped, “Enter,” and one of his soldiers came into the room.

“My lord,” the man said in a pale voice. His face was ashen, but his eyes still held the red glow of lava. “It’s getting worse.”

“ ‘Worse’?” the lord demanded without moving.

The soldier jerked a nod. “They’re translating more lava. We can see it pouring out of the air. It’s building up against us faster. Two of the pits ran together.” He hesitated, then said, “Part of the wall just gave way.”

A sting of alarm went through Terisa. Half involuntarily, she said, “That’s because we’re here. We’re too dangerous.”

And because they were approaching the crisis – the point where Master Quillon said Eremis would be vulnerable. So that he would attack here. The point at which King Joyse intended to strike back. If in fact he had ever had the policy Quillon ascribed to him – or if he were still King enough to carry it out. Eremis needed to kill or paralyze the King’s allies before that moment, so that King Joyse wouldn’t have any force with which to strike.

It was probably true – although the thought made her sick – that Eremis wouldn’t try so hard to kill her and Geraden if she hadn’t convinced the Master that King Joyse knew what he was doing, that the King’s choices were deliberate, purposive, rather than passive or accidental.

“ ‘We’?” asked the Termigan. He sounded fatal – too calm for the extremity of his outrage and dismay. “One new Imager and a failed Apt? I don’t believe it.”

“You should.” Terisa couldn’t bear it. Sternwall was going to be destroyed. Like Houseldon. Because of her and Geraden. “He’s an Imager, too. He’s even more powerful than I am. Let him make a mirror, and he’ll get rid of that lava for you.

“Eremis wants us dead. He can’t take the chance we’ll talk you into helping us.”

Then she closed her eyes, trying to rest her head from this prolonged struggle against pain; trying to believe that she hadn’t condemned Geraden and herself to spend the rest of their short lives in the Termigan’s dungeons.

She expected the lord to do something vehement: spring to his feet, storm around the room, perhaps have her locked in irons. He did none of those things, however. He murmured to his soldier, and the man left the room. Then he sat still, studying Terisa flatly; his gaze was so unreadable that when she finally met it it made her want to scream.

A few moments later, the soldier returned, ushering Geraden into the Termigan’s presence.

After that, the man left.

Geraden looked at her, at the lord. He said, “My lord Termigan,” roughly, his only concession to politeness. He was already hurrying toward Terisa.

“Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice. “You were hit so hard, I thought they broke your neck.”

She managed a crooked smile, a stiff nod. Putting her hand in his, she pulled herself to her feet. “The lava’s getting worse,” she said, speaking carefully so that she wouldn’t start to yell. “I think it’s another way of attacking us.” She faced the Termigan although she spoke to Geraden, held Geraden’s hand; with all her strength, she willed the lord not to harm Geraden. “And I think Eremis is afraid of the Termigan. There must be something he can do to fight back.” Because she wanted the lord to understand that she was threatening him, she concluded to Geraden, “I told him you’re an Imager.”

And Geraden – without hesitation, almost without trepidation – supported her even though he probably had no idea what he was getting into. “That’s right,” he said. “If you’ve got any sand here, any kind of furnace or kiln, I might be able to make a mirror. I could translate that fire away.”

Terisa squeezed his hand hard and held her breath.

For the first time, she saw the Termigan react plainly. A muscle twitched in his cheek; his brows knotted into a hurt scowl. The emotion she felt wash from him wasn’t anger or even disgust: it was grief.

In a ragged voice, he said, “No. Even if you’re telling the truth. I won’t have it. I won’t have Imagery here.”

His own severity cost him this hope.

Geraden blew a sigh; but he still didn’t hesitate. “Then, my lord,” he said clearly, “there’s only one thing you can do for your people.” Terisa marveled at him – at the strength in his voice, at the certainty with which he met a dilemma that confounded her. “Evacuate Sternwall. Get your men together. Go fight for King Joyse. Before it’s too late.”

It didn’t work. “ ‘Evacuate Sternwall’?” the Termigan spat as if he had discovered a piece of glass in his food. “Leave my people? Abandon my Care?” Softly, but so intensely that it sounded like a cry from his heart, he demanded, “For what?”

“For Mordant,” answered Geraden. “For peace.”

The Termigan didn’t respond, so Geraden went on, “Orison is under siege. Prince Kragen brought the Alend army against us – at least ten thousand men. And Cadwal is marching. The High King’s army is even bigger – I don’t know how long the Perdon can hold out against it. Right now, the Alend Monarch may be in the strange position of defending Orison from Cadwal.

“I don’t think you can do anything about that. I don’t think you’ve got enough men.

“But you could attack Eremis directly.” He released Terisa’s hand so that he could move closer to the Termigan, face the lord more squarely. “He’s in league with High King Festten. But Cadwal has to fight Alend and Orison. So the place where Eremis keeps his mirrors is vulnerable – the place where he does translations like this one, the one destroying Sternwall. The place where he and Gilbur and Vagel hid to do their plotting and shape their mirrors.

“You could attack him there. In the Care of Tor. In his home. Esmerel.”

Esmerel? Terisa was surprised. That didn’t make sense. “What about his father – his brothers?” she asked stupidly. They would have betrayed him long ago. “He couldn’t use Esmerel.”

Geraden turned to her. Frowning at the distraction, he said, “Eremis doesn’t have any family. They all died in a fire years ago. Some of his servants in Orison are people who used to serve his father. I’ve heard them talk about it.”

So that also was a lie, just another of Eremis’ attempts to manipulate her. She ground her teeth. Suddenly, she felt a fierce desire to do what Geraden was proposing: ride into the Care of Tor, ride to Esmerel, attack—Get even with that bastard.

But the Termigan wasn’t moved. “Will that save Sternwall?” he asked Geraden in a voice like a winter wind.

“Probably not,” Geraden admitted. “It’ll take too long. Sternwall is probably doomed – unless something good happens for a change. Unless something happens to distract Eremis or Gilbur so they can’t keep translating that lava.”

“Then I repeat,” gritted the lord. “For what?”

This time, Geraden said simply, “You might be able to save King Joyse.”

The Termigan chewed on that for a while. Then he said harshly, “So you think there’s something worth saving? You think Joyse hasn’t just gone passive or anile?” He’d been pushed too far: he was losing his calm, his inhuman self-restraint. “You think there’s some reason why he let those shit-eating Imagers do this to my Care?”

“Yes,” Terisa said at once, before the lord’s sorrow and distress became too much for her. “I don’t like it very well. I don’t think it’s good enough. But there is a reason.”

In a few stiff sentences, while the Termigan stared at her as if she were lice-ridden, she told him what Master Quillon had told her about King Joyse’s reasons.

The lord surged to his feet; almost before she was done, he snapped, “Is that all? He turned his back on us, left his realm to rot, let Imagers do whatever they wanted to his people – just so Mordant would be attacked, instead of Alend or Cadwal?”

His passion stopped Terisa’s voice. She nodded dumbly.

Without warning, the Termigan let out a snarl of laughter. Candlelight reflected in his eyes like an echo of lava. “Brilliant. Destroy your friends to save your enemies. Completely brilliant.”

“He needs the help anyway, my lord,” murmured Geraden. “No matter how slim it is, the possibility that he knows what he’s doing is the only hope we have left. You might be able to do him some good by striking against Esmerel.”

For a moment, the lord remained motionless, holding himself as though a gale were gathering inside him. Then, abruptly, he lifted his fists and roared, “No!

“He decided to sacrifice Sternwall without consulting me! Let him pay for the rest of his reasons himself!”

When he left the room, he slammed the door so hard that splinters jumped from the latch and one of the crossmembers cracked.

Geraden looked at Terisa with trouble in his eyes. “Well,” he said finally, “at least I haven’t lost my talent for mishap.”

She went to him and hugged him. “Wait and see,” she muttered dryly. “If he doesn’t tie us up and throw us in the lava, you got more out of him than I did.”

That enabled him to chuckle a little. “Do you mean,” he asked, “that if we simply survive this experience I’m supposed to consider it a success?”

“Wait and see,” she repeated. She didn’t know what else to offer him.

They waited.

Eventually, a servant brought them hot water, so Geraden braced a chair against the door, and they bathed each other. They drank the wine and ate the food; they took advantage of the bed. They even got some sleep.

The next morning, they answered a knock at their door, and another servant came into the room carrying their breakfast.

A soldier visited them as well. Brusquely, as if he had no time for this, he asked Terisa and Geraden what they needed for their journey.

They were surprised – but not so surprised that Geraden couldn’t think of a list. After all, the Termigan had a reputation for fidelity. He may have hated Imagers and lost confidence in his King, but apparently he couldn’t forget his lifelong loyalties. To the Domne, for instance. And Geraden and Terisa had lost their horses and supplies outside Sternwall; they needed anything the lord was willing to give them. So Geraden talked to the soldier for several minutes; and by the time he and Terisa had finished their breakfast the man returned to report that their new horses and fresh supplies were ready to go.

In fact, the Termigan sent them on their way better equipped than they had been when they entered his Care. In addition to the horses, he gave them plenty of food, full wineskins, cooking utensils, a short sword for each of them, and bedding that seemed luxurious compared to the thin blankets with which they had left Houseldon. He even provided a rough map which showed a direct route across country toward the Care of Fayle and Romish.

But he didn’t do anything to help King Joyse.

THIRTY-SIX: GATHERING SUPPORT

According to the map, Romish was situated near the southeast point of the Care of Fayle, where the border between Fayle and Armigite met the border between Termigan and Fayle.

Terisa and Geraden wanted to hurry. From one perspective, the attack on Sternwall was a good sign: it implied that Master Eremis was still waiting for his plans to mature, still vulnerable. In every other way, however, the Termigan’s plight was cause for alarm. So far, Houseldon had been burned down; Sternwall was falling into a pit of fire. The Armigite had made an agreement with Prince Kragen. The Perdon was alone against all of High King Festten’s power. What came next? If this process continued much longer, Mordant would soon have nothing left to save.

Terisa and Geraden had reason to hurry.

Unfortunately, the terrain didn’t let them.

They made good progress for a day after they left Sternwall, but that was only because they were able to remain on the road which led eventually to the Demesne and Orison. The second day, their route required them to angle away from the road, heading more to the north as the road shifted east. And this part of Termigan was the roughest land she had yet seen in Mordant.

“Now if this were Armigite—” Geraden panted as he tugged his horse, a rangy gray with a head like a mallet, up an interminable hillside that was too flinty and steep for safe riding. “Armigite in spring is worth seeing. The soil is so sweet they say you only have to wave a few squash seeds at the ground and you’ll be up to your hips in vines. The early hay should be just coming up – it smells so fresh you want to take up dancing. And the women—” He glanced at Terisa and grinned. “All that rich soil and relaxed countryside makes their work so easy they really don’t have anything better to do than sit around and become gorgeous.”

Terisa snorted softly. At the moment, she would have been delighted to be in Armigite. Let the women there become as gorgeous as they pleased. As far as she was concerned, the only thing worse than riding a horse was trying to haul it by main force up a hill it didn’t want to climb, when her knee still pained her. Generally, she was willing to put up with the mount the Termigan had provided for her – a roan gelding with a decent gait and no malice. In the present circumstances, however, she would cheerfully have dropped the beast into one of Eremis’ fiery pits.

Nevertheless she didn’t suggest that she and Geraden forget about the Fayle; that they return to the road and head straight for Orison. The Fayle was the only lord left whom they might bring to the King’s support.

And Queen Madin lived in Fayle, in Romish. Myste had mentioned a manor just outside Romish.

Terisa felt a strong, if rather irrational, conviction that Queen Madin had a right to know what her husband was doing. Otherwise the Queen might go to her grave believing that King Joyse had lost his interest in life, his commitment to Mordant; his love for her.

It was typical of Terisa’s mood – her soul shocked by Sternwall’s danger, her thoughts troubled by the ramifications of what Master Eremis was doing, and yet her heart full of Geraden – that she considered Queen Madin’s feelings at least as important as King Joyse’s need for help.

So she wrestled her roan up the hillsides, rode it gingerly down the gullies, and trotted it inexpertly across the flats, not precisely without complaint, but without significant self-pity.

The Care of Termigan, as Geraden explained, wasn’t heavily populated. And most of the towns and villages were spread out along the Broadwine River, away from the Pestil and Alend. After the second day, the two riders seemed alone in the stringent landscape.

Terisa began to think that Termigan had already lost everything it had ever contained worth fighting for.

For three days, dark clouds locked the sky, threatening rain. Water and mud would have perfected the pleasure of her journey; nevertheless she wished for rain. Orison could always use water. And mud would make the movements of armies more difficult.

Despite the fierce way they glowered down at the earth, however, the clouds were only able to spit a few brief sprinkles before they blew away. The weather itself seemed to have Master Eremis’ best interests at heart.

On the other hand, as the clouds drifted off, the terrain improved, as if sunlight had an ameliorating effect on the slopes and soil. Trees became more common: soon the errant and bedraggled copses of the rest of Termigan began to accumulate into long stands of elder and sycamore, ash and wattle. “We’re getting closer,” commented Geraden. “Fayle is known for its wood.

“Actually, that’s one reason Alend traditionally attacks through Termigan or Armigite rather than Fayle. And it’s why the Fayle was King Joyse’s second ally, after the Tor. You could make yourself old trying to run a military campaign through the forests of Fayle. The Care has more history of resistance – or maybe I should say of successful resistance – than most of the rest of Mordant.

“That probably explains,” he concluded humorously, “where the Fayle got his loyalty – and Queen Madin got her stubbornness.”

Terisa felt that if she never saw another hillside covered with gorse and nettles again she could die happy. “How much farther?”

He consulted the map. “Two days, if we’re lucky. It’s easy to get lost in woods and forests. And I’ve never been in Fayle before. Actually, Batten in Armigite is the closest I’ve ever been to Romish.

“But the good news” – he looked around – “is that we ought to start seeing people again soon. According to the map, we’ll go right through several villages. Technically, some of them will still be Termigan. But for all practical purposes we’re coming into the Care of Fayle right now.”

Simply because he said those words, she took a harder look ahead – and spotted what appeared to be a smudge against the horizon.

Frowning, she tried to squint her vision into better focus.

Geraden noticed the direction of her gaze. “What do you see?”

“I don’t know. Smoke?”

He squinted as well, then shook his head. “I can’t tell.” Terisa didn’t need to say anything; he had the same memories she did. After scanning the map again, he added, “That might actually be the first village. A place called Aperyte. Unless I’m wrong about where we are. If it has a smithy, the forge will smoke.”

“Let’s find out,” she said under her breath.

Self-consciously, he loosened his sword in its scabbard. Then he tightened his grip on the reins and urged his gray into a canter.

Her gelding followed. She was getting better at telling it what to do.

Between the trees, the ground was covered with clumps of dull grass and bracken. The first hint of evening was in the air, but she didn’t notice it; she was concentrating ahead, trying to see past a number of intervening wattle thickets. The wattle had bright yellow flowers that grew in sprays like mimosa blooms. The ground was rising: if she had turned in her saddle, she could have seen a panorama unrolled behind her. But she had watched Houseldon burn; she didn’t have any attention to spare for flowers and vistas.

The distance was greater than she expected. She began to think that the smudge she had seen was a trick of the light.

Then, abruptly, a knot of copses stood back from a clearing.

A corral with a split-rail fence filled most of the clearing. It wasn’t as big as it first appeared; but it was plainly big enough for ten or fifteen horses. Terisa – who felt that she was becoming an expert on horse manure – was sure that the corral had been full of horses.

Recently.

But not now.

Geraden stopped. He studied the clearing. “That’s odd.”

“What’s odd?”

“The gate’s closed.”

He was right: the gate wasn’t just closed; it was tied shut.

“Why?” he muttered softly. “Why take all your horses out and then tie the gate?”

She lowered her voice. “Why not?”

“Why bother?” he returned.

Terisa had no idea.

After a moment, he breathed, “Come on,” and slipped out of his saddle. “Let’s go see what we’re getting into.”

When she had dismounted, he led the gray and her gelding away until they were hidden among the copses, out of sight of the clearing. There he tied the reins to a tree; but he didn’t uncinch the girths or drop the saddlebags.

Taking Terisa’s hand, he moved quietly toward the village.

Because she was trying so hard to look ahead, peer between the trees, she had trouble with her footing. Geraden, on the other hand, didn’t trip or stumble. For a moment, she couldn’t figure out how he knew where he was going. Then she realized that he was following worn lines in the dirt – marks made by people and animals that had reason to go in every conceivable direction from their homes.

He brought her to the back of a daub-and-wattle shed. Actually, it was little more than a shelter intended to protect straw for the horses from the weather.

Beyond it lay the village.

At a glance, Terisa could see perhaps a dozen huts, all built of daub-and-wattle, all with roofs made from what appeared to be bundles of banana leaves. Among them stood an open-sided structure that might have served as a meeting hall. The size of the cleared space gave the impression that there were more houses and buildings out of sight behind the ones nearby.

From somewhere among them rose a stream of thin, dirty smoke.

The village was disturbingly quiet. No people shouting to each other. No people at all. No dogs. No chickens scratching the dirt. No children whimpering or playing in the distance. The breeze raised a little furl of dust along the hard ground between the huts, but it didn’t make any noise.

“Oh, shit,” Geraden growled softly.

“Maybe they’re all at work,” she murmured. “In the fields or something.”

He shook his head. “A village like this is never empty. Not like this.”

“Evacuation? Maybe the Fayle got them all away?”

He thought for a moment. “I like that idea better.” Then he said, “As long as we’re whispering, let’s go see if they really are gone.”

Together, they crept into the village.

Its inhabitants really were gone.

So were all its animals and fowl; beasts of burden; pets. Terisa had the impression that even the vermin had disappeared.

Shadows lengthened across the bare ground. Dusk seemed to gather in the huts and peek out from their gaping doorways, their eyeless windows. The breeze brought the taste of something cold, a hint of something rotten.

She was afraid to ask Geraden if he recognized it.

The village did in fact contain a smithy, but the forge was cold. The smoke came from somewhere else.

Shortly, she and Geraden discovered its source. At the northern edge of the village, three huts in a cluster were on fire.

They had been burning for some time – had nearly burned themselves out. Only their blackened frames still stood. Small flames licked in and out of the fallen remains of the roofs; the smoke drifting upward had a bitter smell.

All three were full of corpses.

Terisa gagged when she saw the stumps of charred arms and legs, the lumps of heads protruding from the ash. “Is that all of them?” she choked thickly. “All of them?”

“No.” Geraden was having trouble breathing. “Probably just a few families. The whole village wouldn’t fit. These are the ones who didn’t get away.”

Inspired by nausea – and by the strange scent on the breeze, which didn’t have anything to do with burned wattle and charred bodies – Terisa muttered, “Or they’re the ones who did.”

He gave her a look like a whiplash.

She heard a faint, rustling noise – bare feet scuttling across the dirt. She looked around; her peripheral vision seemed to catch a glimpse of something as it slipped into the evening shadows. Then it was gone. She couldn’t be sure that she had actually seen anything.

Yet a chill went down her back as she remembered what Master Eremis had told the lords of the Cares. All Mordant is already assailed. Strange wolves have slaughtered the Tor’s son. Devouring lizards swarm the storehouses of the Demesne. Pits of fire appear in the ground of Termigan.

But that wasn’t all. Now she remembered it precisely.

Ghouls harry the villages of Fayle.

“Geraden—” She was barely able to clear her throat. “Let’s get out of here.”

He was still staring at the huts; he hadn’t heard what she heard. But he nodded roughly.

For no apparent reason, he pulled out his sword as he started back toward the horses.

She hoped he didn’t have a reason. Nevertheless she was glad that he was armed – and that he was determined, if not skilled. She stayed close to his shoulder all the way through the village and past the corral.

Their boots made too much noise on the hard ground: she wouldn’t have been able to hear any soft rustling sounds. But twice she thought she saw movement in the heart of a shadow, the depths of a hut, as if the dark were coming to life.

She was irrationally relieved to find the horses where she and Geraden had left them – and to find them alive. They were both uneasy: the gray bobbed its head fretfully; the roan kept rolling its eyes. Maybe they smelled the same scent that made her so nervous. They were difficult to manage at first, until they realized that they were no longer tied to the tree.

Respecting the uneasiness of the horses – and his own distress – Geraden led Terisa in a wide circuit beyond the empty village before returning to the route marked on the Termigan’s map.

Until nightfall forced them to stop, they put as much distance as they could between themselves and Aperyte. She didn’t want to stop at all; but of course they couldn’t find their way safely in the dark. A flashlight would have come in handy. A big flashlight. Sure, she muttered to herself sourly. And while she was at it, why not an armored car to ride in? Or even an airplane to drop a few strategic bombs on Esmerel? On High King Festten’s army?

All Geraden needed was a mirror.

He could do it, if he could get to his glass – the one which had brought her here.

Sure.

When they made camp, she helped him build the biggest fire they could. She hunted as far as she dared, collecting firewood. Then, while they ate supper, she commented morosely, “I don’t know what made me say that.”

Geraden looked at her across the stewpot out of which he was eating.

“You said they were the ones who didn’t get away. I said they were the ones who did. I don’t know why I said that.”

He tried without much success to smile. “Let’s hope you just have a morbid imagination.” The firelight on his face reminded her of the Termigan.

She couldn’t smile, either. “Why is it,” she went on, trying to exorcise images which haunted her, “everything that comes here by translation is so destructive? Why is it so easy to find terrible things in mirrors? Is the universe really so malign?”

“I certainly hope not.” In a transparent effort to reassure her, Geraden grimaced lugubriously. Then he set himself to give her an answer.

“It’s probably true that every world has predators. But even if a world didn’t contain any violence at all, its creatures or powers might still be destructive if they were translated – if they were taken out of their natural place. There’s nothing immoral about a pit of fire – as long as you leave it where it belongs. What’s really destructive is the man who translates it somewhere else.

“Would you call a fox destructive? After all, it hunts chickens. And people need those chickens. Even so, there’s nothing wrong with the fox.

“For all we know, the firecat that burned Houseldon might be the same thing as a fox in its own world. It might be anything. It might even be an administer of charity.”

An administer of charity. Just for a moment, she took the idea seriously. Someone who ran a mission, for example. Then, however, she was struck by the thought of Reverend Thatcher going around setting towns on fire. On his own terms, that would please him. But literally setting towns on fire—

Involuntarily, she grinned. When Geraden rolled his eyes at her, she started laughing.

She felt like a fool – like she was losing her mind. But she went on laughing, and after a while she felt better.

Nevertheless she didn’t sleep very well that night. She kept expecting the horses to snort and shy – kept expecting to smell something cold and slightly rotten in the dark. And for some reason Geraden spent most of the night snoring like a bandsaw. When she nudged him awake in the early gray of dawn, so that they could be on their way, she felt cold herself and vaguely stupid, as if the matter inside her skull had begun to turn rancid.

The day began well. The air was clear and crisp, and the horses moved easily along the increasingly traveled paths. And before noon she and Geraden came upon a village that had nothing wrong with it.

Nothing, that is, except anxiety. When the people of the village heard what Terisa and Geraden had found in Aperyte, they muttered nervously and scanned the woods around their homes and began to talk about leaving.

“Ghouls,” a woman pronounced, confirming Terisa’s guess. “Don’t know what else to call them. Never seen one – but the lord sent men to warn us. Attack at dusk or dawn. Little critters, almost like children. Green and smelly.

“Eat every kind of flesh. Don’t even leave the grease and bones. That’s what the lord’s men said.”

Geraden scowled as if he were in pain. “That’s why the gate was closed,” he muttered. “The horses never got out. They were eaten right there in the corral.”

Terisa was thinking, They’re the ones who did. They escaped into their huts and somehow sealed the doors. And then they were incinerated in their own homes.

Eremis.

She was beginning to understand why King Joyse had fought for twenty years to strip Alend and Cadwal of Imagers and create the Congery. He wanted to prevent creatures like ghouls from being translated into the world.

Through a haze of nausea and anger, she asked one of the villagers, “What’re you going to do?”

“What the lord’s men told us,” came the reply. “If we heard any rumor of ghouls around here, saw any sign. Get to Romish as fast as we can.”

“Good,” said Geraden fiercely.

He and Terisa rode on.

She still felt like the meat of her brain was going bad. Even though those villagers were safe, she couldn’t rid herself of the impression that the day was getting worse. How many ghouls had Eremis already translated into the Care of Fayle? How much of the Fayle’s strength had already been eaten away?

How could he help King Joyse and defend his own people at the same time?

She practiced saying Oh, shit to herself until it began to feel more natural.

“Here’s some more good news,” Geraden remarked the next time he studied the map. “At the rate we’re going, we’re due to reach another village just about sunset. A place called Naybel.”

Oh, shit.

Grimly, she made an effort to think. “Maybe we should stay away from it. Maybe those things are following us.”

He glared at her. “You do have a morbid imagination.” After a moment, he added, “If we’re being followed, we’ve got to warn the village. We can’t lead ghouls past Naybel and expect them to leave it alone.”

The day was definitely going downhill.

The afternoon wore on, as miserable and prolonged as a toothache. Eventually, Terisa concluded that there were after all worse things than spending so much of the day on horseback. She couldn’t get that smell out of her mind.

Without making an explicit decision to hurry, she and Geraden began to urge their horses faster. They wanted to reach Naybel before dusk.

Mishap continued to dog them. Because they were hurrying, they rode into the village precisely as the sun began to dip into the horizon. At a slower pace, they wouldn’t have arrived until full dark.

The decision to ride straight into the village was also one which they hadn’t made explicitly: they did it simply because the need to warn Naybel’s people blanketed other considerations. As a result, they were already among the huts, on their way in toward the center of the village, when they realized that Naybel was as empty as Aperyte.

Geraden slowed the gray’s canter. The beast’s head went up and down like a hammer, fighting the reins. Terisa’s gelding had its ears back. Where the sunlight came through the trees, the shadows of the huts were as sharp as blades.

“Geraden,” she whispered, “we’re too late. Let’s get out of here.”

Geraden hesitated, turned his head to fling a look around him – and lost control of his mount. The gray caught its bit between its teeth and bolted.

Terisa couldn’t stop her roan from following.

Almost at once, she heard the squeal of a pig. Geraden nearly lost his seat as the gray wrenched itself aside to avoid collision with a fat porker. Immediately, his horse blundered into a squall of chickens. Terisa followed him through feathers and shadows.

Into the center of the village.

Like Aperyte, Naybel had an open-sided meeting hall among its houses.

In the hall stood a group of men – six or eight of them. They wore heavy boots and battle-leathers; they were armed with swords, pikes, longbows.

As soon as they saw Geraden and Terisa, they began to yell, waving their arms wildly.

“Fools!”

“Fornication!”

“Get away!”

“Stop!”

Several of them apparently wanted to chase the horses off. Fortunately, one man had a different idea. Or he realized that the gray was a runaway. With the practiced ease of someone who had worked with horses all his life, he jumped at the gray’s head and caught the reins. The gray wheeled to a halt so hard that Geraden was nearly snapped out of the saddle.

More to avoid hitting the gray than because of anything Terisa did, the gelding also blundered to a stop.

“Fools!” a man shouted. “You’re going to be killed!”

Terisa tried to hold herself still, but the whole village seemed to be spinning. A shadow as distinct as a cut lay across the roan’s head. The men from the meeting hall shifted in and out of shadows; their weapons disappeared, caught the sun, disappeared again. Geraden had nearly run into a pig. And chickens. Naybel wasn’t empty, not like Aperyte.

Then what—?

It was true: she could smell something cold, something that had begun to rot; something like the exhalation from a neglected tomb.

Out of a hut beyond the meeting hall came a little boy. She thought he was a little boy, oddly naked. A grin split his face, leaving a wide, empty place. He didn’t leave the shadows; because of the dim illumination, a moment passed before she noticed that he had a chicken in his hands.

The chicken was melting. It slumped over his fingers like heated wax. But none of it dripped to the ground. Instead, as it oozed it was absorbed into his flesh.

Now she realized that his whole body was covered with slime. Maybe the shadows were playing tricks on her eyes. The boy looked green—

A hoarse cry broke from the men. Two of them already had their longbows up, arrows nocked. Bows like that could have flung their yards straight through the walls of one of these huts. The two arrows that hit the little boy spiked him to the dirt.

Terisa distinctly heard a popping noise, a sound of rupture; she. heard a brief wail claw the air.

Instantly, three more green children appeared in the shadow beside the little boy. They grinned as they began to feed.

Somewhere out of sight, the pig squealed – a shriek of porcine agony. The gelding took this occasion to pitch Terisa off its back. With a whinny like a scream, it rushed out of the village.

Terisa landed heavily, knocking the air out of her chest. In the distance, Geraden yelled her name, but she couldn’t react to it. The jolt of impact stunned her. A streak of sunlight fell over her face: she looked up and saw one of ghouls standing in shadow no more than four or five feet away. She could smell the child—

In fact, the odor wasn’t particularly strong. It was insidious, however, and its subtlety seemed to make it more nauseating, more corrosive, than a stronger stench would have been. Smelling it, staring at the small girl who grinned at her as if she were an especially tasty snack, Terisa decided that the slime on the ghoul’s skin was acid. It rendered flesh down to a tallow the creature could take in through its pores. And when someone tried to escape by barring the door of a hut, the acid probably set the wood on fire.

The ghoul was so hungry that she started out of the shadow into the light that covered Terisa’s face.

Geraden leaped over her and swept the girl’s head off with a long swing of his sword.

The popping noise, the sound of rupture; a high, thin cry.

Two, three, no, at least six more ghouls came at once to feed on their fallen sister.

Around the meeting hall, a weird battle raged. Superficially, it was an uneven struggle: the men slaughtered the ghouls with relative ease. Swords, pikes, arrows, even stones thrown hard – everything worked. Panting, raging, the men hacked down, sliced up, or spitted the ghouls as fast as possible. They were only children, as simple to kill as children.

But they were so many—

No, they weren’t as many as all that. The truth was more complex. As soon as one of them got enough to eat, the creature split apart, became two. And whenever one of them died, the body provided enough food for three or four other ghouls to multiply.

And with every death wail, more creatures swarmed out of the shadows.

In addition, the weapons of the men didn’t last long. Every arrow that struck home caught fire; every blade that cut came back pitted and weakened, streaked with ruin; every pike that pierced a ghoul lost its head.

Geraden tried to wrestle Terisa toward the meeting hall, into the relative center of the battle, where the men watched each other’s backs. She thought she ought to help him, but she couldn’t get her legs under her; the fall from her horse seemed to have broken the connection between what her brain suggested and what her muscles did. She wanted to say, Water. Try water. Maybe the acid could be washed away. Or diluted. Unfortunately, all that came between her lips was a hoarse gasp for air.

And the air was full of wails and death; the stench of rot; men cursing for their lives; sunset.

Then, so suddenly that the sound of it almost relaxed her chest enough to let her breathe, she heard a trumpet.

That high penetrating call seemed to change everything.

At its signal, twenty or thirty men charged through the village on horseback.

They knew what they were doing: they didn’t risk any of their mounts in an attempt to trample the ghouls. Instead, they carried lights of every description – torches, lanterns, blazing fagots, even oil lamps. Shining like a host of glory, the riders swept into Naybel at dusk.

Obliquely, Terisa noticed that one of them was the Fayle himself. She recognized him by his age, his leanness, his long, heavy jaw.

She didn’t have the strength to wonder what he was doing here. She was too busy watching.

The light seemed to hurt the ghouls worse than death did: it paralyzed them. They lost their grins, their hunger, the power of movement. And when they couldn’t move, they couldn’t feed on each other; they couldn’t multiply.

Clearly, the Fayle’s men knew this would happen. At once, they took advantage of it.

In grim concentration, as if they had never been able to reconcile themselves to killing creatures that looked like children, they began hacking the ghouls apart and setting the pieces to the torch.

They used cast-iron tongs and shovels to pile the dismembered corpses together so that the flames fed on each other. Before long, the bonfire beside the meeting hall of Naybel grew so large that its flames seemed to reach the darkening heavens. After the last of the sun went down, there was no other light in the village except fire.

Hot fire and acrid smoke slowly took the cold, rotting odor out of the air. A gust of wind carried smoke into Terisa’s eyes; tears ran down her cheeks as if she were weeping. But she was able to breathe again, able to get air all the way down into the bottom of her lungs, able to move her shoulder. So that was why, she thought deliberately, distracting herself from the slaughter she had just witnessed so it wouldn’t overwhelm her, that was why the bodies in those burned huts in Aperyte hadn’t been consumed, when every other form of flesh in the village was gone. Once the acid had set fire to the wood, the flames had cast enough light to keep the ghouls away.

After a minute or two, she became aware that Geraden still had his arms around her. Like her, he had taken a face full of smoke; like her, he appeared to be weeping. The light of burning children reflected in his eyes.

She hugged him, held him; clung to him. She didn’t know how much more she could bear.

Trying to recover his composure, he muttered, “I’m never going to tell Quiss about this. Never as long as I live.”

Terisa coughed at the smoke, cleared her throat. Remembering the way he had kept her sane when the Congery’s champion had brought the ceiling of the hall down on her, she made an effort to return the favor. “That’s probably a good idea. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t want you to tell me about it.”

In the same tone, as if he were talking about the same thing, he said, “If I ever get my hands on Master Eremis, I swear I’m going to kill him.”

Distinctly, so that there would be no mistake about it, she replied, “You’ll have to get to him before I do.”

Geraden studied her through the dusk and firelight. Then, just for a moment, he grinned. “If he knew we’re this angry at him, he would break into a sweat.”

He made it possible for her to smile as well. “You know,” she murmured close to his ear, “until I met you, it never once occurred to me that someday I would be able to make my enemies sweat.”

“Your enemies, my lady?” Geraden gave her an extra hug. “You make me sweat.”

When she saw the Fayle riding toward her, she realized that she felt able to face him now.

He dismounted carefully and gave her an old man’s brittle bow. “My lady Terisa,” he said in a voice like dry leaves, “you astonish me. When last we met, I believed that Master Eremis was the source of my surprise, but now I can see that I was mistaken. The surprise is in you.

“This trap was set for ghouls, my lady. It was never my intention to ensnare you – to endanger you.”

“Of course not, my lord Fayle.” She didn’t know what kind of bow to give him. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to expect one. “We were just—” She caught herself, made an effort to take one thing at a time. “My lord, this is Geraden.”

The Fayle looked at Geraden. “Son of the Domne,” he murmured. “Translator of the lady Terisa of Morgan. A prominent figure in the Congery’s augury of Mordant’s need.” Again, he bowed. “You are welcome in the Care of Fayle.”

Geraden returned the bow. Terisa wondered whether he – whether she herself – would still be welcome if the lord knew of their talents; but she wasn’t given a chance to explore the issue. Without pausing, the Fayle went on, “I must get out of this smoke. Our camp is a mile from here. There we can offer you hot food and a safe bed. If you will consent to accompany me, we will hear your story in better comfort.

“In the morning, the villagers will return to cleanse their homes, and we will ride to attempt this tactic again elsewhere. You will be welcome to accompany us then, also, if you wish.”

“Thanks, my lord,” Geraden answered promptly. “We’ll be glad to go with you – at least for tonight. We’ve got a lot to tell you.”

“I am sure you do,” said the Fayle. “Perhaps you will be able to tell me whether Master Eremis is honest – whether I was wrong to betray his intentions to Castellan Lebbick.

“Come.”

As if all his joints ached, he climbed back onto his horse.

All his joints probably did ache. Terisa would have thought that he was too old for ambushes and battles. Privately, she wondered what drove him to it.

She also wondered how much it would be safe to tell him. She and Geraden had come close to disaster by telling the Termigan too much.

Before she had time to wonder what had become of the roan gelding, one of the Fayle’s men returned it to her; he had found it in the woods. Soon she and Geraden were riding among the Fayle’s companions toward his camp.

After the turmoil and fright of the battle, the ride seemed reassuring and peaceful, too brief. In a short time, she found herself dismounted before a bright fire near the center of a clearing. Around her were servants and supply wains, bedrolls set out on the ground, more men, extra horses; a few of Naybel’s people had come to hear what had happened to their village. A steward brought a flagon of heated wine for the Fayle, then hurried away to get more for the lord’s unexpected guests. The way the men looked at her reminded Terisa that she hadn’t had a decent bath for days. Her hair probably looked like a rat’s nest, and her clothes were filthy. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about those things at the moment. Instead, she attempted to ignore the stares of the Fayle’s men.

A campstool was brought for the lord, and he seated himself near the fire as if he were chilled. Almost at once, more stools appeared for Terisa and Geraden. They sat down, accepted warm flagons of wine. Terisa took a sip, then forgot her self-consciousness – forgot that at least thirty people were watching her – long enough to give a grateful sigh. The wine was full of cinnamon and oranges, a blissful antidote for the smell of ghouls. If she had enough to drink, she might be able to get that reek completely out of her mind.

She wanted to spend a while savoring the sensation that she was safe.

But Geraden was already eager to talk. “My lord Fayle,” he said before she was ready, “we’ve come a long way to tell you Master Eremis isn’t honest. He’s the one who translates these ghouls into your Care – he and Master Gilbur, and probably the arch-Imager Vagel.

“We came to tell you King Joyse needs help. If he doesn’t get it, Master Eremis may destroy him.”

By force of habit, the Fayle sat upright on his stool. His eyes were keenly blue; his gaze was precise. Looking at him, Terisa was struck by the odd thought that he would never have been able to do what King Joyse had done – make himself appear weak and foolish for years. No one who met the Fayle’s gaze would doubt that he knew what he was doing.

“It is comforting to know,” he muttered dryly, “that Master, Eremis deserved to be thwarted. We will discuss that further. Nevertheless his dishonesty does little to explain how you came to fall into a trap which I had set for ghouls.”

“Actually, it explains a lot, my lord,” countered Geraden. “The rest is just details.” For reasons Terisa understood perfectly, he was being cautious. “We rode here from Sternwall. The Termigan wasn’t especially glad to see us.

“Like yours, his Care is being badly hurt by one of Eremis’ translations. We told him the same thing I just told you. King Joyse needs help. He didn’t seem to care about that. I think we were lucky he let us leave.

“My lord, I don’t want that to happen again. The lady Terisa and I are going to fight for the King. Even if we have to do it alone, we’re going to do it. If you stand in our way, we’ll have to fight you, too.

“I’d rather cut off my hands.”

All the men around the camp were listening. Some of them pretended to be busy with their weapons or their bedding, but they were listening. A focused hush covered everything except the snorts and rustling of the horses.

The Fayle gazed at Geraden steadily. “You must have told the Termigan something he especially did not wish to hear.”

Geraden nodded.

“What was it?” asked the Fayle. “What could you have said to him that would make a loyal and trustworthy ally of the King suspicious of you?”

Geraden referred the question to Terisa.

Simply because the lord’s eyes were so blue, so exact, she assented to the risk.

“We told him the truth,” Geraden answered the Fayle. “We’ve both become Imagers. Terisa is an arch-Imager. The ghouls have started getting worse, haven’t they? Just recently?”

It was the lord’s turn to nod.

“That’s because of us. Eremis knew we were coming here. Or he figured it out. We were at Houseldon first. Then we were in Sternwall. Where else would we be going?

“He wants to kill us before we find a way to hurt him.”

“And have you found a way?” the Fayle inquired dryly.

“We’ve been trying. That’s why we went to Sternwall – why we came here. We’ve been trying to gather support for the King.” Geraden took a deep breath. “And if we can’t do that, we want to find somebody who can help me make a mirror.”

“You have no glass?” The Fayle’s gaze was sharp.

Geraden straightened his shoulders, and Terisa thought she heard a distant echo of strength in his voice, a strange menace. “My lord,” he said, “a number of things would be different if we had as much as one small mirror between us. For one, we would have helped you fight those ghouls.” He was speaking through his teeth. “That’s what our talents are good for.”

After a moment, however, the menace faded from his tone. “Unfortunately, we’re helpless. So far.”

The Fayle considered Geraden and Terisa for a while. He turned away to request food and more wine. Then he commented, “Perhaps you should tell me your story now. While we eat.”

Geraden glanced at Terisa again. She nodded without hesitation. She was remembering the way the old lord had left the meeting Master Eremis had arranged between the lords and Prince Kragen. Queen Madin is a formidable woman, he had explained in an apologetic and even vaguely foolish tone. Whatever choice I make here, I must justify to her. His peaked shoulders and elongated head should have made him look silly as he walked out on Eremis’ plotting. And yet he hadn’t looked silly at all. His clear loyalty had made him admirable.

Under the circumstances, she didn’t know what to expect from the Fayle. She was willing to trust him anyway.

Apparently, Geraden felt the same. As soon as the decision to speak freely had been taken, he began to relax.

He didn’t try to include everything, however. He still wanted an answer from the Fayle. So he only described the broad outlines of what he and Terisa had learned, what they had done. The Fayle flinched at the news of what had happened to Houseldon, what was happening to Sternwall; but Geraden kept on talking. Whenever the lord stopped him with a question, however, he replied in more detail.

Most of the men were listening openly now. A few of them fingered their weapons in anger or fear. But because their attention wasn’t on Terisa she was able to ignore them.

While Geraden and the lord spoke, she drank her wine, ate the food placed in front of her, and did a little calculating backward. That brought her to the unexpected realization that thirteen days had passed, thirteen, since her translation from Orison. In thirteen days, anything could have happened, anything at all. Prince Kragen could have taken the castle – and the Congery. High King Festten could have taken the castle and the Congery and Prince Kragen. On the other hand, Castellan Lebbick could have stuck a quiet knife in Master Eremis’ back.

“The problem is,” she put in when Geraden paused, “we’ve been away from Orison too long.” Abruptly, she became the focus of attention. Swallowing a rush of self-consciousness, she forced herself to say, “Thirteen days for me. Fourteen for him.

“We don’t have any way of knowing what’s happened in the meantime.”

“So perhaps,” the Fayle murmured slowly, “this strange policy of the King’s has already come to its crisis. Perhaps he is already victorious. Or perhaps he has already been defeated and killed.”

“We can’t know,” she agreed. “All we have to go on is that when we left Orison Eremis was still working hard to look innocent. And since then he’s been working hard to get us killed. He’s still afraid we can hurt him somehow.” She shrugged. “It isn’t much. But as long as he’s afraid of us, we have something to hope for.”

“That’s something else we might be able to do if we had a mirror,” Geraden added. “Get an Image of Orison. See what’s going on.”

The Fayle faced Geraden acutely. He looked at Terisa, searched her. After a moment, he spread his hands. The gesture was small, but it seemed full of resignation.

“I have no glass, and no way to make it. I have no Imagers – what use do I have for mirrors? Every product or tool of Imagery which has ever been found in the Care of Fayle, I have given to King Joyse and Adept Havelock.”

By degrees, his gaze drifted away toward the fire. “Without Imagers, my Care is helpless against these ghouls. You have been away from Orison for thirteen or fourteen days. I have not seen Romish since the day I returned from Master Eremis’ meeting. I have been in the saddle, in the villages of my Care – fighting—”

Terisa had never heard him sound so old.

“I cannot win this struggle. In the end, I must fail.” He wasn’t looking at his men. His men didn’t look at him. None of them contradicted him. “You saw that I have failed Aperyte. It is only one among many villages dead, gutted—

“These ghouls are too many. I have hardly enough trained horsemen for four bands such as this one. I must fail.”

“Then, my lord,” Geraden said softly, formally, hinting at authority, “fight another way. Gather your men. Strike at Eremis in Esmerel. While any hope at all remains.”

The old lord studied the heart of the fire. His erect posture didn’t shift, didn’t sag, but his hands hung between his knees as if they were useless. After a while, he whispered, “No.”

“My lord—” Geraden began.

“No,” breathed the Fayle. “Joyse is my King – and the husband of my daughter. I love him. I do not understand this policy. I do not like it. Yet I love him.

“But he has never” – one hand came up into a fist, fell again – “in all his years of warfare against Cadwal and Alend and Imagery, he has never asked a lord for aid when that lord’s Care was under attack. He came to me, freed my people. He did not ask me for any help until my Care was safe.

“He will not ask me now. He has no wish to break my heart.”

Geraden tried again. “My lord—”

“No.” The Fayle didn’t sound angry: he sounded sad. “Today we saved Naybel. You were witness. Tomorrow – or in five days – or in fifty days” – now both hands were fists, beating the rhythm of his words against each other – “we will spring another trap, and it will succeed. People will live who would die if I left them to the mercy of these ghouls.

“Do you hear me, Geraden? Did your father ride away from his Care? Did the Termigan?

“I will not leave my people to die undefended.”

“I understand, my lord.” Geraden’s voice was as soft and sad as the lord’s, but there was no bitterness in it. “It doesn’t matter how desperate King Joyse is. He wouldn’t want you to abandon your own Care. He didn’t create Mordant or the Congery because he was desperate. He created them because he believes the same things you do.”

The Fayle stared into the fire, nodded several times. In a voice like a winter breeze, he sighed, “Thank you.”

Geraden hesitated momentarily, then ventured to say, “Unfortunately, that doesn’t change our problem. Is there anything you can do to help Terisa and me?”

With a shift of his head, the lord brought his blue gaze to Geraden’s face. For an instant, Terisa thought he was angry. Then, however, she saw a suggestion of a smile touch his old mouth. “That is true, Geraden,” he said. “My stubbornness does nothing to change your problem. You and the lady Terisa are Imagers, and the evil of Imagery must be met and answered by Imagers. That is your ‘Care,’ in a manner of speaking.

“I will give you supplies. If you need it, I will give you a map. And I will give you two men to ride with you as far as you choose – to Orison, even to Esmerel. They will be useless against Imagers, but they will know how to use their swords to guard your backs and clear your road.”

Before Geraden could reply, Terisa asked, “Can they take us to the Queen?”

Geraden was surprised: apparently, he hadn’t given much thought to Queen Madin. The Fayle raised an eyebrow; but this time his smile was plain. “A good thought, my lady,” he murmured. “It would have come to me in a moment. My men can certainly take you to the Queen. She has a clear right to know what her husband has been doing.” His smile faded at the memory. “After all, she has been, deeply hurt by his policy. And it is possible that she may want to do something about it.”

In response, Terisa swallowed hard and said, “Thanks. I appreciate that.” The force of her relief took her aback. She had known that she wanted to meet the Queen, but she hadn’t realized before just how terrible she would feel if she and Geraden came all this way and then left without taking the time to share what they knew with King Joyse’s wife.

Geraden stared at her, but he didn’t argue; he didn’t say, That’s a delay we don’t need, a day we could spend better on the way to Orison. Luckily, his instinct to trust her was still intact. After a moment, he let the matter drop and concentrated on eating his supper.

Later that night, however, when she and Geraden were in their bedding together, a short distance away from the Fayle’s men, he said under his breath, “I didn’t know you wanted to meet Queen Madin. Or is it Torrent you’re so interested in?”

Terisa didn’t answer directly. After musing for a while, she murmured, “Do you remember what the Castellan said to Elega – the message he said King Joyse sent to her?” In case he didn’t remember, she reminded him: “ ‘I am sure that my daughter Elega has acted for the best reasons. She carries my pride with her wherever she goes. For her sake, as well as for my own, I hope that the best reasons will also produce the best results.’ ”

“Yes,” returned Geraden. “It still doesn’t make sense. It still doesn’t fit with what Master Quillon told you.”

“Wait a minute,” she said to keep him quiet. “Do you remember that talk I had with Adept Havelock, while you and Artagel were on the other side of the pillar – after he rescued us from those insects?”

Obediently, Geraden nodded.

“He talked about Myste,” she whispered, “and the Congery’s champion. He said he had cast an augury about King Joyse, and one of the Images showed Myste and the champion together.”

Obediently, Geraden didn’t interrupt.

“I’ve always wondered why he told us that. If it wasn’t just because he’s crazy. And I’ve always wondered why King Joyse got so upset when I lied to him about Myste – when I said she went back to her mother. Why he was relieved when I told him I helped her go after the champion.”

In silence, Geraden waited patiently. At last, he suggested, “Why don’t you tell me what you think?”

“I think—” Terisa held her breath, then forged ahead. “I think there’s more to King Joyse’s plans than Master Quillon told us. I think his daughters are important – I think his whole family is important somehow. I think he wanted to throw Elega and Prince Kragen together. I think he wanted Myste to go after the champion.”

“You think he wanted us to go talk to Queen Madin and Torrent? Isn’t that a little farfetched? After all, he didn’t know either one of us had any talent. There was no way he could have predicted we would ever be here.”

That was true. And it made everything more dangerous. Nevertheless Terisa persisted. “I think,” she said, “I want to go talk to Queen Madin and Torrent. Just in case.” After a moment, she added, “He had reason to think we might have talent.”

She could feel Geraden grinning in the dark. “My lady, you’ve got a remarkably subtle mind. Or indigestion – I can’t figure out which.”

She got a hand under his jerkin and poked him in the ribs until he apologized.

Then she poked him for apologizing.

With so many potential spectators nearby, she and Geraden actually got more sleep than usual. And the next day two of the Fayle’s men guided them to Romish.

The lord’s seat was situated on a fertile plain uncharacteristically – for this Care – devoid of trees. The land for a mile or two in each direction had been cleared to make room for the fields which fed the city. But Terisa saw no more of Romish itself than the earthwork wall around it. As Myste had said, Queen Madin and Torrent lived in a manor outside the city.

The manor, Vale House, which a former Cadwal prince had raised to shelter his poor relations while he ruled Fayle, was tucked into a fold among small hills perhaps half a mile upstream along the small Kolted River which provided most of the water for Romish and the fields. As a defensive position – Terisa surprised herself by thinking about such things – the location of Vale House left a lot to be desired: in full daylight, a rider could probably get within twenty yards of the building unnoticed. On the other hand, the House was so easily reached from Romish, and so stoutly constructed, that it was probably in no danger most of the time. Its walls were of stone – strong against ghouls – and the timbers of its doors were banded with iron.

Through the long dusk of the plain, the Fayle’s men guided Terisa and Geraden among the hills to Vale House. They dismounted before the high doors. The Fayle’s men told the emerging servants to fetch torches for light, grooms for the horses; also the lady Queen Madin. The windows of the House filled up with brightness as lamps and lanterns were lit inside. In a short time, a woman came across the porch to the steps with a blaze of illumination behind her, as regal as if she ruled the world.

The Fayle’s men bowed and stepped back.

“My lady Queen.” Geraden bowed as well, bending so low that he nearly fell over. There was a suggestion of tears in his voice. Madin was a sovereign to him, after all – and the wife of the King he loved. “It does my heart good to see you again.”

“Geraden.” Queen Madin’s tone conveyed the immediate impression that she knew how to make up her mind. “This is quite a surprise. But a good one – so far.” She didn’t sound harsh, and certainly not cold; she only sounded quick to choose. Decisiveness was a power she wielded without noticing it. “I am glad to see a friendly face from home. And I will be glad to hear your news, whatever it is.” A moment later, she added, “But if that old fool Joyse sent you here to plead his case, you can forget about it and go back. I will not have it.”

“My lady Queen,” repeated Geraden. He bowed again, this time to cover a smile. “This is the lady Terisa of Morgan.”

“Ah.” Queen Madin turned toward Terisa, but Terisa still couldn’t see her face; dark against the glow from the house, her features were undecipherable. “The lady Terisa. My father mentioned you, after his return from Orison.

“My lady – Geraden – you are welcome in Vale House. Please enter.”

She turned and walked back into the light.

Geraden touched Terisa’s shoulder, nudged her toward the steps and the porch. The light shone on his face, and she was filled for a moment with the unexpected conviction that they had done the right thing by coming here. He had never looked taller; his gaze had never seemed keener. This was the way he might have appeared when he stood in front of King Joyse – if his King hadn’t been so studiously dedicated to breaking his loyalty.

She slipped her arm through his and hugged it so that they went up to the porch and entered the high doorway of Vale House together.

They followed the Queen’s back and a bowing servant along an entryway hall with tapestries and portraits on the walls, several doors on each side, and a wide stair at the end. Queen Madin chose a door on the left; the servant held it open for Terisa and Geraden, and they found themselves in what looked like a large sitting room. A blazing fireplace dominated the outer wall, and two deep couches and four or five plush armchairs were semicircled before the hearth with their backs to the paneling in the rest of the room. Queen Madin sent the servant for some wine, then gestured her guests toward the chairs; but she remained standing beside the fireplace.

Neither Terisa nor Geraden sat. He may have stayed upright out of courtesy, but her thoughts were elsewhere. At last, she could see Queen Madin clearly, and what she saw kept her on her feet.

Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she was expecting the Queen to resemble Elega. From Terisa’s point of view, Myste favored her father: Myste’s laugh was so much like King Joyse’s smile that the resemblance seemed more important than any differences. Simply on that basis, because the contrast between Myste and Elega was so pronounced, Terisa had assumed that Queen Madin would prove to be the parent Elega favored.

It was clear now, however, in the light of the fire and the bright chandelier and the surrounding lamps, that Terisa’s assumptions were mistaken. One good look at the Queen made it plain that both Elega and Myste in fact resembled their father. Madin was still a luminous woman, despite her years; her gaze was strong, and the years hadn’t cost her manner any discernible loss of firmness. But her features were at once too blunt and too forthright to be the model for Myste’s and Elega’s faces.

What kept Terisa on her feet, however, wasn’t the Queen’s appearance, but rather her bearing: she stood the way a queen should stand, as if not just her authority but her wise use of it as well came to her so naturally that both were beyond question. She was the Fayle’s daughter in more ways than one; she even conveyed a suggestion of the same sorrow which harried the old lord. Nevertheless, perhaps because her frame was more solidly constructed than his, she projected more force of personality, more of both the ability and the willingness to make other people do what she wanted.

Her failure to make King Joyse put down his passivity and become a decent ruler for Mordant again must have been more galling to her than any other wound she had suffered in her life.

But she was obviously not a woman who felt much self-pity, and she wasn’t feeling sorry for herself at the moment. She was studying both Terisa and Geraden with keen interest. And she seemed to find him especially intriguing, even though Terisa was the one who had come to Mordant from an alien world. After a moment, she explained her attention by saying, “Geraden, you have changed.”

Terisa’s immediate reaction was, No, he hasn’t. From her perspective, he had come back to his essential self from iron and despair. Queen Madin’s observation made her think again, however. In fact, he had changed. He hadn’t simply lost his clumsiness: he had lost his puppyish look, his appearance of being a boy hidden inside a man. His back was straight and strong, and she had a hard time imagining him making a mistake.

As if to demonstrate the change, he smiled almost without embarrassment. “It’s Terisa’s influence, my lady Queen. She made me stop apologizing.”

“No,” Queen Madin replied firmly. “The difference is that you are more at peace within yourself.” She was sure of her own judgment. “You have become an Imager.”

In response, he shrugged self-deprecatingly; but he held her gaze. “I didn’t know it shows.”

“Oh, it shows, Geraden,” the Queen affirmed, “it shows. No one would mistake you now for the oldest failed Apt ever to serve the Congery.

“As for you, my lady,” she went on, turning to Terisa, “you are less clear to me. Your surprises are better concealed, I think. You both have a great deal to tell me.”

“That’s true, my lady Queen,” Geraden said at once. His awareness of how hard that job would be showed in the way he asked, “But what of yourself? Won’t you first tell us how you are? And Torrent?”

The Queen shook her head. “What I tell you of myself will depend entirely on whether you were sent here by that old dodderer the King. I have asked you that once, but you did not answer clearly.”

For a moment, Geraden measured his reply. Then he said flatly, “King Joyse didn’t send us. I think he would be astonished if he knew we were here.”

Queen Madin appeared to receive this information as if it inflicted a deep hurt which she had no intention of showing. As she spoke, however, she couldn’t muffle the roughness in her voice. “In that case, Geraden – Torrent and I are well. But not as well as we would be if our family were whole again. The King’s aberrations exact a price from us all.

“Will you not be seated?” she continued, shaking herself out of her thoughts. “Here is wine.” The servant had reentered the room carrying a silver tray. “And Torrent will be with us soon, I am sure.

“Ah,” the Queen concluded as the door opened again, “here she is now.”

Terisa turned in time to see King Joyse and Queen Madin’s second daughter close the door behind her and approach the fire.

Torrent’s carriage and downcast eyes and demure gown conveyed two impressions almost simultaneously: first, she was so shy that she made Myste and Elega seem as extroverted as mountebanks; and second, despite her shyness, she was nearly the image of her mother. She could have been Queen Madin’s shadow: they were as alike as reflections of each other. Only her mother’s decisiveness was missing, her mother’s assurance.

“Torrent,” the Queen said, “here are Geraden and the lady Terisa of Morgan. They have a great deal to tell us. She has done something all the Masters of the Congery together could not do. She has made him an Imager.”

Torrent paused among the chairs. The gaze which she raised beneath her lashes was at once so hesitant and so full of wonder that Terisa blushed involuntarily.

“Under the circumstances,” Geraden muttered humorously – perhaps for Torrent’s benefit, perhaps for Terisa’s – “I don’t think that’s much of a compliment. The only benefit I’ve gotten from the change is that now people want to kill me.

“My lady Torrent,” he went on, “I’m glad to see you. When you and the Queen left Orison, I didn’t think I’d ever have that privilege again.”

“Oh, ‘privilege,’ Geraden.” Torrent spoke as if she, too, were blushing; yet her cheeks remained pale, untouched. “You’re making fun of me.”

Before he could reply – perhaps so that he wouldn’t have a chance to reply – she came abruptly toward Terisa. Facing Terisa as if holding her chin up were an act of courage, she said, “I’m sure Mother has made you welcome, my lady, but let me welcome you also. Grandfather – the Fayle – told us everything he knew about you, but it only made us more curious. I’m afraid we’ll exhaust you with questions.”

“Please.” Terisa had no idea why she was blushing. She made a special effort to speak calmly, comfortably, to put Torrent at case. “Call me Terisa. Both Myste and Elega do.”

That brought a smile to Torrent’s face, a lift of self-confidence. “Do you know Myste and Elega? I suppose you must, since you’ve been in Orison. Are you friends? How are they?” After an instant of hesitation, a quick glance at Queen Madin, she asked, “And Father? How is he?”

“Torrent,” the Queen said both kindly and firmly, “we must sit down. If we do not, Geraden and the lady Terisa will remain standing all night.”

In a convincing imitation of a woman with no will of her own, Torrent immediately sat down in the nearest chair.

Queen Madin took an armchair near the fire. Geraden and Terisa seated themselves on a couch between the Queen and her daughter. Promptly, the servant brought around goblets of wine on a tray, then set the wine down near Torrent and withdrew.

“You are tired from your journey,” Queen Madin said after she had tasted her wine. “We will bathe and feed you shortly. You will be given all the rest you can allow yourselves. But you must understand that we are hungry for news. In Vale House, we do not hear even rumors from Romish, not to mention truth from Orison. How are Elega and Myste?” Just for an instant, her throat closed. “How is the King?”

Now Geraden hesitated; the change Queen Madin had observed seemed to desert him momentarily. Which made perfect sense to Terisa. Her heart was suddenly thick, and she felt an ache gathering around her. It was possible that the Queen and Torrent would take the news of King Joyse gladly: possible, but very unlikely.

“This is difficult,” Geraden murmured awkwardly. “I can’t really tell you anything without telling you everything – and I don’t know where to start. I can’t think of any way to say this that won’t be hurtful.”

Torrent studied her hands, but Terisa could see that she was breathing deeply to steady herself. Queen Madin, on the other hand, faced Geraden’s uncertainty without blinking.

“Tell us the truth,” she said bluntly. “Speculation will be more hurtful to us than any news.”

Still Geraden faltered.

Grimly, because the only thing worse than knowledge was ignorance, Terisa said, “The King knows what he’s doing. He’s doing it on purpose.”

Torrent didn’t raise her eyes; she seemed to freeze in her seat.

“ ‘On purpose,’ ” Queen Madin echoed slowly. “My lady, you must explain that observation.”

“Unfortunately, it’s true,” Geraden rushed in. “Terisa knows more about King Joyse’s reasons and intentions than anybody else. She’s had several talks with him – he answered questions for her. He’s gone out of his way to give her explanations. I think it’s because of the way she came to Orison. An impossible translation – or we all thought it was impossible until I realized I can do it anytime I want. She was so obviously important. She’s involved in the Congery’s augury. We didn’t know what her talent is, but it was obvious she had to have some kind of unprecedented power.”

Abruptly, he made himself stop. Speaking distinctly, he said, “The last we heard, Elega is fine. We don’t know about Myste.”

“It’s a trap, my lady Queen,” Terisa tried to explain. “He’s setting a trap for his enemies, for Mordant’s enemies. They were too powerful – and he didn’t know who they were. And he was afraid that they would keep getting stronger – that they might swallow Alend or Cadwal or both – and leave him alone while they got stronger and stronger, until they were too strong for him, too strong for anyone. He was afraid that if he didn’t find out who his enemies were and stop them he would lose everything.”

“That was true,” the Queen put in crisply. “Any fool could see it.”

“So,” Terisa went on with an inward groan, “he made himself weak.”

Queen Madin stared at her. “I do not believe you. What nonsense! What good is weakness? How is it used against Imagers and armies?”

She might have said more, but Geraden intervened. The unexpected authority in the way he raised his hand stopped her. “Listen to us, my lady Queen,” he breathed gently. “Please listen.”

“I’m sorry,” Terisa murmured. “It’s the truth. It’s all we have.

“He paralyzed his own strength. He made it impossible for the Congery to do anything effectively. He undercut the Castellan. He abandoned the Perdon without reinforcements. He insulted Prince Kragen – the Fayle probably told you that. He made himself look like a fool. He” – her voice caught briefly – “he did his best to drive his family away.” She thought she ought to mention the Tor’s son, but she didn’t have the heart for it. “He practically punished people like Geraden for being loyal.”

Queen Madin sat without moving a muscle, listened without any reaction except a slow reddening of her cheeks. Torrent was breathing so hard she was almost panting.

“My lady Queen, he made himself a target. So that his enemies would attack him, instead of chewing Alend and Cadwal and Mordant up slowly until they were too strong to be beaten. It was all a ruse, a trick to make his enemies try to destroy him before they became strong enough to be safe.”

The Domne had put his finger on it. King Joyse wanted to save the world. He hurt all the people he loved best because saving the world was more important to him than anything else.

That was a terrible burden for him to bear.

On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly easy for the people he loved.

Without warning – and almost without transition, as if she had been secretly standing all along – Queen Madin swept to her feet. “Why?” she demanded in a voice that made Terisa want to hide under the couch. “If this is true, why did he not tell me?” She didn’t shout, but her tone had the impact of a yell. “Did he not trust me? Did he believe that I would not understand? – that I would not approve?“

Geraden stood to face her. “My lady Queen,” he asked softly, intently, “what would you have done if he told you?”

“I would not have come here.” The Queen might as well have been shouting. “I would have stood by him, instead of allowing all the world to think that I have lost my love for him and his ideals and the realm.”

Geraden gave Terisa a look full of pain and sorrow, a look that brought her to her feet at his side, but he didn’t back down. “That’s the problem, my lady Queen. You would have stood by him. And as long as you were there, no one would believe he was collapsing. Not really. Or if they did believe it, they would know you were there to make decisions for him, Queen Madin, daughter of the Fayle, the most formidable woman in Orison. His trap would have failed. No one would fall into it.

“And if he had asked you to leave?” Geraden went on. “If he had explained his trap and asked you to cooperate by abandoning him? Could you have borne it? Could you have sat on your hands here for – what is it, two years now? – while he risked his life and everything you both believe in?”

He was right: this was hurtful with a vengeance. Nevertheless Terisa was certain these things had to be said. She was just grateful that she wasn’t the one saying them.

And Queen Madin was hurt: that was unmistakable. She had been dealt a blow which shook her to the bone.

“My lady Queen,” Geraden concluded in a voice thick with regret, “if this policy is to succeed – if there’s any chance to save Mordant – what else could he have done?”

“Oh, Father.” Torrent was so distressed that she watched Geraden’s face openly, without shyness, without self-consciousness. “What have I done? I should have stayed with you. Like Myste and Elega. “

“No, Torrent.” Queen Madin tried to speak as if she had no tears spilling down her cheeks, no grief in her chest. “We would have broken his heart. It was a hard thing for him to drive us away. It would have been terrible to try to drive us away and fail – and so lose the chance to save his kingdom.”

“But he’s caused all this pain” – sitting, Torrent looked small and helpless, too little to understand or be consoled – “and we left him to endure it alone. I left him. He has no wish to cause pain. His heart is broken already, or he wouldn’t have done something so desperate—”

Despite her own hurt, the Queen gave her daughter a comforting response. “Hush, child. Do not be in a hurry to call him desperate. Your father has always been given to risks. We must not believe the worst until it is proven.”

Then she wiped her eyes and faced Geraden and Terisa squarely. “Now,” she said in a tone of barely concealed ferocity, “you must tell us what the outcome of the King’s weakness has been.”

Geraden nodded. Terisa murmured, “Yes.”

In pieces back and forth as details and developments occurred to them, they told their story as coherently as they could.

And while they told it, Queen Madin became another woman before their eyes. She seemed to find sustenance in the events they described, the implications they discussed. She knew, of course, about the disaster of the Congery’s champion, and about Master Eremis’ strange attempt to make an alliance of the lords of the Cares, Prince Kragen, and the Congery: reminders of that information had no effect on her now. But the presence – and the freedom – of the High King’s Monomach in Orison made her straighten her shoulders. King Joyse’s treatment of the Perdon and Prince Kragen seemed to strengthen her bones. Myste’s foolish and gallant pursuit of the champion caused her eyes to glow. And Elega’s plot with Nyle and Prince Kragen to betray Orison – which Geraden explained with considerable difficulty because it, too, must be hurtful – seemed to bring a flush of youth to the Queen’s cheeks. “Brave Elega,” she murmured as if she would have done the same thing in her daughter’s place. But when she heard that Orison was besieged, she snapped like a soldier, “Then why are you here? Why are you not there, fighting for King Joyse and Mordant?”

“My lady Queen,” replied Geraden, “we still have a lot to tell you.”

Just for a second, the Queen paused – not hesitating, but simply allowing the forces inside her time to come together. Then, surprisingly, she said, “Let it wait. Until dinner, perhaps. I have no time for it now.”

At once, she clapped her hands twice, summoning a servant.

Almost immediately, the servant who had brought the wine came into the room. Without a glance at her guests, she commanded, “Please conduct Geraden and the lady Terisa to their rooms. Supply them with bathwater and clean clothes. Announce dinner for them in an hour. Then bring the Fayle’s men to me.

“Come, Torrent. We must prepare.”

As the servant bowed, Queen Madin swept toward the door as regally as if she had an entire procession behind her.

With a flustered look, Torrent jumped up and hurried after her mother.

Geraden met Terisa’s gaze in quick apprehension; then he mustered his temerity to ask, demand, “My lady Queen, what’re you going to do?”

Queen Madin paused in the doorway. “ ‘Do,’ Geraden? My husband and my home are besieged. One of my daughters has allied herself with Alends. Another – if she still lives – is embarked on a mad quest after a champion from another world. I will not be left out of such events. I am going to Orison.

“I intend to be there in three days.”

She left the room with Torrent nearly gasping in her wake.

For a long moment, Terisa and Geraden stood where they were as if they expected the ceiling to collapse on them. Then she took hold of herself, made an effort to shake the surprise out of her head. To break the shock, she murmured, “Well, at least she’s going to let us have time for a bath and some food.”

He snorted. “I should have guessed something like this would happen. I’ve known her long enough.

“The truth is” – he shrugged rather helplessly – “I’ve always liked her.”

Terisa was quietly disturbed to find herself thinking of her own mother, who hadn’t resembled Queen Madin in any meaningful way. And she, Terisa, could so easily have become her mother’s image: passive and wan, all her passion kept secret. If Geraden hadn’t come for her—

Slipping her arm like a promise through his, she accompanied him out of the sitting room.

Dinner at the long table in the formal dining room of Vale House was an odd experience.

An abundance of candles made the ornaments and paneling glitter. There was a deep rug underfoot, thick cushions on the chairs. The food was good, better than anything Terisa and Geraden had eaten for quite a while; the wine was almost equal to the food. And the sensation of being clean again from head to toe, of being wrapped in clean clothes, of having a clean bed to look forward to, was so luxurious that it seemed practically indecent.

In addition, Torrent was fascinated by the personal side of Terisa and Geraden’s story. Before she finished her soup, she was so caught up in what she heard that she forgot to be shy. She was indignant at Master Eremis’ manipulations, horrified by Master Quillon’s murder. Terisa’s repeated rescues from Gart thrilled her. She grieved for Castellan Lebbick, and yet couldn’t refrain from shuddering at the things the Castellan had done to Terisa. Artagel’s injuries and Nyle’s unhappiness touched her heart. The discovery of talent in her guests filled her with wonder. She heard about the destruction of Houseldon and the danger to Sternwall with parted lips and flushed cheeks.

Unwittingly, unself-consciously, she helped make the meal as pleasant as possible for her guests.

It was Queen Madin who provided the occasion with its oddness. She didn’t appear to hear a word either Terisa or Geraden said.

She wasn’t vague or befuddled: she was simply absent. Her attention was so sharply focused elsewhere that she had none to spare for such comparative details as Master Eremis’ mendacity or Castellan Lebbick’s accumulated distress.

As a result, neither Geraden nor Terisa was able to relax. Unexpectedly, she found herself thinking that the Queen was rather an old woman to attempt something as arduous as a wild ride to Orison. So she resolved to speak to Torrent privately after supper, to ask whether there was anything Torrent could do to dissuade the Queen.

Unfortunately, when Queen Madin announced the end of dinner she took Torrent with her at once. Instead of saying good night, she informed her guests that the men who had brought them here would procure a team of horses from Romish, “So that we need not stop too often on the road. We will depart as soon as the mounts are able to see their footing.” Then she led Torrent away.

Terisa returned with Geraden to her room, troubled by the sense that this visit to the Queen wasn’t producing the results she had intended. Whatever those were.

When they were alone, she asked him, “Is this a good idea?”

“What?” he replied disingenuously, “this rush to reach Orison in only three days?”

She poked his shoulder to get his attention. “Of course, you idiot. What else did you think I was talking about? Isn’t she a little old to try something like that?”

He snickered. “You tell her she’s too old – if you’ve got the nerve.” Before Terisa could poke him again, however, he tried to give her a serious answer. “It isn’t the ride I’m worried about. Either she can do it or she can’t. Either way, it’s out of our hands. What I’m worried about is the siege. Prince Kragen and his ten thousand Alends. Or, worse yet, High King Festten and twice that many Cadwals.

“How does she propose to get past them into Orison? Assuming it hasn’t already been taken. When they find out who she is, they aren’t exactly going to step aside for her. She’s the perfect hostage. King Joyse may have been able to turn his back on the Perdon. He may have been able to swallow what happened to the Tor’s son. He may even have been able to let Myste and Elega go. But he is not” – Geraden said the words distinctly, like drum beats – “going to be able to sit still when someone like the High King threatens his wife.

“She’s the only weapon Alend or Cadwal needs to beat him.”

At the thought, Terisa’s stomach turned over. “Oh, good,” she muttered. “I’m so glad you told me that.”

“Sleep well,” he replied with a malicious grin and rolled away from her.

She had to poke him several times to get him back where he belonged.

For a variety of reasons, neither of them slept much. Long before dawn, they got up, got dressed, and went to help with the preparations for the road.

Outside the protective stone of the manor, the air seemed colder than it had for several days. Even in the gray light before the sun came up, the day had an almost prescient clarity, a dimension of visual precision which made Terisa shiver. She hugged the half cloak the Termigan had given her around her shoulders and tried not to think about how tired she was.

The boards of the porch creaked under her feet.

From the porch of Vale House, the hills which enfolded the Kolted River appeared to bulk larger than they had the previous evening. They were dark in the dim forecasting of dawn, deep with potential; the whole world lay beyond them, completely hidden. They reminded her that Vale House would be easy to ambush.

On the other hand, an ambush didn’t seem very likely at the moment. Even self-respecting villains and traitors were still in bed at this hour. And the Fayle’s two men were already there, along with a groom they had brought from Romish to care for the horses and a servant to look after the needs of the ladies Queen Madin and Torrent. As for the horses—

There must have been sixteen or seventeen of them, filling the hollow between the manor and the river. Terisa’s and Geraden’s mounts. Horses for the four men and the two ladies. A pack animal to carry supplies. And a second mount for everyone, so that the horses could be rested while the Queen kept moving.

They shuffled their hooves, shook their manes; two or three of them snorted disconsolately. Their tack jangled softly, muffled by leather. The groom moved among them, settling the saddles of the ones that would be ridden first, cinching up their girths. Queen Madin’s servant was busy checking the contents of his packs again.

Because she was cold and had to do something, Terisa asked Geraden, “Do you think we should try to stop her?”

He shrugged; the dimness hid his expression. “I’ll try. But don’t get your hopes up.”

The sky spanning the hills grew to the color of mother-of-pearl, but without that nacreous flatness: it was at once deep and impenetrable. If anything, the approach of dawn made the hills darker; they clenched themselves around the river and Vale House, brooding. Nevertheless a stretch of water near the bend of the hills caught the air’s reflection and gleamed silver.

Terisa wished that she could stop shivering.

After a moment, Queen Madin came out onto the porch with Torrent beside her. The light was improving: Terisa saw that both ladies were wrapped in warm cloaks; riding boots protected their feet and calves; they had scarves bound around their heads to keep their hair out of their faces.

“Are we ready?” the Queen asked anyone who could answer her. “Can we go?”

“In a moment, my lady Queen,” replied the groom. He was busy inspecting the hooves of the horses.

Geraden cleared his throat. “My lady Queen, are you sure this is wise? I have qualms about it.”

“Geraden” – Queen Madin wasn’t looking at him; her gaze was fixed on the sharp outline of the hills – “you underestimate me if. you think that any ‘qualms’ of yours will stand between me and my husband.”

He let a little sharpness into his voice. “Maybe you underestimate me, my lady Queen. You don’t know what my qualms are.”

“Do I not?” She still didn’t look at him. “You are concerned that I may fall hostage to the forces besieging Orison.”

“Yes,” he admitted. His tone told Terisa that he felt rather foolish.

“That is an important concern. I have no intention of allowing any Alend or Cadwal to use me against the King.” She paused, then said, “It will be your duty to help me insure that the difficulty does not arise.”

“Yes, my lady Queen,” Geraden murmured glumly.

Terisa put her hand on his arm and gave him a small squeeze of consolation.

“Now, my lady Queen,” the groom announced over the champing and rustling of the horses. “You can mount whenever you wish.”

Torrent gave a stifled gasp. “A moment,” she said quickly. “I have forgotten something.” Before anyone could react, she hurried back into the manor.

Softly, so that no one except Terisa and Geraden heard her, the Queen breathed, “Probably one of her dolls. She does not like to sleep without her dolls.” Her tone was affectionate, but it suggested that she didn’t know how she had managed to produce a daughter like Torrent.

It was astonishing how distinct everything was to Terisa. Every one of the hills across the river had a particular shape, an individual character. Each of the mounts was facing in a different direction, stubbornly determined to see life from its own angle. Geraden held his head up as if he had caught some of the Queen’s mood. Queen Madin herself was a knot of controlled impatience. The groom and the servant waited. The Fayle’s men had begun to move toward the porch in order to help the ladies mount.

And a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel slid straight through the center of her abdomen.

“Geraden!” she shouted, almost wailed because her desperation was so sudden. “There’s a translation coming!”

As if she and Geraden had the same mind, the same will, they grabbed Queen Madin by her arms, one on each side, and practically flung her off the porch, down the steps, out among the abruptly milling horses.

Terisa had time to hear one of the men curse as if a horse had kicked him. She registered the Queen’s quick gasp of surprise, her swift self-command. She felt rather than saw the tethered mounts twist their heavy bodies around her, blunder against each other, stumble, start to panic.

Then she turned in time to see a fall of rock appear out of the empty sky and crash down on the roof of Vale House.

A fall of rock as massive as an avalanche. A few heavy, bounding stones hit, followed instantly by rushing thunder, the side of a mountain coming down.

The slates and beams of the roof couldn’t hold, couldn’t begin to think of holding. Almost without transition, the whole attic story of the manor buckled and collapsed, plunging down into the level where the bedrooms were.

“Torrent!” cried Queen Madin. Without thinking, she twisted against Terisa and Geraden’s grasp, tried to run back into the house. “Torrent!”

Terisa helped Geraden drag the Queen backward.

A frightened horse hit them with its hindquarters and knocked them all off balance.

The rockfall went on with a sound as if the hills themselves had begun to rumble and break. The bedroom level of the manor held until too many tons of rubble piled into it; then, one room at a time, it crumbled toward the ground floor.

Bouncing like balls, huge rocks came off the pile into the hollow. A horse screamed horribly; others squealed, wheeling in wild circles. They were tethered, had no way to escape. Behind Terisa, the groom was trampled to death. She didn’t know how any of the stones missed her. The rockfall and the horses made so much noise that she couldn’t hear any of the stones splash into the river; couldn’t hear any cries, commands, any warnings.

Slowly, almost one stone at a time, the avalanche thinned. The rush of rock turned to scree and gravel, loose dirt.

Terisa stared in shock as the thunder subsided and huge clouds of dust swelled into the dawn.

The fact that she wasn’t moving nearly got her killed.

There were men on horseback in the middle of the chaos, at least half a dozen of them. They lashed their beasts among the tethered mounts.

One of them clubbed Geraden to the ground; he never knew they were coming. Another knocked Terisa into a swirl of panic-stricken hooves.

And yet somehow, before she covered her head and curled into a ball to protect herself from being stamped on and broken, she had time to see three men leap from their mounts and snatch up the Queen.

She had time to see that they were armed and armored just like the men of Prince Kragen’s army.

They were Alends.

Then hooves danced on all sides of her, thudded the dirt, hammered at her life, and she couldn’t do anything except cling to herself and clench her eyes shut until the horses either killed her or backed away.

They backed away. Geraden was on his feet: he yelled at the horses, slapped at them until they retreated. At once, he reached down and pulled her to her feet.

“The Queen!” he panted as if he had broken something in his chest. “What happened to the Queen?”

At the same time, another woman cried from the bottom of her heart, “Mother? Mother!”

Staggering, Terisa turned; she dragged Geraden with her.

Torrent stood amid the ruins of the porch as if she had never been touched. Her arms were locked and rigid at her sides; one of her hands clutched a knife. She didn’t look down into the hollow, at the horses, down at Terisa and Geraden; her face was lifted to the sky.

“Mother!”

Terisa stumbled in that direction, out of the confusion of horses, trying to reach the Queen’s daughter before Torrent went mad. With Geraden behind her, she clambered among the splintered and canting remains of the porch.

“She wasn’t killed!” she answered Torrent’s wail, shouting to make herself heard over the memory of thunder. “They took her! She’s been kidnapped!”

Master Eremis had sprung another of his imponderable traps. But this one changed everything. Alends—! He was in league with Alends? As well as Gart and the High King? What in the name of heaven was going on?

Terisa’s shout snapped Torrent’s head down, brought her frantic gaze out of the sky to Terisa’s face.

“What?”

And Geraden demanded fiercely, “What? Kidnapped?”

“Soldiers came.” Terisa could hardly distinguish between her own voice and the long, deep rumble echoing inside her. “Alend soldiers. They took her. That’s why this happened. So they would have a chance to take her.”

“Alend soldiers?” Geraden began to snarl uncharacteristic obscenities, ones Terisa had never heard him use before.

“Why?” Torrent asked softly, as if she were being split apart.

“Because she’s so important!” Geraden rasped at once. “King Joyse will do anything to save her. He’ll surrender Orison and the Congery and every one of us to save her.”

Slowly, Torrent raised her knife, stared at it. “It’s my fault.” Terisa was amazed that Torrent wasn’t weeping. The Queen’s daughter sounded like she was weeping. “I wanted to take a knife. So I could help defend us. Elega would have been ready for that. Myste would have been ready. But I forgot. I ran to the kitchen.” She turned the blade from side to side as if she had the idea of stabbing herself. “If I’d been with her – if I hadn’t forgotten – I could have saved her. I could have tried to save her.”

There was no doubt about it in Terisa’s mind: Torrent was going mad.

If she had gone to her bedroom, as her mother had expected, instead of to the kitchen, she would have been killed almost instantly.

“No!” Terisa replied as loudly as she could, trying to convey conviction through her mounting sense of horror. “None of us could have saved her. They took us by surprise. The horses caused too much confusion. The men—”

Abruptly, she pivoted away to see what had happened to the groom, the servant, the Fayle’s men.

The dawn was brighter now: it didn’t raise much color, but it showed everything clearly.

A hoof had crushed the groom’s head: he lay in the dirt as if he were abasing himself. One of the Fayle’s men clutched at an incapacitating wound in his left shoulder; the other had been hacked to death. Dead and dying horses sprawled everywhere, some of them still quivering. Perhaps ten of the beasts remained alive, but of those at least half showed injuries of one kind or another.

In the middle of the carnage, Queen Madin’s servant knelt beside his mount, whimpering for his life.

Swallowing nausea, Terisa whipped herself back to face Torrent. “None of us could have saved her,” she repeated hoarsely.

“Then” – Torrent’s voice shook wildly, but she drew herself up as if she had become a different woman – “we must rescue her.”

Terisa stared at her, shocked by the strange sensation that she could see King Joyse in Torrent’s eyes.

“How?” With a visible effort, Geraden forced himself to speak gently, reasonably. “We don’t have any weapons – and there aren’t enough of us. By the time we get help from Romish, they’ll be long gone. They’ll have plenty of time to hide their trail.”

Torrent shook her head. “Not Romish.” She took several deep breaths as if she were hyperventilating, with the result that she was then able to control the wobble in her voice. “You must get help from Orison.”

Both Geraden and Terisa gaped at her.

“They will not hide their trail from me. I will follow and make a new one behind them. I am helpless for everything else, but that I can do. He” – she indicated the man with the badly cut shoulder – “will get support for me from Romish. But you must ride to Orison. You must warn Father.”

She had lost her mind. There was no question about it.

Torrent couldn’t entirely stifle her rising hysteria. “Do you not understand? It is his only hope!”

Terisa and Geraden stared at her, gaped, held their breath – and suddenly he gasped, “She’s right!” He grabbed at Terisa’s arm, wheeling toward the horses. “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!”

Terisa froze: she couldn’t move at all. Get out of here. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Ride like crazy people halfway across Mordant to Orison, while she goes after those Alends and her mother alone. You’ve done this once before. Don’t you remember? You sent Argus after Prince Kragen, and he got killed. And stopping Nyle didn’t do us any good.

“Terisa,” he demanded. “I tell you, she’s right. It’s his only hope.”

“What—?” She couldn’t make her throat work. An avalanche had come this close to failing on her. Like the collapse of the Congery’s meeting hall. “What’re you talking about?”

In response, Geraden made one of his supreme and unselfish efforts to control himself for her sake. Intensely, he said, “His only hope is if he finds out what happened to her before the people who took her know he knows. Before they can tell him. Before they start trying to use her against him. During that gap – if we can give him a gap – between when he knows and when they know he knows – he can still act. He can do something to save her. Or himself.”

“Yes,” Torrent breathed. “It is the only thing I can do.”

Abruptly, she climbed out of the ruin of the porch, heading toward the horses. Her knife was still gripped in her fist.

As if she were her mother, she commanded the injured man, “Take a horse, ride to Romish. You’ll be tended there. Tell them what happened. Tell them I require help. I’ll leave a trail for them.” Then her tone softened. “You’re badly hurt, I know. There’s nothing I can do for you. I must attempt to save the Queen – and my father’s realm.”

As if she were accustomed to extreme decisions – not to mention horses – she chose a horse, untethered it, and swung up into the saddle.

Terisa would have tried to stop her, but Geraden’s acquiescence held her. “Geraden—” she murmured, pleading with him. “Geraden—”

“Terisa,” he replied, so full of certainty that she couldn’t argue with him, “she’s right. I’ve got the strongest feeling she’s right.”

“Farewell, Geraden,” Torrent broke in. “Farewell, my lady Terisa. Save the King.

“Do that, and together we will rescue Queen Madin.”

Geraden turned to give the King’s daughter a formal bow. “Farewell also, my lady Torrent. This story will fill King Joyse with pride, whatever comes of it.” A moment later, he added, “And both Myste and Elega are going to be impressed.”

That almost made Torrent smile.

Alone, she rode out of the hollow on the trail of Queen Madin’s abductors.

Terisa put the best tourniquet she could manage on the wounded man’s shoulder. Gritting his teeth, Geraden slapped a measure of sense into the Queen’s whimpering servant, then instructed him to make sure the Fayle’s man reached Romish.

After that, they selected the two best horses, packed a third to carry their supplies, and started toward the Demesne and Orison.

THIRTY-SEVEN: POISED FOR VICTORY

The Alend army didn’t move.

It hadn’t moved for days.

Oh, Prince Kragen kept his men busy enough: he was determined to be ready for anything. But he didn’t waste another catapult; didn’t risk any kind of sortie, much less a massed assault; didn’t make anything more than covert efforts to spy on the castle. In fact, the only thing he apparently did to advance his siege was to completely prevent anyone from getting into or out of Orison: he cut King Joyse off from any conceivable source of news. Other than that, he and his forces might as well have been engaged in training exercises.

He was busy in other ways, of course. For instance, he had quite a number of men out at all times, furtively searching for some sign of the Congery’s champion. Knowing what the champion had done to Orison, Prince Kragen felt a positive dislike for the prospect of being attacked from behind by that lone fighter. In addition, he spent quite a bit of time, both alone and with his father, trying to fathom King Joyse’s daughters.

But King Joyse’s warnings haunted him – and Master Quillon’s. He took no direct action to hasten the fall of Orison.

That changed during the night which Terisa and Geraden had spent with Queen Madin.

Naturally, Prince Kragen had no way of knowing where Terisa and Geraden were. He couldn’t know that they had ever left Orison – or that Mordant’s need was coming to a crisis around him.

On the other hand, he was alert to every outward sign of what was happening in the castle.

When the men who had the duty of watching the ramparts more closely after dark reported to him that they heard shouts and turmoil, saw lights in the vicinity of the curtain-wall, he didn’t hesitate: he sent half a dozen hand-picked scouts to creep as near to the wall as possible, climb it if necessary, and find out what was going on.

The news they brought back tightened excitement or dread around his heart.

There was a riot taking place on the other side of the curtain-wall.

Apparently, the overcrowded and raw-nerved populace of Orison was breaking into active rebellion against Castellan Lebbick.

After a while, the noise receded, as if the riot were moving into the main body of the castle. But light continued to show at the rim of the wall, blazing up in gusts like a fire out of control. And when dawn came the Prince saw dirty plumes of smoke curling upward from the wound in Orison’s side, giving the castle a look of death it hadn’t had since the day the champion had first injured it.

Again, Prince Kragen didn’t hesitate: he had spent the night preparing his response. At his signal, fifty men carrying a battering ram in a protective frame ran forward to try the gates. The walls and roof which received the arrows of the defenders made the ram look as unwieldy as a shed; but the use of the frame could be an effective tactic, as long as the gate failed before the defenders had time to ready a counterattack – or as long as they were distracted by trouble elsewhere.

As a distraction, Prince Kragen sent several hundred soldiers with storming ladders and grappling hooks to assail the curtain-wall.

Unfortunately, Orison’s guards proved equal to the occasion. A tub of lamp oil and a burning fagot turned the ram’s protective frame into a charnel. And the Castellan – or whoever had taken command after the riot – had obviously expected the attack on the curtain-wall; so the defense there had been reinforced.

When Prince Kragen saw that his men were taking more than their share of losses and getting nowhere, he chewed his moustache, swore, and shook his fists at the sky – all inwardly, in the privacy of his thoughts, so that no one witnessed his frustration. Then he ordered a withdrawal.

Rather tentatively, as if sensing the Prince’s state, one of his captains commented, “Well, they have to run out of oil sometime.”

Prince Kragen swore again – out loud, this time. Then he instructed the captain to begin raiding the surrounding villages and trees for wood: he wanted more battering rams, more protective frames. And while that raid was underway, he set about using up the rams and frames he already had.

If the defenders had left any of the battering rams he now sent against them alone, they would have soon learned that none of the rams had enough men with it to actually threaten the gates. This time, however – for once! – his tactics succeeded. The defenders faithfully burned every ram and frame to charcoal.

The Prince grinned grimly under his moustache. Apparently, Castellan Lebbick – or whoever had replaced him after the riot – was still human enough to be outwitted once in a while.

The riot which had taken place in Orison that night was an ugly one. It had a number of excuses. The castle was indeed overcrowded, badly so – a detail which became increasingly onerous for everyone as the siege wore on. And of course the siege had come at the end of a hard winter, before spring could do anybody any good; so supplies were relatively short, and everything from food and water to blankets and space was strictly – a swelling number of people said harshly – rationed. By Castellan Lebbick, naturally. Despite Master Eremis’ heroic replenishment of the reservoir.

And Orison’s surplus population had nothing to do. Nobody really had anything to do. As long as the Alend army just sat there with all their heads crammed up the Prince’s ass – as one tired old guard put it – nobody had any outlet for long days of pent-up fear.

Why didn’t Prince Kragen do something?

Where was High King Festten?

For that matter, where was the Perdon?

How much longer was this going to go on?

Tempers grew ragged; hostility fed on frustration and uselessness; grievances multiplied in all directions. Orison’s sewers kept backing up because the drainfields weren’t adequate to the population. And the leaders of Orison, the men in command – King Joyse, Castellan Lebbick, Master Barsonage – did nothing to ease the pressure. They all went about their lives in isolation, as if the burgeoning misery sealed within these walls were immaterial to them. Even the castle’s most comfortable inhabitants – men of position, women of privilege – were in an ugly mood; and the ugliness was spreading.

But even ugliness couldn’t function in a vacuum: it needed a focus, a target.

It needed the Castellan.

He would have been a likely candidate in any case. After all, the responsibility for deciding and implementing Orison’s distress was on his shoulders. Merchants and farmers had time to become bitter about the confiscation of their goods. Mothers with sick children had cause to complain about the rationing of medicines. People with a normal need for activity – and privacy – didn’t have anyone else to blame for the lack of those necessities.

The guards, however, were loyal to their commander. Most of them had had years to become familiar with his loyalties – to them as well as to King Joyse. And they were accustomed to taking his orders. One way or another, they worked to control the pressure building against the Castellan.

As a result, there was no riot – no outbreak of resentment – until someone threw a spark into the tinder of Orison’s mood.

That someone was Saddith.

She was on her feet now, able to get around. Despite the loss of a few teeth, and the rather dramatic damage done to the rest of her face, she was able to talk. And that was what she had been doing ever since she had healed enough to climb out of her sickbed: getting around; talking.

She had started with every man in Orison who had ever visited between her legs – or had let her know he’d like to visit. She had told those men what the Castellan had done to her, and why: she had gone to his bed out of simple pity for his loneliness, out of compassion for the pressure he was under; and he had hurt her here, and here, and here. But as her strength returned she broadened her range. She carried her injuries everywhere in public: her left hand broken and useless, the right nearly so; her face so badly battered that it would never regain its shape, one cheek crushed, one eye unable to close properly, scars in all directions. If anything, she wore her blouses unbuttoned farther than before, enabling the world to see what Lebbick had done to her there.

And everywhere she went, her message was the same.

You sods were quick enough for fornication when I had my beauty. If you were men now, you’d hoist Castellan Lebbick’s balls on a stick.

His violence had no reason and no justification: it was as senseless as it was brutal. As senseless as all the other little brutalities he committed throughout the castle.

How long would it be before some other helpless woman received the same treatment? How long would it be before brutality became the governing principle in Orison?

How much longer will you sods and sheepfuckers permit this to go on?

Of course, when she spoke to women – which she did often, more every day – her words were different. Her message, however, remained the same.

Her disfigurement, as well as her intensity, made her impossible to look away from. She compelled stares and pity; nausea and indignation. It was impossible to look at her and not feel fear.

Because of the way she talked, and the way the men who had once reveled in her talked, and the way the women who were terrified of the same fate talked, this fear took the form of a call for justice, a thinly concealed demand for retribution. With Alend just outside, rape and murder were on everybody’s mind.

At the time, few people had any notion of how this demand came to be translated into action. One day, people were growling to each other, muttering vague threats which they had no actual intention of acting on: the next, rumors seemed to filter everywhere that voices would be raised, justice insisted upon; action taken. Come to the disused ballroom this evening, the great hall where King Joyse and Queen Madin were married, and where the peace of Mordant had been celebrated.

Oh, yes? Whose idea was this?

No one knew.

We’re besieged. Is it really a good idea to challenge the Castellan at a time like this?

Perhaps not. But it’s gone too far to be stopped. Better to support it, make sure it succeeds, than take the chance he’ll be able to crush it – the chance he’ll be left alone to do something worse the next time.

Yes. All right.

So that evening the crowd began to gather in the high, vast, dusty ballroom. At first, it was plainly a crowd rather than a mob, despite the fact that its numbers quickly swelled to several hundred: the fear threatening to become violence was counterbalanced by uncertainty; by habits of mind learned during many years of King Joyse’s peaceful rule; by the perfectly reasonable idea that it was dangerous to weaken Orison during a siege; by the manifest presence of Castellan Lebbick’s guards all around the hall. Nevertheless, as darkness deepened outside the windows, the only light came from torches which someone had thought to provide, and the erratic illumination of the flames had a disturbing effect on faces and rationality. People began to look garish to each other, wild and strange; the air was full of grotesque shadows; the atmosphere seemed to flicker. And through the shadows and the orange-yellow light Saddith appeared, around and around in the ballroom, displaying her wounds, speaking of outrage. The seething murmur of several hundred voices took shape in fits and bursts as more and more people found occasion to say the name Lebbick.

Lebbick.

And the guard captain who had been detailed to preserve order made a mistake.

He was a tough old fighter with bottomless determination and not much intelligence; and during one of King Joyse’s battles the Castellan had saved his entire family from being cut down when they were caught in the path of an Alend raid. He heard all these whimpering shitholes – they were practically puking with self-pity – start to mutter Lebbick, Lebbick, as if they had the right, and he decided that the crowd had to be dispersed.

Even though the odds were against him, he might have succeeded if he had been able to drive people out of the ballroom back into the public halls and passages. Unfortunately, he failed to do that. Someone with more presence of mind – or maybe just a nastier sense of humor – than the rest of the mob went to the entryway which led to the laborium and called everyone else to follow.

Fear of the Castellan and fear of Imagers formed a powerful combination. Several hundred people surged in that direction as if they had lost the capacity to think.

Somehow, they forced the guards back. Somehow, they were swept into the laborium, where the great majority of them had never set foot in their lives. Somehow, they found themselves packed into the ruined hall where the Congery had held meetings until the champion had blasted one wall open to the world.

Men closed the doors against the guards, shot the bolts. Torches ringed the stumps of pillars which used to hold up the ceiling. Because the curtain-wall didn’t completely seal the hole in Orison’s side, the hall was theoretically exposed to the guards defending the wall. The wall, however, had been built to protect against siege rather than against riot: its defensive positions faced outward rather than back down into the hall below. Only the archers could have taken any action. And even Lebbick’s staunchest supporters knew better than to begin slaughtering Orison’s inhabitants.

Lebbick. Men and women shouted back and forth, made threats. Lebbick. Their mood grew uglier by the moment. They started demanding blood.

Lebbick. Lebbick!

Back against the wall near one of the doors stood a tall man who wasn’t shouting, didn’t make any demands. Wrapped in his jet cloak, he was nearly invisible among the shadows. But the hood of his cloak couldn’t hide the way his eyes caught the reflection of the torches, or the way his teeth gleamed when he grinned.

“Very good so far,” he said in a conversational tone because absolutely no one could hear him. “Now the time has come. Do what I told you.”

Around him, the confusion began to change. Something caught the attention of the mob, focused it.

Amid the torches, Saddith stood on the dais of the Masters.

She was just tall enough to be seen over the heads of the people nearest her.

“Listen to me!” There was nothing left of her beauty: it had all become disfigurement and rage. Her voice rang off the stones, rang through the mob. “Look at me!”

She raised her hands into the light.

“Look at me!”

The mob snarled.

She shook her hair away from her face.

“Look at me!”

The mob hissed.

She stripped open her blouse, exposing her maimed breasts.

“Look at me!”

The mob shouted.

“Lebbick did this! He did this to me!”

The mob roared.

“Yes, my sweet little slut,” the man in the jet cloak commented. “And you deserved it. Perhaps that will teach you the folly of betraying my secrets.”

“Now he has threatened you,” Saddith went on, as fierce as her nakedness, “for no reason except that you think this should not have been done to me!”

Lebbick! Lebbick!

“I went to him because I pitied him!” she shouted. “I went to offer him my love when I was beautiful and all men desired me! This is the result!”

“No,” said the man in the jet cloak, entirely unheard. “You went to him because you were ambitious. And you went when I told you to go. I understood his need far better than you did.”

Her voice seemed to turn the torchlight the color of blood. “He must pay!”

Lebbick! Pay! Lebbick!

“Think about this gambit, Joyse.” The man in the jet cloak was no longer grinning. “Save him if you can. Stop me if you can. You thought to play this game against me, but you are outmatched.”

Then he cocked an eyebrow in mild surprise and peered over the heads of the crowd as a figure wrapped in a brown robe stepped unexpectedly up onto the dais beside Saddith.

Lit by torches and looking like an image out of a dream, the figure turned sharply; the robe seemed to swirl through the air and float away, thrown off as the man revealed himself.

Castellan Lebbick.

He wore the purple sash of his authority over his mail, the purple band of his position knotted around his short, gray hair. He had a longsword in a scabbard on his hip, but he didn’t touch it; he didn’t appear to need it. His familiar scowl answered the torches blackly. The lift of his head, the thrust of his jaw, the movements of his arms and shoulders were tight with passion and command. He wasn’t tall, yet he made himself felt everywhere in the hall.

He had never looked more like a man who beat up women.

“All right.” His voice carried; it promised violence, like a hammer knocking chips from stone. “This has gone on long enough. Get out of here. Go back to your rooms. The Masters don’t like having their precious laborium invaded. If they decide to defend it themselves, they might translate the whole lice-ridden lot of you out of existence.”

An interesting threat, thought the man in the jet cloak – plainly hollow, but interesting. Nevertheless everyone stared at the Castellan. He had clapped a hush over the mob. Surprise and old respect and inbred alarm did more for him than fifty guards.

Saddith ignored his threats. She ignored his appearance, his proven capacity for harm. After what he had cost her, she had nothing left to lose, no more reason to be afraid. And she hated him – oh, she hated him. Her face was a scabbed and deformed clench of hate as she spat his name:

“Lebbick.”

Despite his authority and fury, he turned to look at her as though she had the power to compel him.

“What do you wish here?” she asked thickly. “Have you come to gloat? Have you come to lay claim to your handiwork? Are you proud of it?”

“No.” His voice was quiet, yet it could be heard throughout the hall. “I was wrong.”

“ ‘Wrong’?” she cried.

“It wasn’t your fault. It probably wasn’t even your idea. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

At a calmer moment, the crowd might have been utterly astounded to hear Castellan Lebbick say something that sounded so much like an apology, almost a self-abasement. But the people weren’t thinking as individuals: they were feeling like a mob, ugly and extreme. Lebbick, someone murmured – and another, Lebbick – a chant began, far back in the throat, through the teeth, a hunting growl, Lebbick, Lebbick.

“ ‘Wrong’?” repeated Saddith. She was breathing hard, trying to get enough air for her vituperation. “You admit that you were wrong?” Her damaged breasts shone with sweat. “Do you think that heals me? Do you think that one small piece of my pain is made less, or one small scar is removed?” Her arms beat time to her respiration, Lebbick, Lebbick, the snarl of the mob. “I tell you, you will pay with blood!

“Blood!” she howled, matching the rhythm in the hall: “Blood!”

And the mob responded, “Lebbick! Lebbick!”

The man in the jet cloak grinned with undisguised relish.

Nevertheless Castellan Lebbick wasn’t daunted. Maybe he wasn’t even afraid. “Oh, stop it!” he snapped over the heavy shout as if the people surrounding him were nothing more than bad children and he had no time for their misbehavior. “Do you think all this surprises me? I knew it was going to happen. I’ve been ready for days.”

His voice wielded enough of the whip to slash through the beat of his name, the outrage. Men and women faltered, began to listen.

“I had you driven in here so I could do what I wanted with you. You didn’t know I was here. You don’t know how many of my men are here. Well, I’ll tell you. Ninety-four. All disguised. All pretending to be one of you. The person standing next to you shouting Lebbick, Lebbick like a dog with the mange is probably one of my men. If anyone raises a hand at me, he’ll be cut down where he stands. And the rest of you will be remembered!”

It was a remarkable ploy. The man in the jet cloak was virtually certain that it was in fact a ploy, that the Castellan was in fact undefended, as vulnerable as he would ever be; but that changed nothing. It worked. Like water on hot coals, it transformed the fury of the mob back into fear.

All the shouting stopped. Men and women glanced at each other, tried to edge away from each other. When the Castellan barked, “Now get out of here. Open the doors and get out of here. You’ve all been stupid enough for one, night,” the people near the doors undid the bolts, and the crowd began to move.

This was too much for Saddith – as the man in the jet cloak knew it would be. Of course, he was as surprised as anyone by Castellan Lebbick’s appearance in the hall; and more vexed than most, although he didn’t show it. From the beginning, however, he had been prepared for the possibility that she might fail – that the crowd might refuse to gather, that it might not become a mob, that the mob might not rise to bloodshed. And then she would break. The hate inside her would refuse to be contained.

That was why he had given her a knife.

She had it in her hand now, and she wailed in a high, shrill voice as she flung herself at Lebbick.

Maybe he wasn’t as ready as he pretended to be. Or maybe something had distracted him. Or maybe this was what he had had in mind all along. Whatever the reason, he was slow turning, slow with his hands; too slow to prevent Saddith from driving her blade through his throat.

Nevertheless she didn’t so much as scratch him.

While she swung, Ribuld came up onto the dais in a headlong charge and spitted her on his longsword, ran her through so hard that they both crashed into the throng on the far side and fell to the floor.

Just for a second, the Castellan’s features seemed to crumple as if he were disappointed. Almost immediately, however, he swept out his own sword and went to stand over Ribuld so that no one would try to strike at the guard who had saved his life.

The man in the jet cloak was mildly entertained to hear Castellan Lebbick rasp at Ribuld, “Next time don’t be in such a hurry.”

The time had come to go with the crowd. If the man in the jet cloak lingered, he might get pulled along when the crowd’s departure became flight, people hurrying and then running to get away from the Castellan and trouble. With a shrug, he eased out of the hall.

The next morning, however, he was gratified to hear that some of Saddith’s supporters had been sincere enough in their outrage to burn everything flammable they could find before guards arrived to drive them out of the laborium. She deserved at least that much recognition. She had become too ugly to go on living, of course; but while she lasted she had been worth the risk of knowing her. Although he wasn’t exactly grieved by her loss, he admired the aesthetic judgment of the man or men who had tried to commemorate her death by doing a little trivial damage to the laborium.

On the other hand, he was both surprised and rather amused that the better part of the day passed before anyone discovered that during the riot someone had broken into the warren of rooms where the Congery’s mirrors were kept and had shattered several of them.

Treachery was everywhere, it seemed. What a shame.

Chew on that, Joyse, you old goat. I hope it chokes you.

The next morning, with Orison full of news which he might be presumed to have come by honestly, Master Eremis went to visit the mediator of the Congery.

He had a number of matters that he wanted to pursue with Master Barsonage. He had been putting them off for days, partly because he hadn’t wished to call attention to himself, partly because he’d been busy elsewhere. But the time was ripe for a little probing. Perhaps he would be able to learn something useful – and sow a hint or two of uncertainty in the process.

Twirling the ends of his chasuble, he walked through the tower which held King Joyse’s private quarters. In fact, he made a point of passing that way often, whatever his destination might be. If anyone had asked him why he occasionally walked a considerable unnecessary distance in order to cross the waiting room in front of the stairs up to the King’s rooms, he would have replied that he always hoped to overhear something – any gossip or rumor which might reveal where he stood with his sovereign.

After all, King Joyse had said exactly nothing to him, either in person or by message, after his solution to the problem of Orison’s water supply. Since what he had done was so obviously the kind of thing which King Joyse had always demanded from his Imagers, he, Master Eremis, might be forgiven for drawing worrisome inferences from the King’s silence. Was Eremis not trusted? Were his enemies speaking against him? Had he offended against King Joyse’s apparent desire to bring about the collapse of the realm? Or was it true that the King’s insistence upon an ethical use of Imagery had never been sincere?

Surely Master Eremis’ interest in any news which might somehow emanate from the King was understandable? Under the circumstances, how could he be confident that his life wasn’t in danger, even though he had saved Orison from terrible suffering and inevitable defeat?

This explanation – although Master Eremis would have supplied it with perfect assurance – was no more than a by-blow of the truth.

The truth was that he had come this way by accident several days ago, and had chanced to find the Tor in the waiting room.

The old lord was alone, of course. The waiting room was almost always empty, now that King Joyse had made plain his disinclination to respond intelligently – if at all – to the petitions of his subjects. It was possible that the Tor had been alone there for hours – and would be alone for hours more.

He was asleep on the floor, with his face pressed into the corner between the floor and wall; his fat made a quivering mountain, and he snored like a sawmill; he was so drunk that Master Eremis might have been unable to awaken him with a trumpet. The stink exhaling from him was so strong that simply breathing it made Master Eremis feel tipsy and arrogant.

While the old lord’s thick flesh shook from his raucous snoring, Master Eremis paused to think. He considered taking this opportunity to slip an unobtrusive knife between the Tor’s ribs. That might be helpful – not at the moment, naturally, but later on. Vagel would do it without hesitation; Gilbur, with glee. On the other hand, it would be almost no fun at all. Eremis wanted to humiliate the Tor before killing him.

In addition, there was only one lord whom Master Eremis feared less, and that was the Armigite, who had already sold his Care to Prince Kragen to purchase a temporary safety for himself and his women and his fresh boys. Upon reflection, Eremis let the chance for murder pass.

But he didn’t forget it.

If the Tor were occasionally to be found in the waiting room alone and drunk and asleep, then it was possible that he might also occasionally be found there alone and drunk and awake. Awake enough to talk – and too drunk to be cautious.

Master Eremis believed that opportunities were like women: they came to men who knew how to court them.

As a rule, he was given more to flashes of inspiration than to steady labor. That was why he – and Vagel as well – needed Master Gilbur. Nevertheless he began courting this opportunity assiduously. He made sure that he passed through the waiting room more often than any other man in Orison.

Today, on his way to talk with Master Barsonage, his diligence reaped its just reward. The Tor was sitting on one of the deserted benches, so drunk that he could hardly find his head with both hands. His eyes were red and miserable, self-abused, and he exuded a sour smell of old sweat and acid vomit. What was left of his hair straggled into his face.

Clearly, the long, strange wait while Prince Kragen sat outside Orison and did nothing had begun to bear fruit. A riot against Castellan Lebbick, what a shame. Mirrors broken in the laborium. And the King’s oldest friend reduced to this, drinking himself to death in full view of anyone who bothered to notice.

It was odd and wonderful that the man who bothered to notice wasn’t the King at all, wasn’t the one at whom this display was directed. Instead he was Master Eremis.

“My lord Tor,” the Master said amiably, “this is fortuitous.”

Slowly, as if he were bringing long forgotten muscles into service, the Tor raised his head; he peered at Eremis through a haze of drink. With no discernible self-awareness, he belched.

Then he said in a surprisingly clear voice, “Got any wine?”

Master Eremis smiled across his teeth. “I have wished to speak with you, my lord. Great events transpire in Orison.”

The old lord considered this assertion soddenly. After a moment, he dropped his head; it lolled on his neck. Nevertheless when he spoke every word was as distinct as a piece of glass: broken and precise, like augury.

“Too far to get. Too many stairs.”

He belched again, aimlessly.

“We have had a riot against the good Castellan,” explained Master Eremis. “And it may have been premeditated. While the guards were distracted by the riot, several of the Congery’s mirrors were destroyed.”

The Tor’s head continued rolling back and forth, back and forth, as if he were rocking himself to sleep.

“And now, like a man who knows what happens within our walls, Prince Kragen attacks at last – although I must confess that I am less impressed by the audacity of his assault than by its circumspection.”

And may the attacks continue, the Master wished, daring fate to deny him. They are an admirable distraction.

Simply because he was so willing to pursue his aims even if everything went against him, he felt confident that fate would in fact heed his desires.

The Tor met Master Eremis’ remarks with a snort; he might have been starting into a snore. A quiver ran through him then, however, and he blinked his bloodshot eyes. “Wine,” he pronounced, as if he expected a cask to appear magically before him.

Master Eremis had difficulty restraining a laugh. True, some of King Joyse’s supporters were proving to be more resourceful than Eremis could have predicted. Others, however, only saved themselves from appearing pathetic by being ridiculous.

“What do you make of it all, my lord Tor?” he asked in kind good humor. “Where are the forces of Cadwal? Where is the Perdon? How has Prince Kragen dared to let us endure against him so long?”

Without looking up, the Tor countered absentmindedly, “Did I tell you my son was killed?”

“It seems clear, does it not” – at the moment, Eremis was delighted that he hadn’t knifed the old lord – “that the Prince and his illustrious father know something we do not.” This conversation was too much fun to be missed. “They would not have wasted so much as a day in hesitation, unless they had reason to believe that High King Festten would not arrive against them. What conclusions do you draw, my lord?”

The Tor appeared to suffer from the delusion that he was actually participating in the discussion. “Did I tell you,” he replied, “that he gave Lebbick permission to torture her?”

That was an interesting revelation; but Master Eremis could guess its import too easily to pursue it. Instead, he inquired, “What conclusions can you draw? There are only two. The first is that Festten and Margonal are in alliance – and Festten trusts Margonal enough to give him time to capture the Congery for himself. And if you are able to believe that, I fear we have nothing more to say to each other.”

“Torture her,” repeated the Tor, “despite her obvious decency – and her proven desire to help him.”

“The second,” continued Master Eremis, grinning, “is that the Prince has cut us off from information which he himself possesses – from the knowledge that we are not indeed threatened by Cadwal at all. High King Festten has other intentions. He has mustered his army, not against us and Alend, but to wage another war entirely. And if you are able to believe that, I fear you have nothing left to say to anyone.”

“I begged her.” Fat tears rolled down the old lord’s aggrieved cheeks. “I should have begged him, of course, but he was past hearing me. I begged her. Betray Geraden. So that he would not be responsible for what Lebbick would do. So that he would not have her on his conscience.” He seemed unaware that he was weeping. His ability to speak so exactly when he was barely sober enough to keep his eyes from crossing was delightful, even entertaining, like a trick done by a mountebank. “But she has the only loyal heart left in Mordant. She would not betray Geraden, even to save herself from Lebbick.”

Master Eremis was so pleased that he could hardly contain his relish. Because his exuberance absolutely had to have some outlet, he spun the ends of his chasuble like pinwheels.

“My lord Tor,” he asked nonchalantly, coming at last to the point, “what has he been doing all this time, while his people riot, and mirrors are shattered, and women are maimed and murdered? What has good King Joyse been doing?”

As if the word had been surprised out of him, the Tor replied, “Practicing.”

“Practicing?” A brief giggle burst from the Master: he couldn’t hold it down. “What, hop-board? Still? Has he not given up that folly yet?”

The old lord shook his head, as morose as cold potatoes and congealed gravy.

“Swordsmanship.”

That stopped Master Eremis’ mirth: it made him stare involuntarily, as if the Tor had somehow, miraculously, opened a pit of vipers at his feet – or had told him a joke so funny that he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t laugh at it until he had thought about it for a while. Swordsmanship? At his age? Was he strong enough to do as much as lift a longsword?

“My lord Tor,” Eremis said casually to conceal the intensity of his attention, “you jest with me. Our brave King cannot swing a sword. He can barely stand without assistance.”

Abruptly, with an effort that seemed to make his whole body gurgle, the Tor heaved himself to his feet. He hadn’t looked at Master Eremis since the start of the conversation. Dully, as if he were losing his gift for enunciation, he announced, “Got to have wine.”

With his hams rolling unsteadily under him, he lurched away.

Master Eremis was about to spring after him, pull him back, wrench an explanation out of him, when the true point of the joke struck home. King Joyse intended to fight – and he was years or even decades past the time when he was strong enough to do so. That shed a new light on everything – on every sign that the King knew what he was doing, that he did what he did out of deliberate policy rather than petulant foolishness. He intended to fight because he didn’t know or couldn’t admit he no longer had the strength. He wasn’t self-destructive or apathetic: he was just blind to age and time. He risked his kingdom in an effort to prove himself still capable of saving it.

That was a rich jest, too rich for any coarse display of mirth. Instead of laughing aloud, Eremis whistled cheerfully through his teeth as he continued on his way to see Master Barsonage.

The mediator answered his door wearing only a towel knotted around his middle – a style of dress which emphasized his girth at the expense of his dignity. Water glistened on his pine-colored skin, his bald pate: apparently, Master Eremis had caught him bathing, and his servants were out. His flesh didn’t sag on him as the Tor’s did, however; his bulk was solid, tightly packed over muscle and bone. He didn’t seem especially embarrassed to receive Master Eremis in this damp, disrobed condition.

In fact, he sounded almost friendly as he said, “Master Eremis, good day to you. Come in, come in.” He stood back from the door, waved a dripping arm. “It is an honor to be visited by the man who saved Orison. Let us hope that you have saved us permanently. Have you recovered from your ordeal? You look well.”

Master Eremis laughed lightly at Barsonage’s uncharacteristic gush. “And a good day to you, Master Barsonage. I have clearly come at an inopportune moment. I can return later.”

“Nonsense.” The mediator touched the sleeve of Eremis’ cloak, urged him into the room. “Orison is under siege. In one sense, all times are inopportune. In another, the present moment is always better than any other. Some wine?”

Thinking of the Tor, Master Eremis said deliberately, “With pleasure.”

He accepted a goblet of a very mediocre Armigite vintage, then seated himself in the chair Master Barsonage indicated. He had visited the mediator’s rooms on any number of occasions – disputes privately arbitrated at one extreme, formal feasts welcoming new Masters at the other – but whenever he came here he always took a moment to admire the furniture.

It had all been made by Master Barsonage himself.

Eremis did him the justice of admitting that the mediator was a competent Imager. In particular, the preparation for and execution of the Congery’s most important augury had been deftly done. On the other hand, he was much more than competent with wood: he was an artist. It was universally acknowledged around the Congery that his frames were better than anyone else’s: better made, better fitted; altogether finer. And his furniture could have graced the finest salon in Orison – or in Carmag, for that matter. The expanse of his table had been so well shaped and polished that it seemed to glow from within; the arms of his chairs flowed so naturally with the grain of the wood that it was surprising to find them comfortable.

Secretly, Eremis laughed at Master Barsonage for dedicating himself to his lesser talents – for wasting his time with Imagery when he could have contributed some real beauty to the world in another way.

And he wanted to laugh more now. Instead of leaving the room to put on at least a robe, Barsonage sat down as he was, drank off his wine in a gulp, wiped the water out of his stiff eyebrows, and began to prattle.

“You are much admired now, Master Eremis. Of course, you have always been admired. But it will not surprise you to hear that you have not always been liked. You are too able, too quick. And you mock people. You have not made yourself easy to like.

“Ah, but now—The refilling of the reservoir was a clever action as well as a courageous one. No, do not deny it,” he said although Eremis hadn’t moved a muscle. “The exhaustion of so much prolonged translation. If I had made that attempt, my heart would have failed me. Yet you did not hesitate to risk complete prostration. And, as I say, it was clever. Your reputation has not been the only beneficiary of your action. Your heroism and Master Quillon’s foul murder have combined to raise the esteem in which all the Congery is held.

“Shall I give you an example? My servants no longer sneer at me when I put them to work.”

Grinning, Master Eremis raised his hands to ward off the babble. “Master Barsonage, please. I did not come to you for flattery. I am precisely aware of my own virtues, and they do not merit this praise.”

“Really?” the mediator returned. “I think you are too modest.” His eyes were as bland as bits of glass. “But if praise is offensive I will cease. Of course you did not come for flattery. How may I serve you?”

“I am well rested now, as you see,” Eremis answered. “And another matter which required my attention has come to an end. It is no secret that the maid Saddith was my lover.” He spoke with admirable sincerity. “After I recovered my strength, I spent much of my time with her. She needed friends—”

He grimaced. “Sadly, she would not give up her hatred of our good Castellan. There was nothing I could do with her.” Grief wasn’t his best pose, but he projected as much of it as possible. As if he were putting Saddith and her death behind him by an act of will, he said, “Master Barsonage, I am ready.”

The mediator raised an eyebrow. As his skin dried, it looked more and more like cut pine. “ ‘Ready’?”

“I have heard that the Masters are busy – that since Quillon’s death you have rediscovered your sense of purpose. I am ready to rejoin the work of the Congery.”

“Our work?” Master Barsonage’s features reflected nothing. “What work do you mean?”

Master Eremis had difficulty suppressing a smile. The mediator was almost ludicrously transparent. Fixing him with a glittering gaze which was intended to express indignation as well as penetration, Eremis replied slowly, “So it is true. I am still not trusted. That is the reason I have not been summoned to any of your meetings – to any of your labors. I have saved Orison from a quick fall to Alend. I did everything any man could do to keep Nyle alive – and I was the only man here who so much as made the attempt. I have been striving with unmatched diligence to find some means to avert Mordant’s fate. It was not I who disbanded the Congery. And I am still not trusted. That murderous puppy, Geraden, casts a few groundless aspersions on my good name, and suddenly nothing I can do is enough to redeem it.”

“Oh, no, Master Eremis.” Barsonage put up a thick hand in protest. “You misunderstand me. You misunderstand us all.” In a tone as bland as his expression, he explained, “You fail to grasp, I think, how high your standing has become. The man who refilled the reservoir – the man who did so much to save Nyle – is not someone who can be ‘summoned’ to meetings like an Apt. He cannot be put to labor like a packhorse. You have been much involved in your own concerns – and you have earned the right to be. The Congery does not distrust you. We only respect your high standing – and your privacy.”

Firmly, Eremis resisted a giddy temptation to snort, During a siege? With Orison’s fall tied like a noose around your neck, and no hope anywhere? Can you truly believe me silly enough to swallow that lie? The mediator, however, didn’t look like a man who had an opinion about Master Eremis’ silliness, one way or the other. He looked – his blandness itself betrayed him – like a man who had spent some time preparing for this encounter.

Master Eremis sat forward in his chair; his relish for the conversation sharpened.

“Perhaps,” he said in a skeptical drawl. “You will forgive me if I reserve judgment on that point.

“It remains true, does it not, that there have been meetings to which I have not been invited? That there is work in progress which I have not been asked to share? That the Congery has rediscovered its purpose?”

Master Barsonage nodded. “Indeed.” Something about him – perhaps it was the way his eyebrow bristled – suggested an intensification which his mild gaze contradicted. “I am glad to say that is the case.”

“Am I permitted to ask how it came about?”

“Certainly. At last we are able to see clearly that the lady Terisa is an Imager.”

Eremis scowled to conceal the fact that he didn’t like what he heard. “Master Barsonage, that is an answer which explains nothing.”

“Well, perhaps not.” Apparently, the mediator had prepared himself quite well for this encounter. “A man of your assurance and ability may have difficulty understanding men whose chief talent lies in their capacity for doubt.

“Nevertheless in practice – as distinct from theory – the great stumbling block for the Congery has been the question of the lady Terisa. What does she signify? What does her presence among us indicate? Is there a reason for her unexpected appearance, or was Geraden merely the agent of a monumental accident?

“If she is an accident, then all Imagery is accidental in the end, and our research, like our morality, is only foolishness. Geraden’s role in the augury has no meaning.”

Master Eremis nodded as if the truth were obvious to him.

“But if,” the mediator continued, “there is a reason, then two conclusions are inescapable. So inescapable,” he commented without discernible sarcasm or humor, “that even our most contentious members have accepted them. First, the responsibility she represents falls upon us. Imagery is our demesne. Second, since the problem she represents exists it must have a solution. What one Imager can do, another can understand and counter.

“It has been demonstrated,” he concluded, “that there is a reason. She is an Imager. We can regret that she has chosen to ally herself with Master Gilbur and arch-Imager Vagel, but we cannot shirk either the responsibility or the hope which that knowledge implies.”

“Yes, very well.” Master Eremis made an impatient gesture. “That is all reasonable as far as it goes, but you have not yet explained it. How do you know she is an Imager? What evidence has she given? Lebbick reports that Gilbur freed her from her cell. He killed Quillon. He took her to the room where Havelock’s mirrors are kept. Lebbick found them there. After Gilbur felled Lebbick, he and she disappeared from Orison. What does that demonstrate? Gilbur’s ability to come and go is as well established as Gart’s – and as unexplained. There is no reason to attribute Imagery to her.”

Master Barsonage shrugged, scratched his chest. As if to compensate for his baldness, his chest was matted with yellow hair. Water clung to it like beads of sap. “That is true,” he replied without hurry or hesitation. “On the other side, it could be argued that Master Gilbur and the arch-Imager would have no reason to free her – just as the High King’s Monomach would have no reason to kill her – if she were not an Imager. Speaking only for myself, I have examined that argument and found it persuasive. In fact, it persuaded me to accept the position of the Congery’s mediator once again.

“Since then, however, we have been given evidence instead of argument, the kind of evidence you and several of the other Masters require.”

Maddeningly, he halted and gazed at Eremis as if he had said enough.

Master Eremis forced himself to take a deep breath, relax, stop grinding his teeth. When he had recovered his nonchalance, he said, “You say that you do not distrust me. Do you trust me enough to tell me what that evidence is?”

Once again, Master Barsonage replied, “Of course.

“The Castellan is a hard man, hard to defeat. He was already coming back to consciousness when the lady Terisa and Master Gilbur left the storeroom of Adept Havelock’s mirrors. He saw that they did not depart together.

“The lady Terisa vanished into a glass. Master Gilbur was too far from her to have translated her. He left the room the same way he entered it, along the corridor.”

The mediator favored Master Eremis with a smile as bland as milk.

Eremis prided himself on his restraint. Nevertheless he betrayed some surprise as he protested, “That is not the story Lebbick tells.”

He was surprised because he hadn’t expected Barsonage to know so much. And a man who knew more than he was expected to might also do more than he was expected to.

And if he really didn’t trust Eremis, as his manner made clear, why was he revealing what he knew?

“No” – the mediator corrected his visitor amicably – “it is not the story Castellan Lebbick has told in public. I gather from what I have heard that at first he was too full of fury and desperation to grasp the significance of what he had seen. And since then he has chosen to keep his thoughts to himself. But he did speak to Artagel. And Artagel brought the story to me. He believed – quite rightly – that his information was vital to the Congery.”

In a tone that made him sound like a simpleton, Master Barsonage said, “It has enabled me to unite the Masters for the first time since the Congery was created.”

Master Eremis drank more wine to conceal the fact that all these surprises were beginning to affect him. Lebbick told Artagel. Artagel told Barsonage. But Gilbur had sworn that Lebbick was still out cold when he left. Was he just trying to cover up a mistake? Or was Barsonage lying – Barsonage, of all people? Was he playing some kind of game?

Eremis grinned around the rim of his goblet. This was better than he had anticipated, more fun. He liked opponents who, were capable of surprises. He had grown almost fond of King Joyse. Even Lebbick had his good side. Geraden was virtually likable. And as for Terisa—

That made their destruction especially exciting.

Unite the Masters, was that it? Then they would have to be un-united.

He twirled his goblet in his long fingers. “Thank you, Master Barsonage,” he said happily. “I understand you now.

“What work is the Congery doing with its rediscovered purpose?”

Again the mediator shrugged. A trickle of water ran out of his chest hair across his belly. “It will not surprise you. We labor to learn how it is that men such as the High King’s Monomach, who is no Imager, and Master Gilbur, whose talents are known to us, can be translated in and out of Orison at no cost to their sanity. Translation through flat glass drives men mad. That has been true since the dawn of Imagery. Why, then, are our enemies not destroyed by the very weapons they use against us?”

Ah. That was a subject which Master Eremis had come prepared to discuss. With a small, inward sigh – relief, perhaps, or disappointment – he said, “There I may be able to help you. I have an idea that may shed some light.”

For the first time since the conversation began, Master Barsonage looked interested. “Please explain it,” he said at once. “You know that the matter is urgent.”

“Certainly.” Matching the blandness of Master Barsonage’s tone, Eremis explained. “To the best of our understanding, as you know, the peril of flat glass arises from the translation itself, not from the simple movement from place to place within our world. Put crudely, translation is too strong for simple movement. The power which makes passage possible between entirely separate Images turns against the man translated because it is not needed.”

Barsonage nodded.

“On the assumption that our understanding is accurate,” Master Eremis went on, “my idea is this. Suppose that two mirrors were made – one flat, showing, say, an unused chamber in Orison, the other normal, showing a barren, deserted plain. Suppose then that the flat glass is now translated into the other, so that it stands upon the plain in the Image, and the focus of the Image is adjusted so that the flat mirror fills the glass. Is it not conceivable that the Imager who shaped those mirrors could now step straight through them, performing in effect two safe translations rather than one which would make him mad?”

The mediator was listening intently; he seemed to soak up Eremis’ words through his pores. Softly, as if he were astonished, he breathed, “It is conceivable.”

“Of course,” Master Eremis continued, simply marking time while he watched the mediator’s reaction, “the difficulty is that if the Imager stepped through himself he would not be able to step back. And to send and then retrieve someone else by such a method, he would need to be able to perform both translations simultaneously. We have no way of knowing whether such a thing is possible.” Like most of his lies, this one bore an insidious resemblance to the truth. “There Vagel is ahead of us. He may have spent fifteen years perfecting simultaneous translations.

“But surely we can attempt it? We can learn for ourselves whether this idea is indeed possible as well as conceivable?”

“Yes.” Master Barsonage had lost his air of studied mildness, of deliberate simplicity. His eyes shone. “We can.”

Abruptly, he surged to his feet like a breaker off the sea. “We can and we will. Today. Give me an hour to gather the Masters. Come to the laborium. We will begin experimenting.” Almost in the same breath, he added, “It is a brilliant idea. Two mirrors – simultaneous translations. Even if it fails, it remains brilliant. Brilliant.”

Having hooked his fish, Master Eremis proceeded to act as if he were letting the mediator go. He agreed to everything, stood up, started to leave, then paused at the door. As if he were innocent of all malice, he said, “Oh, Master Barsonage, one other matter – in case I forget it later. There is a rumor that some of our mirrors have been broken. Can that be true?”

Master Barsonage turned immediately grim: apparently, he was shocked by what had happened. “During the riot against Castellan Lebbick,” he admitted. “Five mirrors.” He shook his head. “It is plain that someone hates us. But why only five? Why those five? If you were insane enough to. deprive us of the means to defend Orison and ourselves, would you not break every glass you found?”

“Certainly.” Master Eremis made a sincere effort to look shocked himself. “Unfortunately, insane actions are by their very nature insane. Which mirrors were broken?”

The mediator replied promptly: once again, he was prepared. “The glass with which you refilled the reservoir. That was an attack on Orison. And Geraden’s mirror, the one that brought the lady Terisa here. Either he or she is stranded now, wherever they are – as is our lost champion. That was an attack on one of the three of them. But the third was a flat mirror of Quillon’s, showing a field of Termigan grapes. The fourth was the one with the Image of the starless sky. The fifth, the one where that gigantic slug-beast can be seen – one of the mirrors King Joyse captured in his wars. An attack on wine? On the heavens? An attack on monsters? It makes no sense.

“Geraden and the lady Terisa and our champion – if he still lives – may have been stranded entirely at random, by someone who had no idea what he did.”

Trying to sound disturbed, perhaps even grim, Eremis said, “My glass. Then we must depend on the weather for water. I cannot save us again.”

“That is true,” replied Barsonage. “Prince Kragen’s position is now much stronger. We must hope he does not know it.”

Master Eremis swallowed a final smile and made his way out of the mediator’s quarters. He wanted to reach his own rooms quickly, where he could afford to laugh out loud.

He realized, of course, that he was in a tricky situation. But it was a situation of his own devising. Thanks to the seeds he had just planted, Barsonage and the other Masters might spend the rest of their time until they died trying to work a simultaneous translation because they didn’t know it was impossible. Or, rather, it was trivial. The trick was not in the translation, but in the glass.

For all practical purposes, he had neutralized the Congery – the only force in Orison still capable of fighting him.

On the other hand, he would have to be very careful. Lebbick had said something to Artagel, who had told it to Barsonage. Not something about Terisa: something about Eremis himself. The mediator had lied to him.

For him, the trick would be to determine exactly what that lie was.

Thinking about things like this made him look like he was about to burst with good humor.

THIRTY-EIGHT: CONFLICT AT THE GATES

“The trick,” Geraden said the first time they rested the horses, “is not to get stopped.”

They had ridden hard for most of the morning: the road from Romish was easy going, and he was in a hurry. But the horses couldn’t sustain a pace like that indefinitely.

“Oh, really?” Terisa didn’t realize how sourly she spoke. She was still thinking about Torrent: the idea of the King’s shy daughter riding away alone in a foolish and dangerous effort to rescue Queen Madin clung to her mind like a splash of acid. “We’re going back to Orison. Where Master Eremis wants us. Why would anybody try to stop us?”

Geraden looked at her sharply; for a moment, he seemed unsure how to respond. As if he had missed the point, he said, “We’ve been riding so long – and it feels so good to be with you – I keep thinking you know Mordant better than you do. Would you like to look at the map again?”

She shook her head. She didn’t care about the map. She didn’t care about being stopped. At the moment, she didn’t even care about having to face Eremis again.

Geraden, that’s how Argus got killed.

“Well,” he explained, still missing the point, “there’s really only one fast way to get from Romish to Orison, and that’s along this road – the main road through Armigite. Which just happens to be the route Prince Kragen used. It’s his link to Alend – his supply line, his line of retreat. It’ll be crawling with his men.

“On top of that, even the Armigite can’t be as stupid as people think. He’s got to have scouts and spies everywhere, especially along the road. He needs to know what’s happening. And right now he probably wants an Imager or two more than anything in the world. If his men get their hands on us, they aren’t going to let us go just because we smile and say please.”

Terisa stared into the trees without saying anything.

“And on top of that” – Geraden’s tone became slowly harsher – “I assume Orison is still under siege. I assume it hasn’t already fallen, or there wouldn’t be any reason to kidnap Queen Madin. If we’re going to get in to see King Joyse, we’ll have to get past the whole Alend army.

“The men who took the Queen were Alends. It looks like this is some plot of Prince Kragen’s. So he’s the one we have to worry about. And he won’t let us in to Orison until he’s ready – until his trap is ready.”

He surprised her, and she winced. “Do you really think that’s true? Do you really think Prince Kragen is responsible for kidnapping the Queen?”

“Don’t you? You said those men were Alends. They took her toward Alend.”

The acid in her mind was turning to nausea. “But if he’s responsible—” Until now, she hadn’t considered the question closely. “That means he’s working with Master Eremis. Where else would he get an Imager who could translate an avalanche?”

Geraden watched her and waited.

“But if that’s true, why did Eremis refill the reservoir? Why didn’t he just let Prince Kragen into Orison?”

“An interesting question,” Geraden murmured past his teeth.

She tried to imagine an explanation; but almost at once another aspect of the situation struck her. “If the Prince did it, he must have done it behind Elega’s back. She’d never approve of something like that.”

Geraden nodded once, roughly.

The implications brought Terisa to a halt. “Elega’s being betrayed herself.” She faced Geraden squarely, showed him her distress. “What’re we going to do?”

The way he met her gaze gave the impression that he had accomplished his goal: he had shifted the direction of her thoughts. “We’ll stay on the road until we get close to Batten,” he replied. “That’s where the Alends will pick it up. And it turns south there to meet the road from Sternwall. We can go straight southeast toward Orison. We’ll save some miles – and maybe we won’t lose much time.

“When we reach the siege, we’ll try to get to Elega before the Prince realizes what we’re doing.” Abruptly, he grinned – a sharp smile with no humor in it. “If she knows what happened to her mother – if she allowed it to happen, if she approves of it – I’m going to be very disappointed in her.”

“And if she doesn’t know,” Terisa completed for him, trying to reassure herself, “she might be willing to help us.”

He nodded again.

After a while, they mounted their horses and went on.

They rode out of the last hills of Fayle onto one of Armigite’s many fertile flatlands at what felt like a breakneck pace. Leaving the woods behind increased Terisa’s anxiety: Armigite appeared to be almost unnaturally open, as if everything that moved through it were somehow exposed. Perhaps that was why the Armigite had become what he was: perhaps his personality had been distorted by the pressure of being so exposed. But actually there were quite a few trees around, even in lowlands which had obviously been under cultivation before Prince Kragen and his army crossed the Pestil. Concealment was scarce, but shade was available. Partly for that reason, and partly because of the soil’s richness, the flats of Armigite bore no resemblance to the arid spaces of Termigan.

Terisa and Geraden made good progress, despite the lack of fresh mounts. He studied the map repeatedly – they were still crossing a part of Mordant where he had never been before – and assured her that their progress was good. He may have been trying to shore up her spirits. For some reason, his own didn’t appear to need support: his keenness suggested that he liked this rush across the landscape, this clear and urgent sense of purpose; that he was eager to return to Orison. By the time nightfall forced them to halt and make camp, they were well on their way toward making the journey to Orison as Queen Madin had intended it, in three days.

The more he looked ahead, however, the more her attention turned backward. Torrent had touched her unexpectedly, made her aware of her own inadequacies. In their separate ways, each of the King’s daughters had daunted her. They had inherited more courage than she seemed to possess. Her determination to oppose Master Eremis was little more than a pretense, after all – a pretense that she could somehow transcend her past.

As she gazed across the campfire into the open dark of Armigite, she murmured, “Geraden, there’s something I don’t understand.”

“Just ‘something’?” he returned, making a transparent effort to jolly her out of her mood. “Then you are marvelous to me, my lady. My lack of understanding doesn’t stop at ‘something.’ It’s as vast as the world.”

She looked over at him. His face was as dear as ever. And if anything he had become more handsome; the excitement he had felt since Torrent left brought out the best in his eyes, in the lines of his features. He didn’t deserve her gloom. For his sake, she made an effort to smile.

“That’s probably true. But I’ll bet you know the answer to this one.”

He met her eyes and smiled back. “Try me.” The dancing light of the campfire created the impression that his smile went all the way to the bone.

Almost at once, she found that the weight pushing down on her spirit wasn’t quite as heavy as she had thought.

“I think I will,” she said. “But first I want you to explain something.”

The gleam in his eyes grew brighter as he waited for her to continue.

“That avalanche,” she said. “They must have used two mirrors. Isn’t that right? One to translate it away from wherever they found it. One to translate it to Vale House.”

“Yes,” Geraden replied at once. “But that’s been true of everything we’ve seen. Those pits of fire outside Sternwall. The ghouls in Fayle. Even the creatures that attacked Houseldon.” A shadow which might have been grief or rage darkened his gaze briefly. “They all needed two mirrors. That must be Eremis’ secret. It must be how he’s able to attack so many different places in Mordant without actually going to them. And it must be how he’s able to move people in and out of Orison without costing them their minds.

“We’ve talked about that before,” he added.

“I remember. It’s the only explanation I’ve heard that seems to make sense. Two mirrors. One shows a scene with a lot of landslides. The other is a flat glass with Vale House in the Image. That means” – her heart tightened as she came to the point – “Eremis could have seen us in the Image. He must have seen us. I know I was in the Image. Otherwise I wouldn’t have felt the translation.

“That means he knows where we are.

“And it means we’re responsible for what happened to Queen Madin. She was taken because of us.”

“No.” Geraden rejected the idea without hesitation. “That can’t be true. It wasn’t because of us.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too complicated. He had men ready for that attack. They must have been on their way before we ever got near Fayle. If we had anything to do with it, he must have known we were going there – and not to Romish – long before we did. And his men wouldn’t have ignored us. He would have been glad for a chance to capture us.

“That attack was aimed at the Queen herself. Even the timing was just a coincidence. Eremis couldn’t control the avalanches in his mirror. He had to be ready to act whenever the opportunity came along.”

Involuntarily, Terisa shook her head. She didn’t like what she was thinking. “No. He probably can control the avalanches. I mean he can cause one whenever he wants. All he has to do is focus his mirror on the right kind of mountainside. Then, when he wants a landslide, all he has to do is translate away the rock supporting the mountainside.”

Geraden stared at her, his eyes glittering flames. “You’re right. I never thought of that.”

“The attack wasn’t aimed at us,” she assented. “But he knows we were there. He could have seen that we survived. He could have seen us ride away. He could guess where we’re going.

“That means we can’t warn King Joyse. It won’t do any good. There won’t be any gap between when he knows what happened to the Queen and when Eremis knows he knows. He won’t have a chance to act. What we’re trying to do doesn’t make any sense.”

She stopped and watched Geraden’s face, holding her breath as if she feared his reaction.

She was relieved to see that he wasn’t discouraged. His expression became intently thoughtful, but he didn’t look especially alarmed; he certainly didn’t look horrified. Softly, he commented, “I’ve said it before. You have a morbid imagination. No wonder you’ve been so depressed all day.

“This time,” he said after a moment, “I think you’re wrong.”

Quietly, she let the air sigh out of her lungs.

“If Eremis saw us,” he asked by way of explanation, “where’s Gart?”

Terisa’s mouth fell open. She wasn’t the only one with a morbid imagination.

“While we were talking with Torrent,” Geraden continued, “while we were trying to help the Fayle’s man, while we were packing our horses – that was the best chance Gart’s ever had to kill us both. We were defenseless. Why didn’t Eremis get rid of us while he had the chance?

“I don’t think he saw us.

“He could have seen us, of course. We found that out outside Sternwall. But this time I don’t think he did.

“I’m sure he didn’t before the avalanche. We were on the porch, under the roof, and his mirror was focused in the air over the house. After all, he didn’t want to kill Queen Madin. She wouldn’t have done him any good dead. But that’s not really the point. The point is, if you’re translating several hundred tons of rock out of one glass into another, what do you do with it while it’s between translations? If you make even the tiniest mistake, all that rock will shatter the second mirror, and you’ll have the entire avalanche in your lap.”

In spite of herself, Terisa let out a slightly hysterical giggle. That would have been perfect justice, if the landslide Eremis had planned for Vale House had come down on his own head.

Geraden flashed her a grin. “The solution,” he said, “is the one we talked about – a hundred years ago or so in Orison, when we didn’t know we were two of the most powerful people alive. Translate the second glass into the first. In effect, the rock goes straight into the flat mirror.

“But.” He held up a hand to forestall interruption. “This is what saved us. When you do a translation like that – when you put the second mirror into the first before you start – what can you see? You can see the mountainside. You can see the rock. But you can’t see the Image in the second mirror. The back of the flat mirror faces you, so the front can translate the rock.

“And once you start a process like that you have to keep it going until the dust clears and you’re sure you’re safe. If you stop while there’s any chance one or two boulders are still hopping down the mountainside, the flat glass could be crushed, and the boulders could end up in your face. So you can’t be in a hurry to translate the second mirror back out of the first and turn it around and refocus it.

“That’s why we had time to get away.”

Listening to him, Terisa felt a knot inside her loosen at last. He was right. It was possible that Eremis hadn’t seen them. If he had, surely he would have sent an attack after them – wolves or a firecat, if not Gart himself. There was still hope for the wild scheme Torrent and Geraden had conceived.

That night, she experienced some of the benefits of Geraden’s keenness. She began to feel a bit keener herself.

At about the same time, when the embers had died down, and clouds covered the moon, Prince Kragen sent men to clear the charred remains of his battering rams and their protective shells away from Orison’s gates. He wanted the new rams and shells being hammered together to have an unimpeded approach.

And the next morning, he pressed his attack.

Well, they have to run out of oil sometime.

It seemed a rather thin tactic on which to hinge Alend’s hopes for survival, never mind victory. Nevertheless he persisted. He simply didn’t have any better ideas. With enough time, he could have sat where he was in perfect safety, discussing governance with his father, or with the lady Elega, training his forces – and waiting for Orison to starve itself into submission. That was the way sieges were supposed to go. But nothing that had anything to do with King Joyse ever went the way it was supposed to go. And as for High King Festten—

If the Prince could use up Orison’s supplies of lamp oil, cooking oil, flammable grease, he might be able to bring his battering rams to bear on the gates more effectively. All he needed was to get the gates open.

He knew he had enough men to overwhelm the castle, if he could just get the gates open.

Around midafternoon that day, while the fifth of Prince Kragen’s makeshift rams burned like a bonfire, Terisa and Geraden sighted Batten and left the road to work eastward around the city.

This was one of the tricky parts, Geraden explained. Here they had to cross Alend’s supply route. The danger of encountering Alend soldiers was now severe. And the Armigite’s scouts or spies would almost certainly be concentrated along the lines where Alend forces were expected. Geraden and Terisa slowed their pace almost to a walk; and he spent long moments on the crest of every rise, straining his eyes toward the horizons. From time to time, he found a tree and climbed it to study the terrain from that vantage.

For no good reason except that she saw nothing – not even the walls of the city, once she and Geraden had left the road – she began to think these pauses for caution were unnecessary. They crossed the unmistakable swath of ground which had brought the Alend army to the road – unmistakable because the soil still held the cut of wheels, the gouge of hooves, the pressure of boots – but they didn’t see any sign of Alend supply wains or Armigite spotters. She would have preferred the risk of speed to the frustration of delay.

She changed her mind, however, when he came down out of a tree so fast that he nearly fell like the fumble-foot he had once been. Hissing instructions rapidly, he dragged the mounts into a nearby thicket; with her help, he forced the beasts to lie down, then did his best to muffle their noses, prevent them from whickering as the other horses came near.

A small band of riders with grime-caked clothes and eyes made evil by fear passed so close that Terisa could have hit them with a stone.

“Mercenaries,” Geraden grated under his breath after the riders were gone. “Men like that—If they were in a hurry, they might cut your throat before they raped you.

“I thought every mercenary in the world worked for Cadwal.”

Terisa was having trouble with her pulse. “Then what’re they doing here?”

He shrugged stiffly, as if all his muscles were in knots. “Working for somebody else. Or spying for the High King. If the Lieges send Prince Kragen reinforcements, Festten will want to know about it. He may have men all over this part of Mordant by now.”

Oh, good, Terisa muttered to herself. Just what we need.

She and Geraden had to hide twice more before the end of the day, but both times they were able to avoid discovery with relative ease. The scouts or mercenaries expected many things, but they clearly didn’t expect to encounter a man and a woman with three horses cutting across open ground around Batten.

In a fireless camp that night in a small gully, she remarked, “I can’t live this way.”

“What, sneaking around like this? Surrounded by people who would gut us unless they had the good sense to take us prisoner if they only knew we were here? You aren’t having fun?” Geraden snorted softly. “Terisa, I’m surprised at you.”

Actually, she was surprised at herself. Without warning, she was filled with a sense of how strange her circumstances were. Wasn’t she Terisa Morgan, the passive girl who had typed sad letters for Reverend Thatcher until she had lost faith in him and his mission? Wasn’t she the lonely woman who had decorated her apartment in mirrors because she didn’t know any other way to prove she existed? So what was she doing here? – surrounded, as Geraden observed, by enemies; struggling across country on horseback in a nearly crazy effort to warn King Joyse that his wife had been abducted; so angry at Master Eremis that she couldn’t think about it without trembling. What was she doing?

“So am I,” she murmured; but Geraden had been teasing her, and she was serious. The night on all sides felt at once vast and subtle, too big to be faced, too cunning to be escaped. And the stars—She knew in her bones that the city where her apartment was had nowhere near this many stars watching it. “Right now, it seems like there isn’t another place in the universe farther away from where I used to live than this.”

“Are you afraid?” he asked gently. “We still have a long way to go.”

He wasn’t talking about the distance to Orison.

“That’s the funny part,” she mused. “When I stop and take my pulse, I get the impression I’ve never been so scared in all my life. But when I think about where I came from – my apartment, my job, my parents – I think I’ve never been so brave.”

After a while, he said, “It makes an amazing difference when you have good, clear reasons for what you’re doing. I think I used to have so many accidents because I was confused. In conflict with myself.”

She agreed, but she didn’t say so. Instead, she said, “Don’t get cocky. I saw you almost fall out of that tree.”

That made him laugh. And his laughter always made her feel better.

Prince Kragen also had reasons for his actions.

What he was doing was unprecedented. Despite the darkness – despite the fact that his men couldn’t see Orison’s counterattacks in time to defend themselves very well – he was belaboring the gates with the heaviest battering ram he had.

He had two reasons for risking the blood of his army so lavishly, one immediate, the other alarming.

His immediate reason was that just before sunset the defenders had stopped pouring oil on the shells of his rams. The particular ram spared by this forbearance wasn’t especially impressive: its shell protected only enough men to move it, not enough to seriously threaten the gates. Nevertheless the forbearance itself was significant. Without hesitation, the Prince called back that ram and sent out a bigger one, fully manned.

This one, also, was allowed to do its work without being set afire.

Two interpretations immediately suggested themselves. Orison was out of oil. Or Orison was trying to conserve oil – was trusting the dark for protection.

Under other circumstances, this chance to hit the gates wouldn’t have been worth the risk. At night, protected by darkness from archers, the castle’s defenders would be able to swing down from the walls on ropes and strike at the ram in a matter of minutes. But the Prince was too worried to miss any opportunity, however costly it might prove.

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 Prince, 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.”

He reached up his hands to help her dismount.

That was a courtesy to which she wasn’t accustomed, but she did her best to let him assist her. Geraden swung down and came to her side; at once, he bowed formally to Prince Kragen.

“My lord Prince, I haven’t been properly presented, but you’ve named me. I’m Geraden, the seventh son of the Domne, an Apt of the Congery of Imagers.

“As you say, we have a remarkable story to tell.” Somehow, he contrived to sound like he couldn’t think of a single reason to distrust the Prince. “And there must be a lot you could tell us, if we can persuade you to do it.”

“Geraden.” Elega had come forward while Terisa was focused on Prince Kragen. Her face and form were in shadow now, with the paradoxical result that she looked brighter, keener; more capable. “What does this mean?” she demanded. “Why are you here? And how? Surely you will not ask us to believe that this is nothing more than another of your colossal mishaps?”

“No,” Geraden replied. “On the other hand, I do expect you to believe that it’s hard for me to trust you enough to tell you anything.”

There: he had given the first hint of his loyalties; therefore of his intentions. Terisa held her breath, afraid that he might be risking too much too soon.

Fortunately, Kragen wasn’t surprised enough to react badly. He knew what had happened to Nyle’s attempt to reach the Perdon: he was probably able to take Geraden’s loyalties for granted. Before Elega could respond to Geraden’s gibe, Prince Kragen stepped between them and took Terisa’s arm.

“We will discuss such things thoroughly, I assure you,” he remarked, “but I can see no reason why we should not discuss them in comfort – and in private.” With his hand on her arm, he urged Terisa into motion, steering her toward the largest of the surrounding tents. “In addition, I have offered you the Alend Monarch’s hospitality, and he does not like to be refused.” As if she weren’t already moving – as if she had a choice – he asked, “Will you come with me?”

Terisa nodded. But she didn’t let out her breath until she saw that both Geraden and Elega were following.

The Prince took her into what she realized after a moment was a fore-tent. It was lit only by the braziers which warmed it, with the result that its furnishings were obscure, vaguely ominous; the chairs seemed to crouch in the dimness, as unpredictable as beasts. Prince Kragen clapped his hands, however, and called for lamps as well as wine. The servants responded almost instantly; soon warm yellow light filled the fore-tent, and the danger crept away, hiding in the darkness at the tops of the tentpoles, or in the shadows behind the chairs.

“The Alend Monarch has gone to his bed,” Prince Kragen said casually. “Otherwise he would welcome you himself. This tent serves as his council chamber, and I doubt” – he smiled – “that there is a man in all the camp who would dare eavesdrop on what is said here. We will speak freely.”

Briskly, he got Terisa, Geraden, and Elega seated. When the wine had been served, he took a chair himself. Terisa drank a gulp of the fine vintage, trying to control her nervousness; but Elega watched her and Geraden, while Geraden faced the Prince.

Prince Kragen toyed with his goblet. “My lady Terisa, Geraden, these are complex times. I suspect that all stories are remarkable. Nevertheless your arrival here suggests questions to which I must have answers.”

“Forgive me, my lord Prince,” Geraden put it as if he hadn’t heard Kragen. “So much has happened—The last we knew, Cadwal was marching. A vast army. Where is it? What’s happened to the Perdon? How has Orison been able to hold you back so long?”

“Geraden, I am in command of this siege.” The Prince’s voice became a soft purr, a threat. “This army is mine. I wish to understand how you come to be here.”

“Of course” – Geraden allowed himself a slight, suggestive pause – “my lord Prince. On the other hand, I wish to be able to measure the consequences of what I tell you. I’m talking to an honorable enemy and a dishonorable friend.” He ignored the way Elega stiffened, the violet flare of her gaze. “Knowledge is power. I don’t want to place a weapon in the wrong hands.”

“You will not.” Prince Kragen might have been a cat pretending that he wasn’t about to spring. “You will place it in my hands.”

Geraden didn’t blink. “Or else?”

The Prince shrugged delicately. “There is no ‘or else.’ I simply state a fact. You will tell me your remarkable story.”

His tone left Terisa’s stomach in knots. When she looked in her goblet, she found that it was already empty.

“Geraden,” Elega put in, “why did you come here? You have never been stupid. You knew that this situation would arise. You knew that both the Prince and I desire the defeat of Orison. And you knew” – she seemed to falter, but only for an instant – “that we cannot afford to let you keep your knowledge secret. We are too much at risk. My life is perhaps a little thing, but the Prince is responsible for the whole Alend army. In the end, he is responsible for the survival of all his father’s realm.

“And for that,” Elega added firmly, “I have my own responsibility. Like the King, I have brought us to this place.

“Why did you put yourself and the lady Terisa in our hands, if you do not intend to tell us what you know?”

“Because we are unable to reenter Orison without your consent.” Geraden didn’t elaborate.

“That is what you want?” demanded Prince Kragen softly. “You wish to be allowed to enter Orison, so that you can tell King Joyse the story you mean to withhold from me?”

Geraden contemplated this view of the situation. “That’s essentially true, my lord Prince.”

“I suspected as much.” The Prince held his hands together on his thighs, the tips of his fingers touching each other lightly as if his self-command had become perfect. “My mind is not like my lady Elega’s. When you entered my camp, I did not say, Here are Imagers. I said, Here are scouts who wish to report to their lord.

“If you believe that I will let you pass my siege in order to take assistance or information of any kind to King Joyse, you are seriously deranged.”

Geraden shrugged. Judging by the blandness of his expression, he had no idea how seriously he was being threatened.

Terisa was too full of anxiety to sit still. Without asking permission, she stood up and went to the wine decanter. “Why don’t we trade?” she said impulsively. Fatigue and the first effects of the wine might have been speaking for her. She had played the game of trading information with King Joyse: she knew it was dangerous. But it was the best she had to offer. Her goblet full, she returned to her seat. “You tell us something. We’ll tell you something. Fair exchange. That way we don’t have to trust each other.”

“Who will speak first?” asked Elega in a carefully neutral tone.

“You will.” Terisa didn’t hesitate. “We’re in your power. You can do anything you want to us anytime you want. What have you got to lose?”

She sat down.

Geraden kept his reaction hidden. The lady Elega looked at Prince Kragen.

The Prince thought for a while; he didn’t appear to be aware that he was chewing his moustache. Two of his fingertips tapped soundlessly against each other, measuring the menace in the fore-tent. Then he said with steady nonchalance, “I think not.

“My lady Elega,” he continued before Terisa was sure that she had heard him right, “you have not heard the details of our guests’ arrival. You will be interested, I am sure.

“Geraden and the lady Terisa made no attempt at stealth. They confronted one of my patrols” – he paused ominously – “but they did not request an audience with me. They did not request permission to approach Orison. No, my lady, they demanded the right to speak with you.”

Involuntarily, Elega caught her breath.

While she stared at Geraden and Terisa, Prince Kragen added, “It is clear that whatever device or policy they have prepared to get them into Orison is directed at you. They believe that they have the means to persuade you.” Again, he paused; then he remarked cryptically, “It is even conceivable that they are aware of the existence of a precedent.”

In response, Elega’s eyes widened with pain and anger. “That is unfair, my lord.” Almost instantly, however, she seemed to catch the implications of what he said. In a rush, she asked, “Geraden, have you seen—?”

So suddenly, so loudly that the sound made Terisa’s heart lurch, Prince Kragen slapped his hands together, interrupting Elega; stopping her.

“My lady,” he articulated, “I have said that I do not wish to trade stories with them. When they have told us what they know, I will decide what they may hear.”

Elega held her tongue; yet her face showed the difficulty of restraint. Abruptly, Terisa became aware that she wanted to hear Elega’s story: the Elega she remembered wouldn’t have suffered a command to shut up so compliantly. What had happened to change the lady, to make her acquiescent? What kind of contest was going on between her and the Prince? Was it just a question of blame because her attack on the reservoir had misfired? Or had she done something else to earn Kragen’s distrust?

Because her heart was still racing and she wanted to be calm, Terisa went to get some more wine.

As if they were being polite, the other people in the fore-tent waited until she had seated herself again. She had the impression that they were all watching her.

“You serve a heady wine, my lord Prince,” Geraden murmured softly. “I haven’t tasted anything like it for a long time.”

In Terisa’s opinion, that was an odd thing to say at a time like this.

Apparently, Prince Kragen agreed with her. He ignored Geraden’s comment. Still speaking to Elega as if she were the true subject of his scrutiny, he said, “In any case, my lady, I have not yet told you everything you must hear. When Geraden and the lady Terisa demanded to speak to you, they gave a most interesting explanation. They said that they had messages for you from Queen Madin, your mother.”

At once, Elega was on her feet. “The Queen?” She didn’t appear to realize that she was standing. “You have spoken with the Queen? She sent messages for me?” Her eyes shone with excitement and anguish; her voice held a visceral tremor. “Doubtless you told her of my part in the siege. What does my mother wish to say to me now?”

Terisa was bemused to find that she had slipped down in her chair. The wine seemed to have made her top-heavy.

Pushing herself upright, she said, “We can tell you who the traitors are inside Orison. Who the renegade Imagers are. We can tell you how they planned all this with Cadwal. Together, we might be able to guess what kind of trap they plan to spring.”

Prince Kragen’s gaze burned darkly at her. For no particular reason, she added, “If you want to trade, we can even tell you what Domne and Termigan and Fayle are going to do about it.”

As far as she could tell, Geraden and Elega and Kragen were all speaking at once. Geraden asked, “Do you know what you’re doing? You look like you’ve had too much wine.” He sounded like a man who had lost his sense of humor.

At the same time, Elega protested, “No! I will hear my mother’s messages!”

Prince Kragen was saying, “Continue, my lady Terisa.” Despite his self-control, he looked eager. “I am sure that we will be able to achieve an equitable exchange when you are done.”

Grinning, Terisa wagged her finger at him. “Oh, no, my lord Prince.” She actually wagged her finger at him. “Be fair. That isn’t the way the game is played.”

Geraden stood facing Elega; his voice was pitched to cover Terisa’s. His tone didn’t hold any authority, however. It didn’t even convey confidence. Instead, it hinted at hysteria.

“The fact is,” he said, “we don’t have any messages from the Queen. She didn’t have time to give us any. She was planning to come here herself. She wanted to stand beside the King. But she didn’t get the chance.”

In spite of the pressure to speak, he faltered. Elega’s gaze was fastened to his face; her whole body concentrated toward him.

“Go on,” she said with her throat clenched.

“Continue, my lady!” Prince Kragen snapped, apparently trying to startle words out of Terisa.

Just in time, Terisa put her finger to her lips and made a shushing noise.

“Elega, I’m sorry,” Geraden said miserably. “While we were there, the Queen was taken. Ambushed. Imagery and soldiers. She was abducted.”

Slowly, as if she could barely lift them, Elega raised her hands to her mouth.

“We know who the Imager was.”

Her breath came hard, straining between her teeth.

“The soldiers were Alends.”

Prince Kragen was so startled that he sprang to his feet and barked, “You lie!” before he could stop himself.

Terisa studied the three of them. “No.” It was wonderful how clearly she could speak, despite the weight in her head. “He’s not lying. We were there. That’s why we want to go into Orison. That’s what we want to tell King Joyse. Your men kidnapped Queen Madin.”

From Terisa’s perspective, the lady Elega went up like a candle flame. Without moving, she seemed to burst into passion; it swept through her toward the ceiling, hot enough to scorch. Confronting the Prince as if Terisa and Geraden were forgotten, she whispered like a cry, “What have you done?”

Kragen’s face twisted; his teeth showed under his moustache. “They lie. I tell you, it is a lie.”

She didn’t flicker. “Geraden has never told a lie in his life – never one of such hurt. What have you done?”

“Nothing!” he shouted at her, trying to drive back her fury. “Geraden does not lie? Perhaps not. I do not lift my hand against lonely and harmless women! Never in my life.”

Perhaps she didn’t hear him: perhaps she couldn’t. Her hands clenched into fists against her cheeks; blazing, she lifted her voice into a wail.

“Where is my mother? What have you done to my mother?”

In that outcry, she burned up too brightly to sustain herself. She was too vulnerable: her strength failed, and she fainted. Delicately, like heated wax, she slumped toward the floor.

Geraden caught her.

Holding her in his arms, he faced the Prince. Now he was the one breathing hard, panting for air as if he had caught fire from her. Her distress made him savage, heedless. Prince Kragen came to him in dismay, tried to take her from him. He wrenched her away as if he didn’t care that the Prince could have him killed.

“There are only two possibilities. My lord Prince. Isn’t that right? Either you did it. So you’re going to tie me and Terisa up and start torturing us. Or it was done to you. So you’re going to let us go see the King.

“Which is it?”

But Prince Kragen wasn’t listening. “Release her, Geraden,” he murmured, almost pleading. “She is only your friend. I love her. If all of Cadwal and the wide sea itself come between us, I will wed her before I die. Give her to me.”

He held out his arms.

Terisa saw Geraden burning the way Elega had burned; she saw him on the verge of hurling something he wouldn’t be able to retract into the teeth of the Prince’s regret. Fortunately, she was already on her feet, pulled erect by his fury. Otherwise she couldn’t have reached him in time. She put a hand on his shoulder, then slipped her arm around his neck and hugged him.

“I believe him,” she said softly. “You called him an honorable enemy. He wouldn’t do something like that. And if he did, he would have done it long ago.

“He’s going to let us into Orison.”

She felt Geraden’s muscles pull tight, as rigid as Elega’s cry.

After a moment, she felt them relax.

Gently, he shifted Elega into Prince Kragen’s embrace.

At once, Kragen sank to the floor, holding Elega close while he checked her pulse and respiration, made her comfortable. He bowed his head over her, ignoring Terisa and Geraden.

They stood near him and waited. The sides of the fore-tent were lined with servants and soldiers, summoned by the lady Elega’s wail. They had no instructions, however, and didn’t move.

Then Elega’s eyes fluttered open. When she saw where she was, a slight smile curved her mouth. Gently, as if she didn’t want to hurt him, she put up her hand to touch the Prince’s cheek.

He let out a stiff sigh and raised his head.

His voice had to struggle out of his chest. “Why am I going to let you into Orison?”

Geraden cleared his throat. Constricted with emotion, he rasped, “Because if the men who took Queen Madin were Cadwals or mercenaries disguised as Alends, the attack is aimed at you as well as King Joyse. Part of the point is to keep anybody from trusting you. And part of it is to keep you and King Joyse from trusting each other, from forming an alliance.

“You’re being manipulated. By High King Festten. And the traitors. And the only way you can save yourself is to let us talk to the King.”

“And if I do not let them into Orison” – the Prince was speaking to Elega – “you will believe that I am responsible for your mother’s abduction.”

Elega didn’t nod or shake her head. The small smile stayed on her lips; her hand cupped Kragen’s cheek. “You want an alliance, my lord. You have always wanted an alliance, not this misconceived and aimless siege. Perhaps that is possible now. Perhaps it would be worth the attempt.”

Prince Kragen made a harsh noise like an attempted laugh. “The last time I proposed that, he humiliated me. He went to considerable lengths to humiliate me.”

“He didn’t—” Terisa began. Her legs were unsteady, however, and she had to support herself on Geraden’s shoulder. For a moment, she forgot what she was saying.

Then she remembered.

“He was testing you. He thought you were his enemy. He didn’t know who the traitor was. He didn’t know what alliances had already been made. Now we can tell him.”

Prince Kragen’s head turned; his eyes held an obsidian smolder which would have frightened her if she had been able to concentrate on it. Softly, he commanded, “Tell me.”

Geraden took a deep breath, straightened his back. “I’ll tell you this much, my lord. The traitor is Master Eremis. We can guess how he does the translations that let him attack anywhere in Mordant – that let him and Gart and Master Gilbur move through flat glass without losing their minds. And we know where his power is located, where he keeps his mirrors.”

With an intensity Terisa didn’t quite understand, Prince Kragen demanded, “Where is that?”

When Geraden had described Esmerel and its location, the Prince lowered his head.

“My lady,” he asked Elega, “can you stand?”

She nodded.

A flick of his fingers brought two servants running forward. They eased the lady out of his arms, assisted her to her feet. At once, Prince Kragen surged upright. He kept his face averted, so that Terisa and Geraden couldn’t see his expression. Under his breath, he murmured, “I must speak to the Alend Monarch.”

Without offering an explanation or waiting for an answer, he entered the darkness of the main tent and closed the flap behind him.

While Geraden and Elega studied each other with uncertainty and some embarrassment, Terisa went to refill her goblet.

She was stretched out on the floor, sound asleep and snoring gently, when the Alend Contender returned.

In a subtle way, his manner had changed. He looked less angry, less sick to the teeth with frustration; the prospect of immediate battle or danger came as a palpable relief to him. Despite his efforts to sound neutral, his voice was several shades lighter as he announced, “The Alend Monarch has decided that you will be allowed to enter Orison tomorrow morning.”

When he said that, Elega’s face shone at him.

Geraden let the air out of his tight chest with a burst like a laugh. “Thanks, my lord Prince. I’m glad we were right about you. And I’m glad you don’t hold a grudge against me for stopping Nyle.” He glanced affectionately at Terisa. “She’ll be glad, too – when she wakes up.”

The Prince nodded brusquely and continued, “I will accompany you, both to demonstrate my good faith and to pursue the Alend Monarch’s desire for an alliance.”

“Good idea,” Geraden remarked.

“The lady Elega will remain here to ensure that King Joyse does not abuse my good faith.”

Elega dropped her eyes, but didn’t try to argue.

“In the meantime,” Prince Kragen concluded, commanding the attention of his soldiers with a gesture, “it might be advisable to discontinue our assault on the gates.” He looked at one of his men. “Give the order.”

The man saluted and left. The rest of the servants and soldiers also filed out of the fore-tent.

To his own surprise, Geraden found that he felt suddenly giddy, in the mood for jokes and foolishness. “With your permission, my lord,” he said, “I’ll have some more of that strong wine. Then, if you’re interested in the trade Terisa mentioned, I’ll tell you a story that will curl your hair.”

Grinning like a predator, the Prince refilled Geraden’s goblet himself.

THIRTY-NINE: THE FINAL PIECE OF BAIT

By midnight, Prince Kragen and the lady Elega knew most of Geraden’s secrets.

The Alend Contender was an honorable man, however, and he kept his word.

While Terisa and Geraden slept the heavy sleep of too much wine, servants carried them to another tent, and put them to bed. At dawn more servants awakened them, offered them baths and food, and clean clothes. According to the servants, Prince Kragen wished his guests to take full advantage of his hospitality. When they were entirely ready, he would approach the castle with them.

Terisa felt loggy with sleep, thick-headed with the wine’s aftereffects. She wanted a bath so badly that she could hardly contain herself.

She was also considerably embarrassed.

When she realized that she couldn’t quite meet Geraden’s eyes, she asked awkwardly, “Are you still speaking to me?”

“Of course.” There was a watchful air behind his smile, but no discernible irritation. “If you want me to stop speaking to you, you’re going to have to do something worse than that.”

At least he didn’t pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. She covered her face with her hands. “Did I make a complete idiot out of myself?”

He chuckled easily. “That’s the amazing part. You scared me, all right. I thought you were going to get us in terrible trouble. But everything you did turned out fine. Even drinking as much as you did may have helped. It made you believable. I don’t think I could have handled either Elega or the Prince without you.”

She pulled down her hands. Deliberately, she glared at him. “Stop being so nice to me. I was irresponsible. You ought to be furious.”

Geraden gaped like a clown. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I’m so ashamed.”

She made a grim but halfhearted effort to kick his shins.

Laughing, he caught hold of her, held her, hugged her. After a while, a strange desire to weep came over her, and she found herself clinging to him hard. Fortunately, the desire only lasted a moment. As soon as it faded, she felt better.

She had to let go of him to wipe her nose. “Thanks,” she said softly. “Someday I’ll do something nice for you.”

It surprised her to see that he was leering. “If we had time, I’d get you to do it right now.”

That brought a smile out of her. “No, you wouldn’t.” She was definitely feeling better. “I stink like a pig. I think I’ve got cockroaches living in my hair.”

He stuck out his tongue in mock-nausea.

She went to take a bath.

When they were clean, and dressed in the new clothes Prince Kragen had provided for them – comfortable traveling clothes sewn of leather as supple as kidskin – they ate breakfast. The impression that they were keeping the Alend Contender waiting nagged at the back of Terisa’s mind; nevertheless she let him wait so that she would have a last chance to talk to Geraden. She had to prepare herself for Orison.

“We’re aren’t likely to get much of a welcome, you know,” she said between bites of honeyed bread and souffléed eggs – an unexpectedly rich sample of the Alend Monarch’s hospitality. “I tried to make the Castellan think I might be innocent, but Master Gilbur did a pretty good job of wiping that out.” She didn’t mention Artagel. “Everybody there has spent the whole time thinking you killed Nyle and I’m in league with the arch-Imager.”

Geraden nodded. “It won’t be much fun. But I’m not too worried. We’ll have Prince Kragen with us. We’ll be under a flag of truce. No matter what Lebbick and everybody else thinks of us, they’ll leave us alone.”

He chewed for a moment in silence, then added, “What I’m worried about is that mirror – the one that attacked the Perdon when he came here to get King Joyse’s help.”

Suddenly, Terisa found a sick taste in her mouth. “Didn’t Eremis change all that? He used those creatures to try to kill us outside Sternwall. He may have used them to kill Underwell. What can he still do?”

“Well, he must have switched flat mirrors in the Image of the world where those creatures come from. Otherwise he couldn’t have attacked us. But he’s had plenty of time since then. He could have switched the mirrors back.

“In any case, the point is that he has a glass that shows the approach to Orison, the road. He’ll be able to see us go in. He’ll be forewarned.”

She thought about that while the taste in her mouth changed to an old, settled anger. Then she muttered, “At least he’ll be surprised. He won’t have any idea how we managed to talk Prince Kragen into this.”

It did her good to be angry. Facing down Castellan Lebbick – or the Tor and Artagel, who had turned against her – would be hard enough. But confronting Master Eremis would be worse. The more she loved Geraden, the more her skin crawled at the memory of the things Master Eremis had done to her.

She could see Geraden’s eagerness in his eyes, in the way he moved: he was starting to hurry. She had never been as confident or as clear as he was; but she, too, felt a need for haste. By tacit agreement, they left the remains of their meal. They had nothing to pack, nothing to carry. They kissed each other once, like a promise; then they went out of the tent.

Prince Kragen was waiting for them. They caught him in the act of pacing back and forth across the open area among the luxurious tents.

He was dressed in his ceremonial garb: a black silk doublet and pantaloons covered by a brass breastplate with a high polish; a sword in a gleaming brass scabbard on his hip; a spiked brass helmet on his curling hair. The sheen of the metal emphasized his swarthy skin; it made his black eyes glitter and his moustache shine. And his impatience only increased the self-assertion of his bearing, emphasizing his habit of command.

Three horses were held ready beyond the tents. They, too, were dressed for show, with satin and silk streaming from their saddles and tack, gilt cords knotted into their manes and tails. Around them, an honor guard was already mounted: ten men to carry the Prince’s pennon, and his dignity.

Terisa didn’t see Elega anywhere.

Prince Kragen nodded to Geraden, bowed to Terisa. In a tightly reined voice, he explained, “The lady Elega sends her goodwill to you – and to her father – but she cannot bid you farewell. She has already been placed under guard. The Alend Monarch intends to assure that no mistakes are made with us, and the lady Elega is his only means to that end. Even I do not know where she is held. Therefore I cannot enable the King’s men – or his Imagers – to find her.”

Terisa swallowed hard. The sun was up, but it didn’t seem to be enjoying its work. The light over the encampment and against the walls of Orison was thin, unconvincing; the air had a cold taste, more like a residue of winter than a part of spring. The castle’s battlements looked bleak, as if they had been abandoned. If anything happened to her and Geraden there – but especially if anything happened to Prince Kragen – Elega would be in serious trouble.

“My lord Prince” – Geraden changed the subject awkwardly – “you must have heard about the mirror that attacked the Perdon. If he didn’t tell you about it himself, surely Elega did?”

“Yes.” A subtle shift in his expression suggested that Prince Kragen was glad to discuss something other than Elega. “But I must confess that I am baffled. Our siege engines have no approach to the gates, except along the road. Our rams must pass through the Image which struck at the Perdon. Yet nothing has been translated against us.

“You have told me that Master Eremis is in league with Cadwal to destroy Mordant – and Alend as well. For that reason, his power has been used to defend Orison against us. Yet we are now within hours – within a day at most – of breaking down the gates, and he has done nothing to hinder us.”

Breaking down the gates. Terisa’s stomach twisted. So it was now or never. If she and Geraden couldn’t get King Joyse to accept an alliance, Orison would fall almost immediately.

The muscles along Geraden’s jaw bunched; but if he was worried about Orison’s vulnerability to Prince Kragen he didn’t admit it. “He probably hasn’t given you trouble,” he said, “because you haven’t been attacking very hard. If you’re about to break in, and he still isn’t using Imagery, I’d guess his trap is just about ready to spring.”

Prince Kragen nodded darkly. Without a word, he beckoned for the horses and his honor guard.

In a moment, Terisa found herself being offered a charger so big that she couldn’t see over its back. Oh, shit, she muttered to herself. That was one thing she had learned in Mordant, anyway: after some practice, she was now able to say oh, shit without sounding like she expected to have her mouth washed out with soap. If she fell off that beast, she might take days to hit the ground.

Unfortunately, Prince Kragen had already mounted; Geraden was swinging up into the saddle of his horse. This probably wouldn’t be a good time to ask for something smaller.

Somehow, she climbed onto the charger’s back.

The reins carried so many streamers that they looked like the lines of a maypole. She was afraid to move them: they might make her horse shy. But Prince Kragen and Geraden weren’t having any trouble. Apparently, these beasts were trained for ceremonial occasions. Nothing embarrassing happened as she guided her mount to Geraden’s side.

“Simply as a precaution,” the Prince announced, “we will avoid the road. We will ride to the walls directly, and around them to the gates.”

Geraden seemed to think that made sense.

Prince Kragen nodded to his honor guard. His standard-bearer raised the green-and-red pennon of Alend, then affixed a flag of truce below it. The soldiers took their formal positions around their Prince and his companions.

In formation, the riders left the encampment.

The charger’s strides made the distance shorter than it had any right to be. Before she had time to accustom herself to the beast’s gait, Terisa found herself moving into what looked like arrow-range of the castle. She could see men on the walls now, watching, pointing; some of them hurried from place to place. She tried to stifle the fear that they would ignore the flag of truce and start firing, but it refused to go away.

Luckily, there was still some common sense left in Orison. None of the men on the battlements bent their bows. None of them made any threatening gestures.

Instead, the castle’s trumpeter winded his horn, sending a forlorn call like a wail of defiance into the skeptical sunlight. As the riders rounded the corner of Orison and neared the entrance, they heard the great winches squeal against the strain of raising the battered and deformed gates up into the architrave.

Terisa felt nothing to indicate that a translation had ever taken place near here.

In formation, Prince Kragen and his company crossed the bare ground to the road in front of the gates.

Castellan Lebbick and ten of his men came out on horseback to meet them.

Seeing the Castellan filled Terisa’s stomach with a watery panic. His men were nervous; the horses fretted because they hadn’t had enough exercise. In contrast, he looked too obsessed and single-minded for nervousness. His eyes were red and raw, dangerously aggrieved; he moved as if the violence coiled in his muscles might burst out at any moment. His features were sharp with anticipation – almost with yearning.

“My lord Prince.” He bared his teeth: maybe he was trying to smile. “You’ve got strange friends. A fratricide and a traitor. I never thought I was going to see either of them again.”

“Castellan Lebbick.” Prince Kragen lacked Lebbick’s air of madness, but he matched the Castellan’s tone. “Geraden and the lady Terisa accompany me under a flag of truce. I have no interest in your opinion of them. You will respect the flag.”

“Oh, of course. They’re as safe as babies. Especially since they’re with you. You’re the man who intends to break down my gates. I wouldn’t lift a finger against any of you.”

Prince Kragen clenched his jaws. Before he could speak, however, Geraden said hotly, “Castellan, I didn’t kill my brother.” His face was flushed; anger glinted from his eyes. Hints of authority echoed in his voice. “Terisa isn’t a traitor. It’s time for you to start believing us. You’re doomed if you don’t.”

The Castellan actually laughed – a rough sound like a piece of stone being crushed. “Believe you? I believe you. I don’t need you to tell me I’m doomed. That’s not the problem.”

Prince Kragen contained himself. “What is the problem, Castellan?”

“The problem, my lord Prince,” retorted Lebbick fiercely, “is that I’m the only one. Nobody else here cares enough. Nobody else is desperate enough.”

Terisa recoiled from his vehemence. She didn’t want to know what he was talking about: she wanted to get away from him. Geraden leaned forward in his saddle, however; he was almost panting. “Did I hear you right, Castellan?” he demanded. “Did I just hear you admit Terisa and I are innocent?”

“No.” The Castellan bared his teeth again. “You heard me say I believe you. They all think I’m insane. If I said the sun is shining today, the people in there” – he indicated Orison with a twitch of his head – “would run to get out of the rain.

“Nobody cares what a crazy man believes. Besides” – he shrugged maliciously – “I might be wrong.”

“Castellan Lebbick.” Prince Kragen spoke harshly, trying to gain control of the situation. “We will discuss the question of your sanity at another time. As you may guess, Geraden and the lady Terisa have traveled widely since they departed Orison. They bring news. I must have an audience with King Joyse.”

“An audience?” Lebbick snapped back at once. “You? The Alend Contender? Any news you want King Joyse to hear is either false or dangerous. They’re going to scream for your heart’s blood when I let you in. Of course you can have an audience.”

Wheeling his horse as if the matter were settled, he faced his men. Counting off four of them, he ordered, “Tell King Joyse I’m going to take Kragen and these two to the hall of audiences. Tell him there are going to be riots unless he backs me up. We’ll have to kill people to keep the Prince and his friends alive if King Joyse doesn’t come to the hall.”

At once, Prince Kragen put in grimly, “And tell him also that the lady Elega is being kept hostage. Until now, she has been an honored guest and friend of the Alend Monarch. To ensure my safety, however, she has been deprived of her freedom.” He spoke as if he intended to make someone pay for the necessity which compelled him to let Elega be used in this way. “If any harm comes to me, or to my companions, she will be hurt as well.

“Tell King Joyse that.”

“Oh, of course, my lord Prince,” the Castellan grated without looking at Kragen. “I burn to do everything you command. My men will keep you alive. Somehow.”

His four guards rode back into the courtyard. Terisa saw them dismount, saw them head at a run for one of the inner doorways.

“Come on,” added Lebbick. He might have been speaking to the wall stretching high above his head over the gates. “Or ride back to Margonal and admit you haven’t got the bare courage to do whatever it is you’ve got in mind.”

With his remaining men, he reentered the mouth of Orison.

Prince Kragen stared at the Castellan’s back. He made no effort to lower his voice. “That man has lost his mind.”

Still aching inside, Terisa murmured, “King Joyse cut the ground out from under him. His wife died, and he didn’t have anything else to live for except his loyalty, and the King made him look like a fool for being loyal.”

“A pitiful tale,” rasped the Prince. Obviously, he had no patience for Lebbick’s problems. “Sadly, it does not tell us whether or not he can be trusted. Will he not have us killed as soon as we cross that threshold?”

“Suit yourself.” Abruptly, Geraden jerked up his charger’s head. “I trust him. I’m going in.”

Breaking formation, he started for the gates.

Prince Kragen swore at him, ordered him back. Terisa was already following him, however, urging her mount almost onto his horse’s heels. The Prince and his guard had no choice but to enter Orison behind Geraden and Terisa.

As she passed through the thick stone wall into the protected rectangle of the courtyard, her pulse went up a beat. In spite of her numerous anxieties – or perhaps because of them – she had the strange sensation that she was coming home.

The interior faces of the castle loomed above her, crowded with spectators, punctuated with clotheslines. Castellan Lebbick had dismounted in the mud. When the Alend party approached him, he saluted with withering sarcasm. At once, his guards took the heads of the horses and held them so that Prince Kragen and his people could dismount in an orderly fashion.

Pulling her leg hesitantly off the back of the charger, Terisa found herself caught and lifted down in Artagel’s grasp.

He embraced her as if she were dear to him.

“Artagel!” He had hurt her once, badly. On the other hand, he was Geraden’s brother; she knew most of his family. And his hug was as eloquent as an apology. Instinctively, she flung her arms around his neck.

After a moment, he pushed her away and gave her a lopsided, rather embarrassed grin. “Be careful, my lady.” He rolled his eyes at Geraden. “We don’t want to make him jealous.”

“Artagel.” Geraden practically jumped on his brother; he grabbed Artagel, shook him, hugged him, thumped his back. “How are you, how’s your side, are you all right, what’s going on here, what’s the matter with Lebbick?” Geraden’s face shone with joy. “Do you realize how long it’s been since I saw you well? I can tell you, the Domne had some stern things to say about letting yourself get hurt like that.”

“ ‘Da’,” Terisa put in happily. “You promised to call him ‘Da.’ ” Artagel’s smile told her everything she needed to know. Now she was just glad that she had never told Geraden about Artagel’s distrust.

Nevertheless Artagel’s next words reassured her further. Instead of trying to answer Geraden’s questions, he commented half casually, “I heard what he said.” He nodded toward the Castellan. “We all heard him. Actually, he isn’t the only one who believes you. But I have to admit we’re in the minority.”

Terisa beamed with pleasure and relief.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Geraden. “We’ll get that straightened out as soon as we see King Joyse. Tell me something important. How’s your side?”

Artagel laughed easily. “Terrible. All this rest is giving me the twitches.” Humorously, he whispered, “If I don’t get to fight somebody soon, I’m going to end up like Lebbick.”

“My lady Terisa. Geraden.” Prince Kragen addressed them coldly, but his expression was one of bemusement rather than irritation. “It might be wise to conduct this reunion later. The present circumstances are less than cordial. We must meet with King Joyse promptly.”

Artagel laughed again. “He’s right. First things first. I’ll follow you to the hall. When you’re done there, we’ll talk.”

Waving his hand cheerfully, he retreated among the horses and guards.

When Terisa looked at Geraden, she saw that his eyes were full of tears.

He was happy: she knew he was happy. He loved Artagel. For that reason, she was surprised by the pain on his face.

Until she noticed Geraden’s pain, she didn’t absorb the fact that Artagel moved with a slight limp, as if he had an unhealed stiffness in his side.

And he wasn’t carrying a sword.

Oh, Artagel!

Had Gart hurt him that badly? Or had his long sequence of over-exertions and relapses aggravated the damage enough to cripple him? A swordsman of Artagel’s prowess didn’t have to be maimed or broken to be crippled. A few muscles which didn’t heal properly in his side could do it.

“It’s too much, Terisa,” Geraden gritted between his teeth. “Too many people have been hurt. Too much harm has been done. This has got to stop. We’ve got to stop him.”

She put her arm through his and squeezed it: she knew whom he was talking about.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t get the feeling out of her stomach that a lot more people were going to be hurt soon.

“Come on,” she murmured so that Prince Kragen wouldn’t summon them again. “If we’re going to stop him, this is the way to do it.”

Geraden nodded; he scrubbed the expression of sorrow off his face.

Together, he and Terisa joined the Prince and Castellan Lebbick.

Lebbick considered them balefully. He didn’t look like a man who believed them. He also didn’t sound like a man who believed them. Without preamble, he asserted, “You’ll leave your men here, my lord Prince.”

Prince Kragen stiffened. “What an odd idea, Castellan. Why would I do such a thing?”

The Castellan’s mouth twisted. “I understand your problem. You don’t think you’re safe here. Well, I have a problem, too. I could be wrong about you. You could be plotting treachery.

“If you’re honest, I can tell you one thing for certain. I’ll die before you do. But if you aren’t—” He shrugged. “You’ll leave your men in the courtyard.”

Prince Kragen’s fingers stroked the hilt of his sword lightly. His demeanor was unruffled, but Terisa could sense his ire. Softly, he asked, “Are you so unconcerned about the lady Elega’s position, Castellan?”

Castellan Lebbick returned a snort. “She isn’t my daughter. I don’t care what happens to her. I’m in command of Orison. If you make me cut you down, King Joyse will never know the difference. I’ll report it any way I like.”

He faced the Prince, daring the Alend Contender to doubt him.

The darkness in Prince Kragen’s eyes scared Terisa. She thought she ought to do something, intervene somehow. But Geraden was holding her arm now; he kept her still.

After a moment, the Prince said, “If you had come to me, Castellan, you would have received better treatment.”

“Swineswater,” remarked Lebbick succinctly.

Prince Kragen’s jaws bunched; blood deepened the hue of his skin. After a moment, however, he nodded.

“My guard will wait outside the gates. If we do not return in an hour, they will ride to the Alend Monarch. The lady Elega will be killed. Tell King Joyse what you will.”

Castellan Lebbick gave another of his crushed-rock laughs. “Let the Alends wait outside the gates,” he told one of his men. “Be civil about it. Keep the gates open.”

Without waiting for a reply, he headed toward the nearest doorway.

Prince Kragen glanced at Terisa, at Geraden. She chewed her lip; but Geraden assented promptly. “It’s the best chance we’ve got. He’s never stabbed anybody in the back.”

“You are a bad influence,” murmured Prince Kragen, “both of you. You urge me to accept horrifying risks as if they were entirely plausible. If I am ever crowned the Alend Monarch, I will have to become more cautious.”

Smiling ominously, he led Terisa and Geraden after the Castellan.

Inside the castle, past the guards at the door, the halls were deserted. The spectators who packed the inner windows and balconies were nowhere to be seen; every indication of Orison’s overcrowding was gone. “Curfew,” Castellan Lebbick explained as he strode along the echoing passage. “I thought you were going to break through the gates today. I ordered everybody out of the way. Nobody’s allowed to use the halls except the King’s guard.”

He may have intended his explanation to be reassuring. Nevertheless the unnatural silence of the place plucked at Terisa’s nerves. She seemed to feel vast numbers of people crouched out of sight, waiting—

Rumors would travel fast in a besieged castle. When enough people heard that Nyle’s murderer and Master Quillon’s murderer and the Alend Contender were in Orison, the curfew wouldn’t hold. No curfew would hold.

And when it broke, what would Lebbick do?

King Joyse had to listen to them. That was all there was to it. He had to listen. He had to believe them.

Otherwise she and Geraden and even Prince Kragen might not live long enough to find out what Master Eremis’ trap actually was.

They were obviously being watched. She didn’t see anybody, but she could hear voices. Just a murmur at first, an impression of whispering which filled the corridors with hints of menace. Then the voices grew louder, bolder. One of them said, “Killer.” Another called out clearly, “Butcher!”

Castellan Lebbick didn’t glance aside. He didn’t seem to hear the voices. Or maybe he approved of them. He waited until they faded behind him. Then, to no one in particular, he commented, “They don’t mean you. They mean me.”

The way he walked was so tightly controlled that it made his whole body appear brittle.

He took Terisa, Geraden, and Prince Kragen directly to the audience hall.

Across a high, formal space marked with windows and pennons, they approached a set of peaked doors. Like the ones to the courtyard, those doors were guarded. Terisa took that as a good sign. She held Geraden’s arm and tried to keep her respiration steady as the guards opened the doors into the hall of audiences.

She remembered it vividly – its cathedral-like height and length; the walls covered by carved wooden screens, their finials reaching twenty or thirty feet toward the vaulted ceiling; the two narrow windows high in the far wall. Working on short notice, a flustered old servant hurried along the rows of candles, past the batteries of lamps, trying to light them all as fast as he could. He still had a long way to go; yet he – and the windows – already gave enough illumination to show King Joyse’s ornate mahogany throne on its pediment. A run of rich carpet led from the doors to the pediment; the rest of the wide area in front of the throne was open, surrounded by benches like pews. From each side of the pediment, a row of chairs reached toward the benches.

Because the light was so dim, the balcony surrounding the hall above the screens was shrouded in darkness. Terisa could see well enough, however, to note that the Castellan already had guards in position. Archers ranged there along the walls of the hall, four on each side.

Two pikemen closed the doors and stood to hold them. Four more were at attention beside the King’s seat. She counted them again: fourteen guards. Sourly, she supposed that Lebbick’s refusal to permit the attendance of Prince Kragen’s honor guard made sense. If the Castellan could only produce fourteen guards, Kragen’s ten soldiers might have been sufficient to protect him from the consequences of treachery.

Then, as the old servant continued to do his job, and the light improved, she realized that the benches and chairs weren’t empty.

The gathering was small compared to the one which had greeted Prince Kragen’s first visit. Terisa suspected, however, that the people here were the ones who mattered. No courtiers were present, no lords or ladies whose sole claim to significance arose from birth or wealth. Around the benches were several more guards, each wearing the insignia of a captain: Lebbick’s seconds-in-command. Artagel sat among them, grinning encouragement. She saw some of King Joyse’s counselors, men she had met only once before: the Lord of Commerce, for example; the Home Ambassador; the Lord of the Privy Purse. And in the chairs—

To the right of the throne sat the Tor, sprawling his bulk over at least two chairs. To all appearances, he hadn’t changed his robe since Terisa had last seen him: it was crumpled and filthy, so badly stained that it looked like it would never come clean. The dull red in his eyes and the way his flesh sagged from the bones of his face gave the impression that he was drunk. If he recognized either Terisa or Geraden, he didn’t show it.

As if to avoid him – as if he stank or had lost continence – everyone else was seated on the left.

The men there were Masters. Terisa knew Barsonage, of course: the mediator was scowling at her as if she had betrayed everything he valued. And most of the Imagers with him she had seen before. But at least one of them looked so unfamiliar – and so young – that she thought he must be an Apt who had just recently earned his chasuble.

Two or three of them were breathing hard. They must have come at a run. After all, the Castellan’s men hadn’t had much time to summon people to this audience.

The reason for the attendance of the Masters was obvious. King Joyse had threatened to defend Orison with Imagery. To do that, he needed the support of the Congery.

The Imagers made her think of Master Quillon, and her heart twisted.

Then she realized that Adept Havelock was missing. The High King’s Dastard wasn’t in the hall anywhere.

Neither was Master Eremis, however. That was a relief.

Soundless on the carpet, Castellan Lebbick strode toward the chairs on the right and sat down a few places away from the Tor, leaving Prince Kragen, Geraden, and Terisa in the open space before the throne. Inconsequently, she noticed the burned spot on the rug, where Havelock had once dropped his censer. No one had bothered to mend it. King Joyse hadn’t had much use for his audience hall in recent years.

He didn’t have much use for it now, apparently. He wasn’t present.

Prince Kragen surveyed the hall; he scanned the balconies. The corner of his moustache lifted as if he were sneering. When he had completed his study of the King’s defenses, he said clearly, “Remarkable. Is this the best audience King Joyse can produce? If an ambassador came to the Alend Monarch, at least a hundred nobles would commemorate the occasion, regardless of the hour – or the urgency.” A moment later, however, he remarked politely, “Most impressive, Castellan. For the first time, I truly believe that you do not intend to harm us. You would not need so many men – and so many witnesses – to procure our deaths.

“What do you intend? Where is King Joyse?”

Castellan Lebbick remained sitting. In a voice which resembled his laugh, he barked, “Norge!”

Slowly, almost casually, one of the captains stood and came to attention. He saluted the Castellan calmly. In fact, everything about him seemed calm. He sounded like he was talking in his sleep.

“My lord Castellan?”

“Norge, where is King Joyse?” demanded Lebbick.

Norge shrugged comfortably. “I spoke to him myself, my lord Castellan. I told him what you said. I even told him what the Prince said. He said, ‘Then you’d better get the audience hall ready.’ ”

Apparently, the captain didn’t think any other comment was necessary. He sat down.

Terisa heard a door open and close as the servant left, his job done.

Castellan Lebbick faced the Prince. “Now,” he said, “you know as much as I do. Are you satisfied?”

“No, Castellan,” put in King Joyse. “I doubt that he knows as much as you do. And I’m sure he isn’t satisfied.”

Somehow, Terisa had missed the King’s arrival. He must have entered from a door hidden behind his seat: she jumped to that conclusion because he was beside the pediment now, with one hand braced on the base of the throne as if he were about to go up the four or five steps and sit down. Nevertheless she hadn’t seen him come in. For all she knew, he had appeared by Imagery.

He was wearing what she took to be his formal attire: a robe of purple velvet, not especially clean; a circlet of gold to keep his white hair off his forehead. And from a brocade strap over his right shoulder hung a tooled sheath which held a longsword with a jeweled pommel. His blue eyes were as watery and vague as she remembered them; his hands appeared arthritic, swollen and inflexible. The way he moved conveyed the impression that he was frail under his robe, barely able to support his own weight; too frail for dignity or decision.

Only his beard had changed. It had been trimmed short and neatly combed. Under his white whiskers, his cheeks showed a flush of exertion or wine.

At once, everyone stood. A bit too slowly for decorum, Lebbick stood also and bowed. “Attend,” he drawled by way of announcement. “This audience is granted to Prince Kragen, the Alend Contender, by Joyse, Lord of the Demesne and King of Mordant. It’s a private audience. Everyone here is commanded to speak freely – and to say nothing when they have left the hall. To speak outside of what is said here is treason.”

Bitterly, as if he had no use for the King’s permission, he sat down.

No one else sat. Even Lebbick’s captains remained on their feet while King Joyse looked up and down the hall as if he were making a mental note of everyone present. Meeting Terisa’s gaze, and Geraden’s, he scowled so dramatically that she was tempted to think he didn’t mean it; tempted to think he was scowling to conceal a leap of joy. She had no way of knowing the truth, however. Instead of addressing her or Geraden – or the audience generally – he turned abruptly and ascended his seat, dragging his sword upward like a millstone. When he reached his throne, he collapsed into it; he had to pause and breathe deeply for a moment before he was able to tell the gathering to sit.

The assembled captains and counselors and Imagers obeyed.

Of course, Prince Kragen, Terisa, and Geraden had to remain standing.

Her reaction to the sight of King Joyse was more complex than she had expected: she was at once gladder and more distressed. He had a strange power which always surprised her, an attraction of personality that made her want to believe he was still as strong and idealistic and dedicated and, yes, heroic as he had ever been. That was why his appearance upset her. He was simply too weak. There on his throne, with Mordant in shambles, and Eremis poised to strike the last, crushing blow, he was too close to his grave – the burial ground as much of his spirit as of his decaying frame. She understood why Geraden loved him. Oh, she understood. Everything in her chest ached because he wasn’t equal to the love people gave him anymore.

Somebody else would have to save Orison and Mordant.

He seemed to share her opinion. In a dry, querulous tone that made him sound nearly decrepit, he said without preamble, “You first, Kragen. And be quick about it. I don’t have much patience for men who threaten my daughters.”

Prince Kragen’s fists knotted on his anger; he held his voice steady. “Then you must have no patience at all for yourself, my lord King. I have come because I have news which you must hear. Thanks in part to Apt Geraden and the lady Terisa – and in part to other sources of knowledge – I have an astonishing range of threats to lay before you. But they are all of your own making, not mine. Even the lady Elega is entirely safe – unless you have lost even the small honesty necessary to respect a flag of truce.”

Unexpectedly, the Tor let out a snorting noise like a snore. His eyes seemed to be failing closed; his head began to loll on his thick neck.

“Whoreslime,” commented Castellan Lebbick unceremoniously. “You must have noticed that we’re besieged. Maybe you’ve even noticed that you’re the one besieging us.”

When King Joyse didn’t intervene to silence the Castellan, Terisa’s heart sank. The King had to listen, had to. He had to understand. Nevertheless he didn’t look capable of understanding – and he didn’t seem to be listening. He only stared at Prince Kragen as if the Alend Contender’s presence were no more pleasant – and no more interesting – than a bad smell.

“No, my lord King.” Prince Kragen did what he could, under the circumstances: he treated Lebbick’s words as if they came from King Joyse. “Even that threat you have brought upon yourself. When I first came to you seeking an alliance, you humiliated me deliberately. And since that time your only ambition has been to destroy your realm before you die. You forget that Alend also is bound up in Mordant’s need. You created the Congery, my lord King, and now you must face the consequences. If the power of all Imagery falls to High King Festten, our ruin is certain. We must fight for our survival. Even dogs will do as much. If you are determined to let the Congery fall to Cadwal, then we have no choice but to prevent you as best we can.”

The Prince had moved a step closer to King Joyse. Terisa and Geraden were on either side of him, a bit behind. Across Prince Kragen’s back, she whispered to Geraden, “This isn’t going to work. We’ve got to do something.”

A clenched glitter filled Geraden’s gaze. “My lord King—” he murmured as if the words stuck in his throat. “My lord King, please. Give us a chance.”

King Joyse paid no attention to him.

“No, my lord Prince.” Master Barsonage glared from under his shrubbery eyebrows. He didn’t stand. On the other hand, he did speak courteously. “Your view of the situation is persuasive, but not entirely fair. You forget that the Congery is composed of Imagers – and Imagers are also men. Like yourself, we must fight for our survival. Unlike you, however, we are men who have accepted the King’s ideals, the King’s purposes. Oh, there are some among us who serve the Congery only because they dislike the alternatives available to them. But they are few, my lord Prince – only a minority. The rest of us value what we are.

“Do you think we will calmly resign ourselves to High King Festten when Mordant collapses?

“You say you must keep the Congery from falling into Cadwal’s hands, and that is a worthy endeavor, I am sure. But the assumption on which your actions are based is that the Congery is a thing, not men – that we do not choose, or believe, or have worth as men.

“Why do you believe you have the right to determine our survival – and our allegiance – for us?”

Prince Kragen received this argument with a closed face. Once again, he treated what was said as if it came from King Joyse. Only the sweat at his temples betrayed the pressure he felt.

“A fascinating debate, my lord King,” he said grimly, “but irrelevant. We cannot leave Alend’s future in the hands of men who are so confused – either by Imagery itself, or by the necessity of achieving decisions through debate – that they believed the translation of an uncontrollable battle-champion to be a sensible action.

“No, my lord King. Your people will defend you, as they must. Nevertheless the responsibility for this siege is yours.”

King Joyse shrugged. At least he was listening well enough to know that Prince Kragen had paused. He gave the Prince a chance to go on, then said abruptly, “I know all this. Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me about your ‘astonishing range of threats.’ ”

The Tor snorted again, softly, and opened one eye. “So Terisa and Geraden are traitors after all,” he rumbled. He was lost in a world of wine. “How sad.” At once, he closed his eye again, dismissing whatever happened around him.

“In any case, my lord Prince,” the Castellan grated as if King Joyse hadn’t spoken, “you do have choices. We’ve already told you what they are. Withdraw to a safe position. Wait and see what happens. If you do that, King Joyse is willing to meet Margonal under a flag of truce and discuss an alliance.”

When she heard that, a small flame of hope leaped up in Terisa.

And was quenched immediately. Before Prince Kragen could reply, King Joyse muttered shakily, “No, Castellan. It’s too late for that. It’s too late for anything.

“It’s time for the truth.”

His swollen hands gripped the arms of his seat; he had trouble holding himself upright. Almost whining, he said to the Prince, “Tell me about your threats. Tell me what Terisa and Geraden know. Tell me why you stopped beating on my gates.” Under his whining, however, lay an iron blade, too well whetted and keen to be mistaken. All the light in the hall seemed to shine on him. “Tell me now.”

A tight silence closed around the onlookers. Terisa couldn’t bear to look at King Joyse any longer. She glanced at Geraden, saw him chewing the inside of his cheek; his eyes were wide and white, as if he were thinking desperately. Because Prince Kragen stood closer to the throne than she did, she couldn’t see most of his face; but she could see a twitch run down the long muscle of his jaw, a bead of sweat trail from his temple across his cheekbone. Ignoring the proprieties of a royal audience, she turned her head and caught Artagel’s eye; she was looking for inspiration. He didn’t have any to give her, however. He looked stretched and pale, as if he were stifling nausea.

Still avoiding the King, she faced Master Barsonage. You’re wrong about us. That was what she ought to say to him. All the assumptions here are wrong. Geraden didn’t kill Nyle. I didn’t kill Master Quillon.

But she didn’t say anything. The silence held her.

Why were Geraden and Prince Kragen sweating? Surely the air was cooler than that?

Prince Kragen’s fist sprang involuntarily from his side; he forced it down again. “No,” he said through his teeth, “I will not.”

A grin split Castellan Lebbick’s face. He was going to laugh. Or wail. “Why not, Prince? Why else did you come?”

Kragen ignored the Castellan. “I will not suffer this senseless treatment. I will not trade my only hopes to a King so contemptible that he respects no one else.” Despite his efforts to speak quietly, his voice grew thick with passion until he was nearly shouting. “The lady Elega persuaded me to come. Apt Geraden and the lady Terisa persuaded me. They are all deluded by the idea that their lord remains possessed of some vestige of wisdom – or of courage – or of bare decency.”

To Terisa, every word sounded like a nail being driven into the lid of Mordant’s coffin.

“Do you hear me, Joyse?” Prince Kragen raged. “You are deaf to everything else. You are deaf to the misery of your people, locked in a useless siege – caught in Cadwal’s path – slaughtered by renegade Imagers. You are deaf to the simplest requirements of kingship, the wisdom and the necessity of dealing fairly with other monarchs. You are deaf to love, deaf to the loyalty which destroys your friends and family.”

“Enough, my lord Prince.” King Joyse raised one hand. “I have heard you.” Now he didn’t sound querulous. And he didn’t sound angry. He sounded oddly like a man who was experiencing a personal vindication. “You have said enough.”

But Prince Kragen had gone too far to stop. For a second, he let his fists pound the air. “By the stars, Joyse, it is not enough. You will not pull Alend down in Mordant’s ruin. I will not allow it.

“I will tell you nothing!”

Abruptly, he wheeled away from the throne.

Catching hold of Terisa and Geraden, he pulled them with him toward the doors.

Instinctively, she wrenched her arm out of his grasp.

She hadn’t made a conscious decision, either against him or for King Joyse. She was simply so torn, so hurt by the difference between what was needed and what was happening, so urgent for another outcome that she couldn’t bear to give up.

Geraden was clearer. He, too, jerked free of Prince Kragen. Swinging toward the throne, he cried out like a trumpet, “My lord King—! Houseldon is destroyed. Sternwall is failing. The people of Fayle are butchered by ghouls. Your people, my lord King, everywhere!”

King Joyse was on his feet. Terisa hadn’t seen him stand: she only saw him standing now, towering over her on the pediment with his beard thrust forward and his hair full of light.

“And?” he demanded. “And?”

As if he left her no choice, she replied, “And the Queen is gone. She’s been abducted.”

Then her stomach knotted as if she were about to be sick.

The idea that he would crumple now, that she had hurt the King hard enough to break him, was too much for her. Prince Kragen was shouting, “You fools! He will have me killed!” Too late. She turned her back on King Joyse, hugged her arms over her belly.

A movement on the balcony caught her eye. She cast a glance upward in time to see one of the archers fold to the floor.

Hands grabbed her, spun her. King Joyse had come down from his seat so fast that she didn’t have time to think, to react; he clenched his fists in her soft shirt. Shouting the King’s name, Geraden tried to intervene. King Joyse thrust him away.

“Who took her?” The king seemed to swell over Terisa. His eyes were blue fire; his teeth flashed; he shook her as if her heart were an empty sack. “I’ll have that man’s head! Who took her?”

Terisa struggled to turn her head, look back up at the balcony. But King Joyse was shaking her too hard; she couldn’t get her gaze into focus.

“Alends!” cried Geraden. “She was taken by Alends!”

So suddenly that Terisa nearly fell, King Joyse dropped her. His sword came into his hands swiftly, catching the light like a whip of fire.

She stumbled around to scan the balcony.

Three of the archers were down.

The rest were so engrossed in the scene below them that they hadn’t realized what was happening.

King Joyse and Prince Kragen confronted each other. The Prince had drawn his own blade: the tips of their swords danced at each other in the glow of the lamps and candles.

“Where is she?” demanded the King.

Wildly, Geraden pushed himself between the blades. “They were dressed like Alends!” he panted. “We think it’s a trick! Prince Kragen came here to prove his good faith!” Before his King could cut him down, he added, “Torrent went after her. She’s going to leave a trail for help to follow.”

“The balcony,” Terisa said. She was hardly able to hear herself.

Shielded by Geraden, Prince Kragen lowered his sword. Facing King Joyse regally over Geraden’s shoulder, he avowed, “My lord King, I spit on the men who did this to you. And I spit on the cheap ploy which made them appear Alend. I would rather die than become a man who can only gain his ends by violence against women.”

He was too late: the blow which felled him was already in motion. Too quickly for any reaction – even from King Joyse – Artagel reared up behind the Prince and chopped him so hard across the back of the neck that he went down as if he had been hit with an axe.

At the same time, Castellan Lebbick cried like a howl of glee, “Gart!”

Terisa could see the High King’s Monomach now. As the fourth archer went down, Gart rounded the balcony to attack those on the other side. He was black and swift, a slash of midnight, and his sword seemed to splash blood in all directions.

The remaining archers had their bows ready to protect King Joyse from Prince Kragen. Instantly, they shifted their aim toward Gart and let fly.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone. He had a number of his Apts with him. Swooping like shadows, they caught the archers from behind, hacking the guards down, spoiling their aim. Only one of the arrows went true.

Gart knocked the shaft aside with the flat of his blade.

His return stroke beheaded the nearest archer. The head flopped lopsidedly over the balcony railing and fell among the benches with a thud.

Men yelled everywhere. Castellan Lebbick roared, “I’m coming, you bastard! I’m coming!” and sprinted toward a door hidden behind one of the screens. Most of the Imagers started to flee. Master Barsonage lashed them back to his side with curses.

Geraden cried at Artagel uselessly, “You idiot!”

“I didn’t know!” retorted Artagel. Looking frantic and self-disgusted, he flung a glance up at the balcony, at Gart, then scanned the hall; he couldn’t decide what to do. In spite of his uncertainty, however, he didn’t hesitate to help himself to Prince Kragen’s sword.

Laconic in the tumult, Norge demanded reinforcements. Two of the captains headed out of the hall to rally Orison; the rest of Lebbick’s men followed him toward the stairwell to the balcony.

The noise awakened the Tor. He opened his eyes with a snuffle and gazed around blearily.

Terisa felt that she was still watching the severed head flop off the balcony and fall. The sound when it hit the bench was unmistakable: she would remember it for the rest of her life. She had to get out of the way, but for some reason she couldn’t move. Geraden turned toward the Masters: she thought she heard him ask, “Can you fight? Have you got mirrors with you?” The strain around Artagel’s eyes was clear as he hefted the Prince’s blade; he moved stiffly. She knew as if he had explained his dilemma at length that he yearned to go after Gart – and that he feared to go because he was no match for the High King’s Monomach. Distinctly, she heard a Master snap, “We brought none. How could we know that mirrors would be needed in the audience hall?” She really ought to get moving. Before Gart or his Apts had a chance to come after her.

Instead of moving, she waited until she felt a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel slide straight through the center of her abdomen.

Then she flipped forward, dove to the floor, rolled away. When she got her feet under her again, she ran toward Geraden and the Masters.

Out of the air where she had been standing stepped Master Gilbur and Master Eremis.

Master Gilbur gripped his dagger in one fist. The hunch of his back and the thickness of his arms made his hands look as powerful as battering rams.

Master Eremis carried a sword in a scabbard belted around his jet cloak. His chief weapon was already in his hands, however.

A mirror the size and shape of a roofing tile.

With a precision that seemed like lunacy, she noticed that both men still wore their chasubles.

Immediately, Master Gilbur leaped to attack Prince Kragen.

Grinning happily, Master Eremis came toward Terisa and Geraden.

There were no guards to oppose them. Norge’s reinforcements hadn’t arrived. And the rest of the men had followed Castellan Lebbick.

Lebbick burst out onto the balcony with his sword in both hands, snarling for blood. And he almost caught Gart. Unfamiliar with the stairwell, Gart couldn’t know where it opened; out of ignorance, he had placed himself in an awkward position. Nevertheless he countered Lebbick’s first cut, blocked it against the railing so hard that chips flew. Retreating nimbly, he countered the backstroke.

That gave him all the time he needed to recover his balance.

Behind the Castellan, six guards and as many captains led by Norge rushed from the stairwell one at a time to engage the Monomach’s Apts.

Gart had only four men with him: they were badly outnumbered. But the balcony was too narrow for any two men to stand and fight abreast. Gart blocked Lebbick on one side; on the other, an Apt battled the first pikeman to come at him. The rest of the defenders were caught in the middle, helpless.

Gart struck furiously, trying to jam his opponents against each other; he almost succeeded at driving the Castellan backward. Lebbick slipped one blow, blocked a second which hit hard enough to jar his joints and leave a notch on his blade. But he was happy at last, nearly ecstatic at the chance to fight without restraint. Savage joy lit his face as he held Gart’s attack.

“Bastard!” he panted. “I’ll teach you to think you can do what you want in my castle!”

Behind him, unfortunately, the first pikeman didn’t fare as well. The guard probably hadn’t had a fraction of the training given to Gart’s Apts. He stumbled; and his black-armored opponent gutted him almost without effort, then used the moment of surprise while he fell to cut halfway through the nearest captain’s chest.

Norge stooped, snatched up one of the bows. So placidly that he didn’t seem to be hurrying, he flipped a shaft into the Apt’s throat.

Across the hall, one of Gart’s men recklessly flung a dagger. It should have missed from that distance: its target should have seen it coming. Unluckily, he didn’t. The guard went down with the blade buried in his left eye.

Norge shot the Apt cleanly in the chest.

Gart’s gaze swept the balcony. He took in the positions of the people below him. Instead of ripping Castellan Lebbick’s parries aside, the High King’s Monomach began to give ground.

Artagel watched what was happening above him for one more moment, then turned his attention to Master Gilbur.

Plainly, Gilbur intended to kill the Alend Contender.

It was also plain that he wasn’t going to succeed. Artagel’s side was sore and tight; in some sense, he was a cripple. Nevertheless he could have handled a lone Imager armed with only a dagger in his sleep.

“Guard the Prince!” shouted the Tor for no discernible reason. He was on his feet, his legs splayed, swaying under the influence of too much wine.

Smiling pleasantly, Artagel aimed Prince Kragen’s sword – and barely saved himself when Master Gilbur turned suddenly, picked up one of the benches, and hurled it at his head.

A corner of the bench punched his shoulder, and he went down; he hit the floor heavily, lost his direction. The Master’s strength was prodigious. How was it possible to fight somebody who could throw benches around with one hand? Shock numbed Artagel’s shoulder, but he ignored it. He ignored his side. Suppressing any kind of pain, he surged upright again as smoothly as he could—

Facing in the wrong direction.

He wheeled back to the Prince’s sprawling body just in time to block Master Gilbur’s dagger.

Roaring, Gilbur hit Artagel’s blade so hard that Artagel nearly dropped it.

Nearly: not quite.

Mustering his balance, his poise, his old skill, Artagel pointed his sword at the base of Master Gilbur’s throat and dared the Imager to move again.

The struggle over Prince Kragen apparently held no interest for Master Eremis. He approached Geraden and Terisa and the knot of Masters as if he were on the verge of an epiphany. His smile was so keen it seemed to cut the air. When Geraden cried in frustration, “Doesn’t anyone have a mirror?” Eremis began to laugh.

He tightened his fingers, murmured something Terisa couldn’t hear.

Instantly, a creature the size and shape of a fruit-bat swept out of the glass, flapped forward, and fastened itself to the nearest Imager’s cheek.

The man toppled backward, screaming.

“Eremis!” Geraden yelled as if that were the worst obscenity he knew. From under his jerkin, he produced a knife – an eating utensil he must have appropriated at breakfast – and threw it with all his strength.

For once in his life, he did something right. He had never trained with a knife; but by chance his blade shattered the glass in Eremis’ hand as neatly as if that was what he had intended all along. Splinters sprayed out of Eremis’ grasp, glittering like jewels in the light.

The Master’s laugh turned to a snarl.

While he ripped out his sword, the doors of the hall slammed open and twenty guards charged inward.

Norge’s reinforcements.

The guards were too late to save Geraden or Terisa. Their backs were to the wallscreens: they had no escape from the easy action of Eremis’ blade. He plainly knew what to do with a sword. It seemed to flex like a live thing in his hands.

In contrast, Artagel didn’t need any help. This was the work he had been born to do. First he slapped the dagger out of Master Gilbur’s fist. Then he began to make small, delicate cuts in the Imager’s thick neck, as if he were marking the spot at which Gilbur’s head would be hacked away. All his movements were taut and precise.

Up on the balcony, Gart lost another Apt. Gart himself hadn’t killed anyone: Lebbick kept him back. Lebbick’s fury appeared almost equal to Gart’s skill. The Apts had accounted for five of the defenders. Surveying the situation, Gart judged that one more pikeman would die before his last student fell. He prepared himself to dispatch Lebbick, perhaps eviscerate him; then he glanced downward, saw the arrival of the reinforcements, and changed his mind.

Before anyone could grasp his intent, he sprang away from Castellan Lebbick and vaulted over the railing.

A drop like that could have killed him; it should have snapped his legs. But he had been jumping from high places ever since he began his training under the previous Monomach: he knew how to do it.

When he hit the rug, he collapsed into himself and rolled to absorb the impact. Then, despite the fact that his feet and legs had gone numb as if his spine were broken, he launched himself at Artagel’s back

The only warning Artagel got was the thump when Gart landed. He turned just in time to keep the Monomach’s sword out of his ribs.

Swiftly, he launched a second parry, a counterstroke. He knew he couldn’t beat Gart, but in the rush of action, the heady flow of battle, he didn’t care.

Unfortunately, he never finished his riposte. Gilbur’s quickness was like his strength: prodigious. In an instant, he sprang after Artagel and clubbed him to the floor with both fists.

Prince Kragen was still unconscious. He could have been killed almost without effort.

Now, however, Master Gilbur and the High King’s Monomach had other priorities. The charging guards had already covered half the distance from the doors: Master Eremis’ allies only had a few seconds left.

Behind them, Castellan Lebbick came down on the rug with a smashing impact. He had tried Gart’s jump, had landed badly. Pain ripped a gasp out of him; it muffled the sound of splintered bones.

Together, Gilbur and Gart raced to help Eremis.

He was fighting for his life.

No one had opposed his advance on the Masters, on Terisa and Geraden. The Masters were as useless and cowardly as he had always believed them to be; they wouldn’t be worth the trouble of killing. Even Master Barsonage wasn’t worth killing.

Geraden, on the other hand—

But at the last moment, Master Eremis had paused. He saw something in Geraden’s eyes – an unexpected threat; some kind of fatal promise.

It caused the Master to check his swing.

Terisa didn’t look dangerous. She didn’t even look desirable. She had turned inward with her back against the wall as if she were trying to faint.

Eremis raised his sword to fend Geraden away while he grabbed at her.

Suddenly, a mountain of flesh slapped against him with such force that he nearly went sprawling.

The Tor—! Eremis got his blade up just in time to keep the fat, old lord from splitting his head open.

Considering the Tor’s skill and age and drunkenness, his sword might as well have been a cudgel. Nevertheless it had weight behind it, and a mad, blubbering fury. Master Eremis parried as hard as he could, and again, and again; yet he was driven backward. He would have to disembowel that old slob to stop him.

“My lord!” Geraden yelled. “Look out!”

The Tor didn’t seem to hear the warning. He was still swinging his sword like a club when Gart kicked him in the stomach hard enough to rupture his guts.

Retching, he collapsed to his knees and presented his exposed neck to Gart’s blade.

Geraden jumped at Eremis.

Gilbur intercepted him, however, and flung him aside like a handful of rags. Like Prince Kragen, Geraden wasn’t important enough to risk death over. Terisa was the one who mattered. Eremis closed a hand around her arm. Gart braced himself for the quick satisfaction of beheading the Tor.

Fuming curses and agony, one knee crushed, an ankle cracked, Castellan Lebbick came up behind the High King’s Monomach. He was barely able to stand; every movement ground shards of bone against each other. His sword hung in his hands, too heavy to lift through the pain.

Yet he kept Gart from killing the Tor.

To save himself, Gart whirled and drove his sword straight through the Castellan’s heart.

Lebbick’s eyes flew wide, as if he had just seen an astonishing sight. Blood burst from his mouth, gushed down the front of his mail. He dropped his weapon. For a moment, his hands clutched at Gart’s blade as if he wanted to wrench it out of his chest. Then, like a man who had decided to let go, he released the iron.

“Bastard,” he breathed between gouts of blood as if he were talking to someone else, not Gart at all. “Now I’m free. You can’t hurt me anymore.”

Slowly, as if performing at last the only graceful action of his life, he slid backward off Gart’s sword.

In that way, Lebbick finished mourning for his wife.

Full of horror, Terisa tried to break Master Eremis’ grip; but she couldn’t do it. She had never been strong enough with him. Geraden lay on the floor without moving. Helplessly, she watched as Eremis made a strange, familiar gesture, a signal she had seen once before.

Only a heartbeat ahead of the charging guards, she and Eremis, Gilbur and Gart were translated out of the hall.

In the resulting confusion, a long time passed before anyone noticed that King Joyse had also disappeared.