A Man Rides Through

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “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 lan
d. 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 curl
ing 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.