Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  ‘It was perfectly flat, but because of its tinct and shape it showed a place among the sharp hills and fells of the Alend Lieges. A high summer sun shone on the meadow grass of the hillside – and on the waterfall, so that it sparkled in the distance. I saw butterflies of a kind which do not come to Mordant, and they danced among the daisies and dandelions. Above the waterfall stood tall fir trees. I saw it all.

  ‘Mark me, my lady.’ He glared intensely into Terisa’s face, but one eye or the other necessarily scrutinized the pillar behind her. ‘I remember Vagel well. I heard his scorn as he laughed at me, and I saw him step into the glass as though he had nothing to fear. I saw first one boot, then the other come down among the grass, crushing the blades. I saw his robe flare ebony under the summer sun. I saw the waterfall blocked from view by his shoulder as he took a stride or two on the hillside.

  ‘Then he turned and beckoned for me to follow him.

  ‘He beckoned to me, my lady.’ Havelock’s hands made fierce scraping movements, tearing the air in front of Terisa like hungry claws. ‘He beckoned, and his scorn was still on his face. So I followed him, though every Imager knows that a translation which does not go anywhere is madness.’ His voice began to scale upward in pitch. ‘Wait for me, Vagel. I’m coming. I’m coming. Ah.’ His groan came out strangled, like a scream.

  ‘I’m an Adept. I opened his glass. I stepped into it. But when I did’ – his voice was now a high, falsetto croon – ‘he plucked the sun down from the sky and drove it into my eyes, and deep inside me everything was made light. Light, my lady, hee hee. Light.’ From his throat came sounds like a little girl locked in a closet trying to comfort herself.

  Master Quillon coughed. His eyes were red with wine or grief. In a husky voice, he said, ‘My lady, you asked why some men call him “the King’s dastard.” That is because they think him a traitor to his own kind – to other Imagers.

  ‘Well, it is true that he betrayed many Imagers to King Joyse. In his mind, the King’s purpose outweighed their right to freedom. But his greatest act of treachery was to the Imagers gathered around Vagel in Carmag. It was he who broke that cabal. Concealing his identity and loyalty, he joined the arch-Imager as simply another crafter of mirrors hungry for power. For three years – his life always in the deadliest jeopardy – he served and studied Vagel, acting the part of an avid disciple, but in truth learning the cabal’s defenses and plans. And when he had taught himself how to counter them, he sprang his trap, admitting King Joyse and a squadron of his guard into the keep where the Imagers lived and plotted.

  ‘But the arch-Imager,’ Quillon continued sadly, ‘had one power which Havelock lacked. He was able – we know this now, though at the time we considered it impossible – to translate himself within our world by means of flat glass. When Havelock attempted to follow Vagel, the wrench of a translation which went nowhere cost him his mind, as it has cost the mind of every man but Vagel who has attempted it. For that reason, we believed the arch-Imager dead when Havelock returned raving to King Joyse and no trace of his foe could be found.

  ‘As I say,’ the Master sighed, ‘Adept Havelock has his lucid moments. But for ten years now the King’s chief friend and counselor has been a madman.’

  The Adept had been growing increasingly restive during this speech. When Quillon finished, Havelock suddenly flung his arms out violently, as if he were ripping a veil in front of him. Then he grabbed Terisa’s arm and dragged her off her stool, pulling her in the direction of the open door. ‘Come on, woman!’ he roared. ‘I can’t stand the suspense!’

  Suspense? Terisa’s thoughts were too full of the things she had just heard. She forgot herself. Apparently, she didn’t like being hauled around like a disobedient child. She took a couple of quick steps to catch up with the Adept, then planted her feet and twisted her arm in an effort to break his grasp.

  It was easier than she expected. His old fingers slipped from her arm; he nearly fell as he stumbled away from her.

  Her heart pounding – not so much at the exertion as at the shock of her own audacity – she turned back to Master Quillon.

  He studied her with interest, his head cocked to one side and his nose twitching.

  ‘I want to thank you,’ she said before her nerve failed. ‘This is a big help. I won’t give you away.’

  He inclined his head gravely as if her promise were bigger than she realized. ‘That would be much appreciated, my lady.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about your mirrors,’ she went on at once. ‘I’m not an Imager. But I think the worlds you see must be real. The place I come from isn’t something Geraden and a piece of glass invented by accident.’

  Master Quillon shrugged, and his depression returned. ‘I hope you are right, my lady. I believe you are. But the arguments on the other side are difficult to refute. If your world is real – and if you are no Imager – then how was it possible for Geraden’s translation to go so far awry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘It’s all new to me. But’ – she was astonished to hear herself say this – ‘I’m going to try to find out.’

  Perhaps simply to keep herself from saying anything else so much unlike her image of who she was, she yielded to Havelock’s dramatically mimed impatience and turned to follow him back into his secret passage.

  ‘Nothing else,’ the Adept muttered at her darkly. ‘Only hop-board signifies.’ When she had entered the passage, he closed the door. In the darkness, he fumbled around for a moment before producing a light from his piece of glass. Then he hurried upward, taking the stairs as rapidly as his old legs could manage.

  She found climbing the stairs easier than descending them because she had a better chance to find where she was about to put her feet; but Havelock complicated the ascent by jerking his light from side to side and shining it far ahead of him rather than holding it steady. He was becoming more tense by the moment. His exertions made his breath rattle raggedly in his lungs, but he refused to slow his pace.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ she panted after him. The elevators of her apartment building hadn’t prepared her to run up stairs.

  He paused at an intersection and flashed his light in all directions. Then he squinted down at her for a moment. ‘The trouble with women,’ he gasped, heaving for breath, ‘is that they never shut up.’

  As he started upward again, the stone corridor suddenly felt more constricted, narrower. The beat of feet on the stairs seemed like the labor of her heart, reverberating almost subliminally from the walls. The ceiling was leaning down at her. He was crazy; it was crazy how he managed to communicate things he didn’t say. Where had this urgency come from, this panic? She didn’t understand why she rushed to keep up with him – or why she tried to muffle her breathing at the same time.

  Surely they had passed her rooms by now? It wasn’t possible that she had been dragged so far down without a better sense of the distance.

  She nearly collided with him when he stopped.

  ‘What—?’

  At once, his arms flailed furious shushing motions. He stood with his light aimed at his feet and his face in shadow, concentrating hard – listening. In the reflection from the gray stone, she saw that his lips were trembling.

  Then she heard it: from somewhere far away, a faint, metallic clashing sound, a dim shout.

  Havelock spat a perfectly comprehensible obscenity and threw himself up the stairs, dousing his light as he ran.

  For a fraction of a second, she remained frozen as darkness slammed down through the passage. Then she sprang instinctively, as quick as fear, after the Adept, straining desperately to catch him before he left her alone in the dark.

  His raw panting loomed ahead of her, almost within reach. She stretched, stretched – and her fingers hooked the fabric of his surcoat.

  That was enough. He made a sharp, unexpected turn; she was able to follow, guided by her small grip on his clothes.

  His turn took them toward a glow of lamplight, but the illu
mination came too late. Half a heartbeat after his feet thudded on wooden boards instead of stone, she tripped over the rim of the wardrobe door and sprawled headlong to the floor of her bedroom.

  There were peacock feathers everywhere. They floated through the air, swirled in small eddies across the rugs, draped themselves delicately over the edges of the bed. One of them wafted into her face, blinding her while a harsh voice gasped, ‘My lady!’ and iron rang like a carillon.

  The voice sounded like Ribuld’s.

  She snatched down the feather in time to see him parrying frantically, sparks raining from the length of his longsword.

  He and Argus fought with all their strength against a third man who held the entryway to the bedroom, blocking them from her.

  The feathers were part of a decoration which this man had torn down to use as a shield.

  He wore a cloak and leather armor so black that he was difficult to see: he confused Terisa’s sight like a shadow cast on an uneven surface; all his movements looked like the flitting and darting of a shadow. Only his longsword caught and held the light, gleaming evilly as it struck fire from the opposing blades.

  He seemed to be at least a hand shorter than Ribuld or Argus, slimmer than either of them. Yet his blows were as strong as theirs.

  It was clear that they weren’t winning.

  Both of them were already badly battered. Argus had a vivid bruise under one eye, and his knuckles were bleeding. Ribuld had sustained a cut to the joining of his neck and shoulder. Notches and tears marked their mail: their opponent had been able to hit them at will.

  Now Ribuld reeled away from the force of the attack. Losing his balance took him out of his assailant’s reach, but it also fetched him heavily against the side of the fireplace. He stumbled to his knees.

  Argus tried to surge forward, his sword hammering for the man’s skull. The man was defter, however: his longsword leaped to catch Argus’ blow and turn it. Then he smashed his now-tattered shield into Argus’ face. Before Argus could counter, the man in black dealt him a kick to the groin which nearly pitched him on his head.

  When he hit the floor, he hunched over and began retching.

  As smooth as a shadow, the man turned toward Terisa.

  Now she saw his face. His eyes shone yellow in the lamplight; he had a nose like the blade of a hatchet; his teeth were bared in a feral grin. She had the indistinct impression that there were scars on his cheeks.

  His cloak seemed to billow about his shoulders as he clenched the hilt of his longsword in both hands and raised his blade against her.

  ‘My lady!’ shouted Ribuld again.

  Charging like a ram, he launched himself at her attacker’s back.

  She had risen to her hands and knees, but she couldn’t move. None of this made any sense. She could only watch as the man in black swung away from her and accepted Ribuld’s assault.

  Their blades met so hard that she thought she could hear them break. The sound of the iron was the sound of shattering. But this time Ribuld and his longsword held: it was the man in black who was forced to slip the blow past his shoulder and parry the return stroke.

  He parried so well, however, that Ribuld had to skip backward to keep his hands intact.

  The attacker followed at once, hacking at Ribuld from one side and then the other. Ribuld took the blows with his blade. Sparks spat over his forearms, but he didn’t appear to feel the burns. He was retreating again, but under control this time, looking for an opening.

  Abruptly, the man jumped away from Ribuld – jumped toward Argus. While Argus gaped horror at him, helpless with pain, the man whirled his sword to lop off Argus’ head.

  ‘No!’ Desperately, Ribuld tried to catch his opponent in time. But desperation made him reckless. He had no defense when the man in black changed the direction of his stroke. The flat of his blade hit Ribuld in the face and leveled him.

  ‘Now, my lady,’ the man said in a voice like silk, ‘let us end this.’

  With his longsword poised in front of him, he strode into the bedroom.

  For some reason, Terisa thought that this time no one would rescue her, that no young man would appear out of her dreams and risk his life to save hers. If she wanted to live, she would have to do something to save herself – shout for help, jump to her feet and flee into the secret passages of Orison, something. Yet she remained lost, unable to understand why anyone would attack her with such hate, unable to move.

  Fortunately, at the last moment Adept Havelock hopped out of his hiding place in the wardrobe and fired his glass into her assailant’s eyes.

  The man gave a roar of pain and recoiled. For an instant, he stood with his forearms crossed over his eyes, his longsword jutting at the ceiling. Then he snarled a curse. Though he plainly couldn’t see a thing, he brought his blade down and started forward again, probing the air for someone to strike.

  In the other room, Argus heaved himself into a crouch, reached for his sword. ‘Now,’ he grunted, in sharp pain and ready for murder. ‘Now I’ve got you.’

  Terisa’s attacker froze. If he could have seen Argus, he would have known that he was safe: Argus was barely able to crawl. But the man couldn’t see. He hesitated momentarily while he listened to the sounds Argus made; then he whirled away from Terisa, took an immense, acrobatic leap which carried him over both Argus and Ribuld, and found his way to the door. A second later, he was gone.

  Groaning, Argus nudged Ribuld’s inert form. ‘Go after him, you fool. Don’t let him get away.’

  Terisa stared about her, too stunned to think in logical sequences. Ribuld and Argus had tried to defend her – and had almost been killed for their pains. The wood of the door was splintered around the bolt. If the man recovered his sight and came back— The Adept was out of his mind, of course, but he understood what took place around him to some extent, at any rate.

  ‘Havelock,’ she murmured vaguely, ‘did you know this was going to happen?’

  He wasn’t there. He had already left. The door hidden in the back of the wardrobe was closed.

  SEVEN

  THE DUNGEONS OF ORISON

  The events of the next half hour had blurred edges and imprecise tones. Her nerves jangled like badly tuned strings, and her pulse refused to slow down. With so much adrenaline in her veins, she should have been more alert, had a better grasp on what was happening. But everything seemed to leak away as soon as she focused her attention on it. Reality had become like sand, trickling through her fingers.

  ‘Get help,’ Argus coughed in her direction. He hadn’t moved from Ribuld’s side; he was hunched there, barely able to hold himself up with his arms. ‘If he comes back—’

  That was probably intended to mean something. Hadn’t she just been thinking the same thing herself? But now she was unsure of it. Her instinct was to simply run away. Use the Adept’s secret passage and find her way back to Master Quillon. She wanted warm arms around her. She wanted someone who knew what he was doing to take care of her. Surely Master Quillon would be able to comfort her? So she felt that she was doing the hardest thing she had done in years when she made her way around Ribuld and Argus to the bellpull behind one of the feather displays. From there, she was exposed to the open door. But she didn’t know how else to call for help.

  She tugged on the satin cord of the pull as hard as she dared. Then she returned to her bedroom.

  An impulse she didn’t immediately understand made her rearrange the clothes in the wardrobe and then close the door, concealing the secret passage.

  Before long – or perhaps after a long time, according to how she happened to feel at the moment – her summons was answered. But not by Saddith. The woman who appeared in the doorway had the look of a chambermaid; she was older than Saddith, however, blowzy with sleep and hasty dressing, and in no good humor. Nevertheless after one glance at Ribuld and Argus, at the scattered feathers and the broken door, she forgot her irritation and fled.

  For a moment, she could be heard squall
ing into the distance, ‘Ho, guards! Help!’

  ‘Fool woman,’ Argus muttered through his teeth.

  Ribuld was stirring. His hands rubbed at his face, then flinched away from his bruised forehead. ‘Daughter of a goat,’ he groaned. ‘Who was that bastard?’ Weakly, he propped himself up on one elbow and peered around the room. When he saw Terisa, he gave a sigh of relief and sank back to the floor again.

  ‘I’m dying,’ Argus whispered thickly. ‘Hogswill unmanned me.’

  ‘Forget it,’ replied Ribuld in a prostrate tone. ‘Won’t change your life.’

  Shortly, Terisa heard nailed boots hammering the stone of the outer corridor – a lot of boots. Brandishing his longsword, a man dressed like Ribuld and Argus sprang through the doorway. He had five companions behind him, all ready for a fight: they looked clenched for violence, like the three riders in her dream. But there was no fight available. They scanned the rooms quickly, then gathered around Terisa’s defenders. ‘What happened?’ one of them asked, awkwardly jocose. ‘Did you two lechers finally meet a woman tougher than you are?’

  Before Argus or Ribuld could answer, another man stamped into the room. From his close-cropped, gray-stained hair to his out-thrust jaw, from his swaggering shoulders to his hard strides, he bristled with authority, though he was shorter than Terisa – nearly a foot shorter than any of the men around him. He was dressed as they were, with the addition of a purple sash draped over one shoulder across his mail and a purple band knotted above his stiff, gray eyebrows. His eyes held a perpetual glare, and his mouth snarled as if it had long ago forgotten any other expression.

  He scanned the room, assessing the situation, then stalked up to Terisa and gave her a rigid bow. ‘My lady,’ he said. In spite of its quietness, his voice made her want to flinch. ‘I’m Castellan Lebbick, commander of Orison and the guard of Mordant. I’ll speak to you in a moment.’

  At once, he turned on Argus and Ribuld. Without raising his voice, he made it sound like a lash. ‘What’s going on here?’