Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The Apt grimaced, nodded, threw up his hands, and trotted after Master Quillon.

  Saddith laughed again, this time at Geraden, but her mirth was not unkind. ‘He is a good boy, my lady, with many attractive qualities.’ She grinned. ‘Even his awkwardness might prove piquant. But in your place I would not trouble with him. You can aim higher.

  ‘If you are already able to interest Master Eremis’ – now she was serious, perhaps even a trifle vexed – ‘making no more effort than you do, you can most certainly aim higher. As an example, consider Castellan Lebbick. You will hardly believe it, having tasted a little of his tongue – and his temper – but he is uxorious to a fault. And now his wife of many years has died, after a protracted illness. There is a man in grave need of a woman. If I could attract his notice, I can assure you I would not remain a servant in Orison much longer.’

  ‘Saddith, what should I do?’ Terisa asked on impulse. Now that Geraden was gone, she felt an urgent need to talk to him. Despite Master Barsonage’s instructions, she wanted to tell Geraden everything. And she wanted to know how he would answer Master Eremis’ reasoning. But she couldn’t discuss any of those things with the maid. ‘I’m not an Imager. I don’t know anything about men.’ Then, remembering Eremis’ hands – and his mouth – she added, ‘Master Eremis and Geraden hate each other.’

  ‘My lady,’ replied Saddith, trying to speak lightly, ‘I would make certain that Master Eremis does not come to hate me.’

  An open window somewhere let a draft of cold into the corridor. Terisa shivered. Saddith was silent along the way to their destination.

  Terisa expected the maid to take her to the suite the lady Myste shared with her sister, in the tower above King Joyse’s rooms, but Saddith led Terisa back to her own quarters. Myste was waiting there.

  Saddith exchanged her customary badinage with the guards, then opened the door and ushered Terisa inside. They found the lady Myste standing in front of one of the windows. Despite the chill outside, sunshine emphasized the summer tone of her hair and skin, making her more obviously beautiful than she had been in her own rooms, in Elega’s company. Nevertheless she gazed out over the castle and the desolate winter as though she longed to be anywhere except where she was.

  Her face retained its faraway expression, but she left the window and smiled when Terisa entered the room. ‘My lady,’ she began, then corrected herself, ‘Terisa, it is good of you to come so promptly.’ She hadn’t lost the strange excitement with which she had greeted the idea that Terisa was far from being an Imager or a woman of power, was in fact nothing more than a mission secretary. ‘I hope I have not called you away from anything you would rather do. I fear I have nothing urgent in mind. For Elega everything is urgent, but I want nothing more than a little quiet talk.’

  This greeting took Terisa aback. She felt instinctively that Myste was one of the few people here who didn’t have some kind of outlandish or even lethal expectations of her – one of the few with whom it might be possible to have a simple friendship. But for that precise reason she wasn’t sure how to respond. She knew so little about friendship.

  Fortunately, Saddith came to her rescue. Dropping a curtsy, she lied, ‘The lady Terisa was already returning here when I found her, my lady. She had attended a meeting of the Congery, but it was ended.

  ‘And it is well past time for a meal,’ she went on. ‘Shall I bring you something to eat? You will be able to talk at your leisure.’

  For a moment, Terisa expected Myste to answer Saddith. Myste was the King’s daughter. But then she realized that these were her rooms: hospitality was her responsibility.

  ‘Please,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m hungry.’ Hurrying to recover her manners, she asked Myste, ‘Are you? I don’t know what Saddith can bring us, but I’m sure it won’t take long.’

  The lady continued to smile. Her gaze was direct – and distant, as if it passed straight through Terisa’s eyes and mind to something beyond. ‘Thank you. You are kind.’

  ‘Very well, my lady,’ said the maid. ‘I will return shortly.’ On her way to the door, she turned so that her back was to Myste and gave Terisa a sharp look – a look that seemed to say, Wake up. Pay attention. This woman is the King’s daughter. Then she left, closing the door quietly behind her.

  From Terisa’s point of view, however, the fact that Myste was the King’s daughter really made no difference. What mattered was that she, Terisa, suddenly wanted Myste’s friendship so strongly that the desire made her ache. She had never had a friend—

  Oh, of course, she had had friends: playmates in her early years; girls who spoke to her in the halls and whispered gossip during school. But from the first her parents had never encouraged friendships. In particular, they had never allowed her to visit the homes of her young playmates, had never invited any of those girls to their home. And this separation had carried on into the numerous private institutions to which she had been sent, exclusive schools dedicated more to forming moral character than to nurturing comradeship. Or perhaps the distance that kept everyone away was something she had carried in herself – a gulf of passivity and doubt that no one knew how to cross; an unhealed wound.

  She didn’t want to lose this opportunity.

  Awkwardly, she gestured toward two of the chairs. ‘Would you like to sit down?’ Then she remembered the decanter on one of the side tables. ‘Would you like some wine?’ But she sounded so disconcerted to herself that she couldn’t endure it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, abandoning the pretense that she knew what she was doing. ‘I’m making a mess of everything. I’m so new at all this. I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest in my apartment.’

  Myste had no way of knowing that this was the literal truth, but she accepted it anyway. ‘Please do not apologize. I think you do amazingly well. Consider what has happened to you in the past three days. You have been taken to a strange and alien world. You have been put down in the middle of a castle full of conflict, machination, and treachery. Half the people around you seem to believe that you can save them from war and chaos. An attempt has been made on your life. If I were in your place’ – her tone became wistful – ‘I would be proud to manage half as well.’

  Without warning, Terisa’s eyes filled with tears. Myste’s understanding took her completely by surprise. ‘Thanks.’ Gratefully, she tried to explain. ‘Most of the time, I think I must be losing my mind. Everybody wants me to do something, and I barely understand what’s going on.’

  ‘Here.’ Myste took Terisa’s arm and guided her to one of the chairs. Then the lady produced a delicate handkerchief from the sleeve of her gown and handed it to Terisa. ‘It is a lonely thing which has happened to you. You must think that everyone you meet plots against you in some way. And now you have been taken to a meeting of the Congery. I doubt they reacted well when you told them you are not an Imager.’

  Terisa nodded, wiping her eyes with the handkerchief. ‘They’re all doing it. The Congery doesn’t want me to talk to the King. He doesn’t want me to talk to the Congery. None of them want me to talk to anybody else.’ She almost said, Except Master Quillon and Adept Havelock. ‘And the Masters are all scheming against each other. Master Eremis—’ He kissed me. He kissed my breasts. ‘Castellan Lebbick yells at me.’ She hesitated for a second, then blew her nose on the fine fabric. ‘Even Geraden wants to turn me into an Imager.’

  ‘Ah, Geraden.’ Myste’s voice suggested a smile. ‘I cannot speak for the others, but him, at least, you can trust. You may doubt his judgment. His luck is disastrous. Nevertheless you can trust his heart. It is agreed everywhere that the Domne has no bad sons.’

  After a pause, she added, ‘I would like to be your friend, Terisa.’

  Terisa met the lady’s eyes. They were focused on her now, not distant at all, and the expression in them was direct and kind.

  So that she wouldn’t start crying again, Terisa looked away. Myste’s offer touched her too deeply to be acknowledged. How was it possible for someone like
her to have friends? Evading the important point – and hating herself for doing so – she said, ‘You have a better opinion of him than Elega does.’

  Myste smiled again; but as she did so her gaze slipped back into the distance, and her face resumed its faraway cast. Quietly, she replied, ‘I have a better opinion of many things than she does. She is a king’s daughter, and she desires the importance of a high place in the affairs of Mordant. She does not forgive her father – or the society around her – or anything else which she imagines stands between her and her natural right to plot and manipulate and betray as much as any prince. She does not forgive Geraden for the mistaken judgment which once betrothed him to her.’ Then she shrugged. ‘I think better of being a woman. I think better of those who hold power in Orison.’ Her tone was gentle and reassuring, but soft, as if she were speaking in another place, perhaps to someone else; and there was a note of yearning in what she said that didn’t entirely agree with her words. ‘I think better of myself.’

  Terisa nodded as though she understood. ‘Was that what you wanted to talk to me about?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Myste replied easily. ‘Or perhaps it was. I have nothing special to say. But I would like to know everything about you. You are a pleasure and a wonderment to me. You consider yourself an ordinary woman – and I believe you,’ she hastened to add, ‘I believe what you say of yourself, though it is difficult for me to call any woman from another world ordinary – and yet you find yourself here, in the great crisis of Mordant’s history. If your world has no Imagery, such a translation must seem extraordinary.

  ‘For my part, great things have never happened to me. I have never been to a world other than my own. Indeed, I have hardly been out of Orison in the past few years. What is your world like? How did you live your life there?’ She became more animated as she spoke, bright with curiosity. ‘How does it feel, to step through a glass and find everything changed? What do mirrors do in your world, since they have no magic?’

  ‘Please. One thing at a time.’ In spite of herself, Terisa smiled at Myste’s fascination. ‘We don’t have anything magic. Mirrors just’ – she groped for an adequate description – ‘just reflect. They show you exactly what you put in front of them. If they’re flat. If they aren’t flat, they still reflect what you put in front of them, but they distort it.

  ‘In my apartment—’ There she faltered. She had never admitted to anyone, I had my walls covered with mirrors so that I would know I existed. Lamely, she finished, ‘I had a lot of mirrors.’

  ‘Then you must be very wise,’ murmured Myste as if she were clinging to every word.

  ‘Wise? Why?’

  ‘You are able to see yourself exactly as you are. You are able to see everything exactly as it is. I have no such vision. And those who look at me do so with their preconceptions of a king’s daughter – perhaps even of a woman – and so their vision is confused. None of us see anything exactly as it is.’

  ‘We do the same thing,’ objected Terisa. ‘We have the same preconceptions. But we only look at the surface. All we care about is the surface.’ She made a deliberate effort to be candid. ‘Maybe I’ve been able to see what I look like. But I don’t know what that means. It doesn’t help me know who I am.’

  Myste seemed to find this notion both humorous and appealing. ‘Then you are not wise?’

  Slowly, Terisa replied, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody who was wise.’ Unless Reverend Thatcher’s ineffectual dedication counted as wisdom.

  At that, the lady laughed. ‘Then you are surely mistaken, Terisa. You yourself are already the wisest woman in Orison, for you have not been misled by those who believe in their own wisdom. You know the difference between what is seen and what is unseen, and you do not attempt to judge the one by the other.’

  ‘Do you call that wisdom?’ Terisa wanted to laugh simply because Myste was amused. The lady’s mirth betrayed her kinship to her father: her smile was almost as infectious and likable as his. ‘Doesn’t the fact that I don’t understand anything count against me?’

  Myste went on laughing. ‘Of course not. Mere understanding is the business of kings, not of sages – or of ordinary women. And it is always mistaken. It depends upon a knowledge of things which cannot be known – a knowledge of what is unseen.

  ‘I must tell you, Terisa, I wish that Elega had less understanding and more wisdom. You are wiser than she.’

  They were silent for a moment while they relapsed to seriousness; then Myste asked, ‘Where does such wisdom come from? Tell me about your world. What are its needs and compulsions? How do you spend your days?’

  A few minutes earlier, that question would have frozen Terisa. But Myste’s friendly manner defused the frank pressure of her curiosity. Almost before she knew what she was going to say, Terisa began talking about her work in the mission.

  She had never discussed it before. Words seemed to tumble headlong after each other as she described the mission’s work, the human wrecks and relicts it served, the facilities, the surroundings; and her own job, her typing and filing and drudgery, her relationship with Reverend Thatcher; and her reasons for doing the work, because she had believed that in a place like that even she would be able to make a difference, because she could afford to accept the meager pay, because she hadn’t considered herself capable of anything more demanding or ambitious. She babbled about it all until the discrepancy between what she was saying and the sparkle of Myste’s attention stopped her. The lady absorbed every sentence as if she were hearing a tale of heroism and romance. Abruptly, Terisa said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go on like that.’

  ‘It is a wonderment,’ sighed the lady. A gleam still shone in her faraway gaze. ‘Forgive me if I repeat myself. But that such a strange world exists! And you have a part in it.’

  ‘A little part,’ Terisa commented, ‘and getting less by the minute. Reverend Thatcher must have replaced me by now.’ And her father had no reason to want her back.

  In her excitement, Myste rose to her feet. ‘But that is just the point.’ She began to pace the rug, her eyes searching everything except her companion. ‘You are an ordinary woman, and you say that your life in your world was utterly ordinary, however brave and self-sacrificing it may appear to me. I, too, am an ordinary woman.

  ‘I am a king’s daughter – but what of that? It is an accident of birth. Its effect upon what is seen is merely that I am able to dress well and command servants. Its effect upon what is unseen is – I hardly know whether it has any effect. It seems plain to me that I am an ordinary woman – and that this is good.

  ‘Yet I am surrounded by people who are not content. Her lack of involvement makes Elega savage. Geraden causes himself misery striving for a Mastery he will never attain. Half the Congery wishes to retreat into pure research. The other Masters yearn for power over Mordant. Castellan Lebbick’s life has revolved around a woman, and yet in his grief he despises all women. Alend and Cadwal struggle against the peace which has done them more benefit than all their generations of warfare.

  ‘Terisa, I do not consider my father’s passivity a good thing. I do not understand it. I am his daughter enough to know the importance of striving and risk. Passivity is not content. But surely we must acknowledge that it is not a terrible thing to be who we are.

  ‘You are the proof of this.’ Her voice had risen to a pitch of affirmation. ‘By your own insistence, you are an ordinary woman, with no experience of power, and no talent for it. Yet your life is not meaningless. Great forces are at work in Mordant, and you are involved in them. There is no life which does not possess its own importance, no life which may not be touched by greatness at any time – yes, be touched by greatness and have a hand in it.’

  For a moment, Terisa stared at Myste. With an urgency which surprised her, she wanted to say, Greatness? That’s ridiculous. How could I have anything to do with greatness?

  At the same time, she wanted to weep harder than she had ever cried in her life. />
  Fortunately, Myste realized almost at once what she was doing. Puncturing her own seriousness, she smiled; her manner relapsed to its more usual diffidence. ‘In her heart,’ she said with a verbal shrug, ‘Elega considers me mad. She thinks that such romantic notions render me unfit for my own life.’ A note of sadness entered her voice. ‘But my father did not despise what I believe. He loved me for it, and it was a bond between us.’ Her face hardened. ‘Until he changed, and it became impossible for any of us to speak with him.’

  Terisa was holding her breath, clamping herself rigid to restrain what she felt. But that wasn’t necessary anymore, was it? She was free, wasn’t she? The past didn’t exist. What she said or did didn’t matter. She could tell Myste the truth. By degrees, she released the air from her lungs.

  ‘My father didn’t change. He’s always been like that.’

  ‘Do you mean passive?’ asked Myste. ‘Lost and uncaring?’

  ‘No. I mean impossible to talk to.’

  Tentatively, like a small animal coming out of a burrow after a storm, she began to smile. She had just spoken critically of her father, as if she had the right to do so – and nothing terrible had happened. Maybe friendship was possible after all.

  Myste sat down beside her again. The lady’s expression was soft and reassuring. ‘Tell me about him.’

  By chance, Saddith found that moment to knock on the door and come into the room, carrying trays of food.

  Unable to sustain the way she felt in front of the maid, Terisa stood up at once – more abruptly than she intended – to thank Saddith and help her set out the meal.

  If Myste was taken aback by the shift in Terisa’s manner, she didn’t show it. Apparently, she recognized that something important had happened – something that required privacy. She didn’t pursue the conversation. When Saddith had served the food and left again, Myste made a polite show of enjoying her meal, and while she ate she kept her curiosity still.