Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  ‘My lords!’ Geraden cut in sharply. His voice carried potential authority across the room; and a thrill prickled suddenly down Terisa’s back. ‘There’s no need to argue about waiting. We’re done waiting. It’s time to march!’

  The Tor snatched his hand down from his face, peered bleary pain and desire at Terisa and Geraden. Artagel wheeled with joy already catching fire across his features. Norge turned more cautiously; but Prince Kragen spun like Artagel, his swarthy face congested with conflicting needs.

  ‘Terisa! My lady!’ Artagel crowed. ‘Geraden! By the stars, you did it!’ As if he had never been injured in his life, he caught Geraden in an exuberant bearhug, lifted him off his feet, then dropped him to snatch up Terisa’s hand and kiss it hugely. ‘Every time I see you, you’re even more wonderful!’

  She wanted to hug him, but she was distracted; there were too many other things going on. The captains were shouting encouragement to each other, or demanding silence. And the Tor had risen to his feet. Unsteadily, almost inaudibly, he murmured her name, Geraden’s. ‘You are indeed wondrous.’ He spoke huskily, as if he were dragging his voice along the bottom of a cave. ‘There must be hope for us after all, if such blows can be struck against our enemies.’

  Prince Kragen was right behind Artagel; he grabbed Geraden by the shoulders when Artagel dropped him. ‘How did you do it?’ the Prince demanded. ‘How did you rescue her? What has changed? Where is King Joyse? Did you say march?’

  Somehow, Norge made himself heard through the hubbub. His laconic tone sounded so incongruous that it had to be heeded.

  ‘You got away, my lady. What did you learn from him?

  ‘What did you do to him?’

  In the stark silence which followed, a moment passed before she understood the point of his question.

  With her chin jutting unconsciously, she met the hot and eager and worried stares of the men around her. ‘I didn’t do anything to him.’ I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even hurt him. ‘But I learned enough.’

  Too quickly for anyone to interrupt her, she added, ‘Before Gilbur killed him, I had a long talk with Master Quillon. He told me what King Joyse has been doing all this time. Why he’s been acting like a passive fool. What he wanted to accomplish. Geraden is right. It’s time to march.’

  In response, the room burst into tumult. Only Prince Kragen had been given any hint of the things she knew; and he had only heard pieces of the story from Geraden under the influence of too much wine, not from her. For a man like the Tor, who had spent so many miserable days praying that his besotted and stubborn loyalty would prove valuable in the end, her words must have struck as heavily as a blow. Norge and Prince Kragen and Artagel were surprised; Master Barsonage and the captains, astonished. But the Tor’s cheeks turned the color of wet flour, and he sank down in King Joyse’s chair as if his heart were being torn out.

  Urgently, Terisa pushed between Artagel and Prince Kragen, hurried to the lord. ‘Get him some wine!’ she called. ‘Oh, shit. He’s having a heart attack.

  ‘My lord Tor. Are you all right?’

  His hands fluttered against the arms of the chair. For a moment, he gagged as if he were choking; under his lowered eyelids, his eyes rolled wildly. Then, however, he took a breath that made all his fat quiver. He raised one hand to his chest, knotted it in his robe; and his head lifted as if he were pulling it up by main strength.

  ‘Do not be alarmed, my lady,’ he wheezed thinly. ‘The difficulty is only that I have pawned all I am for him. I have made myself contemptible for the belief that my King would at last prove worthy of service.’ With remarkable celerity, one of the captains brought forward a flagon of wine. Then Tor accepted it and gulped a drink. Then torment clenched his features. ‘Did you truly mean to suggest that he has been acting according to a plan – that the things he has done have had a purpose?’

  ‘Yes,’ she avowed at once, despite the fact that at the moment she would cheerfully have wrung King Joyse’s neck. ‘He didn’t know you would come here. You heard him say you defy prediction.’ The explanation Master Quillon had given her wasn’t good enough to justify the cost King Joyse had exacted from men like Castellan Lebbick and the Tor, from his daughters, from Geraden and everybody else who loved him. ‘His plans didn’t include you. He didn’t mean to hurt you.’ For the time being, she supported the King, not because she approved of what he had done, but because he had left her no alternative.

  ‘All this time, he’s been working to save Mordant.’

  Until now. That thought was enough to turn the edges of her vision black with bitterness. King Joyse put his people through the anguish of the doomed. And just when events arrived at the point when he could have safely explained his policy, safely given at least that much meaning or justification to the people he had hurt, he chose to disappear. To go kiting off, as Adept Havelock had said.

  Nevertheless she took his side as if she had never doubted him.

  ‘He didn’t know who the renegades were – the Imagers who were willing to translate abominations against people who couldn’t defend themselves. He didn’t know where they made their mirrors, where they built their power.’

  When she began, she was speaking to the Tor alone; she hadn’t intended to address the entire gathering. But King Joyse’s intentions carried her further than her own. As she spoke, her voice rose, and she turned partly away from the Tor to include everyone in the room.

  ‘He knew they needed soldiers to back up their Imagery. Imagery can destroy, but rule requires manpower. But he didn’t know what alliances they might have made, with Cadwal or Alend. There was only one thing he could be sure of. As long as he was the strongest ruler here – as long as Mordant was strong enough to fight back both Cadwal and Alend – the renegades would leave him alone. They would chip away at the Alend Lieges, or find a way to swallow Cadwal – but they would leave him alone. Until they were too strong to be stopped.’

  She had to raise her voice more, until she was nearly shouting. That was the only way she could control her frustration and grief. He had smiled at her so gloriously that she would have done anything for him. And he had caused so much pain—

  ‘The only way he could find out who they were, how they worked, where their power was before they grew too strong – the only way he could bring them out into the open – was to make himself weak. He had to convince everybody, everybody, that he had lost his will, his sense, his determination. He had to make himself the only reasonable target.

  ‘So that they would attack here.

  ‘So that he would have a chance to stop them. A chance to surprise them by turning their own traps against them.’

  She had ruined that, of course. She had warned Eremis. Her bitterness included herself: she hadn’t earned the right to be self-righteous. Yet her culpability only made her more determined.

  ‘That’s what we have to do. I don’t know why he isn’t here. He’s been working toward this moment for years. I don’t know why he’s abandoned us now.’ If he went to rescue Queen Madin – That was understandable, but it didn’t help. At that distance, he wouldn’t be able to return until long after the battle was decided. Terisa made an effort to steady herself, calm her raw anger. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re still here. We still have to save Orison and Mordant.

  ‘We don’t have any choice. He hasn’t left us any choice. The only thing we can do is what he would do if he were here. We’ve got to march.’

  The room was still; the men around her listened with all their senses, avidly. Geraden’s face shone as if nothing could stop him now. Artagel nodded to himself happily. Prince Kragen’s eyes were dark with dismay and calculation – and with something else, which might have been eagerness. Master Barsonage gaped, his mouth hanging open; he gave the impression that he was reeling inside.

  ‘March,’ muttered the Tor, struggling to straighten his spine against the back of his chair. ‘“So that they would attack here.” My old friend. How I must have hurt you.’


  Finally, however, it was Norge who asked the obvious question.

  ‘March where, my lady?’

  She was so full of pressure that she could hardly articulate the word:

  ‘Esmerel.’

  At once, Geraden supported her. ‘That’s Eremis’ family Seat. Apparently, that’s where he has his laborium. That’s where he and Gilbur took her. And Vagel is there. Gart is there. Cadwal is there. Eremis consulted with the High King there this morning.

  ‘That’s where we need to strike.’

  Terisa was thinking, In the Care of Tor. Where those riders with the red fur and the hate-filled eyes had come from to attack her and Geraden. No wonder they had been mounted on horses with tack from the Tor’s Care.

  The old lord’s mind was running in a completely different direction, however. ‘That explains it, then,’ he rumbled.

  He braced himself upright with an arm on one side, an elbow on the other. Canted in this posture as if his weight were about to overturn the chair, he muttered, ‘That is why he told Lebbick to do whatever he wanted to her. He had to appear weak – had to seem like he had lost his reason. He had to persuade me. If I had failed to believe him, I could have betrayed him to Eremis.

  ‘At the same time, he sent Master Quillon to remove her from the dungeon, so that no one would suffer from his feigned weakness – so that Lebbick would not have a crime on his heart – so that she would not be harmed.

  ‘At last I understand.’

  The Tor looked like a man whose hands had just been released from thumbscrews.

  ‘And we have another reason to march now,’ Geraden went on in a tone which Terisa would have found impossible to refuse. ‘In Esmerel, the lady Terisa discovered Nyle alive.’

  That announcement snatched most of the eyes in the room to him. Something in Artagel leaped up: his expression was as keen as a honed blade.

  ‘I didn’t kill him.’ Geraden spoke through his teeth, restraining outrage. Now he didn’t need the strange authority which sometimes came to him: his bone-bred passion was enough. ‘I never lifted a hand against him. Eremis forced his help by threatening my family. Our family,’ he said to the sharpness in Artagel’s face. ‘Nyle pretended I stabbed him. Then Eremis carried him off. He called for the physician Underwell, who was almost exactly Nyle’s size and coloring. He had Underwell butchered by creatures of Imagery. Then he dressed Underwell in Nyle’s clothes to make it look like I came back to finish what I started.’

  This was news to the Tor, as well as to the captains. They stared at Geraden in undisguised astonishment.

  ‘But Nyle is still alive. Eremis has him chained to a wall in Esmerel. To use against me if I ever try to fight him.

  ‘I’m a son of the Domne.’ Geraden held himself powerfully still. ‘My family have been dear and loyal friends to King Joyse and Mordant from the beginning, and I want my brother rescued!’

  Yes! Terisa said with the way she lifted her head, the way she carried herself. Yes.

  ‘It’s a simple question, really,’ Artagel drawled into the silence when Geraden was finished. His nonchalant manner contrasted dramatically with the flame of combat in his eyes. ‘As my lady Terisa says, we don’t have any choice. We’ve already let the Perdon be destroyed.’ His stance was casual, but his hands curled as if they ached to hold a sword. ‘If we don’t return to King Joyse’s policy of supporting his lords – and do it soon – we’ll lose everything that holds Mordant together, whether Eremis and Festten beat us or not. Everything that made Mordant worthwhile will be gone.’

  Terisa smiled at him. She was trying to express thanks, gratitude; but the tension in her muscles made her grin too fierce for that.

  The Tor took a deep breath, then gasped. The flagon dropped from his hand, spilling wine across the rug; but he didn’t notice it. He looked at Norge, nearly squinting to get his eyes into focus; he looked at Prince Kragen.

  ‘I am content.’ His voice was flat, curiously unresonant. Apparently, Gart’s kick still pained him. ‘Let us call the matter settled. Tomorrow we will march against Master Eremis in Esmerel.’

  Terisa wanted to applaud until she heard Prince Kragen rasp, ‘No.’

  ‘My lord Prince?’ A fine dew of sweat covered the Tor’s forehead.

  ‘I am not content.’ Kragen chewed the words under his moustache as if they were gristle and gall. ‘I do not call the matter settled. You have proposed an alliance – on which we have been utterly unable to agree. Now you announce your intention to march away on a fool’s mission. Is it your intention that Alend should march with you?’ His tone sounded oddly conflicted to Terisa, at once furious and hungry, as if his passion had another name than the one he chose to give it. ‘Is that what an alliance means to you now? Do you believe that the Alend Monarch will be content to let all his strength commit suicide beside you, for no other reason than because you have decided to die insanely?’

  Artagel started to retort; Geraden stopped him.

  ‘You have a better idea, my lord Prince?’ Geraden asked. His voice made Terisa shiver: it was thick with hinted promises or threats.

  ‘Of course!’ the Prince snapped. ‘An alliance here. In Orison. Let the High King come against us here and do his worst. Together, we will withstand him.’

  ‘What about Nyle?’ demanded Artagel, unable to restrain himself.

  Geraden ignored his brother. ‘I don’t think so,’ he answered Prince Kragen. ‘Eremis doesn’t need to come here. He can attack us anywhere by Imagery. While we stay in one place, any place, we’re powerless, vulnerable. Without risking one Cadwal, he can fill Orison with enough horrors to leave even you screaming, my lord Prince. The only reason he hasn’t done it so far is that he isn’t ready. Wasn’t ready. All he needed is time. He’s ready now. If we don’t carry the fight to him now, High King Festten and his twenty thousand men won’t have to do anything except come here at their leisure and clean out the ruins. We’ll all be dead or scattered.’

  As well as she could, Terisa controlled her frustration at Prince Kragen, her fear of the things she remembered. ‘Eremis—’ she said, then swallowed hard to steady herself. ‘Eremis knows how to use flat glass safely. He’s discovered an oxidate which lets him translate a flat glass into a curved one, so that whatever is in the curved Image can be translated straight to whatever is in the flat Image.’

  Master Barsonage and Geraden had had time to absorb this information. They didn’t flinch. And they didn’t interrupt her.

  ‘Didn’t Geraden tell you?’ she asked the Prince. ‘Eremis dropped an avalanche out of nowhere onto Vale House. That’s how he was able to kidnap Queen Madin. And he has a flat mirror with the audience hall in the Image. He could bring an avalanche in there right now if he wanted to. And we know he has at least two other mirrors that show parts of Orison. His rooms. That place in the lower levels – near the dungeons. Maybe he has more.

  ‘But that’s not all. Vagel – the arch-Imager Vagel – has devised a system that allows him to create specific Images deliberately, instead of by trial and error.’

  Despite the fact that she had already told Master Barsonage this, the mediator looked like he was on the brink of apoplexy.

  ‘And Gilbur has the talent to make mirrors quickly,’ Terisa continued. ‘Together, they can shape enough Images to attack Orison anywhere, anytime.

  ‘Eremis is ready now. It isn’t suicide to march. It’s suicide to stay here.’

  A murmur rose from the captains – agreement, worry, caution.

  ‘Perhaps.’ For a moment, Prince Kragen’s eagerness seemed to outweigh his outrage. ‘Perhaps in that, you are right.’ As if by an act of will, however, he brought back his indignation. ‘Yet if it is madness to remain here, it is not therefore sane to march against Esmerel.’

  He glanced at the Tor. Briefly, he appeared to consider addressing his challenge to Terisa. But at last he turned to Geraden and Artagel, drawn to them by the blood-claim of Nyle’s imprisonment – and by Geraden’s new
stature.

  Dangerously calm, he inquired, ‘You have some acquaintance with Esmerel, I suppose?’

  Artagel nodded without hesitation. Geraden said distinctly, ‘Some.’

  ‘I have heard reports of the terrain. Who will be favored in a battle there?’

  ‘Good question,’ Norge observed equably.

  Artagel grinned. ‘Whoever gets there first. The entrenched forces can pick their ground. It’s a trap for whoever arrives second.’

  Geraden shook his head, dismissing the issue. ‘Why do you think Eremis chose that place, my lord Prince? You didn’t think it was an accident. You didn’t think High King Festten drove twenty thousand men there just for the pleasure of annihilating the Perdon.’

  ‘No, Geraden’ – Prince Kragen allowed himself a snarl of sarcasm – ‘I did not think it was an accident. It is your thinking I question, not my own. Did you not hear Artagel use the word trap? You say that Nyle is intended as a hostage against you. Is he not also intended as bait? A march to Esmerel is precisely the action Eremis wishes us to take.’

  ‘Of course,’ Geraden retorted.

  ‘That’s one reason I was captured,’ commented Terisa. ‘More bait. Eremis wanted to have me where I couldn’t hurt him.’ He wanted to rape me. He wanted to break Geraden. ‘But he also wanted to make sure you went to Esmerel. All of you.’

  ‘Everything he’s ever done us to us is a trap,’ Geraden continued. ‘That’s his great strength – and his great weakness.’

  ‘And you still believe we should go?’ Prince Kragen’s protest was an inextricable mixture of excitement and fury. ‘Knowing he has set this trap to destroy us, you believe that we should accommodate him – that we should rush to put our necks in his noose for him? Geraden, you are mad.’ Wheeling toward the Tor, he unleashed a shout. ‘My lord, this is madness!’

  The Tor sat in his chair like a lump of stale dough and waited for Geraden’s answer.