Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Artagel didn’t look at either Geraden or Terisa as he followed the new Castellan out of the room.

  Simply because she hated to see Artagel hurt like that, she groaned to herself. But what was the use of being upset? The Tor had found a better answer to Orison’s problem – and to Artagel’s – than she had been able to imagine for herself. Geraden had told his brother the truth. She could understand how Artagel felt – but so what? He—

  ‘You also, my lady,’ the Tor said as if he had boulders rolling around in his gut, ‘will remain here.’

  What—?

  She looked around her. Geraden was gaping at the old lord, frankly dumbfounded. Master Barsonage’s expression was white with consternation.

  She had heard right. The Tor intended to leave her in Orison.

  Which was why Ribuld hadn’t brought any protective clothing or weapons for her. And why he had evaded her eyes, her inquiries. Of course.

  Unexpectedly calm, she faced the lord. Her gaze was steady; even her pulse didn’t flutter. Geraden started to speak for her; but when he noticed her demeanor, he bit his mouth closed. ‘My lord Tor,’ she said gently, as if he were as mad as Havelock, unable to be questioned, ‘you don’t want me to go with you.’

  The tone of her reaction seemed to weaken his resolve. Speaking loudly in an apparent effort to shore up his position, he retorted, ‘You are a woman.’

  Because he had raised his voice, she lowered hers. ‘And that makes a difference to you.’

  ‘I am the lord of the Care of Tor.’ His face grew redder, goaded toward passion by the fact that she wasn’t yelling at him. ‘And I am the King’s chancellor in Orison. His honor is in my hands, as is my own. You are a woman.’

  Deliberately rejecting sarcasm, she replied quietly, ‘Please be plain, my lord Tor. I want to understand you.’

  As if she were driving him to distraction, he shouted, ‘By the heavens, my lady, I do not take women into battle!’

  In spite of her determination to be kind, Terisa smiled. ‘Then don’t think of me as a woman, my lord. Think of me as an Imager. Ask Master Barsonage. He offered to make me a Master. I’m not going with you. I’m going with the Congery.’

  The Tor took a deep breath, preparing to bellow.

  At once, Master Barsonage put in, ‘My lady Terisa is quite correct, my lord Tor,’ speaking in the most placating voice he could manage. ‘You have not forgotten that she is an Imager – in effect, a member of the Congery. It is possible that she is the most powerful Imager we have ever known. I do not believe that we can confront Master Eremis and Master Gilbur and the arch-Imager Vagel without her.’

  Livid with anger – or perhaps with the pain of holding his damaged belly upright – the Tor demanded, ‘Do you defy me, mediator?’

  Master Barsonage spread his hands. ‘Of course not, my lord Tor. I merely observe that the lady Terisa is a question which belongs to the Congery. Regardless of the role we assign to her in the support of Orison and Mordant, she casts no aspersion on your honor – or the King’s.’

  Carefully, Geraden commented, ‘And King Joyse doesn’t hesitate to use women when he needs them. Adept Havelock told us last night that King Joyse knew years ago the lady Elega and Prince Kragen would become lovers. He consented to his own betrayal – he practically drove her into the Prince’s arms. I don’t think the Prince would ever have let Terisa and me into Orison if she hadn’t been there. And she may do other things for us yet.

  ‘My lord Tor, we need Terisa with us.’

  The Tor looked back and forth between Master Barsonage and Geraden, his eyes swollen and baleful as a pig’s. His face was crimson with stress.

  Nevertheless he acquiesced.

  Slowly, he slumped into a chair; his hands made weak gestures of dismissal. Terisa had to remind herself that she wasn’t his only – or even his primary – reason for appearing so defeated. ‘Leave me,’ he muttered. ‘We march at full dawn. I must have a moment’s peace.’

  She felt that somebody ought to stay with him. He seemed to be in need of comforting. He had suffered so long, and to so little purpose. From the day when he had arrived in Orison with his eldest son dead in his arms until now, he had been groping like a doomed man, struggling against his own heart and King Joyse’s machinations for some way to heal his grief. Surely there were things he needed more than ‘a moment’s peace.’

  But Master Barsonage moved to leave, and Geraden put a hand on her arm, urging her toward the door. ‘Come on,’ he breathed, ‘before he changes his mind.’

  Dumbly, she accompanied Geraden and the mediator.

  Outside, trying to articulate her own sorrow, she said, ‘Gart must have hurt him pretty badly. He doesn’t look like he can stay on his feet much longer.’

  Away from the Tor, Geraden’s expression turned bleak, unconsoled. ‘That doesn’t matter. King Joyse hurt him worse than Gart did.’ To Master Barsonage, he explained, ‘Artagel told us the Tor spent most of the time we were away blind drunk.’

  The mediator nodded grimly.

  ‘What’s holding him together,’ Geraden continued, ‘is feeling needed. As long as he knows he’s necessary, he can stand being kicked. That’s why it hurts him so much when we argue with him – even when he’s wrong. He hasn’t got the strength or the resolution or the hope left to survive doubting himself.’

  Terisa hugged Geraden’s hand where it held her arm; she was grateful that he understood.

  Master Barsonage thought for a while as they descended from the King’s tower. Then, speaking wryly as if to distance himself from what he felt, he said, ‘I, on the other hand, have a passion for doubt. I cannot resist it. That is why I try to surround myself with so much solidity.’ He made a mocking reference to his girth. ‘Is he right, do you think? Are you certain of what we do? Are we on the path King Joyse would have chosen for us, if he were here?’

  ‘And if we are,’ Geraden growled, at least partially serious, ‘did King Joyse know what he was doing? Did he ever know what he was doing? Do any of us have even the vaguest conception of the consequences of our actions?

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Master Barsonage. I don’t have any wisdom for you. We’re doing the only thing that makes sense to me.’

  Terisa nodded once, grimly.

  The mediator sighed. ‘We must be content with that, I suppose.’

  More quickly than the circumstances required, they moved downward. The air took on a sharper edge as they neared one of the main public exits to the courtyard. No question about it, Mordant was having a late freeze. Terisa’s breath began steaming well before she reached the high doorway. She could feel cold prickling along her scalp like an omen of some kind.

  The halls of Orison had been nearly deserted; but there was nothing deserted about the courtyard. She could hear shouts and movement, hundreds – no, thousands – of boots hurrying in different directions. And from the doorway she saw a dark, torchlit seething of men and horses, as troubled in the early gloom as the contents of a witch’s cauldron, brewed for destruction and bloodshed. From the cavernous stables under Orison, horses by the score had been led into the courtyard and readied for mounting. And more torches lit the passage which led like a throat down to the stables; in the passage more horses crowded, with more behind them. Most of the mounts were already tended by the men who would ride them, the men whose lives might depend on them.

  And around the inner walls of the castle, around Orison’s benighted inward face, the guards who would travel on foot were gathering in squads and platoons; ordinary individuals uprooted from their lives in order to endure a forced march for three days so that they could be hurled against an army which outnumbered them nearly four-to-one. And for what? Well, Terisa knew the answer to that. So that men like Master Eremis and High King Festten wouldn’t have their way with the innocent of Mordant. To say such things, however, she had to believe that what the Congery and the guard, what she and Geraden were doing might work.

  Failure meant annihilation. F
or all these people.

  Clutching her coat against the cold, she followed Master Barsonage and Geraden, with Ribuld behind her, across the ice-crusted mud among the horses to the place near Orison’s gates where the Congery assembled with its beasts and wagons.

  The Masters nodded and muttered to the mediator. Some of them greeted Geraden with salutations or smiles which seemed sincere in the erratic light of the torches; others were too embarrassed by their old scorn for him to say anything; one or two of them made it clear that they still didn’t believe what they had heard about his demonstrations of power. They all, however, acknowledged Terisa with as much courtesy as the circumstances allowed. Then they went back to the job of securing their cargo in the wagons.

  She counted nine large bundles as big as crates: the Congery’s mirrors. Each glass had been wrapped in blankets, then lashed into a protective wooden frame, then wrapped in more blankets and tied tightly before being bound to the side of the wagon. And the wagons themselves were unusual: a new bed had been built to fit on padded supports inside each of the original ones, so that over particularly rough terrain the new bed holding the mirrors could be lifted out and carried by men on foot.

  Wiggling her toes against the cold that seeped into her boots, Terisa looked up at the sky.

  It was gray with dawn, and cloudless, at once translucent and obscure, like a mirror on which cobwebs and dust had accumulated for years.

  The march would begin soon.

  Curse this freeze. Yesterday she was ready to set out on a moment’s notice. But today, in the cold – She wondered if anyone was ever truly ready.

  More men. More horses. Shouts rang hoarsely off the walls: questions; commands; messages. The bazaar was crowded with guards and their mounts. Gart had attacked her there once; Prince Kragen had used the bazaar to cover his meetings with Nyle. Now, at least temporarily, the whole place was unfit for business. But of course it had probably been unfit for days, cut off by the siege from any way to replenish its wares.

  Grooms led horses forward for Terisa and Geraden. She glared suspiciously at the colorless old nag assigned to her, a beast clearly too decrepit for any rider except one who didn’t know what she was doing. Geraden’s mount, in contrast, was a spirited gelding with an odd white spot like a target on either side of its barrel.

  Seeing her expression, he asked teasingly, ‘Want to trade?’

  ‘This thing’s almost dead already,’ she snorted. ‘After what we’ve already been through, I think I could ride a firecat.’

  Ribuld grinned around his scar.

  But she didn’t want to trade. She had an instinctive sense that she was in danger of overestimating her abilities.

  As full dawn approached, and the level of noise in the courtyard increased, lights began to show in the windows around Orison’s inner face – children dragging their parents out of bed to see what was happening; lords or ladies rousing themselves to witness events; wives and children and loved ones wanting some way to say goodbye to the guards.

  By stages Terisa couldn’t measure, the turmoil of men and horses seemed to resolve itself. More and more guards climbed onto their beasts. The Masters began to mount – except for those who intended to drive the wagons, or to ride on them to watch over the mirrors. The frost from the horses’ nostrils was gray now, as pearly as mist, lit by the dawn rather than by torches. Geraden nudged Terisa’s arm, indicated the horses; but she didn’t move until she saw the Tor emerge from one of the main doors and waddle toward his charger.

  She mounted when he did.

  Slowly, accompanied by his personal guard – the men who had come with him from his Care – as well as by the Castellan Norge and Artagel, he rode to the gates so that when they were raised he would be the first to face the Alend army, the first to face the march. For some reason, his black cloak and hood – the mourning garb which he had worn to bring his son to Orison – made him appear smaller. Or maybe her horseback perspective deemphasized his bulk.

  He didn’t look large enough to take King Joyse’s place, imposing enough to threaten King Joyse’s enemies.

  Yet when he lifted his voice he lifted her heart as well, like the remembered call of horns.

  ‘It is a dangerous thing we do.’ Somehow, the old lord made his words carry across the courtyard, made them echo around the face of Orison. ‘Barely six thousand of us go to meet Cadwal and vile Imagery on the ground they have chosen for battle. And we will have the Alend army at our backs – if I cannot persuade the Alend Monarch to see reason at last. An attempt may be made to take Orison in our absence. King Joyse is not with us, and the power against us is staggering.

  ‘It is a dangerous thing we do.

  ‘But it is the best we can.

  ‘The Congery rides with us. We have powers which our enemies cannot suspect. Artagel will preserve Orison for us – and High King Festten is weaker than he knows, helpless to supply his forces by any means which cannot be cut off. King Joyse has planned and labored for years to reach this moment. It will not fail.

  ‘It is a dangerous and desirable thing we do. I am proud to take part in it.’

  The Tor signalled with one hand. At once, the castle’s trumpeter blew a fanfare which echoed against the walls, rang into the sky. Groaning, the great winches began to crank the gate open.

  While the gate went up, the Tor pulled his charger around to face the opening and the future as if he had never been afraid in his life.

  Artagel withdrew. Castellan Norge called the guard to order.

  When the gate was up, the trumpeter sounded another fanfare.

  With the Congery and six thousand men behind him, the Tor rode out of Orison.

  FORTY-FIVE

  THE ALEND MONARCH’S GAMBLE

  Out in the dawn, the Alend army waited.

  Prince Kragen had withdrawn all his forces – his patrols and scouts, his siege engines, his battering rams – to the great circle of his encampment. Beyond the gates, none of his men came closer than the tree-lined roads from Tor and Perdon and Armigite. But his foot soldiers stood ready, holding their weapons. His mounted troops were on their horses. Past the intervening guards, past the Tor and Norge, Terisa could see the Alend strength among the trees like a black wall wrapped around the castle.

  One of the riders who held the roads was a standard-bearer with the Alend Monarch’s green-and-red pennon.

  A cold wind came up out of the south, out of Tor, making the pennon flutter and snap like a challenge.

  The standard-bearer held no flag of truce.

  As always, however, Prince Kragen’s men avoided the intersection where the roads came together. This created a gap in the Alend line, as if Kragen intended to let Orison’s guard through.

  The Tor spoke to Norge; Norge muttered a command Terisa didn’t hear. At the head of the guard, King Joyse’s plain purple insignia was raised.

  Maybe Prince Kragen would think the King had returned.

  Maybe he would reconsider.

  Terisa gripped her reins with icy hands and prepared to nudge her nag into motion. Geraden held his head up as though he were waiting for sunrise. Ribuld scratched at his scar as if it itched in the chill, an old wound remembering pain.

  Snorting steam, shaking their heads, rattling their tack, crunching the crusted mud, the horses began to follow the Tor and Castellan Norge.

  Artagel still had his back to the Alends. By holding his mount stationary, he sifted through the vanguard until he was directly in front of Terisa and Geraden – until he came between them, forcing them to stop. As she had feared, he was wearing Lebbick’s old, bloody mail over his shirt and leggings, Lebbick’s purple sash and headband. The sword belted to his hip looked so dark and grim that it must have belonged to the dead Castellan.

  When he was dressed like that, she was afraid of what he might do.

  At the moment, however, he didn’t do anything fearful. He clasped his brother’s shoulder; without quite managing to smile, he said, ‘Take care of your
self. Take care of her. Rescue Nyle. This family has already suffered enough.’

  Geraden replied with a grin that looked like it belonged to Artagel.

  Artagel turned to Terisa. Striving to appear ready and whole – perhaps for her benefit, perhaps for his own – he said stiffly, ‘Don’t make a liar out of me now, my lady.’

  ‘A liar—’ she repeated as if the cold numbed her mouth. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘I’ve told half the men and women in Orison you can shift Eremis’ mirrors so they won’t translate here.’ He watched her, studied her, like a man who didn’t want to get caught pleading. ‘The Tor is heading straight for the place where the Perdon and his men were attacked.’

  Terisa thought her heart was going to stop.

  The mirror which had brought those ravening black spots down on the Perdon and his men out of nowhere— Shapes no bigger than puppies, and yet as fatal as wolves—

  She had forgotten it. Forgotten, forgotten.

  Geraden winced. ‘Terisa—’ he started to say. ‘Terisa—’

  ‘Stop him,’ she said, gasping gouts of steam. ‘Stop him. I need time to think.’

  Instantly, Artagel wheeled his mount and plunged through the press of horses, chasing after the Tor.

  —gnarled, round shapes with four limbs outstretched like grappling hooks and terrible jaws that occupied more than half the body—

  The idea shocked her to the marrow, revolted her. The same creatures had attacked her and Geraden outside Sternwall – but that was different; then they had attacked completely by surprise, without time for panic or nausea. This time— The Tor and Castellan Norge were effectively defenseless. If they met Prince Kragen in the intersection, all the leaders of the armies could be struck at once. How had she forgotten?

  Artagel had told everyone that she could shift Eremis’ mirrors.

  Outside the gates, Artagel caught up with the Tor and Norge, spoke to them urgently. Master Barsonage brought his horse up between Terisa and Geraden. ‘What is amiss?’ he asked. ‘I was unable to hear.’