A Man Rides Through

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Artagel continued slipping. His side hurt too much: apparently, he couldn’t use his hands. She reached through the bars and grabbed his nightshirt to support him somehow; but, he was too heavy for her. Finally he bent his legs and caught his weight on his knees. “I tell you I’ve seen his body.”

  He pulled her down with him until she was on her knees as well. Raging into his face, she gasped, “I don’t care. Geraden didn’t do it.”

  “And I tell you I’ve seen his body.” In spite of weakness and fever, Artagel met her with the unflinching passion which had twice led him to hurl himself against the High King’s Monomach. “You deny it, but it isn’t going to go away. An Imager did it. Translation is the only way a beast could get into that room and out again. But it wasn’t Eremis. He was with Lebbick the whole time.

  “Right now, he’s up in the reservoir translating a new water supply. He’s the only reason we’ve got any hope at all. I took Geraden’s side against him” – Artagel’s voice seemed to be thick with blood – “and I was wrong. He’s saving us.

  “Geraden killed Nyle. I’m going to track him down whether you tell me where he is or not. The only difference it’s going to make is time.”

  “And then you’re going to cut his heart out.” Terisa couldn’t bear any more. He made her want to shriek. With an effort of will, she let go of his shirt, drew back from him. “Get out of here,” she muttered. “I don’t want to hear this.” The image of what had happened to Nyle sucked at her concentration. She thrust it away with both hands. “Just get out of here.”

  Then the sight of him – fierce and in pain on his knees against her bars – touched her, and she relented a little. “You really ought to be in bed. You aren’t going to be hunting anybody for a while. If the Castellan doesn’t tear it out of me – and if he lets me live – I promise I’ll tell you everything I can when you’re well enough to do something about it.”

  He didn’t raise his head for a long time. When he finally looked up, the light had gone out of his gaze.

  Tortuously, like an old man whose joints had begun to betray him, he pulled himself up the bars, regained his feet. “I always trusted him,” he murmured as if he were alone, deaf and blind to her presence. “More than Nyle or any of the others. He was so clumsy and decent. And smarter than I am. I can’t figure it out.

  “You came along, and I thought that was good because it gave him something to fight for. It gave him a reason to stop letting those Masters humiliate him. So then he kills Nyle, kills” – Artagel shuddered, his eyes focused on nothing – “and you’re the only explanation I can think of, you must be evil in some terrible way I don’t understand, but you want me to go on trusting him. I can’t figure it out.

  “I saw his body.” Like an old man, he turned from the door and began shuffling down the corridor. “I picked it up and held it.” Brushing at the dried stains on his nightshirt, he passed beyond Terisa’s range of vision. His boots scuffed along the floor until she couldn’t hear them anymore.

  She stood rigidly and watched the empty passage for a while, as erect as a witness testifying to what she believed. Like the Tor, he said that Nyle was dead. And he could hardly be wrong. He ought to be able to identify his own brother’s body. And yet she didn’t recant. Unexpectedly, she found that she was supported by a lifetime’s anger. A childhood of punishment and neglect had taught her many things – and she was only now starting to realize what some of those things were.

  Her hands shook. She steadied them as well as she could and began to eat the bread and stew she had been brought, pacing back and forth across the cell as she ate. She needed strength, needed to pull all her resources together. King Joyse had told her to think, to reason. Now more than at any other time in her life, she needed the stamina and determination to think clearly.

  To the extent that it was possible for anyone to do so, she intended to defy the Castellan.

  When he came at last – several hours and another meal later – she was almost glad to see him. Waiting was no doubt much easier to bear than rape or torture, but it was harder than defiance. Solitude eroded courage. Half a dozen times during those hours, she quailed, and her resolution ran out of her. Once she panicked so badly that afterward she found herself on the floor in the corner with her knees hugged against her chest and no idea how she got there.

  But she was brought back from failure of nerve by the fact that she knew how to survive waiting alone in a cold, ill-lit cell. She had recovered her ability to blank out the dark and the fear. Paradoxically, the decision to meet her danger head on restored her capacity for escape. And when she surrendered to fading, she rediscovered the safety hidden in it and felt better.

  For this she didn’t need a mirror. Mirrors helped her fight the erosion of her existence; they weren’t necessary if she wanted to let go. And it was letting go, not desperate clinging, which had kept her sane when her parents had locked her in the closet.

  Nevertheless the time and the waiting, the cold and the inadequate food exacted their toll. There were limits to how far she could stretch her determination. She was almost glad to see him when the stamp of boots announced his coming and Castellan Lebbick appeared past the stone edge of her cell.

  Now he would hurt her as much as he could. And she would find out what she was good for.

  But the sight of him shocked her: it wasn’t what she had expected. She was braced for rage and violence, for the intensity like hate in his glare and his knotted jaws, for the potential murder tightly coiled in all his muscles. She wasn’t ready for the distracted man, noticeably shorter than she was, who entered her cell with no swagger in his shoulders and no authority on his face.

  The Castellan looked like someone who had suffered an essential defeat.

  Dully, he let himself into the cell. Again, he didn’t bother to lock the door behind him. He was enough of a bar to her escape. And if she got past him and out of her cell, where could she go? She could run the corridors like a trapped rat, but she couldn’t get out of the dungeon without passing through the guardroom. Castellan Lebbick didn’t need to lock the door.

  For a moment, he didn’t meet her gaze; he glanced around the cell, glanced up and down her body without quite looking at her face. Then he murmured as if he were speaking primarily to himself, “You’re better. The last time I saw you, you were about to fall apart. Now you look like you want to fight.” Without sarcasm, he commented, “I had no idea being thrown in the dungeon was going to be good for you.”

  Terisa shrugged, studying him hard. “I’ve had time to think.”

  At last, he raised his eyes to hers. The smolder she was accustomed to seeing in them had been extinguished – or tamped down, at any rate. He seemed almost calm, almost stable – almost lost. “Does that mean,” he asked quietly, “you’re going to tell me where he is?”

  She shook her head.

  In the same tone, the Castellan continued, “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been plotting? Are you going to tell me why he did it?”

  Once more, she shook her head. For some reason, her throat had gone dry. Lebbick’s uncharacteristic demeanor began to frighten her.

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” He seemed to have no sarcasm left. Turning away, he started to walk back and forth in front of the bars. His manner was almost casual; he might have been out for a stroll. “King Joyse told me to push you. He wants you to declare yourself. Does that surprise you?” The question was rhetorical. “It should. It isn’t like him. He was always able to get what he wanted without beating up women.

  “I’ve been looking forward to it all day.

  “But now—” He spread his hands in a way that almost gave the impression he was asking her for help. “Everything is inside out. Clumsy, decent, loyal Geraden has turned rotten. Crazy Adept Havelock spent most of the day protecting us from catapults. Master Eremis is busy refilling the reservoir.” Apparently, he didn’t know that she had been visited by both the Tor and Artagel, that she was alread
y aware of the things he told her. “And King Joyse wants me to hurt you. He wants me to find out who you are – what you are.”

  A suggestion of yearning came into Lebbick’s voice, a hint of wistfulness. “Sometimes – a long time ago – he used to let me get even with his enemies. Sometimes. Men like that garrison commander—But he’s never given me permission to hurt someone like you.”

  Then the Castellan faced her – and still he seemed almost casual, almost lost. “He must be afraid of you. He must be more afraid of you than he’s ever been of Margonal or Festten or Gart or even Vagel.

  “Why is that? What are you?”

  Meeting his extinguished, unreadable gaze, Terisa swallowed roughly. She didn’t understand what had happened to him, what had taken the fire out of him or stifled his hate; but this was the best chance she would ever get to distract him, deflect his intentions against her.

  “I don’t know,” she said as steadily as she could. “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

  “The wrong questions?”

  “I can’t tell you why King Joyse is afraid of me. If he’s afraid of me. And I won’t tell you where Geraden is. Because he didn’t do it. I’m not going to give him away.

  “But I’ll tell you anything else.”

  “Anything else?” Castellan Lebbick sounded no more than mildly interested in the idea. “Like what?”

  His manner gave her a moment of panic. She was afraid that he had become unreachable – that whatever was happening to him had taken him beyond the point where anybody could talk to him, argue with him, guess what he would do next. Breathing deeply to shore up her courage, she replied, “Like how did I survive when Gart tried to kill me the first night I was here. Like what was I using that secret passage in my rooms for. Like what really happened the night Eremis had his meeting with the lords and Prince Kragen. Like what happened the first time Geraden was attacked.” Her own passion mounted against the Castellan’s blankness. “Like how I can be sure Eremis is lying.”

  At that, something like a spark showed in Lebbick’s eyes. His posture didn’t shift, but his whole body seemed to become unnaturally still. “Tell me.”

  “It all fits together,” she answered. King Joyse had told her to reason, and reason was the only weapon she had. “I can even tell you why they’re afraid of Geraden – Vagel and Eremis and Gilbur – why they’re trying so hard to get him out of their way.”

  Lebbick didn’t blink. “Tell me,” he repeated.

  So she told him. As clearly as she could, she told him how Adept Havelock had saved her from the High King’s Monomach. She described how Havelock and Master Quillon had used the passage hidden behind her wardrobe. She related every detail she could remember about Eremis’ clandestine meeting with the lords of the Cares, including Artagel’s role in saving her. And then she told the Castellan what conclusions she drew.

  “The first time Gart tried to kill me, he obviously didn’t know about that secret passage. The last time, he did. How did he find out? You knew it was there. Myste and Elega knew.” Lebbick didn’t react to this revelation. “Quillon and Havelock, of course. Geraden knew. And Saddith, my maid. But Myste and Elega and Havelock and Quillon all knew about it long before I came here. They could have told Gart that first night. Forget them. What about Geraden? He didn’t know when I first moved into those rooms. You think he’s in with Gart. Well, I told him about it the next morning. After I talked to you. Why did he wait all that time before letting Gart know the best way to kill me?

  “On the other hand” – she was determined to hold back nothing that might help her – “Saddith and Eremis are lovers. She could have told him about the passage – and she could have taken a long time to do it.

  “She could have told him where I was that first night.”

  “I know all that,” the Castellan murmured without inflection. “Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me why Eremis rescued you. Gart came through the passage, and Eremis could have gotten rid of you both at the same time. How do you explain that?”

  Because she was only guessing, Terisa did her best to sound plausible. “There were witnesses. If Gart just killed me, Geraden would see that Eremis let it happen. And if Gart tried to get both of us, the guards outside might catch him at it. All they had to do was open the door. Either way, everyone would know Eremis is a traitor.

  “What he thought he was going to do” – she forced herself to say this also – “was make love to me. And then while I was asleep or distracted Gart would sneak in and kill me. And no one would ever know Eremis had been there.

  “He wasn’t expecting Geraden to interrupt.”

  Still the Castellan didn’t show what he was thinking. All he said was, “Go on.”

  Grimly, Terisa continued.

  “Eremis controlled every detail of that meeting with the lords. He arranged the location, the time, who was going to be there. He arranged where I would be afterward. Geraden couldn’t have known any of his plans. The only thing Eremis didn’t arrange was Artagel. He didn’t arrange for me to be saved.

  “When Gart attacked, he obviously came and went through a mirror. I don’t know how he did that without losing his mind – but Artagel and I figured out where the point of translation was, the place in the Image. He and Geraden and I went to look at the place again, and the same mirror translated those insects. Artagel told you about that. They almost killed all three of us.

  “Eremis says it was a feint, a trick to make Geraden look innocent, but that’s nonsense. If Havelock hadn’t rescued him, he would have died. And no one could have predicted that the Adept would show up there to help us. And Eremis knows all about it, even though he wasn’t there and no one told him. He says I did, but I didn’t. He must have been on the other side of the glass, watching.”

  Lebbick had begun to scowl. His eyes gave out glints of dark fire. For better or worse, Terisa was bringing the banked heat in him to flame. If that was a mistake, she was sealing her own doom. Nevertheless she kept going.

  “They want Geraden dead or ruined because he really is an Imager – a kind of Imager no one has ever seen before.”

  Obliquely, it occurred to her that she should have grasped this before. But she hadn’t forced herself to think until now. And because of that Geraden was paying a fearful price. At the moment, however, she had no time for regret. She was too busy defending herself from the Castellan.

  “That’s why he isn’t able to recognize what he is for himself. He can do translations that don’t have anything to do with the Image in his mirror. He got me out of a glass that showed the champion the Congery wanted. And Eremis knew that was going to happen. Or Gilbur did, anyway. He taught Geraden how to make that mirror. He must have seen Geraden wasn’t making it right. When the mirror was made wrong and it still showed the Image with the champion, Gilbur must have realized what Geraden can do.

  “If he ever figures out what his power is or how to use it, he’ll be the strongest Master there ever was. And he’s loyal to King Joyse. Even though it’s breaking his heart. Gilbur and Vagel and Eremis have to get rid of him before he learns how to fight them.

  “That’s why they attacked him with insects, tried to kill him. And that’s why they set him up to look like he killed Nyle. They’re afraid of him. And he’s trying to expose them. They need to get rid of him in a way that makes them look innocent.

  “Nyle isn’t really dead. He can’t be. Eremis couldn’t have used him like that without his cooperation – and he wouldn’t have cooperated if he thought he was going to be killed.”

  Distinctly, the Castellan said, “Pigshit.” The muscles bunched along his jaw; his eyes glared balefully. “My men are dead, and I saw his body. His entire face was eaten through to the brain.” She had succeeded at restoring his outrage. “Eremis is at the reservoir right now saving us. He’s the hero of Orison. No one will believe a word you say.” His raised his fists in front of her face, hammered them at the unresisting air. “That whoreson physician
betrayed us, and two of my men are dead!”

  Now it was her turn to stare at him, stunned with surprise. “Physician?” Artagel hadn’t mentioned a physician.

  “Underwell, you bitch! The best physician in Orison. Eremis did everything perfectly. He got Nyle to his rooms fast. He got Underwell. He set guards. While you were out helping Geraden escape and that pisspot Quillon was getting in my way, Eremis was actually trying to save Nyle.”

  She should have been afraid of his new rage, but she wasn’t. “Physician?” Instead, she was astonished by the sudden clarity of her thoughts. “What happened to him? Didn’t he see what attacked your men and Nyle?”

  “Escaped!” snarled Lebbick. “What do you think? Did you expect him to wait around and let us catch him?” Rage swelled the cords of his neck. “He was translated away the same way Geraden’s bloody creature was translated in.”

  “But why?”

  “How should I know? I’ve never looked inside his head. Maybe he just hated Nyle. Maybe Festten offered to make him rich. Maybe Gart took his relatives hostage. I don’t know and I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, he just did it.”

  “No,” Terisa said as if now she had nothing to fear. “That isn’t what I meant. Why did he do it that way? Why have the guards killed? Why—?” Why do that horrible thing to Nyle? “They might have been interrupted. They might have been caught. What about the noise? Wouldn’t being attacked by some kind of beast make noise – warn the guards outside? Why take the chance?”

  Fuming, the Castellan started to spit an explanation at her. But she didn’t want to hear him say anything more against Geraden. She ignored him.

  “He’s a physician,” she said. “ ‘The best physician in Orison.’ He didn’t need any help getting rid of Nyle. And he didn’t need to make himself look like a traitor. Don’t you understand?” Lebbick’s slowness to grasp the implications surprised her almost as much as her own certainty. “All he had to do was fail. Let Nyle die. Put something toxic in the wound and cover it with bandages. No one would ever know. No one would even suspect.