A Man Rides Through

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Why take the stupid, stupid risk of all that bloodshed?”

  Castellan Lebbick stared at her as if she were growing noxious in front of him. “So maybe he didn’t do it.”

  “Then where is he?” shot back Terisa.

  “He wouldn’t let them kill Nyle without trying to stop them – without trying to get help.” Lebbick was making a visible effort to understand her. “Maybe they killed him, too, and took the body with them.”

  “Why?” she repeated. “Why bother? To create the illusion they had a confederate they didn’t need? To make you think Underwell is guilty when he really isn’t? What does that accomplish? What would be the point?”

  “Right!” The Castellan clenched his fury in both fists. “What would be the point?”

  And still she wasn’t afraid. His entire face was eaten—Calmly, she asked, “What did Underwell look like?”

  Lebbick made a strangling noise. “ ‘Look like’?”

  “Compared to Nyle,” she explained. “Were they about the same height? The same weight? About the same coloring?”

  “NO!” the Castellan yelled as if she had gone too far, as if this time she had finally pushed him past the point where he could hold back his hands. And then, an instant later, what she was getting at hit him, and he stopped.

  In a thin voice, he said, “Yes. About the same.”

  Quietly, as if she didn’t mean anything personal, she pursued her argument. “If you put Underwell in Nyle’s clothes, would you still be able to recognize him? If you gave him wounds to match the ones Nyle was supposed to have – and if you disfigured him – and if you covered the rest of him with blood – would you still be able to recognize him?”

  Castellan Lebbick stared at her with apoplexy on his face.

  “I think Nyle is alive,” she finished, not because she thought the Castellan still didn’t understand her, but simply because she had to say something to control the silence, keep him from exploding. “I think the poor man who got butchered was Underwell.”

  With an effort, Lebbick pulled a breath between his teeth. “All that,” he chewed out distinctly, “you think all that, and you haven’t set foot outside this cell. Sheep-rut! How do you do it? What do you use for reasons? What do you use for proof?”

  Now that she had arrived at her conclusion, she lost her invulnerability. He was beginning to scare her again. “I’ve already explained it.” She was determined not to let her voice shake. “Eremis wants to shift the blame onto Geraden. Partly to get him out of the way, so he can’t understand his talent and start using it. And partly because Eremis isn’t ready to betray you yet. Maybe his plans aren’t finished. If he sprang his trap now, Prince Kragen would get Orison. Alend would get the Congery. Isn’t that right? But Eremis is in with Gart – with High King Festten and Cadwal. He wants to keep us all safe until Cadwal gets here – until Alend is out of the way.

  “If Geraden is working with Gart – if he really does serve Cadwal – he wouldn’t have done any of this. He wouldn’t have risked accusing Eremis, he wouldn’t have done anything to undermine Orison. Until Cadwal got here. He wouldn’t have ruined his own position by killing his brother.”

  She would have gone on, trying to build a wall of words between herself and the Castellan, but he cut her off. “That’s enough!” he snapped fiercely. “It’s just talk. It isn’t a reason. It isn’t proof. You’ve been in this cell all day. What makes you think you know what’s going on? You say he’s doing everything because he’s guilty – but he would do exactly the same things if he was innocent. I want proof. If you expect me to go arrest the ‘hero of Orison,’ you’ll have to give me proof.”

  Just for a second, Terisa nearly failed. Proof. Her mind went dark; a lid closed over her courage. What kind of proof was there, in a world like this? If Underwell had been stretched out naked in front of her, she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between him and Nyle. She didn’t know men. Only the crudest physical characteristics would have enabled her to distinguish between him and, say, Eremis. Or Barsonage.

  Then, abruptly, the answer came to her. In sudden, giddy relief, she said, “Ask Artagel.”

  “Artagel?” demanded the Castellan suspiciously. “Geraden’s brother?”

  “And Nyle’s,” she countered. “Make him look at the body. Take the clothes off and make him look. He ought to be able to recognize his own brother’s body.”

  Lebbick glared at that idea as if he found it offensive. Under one eye, a muscle twitched, giving his gaze a manic cast. She had gone too far, said something wrong, accidentally convinced him her arguments were false. He was going to do what he had come for in the first place. He was going to hurt her.

  He didn’t. He said, “All right. I’ll try that.

  “It’s too bad Underwell doesn’t have any family here. It would be better to look at this from both sides. But I’ll try Artagel.”

  Terisa felt faint. She wanted to sit down. The Castellan’s scowl was still fixed on her, however. He made no move to leave. After a moment, he said, “While I’m gone, remember something. Even if that is Underwell’s corpse, it doesn’t prove Nyle is alive. It doesn’t prove anything about Geraden or Eremis. All it proves is that some shit-lover is still plotting something. If you want me to arrest the whore-bait ‘hero of Orison,’ don’t show me Underwell is dead. Show me Nyle is alive.”

  Then he left. The cell door banged; the key scraped in the lock; hard bootheels echoed away on the stone of the passage.

  Terisa sat down on the cot, leaned her back against the wall, and let herself evaporate for a while.

  THIRTY: ODD CHOICES

  The bars of the cell were of old, rough iron, crudely forged and cast. Little marks of rust pitted the metal like smallpox; it looked ancient and corrupt. Nevertheless the bars were still intact, despite their age. Against the gnawing of rust, which the rude workmanship and the damp atmosphere aggravated, the iron was defended by generations of human oil and fear. Since the dungeons were first constructed, dozens or hundreds of men and women and perhaps children had stood in this cell, holding the bars because they didn’t have anything else to do with their need. And now the ooze of sweat and dirt left behind by their knotted, aching, condemned hands protected the metal from its accumulated years. Sections of iron could be brought to a dull shine, if Terisa rubbed them with the sleeve of her new shirt.

  So. He was right. It didn’t prove Nyle was alive. She couldn’t argue with that.

  So the Castellan would be coming back.

  She wondered whether the places where people suffered were always made stronger by the residue of pain. And – not for the first time – she wondered how many different kinds of pain it was possible to feel.

  When he came back, whatever he did would be out of her control. She had used up all her weapons. She wasn’t Saddith: she couldn’t use her body to protect her spirit, even though he apparently desired her. Even if she had been willing to make the attempt – a purely theoretical question – she lacked the knowledge, the experience. And somewhere between the poles of love and violence Castellan Lebbick had lost his way. He might no longer be able to distinguish between them.

  She should have gone with Geraden.

  She should have come to her own conclusions about him earlier, much earlier.

  She should have stuck a knife in Master Eremis when she had the chance. If, in fact, she had ever had the chance.

  The Castellan would be coming back.

  What hope was there for her now? Only one: that Artagel might look at the body and be sure it wasn’t Nyle’s. If that happened – if she were proved right on that point – the Castellan might doubt his own rage enough to treat her more carefully. He might. She had to hope for something, now that she couldn’t hope to be left alone.

  She had to hope that Geraden’s talent was strong enough to save him. Somehow, he had bent his mirror away from its Image in order to appear in her apartment and translate her to Orison. That was one thing. But
to bend the same mirror so that it functioned as if it were flat – that was something else. A more hazardous attempt altogether. And yet she had reason to think it was within his abilities. With that same glass, he had put her partway into a scene which bore no resemblance to the Image, a scene which he called “the Closed Fist” in the Care of Domne, and she hadn’t gone mad. If he could do that for her, surely he could do it for himself?

  Surely?

  Oh, Geraden.

  The truth was that she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She wasn’t accustomed to the confidence she had projected in front of Castellan Lebbick: it was easier to forget than to sustain. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything inevitable about the explanation of events she had urged on him. Like her capacity for love, it was purely theoretical. She knew how Master Eremis would laugh, if anyone told him what she had said. At bottom, her defense of herself rested entirely and exclusively on the conviction that Geraden was innocent. If she were wrong about that—

  The implications were intolerable, so she tried to close her mind to them. Because she didn’t know whether the Castellan would come back soon or late – and either way it could mean anything, good or bad – she made an effort to distract herself by counting the granite blocks which formed the walls of the cell.

  Both of the end walls had been built in the same way. At a glance, the construction looked careless: ill-fitting blocks had simply been piled on top of each other. So it might be possible to work some of them loose, especially up near the ceiling. But time and use had worn off the rough edges, leaving a surface that couldn’t be hurt. In contrast, the back of the cell was flat, seamless stone – cut, not built. No doubt the work had been done by the Mordant-born slaves of Alend or Cadwal, during the long years of conflict between those powers.

  And now she was a prisoner of the same conflict. In a sense, dungeons never gave up their victims. The faces and the bodies changed – died and were dragged away – but the old stone clung to its purpose, and the anguish of the men and women locked within it never changed. King Joyse hadn’t gone far enough when he had altered Orison to make it a place of peace. Much of the extensive dungeons had been given over to the Congery for a laborium: that was good – but not good enough. The whole place should have been put to some other use. Then perhaps the Castellan wouldn’t have spent so many years thinking about the things he could do to people who offended him.

  She didn’t know what to say to him.

  She had never known what to say to her father, either. So far, however, she had had better luck with the Castellan. But that was finished. She had done everything she could think of. Now she was at the mercy of events and attitudes she couldn’t control, men who were losing their minds, men who hated, men who—

  “Deep in thought, I see, my lady,” said Master Eremis. “It makes you especially lovely.”

  She turned, her heart thudding in her throat, and saw him at the door of her cell. With one hand, he twirled the ends of his chasuble negligently. His relaxed stance suggested that he had been watching her for several minutes.

  “You are quite remarkable,” he continued. “Ordinarily, cogitation in a woman produces only ugliness. Were you thinking of me?”

  She opened her mouth to say his name, but she couldn’t swallow her heart; it was beating too hard. Staring at him as if she had been stricken dumb, she took an involuntary step backward.

  “That would explain this increased beauty – if you were thinking of me. My lady” – he smiled as if she were naked in front of him – “I have certainly been thinking of you.”

  “How—?” She fought to regain her voice. “How did you get in here?”

  At that, he laughed. “On my legs, my lady. I walked.”

  “No.” She shook her head. Slowly, her immediate panic receded. “You’re supposed to be up at the reservoir. Saving Orison. Castellan Lebbick wouldn’t let you just walk in here.”

  “Unfortunately, no,” the Master agreed. His tone became marginally more sober. “I was forced to resort to a little chicanery. Some cayenne in my wine to produce a sweat, so that he would be impressed by the strain of my exertions. A gentle potion in the brandy I offered to the men he set to guard me, so that they would sleep. A passage which has been secretly built from my workrooms in the laborium into an unused part of the dungeons – tremendous forethought on my part, do you not agree? considering that it was never possible for me to be certain Lebbick would arrest you.”

  Terisa ignored the cayenne and the potion; they meant nothing to her. But a secret passage out of the dungeon—A way of escape—She had to take hold of herself with both hands to keep her sudden, irrational hope under command.

  Struggling to muffle the tremor in her voice, she said, “You went to a lot of trouble. What do you want? Do you expect me to tell you where Geraden is?”

  Again, Master Eremis laughed. “Oh, no, my lady.” She was beginning to loathe his laugh. “You told me that a long time ago.”

  When he said that, a sting of panic went through her – a fear different than all her other frights and alarms. She forgot about the secret passage; it was secondary. She wanted to shout, No, I didn’t, I never did that! But as soon as he said it she knew it was true.

  She had refused the Tor and Artagel and Castellan Lebbick – but Eremis already knew.

  “Then why?” she demanded as though she were genuinely capable of belligerence. “Have you come to kill me? Do you want to keep me from talking to the Castellan? You’re too late. I’ve already told him everything.”

  “ ‘Everything’?” The Imager’s dark gaze glinted as if he were no longer as amused as he sounded. “Which ‘everything’ is that, my lady? Did you tell him that I have held your sweet breasts in my hands? Did you tell him that I have tasted your nipples with my tongue?”

  The recollection twisted her stomach. More angrily, she retorted, “I told him you faked Nyle’s death. You and Nyle set it up as an attack on Geraden. So no one would believe the things he said about you.

  “I told him Nyle is still alive. You ambushed Underwell and those guards so everyone would think Geraden came back and killed him, but he’s still alive. You’ve got him hidden somewhere. You talked him into being on your side somehow – maybe he hates Geraden for stopping him when he tried to help Elega and Prince Kragen – and now you’ve got him safe somewhere.

  “That’s what I told the Castellan.”

  In the uncertain lamplight, Master Eremis’ smile seemed to grow harder, sharper. “Then I am glad it was never my intention to harm you. If I were to hurt you now, everyone would assume that there is some justice in your accusations.

  “But I do not hold a grievance against you. I will demonstrate,” he said smoothly, “the injustice of those accusations.”

  “How?” she shot back, trying to shore up her courage – trying not to think about the fact that she had betrayed Geraden to the Imager. “What new lies have you got in mind?”

  His smile flashed like a blade. “No lies at all, my lady. I will not lie to you again. Behold!” Flourishing one hand, he produced a long iron key from the sleeve of his cloak. “I have come to let you out.”

  She stared at him; shock made her want to lie down and close her eyes. He had a key to the cell. He wanted to let her out, help her escape – he wanted to get her away from the Castellan. She was too confused, she couldn’t think. Start over again. He had a key to the cell. He wanted—It didn’t make any sense.

  “Why?” she murmured, asking herself the question, not expecting him to answer.

  “Because,” he said distinctly, “your body is mine. I have claimed it, and I mean to have it. I do not allow my desires to be frustrated or refused. Other women have such skin and loins as yours, such breasts – but they do not prefer a gangling, stupid, inept Apt after I have offered myself to them. When I conceive a desire, my lady, I satisfy it.”

  “No,” she said again, “no,” not because she meant to argue with him, but because he had given her a way to th
ink. “You wouldn’t risk it. You wouldn’t take the chance you might get caught here. You want to use me for something.”

  Then it came to her.

  “Does Geraden really scare you that badly?”

  Master Eremis’ smile turned crooked and faded from his face; his eyes burned at her. “Have you lost your senses, my lady? Scare me? Geraden? Forgive my bluntness – but if you believe that Geraden fumble-foot frightens me in any way, you are out of your wits. Lebbick and his dungeon have cost you your mind.”

  “I don’t think so.” In a manner that strangely resembled the Castellan’s, she clenched her fists and tapped them on the sides of her legs as if to emphasize the rhythm of her thoughts, the inevitability. “I don’t think so.

  “You know what he can do. You pretend you don’t, but you know what he can do better than anybody – better than he does. Gilbur watched him make that mirror. You knew something unexpected was going to happen when the Congery decided to let him go ahead and try to translate the champion. That’s why you argued against him. You weren’t trying to protect him. You wanted to keep him from discovering who he is.

  “The reason you tried to get him accepted into the Congery was just to distract him, confuse him – make it harder for him to understand.

  “When Gilbur translated the champion” – she swung her fists harder, harder – “you left Geraden and me in front of the mirror, directly in front of the mirror. You probably pushed him. You wanted the champion to kill him.” To kill both of us. The Master had been trying to take her life as well for a long time. But that was the only flaw in her convictions, the only thing which didn’t make any sense: why anybody would want to have her killed. “There isn’t any doubt about it. You’re definitely afraid of him.”

  This time, the bark of Master Eremis’ laugh held no humor, no mirth at all. “You misjudge me, my lady. You misjudge me badly.”