Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  TWO

  THE SOUND OF HORNS

  Without quite realizing what she was doing, she pushed her chair back and stood up. Involuntarily, she retreated. Her feet in her moccasins made faint crunching noises as they ground slivers of glass into the carpet. The wall where the mirror had been glued was splotched and discolored: it looked diseased. The remaining mirrors echoed her at herself. But she kept her eyes on the man sprawled in front of her.

  He was gaping at her in amazement. His smile didn’t fade, however, and he made no attempt to get up.

  ‘I’ve done it again, haven’t I,’ he murmured. ‘I swear I did everything right – but any Master can do this kind of translation, and I’ve gone wrong again somehow.’

  She ought to be afraid of him: she understood that distinctly. His appearance there in her living room was violent and impossible. But instead of fear she felt only bafflement and wonder. He seemed to have the strange ability to bypass logic, normalcy. In her dream, she had not been afraid of death—

  ‘How did you get in here?’ she asked so softly that she could barely hear herself. ‘What do you mean, this isn’t where you’re supposed to be?’

  At once, his expression became contrite. ‘I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t frighten you.’ There was tension in his voice, a fear or excitement of his own. But in spite of the tightness he sounded gentle, even kind. ‘I don’t know what went wrong. I did everything right, I swear it. I’m not supposed to be here at all. I’m looking for someone—’

  Then for the first time he looked away from her.

  ‘—completely different.’

  As his gaze scanned the room, his jaw dropped, and his face filled up with alarm. Reflected back at himself from all sides, he recoiled, flinching as though he had been struck. The knotted muscles of his throat strangled a cry. A fundamental panic seemed to overwhelm him; for a second, he cowered on the rug, groveled in front of her.

  But then, apparently, he realized that he hadn’t been harmed. He lifted his head, and the fear on his features changed to astonishment, awe. He peered at himself in the mirrors as if he were being transformed.

  Spellbound by his intense and inexplicable reactions, she watched him and didn’t speak.

  After a long moment, he fought his attention back to her. With an effort, he cleared his throat. In a tone of constrained and artificial calm, he said, ‘I see you use mirrors too.’

  A shiver ran through her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any idea what you’re doing here. How do you know I’m not the right person?’

  ‘Good question.’ His grin stretched wider. He looked like he enjoyed the sight of her. ‘Of course you can’t be. I mean, how is that possible? Unless everyone has misunderstood the augury. Maybe this room pulled me away from where I should be. Did you know I was going to try this?’

  Terisa didn’t want to repeat herself. Instead of continuing to mention that she had no idea what he meant, she asked, ‘Why don’t you get up? You look a little silly, lying there on the floor.’

  One thing about him pleased her immediately: he seemed to hear her when she spoke, not simply when it happened to suit his train of thought. ‘I would like to,’ he said somewhat sheepishly, ‘but I can’t.’ He gestured toward his truncated right leg. ‘They won’t let go of my ankle. They better not let go. I would never get back.’ His expression echoed the mercurial changes of direction in his mind. ‘Although I don’t know how I’m going to face them when I do get back. They’ll never believe I haven’t done it all wrong again.’

  Still studying him for some sign that what was happening made sense, she inquired, ‘You’ve had this problem before?’

  He nodded glumly, then shook his head. ‘Not this exact problem. I’ve never tried to translate myself before. The fact is, it isn’t commonly done. The last one I can remember was when Adept Havelock made himself mad. But that was a special case. He was using a flat glass – trying to translate himself without actually going anywhere, if you see what I mean.’

  He looked around again. ‘Of course you do. Flat glass,’ he breathed as though her mirrors were wonderful. ‘It’s lovely. And you haven’t lost your mind. I haven’t lost my mind. I had no idea Imagers like you existed.

  ‘At any rate,’ he resumed, ‘the theory of inter-Image translation is sound, and there are lots of cases recorded. Most people just don’t want to take the risk. Since I made the mirror – if I step all the way through, they might not be able to bring me back. Only an Adept can use other people’s mirrors – and Havelock is mad.

  ‘But never mind that.’ He pushed his digression aside. ‘It just looks like I haven’t been able to make it work.

  ‘The fact is,’ he concluded, ‘I’ve never been able to make anything work. That’s why they chose me – part of the reason, anyway. If something went wrong and I didn’t get back, they wouldn’t lose anybody valuable.’

  Baffled as she was by this conversation, her training with Reverend Thatcher came to her aid. He had taught her to ask the questions he expected or wanted. ‘Where are you supposed to be?’ Again she shivered. ‘Who am I supposed to be?’

  He thought for a moment, chewing his lip. Then he replied, ‘I’d better tell you. The augury could have been misinterpreted. An Imager like you might be exactly what we need. And if I’m right—’ He shot a gleam at her and began to explain.

  ‘Everyone has studied the augury. Some of what we see in it can’t be wrong. It shows over and over again that the only way Mordant can be saved is if someone goes into a mirror and brings back help. For some strange reason, that “someone” is me. Unfortunately, the augury doesn’t show me bringing any “help” back. Instead, it shows an immensely powerful man in some kind of armor – a warrior or champion from another world. It doesn’t show whether he’ll save or destroy Mordant, but he’s unmistakable. And about the time of the augury he just happened to arrive in the Image in one of Master Gilbur’s mirrors. Judging from what we could see, he was huge – in his armor – and he had enough magic weaponry to tear down mountains. He looked perfect.

  ‘Of course, Master Gilbur could have just translated him to us. Several of the Masters thought we should do that – and defy the King. But the augury is explicit. We’re supposed to send me somewhere. Something about me is crucial. Apparently.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘There was a lot of argument. Master Quillon said I should go. But Master Eremis said that forcing me to translate myself out of existence was as good as a death sentence – and he isn’t usually that serious about anything. That surprised me. I don’t like Master Eremis, and I thought he didn’t like me. But in the end the Congery decided to let me try.

  ‘So I made the mirror – I made it and made it, until we could all see the champion in it perfectly, and the Masters said it was right.’ He frowned in bafflement. ‘I worked on that so hard. I swear it’s an exact duplicate of the original. But when I stepped into it’ – he met her gaze and shrugged – ‘I came here.’

  She waited until he was finished; but she already knew what she was supposed to say next. ‘So now you think the augury was misinterpreted. It said you had to go get someone. It didn’t say who that someone was.’

  He nodded slowly, watching her face as if she could make what she was saying true.

  ‘This time the Congery might be wrong.’

  He nodded again.

  For no good reason, she still wasn’t afraid. ‘So when you did what the augury showed, you came where you were supposed to be, not where the Congery decided.’

  After a moment, he said softly, ‘Yes. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? It’s impossible. A mirror can’t translate something it doesn’t show. But no matter how badly I foul up, I can’t stop thinking things like that. You must have done something. You must have brought me here.’ He glanced away, then looked up at her strongly. ‘You must have had a reason.’

  This remark restored the logical reality of the situation, took away the illusion that she
was having a comprehensible conversation. A comprehensible conversation with a man who fell into her living room out of nowhere, shattering one of her mirrors in the process? She wanted to answer him, None of this has anything to do with me. But she had never learned how to say things like that out loud. Often she felt a quiver of shame and a personal fading when she thought them. Looking for an escape from the dilemma – or at least from the room, so that she could try to pull herself together away from the influence of Geraden’s intent brown eyes – she said instead, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  She had his undivided attention. ‘I think I would’ – his smile was at once abashed and pleased – ‘but unfortunately I don’t know what “tea” is.’

  ‘I’ll get some,’ she said. ‘It’ll just take a few minutes.’ Keeping her relief to herself, she started toward the kitchen.

  Before she had gone three steps, he said in a completely different tone – a voice strong and formal, and yet strangely suppliant – ‘My lady, will you accompany me to Mordant, to save the realm from destruction?’

  In surprise, she stopped and looked back at him.

  At once, his expression became contrite and embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t have the right to place demands on you. I just suddenly have the strongest feeling that if you leave this room you won’t come back.’

  As soon as he spoke, she realized that one reason she wanted to go into the kitchen was to reach the phone. She wanted to call security and tell them there was a crazy man in her apartment babbling about mirrors and translation and champions.

  ‘Do you have these feelings often?’ She was stalling while she tried to figure out what to do.

  He shrugged; his expression held the shape of his formal question. ‘Not often. And they’re always wrong. But I trust them anyway. They have to mean something.’ He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘One of them made me apprentice myself to the Congery. I don’t know why – it certainly hasn’t done me any good. I’ve been an Apt for almost ten years, and I never get any further.’ His tone was quiet; she heard anger rather than self-pity in it. ‘But I still have the strongest feeling that I must become a Master. I can’t stop trying.’

  ‘But you said you wanted some tea.’

  ‘I didn’t know what I was afraid of until you started to leave.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she responded slowly. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

  Again, she headed toward the kitchen. She was definitely going to call security. This had gone on too long.

  ‘My lady!’ he called immediately. His voice was strong, strangely commanding. ‘I beg you.’

  She tried to continue, but her steps slowed of their own volition. In the entryway to the kitchen, she halted.

  ‘If I twist and pull suddenly, my lady,’ he said quietly, ‘I can probably free my ankle. Then I’ll be entirely here, with no way to return. And the Masters won’t know where I am, since what they see in this mirror is the champion. Then I’ll be lost here forever, unless by some chance or miracle they shape a mirror which shows me to them. If, in fact,’ he added to himself, ‘I am anywhere at all, and not lost in the glass itself, as Master Eremis insists.

  ‘But I’ll do it,’ he went on more intensely, ‘before I’ll permit you to leave without hearing me.’

  For a moment, she remained where she was. She felt herself leaning forward, trying to take the next step which would carry her out of his sight and into the sanctuary of the kitchen. Yet his appeal held her back as if he had a hand on her shoulder.

  After all, she asked herself in an effort to think logically, normally, what would happen if she called security? The guards would come and take Geraden away. If they could – if they could wrench his leg free. And then they would have to let him go. He would be free to haunt her life. Unless she pressed charges against him. Then she would have to see him again as his accuser, making herself responsible for what happened to him. Perhaps she would have to see him several times. And she would certainly have to explain him to her father. Either way, she was stuck with him.

  She had no desire to stand up in court – or in front of her father – and say that a man she had never seen before had broken into her living room through one of the mirrors and had asked her to save something called ‘Mordant.’

  Slowly, she turned back to face the young man. For the first time since he had startled her with his unexpected arrival, she was scared. But he was a problem she had to solve, and security wasn’t the solution she wanted. Trying to keep her voice level, she said, ‘None of this makes any sense to me. What do you want me to hear?’

  ‘My lady—’ At once, embarrassment and relief made him look ten years younger. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’ve done this all wrong. The way I’ve been talking, you probably think your mirrors have destroyed my mind. Which is what they should have done. I still don’t understand it. But please—’

  He had risen to his hands and knees. Now he pulled his torso upright, so that he was kneeling erect among the splinters of glass. Forcing down his confusion and abashment, he achieved a semblance of dignity.

  ‘Please don’t judge Mordant by me. The need is real. And it’s urgent, my lady. Parts of the realm have already begun to die. People are dying – people who don’t have anything to do with Imagery or kings and just want to live their lives in peace. And the threat increases every day. Alend and Cadwal are never exactly quiet. Now they’re forming armies. And King Joyse doesn’t do anything. The heart has gone out of him. Wise men smell treachery everywhere.

  ‘But the gravest peril doesn’t come from the High King of Cadwal or the Alend Monarch. It comes from Imagery.’ He gathered passion as he spoke. ‘Somewhere in the realm – somewhere where we can’t find them – there are renegade Imagers, Masters of mirrors, and they’re opening their glasses more and more to every kind of horror and foulness. They’re experimenting on Mordant, trying to find in their mirrors those attacks and evils which will be most virulent to the peace, stability, and life that King Joyse forged in his prime. And these Masters seem to have no fear of the chaos that comes from unleashing powers that cannot be controlled.

  ‘Before this winter ends, the realm will begin to crumble. Then there will be war on every hand – war of every kind – and all good things will be in danger.

  ‘My lady,’ he said straight to her, ‘I don’t have any power to compel you. If I did, it would be wrong to use it. And you aren’t the champion the Congery expects. I’ve been such a fumblefoot all my life that my presence here might be just another one of my disasters.

  ‘But I might be right. You understand mirrors.’ He gestured around the room. ‘You might be the help we need. And if you are, we’re lost without you.

  ‘Please. Will you come with me?’

  She stared at him, her mouth open and her mind dumbfounded. Dying. War. Every kind of horror and foulness. We’re lost without you. What, me? She had never heard of Mordant – or Cadwal, or Alend. The only countries she knew of that still had kings were thousands of miles away. And nobody anywhere talked about mirrors as though they were doorways into different kinds of reality. You may be the help we need. What was he talking about?

  As carefully as she could, she said, ‘This doesn’t make any sense. I know you’re trying to explain something, but it isn’t working. None of this has anything to do with me.’ You don’t even know my name. ‘I can’t help you.’

  But Geraden shook his head, dismissed her protest. ‘You don’t know that for sure. You don’t—’

  Abruptly, his gaze narrowed as if a new thought had struck him, and he scrutinized her face. ‘Are you happy here?’

  ‘Am I—?’ The unexpected question made her look away from him, as though he had insulted her – or shamed her. Without warning, her fear was replaced by a desire to cry.

  She peered hard into the nearest mirror, trying to reassure herself. Geraden occupied all the reflections, however, although she didn’t want to see him.
From where she stood, there was no glass or angle that didn’t cast his image at her.

  In spite of his strangeness, his reflection appeared more real than her own.

  ‘Are you necessary?’ he asked.

  What a question. She stared deep into her own eyes in the mirror and pinched the bridge of her nose to hold back the tears. She was probably the most replaceable fact of Reverend Thatcher’s life. If she evaporated, he would notice her absence immediately; but his concern would last only until he found a new secretary. And days or even weeks might pass before her father became aware that she was gone. Then he would raise an enormous hue and cry, offering rewards, accusing the police of negligence, having security guards fired – but only to disguise the fact that he really didn’t care one way or the other what had become of her. And she belonged to no one else.

  ‘Are you—?’ He faltered for an instant, then persisted. ‘Forgive me. I’ve got the strongest feeling you aren’t happy. You don’t look happy. And I don’t see anyone else here. Are you alone? Are you wedded?’ At least he had the decency to sound embarrassed. ‘Are you in love?’

  She was so surprised – and he was squirming so badly – that she began to laugh. She remained close to tears; but laughing in front of him was an improvement over crying. The fact that she wasn’t crying enabled her to turn from her reflection to face him directly.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She had some difficulty suppressing her laughter. ‘I guess it’s not easy being in your position. You should have had them tie a rope around your waist, instead of holding on to your foot. That way, you would at least be able to stand up.’

  ‘My lady’ – again he spoke formally, and again his voice seemed to catch hold of her – ‘you are not happy here. You are not needed. You are not loved. Come with me.’ He extended a hand toward her. ‘You are an Imager. It may be that my glass was formed for you from the pure sand of dreams.’

  ‘I’m not an Imager,’ she replied. ‘I don’t dream very often.’