Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  ‘Then why—?’

  ‘Because I owe it to you. I’m the one who brought you here. If you’re the wrong person – or even if you are the right person but you don’t want to help us – it’s my responsibility to get you back where you came from. I want you to understand enough about Imagery to know what that means.’

  He paused, took a grip on his courage, and continued. ‘But that’s not all. Even if you want to go back – and I want to take you back – the Masters won’t permit it. Even if they decide you actually are the wrong person, they won’t be able to ignore the importance of what you represent. They won’t want to let you go.

  ‘Right now,’ he said carefully, ‘while they’re in their meeting, might be our only chance to get to the right mirror and try to take you home.

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ he added at once. ‘I believe you’re exactly the one we need. I don’t know how or why, but you are. If you want to go, I’ll beg you to stay. But’ – he sighed – ‘you have the right to go, if you want to. It would be immoral to keep you here against your will.’

  He amazed her. The question of whether it would be possible for her to return to her apartment, her job at the mission, her infrequent dinners with her father hadn’t seemed particularly substantial to her. Other matters dominated her attention. But behind the relatively tentative surface of his offer, he was asking her something fundamental.

  She glanced down at her gown – at the rich scarlet fabric against her skin, at the snug neckline. Already? she protested. It’s too soon. I’m not ready.

  Nevertheless the risk he was willing to take in the name of her right demanded a different answer.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ she said, although her pulse was heavy in her throat and she felt light-headed. ‘It might be a good idea if I knew what my choices were.’

  Geraden smiled bleakly. ‘In that case, we should probably go now. If we delay, we might miss our chance. There’s really no telling how long that meeting will last.’

  Terisa wished she could take hold of his arm to steady herself. She had a mental image of women in gowns clinging closely to the arms of strong young men and looking happy there, supported and secure. But he gestured politely for her to precede him; she complied by walking toward the door.

  He held the door for her, then closed it after her. Outside, he greeted her guards by name, and they replied in a tone of friendly commiseration, as if they knew all about his ordeal with the Castellan. But they didn’t move to follow her.

  Feeling a resurgence of fright, she hesitated, looking back at them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Geraden answered her concern. ‘Nobody is going to attack you in Orison in broad daylight.’ On this point, he sounded confident. ‘Nobody would dare.’

  She wanted to ask him how he could be sure. But this was his world, not hers. She ought to trust what he told her.

  Carefully, she moved toward the stairs.

  For a while, she and Geraden didn’t speak. As he guided her through the halls, she seemed to recognize the route Saddith had used yesterday. Based on what she had seen from her windows, she guessed that Geraden’s destination was on the opposite side of the huge open rectangle of Orison: in order to reach it without traversing the mud and snow of the courtyard, he had to take her around through the halls. Once again, they encountered any number of men and women of every rank. But now, instead of staring at Terisa, they deferred to her and bowed their respect, as if her gown marked her as a great lady whom they didn’t happen to know.

  Every salutation made her more self-conscious. She wasn’t accustomed to being noticed so much. To distract herself, she asked Geraden if assassins commonly roamed Orison at night.

  ‘Actually, no.’ Sensitive to the tone of her question, he treated it humorously. ‘It isn’t common at all. If it were, Castellan Lebbick would have piglets. He takes his duties very seriously.’

  ‘Then why did King Joyse call off the search?’ As she spoke, she remembered the oddness of the orders which had been reported to Lebbick. The King didn’t like all this running around in the middle of the night. And yet he had known exactly what to expect of his Castellan – and had thought enough of Terisa to protect her from Lebbick’s zeal. ‘I got the impression attacks were something that happened all the time – not worth the trouble of trying to pursue.’

  Geraden shook his head at once, scowling. ‘Orison has always been safe – ever since King Joyse conquered the Demesne. I would have expected him to call out the entire guard, instead of letting that man get away.’ A moment later, however, he admitted, ‘But this is an impossible place to search. It has too many rooms. I don’t think anybody knows how they all interconnect. And then there are the secret passages. As long as he had a head start, it would take a miracle to find him.’

  Even after Havelock blinded him? she wondered. But she didn’t raise the question aloud.

  ‘What I want to know,’ Geraden went on after he had worried for a while, ‘is, how did he know where to find you?’

  That wasn’t something which would have occurred to Terisa. ‘How did Argus and Ribuld find me?’

  ‘That’s not the same thing. They knew you would have someone to look after you, so they asked around the maids until they heard Saddith had volunteered. Then all they had to do was locate her. Nobody was trying to keep where you were secret. But how did he learn where that was? He’s an assassin hiding in Orison. Who did he talk to? He must have talked to someone. He must,’ Geraden said more slowly, ‘have an ally living here. Someone who could ask questions without making anyone suspicious. Or else—’

  ‘Or else?’

  They took a stairway down to a lower level, turned through the base of one of the towers, and continued on around the courtyard. ‘Or else,’ he rasped, ‘he’s one of the people of Orison himself. He lives here like anybody else – and presumably serves the King – or acts like he serves the King – and then at night he sneaks around trying to do murder. He might be someone I know.’

  ‘Is that possible?’

  He shrugged stiffly. ‘Orison is a big place. And it’s open all the time, especially to anybody who lives in the Demesne. Nobody keeps track of all the people here. Although Castellan Lebbick tries, of course.’ His thoughts were elsewhere. ‘My lady, you had better keep your eyes open. If you see anybody who resembles him at all, tell someone right away.’

  Frightened by the prospect, she spent a few tense minutes staring hard at every face she saw, searching it for signs of yellow eyes and scarred cheeks and violence. But slowly she talked herself into calming down. The man would be a fool to show himself where she might encounter him. And if he did, she wouldn’t have to make a special effort to recognize him. She could see him again anytime she wished, simply by closing her eyes.

  Then another stair took them down to the huge, empty hall, the ballroom fallen out of favor, which they had crossed the day before. There were several entrances to the hall; but she recognized the corridor that led down to the meeting room of the Congery.

  The air grew colder.

  ‘In the old days,’ Geraden commented as he guided her into the corridor, ‘before King Joyse unified Mordant – and before Orison was built as big as it is now – these used to be the dungeons. Back then, half of every castle must have been dungeons. But King Joyse gave all the torture chambers, most of the cells, and a hall that used to be a kind of guardroom to the Congery. All that space became the laborium.’ There was a note of pride in his voice. ‘You’ve seen the old examination room. That’s where the Masters hold their meetings. We’ll stay away from there.’

  Terisa remembered the downward stair; but she quickly became lost among the doors and turnings that followed. She had no idea where she was when he opened another of the stout, ironbound doors which characterized the dungeon, and a glare of light and heat burst out at her.

  This must have been the former guardroom: it looked large enough to sleep a hundred people. Now, however, it contained no beds. Inst
ead, it was crowded with two large furnaces built and roaring like kilns; firewood stacked in cords; piles of finely graded sand; sacks of lime and potash; stone conduits and molds in many shapes polished to a metallic smoothness; worktables supplied with scales, pots, small fires, retorts; iron plates and rollers of arcane function; and shelf after shelf affixed to the walls and laden with any number of stoneware jars in a plethora of sizes and colors.

  Working about the room were several young men dressed like Geraden, they tended the furnaces, polished pieces of stone, measured and remeasured tiny quantities of powders from the jars, cleaned up the messes they created, and generally sweated in the heat. One of them saw him and waved. He waved back, then closed the door, sealing the noise and fire of the hall out of the corridor.

  ‘You don’t want to go in there,’ he said. ‘You’ll ruin your gown. But that’s where we make the glass for our mirrors. The Apts do most of their work there. If a boy wants to be an Imager, but he just doesn’t have the power for it in his blood, his inability usually shows up here, before the Masters teach him any of their real secrets. Beginners do the menial chores, like keeping the furnaces at a steady temperature. The more advanced ones learn to mix tinct and prepare molds.’

  ‘Is that what you do when you aren’t disobeying the King?’

  He grimaced, then fell into a wry grin. ‘It was. The one advantage of being older than all the other Apts is that I already know everything they’re being taught. I just can’t seem to do it right. So now I’m sort of a formal servant for the Masters. I normally attend all the meetings, not because they care what I think, but so I can run errands, take messages, things like that. They don’t trust me to carry glass’ – Terisa heard a tone of sadness behind his smile – ‘so they do that themselves.’

  He didn’t let himself brood, however, on the consequences of his awkward instinct for mishap. ‘Come on,’ he said in a brighter voice. ‘I want to show you some mirrors.’

  He touched her arm; and again she wanted to take hold of his, for encouragement and support. The excitement he seemed to feel at the prospect of mirrors affected her strangely: it made her want to hang back – made her reluctant to face a risk that might be more dangerous than either of them knew.

  ‘What do the Masters do?’ she asked wanly.

  ‘Research, mostly.’ His eyes watched the way ahead and sparkled. ‘They’re supposed to be finding proof that Images really do or really don’t have an independent reality. But some of them would rather figure out how to predict what Image a particular configuration and color of glass will show. Most research is just done by trial and error. Unfortunately, the Congery hasn’t been any better at predicting than at proof. As a more attainable goal, Imagers like Master Barsonage are trying to determine how much one mirror has to vary from another before it shows an entirely unconnected Image.

  ‘But the Congery does practical research, too. That’s also King Joyse’s idea. He wants Imagery to be useful for something besides war and ruin. Not so long ago, some important progress was made—’ Geraden swallowed, frowned to himself, and admitted, ‘Actually, Master Eremis did it. He shaped a glass that shows an Image where nothing seems to happen except rain. Nothing at all. The Congery checked the water, and it’s fresh. So now we have a good local solution for drought. That mirror can be taken anywhere crops are dying and provide water.’ Being fair to a man he didn’t like, the Apt pronounced, ‘It’s quite a discovery.

  ‘More recently, of course,’ he added with even less enthusiasm, ‘we’ve spent most of our time worrying about King Joyse’s collapse.’

  Perhaps to shake off uncomfortable thoughts, he guided Terisa forward with a quickening stride.

  Down the corridor, along an intersecting passage, they soon came to a heavy door like the door of a cell. Her step faltered: the door was guarded. But he gave her a reassuring smile, saluted the guards casually; and one of them bowed appreciatively to the lady in the scarlet gown while the other opened the door, ushering her and Geraden into a small, well-lit room like an antechamber, with entryways in the massive walls leading to other rooms.

  ‘These used to be cells,’ he explained, ‘but the Masters had them rebuilt to make a place where mirrors could be displayed – as well as protected.’

  When the guards had closed the door behind him, she whispered, ‘Why didn’t they stop us?’

  He grinned. ‘As a matter of protocol, the laborium is under the command of the Congery. Master Barsonage didn’t give orders to keep us out because it never occurred to him I might bring you here.

  ‘Come on.’

  His excitement was growing. Turning to lead her through the nearest entryway, he caught his toe in the long hem of her gown and fell toward the wall as though he meant to dash his brains out against the stone.

  At the last instant, however, he contrived to tuck his dive into a roll. He hit the wall with an audible thud; but the impact wasn’t enough to keep him from bouncing back to his feet at once – or from apologizing profusely.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said quickly, expressing concern to keep herself from laughing. ‘Are you all right?’

  He stopped himself with an effort. ‘My lady, if I got hurt every time I did something stupid, I would have died by the time I was five. That’s the worst part about being such a disaster,’ he went on ruefully. ‘I do any amount of damage to everybody and everything around me, but I never really hurt myself. It doesn’t seem fair.’

  For a moment, she did laugh. Then she swallowed it. ‘Well, you didn’t hurt me. I’m glad you didn’t hurt yourself.’

  He gazed at her as if the sight made him forget why they were here. ‘Thank you, my lady,’ he said softly, earnestly.

  But he recollected himself almost at once. ‘Let’s try this again.’ With elaborate care, he turned away and walked through the nearest entry into the chamber beyond.

  Following him, she found herself in a room which had been enlarged by joining it with three or four other cells. The light came from plentiful oil lamps, which didn’t smoke. Aside from the lamps, however, and the slim pedestals that held them, the room contained nothing – no decorations on the walls, no rugs on the floors – except three tall objects hidden under rich satin coverings.

  Happily, Geraden pulled off the nearest cover, revealing a glass.

  Like the only other mirror she had seen in Orison – the one that had brought her here – this one was nearly as tall as she was; the glass wasn’t quite flat or quite clear, and it wasn’t perfectly rectangular; it was held in a beautifully polished wooden frame which gave it a secure base on the floor and still allowed it to be tilted from side to side as well as from top to bottom.

  In addition, the glass reflected nothing of the stone or the lamps in front of it. It didn’t even show Geraden.

  What it did show was a fathomless seascape under a bright sun. For an instant, she could have believed that the Image was simply a painting brilliantly contrived to create the illusion of three dimensions. But the waves of the sea were moving. They rolled toward her out of the distance until they came too close to be seen. Small caps of froth broke from their crests and dissolved away before her eyes.

  The Image was so real that it made her stomach watery.

  ‘Master Barsonage shaped that one several years ago,’ Geraden explained. ‘It’s the kind of mirror King Joyse wants the Congery to concentrate on. Something useful, practical. Master Barsonage was searching for a world of water – an Image Mordant could use in case of drought. Or fire. The story is that he extrapolated this glass from a small mirror Adept Havelock once had. If that’s true, it’s an amazing achievement – to reproduce exactly every inflection of curve and color and shape on such a different scale.’ With his fingers, he ran a stroke of admiration down the side of the frame. As he recovered the glass, he added, ‘Unfortunately, the water is too bitter for our soil and crops.’

  Shaking her head in gingerly astonishment, as if her brain were a bit loose in her skull
, she followed him into the next room.

  This chamber was roughly the same size as the one they had just left. It was similarly lit with lamps on pedestals. But it contained four satin-covered mirrors.

  ‘I don’t mean to lecture you,’ he was saying. ‘If you really are an Imager, I’ll bore you. And if you aren’t, I’ll just confuse you. Stop me if I get carried away.’

  He considered for a moment, then selected a mirror.

  When he uncovered it, she gasped involuntarily and stepped back.

  From the glass stared a pair of eyes as big as her hands.

  They glared at her hungrily, and the teeth under them seemed to drip poison as the mouth gaped in her direction. She had an impression of a body like a gargantuan slug’s hulking behind the eyes and the mouth – an impression of a dark, cavernlike space enclosing the body – but she couldn’t look away from those eyes to confirm the rest of the Image. They were eyes that wanted, insatiable eyes, consuming—

  Geraden stooped to the lower corner of the mirror and nudged the frame. At once, the eyes receded a few dozen feet, and Terisa found herself blinking her horror at them from a safer distance. Now it was plain that she was looking at some kind of huge, sluglike beast in a cave.

  ‘This is how we adjust the focus.’ He nudged the frame again: the Image retreated farther. Then he pushed lightly on the side of the frame, and the Image panned in that direction, revealing the mountainside where the cave opened. ‘The range is limited, of course. But once a true mirror is made – one that works, instead of just throwing distortion in all directions – we can look at its whole Image – in this case, the whole mountain – by adjusting the focus. If we have that much patience.’