Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  He stood up and tugged the cover back over the glass. She hardly noticed the darkness gathering in his mood. ‘The story is that King Joyse captured this mirror during his wars for Mordant’s independence. The Imager who made it had already translated that’ – he shuddered – ‘that abomination, and it was busy eating an entire village, hut by hut.

  ‘But that was in the days before Adept Havelock lost his mind. When King Joyse captured the glass intact, Adept Havelock was able to reverse the translation.

  ‘The Congery was founded to keep Imagery under some kind of control. So that no more mirrors like this one would be made.’

  Terisa’s arms and legs felt weak, and her head was full of air. ‘How—’ she asked faintly. ‘How could something like that get through?’

  ‘Oh, size is no problem. Imagers discovered long ago that once a mirror reaches a certain size – about the size of the ones you’ve seen – it can translate anything. Nobody knows quite how that works. But if you had a glass focused at the right place at the right time, you could bring an avalanche through it.

  ‘Come on.’

  Without looking at her, he strode into another room.

  Viscerally expecting the slug-beast to lift its own cover and come after her, Terisa followed him. Mordant was being threatened by things like that? There were people at work here mad or malicious enough to translate things like that? Then he was badly mistaken. Mordant didn’t need her. It needed the champion in Master Gilbur’s mirror. And all the armored men who fought under him. And all the weapons from his ship.

  She trailed right on Geraden’s heels because this whole situation was crazy and she had to get out of here.

  He led her into a chamber larger than the previous ones: apparently, an extra cell or two had been used to make it. Six covered mirrors stood on the smooth stone floor, but four of them had been set back against the walls, leaving room in the center for the remaining two. Those two were the same size. Under their coverings, they seemed to have the same shape.

  As he considered the mirrors, his face clenched into an unself-conscious scowl. ‘We usually keep the flat mirrors here,’ he said toward one of the side walls. ‘This is the largest display room, and we have a number of them. But the Masters had some moved out to make room for these two. The Congery does a lot of experimenting with flat glass, trying to find some way to use it – or at least understand it.’

  Abruptly, he moved toward one of the mirrors against the wall. ‘Here.’ He sounded angry; she couldn’t tell why. ‘I’ll show you what happened to Adept Havelock.’

  With a rough jerk, he pulled the cover off the glass in front of him.

  Involuntarily, she winced.

  Nothing terrible happened.

  The mirror did in fact appear to be flat. Its color, the sand from which it was made, the slight irregularity of its edges – she guessed that these things determined what Image the mirror showed. But because it was flat its Image existed in this world rather than somewhere else.

  Something about the scene looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ muttered Geraden. ‘I don’t know who shaped it, but if it was an accident it was dangerous to make. And even if it wasn’t an accident, it’s dangerous to keep.’

  She was looking at what appeared to be a place where roads came together. The roads were deeply packed in snow, of course, and were only marked by the wheel tracks cut into them by passing wagons. But lines of stark, winter-stripped trees made the roads more obvious than they would otherwise have been against the piled white background. The Image was so vivid that she could see cold aching among the outstretched limbs of the trees.

  On the other hand, she had no idea why it was dangerous.

  Had she seen those trees or that intersection from her windows this morning?

  Apparently so. ‘You can see that place from your rooms,’ Geraden explained. ‘That’s where the one road out of Orison branches south toward the Care of Tor, northeast toward Perdon, and northwest toward Armigite. But why would anybody bother to shape a glass that shows a place we can already see from here? If someone is coming it doesn’t exactly give us a lot of warning. As I say, it could have been an accident. Or else whoever did it was trying to produce a mirror that would show Orison itself – and only missed by that much.’

  ‘Who would do that?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Someone who wanted to spy on King Joyse.

  ‘But what makes this dangerous – more dangerous than most flat mirrors – is that we’re so close to being able to see ourselves in it. If we took this mirror out to that spot and stood in front of it, we would see ourselves in the Image. And we would be lost forever, erased – caught in a translation that took us away without shifting us an inch from where we stood.’

  He dropped the cover to the floor and stepped back to consider the glass. ‘I guess we’re lucky that didn’t happen to Adept Havelock. He was lucky, anyway. He’s just crazy – he hasn’t been erased. But if we tried to use this glass now – if we tried to translate ourselves out to the branching of the roads – we would end up like him. The stress would destroy our minds.

  ‘Nobody knows exactly why.’ He began to sound more and more irritated, vexed with himself. ‘The people who believe that Images don’t exist – that mirrors create what we see – argue that the stress comes from being in a created place that exactly resembles a real place. You expect reality and don’t get it, so your mind snaps.’

  ‘And what if Images are real?’

  ‘Then it’s the translation itself that does the damage. I guess you could say translation is too powerful to be used so simply. If you want to get from here to there’ – he gestured at the scene in the mirror – ‘you need a horse, not Imagery. Because you aren’t using the true power of translation, it rebounds against you instead of taking you safely where you want to go.

  ‘Anyway, something like that happened to Adept Havelock.’ Geraden turned his back on the glass, and now she caught the flash of anger in his eyes. ‘That’s why the Masters want to understand flat mirrors. They’re so dangerous – and fundamental.

  ‘Come on,’ he growled. ‘I’ve dragged my feet long enough.’

  Brusquely, he moved to the two mirrors in the center of the room.

  Now she understood him. He was angry because he was conflicted: he was acting against his own wishes as well as the King’s, forcing himself to do what he thought was right despite his belief that Mordant needed her.

  And he was risking the accusation that he was a traitor in order to give her a chance to go home.

  Despite the warmth of her gown, a chill went through her as he pulled one of the covers off, and she recognized the glass that had stood in the Congery’s meeting room the day before – the glass that had brought her here.

  Its Image was both different and unchanged. The fighting had stopped. The metallic figures had enlarged their defensive perimeter and were holding it unchallenged. But the alien landscape, red-lit by its old sun, was unaltered, as was the tall ship in the center of the scene.

  Like his men, the armored figure who dominated the Image had moved: he now walked the perimeter, pausing briefly at each defensive station as if to check how his forces were placed. Again, his power was almost palpable across the distance between the worlds. He looked like a man who conquered whole continents almost daily, as a matter of course.

  Geraden gave her a glance, measuring her reaction. Then he lifted the satin from the second glass.

  She saw at once that it was identical to the first. The shape was the same; the tint was the same; the curvature was the same. Even the curved and polished wooden frames were indistinguishable. And yet the Images weren’t the same. Under a red-tinged light, against a stark background, a colorless metal helmet with an impenetrable faceplate looked in her direction as if the eyes hidden in it were studying her coldly.

  A moment passed before she realized that both mirrors showed the same scene: the first reflected the ship fr
om some distance, while the second depicted the commander of the defense in extreme close-up. Looking at both mirrors, she could see that each portrayed exactly the movements of the commander’s helmeted head: only the perspective was different.

  Softly, Geraden muttered, ‘It’s too bad we can’t hear thoughts through the glass. It would even help if we could hear language. But of course most of the Masters believe there aren’t any thoughts or language in there to be heard.’

  He adjusted the focus of the second mirror carefully until it duplicated the first. Then he stepped back to stand beside Terisa. Still he avoided her gaze.

  ‘I made one of those,’ he said. ‘The one we used yesterday. It’s a duplicate. Master Gilbur created the original. I couldn’t use his. Imagers learned a long time ago that there’s some kind of essential interaction between a mirror and the talent of the man who shapes it. So I made a copy.’ He snorted sourly. ‘It took me a long time because I kept doing things wrong.

  ‘Can you tell which is which?’

  She shook her head. The question didn’t matter to her. She cared only about his distress and her opportunity. It might really be possible for her to go back to her world, to her apartment and her job and her father—

  —and the man with her wanted her to stay. He wanted it so intensely that the bare thought of letting her go hurt him.

  ‘Actually,’ he murmured, ‘nobody else can. But Master Gilbur and I don’t have any trouble. Any Imager can always feel his own work. The one I shaped makes my nerves tingle.’ He pointed to the glass on the left. ‘That one.

  ‘My lady.’ At last he forced himself to face her. He held his arms clenched over his chest, as if to keep them from reaching out. His scowl had become a knot of worry and pain. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  ‘Geraden—’ Now that he was finally willing to meet her gaze, she wanted to look away. She had never learned how to refuse other people. If she did what was expected, or asked, or even suggested of her, she could at least fit herself to her circumstances. But she didn’t belong here. It made no sense.

  As well as she could, she said, ‘Please understand. I’m no Imager. None of this could possibly have anything to do with me. You didn’t force me to come with you. You just asked me to come, and I came. I don’t know why,’ she admitted. ‘I guess I just wanted to believe my life didn’t have to be the way it was. I didn’t want to just sit there. But now I know I made a mistake. You don’t need me. You need that champion. I think the best thing for me to do is just go back where I came from.’

  ‘It’s your right.’ Behind its dismay, his voice held a note of dignity and even command which she remembered vividly. The importance of what he was saying lit his eyes. ‘But you are needed here. Mordant’s peace will be the first good thing to be lost – and the smallest. In time, the Congery will be perverted, and Orison will be torn down stone from stone, and what remains of the realm will be reduced to nothing but bloodshed and treachery.’

  Somewhere in his voice, or his words, she heard a reminder of horns, calling out to her heart in dreams and changing everything.

  ‘You give us hope,’ he continued. ‘You say you aren’t an Imager. Maybe you aren’t. And maybe you just don’t know yourself yet. Maybe you just don’t know yet that you’re more powerful than any champion.

  ‘I can’t explain it – but I believe you’re here because you must be here.

  ‘And’ – all at once, he relapsed into normalcy, and his gaze clouded – ‘you make sense out of my life. As long as I can believe in you, it’s all been worthwhile.’

  His insistence should have repelled her, frightened her. It was so unreasonable. She was necessary? She had power? She made sense out of his life? No. It was easier to believe that she had already lost herself, faded away into dreams. Or that she had never existed – that the translation had created her.

  Nevertheless what he wanted and offered moved her. His appeal and the reminder of horns moved her.

  ‘Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves?’ she said unsteadily. ‘We don’t know yet whether this is going to work. We should find that out first, before we worry about anything else.’

  He studied her hard, trying to gauge her emotions. Then he nodded. ‘You’re right, I suppose.’ Suddenly decisive, he said, ‘Here – hold my hand. I’ll go first, just in case something goes wrong.’ At the same time, he stepped closer to his mirror. ‘You can anchor me.’

  She became increasingly conscious that the air in the room was cold. She looked at his hand, the glass, the hard lines of determination on his face. Now that she had gained her point, she found herself hesitating. ‘Don’t we have to go through some kind of ritual first?’ Her ambivalence felt absurd, but she couldn’t control it. As soon as she made anything that resembled a choice, she lost confidence. ‘There must be magic powders – or spells – or something? Aren’t there?’

  ‘Is that how Imagery is done in your world?’ he demanded with a glare.

  ‘No, of course not. I mean, we don’t have Imagery. I keep telling you. We don’t have magic.’ Self-consciousness flushed her cheeks. ‘I just thought you must need preparation.’

  He made a visible effort to unclench himself a bit. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Imagery is in the way the glass is made and shaped and colored. That’s the preparation. Then it either works or it doesn’t, depending on whether the person who tries it has the power. If we wanted to translate something out to us, that would be different. There are words and gestures that help the process. But we aren’t going that way. Right now, all we have to do’ – he attempted a smile which didn’t succeed – ‘is do it.’

  Again, he extended his hand to her.

  This time, she took it.

  What she was doing made her feel sick.

  He drew her to the mirror and braced his free hand on the frame to keep it – or himself – steady. ‘First I’ll just stick my head in,’ he murmured, thinking aloud, ‘and take a look around. Then I’ll come back, and you can decide what to do next. Hold on tight,’ he added to her. ‘As long as we’ve got a grip on each other, you can pass in and out of the glass as well as I can.’

  Abruptly, he dashed his forehead at the surface of the mirror.

  And his head vanished, cut off as cleanly as a knife-stroke at the neck. Beyond the glass plane, the Image of the back of his head blocked part of the landscape and the ship.

  Instinctively, she braced herself against his weight.

  He had pushed himself forward too hard: he was losing his balance, starting to fall. His hand pulled on the frame of the mirror, shifting the focus of the reflection. As he toppled forward, she saw one of the armored defenders aim a hot shaft of light at him.

  Somehow, she jerked him back. He pitched out of the glass and stumbled away from it, then caught himself with his feet splayed and his knees locked.

  All the color was gone from his cheeks: he was as white as flour paste. Panic and astonishment stared out of his eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘He shot at me,’ whispered the Apt hoarsely. ‘He almost hit me.’

  ‘I saw him. I saw the back of your head.’

  ‘Glass and ruination.’ He swallowed repeatedly. ‘If I had gone there the first time. Instead of finding you. They would have killed me before I could open my mouth.’

  Her heart began to hurt as the implications struck her. The mirror that had impossibly taken Geraden to her when it should have put him in front of the champion now did what it was supposed to do. ‘I don’t believe it.’ That mirror was her only doorway home. She was stuck here. ‘I want to try.’

  ‘My lady!’ His surprise and fear turned instantly to dismay. ‘You’ll be shot! They might not miss twice.’

  ‘Come on.’ Without thinking, she grabbed one of his hands and tugged him toward the mirror. She was stuck here forever. There was no other way she could get back to her own life. ‘I’ve got to try.’

  He twis
ted out of her grip, then clapped his hands to her shoulders and shook her. ‘No!’ He was shouting at her. ‘I’m not going to let you kill yourself!’

  ‘I’ve got to try!’ she yelled back at him. It was quite possible that she had never yelled like that at anybody in her entire life. ‘Let me go!’

  Wrenching away from him, she swung around toward the mirror – and tripped on the hem of her gown. Helpless to stop herself, she fell as if she were diving straight at the glass.

  Apparently, he got one hand on her just in time to make the translation possible. Instead of shattering the glass, she passed into it.

  The transition felt shorter this time: it didn’t have as much impact on her as the one that had taken her out of her apartment. It was quick and timeless, vast and small, as if eternity had winked at her while she went by; but this time its familiarity made more of an impression on her than its strangeness.

  Then she landed hard enough to jar her breath away on a hillside of thick, rich grass dotted with wildflowers.

  More precisely, her body from the waist up landed on the grass. She must have been lying with her stomach across the bottom edge of the mirror’s frame, because she was cut off at the navel: everything beyond that straight, flat severance was gone. She could feel her legs. They gave her a sensation of movement. Someone was holding them. But she had left them in another world.

  This world was warm and tangy with springtime. A low breeze made the bright heads of the wildflowers dance and cooled the touch of the open sunlight on her hair; the sky was so blue it looked whetted. The hillside sloped down to her right toward a fast stream almost big enough to be called a river. The water ran like crystal over the gold background of its rocks and sand and gurgled happily to itself as it rushed past.

  She saw now that she was in a valley that closed sharply as the ground rose ahead of her. A few hundred feet away, the valley became a narrow defile, almost a chasm, mounting toward the mountains in the distance; and this cut was given both a marked entryway and a guard by the tall, rugged, ponderous stone pillars like sentinels which the hills had set on either side of the stream. Shaded by the steepness of its walls, the defile looked dark and secretive – and also inviting, like a place where it would be possible to hide and be safe.