Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Remembering the conversation she had overheard between him and Master Eremis, she hesitated. But she couldn’t afford the luxury of hesitation. ‘Castellan Lebbick has arrested Master Eremis,’ she said, trying to sound like she knew what she was doing. ‘I need to talk to him.’

  That announcement widened his eyes. She saw him consider and reject a variety of responses in rapid succession – surprise, disapproval, curiosity. When he spoke, he had decided on unruffled amusement. ‘If Eremis is safely locked up, I don’t think Lebbick will want him to receive social visits.’

  He had a good point. Grasping at possibilities that hadn’t crossed her mind until that moment, she said, ‘But you can get me in. If we don’t ask the Castellan’s permission. If we just go to his cell. The guards will let you in,’ she concluded awkwardly, ‘because of who you are.’

  His expression became wary. ‘Maybe. But you’ll be taking a chance. Even if Lebbick doesn’t catch you, he’ll still be told you were there. I assume there must be some reason why Eremis was arrested. You’ll make yourself look like his accomplice. You’ll make me look like an accomplice. What good is that going to do?’

  For a moment, she froze. The matter was too urgent to be explained. King Joyse knew what he was doing. He was doing it on purpose. My daughter, what have I done to you? Master Eremis needed to know that. He couldn’t act or plan accurately unless he knew what he was up against. And he was Mordant’s only hope.

  Unfortunately, that also couldn’t be explained – to Artagel even less than to Geraden. The sons of the Domne were too loyal.

  Impelled by her sense of haste, she tried another prevarication. ‘Maybe I’m being naive, but I think what’s really wrong here is that none of the people who want to defend Mordant are willing to talk to each other. The Congery doesn’t trust Geraden. The King doesn’t trust the Congery. Nobody trusts Master Eremis. Castellan Lebbick doesn’t trust anybody. And meanwhile the whole kingdom is going to hell.’ She was pleased to hear that she sounded like she knew what she was talking about. ‘I want to see if I can make people start talking to each other.

  ‘I’ve just had a talk with King Joyse. Now I want to talk to Master Eremis. I think he’s the key to the whole thing.’

  Artagel watched her while she spoke, a bemused smile on his lips. When she finished, he shook his head, not in refusal, but in wonder. ‘You amaze me, my lady. You make it so simple. There must be some reason why it’s never been attempted.’ Then his smile broadened into a grin. ‘It might be fun. It might even work.’ Bowing extravagantly, he offered her his arm. ‘Shall we give it a try?’

  At once grateful for his acquiescence and alarmed by her own behavior, she accepted his arm and let him guide her down to the dungeons of Orison.

  The cells were physically close to the laborium. After the conversion of the original dungeons, the place where the Castellan kept his prisoners was separated from the workrooms of the Masters only by a masonry wall. Artagel took Terisa to the disused ballroom which was becoming so familiar to her – its emptiness a symbol of Orison’s loss of heart. Beyond it, a passage paralleling the entrance to the laborium led to a corresponding stairwell. There, however, the similarities ended. The atmosphere of the dungeon was a world away from the laborium.

  Ill-lit by torches guttering at intervals along the old walls, the place was dank and oppressive; she could feel the huge pile of Orison’s stone impending over her. Straw that smelled of rot – and perhaps, faintly, of blood – covered the floor. It had originally been scattered to sop up whatever the prisoners of the castle spilled, but now it served primarily to control moisture. The corridor was narrow but direct: after a second downward stair, it brought Terisa and Artagel to the guardroom.

  Here the men who were about to go on duty, or had just been released, or were taking a break could warm or refresh or relieve themselves; but the guardroom also served as part of the dungeon’s defenses. Although the chamber was appointed like a crude tavern, with trestle tables and rough benches for the guards, a few beds against the walls, a large hearth in which a fire struggled against the wet chill of the stone, and a short bar from which a servingman provided ale and meat, it also gave the only admittance to the cells: no one could get in or out of the dungeon without passing through the guardroom. Racks of swords and pikes along the walls above the beds suggested that the men in the guardroom were expected to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice.

  Discipline was slack, however – perhaps because most of Orison’s guards were exhausted by the previous day’s exertions; perhaps because the dungeon wasn’t the most vital or interesting part of the castle. One man sat honing his sword with the studious attention of diminished intelligence; the rest were less involved in their duties. Three guards at one table had obviously consumed more ale than was good for them; two more occupied beds, snoring in a perfect third; the rest threw dice in a corner of the room with more vehemence than pleasure.

  Artagel frowned at what he saw, then changed his expression to an insouciant smile. His eyes glittering, he said to no one in particular, ‘What a collection of slovens and aleheads. I could walk every prisoner you have through this room singing, and you wouldn’t notice until the Castellan locked you in irons.’

  Glaring with surprise, irritation, and stupidity, everyone who was awake turned toward him.

  When the guards recognized him, however, their hostility vanished. Expressions of gruff humor stretched their faces. Several of them guffawed hoarsely, and one riposted, ‘That’s true. Who cares about prisoners? But just try getting that woman past us.’

  ‘Anyway,’ another said, ‘the Castellan never comes here. Except when he wants to question Master Eremis. We always have plenty of warning.’

  ‘The fact is,’ explained a third, ‘Master Eremis is the only prisoner we’ve got. That’s bad enough – but you don’t know what misery is until you’ve spent an entire night turning away women who want to see him.’ Staring straight at Terisa, he clutched his groin. ‘I would give my left hand to know how he does it.’

  Terisa noticed that all the guards were now staring at her.

  Suddenly, she wanted to forget the whole thing and go back to her rooms.

  Then one of the dicers rose to his feet. A purple band knotted around his right bicep marked him as a captain of some kind. ‘Take it easy, you louts,’ he drawled. ‘Unless I’m confused in my old age, Artagel’s companion is the lady Terisa of Morgan. She isn’t one of Master Eremis’s toys – or yours either.

  ‘My lady’ – he gave Terisa a decent bow – ‘don’t look so worried. You aren’t in as much danger as you think. Artagel can unman half the rubbish here before they get their hands on their swords. And Castellan Lebbick would feed the other half to the pigs just for touching an unwilling woman.’

  Artagel’s answering smile made the captain straighten his shoulders. In a more rigid manner, he asked, ‘What can I do for you?’

  She had no idea how to respond, but her companion replied easily, ‘The lady Terisa is taking a tour of Orison. She wants to see the dungeon.’

  The guard with the armband hesitated; his eyes narrowed. ‘The Castellan isn’t going to like that.’

  Artagel’s smile stretched wider. ‘The Castellan isn’t going to hear about it.’

  Terisa was holding her breath. She felt rather than saw the men around her stiffen.

  ‘If he does,’ the captain observed slowly, ‘you won’t be the one who gets eaten alive. I will.’

  ‘That’s probably true.’ Artagel seemed to enjoy himself more and more by the minute. ‘But there’s one consolation. You’ll be safe from me. Whoever tells Lebbick we were here won’t be that lucky.’

  For a moment, Artagel and the guard captain measured each other. By degrees, the guard’s expression changed until it resembled Artagel’s threatening grin. He unhooked a ring of keys from his belt and tossed it to Terisa’s companion. ‘I don’t have any idea why you want to talk to Master Eremis. I don’t want to know.
Just don’t let him out.’

  ‘“Talk to Master Eremis”?’ Artagel was gleaming. ‘You aren’t serious. I would rather lie down in a nest of snakes.’

  ‘That’s a mistake,’ someone chortled. ‘There aren’t any women in a nest of snakes.’

  All the men laughed – with the exception of the guard honing his blade, who frowned as though the people around him spoke a foreign language.

  Artagel jingled the keys. ‘We’ll be back soon.’ Then he said to Terisa, ‘Come, my lady,’ as though she weren’t clinging tightly to his arm. Together, they crossed to the doorway which led to the corridors and cells of the dungeon.

  Beyond the guardroom, she asked softly, ‘Would you really kill somebody who betrayed us?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he replied negligently. ‘That’s why we’re safe. If they were really afraid of me, someone would talk.’

  For some reason, his tone didn’t carry conviction.

  Breathing deeply to ease the pressure in her chest, she inhaled the rotten air and tried to remember why she was here.

  To talk to Master Eremis. To tell him what she had learned from the King. So that he would know better where he stood, what Mordant’s true danger was. So that he could decide what to do, now that his attempts to unite the Congery with the lords of the Cares and Prince Kragen had failed.

  To see him again, so that she could try to understand what he meant to her, why the mere thought of him was enough to make her nerves tingle.

  Her heart laboring, she went with Artagel past a first turn in the passage, past a second, and into the area of the cells.

  Perhaps because the dungeon itself was so obviously closed, the cells were relatively open. They didn’t have solid doors to shut their occupants in. Instead, each of them was essentially a deep niche cut into the foundation stone of the castle, eight or ten feet deep and just wide enough to accommodate a low cot and a washstand against the back wall. A heavy iron grid bolted to the stone served as the near wall for each cell; a barred door in the grid provided entrance and egress.

  All the nearby cells were empty: apparently, King Joyse’s recent rule hadn’t supplied the Castellan with a significant number of prisoners. Nevertheless the glow of a lamp some distance ahead implied that one cell, at least, was occupied. Terisa and Artagel walked toward it, their feet rustling through the straw on the floor. As they passed, the one lantern that provided dim illumination for this corridor made ghoulish shadows leap in and out of the cells on either side.

  Before they reached his cell, Master Eremis said in a voice pitched to carry, ‘Astonishing. I thought that I would be left alone longer. The time is not right for a meal. Have more innocents been arrested? Has the Castellan already obtained King Joyse’s permission to torture me?’ He sounded almost jovial. ‘Can it be that I have been granted a visitor?’

  ‘You’re in good spirits, Master Eremis,’ commented Artagel dryly as he and Terisa reached the cell. ‘I hope you have reason. As I remember, the last time Lebbick locked somebody up down here, she was executed two days later. A Cadwal spy, I think she was. Before that, it was a brigand who lost both hands for his trouble.’

  At first glance, this cell seemed as empty as the others. A small oil lamp balanced on the washstand revealed that a rumpled blanket covered the dirty mattress on the cot; but the light didn’t show Master Eremis. Instead, it reflected delicately in the fine trails of moisture dripping down the granite.

  Then, however, a darker place – a place without reflections – took shape against the wall.

  He was sitting on the end of the cot as far from the lamp as possible, and his jet cloak blended him into the shadows. Until Terisa’s eyes adjusted, she saw the pale skin of his face and hands as nothing more than stains on the old stone of the wall.

  He wasn’t wearing his chasuble. He had given it up – or it had been taken from him.

  ‘My lady,’ he murmured. Now his voice didn’t carry: it was soft, almost intimate. ‘I wanted you to come.’

  That statement went straight into her heart. It was pitched to a key which made her whole being resonate. Nobody else except Geraden had ever said anything like that to her. And nobody else in the world had ever spoken to her with that specific magnetic vibration, that knowing and personal passion. In an instant, all her reasons for being here changed to suit the tone in which he said, I wanted you to come.

  Without thinking, she said to Artagel, ‘Let me in. I need to talk to him.’

  Artagel glanced at her strangely. But the expression on her face must have convinced him not to argue with her. With a shrug, he stepped to the door, tried a few keys until he found the right one, then unlocked the Imager’s cell.

  Before either common sense or timidity could inspire her to question what she was doing, she entered the cell.

  At once, Artagel closed the door. In a distant, noncommittal manner, he said, ‘I’ll be nearby. Just raise your voice. If he tries to do anything, I’ll kill him so fast he won’t know he’s dead until afterward.’

  Quietly, he moved a few paces away down the corridor.

  Terisa paid no attention to him. She was focused on Master Eremis.

  He hadn’t left his seat on the end of the cot. He didn’t speak. He was still hard to see in the dim light. Involuntarily, she slowed down as she moved toward him.

  The cot was low: despite his height, his head only reached her shoulders. When she was near enough, however, he sat forward, drew her between his spread knees, and pulled her head down to take her mouth in an urgent kiss. She tasted wine and desire on his breath.

  The strength of his embrace and the insistence of his tongue seemed to complete the change in her. She responded with everything he had taught her, trying to make her kiss as intimate as his. A long moment passed before she remembered that she had other reasons for being here: that without having planned to do so she had joined the ranks of King Joyse’s opponents; that Mordant’s fate might hinge on what she could tell Master Eremis. And they weren’t really alone.

  Deliberately, she pushed herself back a little way. Trying to recover her breath, she murmured, ‘That’s not why I came.’

  ‘Is it not?’ Still holding her with both knees and one arm, he raised his free hand to the buttons of her shirt. ‘It would be enough for me.’

  Again, he kissed her.

  When he let her pull back once more, his deft fingers began to open her shirt.

  ‘Artagel will see us.’ In spite of her anxiety, she kept her protest low. She wanted the Master to touch her.

  ‘He will not if you do not raise your voice. Artagel is scrupulous.’

  His hand slipped inside her shirt. His fingers were cold, bringing her nipples erect at once, making her breasts ache for him.

  His behavior and her own unexpected emotions confused her; she could hardly think. Nevertheless she made one more attempt to draw away. ‘I’ve just talked to the King. I came straight to you from him.’

  Somewhat to her chagrin – as well as to her relief – Master Eremis loosened his grip. ‘A talk with the King,’ he murmured, tilting his head back to peer into her face. ‘That is an honor which all Orison and half of Mordant would envy you. What did the old dodderer desire?’ He caressed one of her breasts. ‘Does he have enough life left in him to covet my place?’

  ‘Castellan Lebbick came to arrest me.’ She wanted to explain everything clearly, make the importance of what she had learned plain; but she felt that she was babbling. ‘The Tor and Geraden stopped him. But King Joyse wanted to talk to me anyway.’ Quickly furious at her incoherence, she halted, took a deep breath, then said distinctly, ‘He’s not an old dodderer. He knows what he’s doing. He’s doing it on purpose.’

  The Master’s sharp face betrayed no reaction; yet his sudden stillness suggested that she had touched on something important. Slowly, he lowered his hand. ‘My lady, you must tell me everything. Begin at the beginning. Why did Lebbick decide to arrest you?’

  His attitude was like ma
gic: it made her firmer, stronger. At once, her confusion receded. ‘I think it’s the same reason he arrested you. You broke one of the King’s rules, I know that – but I don’t think it’s the real reason. I think the real reason is that he figured out we went to a meeting with the lords and Prince Kragen. He believes we’re all traitors.’

  It was his embrace that confirmed her, his expressionless face, the steady pressure of his knees. She might have been willing to tell him anything. Yet she made no mention of Myste or secret passages; she said nothing about Master Quillon. Instinctively, she focused on the attack after Eremis’ clandestine meeting two nights ago; on the bloodshed that had led Castellan Lebbick to her; on the Castellan’s conclusions. Then she explained how the Tor and Geraden had rescued her from arrest.

  After that, she had to be more careful. Acutely conscious that she wasn’t a good liar, she said, ‘He wanted to talk to me about his daughter Myste. She’s vanished. He thought I might know where she’s gone. I pretended I did to make him talk to me.’ Hurrying once more to get past her falsehood, she described the answers King Joyse had given to her questions.

  Now Master Eremis did react. By the weak lamplight, she thought she saw surprise, anger, excitement emerge in glimpses from the darkness surrounding him. At one point, he breathed as if involuntarily, ‘That old butcher.’ At another, he whispered, ‘Cunning. Cunning. I was warned, but I did not believe—’ Calculations as quick as his emotions ran behind his eyes.

  When she was done, he thought soberly for several moments. Without releasing her, he gave the impression that they had become distant from each other. As though she weren’t still clasped in his arms, he said, ‘This will be a better contest than I anticipated.’

  Almost immediately, however, his notice returned to her. Tightening his embrace, he studied her face and said in a detached tone, ‘You have done me a considerable kindness, my lady. I wonder why. I have claimed you’ – he squeezed her with his knees – ‘and you are mine. No woman refuses me. But I can hardly fail to observe that you are enamored of that puppy Geraden. And you risk more than Lebbick’s rage by coming here. Why have you done it?’