Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  There he waited for Geraden to join him.

  The Masters watched without moving. Castellan Lebbick’s jaws chewed indigestible thoughts; his gaze didn’t shift an inch from the brothers.

  They stood with Geraden’s back to the room. Terisa could see Nyle’s face: it was set and savage, more implacable – and more desperate – than it had been when he had ridden away to betray Orison. He looked at once homicidal and appalled, as if he were involved in a crime which made every inch of him cringe.

  Whispering, he said something to Geraden.

  It must have been something hurtful: Geraden reacted as though he had been struck. He flinched; he surged forward. From the back, he appeared to have taken hold of Nyle’s cloak.

  Between the brothers, an iron dagger dropped to the floor, clattering metallically on the stone.

  It was covered with blood.

  Nyle slumped against the wall. His eyes rolled shut. Then his knees bent. Geraden tried to catch him, but he collapsed on his back. His cloak fell open, exposing the red mess the knife had made of his abdomen.

  Like the dagger, Geraden’s hands were covered with blood.

  TWENTY-SIX

  FRATRICIDE

  In the stunned silence of her mind, Terisa started screaming. Fortunately, she didn’t scream aloud. For a moment, no one said anything aloud. No one did anything at all. Everyone simply gaped at Geraden and Nyle.

  Then Geraden made a constricted noise like a sob, and the Congery erupted.

  Masters jumped out of their chairs and headed in all directions. Castellan Lebbick burst into motion, hurtling like a destructive projectile toward Geraden. Geraden cowered against the wall as if he were cornered.

  Over the chaos, Terisa cried out, ‘Geraden! Run!’

  As if she had set him on fire, he flung himself at the door.

  He was too late, too slow: he was in a state of shock and couldn’t match the Castellan’s instinct for action. But a few of the Masters were also rushing at him, perhaps wanting to capture him, perhaps hoping to help Nyle. One of them was Master Quillon.

  As fast as a rabbit, he dove after Geraden – and stumbled.

  He fell directly in front of Castellan Lebbick, accidentally cutting the Castellan’s legs out from under him. Lebbick plunged to the stone.

  Geraden reached the door and jerked it open.

  ‘Stop him! ’ Castellan Lebbick roared at the guards outside. ‘Stop Geraden!

  ’ The door slammed shut in time to cut off his shout.

  Master Barsonage stood alone in the middle of the confusion. While Imagers shouted at each other and tried to decide which way to run, he clasped his hands together and gaped at nothing. Even his involuntary tic was paralyzed.

  Still roaring, the Castellan sprang upright, heaved Masters away from him on both sides, charged the door.

  Master Eremis wasn’t the first to reach Nyle. Nevertheless he shoved everyone else aside, swept the bloody form up in his arms, and began dodging toward the far exit. ‘A physician!’ he barked although no one was listening to him. ‘He must have a physician!’

  Automatically, Terisa followed Master Eremis and Nyle.

  Without warning, someone caught her by the arm. Forced to turn, she found herself facing Master Quillon.

  His bright eyes shone; his nose twitched extravagantly. ‘Come!’ he demanded in a voice that seemed to pierce straight through the confusion into her heart. ‘We must help him!’

  At once, he started forward, hauling her into motion toward the door Master Eremis had just taken.

  The two guards assigned to that door were in the room, shouting for order and answers. Master Quillon ducked past them. They made an effort to stop Terisa, then let her go: the turmoil of the Congery demanded their attention.

  With his gray robe flapping against his knees, Master Quillon broke into a run.

  She had no idea where he was going: she followed him simply because he had used the word help. But suddenly she began to recognize this part of the laborium. Down a corridor, then along an intersecting passage, Master Quillon brought her to a door small and heavy enough to be the door of a cell.

  This door also was guarded.

  ‘Quickly!’ Master Quillon shouted at the men. ‘Someone has been killed!’ He pointed back the way he and Terisa had come. ‘The Castellan needs you!’

  His urgency was so convincing that both guards left their post at full speed, drawing their swords as they ran.

  Immediately, Master Quillon swung the door open, ushered Terisa through it, and closed it again.

  They had entered the antechamber of the network of cells that had been rebuilt for the storage and display of the Congery’s mirrors.

  ‘Will he come here?’ she asked. She was panting hard.

  With unintended brutality, Master Quillon replied, ‘He has nowhere else to go.’ Taking her arm again, he impelled her through the nearest entryway into the warren of showrooms.

  But he didn’t accompany her.

  When he stopped, she turned back to question him.

  ‘Go!’ he snapped. ‘Help him! I will gain as much time as I can. I will be believed when I say he did not come here – at least for a minute or two.’

  She stared. Help him?

  ‘Go, I say!’ He gave her a push.

  She stumbled, caught her balance, and fled the antechamber.

  Help him? Geraden?

  Nyle was dead. His belly had been cut open with a knife.

  Why?

  So he wouldn’t speak to the Congery. So he wouldn’t support Master Eremis’ accusations.

  Geraden!

  As soon as she found the room where the mirror that had brought her to Orison was on display, she spotted him. He was trying to dodge past an entryway, trying to hide, but he wasn’t quick enough to avoid her.

  Master Gilbur’s original glass had been destroyed by the champion, of course: this mirror was Geraden’s copy. Because it was covered, she couldn’t see what scene it showed.

  ‘Geraden!’ she whispered. She was afraid to shout. ‘It’s me. Terisa.’

  After a moment, he came out of hiding to confront her.

  He had become a different person. His face was iron; his eyes were steel. He spoke as if he could call up authority against her at any time.

  ‘Have you come to persuade me to surrender?’

  ‘No.’ She could hardly force out words. Something inside her was breaking. ‘He told me to help you.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Master Quillon.’

  ‘He should have come himself.’

  The sound of a door echoed faintly through the rooms. Terisa heard a distant murmur of voices.

  ‘If you are an Imager, my lady,’ Geraden went on, ‘you may be able to help me. Otherwise, I have no escape.’

  ‘You know I’m not an Imager.’ Oh, my love! ‘What was Nyle going to say about you?’

  He looked unreachable – too hard and inhuman to be touched. Yet something in her voice or her face or the way she stood must have penetrated him. His defenses cracked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said as if he had arrived without transition on the verge of tears. ‘Nothing at all. It’s a trick. Something Master Eremis cooked up against me.

  ‘Terisa, I did not kill my brother.’

  She heard Castellan Lebbick clearly. ‘Spread out! He’s got to be in here. I want him alive.’

  ‘I’m not an Imager!’ she cried. ‘I can’t help you!’

  In misery, she flung her arms around Geraden’s neck.

  He clung to her until they both heard the sound of hard boots approaching them from one of the other rooms. At once, they sprang apart.

  He had become iron again.

  Without hesitation, he turned to the mirror and swept off its cover.

  The glass showed the bitter alien landscape where the champion and his men had failed.

  ‘No, Geraden!’ she gasped. ‘You’ll be lost! You’ll never get back.’

  He didn’t heed her.
‘As soon as I am translated, my lady,’ he said as if she were a stranger, ‘please shift the focus of the mirror. If I am visible in the Image, I will be pursued.’

  He said something she didn’t understand. His fingers stroked the wooden frame in parting; his hands made a gesture of farewell.

  Then he stepped into the mirror and left her alone.

  But he didn’t appear in the Image.

  She searched the scene feverishly: there was no sign of him. Once again, his glass had performed an impossible translation. It had taken him to a place it didn’t show.

  This time, however, no one was holding on to his foot. He had no way to come back. He was gone completely.

  Castellan Lebbick came upon her so suddenly that she would have wailed if she hadn’t been in such dismay.

  He looked around the room, peered into the glass. Then he put his hands on her arms and ground his fingers into her weak flesh. A ferocious triumph burned in his face.

  ‘Now you’ve done it, woman,’ he said almost cheerfully. ‘You’ve done something so vile that nobody is going to protect you. You’ve helped a murderer escape.’

  She should have said something to defend herself. A denial would have cost Geraden nothing. He was beyond harm. But she only held her head up and met the Castellan’s flagrant gaze as well as she could with her own distress and didn’t speak.

  ‘Now,’ he said through his teeth, ‘you are mine.’

  A MAN RIDES THROUGH

  ‘Steeped in the vacuum of her dreams,

  A mirror’s empty till

  A man rides through it.’

  – John Myers Myers, Silverlock

  Book Three

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE PRINCE’S SIEGE

  Early the next morning, the siege of Orison began. The huge, rectangular pile of the castle stood on slightly lower ground, surrounded by bare dirt and straggling grass – and surrounded, too, by the Alend army, with its supporting horde of servants and camp followers. From Prince Kragen’s perspective, Orison looked too massive – and the ring of attackers around it too thin – for the siege to succeed. He understood sieges, however. He knew his force was strong enough to take the castle.

  Nevertheless the Prince didn’t risk any men. He felt the pressure of time, of course: he could almost taste High King Festten’s army marching out of Cadwal against him, a sensation as disturbing as a stench borne along on the edges of the raw wind. And that army was large – the Prince knew this because he had captured a number of the Perdon’s wounded men on their way to Orison and had taken the information from them. Composed half of mercenaries, half of his own troops, the High King’s troops numbered at least twenty thousand. And of the Alend Monarch’s men there were barely ten thousand.

  So Kragen had to hurry. He needed to take Orison and fortify it before those twenty thousand Cadwals crossed the Broadwine into the Demesne. Otherwise when the High King came he would have no choice but to retreat ignominiously. Unless he was willing to lose his entire force in an effort to help Joyse keep the Congery out of Cadwal’s hands. The lady Elega’s plan to paralyze Orison from within had failed, and now time was not on the Alend Contender’s side.

  Still he didn’t risk any men. He was going to need them soon enough.

  Instead, he ordered his catapults into position to heave rocks at the scant curtain-wall which protected the hole in the side of the castle.

  He had seen that wound from a similar vantage point the day after the Congery’s mad champion had blasted his way to freedom, the day when as the Alend Monarch’s ambassador he had formally departed Orison: a smoking breach with a look of death about it torn in one face of the blunt stone. The damage had been impressive then, seen against a background of cold and snow, like a fatal hurt that steamed because the corpse was still warm. The sight of it had simultaneously lifted and chilled Prince Kragen’s heart, promising as it did that Orison could be taken – that a power which had once ruled Mordant and controlled the ancient conflict between Alend and Cadwal was doomed.

  In some ways, however, King Joyse’s seat looked more vulnerable now. The inadequacies of the curtain-wall were so simple that a child could measure them. Considering his circumstances, Castellan Lebbick had done well – quite well, in fact. But circumstantial excuses wouldn’t help the wall stand against siege engines. The Prince’s captain of catapults was privately taking bets as to whether the curtain-wall could survive more than one good hit.

  No, the obvious question facing Prince Kragen was not whether he could break into Orison, but rather how hard the castle would defend itself. The lady Elega had failed to poison Lebbick’s guards – but she had poisoned the reservoir, putting the badly overcrowded castle into a state of severe rationing. And as for King Joyse – He wasn’t just the leader of his people: he was their hero, the man who had given them identity as well as ideals. Now he had lost his mind. Leaderless and desperate, how fiercely would the Mordants fight?

  They might find it in themselves to fight very fiercely, if Joyse kept his word. He had certainly lost his mind, there was no doubt about that. Yet he had met Alend’s demand for surrender with the one threat which might give heart to his followers: King Joyse intends to unleash the full force of the Congery against you and rout you from the Earth!

  Elega didn’t believe that, but the Prince lacked her confidence. If Joyse did indeed unleash the Congery, then what happened to Alend’s army might be worse than a rout. It might be complete ruin.

  So Prince Kragen held his troops back from the walls of Orison. Wearing his spiked helmet over his curly black hair, with his moustache waxed to a bold gloss that matched his eyes, and his longsword and breastplate exposed by the negligent way he wore his white fur robe, he was the image of assurance and vitality as he readied his forces, warned back the army’s camp followers, discussed weights and trajectories with his captain of catapults. Nevertheless every thought in his head was hedged with doubts. He didn’t intend to risk any men until he had to. He was afraid that he might soon need them all.

  The terrain suited catapults. For one thing, it was clear. Except for the trees edging the roads, the ground was uncluttered: virtually all the natural brush had been cut away, and even the grass struggling to come out for the spring was having a hard time because of the chill and the lack of rain. And the roads weren’t in Kragen’s way: they met some distance outside Orison’s gates to the northeast of the castle, and the wound in the wall faced more toward the northwest. For another, Orison’s immediate setting was either level with or slightly lower than the positions of Alend’s army. As Prince Kragen’s military teachers and advisors had drummed into him for years, it was exceptionally difficult to aim catapults uphill. Here, however, the shot which actually presented itself to his siege engines was an easy one.

  The lady Elega came to his side while the most powerful of the catapults was being loaded. His mind was preoccupied; but she had the capacity to get his attention at any time, and he greeted her with a smile that was warmer than his distracted words.

  ‘My lady, we are about to begin.’

  Clutching her robe about her, she looked hard at her home. ‘What will happen, my lord Prince?’ she murmured as if she didn’t expect an answer. ‘Will the curtain-wall hold? The Castellan is a cunning old veteran. Surely he had done his best for Orison.’

  Prince Kragen studied her face while she studied the castle. Because he loved her, even admired her – and because he was reluctant to acknowledge that he didn’t entirely trust a woman who had tried so hard to betray her own father – it was difficult for him to admit that she wasn’t at her best under these conditions. Cold and wind took the spark out of her vivid eyes, turning them sore and puffy; stark sunlight made her look wan, bloodless, like a woman with no heart. She was only lovely when she was within doors, seen by the light of candles and intrigue. Yet her present lack of beauty only caused the Prince to love her more. He knew that she did indeed have a heart. The fingers that held her robe closed were
pale and urgent. Every word she said, and every line of her stance, told him that she was mourning.

  ‘Oh, the wall will fall,’ he replied in the same distracted tone. ‘We will have it down before sunset – perhaps before noon. It was raised in winter. Let Lebbick be as cunning and experienced as you wish.’ Kragen didn’t much like the dour Castellan. ‘He has had nothing to use for mortar. If he took all the sand of the Congery – and then butchered every Imager for blood – he would still be unable to seal those stones against us.’

  The lady winced slightly. ‘And when it comes down?’ she asked, pursuing an unspoken worry. ‘What then?’

  ‘When this blow is struck,’ he said, suddenly harsh, ‘there will be no turning back. Alend will be at war with Mordant. And we cannot wait for thirst and fear to do our work for us. The Perdon is all that stands between us and High King Festten. We will make the breach as large as we can. Then we will fight our way in.’ A moment later, however, he took pity on her and added, ‘Orison will be given every conceivable opportunity to surrender. I want no slaughter. Every man, woman, and child there will be needed against Cadwal.’

  Elega looked at him, mute gratitude on her chafed and swollen face. She thought for a while, then nodded. ‘Castellan Lebbick will never surrender. My father has never surrendered in his life.’

  ‘Then they must begin here,’ snapped the Prince.

  He believed that. He believed that the curtain-wall couldn’t hold – that apart from Imagery, Orison didn’t have the resources to withstand his assault. Yet doubts he could hardly name tightened their grip on his stomach as he ordered the captain to throw the first stone.

  In unison, two brawny men swung mallets against the hooks on either side of the catapult; the great arm leaped forward and slammed against its stops; a boulder as heavy as a man arced out of the cup. The throw raised a shout of anticipation from the army, but Prince Kragen watched it go grimly. The flat smack of the mallets, the groan of stress in the timbers, the thud of the stops and the protest of the wheels: he seemed to feel them in his chest, as if they were blows struck against him – as if he could tell simply by the sound that the stone was going to miss.