Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Abruptly, the Imager jerked to his feet. He was suddenly angry: he bristled with indignation. Quietly, but with such intensity that he shocked her to silence, he replied, ‘So that he would attack here.’

  What—?

  ‘We did not know who he was, my lady. Remember that. We did not know who he was until last night, when he erred by trying to make us believe that Geraden had killed Nyle. Before that, we had few suspicions – and less proof. We did not know who he was.’ Red spots flamed on the Master’s cheeks. ‘We knew only that he was powerful – that he had the ability, unprecedented in the history of Imagery, to inflict his translations wherever he chose. We had no way to find him, no way to combat him. No way to protect Mordant from him.

  ‘But worse than the danger to Mordant was the threat to Alend and Cadwal, that had no Imagers to defend them. That King Joyse had accomplished with his ideal of the Congery and peace, that Cadwal and Alend were more helpless than Mordant against the enemy. That he was responsible for. His past victories have left Alend and Cadwal at the mercy of his new foes.

  ‘Therefore’ – Master Quillon gritted his teeth to keep from shouting – ‘King Joyse set himself to save the world.

  ‘His weakness is an ambush. He lures the enemy to strike here rather than elsewhere – to inflict their peril and harm here rather than on the people he has made vulnerable – to attack Mordant and Orison rather than first swallowing Cadwal and Alend and thereby growing too strong to be defeated. We did not know who he was.’

  Roughly, Quillon shrugged, trying to restrain his anger. ‘That is the reason for everything King Joyse has done. That – and the Congery’s augury – and Geraden’s strange translation, which brought you here. When you came among us, your importance was obvious at once. Clearly, it was vital to make you aware of the world you had entered, so that you could choose your own role in Mordant’s need. Even a good person may do ill out of ignorance, but only a destructive one would do ill out of knowledge. The augury made it clear that we had to trust you or die.

  ‘But Geraden was also at risk – and his importance was also plain in the augury. His only protection lay in King Joyse’s weakness. If Geraden were granted the ability to elicit intelligent, decisive action from his King, the enemy would surely kill him. In addition, the belief that you were ignorant was a form of protection for you. So it was vital also to spurn Geraden’s loyalty – and then to make you aware of Mordant’s history in secret.

  ‘My lady, I argued against that decision. From the beginning, I found it difficult to trust you – a woman of such passivity. What hope did you represent to us? But King Joyse insisted. That is why Adept Havelock and I approached you and spoke to you, giving you in secret the knowledge which both the Congery and the King had denied to you publicly.’

  Oh, of course, now I understand. Terisa felt herself smiling into the quagmire of her own stupidity. Had she really spent her entire life like this – helpless, passive, unable to think?

  ‘The translation of the Congery’s champion,’ rasped Quillon, ‘presented a similar problem in a different guise. Again, the champion’s importance in the augury is plain. Therefore King Joyse must oppose that translation, in order to appear determined on his own defeat. And yet he must be too weak to oppose the translation successfully. And I was at risk there, in addition to Geraden and yourself. My loyalties had to be concealed. So King Joyse had no choice but to refuse to hear the Fayle’s warnings – and to ensure that Castellan Lebbick did not learn what transpired until the translation could no longer be stopped.

  ‘My lady’ – now Master Quillon faced her squarely, and Terisa saw that some of his anger was directed at her – ‘it will be easy for you to be outraged at what we have done. You have already said that everybody who loves King Joyse or is loyal to him has been hurt – and you are right. His policy is dangerous. Therefore the only way he can save those who love him is to drive them away – to make them distance themselves from the seat of peril he has chosen for himself. He succeeded with Queen Madin. But his failure with such men as the Tor and Geraden haunts him. If harm comes to them, he will carry the fault on his own head, even though they have chosen to do what they do.

  ‘Nevertheless you should understand what he does before you protest against it. He hazards himself so that thousands of men and women from the mountains of Alend to the coast of Cadwal will be spared. He tears his own heart so that the people he loves may be spared. He places the kingdom that he built with his own hands in danger so that his traditional enemies can be spared.

  ‘If you cannot trust him or serve him, my lady, you must at least respect him. He created his own dilemma, and he accepts its consequences. He does what he is able to do, so that the harm his enemies do will be suffered by a few instead of by many.’

  Because the Imager was angry at her – and because she was angry herself and didn’t know how to conceal it – she turned away. The light seemed to be failing; maybe the lamp was running out of oil. Darkness gathered in all the corners: fatal implications spilled past the bars from the corridor into the cell. You must at least respect him. A man whose idea of wise policy was to twist a knife in his friends’ hearts and leave his enemies unscathed. Of course she had to respect that. Sure.

  She could hear Castellan Lebbick crying like a farewell, I am loyal to my King!

  With more bitterness than she had realized she contained, more indignation than she had ever been aware of possessing, she asked softly, ‘What about the Castellan?’

  ‘What about him?’ returned Master Quillon. Perhaps he was too irate to guess what she meant.

  ‘Maybe the Tor and Geraden have made their own choices. They’re more stable than he is. What choice did you ever give him? If he tried to quit serving, King Joyse would have to stop him. This whole policy’ – she sneered the word – ‘depends on the Castellan. If he doesn’t stay faithful – if he doesn’t do his utter best to keep Orison strong while King Joyse is busy being weak – then the whole thing collapses. When King Joyse finally decides to fight, he won’t have anything to fight with. Unless the Castellan stays faithful.’

  Master Quillon nodded. ‘That is true. What is your point?’

  ‘He doesn’t have any choice, and it’s killing him.’ Sudden pity surged up through her bitterness. The man Lebbick had once been would probably have treated her with nothing more terrible than detached sarcasm or kindness. But the entire weight of King Joyse’s policy had come down on his shoulders, and now he could hardly refrain from raping or murdering her. ‘Don’t you see that? What you’re doing is expensive, and you’re making him pay for all of it.’ Without warning, she began to weep again. Her distress and the Castellan’s were too intimately interconnected. ‘You and your precious King are destroying him.’

  She expected Master Quillon to yell at her. She was ready for that: she didn’t care how angry he got, what he said. Somehow she had gone past the point where mere outrage could threaten her. She had anger of her own, and it was no longer hidden away. If her father had appeared before her there and lost his temper, she would have known how to respond.

  The Imager didn’t yell at her, however. He didn’t raise his voice. Slowly, he moved to the door of the cell. Perhaps he intended to leave, give up on her: she didn’t know – and didn’t care. But he didn’t do that, either. He waited until she looked up at him, lifted her head defiantly and glared at him through her tears. Then he said quietly, ‘We didn’t know this was going to happen. We thought he was stronger.’

  Just for a second, she almost stopped crying in order to laugh. Imagine it. An aging King and a madman and a minor Imager got together to save the world – and the best plan they could come up with required them to drive the only man in Orison who knew how to fight for them out of his mind. It was funny, really. The only thing she didn’t understand was, what made them think it would work? How could they possibly believe—?

  The sound of a door rang down the passage: iron hit stone with such savagery that the e
cho seemed to carry a hint of snapped hinges.

  ‘Lying slut!’ howled the Castellan. ‘I’ll have you gutted for this!’

  His boots started toward her from the guardroom.

  Terisa froze in shock. Castellan Lebbick was coming to get her. He was coming to get her, and there was nothing she could do. Master Quillon said something, but she didn’t hear what it was. In her mind, she saw the corridor from the guardroom: one turn; another; then the long line of the cells. The Castellan was coming hard, but he wasn’t running; he might run as he drew closer, but he wasn’t running yet; he was at the first turn – on his way to the next. He would reach her cell in half a minute. Her life had that many seconds left. No more.

  ‘Are you deaf?’ Quillon grabbed her wrist and hauled her off the cot. ‘I said, Come on.’

  She didn’t have a chance to think, to choose. He wrenched her through the open door out into the passage. But he was pulling on her too hard, away from the guardroom: she staggered against the far wall and fell; her weight twisted her wrist from his grasp.

  As she scrambled to her feet again, she saw Castellan Lebbick come into view past the second turn.

  He saw her as well. For an instant, their eyes met across the distance, as if they had become astonishing to each other.

  Then he let out a roar of fury – and she skittered in the opposite direction, her boots slipping on the rotten straw.

  She could hear him coming after her. That was impossible; her feet and breathing and Master Quillon’s shouts made too much noise. Nevertheless her sense of his overwhelming rage, his ache for destruction, made his pursuit loud in her mind. She could feel his hate reaching out—

  And ahead of her the Imager was losing ground. He slowed his flight; took the time to turn and beckon frantically.

  A second later, he whipped open the door to another cell, dashed inside.

  She followed without thinking. She had no time to think. Deflecting her momentum against the bars, she flung herself into the cell faster than Master Quillon was moving and nearly ran him down when he stopped.

  Quickly, he opened a door in the side wall.

  It was well hidden: the spring that released it was so cunningly concealed that she would never have found it for herself; and until he hit the spring she couldn’t see the door itself. Then it swung wide, moving smoothly, as if it were counterbalanced on its hinges and controlled by weights. It must have been built in when this cell was first constructed.

  That was how Master Quillon had gained access to the dungeon. How he had been able to listen to her conversations with Eremis and Lebbick. Another secret passage. But she didn’t have time to be surprised. As soon as the door opened, Quillon caught at her arm again and thrust her forward, into the unlit passage.

  He followed on her heels. Trying to make room for him without advancing into the dark, she found a wall and put her back to it. He was only a silhouette against the dim reflection from the dungeon lamps. At once, he tripped the mechanism that moved the weights to close and seal the door—

  —and Castellan Lebbick burst into the cell.

  He was too late: he wasn’t going to be able to prevent the door from shutting. And once it was shut he would have to find the spring to open it again.

  Nevertheless he was fast, and his sword was already in his hands. Driving wildly to spit Terisa through the closing of the door, he plunged forward, hurled himself headlong toward her.

  The door’s weight swept his thrust aside. His swordtip missed her by several inches.

  Then his sword was caught in the crack of the door. The iron held, jamming the stone so that it couldn’t seal.

  His body thudded against the door; he recoiled, staggering.

  A moment later, his voice came, muffled, into the dark. ‘Guards! Guards! ’

  ‘Come on!’ hissed Master Quillon. He took Terisa by the wrist once more and tugged her away from the thin slit of illumination. ‘Curse him! As soon as his men arrive, he will be able to open that door. We must escape now.’

  Struggling for balance, she hurried after her rescuer into a blind passage.

  Stone seemed to whirl about her head like a swarm of bats, probing for some way to strike at her. There was no light – no light of any kind. Except for his grip, Master Quillon had ceased to exist. Her shoulders kept hitting the walls as if she were reeling. She couldn’t keep up this pace; she had no idea where the passage went, or how it got there. ‘Slow down!’ she panted. ‘I can’t see.’

  ‘You do not need to see,’ Quillon snapped. ‘You need to hurry.’

  Still trying to make him slacken speed, she protested, ‘How long?’

  Without warning, he halted. At the same time, he let go of her. She collided with him, stumbled against the wall again, flung up her arms to protect her head.

  ‘Not long,’ he muttered acerbically. ‘This passage was put in when the dungeons were rebuilt to provide room for the laborium. In other words, it is relatively recent. So it does not connect to the more extensive passage systems.’

  Unseen beside her, he tripped another release, and the wall she had just hit opened, letting cold air wash over her. Her torn shirt couldn’t keep the chill out.

  The space into which the door gave admittance was dim, almost black; but after a moment her eyes adjusted, and she saw ahead of her a truncated bit of hall leading to a wider corridor. Lanterns out of sight along the corridor in one direction or the other supplied just enough reflected glow to soften the gloom.

  When she caught her breath to listen, the sound which came to her was the delicate spatter of dripping water.

  Cold and wet. And a side passage too short to be worth lighting with a lantern of its own. A passage that seemed to go nowhere, as long as this door was closed and hidden.

  Despite the distractions of fear, exertion, and surprise, her nerves turned to ice as if she had been here before.

  ‘Now, my lady,’ whispered Master Quillon, ‘we must be both quick and quiet. These are the disused passages beneath the foundations of Orison, where twice you were attacked. They are back in use now, housing our increased population, but that is not our chief worry. Those people will be asleep – or too confused to hinder us. No, the difficulty is that these halls are now guarded to keep the peace – regularly patrolled. Somehow, we must avoid the Castellan’s men.’

  No, she thought dumbly. That isn’t right. Her brain felt like rock, impermeable to understanding. She had never seen the hall from this side, but it looked the same; the hairs on her forearms lifted as if the hall were the same. When Master Quillon started forward, she managed to reach out and stop him.

  ‘No,’ she whispered, almost croaking. ‘This is the place. I’m sure of it.’

  He stood motionless and studied her narrowly. ‘What place?’ The air grew colder on her skin while he stared at her.

  ‘The translation point.’ The cold made her shiver. Long tremors seemed to start in her bones and build outward until her voice shook. ‘Where those insects came through to get Geraden. And Gart—’

  Closing her arms across her chest, she hugged herself to silence.

  ‘What, here?’ the Imager asked in surprise. ‘Exactly here?’

  She nodded as well as she could.

  ‘We did not know that,’ he muttered; he appeared to be thinking rapidly. ‘We knew the general area, of course.’ His quick eyes studied the passage. ‘But the Adept did not observe the actual translations. And we could hardly afford to betray our interest by asking you or Artagel to show us specifically where the attacks took place.’

  Terisa ignored what he was saying; it didn’t matter. What mattered was the mirror which brought people who wanted to kill her into Orison. ‘We can’t go there,’ she breathed through her shivers. ‘I can’t go there. They’ll see us.’

  They’ll come after us.

  ‘A good point, my lady.’ Master Quillon’s nose twitched as though he were trying to sniff out a way of escape. ‘If they saw us in the Image – and if
they were ready for us—’

  A grunting noise, a sound of strain or protest, carried along the passage from the entrance to the dungeons behind them.

  The Master and Terisa froze.

  ‘Put your backs into it, shitlickers.’ Castellan Lebbick’s voice was obscured by stone and distance, but unmistakable. ‘Get that door open before we lose them completely.’

  Terisa wanted to groan, but she couldn’t stop shivering.

  ‘Glass and splinters!’ Quillon swore under his breath. ‘This is a tidy predicament.’

  An instant later, however, he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her to get her attention. ‘My lady, listen.

  ‘The focus of that glass was shifted. I saw Eremis translated into the dungeon. I saw him depart. He must have used the same mirror which brought your attackers here. Why else was I permitted to eavesdrop on him – to hear him reveal his intentions? Had his allies seen me enter the passage this way, they would have had no difficulty in disposing of me. Therefore they did not see me. Therefore the translation point of that mirror has been shifted.’

  ‘They could shift it back,’ she objected.

  ‘They could be watching us right now,’ he retorted. ‘But if that is true, why are we still unharmed?’

  The groan of stressed ropes and counterbalances came quietly out of the dark. A man gasped, and Castellan Lebbick barked, ‘That does it!’

  ‘We must take the risk!’ Master Quillon hissed.

  Again, Terisa nodded. But she remained still, caught between fears. Gart was there somewhere, the High King’s Monomach. And from that translation point had come four lumbering assailants who had themselves been eaten alive from the inside by the most terrible—

  ‘You must go first!’ Urgency made Quillon’s rabbity face slightly ludicrous. ‘First is safest. Any man will need a moment to react when he sees us.

  ‘Go.’

  He shoved her, and she went.

  Two stumbling steps toward the main corridor; three; four. For some reason, the strength had gone out of her legs. She felt like a woman in a nightmare, frantic to run, but powerless to do anything except ache with fright while her enemies rushed toward her.