Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  ‘But now you have risked a foray into the heart of Orison itself, and have accomplished nothing except Lebbick’s death and her capture. High King Festten considers that so far all his actions under your guidance have come to nothing. His only satisfaction has been the annihilation of the Perdon.

  ‘He desires a report.’

  ‘That sheepfucker,’ growled Eremis in disgust. ‘A man who has lost his interest in women – a man who can only find pleasure in animals – is not fit for kingship.’

  Nevertheless his tone expressed acquiescence. Despite his anger and frustration, the Master left Terisa alone. Muttering obscenities to himself, he strode away through the dark.

  Because she wasn’t done – because she had never been further from surrender and wanted to know her enemy – she demanded after him sharply, ‘Why are you doing this?’

  He must have paused. His tone was at once hard and light; malign; jubilant.

  ‘Because I can.’

  Almost at once, she was sure that he was gone.

  For what felt like a long moment, she didn’t move. She had given King Joyse to his enemies. Queen Madin’s abduction was her fault. She had gone to Eremis in the dungeon and told him what he needed to know and let him command her to betray Geraden and how could she have been so stupid? And Geraden didn’t know the secret of the oxidate. He couldn’t fight the Master. He couldn’t find her in the dark.

  Hope was out of the question, really.

  Never mind that. She probably didn’t have room for hope anyway. Her yearning for Eremis’ blood was too big: it squeezed out everything else. It made the kind of concentration she needed impossible. She was powerless precisely because her ache for power was so intense.

  The chain left her room to move around the bed. Grimly, she pulled up her trousers, tied the sash tightly, and began to rebutton her shirt.

  ‘Unfortunate,’ the rattling voice muttered.

  She froze.

  How many people were watching her – people she couldn’t see?

  ‘I see well without light. Darkness conceals no secrets from me. But opportunities to witness such nakedness have been rare in recent years.’ The speaker’s voice sounded like pebbles on glass. ‘A woman with such proud breasts, and yet so full of fear. A tantalizing combination. And there is time. Eremis will be away for some little while. Festten will question him narrowly before allowing him to go ahead with his plans.’

  Terisa wanted to finish buttoning her shirt, but she couldn’t make her fingers work. How many people—? Until now, she had only been afraid of Eremis, not of the dark itself, not of the place where he had left her.

  ‘Sadly, however, Eremis does not like used meat. And I do not like any meat enough to risk my alliance with him. Hide your breasts – or flaunt them – as you choose.’ She heard relish as well as scorn in the rattle. ‘They will not sway me.’

  As if she had been waiting for his permission, she fumbled at the fastenings of the shirt.

  At last, her eyes were adjusting to the dark. When she peered hard, she was able to discern the outlines of a figure near where she guessed the doorway to be. The voice came from that direction.

  Clenching her teeth for courage, she stood up and tested the chain.

  She was able to swing her arms before she came to its limit. Following it to its anchor, she found that it was stapled into the wall at the head of the bed – nearly ten feet of it, enough to let her perform almost any conceivable gymnastic feat on the bed, but not enough to let her evade the dim figure in the doorway. Nevertheless she was comforted to have that much range of motion. If everything else failed, she would at least have a chance to hit Master Eremis before he touched her again.

  Deliberately, she wrapped some of the chain around her fist to give it weight. She placed her back against the wall. Then she faced the figure with the rattling voice.

  ‘You’re Vagel.’ She didn’t need confirmation: she was sure. ‘The famous arch-Imager. The man who drove Havelock mad. Why do you do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Put up with him. You call it an alliance, but he probably treats you like a servant. You’re the arch-Imager. The most powerful man anybody has ever heard of. Why are you serving him? Why isn’t it the other way around?’

  The outlines of the figure suggested a shrug. ‘Power,’ he said like stones scattering against a mirror, ‘is more often a matter of position than of talent. He told you the truth, in a way. The whole world hinges on the little discovery which enables him to translate glass through glass. But that is not his real power.’

  ‘Really?’ She couldn’t stifle her impulse to goad Vagel. She was too frightened and furious for any other approach. Apparently, Vagel had been listening – watching – while Eremis had her naked. ‘What is?’

  ‘His real power,’ rattled the arch-Imager, ‘is that he is irreplaceable to all his allies – because of his talents, of course, but also because of his position, in the Congery, in Orison. What access do I have to his resources, his freedoms? Gilbur, I grant you, has also been favorably placed. But there it is his talent which is replaceable. He is only swift – uncommonly swift – rather than brilliant. And he hates everyone too much to form bonds – everyone except Eremis.

  ‘No, Eremis’ real power is that he can have his way with anyone.

  ‘He has his way with me, although my Imagery far surpasses his – and although I am the link which allowed him to begin his dealings with Festten, years ago when he rescued me from renegade destitution among the Alend Lieges. He will have his way with Festten, despite the High King’s taste for absolute authority. He will have his way with you’ – Vagel let out a malign chuckle – ‘until the only thing which prevents you from begging for death is that he does not let you speak.

  ‘He will even have his way with King Joyse in the end.’ Now Vagel’s tone suggested hard things – broken things with sharp edges. ‘For that reason I do not care how utterly I serve him.’

  Unexpectedly, Terisa had stopped listening. The Alend Lieges. The way he said those words triggered a small leap of intuition, fitted on odd, minor detail into place. In surprise, she said, ‘Carrier pigeons.’

  Vagel was silent, as if she had startled him.

  ‘You’re the one who brought carrier pigeons here. You gave them to the Alend Lieges.’

  ‘Those mucky barons,’ growled the arch-Imager. ‘Their squalor and their petty ambitions nearly drove me mad. They demanded – demanded – power. Imagery. I had to satisfy them to keep myself alive, me, the greatest Imager they had ever known. And yet they were satisfied with birds that could carry messages. I would have destroyed them long ago – I would have required that of Eremis – if they weren’t such little men.

  ‘For that also, for the humiliation they cost me, Joyse will suffer.’

  ‘Revenge,’ Terisa muttered. Her attention shifted back to Vagel. ‘He and Havelock beat you back when you thought you were about to become the master of the world, and you can’t live with it. Now you don’t care who has the power. You don’t care how much Eremis humiliates you. All you care about is hurting the people who showed you you were wrong about yourself.

  ‘What Eremis is doing to you is worse than anything King Joyse ever did.’

  ‘Is it?’ Vagel’s voice purred like a fall of small stones. ‘How strangely you think. Your defeat becomes less and less surprising, despite all the nearly unguessable implications of your talent.

  ‘Eremis’ manner is demeaning, but the rewards he offers are not. Do you believe that either Joyse or Havelock proved themselves better men than I am – more able or deserving, more powerful? No. They only proved that they were more treacherous. And you have seen in the decline of Mordant and the collapse of Orison that there exists nothing so desirable, worthy, or powerful that it cannot be betrayed. I was beaten, not by a good Imager or a good king, but by a good spy.’

  She expected the arch-Imager to advance, but he didn’t. ‘Do not despise revenge. Unless I am much mi
staken’ – he was sneering at her – ‘you yourself have no other passion.

  ‘In your case, however, revenge must fail. You do not serve any man who can make glass from the blood-soaked sand of your desires. Eremis will have his way with you, and then the truth of you will be proven absolutely.’

  ‘It’s the same for you,’ she retorted, fighting back so that what he said wouldn’t crush her. ‘He’s using you – having his way with you. And when he’s done, he’ll just discard you. You won’t get your revenge after all. He wants all the fun for himself.’

  Vagel made a sharp, hissing noise. After that, there was a long silence. Terisa tightened her grip on the chain, although the vague figure hadn’t moved.

  ‘No,’ he said at last, as if she had provoked him to candor. ‘All his allies must fear the same thing – but he will not discard me. Festten trusts me. Eremis’ plotting would have come to nothing, if I had not stood with him before the High King. He needs Cadwal too much to risk that alliance by discarding me.

  ‘And without me all the force of Imagery at his disposal will become a blunt instrument – able to strike hard, but unable to strike at will. Useless. I am the arch-Imager, as you have observed. The procedures by which we shape mirrors that show the Images we desire are mine. Did you believe that our successes could have been achieved randomly? That Gilbur for all his speed could have made the glass we need simply by mixing accidental combinations of tinct and oxidate, sand and surface? I tell you, he could have sweated until his heart burst without ever producing a mirror which gave us access to Vale House – or one which showed the audience hall of Orison. That victory is mine.

  ‘Alone, I have overturned the tenets of Imagery, and no one on Joyse’s foolish Congery can compare with me.’

  Vagel’s voice intensified. ‘Eremis cannot do without me. His need for glass which only I can provide will never end. And because of that’ – he seemed to be controlling an impulse to shout – ‘before I am done I will roast Joyse’s guts over a slow fire. I will hear him howl until his mind goes, or by the stars! I will take my satisfaction from Eremis himself.’

  A visceral tremor started up in Terisa’s guts, so hard that she couldn’t speak.

  Abruptly, the arch-Imager turned to leave. ‘Remember that,’ he snapped while his voice faded. ‘Perhaps it will inspire you to surrender to him prematurely, and then his pleasure in you will be made that much less.’

  He left her with the chain wrapped around her fist and no one to strike.

  She didn’t trust his departure. Her senses strained into the dark, searching for evidence that she wasn’t alone. But she heard nothing, felt nothing. As for sight— She could discern a hint of the doorway, but the corners of the room were as obscure as pits. When she turned her eyes to the wall behind the bed, however, she was able to make out the source of the scant illumination. Her first guess had been right: the light came from a window not quite perfectly sealed.

  Dropping the chain to increase her range of motion, she climbed onto the bed and reached for the window. From that position, she could get her hands on the boards nailed over the frame. Unfortunately, her fingers found no purchase, either at the edges or in the cracks. She tried until her fingertips tore and her self-control threatened to crumble; then, so that she wouldn’t start sobbing, she got down from the bed.

  Calm. It was essential to remain calm. To preserve a semblance of calm until it became the real thing. So that she could concentrate although of course it was impossible to translate herself out of here with a chain on her wrist no, don’t think about things like that, do not. Be calm. Concentrate.

  Fade.

  Pressing her hands over her face, she sat on the edge of the bed and tried to fade.

  She couldn’t do it: she was too angry and scared, deprived of hope. She had the shakes so badly that her heart itself quivered. She had betrayed King Joyse, and Vagel was going to make him howl – Geraden had no way to find her, rescue her. Too many people might still be watching her, concealed behind spyholes, hidden in the corners—

  Eremis would come back as soon as he finished with High King Festten.

  She needed time to pull herself together.

  Searching for calm, she decided to explore the room as far as the chain allowed. What else could she do? Maybe if she failed to find anything she would recover some self-possession.

  Shaking badly, and too angry to care whether she looked foolish to a spectator, she moved to the staple holding her chain and from there started to grope her way toward the corner, searching the cold, crude stone with her fingers.

  When her hand touched iron in the wall, she nearly flinched.

  Iron: another staple.

  A short chain fixed to the staple. A manacle.

  A wrist in the fetter.

  That did make her flinch. She recoiled to the bed, sat down facing the dark. Her breath came in hard gasps.

  She had felt a wrist. Skin. A hand that flexed away from her touch.

  Another prisoner. Someone was chained in the corner.

  Eremis had intended to rape her before witnesses.

  Who are you? she panted. For a moment, the words refused to come out of her throat. Almost gagging, she forced them.

  ‘Who are you?’

  No answer. Maybe because she was breathing so hard herself, she couldn’t hear any sigh or rustle of life.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ That was another possibility. Who could tell what Eremis or Vagel or Gilbur – or Gart – might do to their enemies? If she hadn’t felt skin and movement, she would have been tempted to imagine a skeleton. Or a corpse.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ She got off the bed and started along the wall again, slowly, slowly, trying to control her alarm with caution. ‘Are you all right?’

  She found the staple, the short chain. The hand in the manacle tried to avoid her touch. Nevertheless she shifted from the fettered wrist to an arm. It was draped with loose cloth – the sleeve of a cloak? The fabric was rough and warm; worsted, perhaps.

  She found a covered shoulder, a bare neck. The shoulder and neck twisted hard, but they couldn’t get away; the other arm must be chained as well. Curse this dark. The prisoner was only a little taller than she was. Although she was near the limit of her own chain, she had no difficulty touching an unshaven face that strained away from her; terrified of her.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she whispered. ‘Who are you?’

  Roughly, he wrenched his head up and sucked a strangled breath through his teeth.

  ‘All right. You’ve found me. They told me not to make a sound, not to let you know I’m here, but this isn’t my fault.’

  His voice was familiar to her. His bitterness was familiar.

  Nyle. Geraden’s ‘murdered’ brother.

  For a moment, she was so glad to find him alive that she could hardly stand. So it was Underwell who had been killed, disfigured; Eremis’ plotting was just as vile as she had believed it must be.

  And Nyle was here; had been kept prisoner for how long now? – held in case he were ever needed again against his brother.

  ‘Oh, Nyle,’ she whispered in relief and quick nausea, ‘I’m so sorry. What have they done to you?’

  ‘Same thing they’re going to do to you.’ His bitterness was worse than anger; he had gone too far beyond hope. ‘A kind of rape. I’m just lucky Eremis still wants me alive. Gilbur likes what they call “male meat,” but he has a tendency to kill his toys, so Eremis makes him leave me alone. Most of the time.

  ‘They need me to make sure Geraden doesn’t do something unpredictable. Or King Joyse either, for that matter.’

  Oh, Nyle.

  She couldn’t stay on her feet. Nausea crowded all the relief out of her. Without thinking, she retreated to the bed, sat down again. For some reason, she wasn’t trembling anymore. But she was going to be so sick— If she let go, she was going to puke her heart out.

  ‘It’s the same reason they’ve got you.’ Now that Nyle had begun to talk, he seemed intent o
n continuing. ‘Only the details are different. We’re hostages. And bait. We’re here to make sure Geraden and King Joyse do what Eremis wants.

  ‘I actually thought somebody would try to rescue me.’ His tone made her want to throw up. Gilbur liked male meat. ‘But I was wrong. Maybe they’ll forget about you, too. That’s your only hope now – that Eremis made a mistake bringing you here.’

  Fighting down bile, she forced herself to say, ‘Nobody in Orison knew you needed rescuing. Don’t you know what they did? They killed that physician, Underwell. They let monsters eat his face’ – don’t think about it, don’t think about it – ‘they dressed him up to look like you. Everybody thought you were dead.’ Because it had to be said, she concluded, ‘They thought Geraden killed you. You accomplished that, anyway.’

  ‘I know all that.’ Nyle coughed thinly, as if he were too weak and beaten to curse. ‘They sent Gart and a couple of his Apts into the room to knock the guards and Underwell out. So there wouldn’t be any noise. They translated me here. Then they sent some of their creatures to feed on the bodies. They told me all about it.

  ‘Do you think that’s what I wanted? Do you think I had a choice?’

  No, it was cruel to accuse him, cruel, he had been Eremis’ prisoner and Gilbur’s for a long time now, and the decisions he had made which had put him here had all been based on King Joyse’s policy of foolish passivity, it wasn’t fair to include him in her anger. Nevertheless she said, ‘Everybody has a choice.’

  She had a choice, didn’t she? She was chained to the wall in the dark, and Eremis intended to use her for his pleasure until her spirit broke, and there was no way she could possibly be rescued, and she still had a choice. Only dead people didn’t make choices.

  He coughed again, like a man whose lungs were full of dry rot. She could picture him in his fetters, with his mouth hanging open in his dirty beard and no strength. ‘You’re wrong,’ he murmured when he was finished coughing. ‘You’re like Elega. You don’t know. I haven’t had a choice about anything since Geraden hit me with that club.’