Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Oh, great. Terisa barely swallowed a snarl. Now he was going to start blaming Geraden. Her stomach tried to come up; she had to force it down. She had already been harsher than she wanted to be. Instead of pursuing what Nyle said, she asked thickly, ‘Do you know where we are? Do you know this place?’

  ‘All I wanted to do was save Orison and Mordant.’ Maybe he hadn’t heard her. ‘You can’t say I deserve this. You can think I was wrong, but you can’t say I was being malicious. I wasn’t going to get anything out of it for myself. Not even Elega— Even if I was right, my family was still going to hate me. I was never going to be able to go home again. They all believed in King Joyse personally, not in the ideas that made him a good king – not in the Congery and Orison and Mordant. They were never going to forgive me for betraying their hero, even if everything I did turned out right.

  ‘I didn’t do it for myself.’

  ‘Oh, Nyle,’ she breathed softly. ‘You don’t understand. Of course they’ll forgive you. They’ve already forgiven you.’

  But maybe he wasn’t able to hear her. Maybe he had spent too much time helpless, caught in an everlasting reiteration of what he had done and why – and what it had cost – without any way to break out. Instead of reacting to what she said, he continued explaining himself.

  Trying to justify himself against the dark.

  ‘But Geraden destroyed me. I know that wasn’t what he wanted, but he set me up for all this. When he came after me, instead of concentrating on Prince Kragen – If he weren’t so determined to have accidents—

  ‘He got me locked up. Like an assassin. Like I was dangerous to all the decent people around me. If I were a farmer who went berserk and started slaughtering his friends and family with an axe, I would have been locked up, but I wouldn’t have been sneered at. I wouldn’t have been despised.

  ‘Don’t you understand? I love King Joyse, too. I always loved him, even though he didn’t let me serve him – even though he didn’t want me around. But some loves are more important than others. He wasn’t interested in my loyalty – and that hurt, because he was so obviously interested in my brothers. Artagel. Geraden. But I could still love his victories, his ideals, his beliefs.

  ‘What do you think I should have done?’ For a moment, Nyle’s voice brought a touch of passion into the dark. ‘Abandon everything that made Mordant valuable for the sake of a failing old man who didn’t care whether I lived or died?

  ‘Then Geraden stopped me, and they threw me in the dungeon. Do you know what that means?’ A coughing fit came over him, draining his intensity away. ‘You should.

  ‘It means I couldn’t get away.

  ‘Artagel came and flaunted his wounds at me. I couldn’t get away. Castellan Lebbick practiced his obscenities on me for quite a while. I couldn’t get away.

  ‘And then Master Eremis came—’

  ‘Nyle, stop.’ Terisa didn’t want to hear it. She knew what was coming, and she didn’t want to hear it. ‘This doesn’t help. You’re just tormenting yourself.’ All she wanted was some way to contain the horror surging at the back of her throat so that she could concentrate, bring her fury and her dread and her ache for blood into focus. ‘Do you know where we are?’

  ‘Just like that,’ Nyle went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘He just walked into the dungeon. He just unlocked my cell and took me out. I couldn’t get away.’ His tone frayed at the edges, worn ragged by bitterness and fatigue and coughing, by anger that didn’t have anywhere else to go. ‘He took me down the passage a little way. Then he made some kind of gesture, and we were translated here. Into his personal laborium. I couldn’t get away from him.

  ‘Do you know what he did to me?’

  ‘Yes!’ Fighting for a defense against pain, Terisa jumped to her feet. ‘I know.’ When she moved, her chain rang lightly against the wall. Quickly, she caught the chain in her fist and swung it harder, made the stone clang. ‘I know what he did to you.’

  Of course, she didn’t truly know: she hadn’t suffered the same experience. But she knew enough – more than she could stomach. Fiercely, she rushed on:

  ‘He showed you a mirror with Houseldon in the Image.’ She swung the chain. ‘And he showed you other mirrors.’ The iron links chimed on the wall. ‘Mirrors with firecats. Mirrors with corrupt wolves. Mirrors with avalanches – mirrors with ghouls.’ Each time, she swung the chain harder. ‘And he made you believe he could bring them all down on your home and family without any warning of any kind if you didn’t do what he wanted. If you didn’t help him turn the Congery against Geraden.’

  Panting, gasping, she stood still.

  Nyle’s silence was all the acknowledgment she needed.

  ‘So you agreed because you thought you were saving most of the people you loved. And you figured somebody was bound to notice eventually that you weren’t actually dead – which would save Geraden and recoil on Eremis. And somehow you managed to avoid the simple deduction that Eremis knew as much about the flaws in his plans as you did.

  ‘Nyle, you made a choice. Geraden didn’t do this to you. You did it to yourself.’

  There. Now she had begun attacking people who were manacled to walls, accusing them of bad logic as well as weak moral fiber. As if they had caused the things their enemies did to them. What was she going to do next? Start beating up cripples?

  And yet in her own case she had no one to blame but herself for the fact that she had been so slow to distrust Master Eremis, so poor at opposing him.

  Out of the dark, Nyle asked in old pain, ‘What choice did I have? What could I have done?’

  Oh, shit. She forced her fingers to release the chain. ‘You could have refused.’

  ‘Weren’t you listening to yourself?’ He had some anger left in him after all. ‘If I did that, he would have destroyed Houseldon. He would have killed my whole family – everybody I grew up with – my home, all of it.’

  ‘No, Nyle,’ she sighed. By degrees, she wrestled down her nausea, her racing pulse, her desire to hurt something. He was going to be hurt badly enough already. She didn’t need to increase the force of the blow. ‘You’re the one who isn’t listening. He destroyed Houseldon anyway. He burned it to the ground while Geraden and I were there, trying to kill us. Your cooperation didn’t make any difference. You gave yourself away for nothing.’

  There. It was said.

  Far away from her, Nyle groaned softly, as if she had just slipped a knife between his ribs – as if she had just cut down the defenses, the self-justifications, which kept him alive in his fetters.

  She went to him, feeling at once as brutal as a child molester and as vulnerable as a molested child. ‘Nyle, I’m sorry.’ Trying to comfort him, she stroked his face. Her hand came back wet with tears. ‘We’ll get out of here somehow. Sometime. I’ve talked to your whole family. I know they understand. They know you. They know you wouldn’t betray Geraden unless you were trying to protect them. And it would have worked, if he hadn’t escaped – if he and I hadn’t gone to Houseldon.’

  Then, aching like a prayer that no one could overhear her, use what she was about to say against her, she put her mouth close to his ear and whispered, ‘They’re safe. They all got away. They went to the Closed Fist and dug in. To defend themselves.

  ‘Eremis doesn’t know that.’

  Trembling at the risk she had taken, she stepped back to the bed and waited.

  Nyle didn’t react. She had no way of knowing whether or not he heard her. But she had done what she could for him. She had needs of her own to take into account. After a while, she returned to her first question – the only one of her questions which he might be in any condition to answer.

  ‘Nyle, do you know where we are?’

  After a moment, he took a shuddering breath; he seemed to be raising his head. ‘Esmerel, I guess. I don’t know. I never saw this place until he brought me here – translated me. But he said it was Esmerel.’

  ‘Nyle’ – the casual threat in Master Eremis’ v
oice was unmistakable – ‘I told you not to speak to her.’

  Stung and urgent, almost panicking, Terisa whirled to face the Master.

  But not panicking: she was too angry and hurt and focused for panic.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded before she had time to think, time to falter. The Imager’s shape, as vague as Vagel’s, approached her out of the doorway’s deeper black. ‘You’ve got everything else you want. Why are you doing this to him? He can’t do you any harm.’

  ‘What, my lady?’ Eremis drawled. ‘Questions? Challenges? That is a poor start to our lovemaking.’ He sounded confident, immaculately sure of himself – and sharper than he had earlier, as if he had spent his absence enduring petty vexations. ‘I am surprised that you do not require to know what the High King and I said to each other.’

  Terisa brushed his words away. ‘I don’t care about the High King. I’m talking about Nyle. Why do you need him? Why don’t you let him go?’

  Why have you got us chained here together? Why do you want him to know everything you do to me?

  Focus. Concentration.

  A blank space in the dark, a gap of existence.

  Anger and blood.

  ‘For the same reason I need you, my lady.’ The Master’s tone was full of mirth and scorn. ‘To perfect my triumph. Your capture will require my enemies to march against me. They must attempt to rescue the lady Terisa of Morgan and her strange talents. They will form an alliance, or they will not. They will destroy each other, or they will not. Whatever happens, they must come to Esmerel in the end.

  ‘Then I will release Nyle. I am not as harsh as you think me – I do not torment him gratuitously. He will witness what becomes of you while we await your rescuers.’ The raw-edged pleasure in his voice went through her like a chill. ‘And when I am ready, I will send him out to tell them what I have done to you.

  ‘Then Geraden will begin to understand what a burden he has undertaken by opposing me.’

  No. Never. Never.

  Concentration. Focus.

  ‘You bastard.’

  He was near enough to touch her now. He could have hit her. She felt his presence, the pressure he emanated; she thought she could smell his lust. Yet he didn’t hit her. ‘Come, my lady,’ he said as if he were sure of her. ‘Is that how you speak to the man who will master you?’ His hand reached out; one finger stroked the line of her cheek. When she didn’t flinch, he cupped his hand around the base of her neck inside her shirt. Slowly, his grip tightened. ‘Must I use force to teach you humility?’

  A blank space; a gap between them. She was vanishing into the darkness, groping farther and farther away from him; groping— Her mind was full of Images, all of them insubstantial; wishful thinking.

  ‘No,’ she said from so far away that he would never be able to possess her. ‘Take my chain off. Let me show you what I’ve learned from Geraden.’

  She made no effort to sound seductive or helpless, to conceal her distance from him.

  The trap she set for him was like the one he had prepared for his enemies. Obvious. And irresistible. How could he doubt that he was more than a match for her? that he could control her, coerce her, defeat her whenever he chose? Resistance would only make her final submission the more appalling to her.

  Chuckling, he took hold of her arm and clicked the fetter off her wrist.

  Because she was so far away, she did nothing to betray herself. And because she was so full of anger, she didn’t hesitate.

  Before he could secure his grip, she swung her leg with all her strength and kicked him in the crotch.

  He gasped as much in surprise as in pain; recoiled violently from her.

  Almost at once, he caught his balance, recovered from the shock and hurt. She wanted to hear him cursing in agony, frothing at the mouth; but he didn’t oblige her. The oath he spat at her was simply vindictive, a promise that she had pushed him too far and was going to suffer for what she did.

  Quickly, he jumped forward to capture her, punish her.

  But not quickly enough. While he was still on his way toward her, she touched a moment of eternity.

  It was hardly longer than the space between one frightened heartbeat and another – yet it was enough. Images coalesced, took on light and shape: dozens of them; chaos and fragments everywhere. She only needed one, however, the sharpest Image, the one with details so precise and unalienable that they might have been acidcut on her mind.

  A sand dune poised in the timeless gap between high winds and nonexistence.

  She had no idea where she might have seen that Image before. She didn’t care. As soon as she saw it, she knew it was hers—

  —and a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel slid straight through the center of her abdomen.

  Eremis was grappling for her, trying to catch her by the shoulders and strike her at the same time. Only an intuitive reflexive leap enabled him to pull himself out of danger as she faded from him and fell backward into the wall.

  Into the light of lamps; onto the floor so heavily that she knocked the breath out of herself.

  For a long moment, she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t do anything except gape back up at Adept Havelock, Master Barsonage, and Geraden, who were staring at her as if she had tumbled out of a coffin.

  FORTY-THREE

  THE ONLY REASONABLE THING TO DO

  The light was extraordinary, as life-giving as sunshine. While she waited to breathe, she was content to simply lie where she was and accept the glow of her escape.

  Then Geraden let out a whoop and seemed to pounce on her. Oblivious to the fact that she couldn’t inhale, he swept her up into his arms and began to whirl her, crying and laughing, ‘Terisa! Terisa!’ spinning her into a dance of wild joy. His happiness burned so brightly that she clung to his neck and didn’t care whether she was able to breathe or not. If Master Barsonage hadn’t immediately clamped a massive hug around both of them, forced Geraden to stop, he would have carried her careening into the mirrors, shattering glass in all directions.

  ‘Stop,’ the mediator panted. ‘Are you mad? Stop.’ He sounded half-delirious himself.

  For a moment, her relief and exaltation turned into a convulsive retch for air.

  At once, Geraden halted, put her down, held her tightly. ‘Are you all right? Terisa, are you all right? I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t reach you. I changed a mirror to go looking for you, but I couldn’t find you. I was afraid he had you for good. Oh, love, are you all right?’

  She did her best to nod while the knot in her chest loosened enough to let air leak past it. Then she returned his hug, gasping in his ear, clasping him almost savagely because she was still full of impossible translations and promises of murder. After her encounter with Master Eremis, Geraden was so dear to her that she held him as if her heart depended on it.

  Geraden. Help me.

  He was going to rape me. Just for the fun of it. And to hurt you.

  Geraden.

  I’m going to kill him.

  ‘My lady,’ Adept Havelock said judiciously, as if he had become a completely different person, ‘that was a very pretty trick. If you can truly do such things, then every action he has taken against you is plainly justified. In his place, I would have done the same.’

  ‘Proof,’ murmured Master Barsonage now that he no longer had to protect the Adept’s mirrors. ‘I would not have believed it. Proof.’ He seemed lost in the wonder of his thoughts. ‘Images are real, independent of their mirrors – independent of Imagery itself. King Joyse has been right all along.’

  ‘Fornicate that uxorious bastard,’ replied Havelock, relapsing to normalcy. ‘A fine time to go kiting off. He should have seen this.’

  I’m going to—

  Nyle!

  ‘Geraden.’ Terisa jerked back, pulled away far enough to meet Geraden’s gaze. He moved to kiss her; the look on her face stopped him. Quickly, so that he would understand, she said, ‘He’s got Nyle.’

  He frowned, in
stantly sympathetic to her urgency. ‘We knew that,’ he muttered. ‘Or we guessed it—’

  ‘I’ve seen him.’ Well, not seen, exactly; but she was in too much of a hurry to explain. ‘I’ve talked to him. Eremis has him prisoner. The same place he took me. In Esmerel.’ Eremis wanted him to watch what he did to me. So you would be hurt as much as possible. ‘We’ve got to get him out of there. He’s—’

  She almost said, He’s being destroyed. Eremis is breaking his spirit.

  ‘She changed the Image,’ Master Barsonage went on, caught in a kind of rapture. ‘Across that distance, she took a glass with an Image which did not contain her, and she shifted it until the Image did contain her. Geraden could not have done it. Flat mirrors are not his talent. And she could not have done such a thing if she were not independently real. It is inconceivable that a woman created in a mirror could have power greater than the mirror – and the Image – that created her.’

  ‘Who cares?’ retorted the Adept happily. ‘She’s female. That’s the point. We can’t trust her. We can’t trust him.’ He sounded like a doting uncle. ‘Look at him. He’s as bad as Joyse. He’s ready to die for her. If things get dangerous, he’ll save her instead of us.’

  She and Geraden weren’t listening. As she caught herself, they both turned automatically to look at the mirror which had brought her back to Adept Havelock’s rooms.

  Its Image was dark, almost impenetrably black. Maybe she could have discerned a shape or two – the bed? the doorway? – if she had been given time; but before she could study the Image it began to melt away. Light bled into the darkness; the potential for obscure shapes became mounded sand. In a moment, the glass had resumed its natural scene, the desertscape for which it had been formed. A breeze was starting to blow, lifting delicate curls of sand from the rim of the dune.

  ‘Nyle!’ A new pain shot through her, a loss she hadn’t anticipated. ‘He was there. In that room. We could have reached him – rescued him—’

  Holding himself steady, Geraden murmured, ‘It takes effort to make that shift. As soon as you relaxed, as soon as you let go, the fundamental Image came back.