Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  ‘I cannot truly vouch for the state of his mind,’ she added. ‘I can only say that he was not easily persuaded to join us, to join his purpose to ours.’

  ‘I’ve seen that look before,’ Darsint muttered. ‘Had his death all planned – until he met us. Now, who knows?’ The champion may have shrugged inside his armor.

  ‘It was not Darsint’s presence that persuaded him,’ Myste continued. ‘He is savage against all Imagery. And I do not think he was moved by the knowledge that you were here.’ She faced her father frankly. ‘He is another lord who believes he was abandoned by his King. But for some reason your alliance with Alend changed him. He finds— Father, I must say this. I fear he finds his old enemies easier to trust.’

  A shadow passed across the King’s face. ‘Who can blame him?’

  Awkwardly, Myste finished her story. ‘Once he was persuaded, however, he did not hold back. Since then, we have spent our time searching for a way past the Cadwals which would spare Darsint’s fire. Without the Termigan’s aid, we could not have reached you as we did.’

  As she spoke, King Joyse’s expression cleared. ‘That is well,’ he said when she was done. ‘If we are defeated, my lord Termigan will be able to do whatever he wishes with his hate. And if we are victorious, he will know that we could not have won without him. That may do much to heal him.

  ‘In the meantime, daughter, you have brought us new hope. Did you know that your meeting with Darsint was augured?’

  Elega looked at King Joyse sharply. Augured?

  Both Terisa and Geraden were grinning.

  ‘Havelock cast an augury,’ Joyse explained, ‘in which you appeared, on your knees before Darsint as if you were begging him not to kill you.’

  Darsint shifted his weight uncomfortably. ‘She did kneel. I was hurt – out of my head. Couldn’t get my eyes in focus. Everything was changed, enemies everywhere. Someone came, I fired. Nearly God-rotting killed her.

  ‘Then I heard her voice. A woman. On her knees. Felt like shooting myself when I saw what I did to her.’

  Distinctly, as if he wanted no mistake on this point, he said, ‘She saved my life.’ There was a threat in his tone. He had no intention of letting Myste be harmed again.

  For a moment, the King’s blue eyes blurred. ‘When you disappeared from Orison,’ he continued to Myste, ‘I knew in my heart where you had gone – and I was afraid. That is why,’ he explained to Terisa, ‘I was so harsh with you, when I asked you to account for her absence. I could not resolve my fear of the truth.

  ‘In fact,’ he went on, addressing Myste again, ‘when I first realized that the champion in Master Gilbur’s glass was the same as the figure in Havelock’s augury, I almost decided to shatter that glass. To spare you. So that Darsint would not be translated. Havelock had great difficulty dissuading me. Allowing that translation to take place – trusting the risks I had chosen—’ His smile was sad and relieved and strong all at the same time. ‘That did not come easily. If I had let the Fayle urge me to stop the Congery, my determination might have faltered.’

  Geraden cleared his throat. ‘Adept Havelock tried to tell us about that augury – tried to tell Terisa. I’m still not sure why. All he managed to do at the time was scare us. But maybe he was trying to make us understand you better. As well as he could, in his condition—’

  Dryly, King Joyse replied, ‘Perhaps. Don’t underestimate him. At his worst, he’s still the best hop-board player I know.’

  Without preamble, Terisa said, ‘There’s got to be something we can do.’ At once, the King shifted his attention to her. ‘My lady?’

  ‘They’re all here.’ She didn’t seem to be speaking to him, or to anyone. Her eyes studied the air; her attention was inward. ‘All the pieces are in place. Myste and the champion. Elega and Prince Kragen. The Masters. Lebbick’s army. He and the Perdon and the Tor all did what they were supposed to do before they were lost – sacrificed so the rest of us would come to this position. Even Torrent did her part. Everyone is doing what you want them to do, what you gave them the chance to do.

  ‘Except Geraden and me.’

  Again, King Joyse asked softly, ‘My lady?’

  No one else spoke. Geraden studied Terisa intently; Myste watched her with shining eyes.

  ‘We’ve done what we can,’ Terisa said. ‘We helped bring about this position. But now we’re useless. We might as well be pushed off the board.’

  Now she met King Joyse’s gaze. ‘What do you want from us?’

  He smiled at her as if she were wonderful. ‘My lady, I can beat the High King. I want you to defeat Master Eremis.’

  Before she could react – before Geraden or Elega or anyone else could say anything – Castellan Norge strode through the tentflaps, unannounced and hurrying.

  ‘My lord King,’ he said with as much urgency as his phlegmatic manner could convey, ‘you’ll want to see this. Something’s going to happen.’

  So quickly that he may have been trying to escape the questions Terisa and Geraden wanted to ask, King Joyse left his chair and followed the Castellan out of the tent.

  Elega hesitated momentarily; she thought she ought to say something to Terisa and Geraden – or even to Myste and Darsint. But her heart was with her father, with the battle and Prince Kragen; she couldn’t remain behind.

  Outside, she hardly noticed that the rest of the people in the tent joined her only a moment later.

  The valley was full of midmorning sunshine. Only midmorning, after all that had happened— Above the ramparts, the sky was immeasurably blue, as clean and complete as springtime. The air was turning subtly but unquestionably warmer, and under the sunlight the night’s thick snowfall had gone slushy. Where the army had trampled the snow, a few small stretches of dark, wet dirt were beginning to appear. The stream down the center of the valley ran more loudly, taking in water from the snow-melt.

  Like King Joyse and his companions around the pennon, every Mordant and Alend from the valley foot to Esmerel watched what could be seen of High King Festten’s army.

  The Cadwal forces appeared to be withdrawing.

  No, not withdrawing: dividing. The High King parted his men into a new formation, half on either side with a space of clear ground between them as wide as the valley itself.

  ‘Does he think he can lure us out there?’ Norge inquired. ‘Does he think we’re crazy enough to let him hit us from both sides?’

  ‘No,’ King Joyse snapped, unintentionally brusque. ‘He is making room.’

  ‘Eremis is going to translate something,’ Terisa breathed to Geraden. ‘If I go down there, if I get close enough— If I can figure out the Image, the way I did at the crossroads, I might be able to break his mirror.’

  She wasn’t talking to the King, but he heard her anyway. ‘You will not, my lady,’ he said at once. ‘If you fail, you will be the first victim. That risk is too great, even for me.’

  Geraden put his arm around her. He may have been trying to reassure her. Or maybe he was making sure she didn’t sneak away.

  Anticipation and dread knotted the atmosphere. King Joyse had said, They will attempt something extravagant— Everyone who had ever heard stories of the old wars knew that Imagers were capable of atrocities which could freeze blood in the heart.

  Nevertheless when the next attack came no one was ready for it.

  Because she was expecting something, concentrating hard, Terisa felt just a suggestion of the visceral cold of translation. Eremis’ mirror was focused too far away to touch her strongly. She tightened her grip on Geraden.

  In the clear space between the sides of the Cadwal army, a monster appeared.

  She had seen it before. Every member of the Congery was familiar with it.

  Huge eyes, insatiable and raging. Teeth dripping poison in a maw big enough to swallow houses. A vast, sluglike body. Slime-streaked sides.

  Once, during the old wars, that beast had destroyed an entire village, eaten it hut by hut. The worm was too big to
be killed, too big even to be hurt. Given time, it could have consumed anything. But King Joyse had captured the mirror from which the monster came, and Adept Havelock had translated the beast back to its cave in the Image.

  Now Master Eremis had the mirror, and the beast was furious.

  The creature gave a roar of hideous outrage, howling so fiercely that the walls of the valley rang. Then it slithered forward and began devouring the rubble that blocked High King Festten’s approach, attacking the mounds as if piled rock offended it.

  In spite of training and experience, determination and courage, the King’s army broke into panic.

  The monster’s teeth among the rubble were as loud as detonations, inescapably destructive. Already the archers hidden in the mounds had to leap and run, risk snapping their legs or backs to get away. And when the rock was gone, the creature would enter the valley—

  It would consume the entire army itself. Or it would drive guards and soldiers to the walls, where High King Festten’s men could crush them at leisure. Or it would force them out of the valley, where the Cadwal army could fall on them from both sides. Something extravagant— This was extravagant, all right. But it wasn’t desperate. It was a masterstroke, completely unanswerable; defeat as stark and terrible as the creature’s teeth.

  Helpless to save themselves, the Alend and Mordant ranks came apart like water and began spilling in all directions. Their cries were everywhere; hoarse and frantic; doomed.

  The sight set King Joyse afire. ‘Death’s hatchetman, Eremis!’ he roared in a voice that seemed to match the monster’s, ‘this is foul!’

  But he didn’t waste time on indignation. Wheeling to Norge, he barked like a trumpet, ‘Find Kragen! Rally the men! Retreat! That beast is no danger yet! We must stop this panic!

  ‘Bring my horse!’

  Galvanized by the King’s shout, Norge raced for his own mount while two dumbstruck guards hauled Joyse’s suddenly frightened charger forward.

  In a moment, both men were gone, spurring their horses into the face of an army transformed to tumult and chaos. King Joyse didn’t rage at his enemies; he didn’t shout at his men. He simply rode hard, rode conspicuously, straight for the foot of the valley, with his sword bright in his hands, so that as many soldiers and guards as possible would see him and think he wasn’t beaten. ‘There’s got to be something we can do,’ Geraden repeated, fretting at his helplessness like a boy.

  Terisa chewed her lip. ‘I said that already.’ She hardly heard him, however. She was listening to the sound of the monster’s teeth in the rubble – a savage, crushing noise which seemed somehow louder than the army’s panic – and trying to think about several different things at the same time.

  Choose your risks more carefully.

  I want you to defeat Master Eremis.

  Problems should be solved by those who see them.

  I’ve got the strongest feeling—

  And something else; something that refused to come clear. There was too much noise, too many people were shouting around her, too many people were going to die—

  Something so stupidly obvious that she was going to kick herself as soon as she figured it out.

  Master Barsonage was at Geraden’s side. His eyes had a wild and aimless stare; he looked like a man who had wandered here after having his brains baked out in the desert. ‘Now I understand,’ he said, not – apparently – because anyone was listening to him, but because he had to say something, needed to hear a reasonable voice. ‘When we rescued you from the ruin of our meeting hall, Eremis used that glass to help clear away the stone. I thought his choice was odd, but now I understand. He was making his beast mad, teaching it to hate stone.’

  Something—

  ‘Why did none of us realize that he must be the maker of that glass? Or an Adept?’

  In spite of herself, she stopped to absorb what the Master said. He was right: Eremis must be an Adept. Or he had been working against King Joyse longer than anyone realized; had conceived his ambitions at a younger age. Unexpected abilities—

  ‘But how did he get possession of the mirror?’ asked the mediator. ‘I thought it was among those broken when he shattered Geraden’s glass. He must have captured it then. That must have been one of the reasons for his attack on the laborium.

  ‘Why did none of us think to see whether all the mirrors we lost were among those broken?’

  It was unexpected: that’s why. What Eremis did was unexpected. His abilities were unexpected. No one could expect the unexpected. By definition.

  Then she had it, had it so suddenly that she seemed to reach her conclusion without taking any of the steps which led to it.

  Yes.

  Oh, yes.

  ‘Geraden.’ She grabbed his arm, pulled him around to face her. ‘We’ve got to get back to Orison.’

  Geraden stared at her in shock; his jaw dropped. For one moment that felt sickening, like a fall from a bad height, she thought he was going to protest, Do you want to run away? Then that danger passed, and as quick as it was gone another took its place; she could see it in his face: What are you talking about?

  Oh, Geraden, don’t ask, we haven’t got time!

  But he was Geraden, the man she loved; instinctively, he had always put her needs ahead of his confusion. Instead of making protests or demanding explanations, he said, ‘We don’t have a mirror.’

  ‘Master Barsonage does.’ With the ballroom of Orison in the Image.

  ‘Flat glass. You can use it. I’ll go mad.’

  That was right. Oh, shit. ‘Are you sure there aren’t any others? Didn’t the Congery bring any other normal mirrors?’

  Hurry. Please. The creature was going to come through the rubble at any moment. And both King Joyse and Prince Kragen were down at the foot of the valley, vulnerable to those teeth—

  As if the fact that he didn’t know what was going on only made him more resolute, Geraden wheeled toward the mediator.

  ‘Master Barsonage. Do you have another mirror? Did the Congery bring any other mirrors?’

  Barsonage blinked some of the wildness out of his eyes. ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you have one?’

  ‘Why do you want it?’

  Terisa pushed herself beside Geraden, tried to make the mediator notice her. ‘We’ve got to get back to Orison.’

  She was putting too much pressure on him; her demand seemed to increase his air of being lost. In a hoarse, dry tone, he asked, ‘Will you abandon King Joyse to his doom?’

  Geraden clenched his fists, breathed, ‘No,’ as if he were defending her.

  Unfortunately, that just put more pressure on Master Barsonage. Terisa shook herself, forced down her fear, tried to give the mediator a better answer.

  ‘I need to use Havelock’s mirrors.’

  She had other reasons as well, but she couldn’t take the time to think about them, much less explain them.

  At least now she had the Master’s attention. The effort to think clarified his expression, made his expression at once sharper and more human.

  ‘What will you do?’

  Hurrying past illogic, impossibility, uselessness, she replied, ‘Find Master Eremis’ stronghold. Stop him.’

  Now Geraden stared at her the same way Master Barsonage did. At the same moment, they both asked, ‘How?’

  ‘Unexpected abilities—’ she began, fumbling for words, ‘unexpected actions— He can’t expect the unexpected. You said so yourself.’

  Strictly literal, Master Barsonage returned, ‘I said nothing of the kind.’

  No. Listen. Let me think. ‘I mean me.’ Why couldn’t she think? The monster devouring the rubble might have been eating her mind away. ‘I’ve done something unexpected. Twice.’

  Abruptly, with the beast already halfway through the piled stone, and the valley in panic, and Geraden and Master Barsonage staring at her as if she were demented, her sense of urgency and horror became too great for confusion. She knew how to think; she knew how to survive. Sh
e knew how to fight.

  As if she were calm, she said, ‘When I got away from Master Gilbur, that wasn’t really unexpected. By then we knew I had some kind of ability. But when I changed the Image in the flat glass in the laborium – the first day after I came to Orison – that was unexpected. And when I changed another Image to escape from Master Eremis, changed it across all these miles – that was unexpected. We’ve never even tried to explain it.’

  ‘Talent—’ suggested Master Barsonage thinly.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t mean that. I’m talking about something else.’ She faced Geraden squarely. ‘When you tried to translate me home, I ended up near the Closed Fist. That was your doing. You’re the one who works with curved glass. But it was the Closed Fist in spring. It was augury. You changed the Image across time as well as distance.

  ‘But when I changed the flat mirror,’ in shock, by reflex rather than conscious choice, ‘my Image showed the Closed Fist the way it really was at the time. In winter. How did I do that? How did I know what it looked like in winter?’

  Geraden watched her as if she had staggered him and he was struggling to keep his balance. ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘And when I escaped from Eremis—’ Now she addressed Master Barsonage as well. ‘I used the same mirror that got me away from Gilbur. That makes sense. I was familiar with the Image. But the Image itself had changed in the meantime. The only time I actually saw it, when I used it to get away from Gilbur, it was full of wind. But when I used it to get away from Eremis, there was no wind. The Image was different. How could I change the Image in that mirror when I didn’t even know what that Image looked like – when the Image I remembered was gone?’

  Master Barsonage gaped. He would have looked foolish if the situation weren’t so desperate.

  ‘You mean,’ Geraden murmured softly, eagerly, on the verge of a revelation, ‘that’s part of your talent. You don’t need exact knowledge to change Images exactly. Something in you compensates for the things you don’t know.’