Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

Darsint set off at a run.

  He headed for the stream and used it as a path: it was relatively clear; few of the men were milling in the cold water. Uneven ground and unsteady rocks made his armored feet slip and his strides lurch, so that he looked like a damaged machine hurrying toward a breakdown. Nevertheless the power still in his suit was enough to give him speed; he ran as fast a horse.

  Not fast enough to save King Joyse and Prince Kragen, of course. At that pace, however, he might reach the foot of the valley in time to help avenge them.

  Unfortunately, the Cadwals at the last catapult saw what he was doing. They threw scattershot at him as soon as he came within range.

  Stones caught the sunlight, the bright metal; soundless amid the shouts and clamor, they hit hard. In spite of his armor, he went down on his face in the chuckling brook.

  King Joyse and Prince Kragen wheeled when they heard the shout which had warned Elega. Kragen spat a curse at the sight of the redfurred creatures. Their hate was vivid, even through the monster’s loud advance. And they were so many – He and King Joyse would never be able to get away. And the men Castellan Norge had already sent to rescue them had too far to come.

  But the King smiled, and his eyes grew brighter. ‘As I said,’ he remarked in a voice only Prince Kragen could hear, ‘the High King grows desperate. He dares not fail. And men who dare not fail cannot succeed.’

  Prince Kragen considered this a foolish piece of philosophy – and gratuitous as well – but he had no time for it. He had no time to regret that he was about to die, or that he had failed his father, or that he would never hold Elega in his arms again. His hands snatched out his sword as he kicked his charger into a gallop, heading not toward the impossible safety of the army, too distant to do him any good, but rather straight at the nearest creatures, the front of the attack.

  For the space of two or three heartbeats, he had a chance to be surprised and a bit relieved by the fact that King Joyse was right beside him, longsword ready, eyes bright for battle. Then the Alend Contender and the King of Mordant crashed alone into a vicious wall of scimitars and fought, trying to take as many of their enemies as possible with them when they died.

  Once again, Elega was concentrating too exclusively on her father and Prince Kragen to see Darsint struggle back to his feet. She was holding Myste tightly: she only knew that something new had happened by the way Myste’s body reacted.

  Lumbering like a wreck, Darsint continued down the stream.

  He couldn’t run now. Myste had helped heal the wounds on his body, but nothing in this world could have helped him repair the holes which the Pythians had burned in his armor, and those holes made him vulnerable. He was hurt again now, listing to the side, stumbling occasionally; the power inside his suit may have been damaged.

  He kept going anyway.

  Prince Kragen and King Joyse kept going as well.

  In fact, they kept going so well that the Prince felt a rush of joy at the way their swords rose and fell, the way their blows struck; the surge of their horses through the attack. The redfurred creatures had eyes in the wrong places, with whiskers sprouting all around them; they had too many arms, too many scimitars. And their hate was palpable in the fray, a consuming lust. Nevertheless they were flesh-and-blood: they could be killed. And they weren’t especially skillful with their blades; they relied more on fury than on expertise.

  The Prince and King Joyse cut into the heart of the attack and kept going, kept fighting shoulder to shoulder, as if between them they had discovered something indomitable.

  It was amazing, really, how many cuts they ducked or parried or slipped aside; how far into the furred bodies they delivered their swords; how their crazy charge made the mounts of the creatures falter and shy. And it was amazing, too, how well the King fought. Prince Kragen himself was much younger – presumably much stronger. Yet King Joyse matched the Alend Contender blow for blow, swung and thrust his longsword as if the weight of steel transformed him, restored him to his prime. Now his beard was splashed with blood; cuts laced his mail; grue stained his arms. And yet he kept all harm away from his companion on that side.

  For a few precious moments, they succeeded against unbeatable odds.

  And while they succeeded, Prince Kragen found that King Joyse made sense to him at last. If everything else was lost, still no one would ever be able to change the fact that the King of Mordant and the Alend Contender had died side by side instead of at each other’s throats.

  Their success had to end. Two men simply couldn’t survive against so much mounted and murderous savagery. And yet they did survive. The momentum of the battle changed suddenly, and Prince Kragen felt another singing rush of joy at the realization that he and King Joyse were no longer alone.

  The Termigan had appeared in the midst of the fray.

  He had all his men with him.

  The look on his face was as keen as a cleaver; he had the hands of a butcher. The way he slaughtered his enemies justified every story the Prince had ever heard of him. And his men were beyond panic. They had seen Sternwall eaten alive by Imagery, and nothing could frighten them. During the first attack of the slug-beast, they had waited with their grim lord down near the foot of the valley, readied themselves to strike. They may have intended to strike at the monster itself. The redfurred creatures were a more possible enemy, however, and the last force of Termigan had hurled itself into the fighting without hesitation.

  The lord and his men kept Prince Kragen and King Joyse alive until Norge’s reinforcements arrived.

  There were nearly a thousand of the creatures. Castellan Norge had sent less than half that many men to the rescue. The thought that King Joyse and Prince Kragen were already lost had filled the valley with alarm again, paralyzing a large portion of the army. And the men who sprang to Norge’s call had to contend with horses that were wild with fear, terrified by the slug-beast and the alien creatures. In one sense, the Castellan was lucky to send as much help as he did to his King. In another, he was unlucky that he couldn’t muster enough strength to turn the battle.

  Nevertheless he achieved a goal which had never crossed his mind: he thinned out the combat directly in front of the monster; thinned it sufficiently to let Darsint through.

  In the middle of the fray, Darsint shambled, hardly able to force one foot ahead of the next. He must have been in better condition than he looked, however. Every creature which attacked him, he shot with one of his handguns, aiming and firing almost negligently, as if he could do this kind of fighting in his sleep. When he missed, scimitars rang off his armor without hindering him; he appeared unconscious that he was struck. He wasn’t interested in mere blades and horses.

  His target was the slug-beast.

  Guns ready, he paused before the monster’s gaping maw. But he wasn’t hesitating: he may have been afraid to hesitate. Instead, he was making some kind of adjustment inside his suit.

  Before anyone except Myste realized what he meant to do, his suit produced a burst of power that enabled him to leap past the dire fangs straight down the beast’s throat.

  FIFTY-ONE

  THE THINGS MEN DO WITH MIRRORS

  Facing Gart’s sword in the stone-walled corridor, Artagel felt that he was looking down the throat of death.

  The High King’s Monomach had recovered from the fire of the lamp, and from the first extremity of Artagel’s attack; now he had his balance again, his command of steel and weight. Moment by moment, he seemed to grow stronger.

  The lanterns which lit the passage made his eyes yellow; they gleamed like a beast’s. His hatchet-nose faced his opponent, keen for blood. The scars on his cheeks, the initiation-marks of his craft, were pale streaks against the bronze hue of his skin. Though he was assailed by the best swordsman in Mordant, he wasn’t even sweating. His blade moved like a live thing: as protective as a lover, it caught and countered every blow for him, as if to spare him the effort of defending himself.

  His teeth showed, white and malign
, between his lips; loathing stretched all the mercy out of his features. Yet Artagel felt sure that Gart’s abhorrence had nothing personal to do with him. It involved no resentment of Artagel’s reputation, no envy of his position, no particular desire to see him dead. In Gart, the lust for killing was a professional characteristic untainted by individual emotions.

  Artagel had heard rumors about the training undergone by Apts of the High King’s Monomach, the privations and hurts and dangers imposed on small boys to make them sure of what they were doing, sure of themselves; to harden their loathing. That was what gave Gart strength: his detachment; the impersonality of his passion. His heart held nothing which might confuse him.

  Artagel, on the other hand, was sweating.

  His hands were slick with moisture; under his mail, his jerkin clung to his skin. His sword had gone dead in his grasp, and his chest heaved with the exertion of swinging the blade. The tightness in his side had become a band of hot iron, fired to agony, and that pain seemed to sap the resilience from his legs, the quick tension from his wrists, the life from his weapon.

  A flurry of blows, as loud as forgework, bright with sparks. A measuring pause. Another flurry.

  There was no question about it: Gart was going to kill him.

  Artagel didn’t face this prospect with quite the same approval Lebbick had felt.

  He couldn’t afford to be beaten, absolutely could not afford to fail. If he went down, Gart would go after Terisa and Geraden. He would go after Nyle. They would all die, and King Joyse himself wouldn’t stand a chance—

  But when he thought about Nyle, remembered what had been done to his brother, his heart filled up with darkness, and he flung himself at Gart wildly, inexpertly. Only the sheer fury of his attack saved him from immediate death. Fury was all that kept him going; nothing but fury gave strength to his limbs, air to his lungs, life to his steel.

  A quick, slicing pain brought him back to himself – a cut along the bunched muscle of his left shoulder. He recoiled from suicide as blood welled out of the wound. A minor injury: he knew that instinctively. Nevertheless it hurt— It hurt enough to restore his reason.

  Not this way. He was never going to beat Gart this way. The truth was obvious in the effortless action of Gart’s blade, the feral smirk on his face; it was unmistakable in the glint of his yellow eyes.

  In fact, Artagel was barely able to keep Gart’s swordpoint out of his chest as he retreated down the corridor, gasping for breath, battling to recover his balance. The Monomach’s blade wove gleams and flashes of lanternlight as if his steel were somehow miraculous, like a mirror.

  All right. Artagel couldn’t beat Gart this way. Actually, he couldn’t beat Gart at all. But he had to prolong the struggle as much as possible, had to buy time. Time was vital. So he needed some other way to fight. He had to start thinking like Geraden or Terisa, but not about Nyle, no, don’t think about Nyle, don’t give in to the darkness. He had to do something unexpected.

  Something to ruffle Gart’s detachment.

  Down in the depths of Artagel’s belly, a knot loosened, and he began to grin.

  Geraden wasn’t grinning.

  When Master Gilbur didn’t follow him, he wasn’t surprised. Just disappointed. He had no idea in the world what he would have done if the Master had chased him. Gilbur knew the stronghold, after all, and Geraden could never hope to beat him in a test of violence. But at least the hunchbacked Imager would have been away from the mirrors, unable for the moment to do King Joyse any more damage.

  That hope had failed, of course. Instead of drawing Master Gilbur away, Geraden had in effect abandoned Terisa, left her to contend with Master Gilbur and Master Eremis and the arch-Imager alone.

  Wonderful. The perfect climax to a perfect life. Now all he had to do was blunder into a squad of guards somewhere and get himself uselessly killed, and the story of his life would be complete.

  Now it’s your turn, the Domne had said. Make us proud of you. Make what we’re doing worthwhile.

  Geraden had succeeded brilliantly.

  He couldn’t resist thinking like that. He had suffered too many accidents; the logic of mishap seemed irrefutable. Nevertheless he was too stubborn to accept defeat. He loved Terisa too much, and his brothers, and the King—

  In the name of sanity, remember to call me ‘Da.’

  As soon as he was sure Master Gilbur had given up the chase, he turned down a side passage and began to double back toward the Image-room.

  Unacquainted with the stronghold, he spent several maddening moments hunting his way. Where were the guards? Surely Master Eremis had guards, servants of the High King if not of Eremis himself? Why hadn’t he encountered them already? At last, however, he reached another of the entrances to the Image-room.

  From the entryway, he saw that Master Gilbur was the only one there. Just for a moment, while his heart lurched in his chest and a cry struggled in his throat, he thought, Terisa Terisa! Master Eremis and Vagel had taken her to rape and torture her, just like Nyle, just like Nyle. He had to go after her, he had to find her, help her, he absolutely and utterly could not bear to let them destroy her.

  At the same time, unfortunately, he noticed what Master Gilbur was doing. The Imager had his back to Geraden. That was fortuitous. Plainly, he didn’t know or care what Geraden might do. He was carrying a glass out of the center of the ring of mirrors.

  The flat mirror which showed Esmerel’s valley.

  He was carrying it toward a mirror which stood in the direct, clean light from one of the windows. Sunshine illuminated the Image vividly.

  The scene which the glass reflected swarmed with cockroaches.

  Geraden remembered those creatures. They had nearly killed him, and Terisa, and Artagel. Nevertheless the horror of that memory gave way at once to a new dismay when Master Gilbur set the flat glass down before the other mirror and stepped back to consider his intentions.

  In the flat mirror, Geraden saw King Joyse and Prince Kragen directly under the rearing jaws of the slug-beast.

  They were engaged in a desperate struggle against huge numbers of redfurred creatures with too many arms holding too many scimitars.

  The King and Prince Kragen weren’t alone: the Termigan was with them, and his men. They were covered with blood, battling furiously. Yet they couldn’t expect to survive against so many alien warriors. And if the redfurred creatures didn’t get them, the slug-beast would.

  And Master Gilbur planned to translate a new threat into the fray. He was considering the focus of his mirrors so that he could move his flat glass in among the swarming cockroaches and translate them straight onto King Joyse’s head.

  Lord of the Demesne. Sovereign of Mordant. And Geraden’s father’s friend.

  Remember to call me ‘Da.’

  Terisa needed him. He let her go. Once, hard, with both fists, he punched himself in the forehead.

  Then he moved.

  Swallowing panic and love and regret, he left the entryway and crept toward the ring of mirrors.

  If Terisa could have seen him then, she would have recognized the iron in his face, the look of despair – and of brutal determination.

  He was quiet; but he went quickly. To the mirrors he and Terisa had broken, to the cotleg he had dropped. Snatching up the club from a pool of splinters, he threw it with all his strength at the flat glass.

  Unluckily, his boots crunched a warning among the shards and slivers; and Master Gilbur heard it. With astonishing swiftness, the Imager spun around, flung up his arm—

  —deflected the cotleg.

  It skimmed past the top of the mirror’s frame and skittered away across the stone, out of reach.

  ‘Balls of a dog!’ Gilbur spat. Already, he had his dagger in his fist; his face was a clench of darkness. ‘Do you never give up?’

  Geraden heard the cotleg knock against the wall as if that sound were the last thud of his heart. Another failure: his last chance gone wrong. Now he wouldn’t be able to help K
ing Joyse or Terisa, and they would both be lost. And if he didn’t escape now, his own death was inevitable. No matter what happened, he would never be able to outfight Master Gilbur.

  Nevertheless the augury drew him. This was his fate, his doom. Instead of fleeing, he stepped forward, into the ring of mirrors, until he was surrounded entirely by mirrors, all of them reflecting scenes of violence and destruction against him.

  There he stopped.

  ‘Why should I give up?’ he asked as if he were just making conversation. ‘Why should I want to make it easy for you?’

  Master Gilbur snarled an obscenity. Cocking his dagger, he prepared to charge.

  At once, Geraden barked, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

  In surprise, the Master paused.

  ‘I don’t have anywhere else to go,’ Geraden explained. ‘I don’t have anything else to hope for. Oh, I suppose I could run away. I could try to hide somewhere. You don’t seem to have any guards. I might be able to stay alive for a while. But I’ll never escape. I’ll never find Terisa.

  ‘If you chase me, I’ll just break as many mirrors as I can before I die. You’ve already lost four. How many more are you willing to risk? Do you think there’s a chance I might be able to get them all?’

  Obviously, Gilbur’s first impulse was to attack: that was plain in the way his teeth showed through his beard, the way his knuckles whitened on his dagger. Almost immediately, however, he appeared to grasp the other side of the situation. Someone was bound to come soon, and then Geraden was lost. In the meantime, why risk damage to years of powerful work?

  Instead of charging, he lowered his blade.

  ‘You are wrong, puppy,’ he rasped. ‘We have guards. They will be here in a moment.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Geraden fought to keep any hint of relief out of his voice. Time: that was all he wanted. A respite for King Joyse. A chance for something to happen. ‘I’m sure you have them, plenty of them. But I’ll bet they’re all outside, protecting this place just in case someone tries a sneak attack. Watching the defile. You and Eremis and Vagel are so stupidly sure of yourselves, you never expected to be attacked from inside.’