The Mirror of Her Dreams (107 page)

Like an echo, Terisa seemed to hear Castellan Lebbick quoting King Joyse to Prince Kragen:
She carries my pride with her wherever she goes. For her sake, as well as for my own, I hope that the best reasons will also produce the best results.

She wanted to yell, But that doesn't make any
sensel
Elega betrayed you! Myste is probably dead! The words died in her throat, however: they were hopeless. The thought that she would have to go support Geraden with nothing except more confusion made her feel sick.

The Tor refilled the King's goblet and his own, then eased himself into his chair. The lady Terisa is distressed,' he remarked distantly. 'It would be a kindness, my lord King, if you gave her what she desires.'

King Joyse lifted his head once more, scowling sourly as if he meant to say something acid to the Tor.

But he didn't. Instead, he growled, 'Oh, very well,'

Over his shoulder, he addressed Terisa. The reason I told Geraden not to talk to you when you were first brought here is the same reason I didn't intervene when the Masters decided to translate their champion. It's the same reason I'm not going to intervene now. I'm trying to protect you. Both of you.'

'Protect us!' She was too upset to restrain herself. 'How does it protect me to keep me ignorant? How does it protect us to let that champion be translated? We were buried alive.' I almost lost my mind. 'How does it protect him to let Master Eremis destroy him? All you're doing is making us look foolish.'

The King turned his head away and sketched a frail gesture with both hands. 'You see?' he observed to the Tor. 'She doesn't reason.' Then his tone grew bitter.

'You're still alive, aren't you? Do you have any conception how unlikely that was when you first arrived? Better minds than yours were sure neither of you would last for three days. A little foolishness is a small price to pay for your lives.'

Terisa stared at the back of his head with her mouth open as if he had taken all the air out of the room.

''Better minds!''crowed Adept Havelock like a man addressing a crowd of admirers. 'He means me.
He means me.'

'If I had welcomed you with open arms,' King Joyse went on, 'my enemies would have formed a higher estimate of how dangerous you are. They would have put more effort into killing you.' He sounded querulous and old, peevishly incapable of the things he ascribed to himself. 'As long as they thought that I had no interest in you-that I was too stupid or senile to have an interest in you-they could afford patience. Wait and see. Gart attacked you that first night because my enemies hadn't had time to find out I hadn't welcomed you. But as soon as people heard that I wasn't treating you like an ally, Gart held back for a while. 'Are you satisfied?'

His demand took her by surprise. She scrambled to ask, 'Do you mean the reason you can't help Geraden now is that if you do your enemies will know you're his friend and they'll start trying even harder to have him killed?'

'I mean much more than that,' he snapped. 'I mean that if I had given him permission to tell you whatever you wanted to know I would have doomed you both. My enemies would have' taken anything like that as a sign that you were on my side.
'Now
are you satisfied?'

'But what-?' It was too much: his explanation increased her confusion. It had all been an elaborate charade. 'Who
are
your enemies? Why can't you protect anybody you want in your own castle?' Images of Geraden and Myste and Elega and Queen Madin and Master Barsonage and even Castellan Lebbick rose in her, all of them lost and aggrieved. '
Why do you have to make everybody who's loyal to you think you don't care what happens?'
'My lady.' His tone was no longer petulant. Now it was as keen and cutting as ice. 'If I had any desire to answer such questions, I would have done so earlier. As a courtesy to your distress, I have already told you more than I consider wise.' Like Geraden's, his speech became more formal as it gathered authority. Despite his years, his voice still had the potential to lash at her. 'I advise reason and
silence,
my lady. You will not prolong your life by speaking of what you have heard.'

He dismissed her without a glance. 'You may go.' But-? But-? She knew she should have been stronger. She should have demanded a better explanation. But what she wanted to ask couldn't get past her mental stutter into words. She had no sure ideas left to stand on. King Joyse knew what he was doing-he knew with a vengeance. He was being passive and obtuse on purpose-hurting the people who loved him on purpose. But what purpose was that? It was inconceivable. He-

'My lady,' he said again, 'you may go.'

In a tone of faraway sadness, the Tor murmured, 'My lady, it is generally unwise to disregard the will of a king.' He spoke as if from personal experience.

With a fierce effort, Terisa quelled her insistent incomprehension. The exertion left her angry and panting, but in control of herself.

'Thank you, my lord Tor,' she said stiffly. 'My lord King, I'm sorry. I lied to you about Myste because she trusted me. She was afraid somebody would try to stop her. She asked me to protect her. I lied to you because I didn't know you would have let her go-'

None of the three men looked at her. They stared vacantly into the fire, as if they had used up their allotment of words for the day and had nothing left to think with. King Joyse let her get as far as the door before he breathed softly, Thank you, my lady.'

She left as if she were escaping.

Geraden joined her in her rooms for supper.

His expression was a strange mixture of relief and dread. His conversation with Artagel made his spirits soar: the upcoming meeting of the Congery hung on him like lead. The good news, he reported, was that Artagel was healing well after his earlier setbacks. And Artagel was still his friend. The bad news was that the swordsman was still in no condition to stand up in front of the Masters and defend his brother.

'When will the meeting be?' she asked.

'I don't know what kind of mediator Master Quillon is, I used to think he wasn't assertive enough to pull a meeting together. But now-' He shrugged.

Fervently, he listened while she described her session with King Joyse, the Tor, and Adept Havelock, Unfortunately, it changed nothing. 'You know,' he commented after a while, 'all this would do us a lot more good if we had any idea why we're so important.'

'I don't think so.' She felt sour and imperfectly resigned. 'It doesn't cheer me up to believe King Joyse is really our friend only he can't risk doing anything about it. What good are friends who treat you just like your enemies do?'

He nodded slowly without agreeing with her. The important thing is, it's hope. He certainly sounds like he has reasons for what he's doing.' Geraden's mood seemed to improve as hers deteriorated. 'And if he has reasons, we can at least
hope
they're good ones.'

'On the other hand,' she countered, 'look at the way he's treating the Tor.'

That made Geraden scowl. 'You heard King Joyse say he 'defies prediction'. There's probably a danger he'll do something to mess up one of the King's plans. So King Joyse is trying to keep him under control.'

A moment later, he added in a black tone, 'I don't like plans that hurt the Tor.'

'Neither do I,' said Terisa.

After a while, he remarked with more humour, 'It's too bad nobody much cares what we think of their plans.'

Damn you, Geraden, she thought, you're starting to cheer up again. I don't understand it.

In spite of his improved humour, however, he didn't smile when one of the younger Apts knocked on the door and announced that the Congery wanted him. When the Apt used the words
at once.
Geraden's eyes widened slightly.

'That was fast,' he muttered to Terisa. 'Master Eremis knows how to get action.'

The young Apt avoided looked at Geraden. The lady Terisa isn't invited.'

The lady Terisa,' she snapped, 'is coming anyway.'

The Apt didn't look at her, either.

Geraden tried to give her one of Artagel's combative grins; but its failure only made him appear sick. 'Let's go get it over with.'

Together, they followed the young Apt through Orison down to the laborium.

Until her knuckles began to ache, she didn't realize that she was clenching her fists.

Although she was warmly dressed, she felt the chill as soon as she crossed the disused ballroom and descended into the domain of the Masters. Castellan Lebbick's new curtain wall defended the breach the champion had made, but didn't seal it. Because of the strong wind outside, there was a noticeable breeze in the passages. As a result, the atmosphere was cold enough to make her wish she had brought a coat.

If Geraden noticed the cold, he didn't show it. His manner was distracted. As he entered the laborium, he grew tense. He had spent all his adult life-and a good part of his adolescence -trying to earn a place for himself in these halls and passages, and now his failure threatened to become so dramatic that it would be considered treason.

For his sake as well as her own, Terisa was getting angrier.

The young Apt led her and Geraden to a part of the laborium where she had never been before-to the room which the Masters had used for their gatherings ever since the champion had destroyed their meeting-chamber.

This room was small by comparison, but still more than large enough. It was a long rectangle, with something in the colour or cut of its cold, grey stone, in the worn but uneven floor, in the number of black iron brackets set into the walls which created the impressioa that it had originally served as a storeroom for the instruments of torture. It was the kind of place where ways of inflicting pain might wait while they weren't needed: racks and iron maidens being taken to and from the interrogation chamber might have rubbed those hollows in the floor; thumb-screws and flails might have hung in the brackets. A few of the brackets had been adapted to hold lamps, but the rest were empty. The empty ones seemed especially grim.

The Masters were already gathered.

They sat in heavy iron-pegged chairs which lined the two long walls, roughly half of them on either side facing each other as if they had deliberately set out to form a gauntlet. Because of the length of the room, however, a sizeable space at each end was unused. The doors were there, several strides from the nearest seats.

Two guards on strict duty held the door through which Terisa and Geraden entered the chamber. Neither man acknowledged the Apt'sglum nod.

As the door closed behind her, she scanned the room. At first, the only face she recognized was that of Master Barsonage. Since she had last seen him, the former mediator seemed to have developed a nervous tic: one of his thick, stiff eyebrows twitched involuntarily. Under the pressure of the Congery's mistakes and indecision, his face had taken on a jaundiced hue. She saw no hope there.

Looking for Master Quillon, her eye was caught by Castellan Lebbick.

When she saw him, her throat suddenly went dry.

He had Nyle with him.

Geraden's brother sat beside the Castellan at the far end of one row of chairs. He wore a brown worsted cloak over his clothes. Inside it, his arms bunched across his chest, holding the cloak shut. His head hung at a dejected angle. He didn't look up at Terisa and Geraden.

Geraden was frozen with shock. All expression had been wiped from his face. The spark which animated his features most of the time was gone-hidden or extinguished-and he seemed smaller, as if he were shrinking in on himself. He stared blankly at Nyle while two bright spots of colour slowly spread in his cheeks. She had never seen him look so lost. The glazing of his eyes made her irrationally afraid that he was having a heart attack.

The lady Terisa was
not
invited,' said one of the Masters loudly.

'But she
is
welcome,' rasped Castellan Lebbick. 'Isn't she, Master Quillon?'

The rabbity mediator rose to his feet, gazing brightly at everything and nobody. Wrinkling his nose, he answered, 'As welcome as you are. Castellan.'