The Mirror of Her Dreams (37 page)

'Very well, my lady,' said the maid. 'I will return shortly.' On her way to the door, she turned so that her back was to Myste and gave Terisa a sharp look-a look that seemed to say,
Wake up. Pay attention. This woman is the King's daughter.
Then she left, closing the door quietly behind her.

From Terisa's point of view, however, the fact that Myste was the King's daughter really made no difference. What mattered was that she, Terisa, suddenly wanted Myste's friendship so strongly that the desire made her ache. She had never had a
friend-

Oh, of course, she had had friends: playmates in her early years; girls who spoke to her in the halls and whispered gossip during school. But from the first her parents had never encouraged friendships. In particular, they had never allowed her to visit the homes of her young playmates, had never invited any of those girls to their home. And this separation had carried on into the numerous private institutions to which she had been sent, exclusive schools dedicated more to forming moral character than to nurturing comradeship. Or perhaps the distance wdiich kept everyone away was something that she had carried in herself -a gulf of passivity and doubt which no one knew how to cross; an unhealed wound.

She didn't want to lose this opportunity.

Awkwardly, she gestured towards two of the chairs. 'Would you like to sit down?' Then she remembered the decanter on one of the side-tables. 'Would you like some wine?' But she sounded so disconcerted to herself that she couldn't endure it. 'I'm sorry,' she said, abandoning the pretence that she knew what she was doing. 'I'm making a mess of everything. I'm so new at all this. I don't think I've ever had a guest in my apartment.'

Myste had no way of knowing that this was the literal truth; but she accepted it anyway. 'Please do not apologize. I think you do amazingly well. Consider what has happened to you in the past three days. You have been taken to a strange and alien world. You have been put down in the middle of a castle full of conflict, machination, and treachery. Half the people around you seem to believe that you can save them from war and chaos. An attempt has been made on your life. If I were in your place'- her tone became wistful-'I would be proud to manage half as well.'

Without warning, Terisa's eyes filled with tears. Myste's understanding took her completely by surprise. Thanks.' Gratefully, she tried to explain. 'Most of the time, I think I must be losing my mind. Everybody wants me to do something, and I barely understand what's going on.'

'Here,' Myste took Terisa's arm and guided her to one of the chairs. Then the lady produced a delicate handkerchief from the sleeve of her gown and handed it to Terisa. 'It is a lonely thing which has happened to you. You must think that everyone you meet plots against you in some way. And now you have been taken to a meeting of the Congery. I doubt they reacted well when you told them that you are not an Imager.'

Terisa nodded, wiping her eyes with the handkerchief. They're all doing it. The Congery doesn't want me to talk to the King. He doesn't want me to talk to the Congery. None of them want me to talk to anybody else.' She almost said, Except Master Quillon and Adept Havelock. 'And the Masters are all scheming against each other. Master Eremis-' He kissed me. He kissed my breasts. 'Castellan Lebbick yells at me.' She hesitated for a second, then blew her nose on the fine fabric. 'Even Geraden wants to turn me into an Imager.'

'Ah, Geraden.' Myste's voice suggested a smile. 'I cannot speak for the others, but him, at least, you can trust. You may doubt his judgement. His luck is disastrous. Nevertheless you can trust his heart. It is agreed everywhere that the Domne has no bad sons.'

After a pause, she added, 'I would like to be your friend, Terisa.'

Terisa met the lady's eyes. They were focused on her now, not distant at all, and the expression in them was direct and kind.

So that she wouldn't start crying again, Terisa looked away. Myste's offer touched her too deeply to be acknowledged. How was it possible for someone like her to have friends? Evading the important point-and hating herself for doing so-she said, 'You have a better opinion of him than Elega does.'

Myste smiled again; but as she did so her gaze slipped back into the distance, and her face resumed its faraway cast. Quietly, she replied, 'I have a better opinion of many things than she does. She is a king's daughter, and she desires the importance of a high place in the affairs of Mordant. She does not forgive her father-or the society around her-or anything else which she imagines stands between her and her natural right to plot and manipulate and betray as much as any prince. She does not forgive Geraden for the mistaken judgement which once betrothed him to her.' Then she shrugged. 'I think better of being a woman. I think better of those who hold power in Orison.' Her tone was gentle and reassuring, but soft, as if she were speaking in another place, perhaps to someone else; and there was a note of yearning in what she said that didn't entirely agree with her words. 'I think better of myself.'

Terisa nodded as though she understood. 'Was that what you wanted to talk to me about?'

'Oh, no,' Myste replied easily. 'Or perhaps it was. I have nothing special to say. But I would like to know everything about you. You are a pleasure and a wonderment to me. You consider yourself an ordinary woman-and I believe you,' she hastened to add, 'I believe what you say of yourself, though it is difficult for me to call any woman from another world ordinary-and yet you find yourself here, in the great crisis of Mordant's history. If your world has no Imagery, such a translation must seem extraordinary.

'For my part, great things have never happened to me. I have never been to a world other than my own. Indeed, I have hardly been out of Orison in the past few years. What is your world like? How did you live your life there?' She became more animated as she spoke, bright with curiosity. 'How does it feel, to step through a glass and find everything changed? What do mirrors do in your world, since they have no magic?'

'Please. One thing at a time.' In spite of herself, Terisa smiled at Myste's fascination. 'We don't have anything magic. Mirrors j
_us
f-
_s
he groped for an adequate description-'just reflect. They show you exactly what you put in front of them. If they're flat. If they aren't flat, they still reflect what you put in front of them, but they distort it.

'In my apartment-' There she faltered. She had never admitted to anyone, I had my walls covered with mirrors so that I would know I existed. Lamely, she finished, 'I had a lot of mirrors.'

Then you must be very wise,' murmured Myste as if she were clinging to every word.

'Wise? Why?'

'You are able to see yourself exactly as you are. You are able to see everything exactly as it is. I have no such vision.-And those who look at me do so with their preconceptions of a king's daughter-perhaps even of a woman-and so their vision is confused. None of us see anything exactly as it is.'

'We do the same thing,' objected Terisa. 'We have the same preconceptions. But we only look at the surface. All we care about is the surface.' She made a deliberate effort to be candid. 'Maybe I've been able to see what I look like. But I don't know what that means. It doesn't help me know who I am.'

Myste seemed to find this notion both humorous and appealing. Then you are not wise?'

Slowly, Terisa replied, 'I don't think I've ever known anybody who was wise.' Unless Rev Thatcher's ineffectual dedication counted as wisdom.

At that, the lady laughed. Then you are surely mistaken, Terisa. You yourself are already the wisest woman in Orison, for you have not been misled by those who believe in their own wisdom. You know the difference between what is seen and what is unseen, and you do not attempt to judge the one by the other.'

'Do you call that wisdom?' Terisa wanted to laugh simply because Myste was amused. The lady's mirth betrayed her kinship to her father: her smile was almost as infectious and likeable as his. 'Doesn't the fact that I don't understand
anything
count against me?'

Myste went on laughing. 'Of course not. Mere understanding is the business of kings, not of sages-or of ordinary women. And it is always mistaken. It depends upon a knowledge of things which cannot be known-a knowledge of what is unseen.

'I must tell you, Terisa, I wish that Elega had less understanding and more wisdom. You are wiser than she.'

They were silent for a moment while they relapsed to seriousness; then Myste asked, 'Where does such wisdom come from? Tell me about your world. What are its needs and compulsions? How do you spend your days?'

A few minutes earlier, that question would have frozen Terisa. But Myste's friendly manner defused the frank pressure of her curiosity. Almost before she knew what she was going to say, Terisa began talking about her work in the mission.

She had never discussed it before. Words seemed to tumble headlong after each other as she described the mission's work, the human wrecks and relicts it served, the facilities, the surroundings; and her own job, her typing and filing and drudgery, her relationship with Rev Thatcher; and her reasons for doing the work, because she had believed that in a place like that even she would be able to make a difference, because she could afford to accept the meagre pay, because she hadn't considered herself capable of anything more demanding or ambitious: she babbled about it all until the discrepancy between what she was saying and the sparkle of Myste's attention stopped her. The lady absorbed every sentence as if she were hearing a tale of heroism and romance. Abruptly, Terisa said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go on like that.'

'It is a wonderment,' sighed the lady. A gleam still shone in her faraway gaze. 'Forgive me if I repeat myself, But that such a strange world exists! And you have a part in it.'

'A little part,' Terisa commented, 'and getting less by the minute. Rev Thatcher must have replaced me by now.' And her father had no reason to want her back.

In her excitement, Myste rose to her feet. 'But that is just the point.' She began to pace the rug, her eyes searching everything except her companion. 'You are an ordinary woman, and you say that your life in your world was utterly ordinary, however strange it may appear to me. I, too, am an ordinary woman.

'I am a king's daughter-but what of that? It is an accident of birth. Its effect upon what is seen is merely that I am able to dress well and command servants. Its effect upon what is unseen is-I hardly know whether it has any effect. It seems plain to me that I am an ordinary woman-and that this is good.

'Yet I am surrounded by people who are not content. Her lack of involvement makes Elega savage. Geraden causes himself misery striving for a Mastery he will never attain. Half the Congery wishes to retreat into pure research. The other Masters yearn for power over Mordant. Castellan Lebbick's life has revolved around a woman, and yet in his grief he despises all women. Alend and Cadwal struggle against the peace which has done them more benefit than all their generations of warfare.

Terisa, I do not consider my father's passivity a good thing. I do not
understand
it. I am his daughter enough to know the importance of striving and risk. Passivity is not content. But surely we must acknowledge that it is not a terrible thing to be who we are.

'You are the proof of this.' Her voice had risen to a pitch of affirmation. 'By your own insistence, you are an ordinary woman, with no experience of power, and no talent for it. Yet your life is not meaningless. Great forces are at work in Mordant, and you are involved in them. There is no life which does not possess its own importance, no life which may not be touched by greatness at any time-yes. be touched by greatness and have a hand in it.'

For a moment, Terisa stared at Myste. With an urgency which surprised her, she wanted to say,
Greatness?
That's ridiculous.

How could I have anything to do with
greatness!

At the same time, she wanted to weep harder than she had ever cried in her life.

Fortunately, Myste realized almost at once what she was doing. Puncturing her own seriousness, she smiled; her manner relapsed to its more usual diffidence. 'In her heart,' she said with a verbal shrug, 'Elega considers me mad. She thinks that such 'romantic notions' render me unfit for my own life.' A note of sadness entered her voice. 'But my father did not despise what I believe. He loved me for it, and it was a bond between us.' Her face hardened. 'Until he changed, and it became impossible for any of us to speak with him.'

Terisa was holding her breath, clamping herself rigid to restrain what she felt. But that wasn't necessary any more, was it? She was free, wasn't she? The past didn't exist. What she said or did didn't matter. She could tell Myste the truth. By degrees, she released the air from her lungs.