The Mirror of Her Dreams (97 page)

Inanely, she said the first words she could think of that had nothing to do with what she felt. 'I thought I saw you blush. What were you and she really doing while I was asleep?'

He stiffened. Retreating to his chair allowed him to turn his face away from her for a moment. When he sat down, his features were set into hard lines, as if he were angry. Nevertheless she knew he wasn't angry. His eyes were hot with grief.

'
I don't understand that woman,' he muttered without meeting her gaze. 'I mean, I understand. I'm not as ignorant as she thinks. It just doesn't make sense to me.' He scowled at the vista of his confusion. 'While you were asleep, she wasn't telling me her life story. She was trying to persuade me to bed her right here on the floor.'

For some reason, Terisa didn't find this amusing. All at once, the muscles around her heart felt tight.

'She said she hadn't had a man for a while. She talked about it like it was just scratching a complicated kind of itch. Of course, there are probably two hundred men within a stone's throw of us right now who would be glad to oblige her. But she didn't want to do anything that might get back to the man she's really interested in. I got the impression he's been away. Whoever he is,' He sighed, but still couldn't bring himself to look at Terisa. 'She said I was safe because my heart was set on you, not her. And she would be doing me a favour by teaching me what to do with your body when I finally got my hands on it.

'I couldn't get it through her head that if she kept talking like that she was going to make me throw up.'

'Why?' Terisa tried to sound casual, but didn't succeed. 'Don't you think she's attractive?'

His gaze turned cold as he faced her. 'Sure, she's attractive. A stone wall would be attractive if it looked like that. It's her attitude I don't like. There's more to love than just getting your itches scratched.

Tell me something.' Now he was angry. 'Some time ago-I think it was the first morning of the thaw-I was here with you, and Saddith came in. You asked her how Master Eremis was.' The knot around Terisa's heart pulled tighter. 'At the time, I thought that was a strange question. I just didn't want to pry. But the more I think about it, the stranger it gets. Why ask
her!
What would she know about Master Eremis?'

Saddith had tried to seduce Geraden. Terisa sat back down on the bed to conceal the fact that she was trembling-and to control it. In a small voice-putting her emotions at a distance because she was afraid of them-she said, 'She's having an affair with him. She tells me about it.' She would never be able to admit that she had seen Master Eremis and Saddith together. 'I think she believes if she sleeps with enough men she'll end up queen of Mordant.'

After a moment, he murmured, That explains it.' He no longer sounded angry. He sounded frayed and alone.

Abruptly, he rose to his feet. 'I got a message earlier. Artagel has had a relapse. His physician says it's temporary. Hell be all right. But I ought to go see him. Saddith will be back soon. That may not cheer you up, but at least you'll get some food and a hot bath.'

Unable to keep his distress from showing, he turned to leave.

'Geraden, wait.' The sight of his departing back seemed to pull everything inside her in a different direction. She jumped upright, reached a hand he couldn't see towards him. 'Don't go.'

He paused in the doorway. His voice was cramped in his throat. His shoulders hunched as if he were huddling over a pain in his chest.
'
I have to.'

'Please,' she said. 'I've been very selfish. You're always so good to me that I let myself forget you have problems of your own. Please tell me what's the matter.'

He didn't move. Slowly, he put out one hand to brace himself on the doorframe. Terisa,' he said, aching, 'this mess really is my fault.'

'No, it isn't.' She was ready to defend him at once. 'You aren't Prince Kragen. You aren't Elega.'

He raised his free hand to his face. 'Nyle was right. I've been a fool about everything. He was doing what he thought was right. But he was also doing something that wouldn't do any serious damage if he turned out to be wrong. That's important. We didn't need to worry about him. He didn't pose any threat. You and I should have gone back to Orison so that Ribuld could stay with Argus. We should have told Castellan Lebbick about Elega right away.'

Slowly, his voice became edged with iron, like the hit of a chisel. He cut off words like chips of stone. 'You wouldn't be here if I hadn't gone wrong with that translation. The champion would be here instead. Or else he would have refused, in which case he wouldn't have been translated against his will. Orison's walls would be intact. And Myste would still be here. If anybody could stop Elega, she could.'

'Geraden.' Terisa went to him; tentatively, she rested her hands on his back. It felt like it had been bound with cords to keep him from exploding. The boyish side of him was dying. He was being taken apart piece by piece, deprived of the things he loved, the things that sustained him. 'Please, Geraden.'

She would have to tell him.

He had gone too far to stop. The Alend Monarch is going to take Orison. It's impossible-it
ought
to be impossible-but he's going to do it. And it's my fault. I was
betrothed
to that woman. Maybe we don't have much in common, but I thought I knew her better than this. First Nyle. Now her. Everything I love-'

His throat closed. She felt him struggle to open it. Then he said, 'Artagel is right. This is going to kill my father.'

She should have told him long ago. 'Geraden, don't do this to yourself.'

Without warning, he turned to face her. His cheeks were wet with tears, but he didn't look like he was weeping: he looked flagrantly unhappy, almost demented with contempt for himself and his mistakes.

'Artagel thinks it's my fault.' He spoke quietly-so quietly that he sounded unreachable. 'I expected that from Nyle. But Artagel thinks it's my fault, too.'

'Geraden.'
She had passed the limit of what she could stand. To steady herself-because she was afraid-she took hold of the front of his shirt with both hands. 'You aren't wrong. I don't know why-or how. But you aren't wrong.

'Do you remember the augury? Do you remember seeing riders?'
Three riders. Driving their mounts forward, straight out of the glass, driving hard, so that the strain in the shoulders of their horses was as plain as the hate in the keen edges of their upraised swords.
'I saw them-I dreamed them before I ever saw the augury. Before I ever met you. I had a dream that was exactly the same as one Image in the augury.'

Searching his face, she saw surprise and bafflement dawn into joy. 'So there
is
a reason,' he breathed in wonder. 'I didn't go wrong. You
are
the champion.'

'I don't know why,' she repeated, insisted. It was the only gift she had to give him, the only consolation. 'I don't know how. But there is a reason. You didn't go wrong.'

In response, he became brighter and brighter, as if he were burning. His arms closed around her; his mouth came down to hers.

Ardently, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. They hugged and held each other until Saddith returned with a tray of food and a porter carrying bathwater.

After a meal, they did what they could to get ready for the coming siege.

By noon the next day, Castellan Lebbick had deployed virtually all the King's guards in Orison, sorting them according to their responsibilities for the defence and maintenance of the castle, and billeting them wherever he could find room. When the barracks became over-crowded, some of the abandoned passages and quarters under the main habitation were brought back into use. Cooks complained about the extra work. Servingmen and -women whose jobs included sanitation complained vehemently. Nevertheless Orison swallowed the additional troops.

Work on the curtain wall across the breach continued.

At the same time, scouts crossed from the Demesne into the Care of Armigite. Although they would have been appalled to encounter the Alend Monarch's army so soon, they began to travel with more caution.

During the night, the men tracking Prince Kragen had returned. The Alend Contender had lost his pursuers in the simplest way possible-by riding onto a road, where his trail couldn't be distinguished from anyone else's. This report inspired the Castellan to curse extensively, but there was nothing he could do to change it.

Nothing was heard from the guards who were trying to find out where Geraden's alien attackers had come from.

Most of the farmers and merchants in the nearer environs of the castle had started to empty their sheds and warehouses and pens and barns towards Orison. Plenty of people still alive in the villages remembered what life had been like before King Joyse had taken power over Mordant and created peace by the strength of his good right hand. They goaded the folk around them into motion.

Grandmothers and flocks of goats didn't move quickly-but they were on their way.

As a result, the courtyard was crowded with activity, and an atmosphere of bustle pervaded the halls. The situation could easily have degenerated into chaos and choler. Castellan Lebbick knew his job, however-and his men knew their orders. Most of the incoming populace found places and got settled without noticing how closely they were supervised. And those who did notice probably didn't guess that the highest priority of the guards wasn't to preserve order, but rather to make sure that Alends or spies didn't sneak into Orison.

Satisfied with the progress of his preparations, Castellan Lebbick paid a visit to Master Barsonage.

The outcome of that visit was less satisfactory. Since the Masters had seen fit to interfere in Mordant's affairs by translating their champion, the Castellan argued that they couldn't now claim to be detached from what was happening. It was their responsibility, therefore, to assist in the defence of Orison and their King. That seemed clear enough.

But Master Barsonage replied with the almost-treasonous information that the Congery had disbanded itself. Paralysed by the very ideals which had brought them together, the Masters couldn't agree on anything. They had no credible purpose. Castellan Lebbick was free to approach individual Imagers as he saw fit-unlike Master Eremis, most of them had remained in Orison -but he couldn't look for concerted decision or action. King Joyse's abandonment of the Congery had finally arrived at its logical conclusion.

Fuming, Castellan Lebbick left.

For his part, the Tor spoke to King Joyse. Or, more precisely, he spoke
at
King Joyse. He wheedled and demanded: he whispered and shouted. He made himself lugubrious, and he tried sincerely to make himself noble. Unfortunately, he received nothing for his pains except a rather strained smile and the absent-minded assertion that the King was sure his old friend the Tor would do whatever he, the Tor, thought best. King Joyse himself was really too busy trying to solve the latest hop-board puzzle Adept Havelock had set for him to be distracted by a mere siege. Nevertheless he became irrationally angry when the Tor risked mentioning the lady Elega. The Tor eventually gave up and retreated to the solace of his chancellor's flagon.

As for Elega, two squads of guards had searched what they called twenty-five miles of hidden passages in Orison without finding her. The Castellan sent them back to the beginning to start over again.

Pacing the peacock rug in Terisa's sitting room, Geraden demanded, 'But what can she
do?'
Terisa had forgotten how many times he had asked the same question; but at least he had the decency not to expect an answer. 'I mean, stop and think about it. She has essentially promised that she'll deliver Orison to Prince Kragen single-handed. And she made him believe it. But he knows what a siege is. And he's seen Orison. What could she possibly have said to him that he would believe?'

Terisa sighed and gazed glumly out the window.

As he had promised, Mindlin brought her new clothes for a preliminary fitting. She made a few arbitrary decisions, accepted a few adjustments; he went away.

She returned to the window. Although she loved the spring-like sunshine which made the hillsides sparkle and the roads treacherous, she was hoping for snow.