A Man Rides Through (46 page)

"My lady Queen, he made himself a
target.
So that his enemies would attack
him,
instead of chewing Alend and Cadwal and Mordant up slowly until they were too strong to be beaten. It was all a ruse, a trick to make his enemies try to destroy him before they became strong enough to be safe."

The Domne had put his finger on it. King Joyse wanted to save the world. He hurt all the people he loved best because saving the world was more important to him than anything else.

That was a terrible burden for him to bear.

On the other hand, it wasn't exactly easy for the people he loved.

Without warning—and almost without transition, as if she had been secretly standing all along—Queen Madin swept to her feet. "Why?" she demanded in a voice that made Terisa want to hide under the couch. "If this is true, why did he not tell me?" She didn't shout, but her tone had the impact of a yell. "Did he not trust me? Did he believe that I would not understand?—that I would not
approve?"

Geraden stood to face her. "My lady Queen," he asked softly, intently, "what would you have done if he told you?"

"I would not have
come here."
The Queen might as well have been shouting. "I would have stood by him, instead of allowing all the world to think that I have lost my love for him and his ideals and the realm."

Geraden gave Terisa a look full of pain and sorrow, a look that brought her to her feet at his side, but he didn't back down. "That's the problem, my lady Queen. You would have stood by him. And as long as you were there, no one would believe he was collapsing. Not really. Or if they did believe it, they would know you were there to make decisions for him, Queen Madin, daughter of the Fayle, the most formidable woman in Orison. His trap would have failed. No one would fall into it.

"And if he had asked you to leave?" Geraden went on. "If he had explained his trap and asked you to cooperate by abandoning him? Could you have borne it? Could you have sat on your hands here for—what is it, two years now?—while he risked his life and everything you both believe in?"

He was right: this was hurtful with a vengeance. Nevertheless Terisa was certain these things had to be said. She was just grateful that she wasn't the one saying them.

And Queen Madin was hurt: that was unmistakable. She had been dealt a blow which shook her to the bone.

"My lady Queen," Geraden concluded in a voice thick with regret, "if this policy is to succeed—if there's any chance to save Mordant—what else could he have done?"

"Oh, Father." Torrent was so distressed that she watched Geraden's face openly, without shyness, without self-consciousness. "What have I done? I should have stayed with you. Like Myste and Elega."

"No, Torrent." Queen Madin tried to speak as if she had no tears spilling down her cheeks, no grief in her chest. "We would have broken his heart. It was a hard thing for him to drive us away. It would have been terrible to try to drive us away and fail—and so lose the chance to save his kingdom."

"But he's caused all this pain"—sitting, Torrent looked small and helpless, too little to understand or be consoled—"and we left him to endure it alone. I left him. He has no wish to cause pain. His heart is broken already, or he wouldn't have done something so desperate—"

Despite her own hurt, the Queen gave her daughter a comforting response. "Hush, child. Do not be in a hurry to call him desperate. Your father has always been given to risks. We must not believe the worst until it is proven."

Then she wiped her eyes and faced Geraden and Terisa squarely. "Now," she said in a tone of barely concealed ferocity, "you must tell us what the outcome of the King's weakness has been."

Geraden nodded. Terisa murmured, "Yes."

In pieces back and forth as details and developments occurred to them, they told their story as coherently as they could.

And while they told it, Queen Madin became another woman before their eyes. She seemed to find sustenance in the events they described, the implications they discussed. She knew, of course, about the disaster of the Congery's champion, and about Master Eremis' strange attempt to make an alliance of the lords of the Cares, Prince Kragen, and the Congery: reminders of that information had no effect on her now. But the presence—and the freedom—of the High King's Monomach in Orison made her straighten her shoulders. King Joyse's treatment of the Perdon and Prince Kragen seemed to strengthen her bones. Myste's foolish and gallant pursuit of the champion caused her eyes to glow. And Elega's plot with Nyle and Prince Kragen to betray Orison—which Geraden explained with considerable difficulty because it, too, must be hurtful—seemed to bring a flush of youth to the Queen's cheeks. "Brave Elega," she murmured as if she would have done the same thing in her daughter's place. But when she heard that Orison was besieged, she snapped like a soldier, "Then why are you
here?
Why are you not
there,
fighting for King Joyse and Mordant?"

"My lady Queen," replied Geraden, "we still have a lot to tell you."

Just for a second, the Queen paused—not hesitating, but simply allowing the forces inside her time to come together. Then, surprisingly, she said, "Let it wait. Until dinner, perhaps. I have no time for it now."

At once, she clapped her hands twice, summoning a servant.

Almost immediately, the servant who had brought the wine came into the room. Without a glance at her guests, she commanded, "Please conduct Geraden and the lady Terisa to their rooms. Supply them with bathwater and clean clothes. Announce dinner for them in an hour. Then bring the Fayle's men to me.

"Come, Torrent. We must prepare."

As the servant bowed, Queen Madin swept toward the door as regally as if she had an entire procession behind her.

With a flustered look, Torrent jumped up and hurried after her mother.

Geraden met Terisa's gaze in quick apprehension; then he mustered his temerity to ask, demand, "My lady Queen, what're you going to do?"

Queen Madin paused in the doorway. " 'Do,' Geraden? My husband and my home are besieged. One of my daughters has allied herself with Alends. Another—if she still lives—is embarked on a mad quest after a champion from another world. I will not be left out of such events. I am going to Orison.

"I intend to be there in three days."

She left the room with Torrent nearly gasping in her wake.

For a long moment, Terisa and Geraden stood where they were as if they expected the ceiling to collapse on them. Then she took hold of herself, made an effort to shake the surprise out of her head. To break the shock, she murmured, "Well, at least she's going to let us have time for a bath and some food."

He snorted. "I should have guessed something like this would happen. I've known her long enough.

"The truth is"—he shrugged rather helplessly—"I've always liked her."

Terisa was quietly disturbed to find herself thinking of her own mother, who hadn't resembled Queen Madin in any meaningful way.

And she, Terisa, could so easily have become her mother's image: passive and wan, all her passion kept secret. If Geraden hadn't come for her—

Slipping her arm like a promise through his, she accompanied him out of the sitting room.

Dinner at the long table in the formal dining room of Vale House was an odd experience.

An abundance of candles made the ornaments and paneling glitter. There was a deep rug underfoot, thick cushions on the chairs. The food was good, better than anything Terisa and Geraden had eaten for quite a while; the wine was almost equal to the food. And the sensation of being clean again from head to toe, of being wrapped in clean clothes, of having a clean bed to look forward to, was so luxurious that it seemed practically indecent.

In addition, Torrent was fascinated by the personal side of Terisa and Geraden's story. Before she finished her soup, she was so caught up in what she heard that she forgot to be shy. She was indignant at Master Eremis' manipulations, horrified by Master Quillon's murder. Terisa's repeated rescues from Gart thrilled her. She grieved for Castellan Lebbick, and yet couldn't refrain from shuddering at the things the Castellan had done to Terisa. Artagel's injuries and Nyle's unhappiness touched her heart. The discovery of talent in her guests filled her with wonder. She heard about the destruction of Houseldon and the danger to Sternwall with parted lips and flushed cheeks.

Unwittingly, unself-consciously, she helped make the meal as pleasant as possible for her guests.

It was Queen Madin who provided the occasion with its oddness. She didn't appear to hear a word either Terisa or Geraden said.

She wasn't vague or befuddled: she was simply absent. Her attention was so sharply focused elsewhere that she had none to spare for such comparative details as Master Eremis' mendacity or Castellan Lebbick's accumulated distress.

As a result, neither Geraden nor Terisa was able to relax. Unexpectedly, she found herself thinking that the Queen was rather an old woman to attempt something as arduous as a wild ride to Orison. So she resolved to speak to Torrent privately after supper, to ask whether there was anything Torrent could do to dissuade the Queen.

Unfortunately, when Queen Madin announced the end of dinner she took Torrent with her at once. Instead of saying good night, she informed her guests that the men who had brought them here would procure a team of horses from Romish, "So that we need not stop too often on the road. We will depart as soon as the mounts are able to see their footing." Then she led Torrent away.

Terisa returned with Geraden to her room, troubled by the sense that this visit to the Queen wasn't producing the results she had intended. Whatever those were.

When they were alone, she asked him, "Is this a good idea?"

"What?" he replied disingenuously, "this rush to reach Orison in only three days?"

She poked his shoulder to get his attention. "Of course, you idiot. What else did you think I was talking about? Isn't she a little old to try something like that?"

He snickered.
"You
tell her she's too old—if you've got the nerve." Before Terisa could poke him again, however, he tried to give her a serious answer. "It isn't the ride I'm worried about. Either she can do it or she can't. Either way, it's out of our hands. What I'm worried about is the siege. Prince Kragen and his ten thousand Alends. Or, worse yet, High King Festten and twice that many Cadwals.

"How does she propose to get past them into Orison? Assuming it hasn't already been taken. When they find out who she is, they aren't exactly going to step aside for her. She's the perfect hostage. King Joyse may have been able to turn his back on the Perdon. He may have been able to swallow what happened to the Tor's son. He may even have been able to let Myste and Elega go. But he is not"— Geraden said the words distinctly, like drum beats—"going to be able to sit still when someone like the High King threatens his wife.

"She's the only weapon Alend or Cadwal needs to beat him."

At the thought, Terisa's stomach turned over. "Oh, good," she muttered. "I'm so glad you told me that."

"Sleep well," he replied with a malicious grin and rolled away from her.

She had to poke him several times to get him back where he belonged.

For a variety of reasons, neither of them slept much. Long before dawn, they got up, got dressed, and went to help with the preparations for the road.

Outside the protective stone of the manor, the air seemed colder than it had for several days. Even in the gray light before the sun came up, the day had an almost prescient clarity, a dimension of visual precision which made Terisa shiver. She hugged the half cloak the Termigan had given her around her shoulders and tried not to think about how tired she was.

The boards of the porch creaked under her feet.

From the porch of Vale House, the hills which enfolded the Kolted River appeared to bulk larger than they had the previous evening. They were dark in the dim forecasting of dawn, deep with potential; the whole world lay beyond them, completely hidden. They reminded her that Vale House would be easy to ambush.