A Man Rides Through (53 page)

Geraden nodded once, roughly.

The implications brought Terisa to a halt. "Elega's being betrayed herself." She faced Geraden squarely, showed him her distress. "What're we going to do?"

The way he met her gaze gave the impression that he had accomplished his goal: he had shifted the direction of her thoughts. "We'll stay on the road until we get close to Batten," he replied. "That's where the Alends will pick it up. And it turns south there to meet the road from Sternwall. We can go straight southeast toward Orison. We'll save some miles—and maybe we won't lose much time.

"When we reach the siege, we'll try to get to Elega before the Prince realizes what we're doing." Abruptly, he grinned—a sharp smile with no humor in it. "If she knows what happened to her mother—if she allowed it to happen, if she approves of it—I'm going to be
very
disappointed in her."

"And if she doesn't know," Terisa completed for him, trying to reassure herself, "she might be willing to help us."

He nodded again.

After a while, they mounted their horses and went on.

They rode out of the last hills of Fayle onto one of Armigite's many fertile flatlands at what felt like a breakneck pace. Leaving the woods behind increased Terisa's anxiety: Armigite appeared to be almost unnaturally open, as if everything that moved through it were somehow exposed. Perhaps that was why the Armigite had become what he was: perhaps his personality had been distorted by the pressure of being so exposed. But actually there were quite a few trees around, even in lowlands which had obviously been under cultivation before Prince Kragen and his army crossed the Pestil. Concealment was scarce, but shade was available. Partly for that reason, and partly because of the soil's richness, the flats of Armigite bore no resemblance to the arid spaces of Termigan.

Terisa and Geraden made good progress, despite the lack of fresh mounts. He studied the map repeatedly—they were still crossing a part of Mordant where he had never been before—and assured her that their progress was good. He may have been trying to shore up her spirits. For some reason, his own didn't appear to need support: his keenness suggested that he liked this rush across the landscape, this clear and urgent sense of purpose; that he was eager to return to Orison. By the time nightfall forced them to halt and make camp, they were well on their way toward making the journey to Orison as Queen Madin had intended it, in three days.

The more he looked ahead, however, the more her attention turned backward. Torrent had touched her unexpectedly, made her aware of her own inadequacies. In their separate ways, each of the King's daughters had daunted her. They had inherited more courage than she seemed to possess. Her determination to oppose Master Eremis was little more than a pretense, after all—a pretense that she could somehow transcend her past.

As she gazed across the campfire into the open dark of Armigite, she murmured, "Geraden, there's something I don't understand."

"Just 'something'?" he returned, making a transparent effort to jolly her out of her mood. "Then you are marvelous to me, my lady.
My
lack of understanding doesn't stop at 'something.' It's as vast as the world."

She looked over at him. His face was as dear as ever. And if anything he had become more handsome; the excitement he had felt since Torrent left brought out the best in his eyes, in the lines of his features. He didn't deserve her gloom. For his sake, she made an effort to smile.

"That's probably true. But I'll bet you know the answer to this one."

He met her eyes and smiled back. "Try me." The dancing light of the campfire created the impression that his smile went all the way to the bone.

Almost at once, she found that the weight pushing down on her spirit wasn't quite as heavy as she had thought.

"I think I will," she said. "But first I want you to explain something."

The gleam in his eyes grew brighter as he waited for her to continue.

"That avalanche," she said. "They must have used two mirrors. Isn't that right? One to translate it away from wherever they found it. One to translate it
to
Vale House."

"Yes," Geraden replied at once. "But that's been true of everything we've seen. Those pits of fire outside Sternwall. The ghouls in Fayle. Even the creatures that attacked Houseldon." A shadow which might have been grief or rage darkened his gaze briefly. "They all needed two mirrors. That must be Eremis' secret. It must be how he's able to attack so many different places in Mordant without actually going to them. And it must be how he's able to move people in and out of Orison without costing them their minds.

"We've talked about that before," he added.

"I remember. It's the only explanation I've heard that seems to make sense. Two mirrors. One shows a scene with a lot of landslides.

The other is a flat glass with Vale House in the Image. That means"— her heart tightened as she came to the point—"Eremis could have seen us in the Image. He
must
have seen us. I know I was in the Image. Otherwise I wouldn't have felt the translation.

"That means he knows where we are.

"And it means we're responsible for what happened to Queen Madin. She was taken because of us."

"No." Geraden rejected the idea without hesitation. "That can't be true. It wasn't because of us."

"Why not?"

"It's too complicated. He had men ready for that attack. They must have been on their way before we ever got near Fayle. If we had anything to do with it, he must have known we were going there—and not to Romish—long before we did. And his men wouldn't have ignored us. He would have been glad for a chance to capture us.

"That attack was aimed at the Queen herself. Even the timing was just a coincidence. Eremis couldn't control the avalanches in his mirror. He had to be ready to act whenever the opportunity came along."

Involuntarily, Terisa shook her head. She didn't like what she was thinking. "No. He probably
can
control the avalanches. I mean he can cause one whenever he wants. All he has to do is focus his mirror on the right kind of mountainside. Then, when he wants a landslide, all he has to do is translate away the rock supporting the mountainside."

Geraden stared at her, his eyes glittering flames. "You're right. I never thought of that."

"The attack wasn't aimed at us," she assented. "But he knows we
were
there. He could have seen that we survived. He could have seen us ride away. He could guess where we're going.

"That means we can't warn King Joyse. It won't do any good. There won't be any gap between when he knows what happened to the Queen and when Eremis knows he knows. He won't have a chance to act. What we're trying to do doesn't make any sense."

She stopped and watched Geraden's face, holding her breath as if she feared his reaction.

She was relieved to see that he wasn't discouraged. His expression became intently thoughtful, but he didn't look especially alarmed; he certainly didn't look horrified. Softly, he commented, "I've said it before. You have a morbid imagination. No wonder you've been so depressed all day.

"This time," he said after a moment, "I think you're wrong."

Quietly, she let the air sigh out of her lungs.

"If Eremis saw us," he asked by way of explanation, "where's Gart?"

Terisa's mouth fell open. She wasn't the only one with a morbid imagination.

"While we were talking with Torrent," Geraden continued, "while we were trying to help the Fayle's man, while we were packing our horses—that was the best chance Gart's ever had to kill us both. We were defenseless. Why didn't Eremis get rid of us while he had the chance?

"I don't think he saw us.

"He
could
have seen us, of course. We found that out outside Sternwall. But this time I don't think he did.

"I'm sure he didn't before the avalanche. We were on the porch, under the roof, and his mirror was focused in the air over the house. After all, he didn't want to kill Queen Madin. She wouldn't have done him any good dead. But that's not really the point. The point is, if you're translating several hundred tons of rock out of one glass into another, what do you do with it while it's between translations? If you make even the tiniest mistake, all that rock will shatter the second mirror, and you'll have the entire avalanche in your lap."

In spite of herself, Terisa let out a slightly hysterical giggle. That would have been perfect justice, if the landslide Eremis had planned for Vale House had come down on his own head.

Geraden flashed her a grin. "The solution," he said, "is the one we talked about—a hundred years ago or so in Orison, when we didn't know we were two of the most powerful people alive. Translate the second glass into the first. In effect, the rock goes straight into the flat mirror.

"But." He held up a hand to forestall interruption. "This is what saved us. When you do a translation like that—when you put the second mirror into the first before you start—what can you see? You can see the mountainside. You can see the rock. But you can't see the Image in the second mirror. The
back
of the flat mirror faces you, so the front can translate the rock.

"And once you start a process like that you have to keep it going until the dust clears and you're sure you're safe. If you stop while there's
any
chance one or two boulders are still hopping down the mountainside, the flat glass could be crushed, and the boulders could end up in your face. So you can't be in a hurry to translate the second mirror back out of the first and turn it around and refocus it.

"That's why we had time to get away."

Listening to him, Terisa felt a knot inside her loosen at last. He was right. It was possible that Eremis hadn't seen them. If he had, surely he would have sent an attack after them—wolves or a firecat, if not Gart himself. There was still hope for the wild scheme Torrent and Geraden had conceived.

That night, she experienced some of the benefits of Geraden's keenness. She began to feel a bit keener herself.

At about the same time, when the embers had died down, and clouds covered the moon, Prince Kragen sent men to clear the charred remains of his battering rams and their protective shells away from Orison's gates. He wanted the new rams and shells being hammered together to have an unimpeded approach.

And the next morning, he pressed his attack.

'Well, they have to run out of oil sometime.

It seemed a rather thin tactic on which to hinge Alend's hopes for survival, never mind victory. Nevertheless he persisted. He simply didn't have any better ideas. With enough time, he could have sat where he was in perfect safety, discussing governance with his father, or with the lady Elega, training his forces—and waiting for Orison to starve itself into submission. That was the way sieges were supposed to go. But nothing that had anything to do with King Joyse ever went the way it was supposed to go. And as for High King Festten—

If the Prince could use up Orison's supplies of lamp oil, cooking oil, flammable grease, he might be able to bring his battering rams to bear on the gates more effectively. All he needed was to get the gates open.

He knew he had enough men to overwhelm the castle, if he could just get the gates open.

Around midafternoon that day, while the fifth of Prince Kragen's makeshift rams burned like a bonfire, Terisa and Geraden sighted Batten and left the road to work eastward around the city.

This was one of the tricky parts, Geraden explained. Here they had to cross Alend's supply route. The danger of encountering Alend soldiers was now severe. And the Armigite's scouts or spies would almost certainly be concentrated along the lines where Alend forces were expected. Geraden and Terisa slowed their pace almost to a walk; and he spent long moments on the crest of every rise, straining his eyes toward the horizons. From time to time, he found a tree and climbed it to study the terrain from that vantage.

For no good reason except that she saw nothing—not even the walls of the city, once she and Geraden had left the road—she began to think these pauses for caution were unnecessary. They crossed the unmistakable swath of ground which had brought the Alend army to the road—unmistakable because the soil still held the cut of wheels, the gouge of hooves, the pressure of boots—but they didn't see any sign of Alend supply wains or Armigite spotters. She would have preferred the risk of speed to the frustration of delay.