A Man Rides Through (67 page)

With a jerk because his hand was unsteady, the Image moved to a near view of the entrance under the portico.

Another jerk.

The Image moved into the forehall of the manor.

Geraden stopped breathing.

Like the exterior walls, the floor was formed of fitted planks anchored with stone. Years of use and wax made the boards gleam, but couldn't conceal the fact that men who didn't care what damage they did had been there in nailed boots—had been there recently. Mud, footprints, gouged spots, splinters: they were all distinct in the Image.

Nevertheless the forehall was empty.

Sweat streamed into Geraden's eyes. He scrubbed at it with the back of his hand. Dimly, he was aware that both Master Barsonage and Adept Havelock were standing over him, watching his search; but he had no attention to spare for them.

More smoothly, he moved the Image into the first room which opened off the forehall.

A large sitting room: the kind of room in which formal guests sipped sweet wines before dinner. Tracked with mud and bootmarks.

Bloodstains.

Deserted.

"Why is no one there?" asked the mediator softly. "Where is Master Eremis? Where are his mirrors—his power?"

Geraden's heart constricted. Nausea rose in his throat as he moved the Image through the house.

A cavernous dining room. More mud and bootmarks, more bloodstains. The edges of the table were ragged with swordcuts.

Deserted.

Oh, Terisa, please, where are you?

Geraden scanned two more fouled rooms, both empty, then located a wide staircase sweeping downward.

"The cellars," mumured Master Barsonage. "That is where they would imprison her."

Of course. The cellars. Esmerel's equivalent of a dungeon. Eremis wouldn't keep his mirrors or his apparatus or any of his secrets where passersby or even tradesmen might catch sight of them. Everything would be belowground.

Who was responsible for all this mud, all these bootmarks?

Geraden nudged the Image downward.

For the first few steps, he was so absorbed in what he was doing—so caught up in the focus of the glass, the search for Terisa, the need to succeed—that he didn't understand what was about to happen to him, didn't realize the truth at all, even though it was perfectly plain in front of him, so obvious that any farmer or stonemason, any ordinary man or woman, would have grasped it automatically.

But then the Image began to dim, began to grow palpably dim in the glass, and Master Barsonage croaked, "Light."

Light.

Geraden's hands froze on the frame. His whole body lost movement, as if the breath and blood had been swept out of him. The stairs loomed below him darkly, treads descending into an immeasurable black.

There was no light. No lamps or lanterns or torches or candles. They had been extinguished.

The Image still existed, of course; but without light there was nothing to see.

He had no answer to that defense. By that one stroke, any attempt to rescue Terisa was instantly and effectively prevented. He couldn't help her if he couldn't find her—and how could he find her if he couldn't see her?

"Maybe—" The air seemed to thicken in his lungs; he felt like he was suffocating. "Maybe there's light farther down. Maybe only the stairs are dark."

At once, Master Barsonage clamped a warning hand onto his shoulder. "Geraden," he hissed as if the former Apt were far away, lost in urgency, almost out of reach, "how will you find it? If there
is
light, how will you find it? You cannot focus an Image you cannot
see.
You may shift it into the foundations of the house, where no light will ever reach."

"I've got to try." Geraden was choking. The mediator's hand on his shoulder was choking him. "Don't you understand? I've got to find her."

"No!" Master Barsonage insisted. Geraden's passion appeared to affect him like anguish.
"You cannot focus an Image you cannot see."

That was true. Of course. Any idiot could have told him that. Even a failed Apt who had never done anything right in his life could recognize the truth. Darkness made all the mirrors blind—and all Imagers.

Somehow, Geraden stepped back against the pressure of Barsonage's grip. Facing the Image as it blurred into the obscure depths, he said harshly, "Then I'll have to go myself."

With a look of iron on his face, and no hope in his heart, he made the mental adjustment of translation and stepped into the glass.

As his face crossed into the Image, he cried out, "Terisa!"

Master Barsonage wrenched him back so hard that he sprawled among the tables.

Before he could regain his feet—or curse or fight—Adept Havelock sat down on his chest, straddling his neck.

"Listen to me," the Adept snarled, savage with strain. "I can't do this for long." His eyes rolled as if he were going into a seizure. "You can make us let you go. Just use that voice. We'll obey. But we won't be able to get you back."

Geraden bucked against the Adept, tried to pitch Havelock off him. Havelock braced his legs on either side, clutched at Geraden's jerkin with both hands, hung on.

"Listen
to me, you fool! Your power sustains the shift! When you translate yourself, that glass will revert to its natural Image. You'll be cut off!—you and the lady Terisa both! You'll
both
be lost!"

It was too much. Geraden flung Adept Havelock aside. He surged to his feet. With all his strength, he punched Master Barsonage in the chest—a blow which nearly made the massive Imager take a step backward.

Then he faced the mirror and began to howl.

"Eremis! Don't touch her!"

FORTY-TWO: UNEXPECTED TRANSLATIONS

Eremis was touching her. He was certainly touching her. She had never been strong enough against him. Her concentration had never been strong enough. While he had approached her in the audience hall, while he had threatened Geraden, while he had fought with the Tor, she had attempted something she didn't know how to do, something she had never heard of before: wild with anger and desperation, she had tried to reach out to the mirror which had brought him here and change it.

On some level, she knew that was impossible. She was on the wrong side of the glass, the side of the Image, not the side of the Imager. But the knowledge meant nothing to her. If she could feel a translation taking place, surely that gave her a link, a channel? And she didn't have any other way to fight. Her need was that extreme: she didn't care that what she was trying was probably insane. Her strange and unmeasured talent was her only weapon. If she could fade, if she could go far enough away to reach his mirror—

His hands made that impossible. They forced her to the surface of herself when she most needed to sink away.

First there was his grip on her arm. He flung her toward the translation point as if it were a wall against which he intended to break her bones. But he didn't let her go.

Then there was the bottomless instant of translation, the eternal dissolution.

Then there was a completely different kind of light.

It was orange and hot, part furnace, part torches—and full of smoke, rankly scented. Another man was there, someone she hadn't seen before, a blur as Eremis impelled her past him, kept her spinning. Gilbur and Gart were right behind her, as blurred as everything else.

And Eremis was shouting, "The lights! Put out the lights!"

Before she could get her eyes into focus, see anything clearly, the torches dove into buckets of sand; a clang closed the door of the furnace. Darkness slammed against her like a wave of heat.

"What went wrong?" someone demanded in a rattling voice.

"Geraden," snapped Master Eremis. "He remains alive. We must not let him see this place."

"I tried to kill him," Gilbur snarled. "I hit him hard. But that puppy is stronger than he appears."

"She
must not see it," continued Eremis. "She is his creation. Who knows what bonds exist between them? Perhaps they are able to share Images in their minds."

The first voice, the man she didn't know, made an assenting noise. "Then it is good that we were prepared for this eventuality. If we were in the Image-room—" A moment later, he added, "It would be interesting to learn what he does when he regains consciousness."

"As long as he cannot find us," muttered Master Gilbur.

"In the dark?" Master Eremis laughed. "Have no fear of that." He sounded exultant, almost happy. His grip on Terisa shifted; with one hand, he held both her arms behind her back. "She is mine now—and they are ours. No matter that Geraden still lives, and Kragen. That will only add spice to the sauce. They will do exactly what we wish."

"And Joyse?" asked the rattling voice.

"You saw," rasped Gilbur. "He fled when we appeared. No doubt he is cowering in some hidey-hole, hoping for mad Havelock to save him."

The tone of Eremis' laughter suggested that he doubted Gilbur's assessment. He didn't argue, however. Instead, he said, "It will be safe to renew the lights when the door is closed."

Firmly, irresistibly, he pushed Terisa ahead of him into the dark.

And all the time, she was still trying to concentrate, still trying to fade.

Now, of course, she wasn't reaching toward the glass Eremis had used; she was struggling to find Adept Havelock's supply of mirrors, striving to feel the potential for translation across the distance. She could sense translations as they occurred. She was sensitive to the opening of the gap between places. That must mean
something.
There must be some way she could use it.

But Eremis' grasp made everything impossible.

He held her too roughly, so that her arms hurt; he pushed her too far ahead of him into the blind dark. Through a doorway, along a lightless passage, through another door: The visceral fear of running into something kept her from being able to pull her heart and mind away. The way he chuckled between his teeth filled her with rage and despair.

I'm not yours. Never. I'll find some way to kill you. No matter what happens. I swear it.

It was impossible to fade while she was so full of fury.

And then the way he held her changed.

Through the second doorway and across a rough floor, he suddenly thrust her down. She couldn't catch herself because he didn't free her arms: she landed heavily on a pillow, a bed. Deftly, he turned her so that she lay on her back, with her wrists now clamped above her head by one of his hands. Then he clasped something iron around her left wrist; she heard a click, a faint rattle of chain. In spite of the fetter, however, he continued to hold her arms pinned.

He went on chuckling while his other hand undid the hooks of her soft, leather shirt, exposing her breasts, her vulnerable belly.

"I must chain you," he murmured pleasantly, "a small precaution against your strange talents—and Geraden's. But it will not prevent me from satisfying my claim on you. You will find that I am not easily satisfied. On the other hand, we have plenty of time.

"If you are compliant, I will keep you bound as little as possible."

In the dark, she struggled; she wanted to smash his face, wanted to feel his blood on her hands. He pinned her easily, however; he knew how to keep women from getting away from him. When she paused to gather her strength so that she wouldn't weep, he curled his tongue like a lick of wet fire around each of her nipples, and his hand slipped aside the sash of her trousers.

Gasping on the verge of tears, she tried to twist out of his hold; failed.

Abruptly, she stilled herself, let the resistance sag out of her muscles. She wasn't accomplishing anything; she was just contributing to her own defeat by making herself wild. She couldn't concentrate— Let him think her stillness was a form of surrender. If he was that arrogant.