A curious weakness dragged at Lebbick’s muscles. He had trouble keeping his back straight. His cheeks felt unnaturally stiff; when he rubbed them, dried blood came off on his fingers. Maybe Havelock was right about him. Maybe he had lost his mind. Two of his men and Nyle had been slaughtered, and it was his fault, not because he had trusted Eremis, whom he hated, but because he had refused to believe that bright, clumsy, likable Geraden was sick with evil. Geraden had translated atrocities to butcher his own brother. Or he had made someone else do it for him.
The Castellan wanted his wife. He wanted to hide his face against her shoulder and feel her arms around him. But she was dead, and he was never going to be comforted again.
Master Eremis wasn’t cold now, but he would be chilled as soon as he stopped for rest. Mortifying himself further, Castellan Lebbick ordered a cot and food, warmer clothes, a fire on the edge of the pool, brandy. Then, when he had done everything he could think of for Orison’s savior, he went back to his duties.
During the afternoon, the Alends brought up a catapult against Orison’s gates – the only other part of the castle which might prove vulnerable without a prolonged assault. Master Quillon roused Havelock from a loud snooze, and the two Imagers took the Adept’s mirror around to Orison’s long northeast face to protect the gates. Castellan Lebbick, however, remained out of sight above the curtain-wall. When several hundred Alends rushed forward suddenly, carrying scaling ladders, the Castellan was ready for them. His archers forced them to retreat.
That success relieved some of his weakness. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough anymore. To keep himself from foundering, he fell back on the one distinct, comprehensible instruction he had received from his King.
To do his job.
That woman must be pushed.
After dark, when the loss of light alleviated the threat of catapults, allowing the guards to concentrate on defending Orison from simpler forms of attack, Castellan Lebbick went back to the dungeon to do what King Joyse had told him.
TWENTY-NINE: TERISA HAS VISITORS
After the Castellan hit her and left, Terisa Morgan remained against the wall for a long time, held up in a sitting position more by the blank stone than by any desire to keep herself from crumpling.
It’s a trick. She told him that, didn’t she? Eremis did this somehow. Yes, she told him. To get rid of Geraden. She told him all that. She even tried to beg – tried to call on the part of herself which had babbled and pleaded with her parents, her father. No, I didn’t do it, it isn’t my fault, I’ll never do it again, please don’t do this. Don’t lock me in the closet. That’s where I fade. It’s dark, and it sucks me away, and I stop existing. Nyle is still alive.
But the Castellan didn’t listen to her. He took hold of her shoulders and kissed her like a blow. Then he did hit her; she staggered against the wall and fell. It was the second time he had hit her. The first time, she had been full of audacity. She had told him that his wife would have been ashamed of him. She could almost have foreseen that he would hit her. But this time she was begging. Please don’t do this to me. And he hit her anyway. Like her father, he didn’t stop.
The third time was going to be the end of her. She felt sure of that. He had promised to hurt her, and he was going to keep his promise. Just a little at first. One breast or the other. Or perhaps a few barbs across your belly. A rough piece of wood between your legs. He was going to hit and hurt her until she broke.
She didn’t understand why he kissed her. She didn’t want to understand. Go to hell. All she wanted was to fade. The cell was cold, and the lamp was afflicted with a ghoulish flicker like a promise that it might go out at any moment, plunging her into blackness. When she was a child, the prospect of fading had always terrified her. It still did. But soon being locked in the closet had reminded her of the safety of the dark, had taught her again that she could fade to escape from being alone and unloved, scarcely able to breathe. If she didn’t exist, she couldn’t be hurt.
If she didn’t exist, she couldn’t be hurt.
Go to hell.
But now, when she needed it most, it was taken away from her. She couldn’t fade: she had lost the trick of letting go. The Castellan was going to hurt her in a way she had never experienced before. That wasn’t like the relatively passive violence of being locked in a closet. It wasn’t like being left alone to save herself or go mad. It was a new kind of pain—
And Geraden—
Oh, Geraden!
She needed to fade, had to escape, in order to protect him, just in case he was still alive, just in case he had somehow succeeded at working another impossible translation. Fading was her only defense against the pressure to betray him. If she were gone, she wouldn’t be able to tell the Castellan where he was.
And yet he was the other reason she couldn’t let go. She was too afraid for him. She couldn’t forget the way she had last seen him, the poignant mixture of anguish and iron in his face, the fatal authority in his voice and movements. The sweet and openhearted young man she loved wasn’t gone. No. That would have been bad enough, but what had happened to him was worse. He had been melted and beaten to iron without losing any of his vulnerabilities, so that the strength or desperation which led him to cast himself into a mirror wasn’t a measure of how hard he had become, but rather of how much pain he was in.
She had cried, I’m not an Imager! I can’t help you! And he had turned away from her because he didn’t have any other choice. She wasn’t the answer to his need. He had flung himself into the glass and was gone, unreachable, so far beyond hope or help that he didn’t even appear in the Image of the mirror. Even an Adept couldn’t have brought him back.
That was how she knew where he was.
If he were still alive at all. And if the translation hadn’t cost him his sanity.
She should have gone with him.
Yes. She should have gone with him. That was another reason she couldn’t fade: she couldn’t forget that she had already failed him. And failed herself at the same time. She loved him, didn’t she? Wasn’t that what she had learned in their last day together? – that he was more important to her even than Master Eremis’ strange power to draw a response from her body? that she believed in him and trusted him no matter what the evidence against him was? that she cared about him too much to take any side but his in the machinations and betrayals which embroiled Mordant? Then what was she doing here? Why had she stood still and simply watched him risk his life and his mind, without making the slightest effort to go with him?
She should have gone.
She was blocked from escaping inside herself by her fear of the Castellan. By her fear for Geraden. And by shame.
After a while, the wall began to pain her back. Imperfectly fitted pieces of granite pressed against her spine, her shoulder blades. Cold seemed to soak into her from the floor, despite the warm riding clothes Mindlin had made for her, despite her boots. Perhaps it would be wiser if she got up and went to the cot. But she didn’t have the heart to move, or the strength.
Now you are mine.
Geraden, forgive me.
“My lady.”
She couldn’t see who spoke. Nevertheless his voice didn’t frighten her, so after a while she was able to raise her head.