She couldn’t lift the whole weight of Mordant’s need by herself. She was hardly able to lift her head off the lumpy pallet which served as her mattress. The Tor had seen Nyle’s body. Geraden’s brother was unquestionably dead.
Why should she bother to eat? What was the point?
Maybe if she got hungry enough, she would regain the ability to let go of her own existence.
She tried to sleep – tried to relax so that the tension and reality would flow out of her muscles – but another set of boots stumbled toward her down the corridor. Just one: someone was coming in her direction alone. A slow, limping stride, hesitant or frail. Deliberately, she closed her eyes again. She didn’t want to know who it was. She didn’t want to be distracted.
For the first time, he called her by her name.
“Terisa.”
It wasn’t a good omen.
Startled, she raised her head and saw Geraden’s brother at the door of her cell.
“Artagel?”
He wore a nightshirt and breeches – clothes which seemed to increase his family resemblance to Geraden and Nyle because they weren’t right for a swordsman. His dress and his way of standing as if someone had just stuck a knife in his side made it clear that he was still supposed to be in bed. He had been too weak yesterday – was it really only yesterday? – to support Geraden in front of the Congery. Obviously, he was too weak to walk around in the dungeon alone today.
Yet he was here.
It was definitely not a good omen that he had called her Terisa.
Forgetting her own lack of strength, she swung her legs off the cot and went toward him. “Oh, Artagel, I’m so glad to see you, I’m in so much trouble, I need you, I need a friend, Artagel, they think Geraden killed Nyle, they—”
His pallor stopped her. The sweat of strain on his forehead and the tremor of pain in his mouth stopped her. His eyes were glazed, as if he were about to lose consciousness. Gart, the High King’s Monomach, had wounded him severely, and he drove himself into relapses by struggling out of bed when he should have been resting. The fact that Gart had beaten him; Nyle’s treasonous alliance with Prince Kragen and the lady Elega; the accusations against Geraden: things like that tormented the Domne’s most famous son, goading him to fight his weakness – and his recovery.
“Artagel,” she groaned, “you shouldn’t be here. You should be in bed. You’re making yourself sick again.”
“No.” The word came out like a gurgle. With one arm, he clamped his other hand against his side. “No.” Because he was too sick to remain standing without help, he leaned on the door, pressing his forehead against the bars. The dullness in his eyes made him look like he was going blind. “This is your doing.”
She halted: pain went through her like a burn. “Artagel?” There were, after all, more kinds of pain in the world than she would ever have guessed. Except for Geraden, Artagel was the best friend she had. She would have trusted him without question. “You don’t mean that.” He thought she was responsible? “You can’t.”
“I didn’t mean to say it.” He was having trouble with his respiration. His breath seemed to struggle past an obstruction in his chest. “That isn’t why I’m here. Lebbick is going to take care of you. I just want to know where Geraden is.
“I’m going to hunt him down and cut his heart out.”
Suddenly, she was filled with a desire to wail or weep. It would have done her good to cry out. But this was too important. Somehow, she kept her cry down. Panting because the cell was too small and if she didn’t get more air soon she was going to fail, she protested, “No. Eremis did this. It’s a trick. I tell you, it’s a trick. The Tor says he’s seen the body and Nyle is really dead, but I don’t believe it. Geraden didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Ah!” Artagel gasped as if he were hurt and furious. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to me anymore.” Now his eyes were clear and hot, bright with passion or fever. “I’ve seen the body myself.”
And while she reeled inside herself he continued, “After Geraden stabbed him, he was still alive. That much is true. Eremis rushed him to his own rooms and got a physician for him. That was his only chance to stay alive. Eremis got him that chance. Then Eremis put guards on him – inside the room and outside the door. In case Geraden tried again.
“It didn’t work.” Artagel’s forehead seemed to bulge between the bars; he might have been trying to break his skull. “Lebbick found them. The guards were killed. Some kind of beast fed off them. Geraden must have translated something into the room – something they couldn’t fight.
“Nyle was killed. It chewed his face off.”
Just for a second, that image struck her so horribly that she quailed. Oh, Nyle! Oh, my God. Visceral revulsion churned inside her, and her hands leaped to cover her mouth. Geraden, no!
She should have gone with him. To prevent all this.
But then she saw iron and anguish, and Geraden came back to her. She knew him. And she loved him. Terisa, I did not kill my brother. Without warning, she was angry. Years of outrage which she had stored away in the secret places of her heart abruptly sprang out, touching her with fire.
“Say that again,” she breathed, panted. “Go on. Say it.”
Artagel was beyond the reach of surprise. Baring his teeth in a snarl, he repeated, “Nyle was killed. The beast chewed his face off.”
“And you believe Geraden did that?” She lashed her protest at him. “Are you out of your mind? Has everybody in this whole place gone crazy?”
He blinked dumbly; for one brief moment, he seemed to regard her in a different light. Almost at once, however, his own horror returned. His legs were failing. Slowly, he began to slip down the bars.
“I saw his body. I held it. I’ve still got his blood on my clothes.”
That was true. Her lamp was bright enough to reveal the dried stains on his nightshirt.
“I don’t care.” She was too angry to imagine what the experience had been like for him – to hold his own brother’s outraged corpse in his arms and have no way to bring the body back to life. “Geraden is your brother. You’ve known him all his life. You know him better than that.”
Artagel continued slipping. His side hurt too much: apparently, he couldn’t use his hands. She reached through the bars and grabbed his nightshirt to support him somehow; but, he was too heavy for her. Finally he bent his legs and caught his weight on his knees. “I tell you I’ve seen his body.”
He pulled her down with him until she was on her knees as well. Raging into his face, she gasped, “I don’t care. Geraden didn’t do it.”
“And I tell you I’ve seen his body.” In spite of weakness and fever, Artagel met her with the unflinching passion which had twice led him to hurl himself against the High King’s Monomach. “You deny it, but it isn’t going to go away. An Imager did it. Translation is the only way a beast could get into that room and out again. But it wasn’t Eremis. He was with Lebbick the whole time.
“Right now, he’s up in the reservoir translating a new water supply. He’s the only reason we’ve got any hope at all. I took Geraden’s side against him” – Artagel’s voice seemed to be thick with blood – “and I was wrong. He’s saving us.
“Geraden killed Nyle. I’m going to track him down whether you tell me where he is or not. The only difference it’s going to make is time.”