King Joyse should already have been crushed under the weight of the callat. He was still up and fighting, however. Prince Kragen was with him, and the Termigan, and Castellan Norge; but they weren’t enough to keep him alive. No, he endured because the monster’s death had galvanized his army: that impossible rescue from certain destruction had transformed panic into hope and fury. As fast as their horses or their legs could move them, his men came to support their King; the first several hundred of them had already charged in among the callat.
The Cadwals hadn’t yet had time to catch up with the red-furred creatures. The callat had to face the recovered force of King Joyse’s army alone.
Geraden dashed past the flat glass with black shapes on his heels. Master Gilbur seemed to be having trouble finding wolves. He had translated three, no, four into the Image-room; but now he was studying the Image, scanning its focus rapidly in search of more predators. The use he and Eremis had made of the wolves previously must have depleted their population.
Four would be enough, of course. The gnarled shapes would be enough. Geraden couldn’t keep ahead of them, couldn’t fight—
Not this way.
The first wolf appeared to rear straight up in front of him, springing for his head. Urgently, he wrenched himself aside. His boots skidded out from under him; he thumped down on his back, sliding beneath the attack.
The wolf landed among the black creatures.
They didn’t care what they ate; they only wanted food. Swiftly, they all pounced on the wolf.
At once, their struggle became a whirl, a snarling dervish, a mad ball of claws and fangs. The wolf was big, powerful; the shapes sank their hooks and teeth in and clung.
With the air knocked out of his lungs, Geraden lay still.
As if they recognized a mortal enemy, the other wolves sped to help their fellow.
Master Gilbur spat curses, then crowed obscenely as he located more wolves.
Geraden couldn’t breathe. He could hardly move his limbs. Nevertheless he had to act now, had to grab this brief chance. He might never get another one.
Talent was a remarkable thing: he was learning more about it all the time. He was an Adept of some kind; he could use other people’s mirrors. And he had rescued himself and Terisa out of her former apartment, out of a world which had no Imagery. All he had to do was concentrate, take Master Gilbur by surprise.
In a way, it helped that he couldn’t breathe. It almost helped that the struggle between the wolves and the gnarled creatures was only ten feet away, and that the wolves were winning, crunching the bones of the smaller beasts. The extremity of his plight left no room for doubt or hesitation.
He turned his head toward the mirror and studied the Image, fixed it in his mind: a forest full of harsh shadows, slashed by light there and there; boughs angling upward; underbrush of a kind he had never seen before. During the spaces between his heartbeats, he memorized the scene.
Master Gilbur hunched beside the mirror, clutching the frame with one fist, crooning to the glass. A feral ecstasy lit his features, as bright as fire, as consuming as lava.
When the first of the new wolves started through the mirror, Geraden closed his eyes and shifted the Image in his mind.
And the Image in the mirror shifted.
He didn’t know what he shifted it to, and he didn’t care. Instinctively, he must have selected some place or vista to fill the mirror: he couldn’t imagine a blank glass. But that detail was unimportant. What mattered was that he could reach out with his talent, that by surprise if not by strength he could break Master Gilbur’s hold on the glass.
It worked. The Image melted while the wolf was still caught in the prolonged instant of translation.
The wolf was cut in half.
The mirror shattered.
Gilbur wheeled to confront Geraden. For a moment, the brutal Imager actually gaped. Then rage knotted his face, and he let out a roar which seemed to strike the air dumb, leaving the battle of the wolves without a sound.
He turned to the next mirror in the ring.
From its dark depths, he brought out a burst of lightning so hot that it scorched the stone floor; a blast of thunder so loud that it thudded in Geraden’s tight lungs; a wind so hard that it seemed to hammer him down even though he hadn’t tried to rise, hadn’t tried to move.
The Imager was translating a storm into the chamber.
Using it to buffet and confuse and overwhelm Geraden until Master Gilbur could get to him and drive a dagger into his heart.
Now that he had Terisa down on the floor and hurt, Master Eremis thought he would begin to take advantage of her. He found, however, that he had trouble pulling his attention away from the mirror.
He liked surprises: they were tests, opportunities. Yet the death of the slug-beast nagged at him. That was an unforeseen development. Of course, the creature could have collapsed for any number of reasons which had nothing to do with the battle. Nevertheless its demise suggested that he had underestimated his enemy’s capabilities.
And King Joyse’s forces were rallying now. That was perfectly predictable – but still frustrating to watch. Festten had made the right decision: to launch a full-scale assault while the armies of Mordant and Alend were still in disarray. Unfortunately, his men were too far away to save the callat. And King Joyse and Prince Kragen were doing entirely too good a job of pulling their forces into order to meet the Cadwal charge.
Soon the battle would degenerate into a simple contest of steel and determination.
King Joyse would lose, of course. Festten had him heavily outnumbered. And Gilbur had an impressive array of mirrors at hand. Yet Master Eremis wasn’t pleased. On the scale of armies, Gilbur’s remaining resources were relatively minor. And if the Cadwal victory weren’t ultimately achieved by Imagery, the High King would become more difficult to rule in future. He would trust his own strength more, Eremis’ less. He might begin to think he could dispense with Master Eremis altogether. And Gart was somewhere in the stronghold—
The Master was prepared for all these eventualities. Nevertheless he didn’t find them especially attractive.
Carefully, Terisa got to her feet, so that she, too, could look at the mirror. She had the smudge of a growing bruise on her cheekbone, but it only made her lovelier. When she had been hurt enough, she would be intolerably beautiful.
Master Eremis considered hitting her again. But that was too crude, really. He expected better of himself: more imagination, greater subtlety. And he wanted to see what his enemies were going to do.
He wanted to see what Gilbur was going to do.
It would be something violent, something effective. Considering Gilbur’s susceptibility to rage of all kinds, however, it might also be something premature. Master Eremis didn’t want to see Joyse die too soon, too easily.
At the moment, there was no danger of that. The callat were beaten: Joyse was able to disengage, with Kragen, Norge, and the unanticipated Termigan. They rode a short way up the valley, conferred with each other briefly, then began shouting orders which conveyed nothing through the glass. And their army seemed to come into order around them almost magically.
None too soon, Kragen spurred away to command the defense to the right of the monster’s corpse. Norge went to the left, with the Termigan beside him. Well, Joyse was an old man. No doubt he needed rest. He didn’t appear to be resting, however. Instead, he rode everywhere, organizing his men.
For some reason, he divided them into three forces: one to support Kragen; one for Norge and the Termigan; one for himself.
“I don’t understand,” said Terisa thinly, in that impersonal, disinterested tone.
Master Eremis felt that he was beginning to comprehend her. That tone didn’t indicate defeat. It was a sign of withdrawaclass="underline" not of retreat, but of hiding, of covert intentions. Perhaps she thought that if she could go far enough away in her mind, he wouldn’t be able to hurt her. Or perhaps she hid so that she could take him by surprise.