A small thrill of anticipation ran through his veins, and he shifted his weight slightly onto the balls of his feet.
“Have you ever understood anything?” he countered with amiable sarcasm.
His scorn didn’t seem to touch her. She may have been too distant to hear it accurately. In the same tone, she said, “You have all these flat mirrors, but you don’t use them very well.”
Another surprise: one with exciting possibilities. What was she thinking?
“Do we not?” he asked casually.
“You have a glass that shows Vale House.” Despite her dullness, her voice was strangely distinct. “You could have taken Queen Madin yourself. You could have brought her here as a hostage. She would have been more use to you than Nyle.”
Oh, that. Master Eremis was mildly disappointed; he had hoped for something a bit more interesting. “A predictable idea,” he commented acidly, “and not precisely brilliant. If I had done that, I would have given up the wedge I wished to drive between Joyse and Margonal. I would have given up the obstacles I wished to place in your path.
“I must confess I am still somewhat surprised that Margonal let you into Orison. That was not a reasonable decision, in view of the news you carried.” He paused to let Terisa volunteer an explanation, but she didn’t speak. No matter. He would get all the answers he wanted from her eventually. “I am sure,” he resumed, “I came very close to achieving exactly what I desired with the Queen.
“If, on the other hand, I had done as you – and Festten – advise, I might have gained nothing. The Queen would have been in my hands – and the translation would have made her mad. Damaging hostages is a blade with two edges. Her madness might have hurt Joyse enough to weaken him. Or it might have incensed him enough to disregard her. Then the effort of attacking her would have been wasted.”
There remained the question of what had happened to the Queen. And the question of how Joyse had contrived to rejoin his army, after his disappearance from Orison. But those answers could wait as well. Thinking about his own tactics brought new joy to the Master’s loins. The satisfaction he wanted from Terisa was long overdue.
“But you have this mirror now,” she said as if she couldn’t see her peril in his eyes. “Why don’t you just translate King Joyse and Prince Kragen? Make them mad? Then you can’t lose. Without them, the army will collapse. And you can lock them up the way you did Nyle. You can laugh at them until they die.”
Oh, how she pleased him! She made him laugh. “I will do that, I assure you,” he promised. “At the right moment, I will do it, and it will give me more pleasure than you can conceive.”
In the mirror, along the sides of the monster, the forces of Cadwal and Mordant and Alend met for their last battle.
“At first, of course,” Eremis explained, “I had to be cautious. You taught me to respect your talents. If I had given you the chance, you might have broken my mirror. But that danger ended when you came here. When you gave yourself into my power.”
Initially, the fight was even. The walls of the valley and the bulk of the slug-beast narrowed the ground, restricted the number of Cadwals able to advance together. And Joyse’s men fought as if they were inspired. Even Kragen and that dour loon the Termigan seemed inspired. For a time, at least, Festten lost a lot of men and gained nothing.
“Now I wait only to let these armies do each other as much harm as possible. Joyse cannot win, but before he dies he may give Festten a victory as costly as any defeat. That will humble even the High King’s arrogance. It will make him too weak to think he can command or refuse me.”
Then, inevitably, the defenders on the left began to crumble. Norge went down; he disappeared under a rush of Cadwal hooves. In spite of his native grimness, the Termigan was forced backward. Their men tried to retreat in some semblance of order, but the Cadwals surged after them, overtook them, hacked them apart. Festten’s strength started flooding into the valley.
“So I will let the battle progress a while. I will wish Joyse all the success he can manage. And then” – Eremis was so delighted that he wanted applause – “at the crucial moment I will translate him away to the madness and ruin he deserves.”
He wasn’t particularly surprised to see Festten himself lead the second wave of the assault. The High King had an old and overwhelming desire to see Joyse die; he would have been ecstatic to kill his nemesis himself. Eremis considered, however, that Festten was taking a useless risk. The Master had no intention of allowing the High King the gratification he craved.
There was something odd in the way Terisa regarded Master Eremis, something that resembled hunger. Softly, she asked, “Have you hated him all your life? Even when you were just a kid? the first time you translated that monster? Did you hate him even then?”
“Hate him?” Eremis laughed again. “Terisa, you mistake me. You always mistake me.” The pressure inside him was rising, rising. “I do not hate him. I hate no one. I only despise weakness and folly. As a youth, when I shaped the mirror which showed what you call ‘that monster,’ I translated it merely as an experiment. To learn what I could do. Later I was forced to abandon my glass in order to avoid being captured with it, and that vexed me. I promised then I would retaliate.
“But I do not waste my time” – he was growing deliciously ready for her – “I assure you that I do not waste my time on hate.”
She continued to gaze at him with her curious blend of absence and hunger. She had her back to the windows and the sunlight; perhaps that was what made her eyes look so dark, her beauty seem so fatal.
Huskily, bringing the words up from far down her throat, she said, “Let me show you what I can do.”
With one hand, she reached out and gently touched her fingertips to the unmistakable bulge in the front of his cloak.
He felt like crowing.
Frantically, Artagel fought to prolong his life, keep himself on his feet for one more moment, just one, then another if he could do it. He was the best swordsman in Mordant, wasn’t he? Surely he could keep himself alive one more moment at a time?
Maybe not. The pain in his side had become a fire that filled his lungs, so that he seemed to snatch each raw breath through a conflagration. His sword kept turning in his hands; blood and sweat ruined his grip. His legs had lost their spring; he had no more strength to do anything except shuffle his boots over the stone. Sometimes his heavy lurching from side to side dashed water and blood off his brows, cleared his vision; most of the time, however, he had trouble seeing.
How had the corridor become so narrow? He couldn’t seem to get a full swing, no matter what he did.
Gart, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be experiencing any difficulty. His brief, wild fury had faded. In fact, the pace of his attacks was slower now, more deliberate; more malicious. He was toying with his opponent. Yellow glee shone in his eyes, and he grinned as if he were crowing inside.
What a way to die. No, worse than that: what a way to be beaten. Artagel was a fighter; he had lived most of his life in the vicinity of death. For him, it was at once so familiar and so unimaginable that he couldn’t be afraid of it. But to be beaten like this, utterly, miserably—
Oh, Geraden, forgive me.
If only, he thought dumbly, if only he hadn’t been hurt the last time. If only he hadn’t spent so much time in bed.
Terisa, forgive me.
But it was stupid to wish for things like that. Foolish regret: a waste of time and energy and life. Gart had beaten him the last time, too. And the time before that.