She could hear Castellan Lebbick crying like a farewell, I am loyal to my King!
With more bitterness than she had realized she contained, more indignation than she had ever been aware of possessing, she asked softly, “What about the Castellan?”
“What about him?” returned Master Quillon. Perhaps he was too irate to guess what she meant.
“Maybe the Tor and Geraden have made their own choices. They’re more stable than he is. What choice did you ever give him? If he tried to quit serving, King Joyse would have to stop him. This whole policy” – she sneered the word – “depends on the Castellan. If he doesn’t stay faithful – if he doesn’t do his utter best to keep Orison strong while King Joyse is busy being weak – then the whole thing collapses. When King Joyse finally decides to fight, he won’t have anything to fight with. Unless the Castellan stays faithful.”
Master Quillon nodded. “That is true. What is your point?”
“He doesn’t have any choice, and it’s killing him.” Sudden pity surged up through her bitterness. The man Lebbick had once been would probably have treated her with nothing more terrible than detached sarcasm or kindness. But the entire weight of King Joyse’s policy had come down on his shoulders, and now he could hardly refrain from raping or murdering her. “Don’t you see that? What you’re doing is expensive, and you’re making him pay for all of it.” Without warning, she began to weep again. Her distress and the Castellan’s were too intimately interconnected. “You and your precious King are destroying him.”
She expected Master Quillon to yell at her. She was ready for that: she didn’t care how angry he got, what he said. Somehow she had gone past the point where mere outrage could threaten her. She had anger of her own, and it was no longer hidden away. If her father had appeared before her there and lost his temper, she would have known how to respond.
The Imager didn’t yell at her, however. He didn’t raise his voice. Slowly, he moved to the door of the cell. Perhaps he intended to leave, give up on her: she didn’t know – and didn’t care. But he didn’t do that, either. He waited until she looked up at him, lifted her head defiantly and glared at him through her tears. Then he said quietly, “We didn’t know this was going to happen. We thought he was stronger.”
Just for a second, she almost stopped crying in order to laugh. Imagine it. An aging King and a madman and a minor Imager got together to save the world – and the best plan they could come up with required them to drive the only man in Orison who knew how to fight for them out of his mind. It was funny, really. The only thing she didn’t understand was, what made them think it would work? How could they possibly believe—?
The sound of a door rang down the passage: iron hit stone with such savagery that the echo seemed to carry a hint of snapped hinges.
“Lying slut!” howled the Castellan. “I’ll have you gutted for this!”
His boots started toward her from the guardroom.
Terisa froze in shock. Castellan Lebbick was coming to get her. He was coming to get her, and there was nothing she could do. Master Quillon said something, but she didn’t hear what it was. In her mind, she saw the corridor from the guardroom: one turn; another; then the long line of the cells. The Castellan was coming hard, but he wasn’t running; he might run as he drew closer, but he wasn’t running yet; he was at the first turn – on his way to the next. He would reach her cell in half a minute. Her life had that many seconds left. No more.
“Are you deaf?” Quillon grabbed her wrist and hauled her off the cot. “I said, Come on.”
She didn’t have a chance to think, to choose. He wrenched her through the open door out into the passage. But he was pulling on her too hard, away from the guardroom: she staggered against the far wall and fell; her weight twisted her wrist from his grasp.
As she scrambled to her feet again, she saw Castellan Lebbick come into view past the second turn.
He saw her as well. For an instant, their eyes met across the distance, as if they had become astonishing to each other.
Then he let out a roar of fury – and she skittered in the opposite direction, her boots slipping on the rotten straw.
She could hear him coming after her. That was impossible; her feet and breathing and Master Quillon’s shouts made too much noise. Nevertheless her sense of his overwhelming rage, his ache for destruction, made his pursuit loud in her mind. She could feel his hate reaching out—
And ahead of her the Imager was losing ground. He slowed his flight; took the time to turn and beckon frantically.
A second later, he whipped open the door to another cell, dashed inside.
She followed without thinking. She had no time to think. Deflecting her momentum against the bars, she flung herself into the cell faster than Master Quillon was moving and nearly ran him down when he stopped.
Quickly, he opened a door in the side wall.
It was well hidden: the spring that released it was so cunningly concealed that she would never have found it for herself; and until he hit the spring she couldn’t see the door itself. Then it swung wide, moving smoothly, as if it were counterbalanced on its hinges and controlled by weights. It must have been built in when this cell was first constructed.
That was how Master Quillon had gained access to the dungeon. How he had been able to listen to her conversations with Eremis and Lebbick. Another secret passage. But she didn’t have time to be surprised. As soon as the door opened, Quillon caught at her arm again and thrust her forward, into the unlit passage.
He followed on her heels. Trying to make room for him without advancing into the dark, she found a wall and put her back to it. He was only a silhouette against the dim reflection from the dungeon lamps. At once, he tripped the mechanism that moved the weights to close and seal the door—
—and Castellan Lebbick burst into the cell.
He was too late: he wasn’t going to be able to prevent the door from shutting. And once it was shut he would have to find the spring to open it again.
Nevertheless he was fast, and his sword was already in his hands. Driving wildly to spit Terisa through the closing of the door, he plunged forward, hurled himself headlong toward her.
The door’s weight swept his thrust aside. His swordtip missed her by several inches.
Then his sword was caught in the crack of the door. The iron held, jamming the stone so that it couldn’t seal.
His body thudded against the door; he recoiled, staggering.
A moment later, his voice came, muffled, into the dark. “Guards! Guards!”
“Come on!” hissed Master Quillon. He took Terisa by the wrist once more and tugged her away from the thin slit of illumination. “Curse him! As soon as his men arrive, he will be able to open that door. We must escape now.”
Struggling for balance, she hurried after her rescuer into a blind passage.
Stone seemed to whirl about her head like a swarm of bats, probing for some way to strike at her. There was no light – no light of any kind. Except for his grip, Master Quillon had ceased to exist. Her shoulders kept hitting the walls as if she were reeling. She couldn’t keep up this pace; she had no idea where the passage went, or how it got there. “Slow down!” she panted. “I can’t see.”
“You do not need to see,” Quillon snapped. “You need to hurry.”
Still trying to make him slacken speed, she protested, “How long?”
Without warning, he halted. At the same time, he let go of her. She collided with him, stumbled against the wall again, flung up her arms to protect her head.