“I’m sorry,” Geraden murmured. “I just meant that she’s important. I had to bring her to you.” He was hurrying. “The Congery sent me into the mirror this morning to try to get the champion they wanted. But I didn’t find him. I found her instead. She might be the answer to the auguries.”
Adept Havelock continued to ignore Geraden and Terisa. Scrutinizing the board, he reached out finally and moved one of the King’s men, hopping one of his own. Then, triumphantly, he responded by demolishing a whole line of opposing pieces and arriving at the last row, where he crowned himself with severe emphasis.
Grimly, forcing himself to speak in spite of his embarrassment, Geraden went on, “She proves you’ve been right all along. The mirrors don’t create what we see. The Images really exist.”
King Joyse studied Geraden for a moment. Then he sighed wearily and turned to Terisa. “My lady,” he said, “please pardon me. It appears that this urgent young man will not allow us the freedom to play hop-board just now.
“Be reasonable, Geraden,” he continued, shifting his attention back to the Apt. “You know that I agree with you. But what does her presence here truly prove?” The quaver in his voice persisted: he sounded like he was rehearsing an argument so old that he would no longer have gotten any satisfaction out of winning it. “Surely it’s possible that you found her instead of the champion you sought because of one of your unfortunate mishaps? Or perhaps you’ve touched on an unsuspected strength in yourself, and you found her instead of the champion because she was what you wished to find? In what way does her translation demonstrate the fundamental nature of Imagery – or of mirrors?”
Geraden looked first startled by the King’s argument, then vaguely nauseated. “But I saw – “he protested incoherently. “It wasn’t the same.”
King Joyse watched him mildly and waited for him to pull his thoughts together.
With an effort, Geraden said slowly, “I made that mirror myself. I saw the champion I was supposed to find in it. He was right there in front of me when I stepped into the glass. But during the translation everything changed. I arrived in a room that was totally different from the Images. She is totally different. What you’re saying is that I made her up – by some kind of accident, either because I didn’t know what I was doing or because I didn’t know my own strength. How is that possible?”
In reply, the King shrugged – a bit sadly, Terisa thought. “Who can say? Centuries ago, no one believed that Imagery itself was possible. Even a hundred years ago, no one believed that Imagery might threaten the existence of the very realms which made use of it.
“Geraden,” he said to the pain on the Apt’s face, “I don’t claim that she does not exist. I only observe that her presence here doesn’t settle the question.”
Geraden shook his head and tried again. “But if you think that way – and you push it far enough – you can’t prove anything exists. You can’t prove I’m here talking to you. You can’t prove you’re playing hop-board with anybody but yourself. You might not be playing it anywhere except in your own mind.”
At that, the King smiled, then grimaced humorously. “Unfortunately, I’m confident that my games of hop-board are real – and my opponent as well. The drubbings I receive are too painful for any other explanation.”
“Very wise,” remarked Adept Havelock unexpectedly, without raising his eyes from the board. In lugubrious concentration, he moved two or three of King Joyse’s men to other squares; then with his crowned piece he jumped them all, hitting each square emphatically as if to compensate for his wall-eyed vision. “Only hop-board is real. Ask any philosopher. Nothing else” – he fluttered one hand in dismissal – “signifies.”
Without meaning to, Terisa smiled at the fond grin King Joyse directed toward Havelock. The Adept’s way of playing checkers made it clear that he wasn’t in his right mind; nevertheless she found the King’s affection for the old Imager catching. Watching them, she forgot for a moment that the present conversation had anything to do with her.
But Geraden was too vexed and unhappy to enjoy the King’s playful attitude. “My lord King, this isn’t a joke. The realm is tottering, and all of Mordant is waiting for you to do something about it.” He gathered momentum as he spoke, until his urgency seemed to clear away his smaller uncertainties, contritions, and anxieties. “I don’t know why you haven’t, but the Masters finally couldn’t wait any longer. They – “He caught himself. “We are doing our best to find an answer. And we have. I think we have, anyway. The lady Terisa isn’t the champion we were expecting – but that probably doesn’t matter. There’s a reason she’s here instead of what we were expecting, and I don’t think it has anything to do with accidents. I’m not an arch-Imager in disguise. And mirrors don’t have minds of their own.”
As she studied his intent expression, Terisa caught a glimpse of what made him so accident-prone. He was too many things at once – a boy, a man, and everything in between – and the differing parts of himself seldom came into balance. She found him attractive in that way. Yet the perception saddened her: she herself wasn’t too many things, but too few.
The King was watching Geraden as well; and the lines of his old visage seemed to hint at a sadness of his own. But they also suggested interest and perhaps a kind of pride. “So much confidence is remarkable,” he commented. The quaver in his voice made his nonchalance sound unsteady, feigned. “You’ve spoken of what you’ve seen, Geraden. Tell me what you’ve seen that gives you this confidence.”
Geraden hesitated, glancing at Terisa in appeal as though he believed she knew what he was about to say; as though he felt it would be more convincing if it came from her. But of course she had no idea what he had in mind. After a moment, he returned his gaze to King Joyse.
“My lord King,” the Apt said, his own voice shaking with determination and alarm, “she is a Master of Imagery.”
At that, the King fixed a watery and unreadable look on Terisa – a look which could have indicated surprise or boredom.
Without a glance at the other people in the room, Havelock swept all the men off the board and began to set up a new game.
“I believe,” Geraden went on softly, “her power pulled my translation away from where I thought I was going.”
The assertion was so absurd that several moments passed before Terisa realized she was expected to answer it. Then, helplessly, she began to blush under the scrutiny of the two men.
Close to panic, she replied, “No. No, of course not. That’s crazy. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Carefully, Geraden said, “I found her in a room entirely walled with mirrors.”
“So what?” A distant, self-conscious part of her mind was surprised by how this ludicrous conception frightened her. “Everybody has mirrors. A lot of people use them for decor. They’re just pieces of glass – with something on the back to make them reflect. They don’t mean anything.”
In response to her alarm, King Joyse murmured as if he were trying to comfort her, “Perhaps in your world that is so. Here the truth is otherwise.”
But Geraden was already saying as definitively as he could, “Each of her mirrors showed her own Image exactly. They showed my Image exactly. And she isn’t hurt. I’m not hurt. I ought to be raving by now. Or my mind should be completely empty. But I’m all right. She’s all right.
“They were her mirrors.”
An amazed dismay stopped Terisa’s mouth. She felt she couldn’t understand what was literally being said to her. Each of her mirrors showed her own Image exactly. Here that wasn’t true. Suddenly, her grasp on the ordinary details of life – the plain facts which showed that she was in contact with reality – was threatened, denied.