A Man Rides Through (38 page)

"I don't understand." Terisa had to swallow hard to make her throat work. "Why? I mean, why do it this way? Why not put this— this lava?—why not translate this lava right into the city and be done with it?"

"It's more fun this way," grated Geraden. Then he shook his head. "No, that's not it. Sternwall itself probably isn't in the Image. The mirror they're using probably shows a place up the hill somewhere. This is as far as they can adjust the focus."

Guards paced the wall without getting too close to the heat. Terisa saw two men stop, point toward her and Geraden; one of them left the wall. She supposed that under the circumstances Sternwall didn't get many visitors. Trying to force down the taste of bile, she nudged her horse into motion.

Grimly, she and Geraden rode past the pits toward the gate on the far side of the city.

Near the lava, she could hear it seething, a deep, almost inaudible rumble that seemed to echo in the marrow of her bones; the sound of the earth being eaten away.

As quiet as that noise was, however, it seemed to deafen her. She hardly heard the lonely cry of a bugle rising from the walls of the city. She hardly heard Geraden say, "Looks like the Termigan is sending men out to meet us. Maybe he doesn't want to risk letting us in until he knows who we are."

She should have been ready. She was near an Image: she should have understood that she and Geraden were in danger of being spotted. Unfortunately, she wasn't thinking that clearly. She was too full of Sternwall's plight to think clearly.

She was taken completely by surprise when
a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel did straight through the center of her abdomen.

Yet the surprise itself may have been what saved her. She had no time to be frightened, paralyzed. Instead, she yelped a warning and flung herself to the side, out of the saddle, out of the way.

The fangs missed her. They came so close, however, that they snagged her shirt at the shoulder, nearly tore it off her body.

She hit the ground awkwardly, wrenched her knee, fell flat on her face. Desperately, she scrabbled her legs under her and pitched to her feet—

—
just in time to see a gnarled black spot the size of a puppy get up on its limbs and come scrambling toward her. Its savage jaws took up more than half its body: they stretched for her, ravening.

At her yell, Geraden had wheeled his mount. Bounding from an invisible perch on the other side of a translation, a black, round shape flipped past him. With all four limbs, it caught the Appaloosa by the head.

Its jaws ripped the horse's skull apart. Fountaining blood, the Appaloosa went down as if it had crashed into a wall. Geraden landed hard: he was momentarily stunned. Before he could recover, his mount's convulsions rolled the horse over onto his legs.

Munching brains and bone, the black creature began to eat its way through the horse toward him.

Another fierce shape appeared out of nowhere—and another— struck the ground—rolled to a stop—

One of them went for Geraden. The other rushed at Terisa.

She had no choice, no time: when the nearest creature sprang at her, she ducked, flinched aside. Geraden had given her a knife—for cooking, he had said, teasing her because he did all the cooking—and she groped for it while she dodged; she jerked it from its sheath, hacked blindly at her assailant.

Her blow caught nothing but air. Off balance, barely able to support her weight with her twisted knee, she stumbled directly into the path of the second attacking shape.

Its fangs were curved and jagged, made for rending. In a mirror, she had seen a creature like this tear a man's heart out. It was going to rip her to tatters. And there was another one turning to jump her from behind.

Geraden had a few more seconds to live than she did. The red meat of his horse had distracted both of his attackers: they were feeding voraciously. He was safe until they reached his trapped legs.

Wildly, he struggled to open his mount's saddlebags.

The blade he had given Terisa was little more than a filleting knife; a hunter might have used it to skin a rabbit. It was the only thing she had to fight with, however; she didn't question it. Since she was off balance anyway, she thrust her weight in the direction she was falling, so that her arm and the knife came around in a wide, sweeping slash.

Somehow, this blow found the creature before the creature reached her face. The black shape tumbled to the side, spattering green blood everywhere.

She tried to catch herself, but her knee gave out. She toppled with a cry just as the second attacker leaped at her back.

Geraden's assailants were working on the Appaloosa's shoulders.

From the nearest saddlebag, he pulled out a sackful of corn meal and flung it.

The sack burst open on the first creature's teeth.

With a sound like thick fabric being shredded, the shape sneezed.

Like its jaws and its appetite, its sneeze was too big for its body. The blast knocked it backward, off the dead horse; tucking its legs around itself, it rolled away.

Another sneeze: another roll.

Geraden searched frantically for something else to throw.

Terisa was down. She couldn't get back up. Her legs shoved at the ground as if her back were broken, but she couldn't bring them under her.

One of the black shapes moved toward her.

As if sensing her helplessness, it stopped hurrying: its steps were almost dainty as it approached. Its huge jaws opened delicately. Each one of its teeth was sharp for her flesh.

Then the quarrel from a crossbow struck the creature so hard that it skipped off the ground and sailed through the air as though it had been kicked by a giant. A few drops of its green blood splashed into her hair as it flew past.

Like a spike driven by a sledgehammer, another quarrel nailed the feeding beast to the Appaloosa's carcass. Without a sound, the creature gaped and died, gushing rank fluids around its fangs.

One of the Termigan's men pounded the last black shape into a pulp under the shod hooves of his mount.

A moment later, the three men halted in front of Terisa and Geraden. They peered down from their high seats. Snarling, one of them demanded, "What in the name of goatshit and fornication
are
those things?"

Geraden didn't seem to notice that he had been rescued. He continued thrashing through the saddlebag, hunting uselessly for a weapon. "That bastard," he panted between his teeth. "That bastard. If I had a mirror—" His whole face was wet with sweat or tears. "If I just had a mirror—"

Terisa still couldn't get her legs under her. Her knee felt numb, dead. She wanted to say, insist, Help me, is he all right, did you kill them all? The only thing her throat and stomach agreed to do, however, was retch. She had green blood in her hair, and it
stank
—it smelled like corpses rotting in sewage. The head and most of the shoulders of Geraden's horse had been chewed away, devoured— Like the Castellan's two guards and Underwell. She kept gagging, but nothing came up.

Maybe Mordant wasn't at war. But she and Geraden were.

Oh, yes.

The Termigan's men dismounted. Two of them heaved the Appaloosa's carcass off Geraden; the third lifted Terisa to her feet. They were hard men with grim mouths and red eyes: they had spent too much time staring into the destruction of Sternwall, watching it boil closer. "All right," one of them said harshly, "you're safe. We've saved you. Who are you? What're those things?"

"Imagery," Geraden gasped. He still seemed unaware of the men. His attention was on Terisa. "There could be more. He could translate them right now. We've got to get out of range."

The men wanted answers—but they also understood Geraden. Just for a second, they glanced at each other, hesitating. Then the man who had helped Terisa off the ground picked her up and leaped for his horse.

The other two mounted instantly; one of them pulled Geraden up behind him. The horses stretched into a gallop back toward the city's gates, putting as much distance as possible between the riders and the point of translation.

Terisa still had her knife clenched in her fist. Her hand and the knife were covered with foul, green blood.

"Relax!" the man holding her gritted into her ear. "We can keep your balance better if you relax."

She couldn't relax. She couldn't stop trying to retch.

"How far?" one of the other men asked Geraden. "How far do we have to go to be safe?"

At last, Geraden began to respond to his rescuers. "Can't be sure." The pounding of hooves muffled his voice. "Depends on the size of the mirror. And how far the focus was adjusted to reach us." A moment later, he added, "A hundred yards should be enough."

"Right!"

The Termigans drove their mounts up to the gates of Sternwall. There they risked stopping.

Terisa didn't feel anything sharp or cold in her stomach. She didn't feel anything except nausea. No more of the gnarled, black shapes jumped out of the air.

Now instead of wanting to throw up she began to think it would be nice to faint.

She didn't get the chance. The man carrying her dropped her to the ground, then slid down beside her. The pressure of his grip made it clear he had no intention of letting her go. One of the other men held onto Geraden as he dismounted.

There was sunset in the air now, as well as the glare of lava. The heavy timbers of the gate were tinged crimson; red ran in streaks along the edges of the buildings. The faces of the men hinted at bloodshed.

"All right," one of them repeated. "Now tell us who you are. Before we decide to close the gate and leave you outside."

Terisa could still hear the deep, visceral boiling of the lava. That noise seemed to undermine everything around her; it made the Termigans sound malign, full of coiled malice.

But Geraden nodded to them. "We've just come from Domne," he panted. "I'm Geraden, the Domne's son. One of his sons, anyway. Houseldon has been burned to the ground."

The men stood motionless, caught between who he was and what he said. A crowd began to gather in the gate: more of the Termigan's men, hostlers to take care of the horses, merchants, passersby. They all had the same red light in their eyes.

After a moment, one of the men said noncommittally, "You better tell us who the woman is. And why you were attacked."

Instinctively, Terisa put a hand on Geraden's arm, reaching out for protection against a threat she couldn't identify.

He also seemed to feel the menace. His arm was tight; he held himself poised. His gaze searched the faces around him. Carefully, he said, "My father has been a good and loyal neighbor to the Termigan all his life. The last time I was here, I slept in the Termigan's house as a welcome guest."

No one wavered; no eyes dropped. The man who appeared to be the leader of the guards rested a hand deliberately on his sword. "I'm sure that's true," he growled. "You'll probably be a guest there tonight again. But not until you tell me who she is and why you were attacked."

The man's tone nettled Geraden. He straightened his shoulders; his voice gave off hints of authority, as if he were accustomed to command respect. "She is the lady Terisa of Morgan, arch-Imager and augured champion. For that reason, the foes of Mordant wish to destroy—"

He didn't get any further. Or if he did she didn't hear him. Somebody hit her on the back of the neck so hard that the ground seemed to flip over and rush away into the sky.

As she lost consciousness, she grasped that the Termigan was also at war.

Later, the war seemed to be taking place somewhere between the back of her neck and the front of her skull. There was a contest of pain going on. Her forehead hurt as if someone on the inside belabored it with a cudgel; the back of her neck ached stiffly. But which was winning? She didn't want to think about it.

Then she remembered Geraden.

Groaning, she tried to roll out of bed.