A Man Rides Through (49 page)

His violence had no reason and no justification: it was as senseless as it was brutal. As senseless as all the other little brutalities he committed throughout the castle.

How long would it be before some other helpless woman received the same treatment? How long would it be before brutality became the governing principle in Orison?

How much longer will you sods and sheepfuckers permit this to go on?

Of course, when she spoke to women—which she did often, more every day—her words were different. Her message, however, remained the same.

Her disfigurement, as well as her intensity, made her impossible to look away from. She compelled stares and pity; nausea and indignation. It was impossible to look at her and not feel fear.

Because of the way she talked, and the way the men who had once reveled in her talked, and the way the women who were terrified of the same fate talked, this fear took the form of a call for justice, a thinly concealed demand for retribution. With Alend just outside, rape and murder were on everybody's mind.

At the time, few people had any notion of how this demand came to be translated into action. One day, people were growling to each other, muttering vague threats which they had no actual intention of acting on: the next, rumors seemed to filter everywhere that voices would be raised, justice insisted upon; action taken. Come to the disused ballroom this evening, the great hall where King Joyse and Queen Madin were married, and where the peace of Mordant had been celebrated.

Oh, yes? Whose idea was this?

No one knew.

We're besieged. Is it really a good idea to challenge the Castellan at a time like this?

Perhaps not. But it's gone too far to be stopped. Better to support it, make sure it succeeds, than take the chance he'll be able to crush it—the chance he'll be left alone to do something worse the next time.

Yes. All right.

So that evening the crowd began to gather in the high, vast, dusty ballroom. At first, it was plainly a crowd rather than a mob, despite the fact that its numbers quickly swelled to several hundred: the fear threatening to become violence was counterbalanced by uncertainty; by habits of mind learned during many years of King Joyse's peaceful rule; by the perfectly reasonable idea that it was dangerous to weaken Orison during a siege; by the manifest presence of Castellan Lebbick's guards all around the hall. Nevertheless, as darkness deepened outside the windows, the only light came from torches which someone had thought to provide, and the erratic illumination of the flames had a disturbing effect on faces and rationality. People began to look garish to each other, wild and strange; the air was full of grotesque shadows; the atmosphere seemed to flicker. And through the shadows and the orange-yellow light Saddith appeared, around and around in the ballroom, displaying her wounds, speaking of outrage. The seething murmur of several hundred voices took shape in fits and bursts as more and more people found occasion to say the name
Lebbick.

Lebbick.

And the guard captain who had been detailed to preserve order made a mistake.

He was a tough old fighter with bottomless determination and not much intelligence; and during one of King Joyse's battles the Castellan had saved his entire family from being cut down when they were caught in the path of an Alend raid. He heard all these whimpering shitholes—they were practically puking with self-pity—start to mutter
Lebbick, Lebbick,
as if they had the right, and he decided that the crowd had to be dispersed.

Even though the odds were against him, he might have succeeded if he had been able to drive people out of the ballroom back into the public halls and passages. Unfortunately, he failed to do that. Someone with more presence of mind—or maybe just a nastier sense of humor—than the rest of the mob went to the entryway which led to the laborium and called everyone else to follow.

Fear of the Castellan and fear of Imagers formed a powerful combination. Several hundred people surged in that direction as if they had lost the capacity to think.

Somehow, they forced the guards back. Somehow, they were swept into the laborium, where the great majority of them had never set foot in their lives. Somehow, they found themselves packed into the ruined hall where the Congery had held meetings until the champion had blasted one wall open to the world.

Men closed the doors against the guards, shot the bolts. Torches ringed the stumps of pillars which used to hold up the ceiling. Because the curtain-wall didn't completely seal the hole in Orison's side, the hall was theoretically exposed to the guards defending the wall. The wall, however, had been built to protect against siege rather than against riot: its defensive positions faced outward rather than back down into the hall below. Only the archers could have taken any action. And even Lebbick's staunchest supporters knew better than to begin slaughtering Orison's inhabitants.

Lebbick.
Men and women shouted back and forth, made threats.
Lebbick.
Their mood grew uglier by the moment. They started demanding blood.

Lebbick. Lebbick!

Back against the wall near one of the doors stood a tall man who wasn't shouting, didn't make any demands. Wrapped in his jet cloak, he was nearly invisible among the shadows. But the hood of his cloak couldn't hide the way his eyes caught the reflection of the torches, or the way his teeth gleamed when he grinned.

"Very good so far," he said in a conversational tone because absolutely no one could hear him. "Now the time has come. Do what I told you."

Around him, the confusion began to change. Something caught the attention of the mob, focused it.

Amid the torches, Saddith stood on the dais of the Masters.

She was just tall enough to be seen over the heads of the people nearest her.

"Listen to me!" There was nothing left of her beauty: it had all become disfigurement and rage. Her voice rang off the stones, rang through the mob. "Look at me!"

She raised her hands into the light.

"Look at me!"

The mob snarled.

She shook her hair away from her face.

"Look at me!"

The mob hissed.

She stripped open her blouse, exposing her maimed breasts.

"Look at me!"

The mob shouted.

"Lebbick did this! He did this to me!"

The mob roared.

"Yes, my sweet little slut," the man in the jet cloak commented. "And you deserved it. Perhaps that will teach you the folly of betraying my secrets."

"Now he has threatened you," Saddith went on, as fierce as her nakedness, "for no reason except that you think this should not have been done to me!"

Lebbick! Lebbick!

"I went to him because I pitied him!" she shouted. "I went to offer him my love when I was beautiful and all men desired me! This is the result!"

"No," said the man in the jet cloak, entirely unheard. "You went to him because you were ambitious. And you went when I told you to go. I understood his need far better than you did."

Her voice seemed to turn the torchlight the color of blood.
"He must pay!"

Lebbick! Pay! Lebbick!

"Think about this gambit, Joyse." The man in the jet cloak was no longer grinning. "Save him if you can. Stop me if you can. You thought to play this game against me, but you are outmatched."

Then he cocked an eyebrow in mild surprise and peered over the heads of the crowd as a figure wrapped in a brown robe stepped unexpectedly up onto the dais beside Saddith.

Lit by torches and looking like an image out of a dream, the figure turned sharply; the robe seemed to swirl through the air and float away, thrown off as the man revealed himself.

Castellan Lebbick.

He wore the purple sash of his authority over his mail, the purple band of his position knotted around his short, gray hair. He had a longsword in a scabbard on his hip, but he didn't touch it; he didn't appear to need it. His familiar scowl answered the torches blackly. The lift of his head, the thrust of his jaw, the movements of his arms and shoulders were tight with passion and command. He wasn't tall, yet he made himself felt everywhere in the hall.

He had never looked more like a man who beat up women.

"All right." His voice carried; it promised violence, like a hammer knocking chips from stone. "This has gone on long enough. Get out of here. Go back to your rooms. The Masters don't like having their precious laborium invaded. If they decide to defend it themselves, they might translate the whole lice-ridden lot of you out of existence."

An interesting threat, thought the man in the jet cloak—plainly hollow, but interesting. Nevertheless everyone stared at the Castellan. He had clapped a hush over the mob. Surprise and old respect and inbred alarm did more for him than fifty guards.

Saddith ignored his threats. She ignored his appearance, his proven capacity for harm. After what he had cost her, she had nothing left to lose, no more reason to be afraid. And she hated him—oh, she hated him. Her face was a scabbed and deformed clench of hate as she spat his name:

"Lebbick."

Despite his authority and fury, he turned to look at her as though she had the power to compel him.

"What do you wish here?" she asked thickly. "Have you come to gloat? Have you come to lay claim to your handiwork? Are you proud of it?"

"No." His voice was quiet, yet it could be heard throughout the hall. "I was wrong."

" 'Wrong'?" she cried.

"It wasn't your fault. It probably wasn't even your idea. I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

At a calmer moment, the crowd might have been utterly astounded to hear Castellan Lebbick say something that sounded so much like an apology, almost a self-abasement. But the people weren't thinking as individuals: they were feeling like a mob, ugly and extreme.
Lebbick,
someone murmured—and another,
Lebbick
—a chant began, far back in the throat, through the teeth, a hunting growl,
Lebbick, Lebbick.

" 'Wrong'?" repeated Saddith. She was breathing hard, trying to get enough air for her vituperation. "You admit that you were
wrong?"
Her damaged breasts shone with sweat. "Do you think that
heals
me? Do you think that one small piece of my pain is made less, or one small scar is removed?" Her arms beat time to her respiration,
Lebbick, Lebbick,
the snarl of the mob. "I tell you, you will pay with
blood!

"Blood!" she howled, matching the rhythm in the hall:
"Blood!"

And the mob responded, "Lebbick!
Lebbick!"

The man in the jet cloak grinned with undisguised relish.

Nevertheless Castellan Lebbick wasn't daunted. Maybe he wasn't even afraid. "Oh, stop it!" he snapped over the heavy shout as if the people surrounding him were nothing more than bad children and he had no time for their misbehavior. "Do you think all this surprises me? I knew it was going to happen. I've been ready for
days."

His voice wielded enough of the whip to slash through the beat of his name, the outrage. Men and women faltered, began to listen.

"I had you driven in here so I could do what I wanted with you. You didn't know I was here. You don't know how many of my men are here. Well, I'll tell you. Ninety-four. All disguised. All pretending to be one of you. The person standing next to you shouting
Lebbick, Lebbick
like a dog with the mange is probably one of my men. If anyone raises a hand at me, he'll be cut down where he stands. And the rest of you will be
remembered!"

It was a remarkable ploy. The man in the jet cloak was virtually certain that it was in fact a ploy, that the Castellan was in fact undefended, as vulnerable as he would ever be; but that changed nothing. It worked. Like water on hot coals, it transformed the fury of the mob back into fear.