A Man Rides Through (70 page)

"They need me to make sure Geraden doesn't do something unpredictable. Or King Joyse either, for that matter."

Oh, Nyle.

She couldn't stay on her feet. Nausea crowded all the relief out of her. Without thinking, she retreated to the bed, sat down again. For some reason, she wasn't trembling anymore. But she was going to be so sick— If she let go, she was going to puke her heart out.

"It's the same reason they've got you." Now that Nyle had begun to talk, he seemed intent on continuing. "Only the details are different. We're hostages. And bait. We're here to make sure Geraden and King Joyse do what Eremis wants.

"I actually thought somebody would try to rescue me." His tone made her want to throw up. Gilbur liked
male meat.
"But I was wrong. Maybe they'll forget about you, too. That's your only hope now— that Eremis made a mistake bringing you here."

Fighting down bile, she forced herself to say, "Nobody in Orison knew you needed rescuing. Don't you know what they did? They killed that physician, Underwell. They let monsters eat his face"—don't think about it, don't
think
about it—"they dressed him up to look like you. Everybody thought you were dead." Because it had to be said, she concluded, "They thought Geraden killed you. You accomplished that, anyway."

"I know all that." Nyle coughed thinly, as if he were too weak and beaten to curse. "They sent Gart and a couple of his Apts into the room to knock the guards and Underwell out. So there wouldn't be any noise. They translated me here. Then they sent some of their creatures to feed on the bodies. They told me all about it.

"Do you think that's what I wanted? Do you think I had a choice?"

No, it was cruel to accuse him, cruel, he had been Eremis' prisoner and Gilbur's for a long time now, and the decisions he had made which had put him here had all been based on King Joyse's policy of foolish passivity, it wasn't fair to include him in her anger. Nevertheless she said, "Everybody has a choice."

She
had a choice, didn't she? She was chained to the wall in the dark, and Eremis intended to use her for his pleasure until her spirit broke, and there was no way she could possibly be rescued, and she still had a choice. Only dead people didn't make choices.

He coughed again, like a man whose lungs were full of dry rot. She could picture him in his fetters, with his mouth hanging open in his dirty beard and no strength. "You're wrong," he murmured when he was finished coughing. "You're like Elega. You don't know. I haven't had a choice about anything since Geraden hit me with that club."

Oh, great. Terisa barely swallowed a snarl. Now he was going to start blaming Geraden. Her stomach tried to come up; she had to force it down. She had already been harsher than she wanted to be. Instead of pursuing what Nyle said, she asked thickly, "Do you know where we are? Do you know this place?"

"All I wanted to do was save Orison and Mordant." Maybe he hadn't heard her. "You can't say I deserve this. You can think I was wrong, but you can't say I was being malicious. I wasn't going to get anything out of it for myself. Not even Elega— Even if I was right, my family was still going to hate me. I was never going to be able to go home again. They all believed in King Joyse personally, not in the ideas that made him a good king—not in the Congery and Orison and Mordant. They were never going to forgive me for
betraying
their hero, even if everything I did turned out right.

"I didn't do it for myself."

"Oh, Nyle," she breathed softly. "You don't understand. Of course they'll forgive you. They've already forgiven you."

But maybe he wasn't able to hear her. Maybe he had spent too much time helpless, caught in an everlasting reiteration of what he had done and why—and what it had cost—without any way to break out. Instead of reacting to what she said, he continued explaining himself.

Trying to justify himself against the dark.

"But Geraden destroyed me. I know that wasn't what he wanted, but he set me up for all this. When he came after me, instead of concentrating on Prince Kragen— If he weren't so determined to have accidents—

"He got me locked up. Like an assassin. Like I was dangerous to all the decent people around me. If I were a farmer who went berserk and started slaughtering his friends and family with an axe, I would have been locked up, but I wouldn't have been sneered at. I wouldn't have been despised.

"Don't you understand?
I
love King Joyse, too. I always loved him, even though he didn't let me serve him—even though he didn't want me around. But some loves are more important than others. He wasn't interested in my loyalty—and that hurt, because he was so obviously interested in my brothers. Artagel. Geraden. But I could still love his victories, his ideals, his beliefs.

"What do you think I should have done?" For a moment, Nyle's voice brought a touch of passion into the dark. "Abandon everything that made Mordant valuable for the sake of a failing old man who didn't care whether I lived or died?

"Then Geraden stopped me, and they threw me in the dungeon. Do you know what that means?" A coughing fit came over him, draining his intensity away. "You should.

"It means I couldn't get away.

"Artagel came and flaunted his wounds at me. I couldn't get away. Castellan Lebbick practiced his obscenities on me for quite a while. I couldn't get away.

"And then Master Eremis came—"

"Nyle, stop." Terisa didn't want to hear it. She knew what was coming, and she didn't want to hear it. "This doesn't help. You're just tormenting yourself." All she wanted was some way to contain the horror surging at the back of her throat so that she could concentrate, bring her fury and her dread and her ache for blood into focus. "Do you know where we are?"

"Just like that," Nyle went on as if she hadn't spoken. "He just walked into the dungeon. He just unlocked my cell and took me out. I couldn't get away." His tone frayed at the edges, worn ragged by bitterness and fatigue and coughing, by anger that didn't have anywhere else to go. "He took me down the passage a little way. Then he made some kind of gesture, and we were translated here. Into his personal laborium. I couldn't get away from him.

"Do you know what he did to me?"

"Yes!" Fighting for a defense against pain, Terisa jumped to her feet. "I
know."
When she moved, her chain rang lightly against the wall. Quickly, she caught the chain in her fist and swung it harder, made the stone clang. "I know what he
did
to you."

Of course, she didn't truly
know:
she hadn't suffered the same experience. But she knew enough—more than she could stomach. Fiercely, she rushed on:

"He showed you a mirror with Houseldon in the Image." She swung the chain. "And he showed you other mirrors." The iron links chimed on the wall. "Mirrors with firecats. Mirrors with corrupt wolves. Mirrors with avalanches—mirrors with ghouls." Each time, she swung the chain harder. "And he made you believe he could bring them all down on your home and family without any warning of any kind if you didn't do what he wanted. If you didn't help him turn the Congery against Geraden."

Panting, gasping, she stood still.

Nyle's silence was all the acknowledgment she needed.

"So you agreed because you thought you were saving most of the people you loved. And you figured somebody was bound to notice
eventually
that you weren't actually dead—which would save Geraden and recoil on Eremis. And somehow you managed to avoid the simple deduction that Eremis knew as much about the flaws in his plans as you did.

"Nyle, you made a
choice.
Geraden didn't do this to you. You did it to yourself."

There. Now she had begun attacking people who were manacled to walls, accusing them of bad logic as well as weak moral fiber. As if they had caused the things their enemies did to them. What was she going to do next? Start beating up cripples?

And yet in her own case she had no one to blame but herself for the fact that she had been so slow to distrust Master Eremis, so poor at opposing him.

Out of the dark, Nyle asked in old pain, "What choice did I have? What could I have done?"

Oh, shit. She forced her fingers to release the chain. "You could have refused."

"Weren't you listening to yourself?" He had some anger left in him after all. "If I did that, he would have destroyed Houseldon. He would have killed my whole family—everybody I grew up with— my home, all of it."

"No, Nyle," she sighed. By degrees, she wrestled down her nausea, her racing pulse, her desire to hurt something. He was going to be hurt badly enough already. She didn't need to increase the force of the blow. "You're the one who isn't listening.
He destroyed Houseldon anyway.
He burned it to the ground while Geraden and I were there, trying to kill us. Your cooperation didn't make any difference. You gave yourself away for nothing."

There.
It was said.

Far away from her, Nyle groaned softly, as if she had just slipped a knife between his ribs—as if she had just cut down the defenses, the self-justifications, which kept him alive in his fetters.

She went to him, feeling at once as brutal as a child molester and as vulnerable as a molested child. "Nyle, I'm sorry." Trying to comfort him, she stroked his face. Her hand came back wet with tears. "We'll get out of here somehow. Sometime. I've talked to your whole family. I know they understand. They know
you.
They know you wouldn't betray Geraden unless you were trying to protect them. And it would have worked, if he hadn't escaped—if he and I hadn't gone to Houseldon."

Then, aching like a prayer that no one could overhear her, use what she was about to say against her, she put her mouth close to his ear and whispered, "They're safe. They all got away. They went to the Closed Fist and dug in. To defend themselves.

"Eremis doesn't know that."

Trembling at the risk she had taken, she stepped back to the bed and waited.

Nyle didn't react. She had no way of knowing whether or not he heard her. But she had done what she could for him. She had needs of her own to take into account. After a while, she returned to her first question—the only one of her questions which he might be in any condition to answer.

"Nyle, do you know where we are?"

After a moment, he took a shuddering breath; he seemed to be raising his head. "Esmerel, I guess. I don't know. I never saw this place until he brought me here—translated me. But he said it was Esmerel."

"Nyle"—the casual threat in Master Eremis' voice was unmistakable—"I told you not to speak to her."

Stung and urgent, almost panicking, Terisa whirled to face the Master.

But not panicking: she was too angry and hurt and focused for panic.

"Why?" she demanded before she had time to think, time to falter. The Imager's shape, as vague as Vagel's, approached her out of the doorway's deeper black. "You've got everything else you want. Why are you doing this to him? He can't do you any harm."

"What, my lady?" Eremis drawled. "Questions? Challenges? That is a poor start to our lovemaking." He sounded confident, immaculately sure of himself—and sharper than he had earlier, as if he had spent his absence enduring petty vexations. "I am surprised that you do not require to know what the High King and I said to each other."

Terisa brushed his words away. "I don't care about the High King. I'm talking about Nyle. Why do you need him? Why don't you let him go?"

Why have you got us chained here together? Why do you want him to know everything you do to me?

Focus. Concentration.

A blank space in the dark, a gap of existence.

Anger and blood.

"For the same reason I need you, my lady." The Master's tone was full of mirth and scorn. "To perfect my triumph. Your capture will require my enemies to march against me. They must attempt to rescue the lady Terisa of Morgan and her strange talents. They will form an alliance, or they will not. They will destroy each other, or they will not. Whatever happens, they must come to Esmerel in the end.