A Man Rides Through (73 page)

The guard said, "I don't know."

Barsonage did his best to catch up with Terisa and Geraden.

In the King's tower, more guards joined them, escorted them upward. Guards swept the King's doors open; Terisa, Geraden, and the mediator went in. For the sake of dignity—not to mention caution—they slowed their pace as they entered.

The King's formal apartment was just the way she remembered it—richly appointed, paneled blond, carpeted in blue and red. She hardly noticed the furnishings, however. Although there were only eight or ten men—most of them captains—in the room, it seemed crowded; too full of anxiety and passion, conflict.

Before the door closed, she heard Prince Kragen's voice blare like a trumpet, "
I
will not do it!"

Her chest tightened. She found suddenly that she was breathing harder than she had realized. The Prince's shout seemed to throb around her, and the hope she had felt at the idea of an alliance began to curdle.

On one side of Prince Kragen stood Artagel, close enough to react to what the Prince did, far enough away to dissociate himself from the Alend Contender. On the other side was a captain Terisa didn't know. Norge?

All three of them had their backs to the doors. Each in his separate way, they confronted the chair where King Joyse used to sit when he played hop-board.

There sat the Tor, slumping over his great belly as if he were barely able to keep himself from oozing out of the position he had assumed.

"The alternatives you propose," the old lord was saying as if he were in a kind of pain which had nothing to do with Prince Kragen, "are intolerable." He had a hand over his face. "I will not permit you to occupy Orison, making us little more than a hostage population. I do not call that an
alliance."

"And I do not call it an
alliance
to wait outside in danger while you sit here in safety," retorted the Prince hotly. "If—no,
when
High King Festten marches against us—we will be helpless while you remain secure, watching the outcome.
We must be allowed to enter Orison.
I
will not
remain where I am, waiting for King Joyse to return—if he ever does return—and tell me his pleasure—if his pleasure involves anything more productive than a game of hop-board."

The Tor didn't look strong enough to raise his head. "I understand your dilemma, my lord Prince. Of course I do. But you cannot believe that Orison's people—or Orison's defenders—will sit quietly on their hams while
Alend
takes power over them. I have already said that I will open the gates to you if you—"

"No!" Prince Kragen barked. "Do you take me for a fool? I have no intention of making Orison's people hostage. I will grant them precisely as much freedom and respect as the necessary crowding of so many bodies permits. But I will
not
submit my forces to your authority."

Orison's captains muttered restively. Some of them were viscerally incensed at the idea of an alliance with Alend. And some of them had noticed Geraden and Master Barsonage—had noticed Terisa—

"My lords!" Geraden cut in sharply. His voice carried potential authority across the room; and a thrill prickled suddenly down Terisa's back. "There's no need to argue about
waiting.
We're done
waiting.
It's time to march!"

The Tor snatched his hand down from his face, peered bleary pain and desire at Terisa and Geraden. Artagel wheeled with joy already catching fire across his features. Norge turned more cautiously; but Prince Kragen spun like Artagel, his swarthy face congested with conflicting needs.

"Terisa! My lady!" Artagel crowed. "Geraden! By the stars, you did it!" As if he had never been injured in his life, he caught Geraden in an exuberant bearhug, lifted him off his feet, then dropped him to snatch up Terisa's hand and kiss it hugely. "Everytime I see you, you're even more wonderful!"

She wanted to hug him, but she was distracted; there were too many other things going on. The captains were shouting encouragement to each other, or demanding silence. And the Tor had risen to his feet. Unsteadily, almost inaudibly, he murmured her name, Geraden's. "You are indeed wondrous." He spoke huskily, as if he were dragging his voice along the bottom of a cave. "There must be hope for us after all, if such blows can be struck against our enemies."

Prince Kragen was right behind Artagel; he grabbed Geraden by the shoulders when Artagel dropped him. "How did you do it?" the Prince demanded. "How did you rescue her? What has changed? Where is King Joyse? Did you say
march?"

Somehow, Norge made himself heard through the hubbub. His laconic tone sounded so incongruous that it had to be heeded.

"You got away, my lady. What did you learn from him?

"What did you do to him?"

In the stark silence which followed, a moment passed before she understood the point of his question.

With her chin jutting unconsciously, she met the hot and eager and worried stares of the men around her. "I didn't do anything to him." I didn't kill him. I didn't even hurt him. "But I learned enough."

Too quickly for anyone to interrupt her, she added, "Before Gilbur killed him, I had a long talk with Master Quillon. He told me what King Joyse has been doing all this time. Why he's been acting like a passive fool. What he wanted to accomplish. Geraden is right. It's time to march."

In response, the room burst into tumult. Only Prince Kragen had been given any hint of the things she knew; and he had only heard pieces of the story from Geraden under the influence of too much wine, not from her. For a man like the Tor, who had spent so many miserable days praying that his besotted and stubborn loyalty would prove valuable in the end, her words must have struck as heavily as a blow. Norge and Prince Kragen and Artagel were surprised; Master Barsonage and the captains, astonished. But the Tor's cheeks turned the color of wet flour, and he sank down in King Joyse's chair as if his heart were being torn out.

Urgently, Terisa pushed between Artagel and Prince Kragen, hurried to the lord. "Get him some wine!" she called. "Oh, shit. He's having a heart attack.

"My lord Tor. Are you all right?"

His hands fluttered against the arms of the chair. For a moment, he gagged as if he were choking; under his lowered eyelids, his eyes rolled wildly. Then, however, he took a breath that made all his fat quiver. He raised one hand to his chest, knotted it in his robe; and his head lifted as if he were pulling it up by main strength.

"Do not be alarmed, my lady," he wheezed thinly. "The difficulty is only that I have pawned all I am for him. I have made myself contemptible for the belief that my King would at last prove worthy of service." With remarkable celerity, one of the captains brought forward a flagon of wine. Then Tor accepted it and gulped a drink.

Then torment clenched his features. "Did you truly mean to suggest that he has been acting according to a plan—that the things he has done have had a purpose?"

"Yes," she avowed at once, despite the fact that at the moment she would cheerfully have wrung King Joyse's neck. "He didn't know you would come here. You heard him say you defy prediction." The explanation Master Quillon had given her wasn't good enough to justify the cost King Joyse had exacted from men like Castellan Lebbick and the Tor, from his daughters, from Geraden and everybody else who loved him. "His plans didn't include you. He didn't mean to hurt you." For the time being, she supported the King, not because she approved of what he had done, but because he had left her no alternative.

"All this time, he's been working to save Mordant."

Until now. That thought was enough to turn the edges of her vision black with bitterness. King Joyse put his people through the anguish of the doomed. And just when events arrived at the point when he could have safely explained his policy, safely given at least that much meaning or justification to the people he had hurt, he chose to disappear.
To go kiting off,
as Adept Havelock had said.

Nevertheless she took his side as if she had never doubted him.

"He didn't know who the renegades were—the Imagers who were willing to translate abominations against people who couldn't defend themselves. He didn't know where they made their mirrors, where they built their power."

When she began, she was speaking to the Tor alone; she hadn't intended to address the entire gathering. But King Joyse's intentions carried her further than her own. As she spoke, her voice rose, and she turned partly away from the Tor to include everyone in the room.

"He knew they needed soldiers to back up their Imagery. Imagery can destroy, but
rule
requires manpower. But he didn't know what alliances they might have made, with Cadwal or Alend. There was only one thing he could be sure of. As long as he was the strongest ruler here—as long as Mordant was strong enough to fight back both Cadwal and Alend—the renegades would leave him alone. They would chip away at the Alend Lieges, or find a way to swallow Cadwal—but they would leave him alone. Until they were too strong to be stopped."

She had to raise her voice more, until she was nearly, shouting. That was the only way she could control her frustration and grief.

He had smiled at her so gloriously that she would have done anything for him. And he had caused so much pain—

"The only way he could find out who they were, how they worked, where their power was before they grew too strong—the only way he could bring them out into the open—was to make himself weak. He had to convince everybody,
everybody,
that he had lost his will, his sense, his determination. He had to make himself the only reasonable target.

"So that they would attack here.

"So that he would have a chance to stop them. A chance to surprise them by turning their own traps against them."

She had ruined that, of course. She had warned Eremis. Her bitterness included herself: she hadn't earned the right to be self-righteous. Yet her culpability only made her more determined.

"That's what we have to do. I don't know why he isn't here. He's been working toward this moment for years. I don't know why he's abandoned us now." If he went to rescue Queen Madin— That was understandable, but it didn't help. At that distance, he wouldn't be able to return until long after the battle was decided. Terisa made an effort to steady herself, calm her raw anger. "It doesn't matter. We're still here. We still have to save Orison and Mordant.

"We don't have any choice. He hasn't left us any choice. The only thing we can do is what he would do if he were here. We've got to march."

The room was still; the men around her listened with all their senses, avidly. Geraden's face shone as if nothing could stop him now. Artagel nodded to himself happily. Prince Kragen's eyes were dark with dismay and calculation—and with something else, which might have been eagerness. Master Barsonage gaped, his mouth hanging open; he gave the impression that he was reeling inside.

"March," muttered the Tor, struggling to straighten his spine against the back of his chair. "'So that they would attack here.' My old friend. How I must have hurt you."

Finally, however, it was Norge who asked the obvious question.

"March where, my lady?"

She was so full of pressure that she could hardly articulate the word:

"Esmerel."

At once, Geraden supported her. "That's Eremis' family Seat. Apparently, that's where he has his laborium. That's where he and Gilbur took her. And Vagel is there. Gart is there.
Cadwal
is there. Eremis consulted with the High King there this morning.

"That's where we need to strike."

Terisa was thinking, In the Care of Tor. Where those riders with the red fur and the hate-filled eyes had come from to attack her and Geraden. No wonder they had been mounted on horses with tack from the Tor's Care.

The old lord's mind was running in a completely different direction, however. "That explains it, then," he rumbled.