A Man Rides Through (92 page)

"You mentioned requirements for each of us. Except the Congery. What do you want from Master Geraden and the lady Terisa?"

Terisa caught her breath while the knot of anger and fear inside her pulled tighter.

Master Eremis shrugged, grinning as if only an iron will kept him from laughing his heart out. "A small sacrifice, my lord. It will cost you little. I require them for myself."

Master Gilbur snickered.

No, Terisa ached inside herself. No.

Geraden watched the Tor as if he expected something wonderful or terrible from the old lord.

"As a condition of your surrender," Eremis explained. "When you have pledged your honor to me—and when Terisa and Geraden have been given into my hands—at that moment, High King Fest-ten's doom is assured."

Prince Kragen started to retort; but the Tor stopped him with another weak gesture. "An interesting suggestion, Master Eremis." The old lord's frailty made him sound mild. "Unfortunately, you are a demonstrated traitor. What assurance is there that you can be trusted?"

"You need none," Master Eremis shot back hotly, happily. "Your choice is too simple for assurances. If you do not satisfy me, you will be destroyed."

"My lord Tor," Prince Kragen put in fiercely, "he wants the lady Terisa and Geraden because he fears them. Their power is our assurance that he cannot destroy us."

Again, the Tor gestured for silence, asking Kragen to bear with him.

"Master Eremis, you are overconfident," he said softly, "so sure of your strength and your
superiority
that you insult us. You insult our honor—but that does not surprise us." His voice sank as he spoke—and yet gathered force at the same time, so that his quietness carried like a shout. "No one expects a man of your moral poverty to respect honor.

"You do wrong, however, to insult our intelligence.

"You have no interest in our surrender. You have no intention of turning against High King Festten. I doubt that the arch-Imager would permit such betrayal." For some reason, Vagel shook his head. "Gart certainly would not. Your only interest here, your only purpose in coming, is to take the lady Terisa and Master Geraden from us."

Eremis had heard enough. "My lord Tor," he snapped, "I have not yet begun to insult your intelligence—but now you demonstrate that you are mad. I fear no one. I covet Terisa's female flesh. And I have a score to settle with Geraden. My reasons for coming are exactly as I have explained them."

No! Terisa protested, insisted,
no.

And the Tor said, "No.

"You are a fool, Master Eremis. In the end, you will die a fool's death. If you had the slightest wish for our service—if you had the slightest intention of turning against the High King"—his passion was too fundamental to be shouted—
"you would have treated the Perdon with more respect"

Dismissing Eremis, he moved with Ribuld's support toward his tent.

"My lord Tor." Geraden's face shone; he looked ready now to tackle both Master Eremis and High King Festten single-handedly. He spoke to the old lord's back formally, and his voice seemed to defy the snow and the wind, as if he had the power to command them. "King Joyse has been fortunate in his friends—but never as fortunate as when he won your loyalty."

The Tor stumbled, but Ribuld caught him.

Prince Kragen also turned his back. Glowering bloodshed, he barked at Castellan Norge, "Give these traitors a count of five. Then instruct your bowmen to kill them."

He didn't stay to watch the riders as they lashed their mounts away from Norge's eager call, surged back in the direction of the manor and the defile, strained for speed as if they had been routed. Bowing first to Geraden, then to Terisa, the Prince strode off toward his own camp.

Terisa heard a few bowstrings thrum, a few arrows hiss in the air. Unluckily, none of the riders fell.

As if on signal, more snow came down the valley. Snow closed off the light, swarmed over the tents, drifted onto Terisa's head and shoulders. The riders of her dream—and the Congery's augury. Geraden was right: she belonged here. And King Joyse was fortunate in his friends.

She put her arms around Geraden, hugged him tightly. Holding each other close, they followed the Tor toward the shelter of his tent.

Before the snowfall became thick enough to blind the sky completely, two or three of the guards on sentry duty down at the foot of the valley thought they saw an imprecise puff of smoke overhead, riding against the wind. Then the sight was gone, and snow came down so thickly that it made everything dark.

FORTY-SEVEN: ON THE VERGE

The Tor's tent was large enough for eight or ten people to stand and shout at each other, but it was ascetically furnished—one bedroll for the lord, one for the guard at the tentflaps, a brazier for warmth, three lanterns hanging around the pole, the Tor's camp chair, a few other stools. Maybe he wanted it that way: maybe he feared that if he ever became comfortable he wouldn't be able to move again. Or maybe he wasn't willing to put any more strain than necessary on the Masters and their translations.

When Terisa and Geraden entered the tent, they found the Tor in his chair, leaning as far back as it would allow. His eyes were dull, and he was panting thinly, as if he needed somehow to get more air past an obstacle which hurt him whenever he inhaled. Ribuld and one of the guards' physicians had removed his cloak, his mail, his shirt. Ribuld was dumb with misery.

For the first time, Terisa saw the place under the lord's ribs where Gart had kicked him.

Involuntarily, she tightened her grip on Geraden.

The Tor's injury was swollen like a tumor, black-purple and angry; it bloated out from his belly as if his skin might burst.

"Oh, my lord," Geraden breathed, nearly groaned. "What are you doing to yourself?"

The Tor had been bleeding inside for days, killing himself with the effort to fill his King's place.

He made a dismissive gesture; he may have wanted Terisa and Geraden to go away. Nevertheless they stayed where they were. After a moment, Geraden asked the physician, "How is he?"

"As you see," the man muttered. "I told him this would happen. We all told him." He mixed some herbs in a goblet and handed it to the Tor. "He's too old. He drinks too much wine. He shouldn't be alive."

For some reason, Ribuld shot out his arm, knotted his fist in the physician's cloak, jerked the man silent. Almost at once, however, he seemed to realize the uselessness of his anger. Releasing the physician, he muttered an apology, then moved away to get a stool for the Tor's legs.

With his legs supported, the lord was able to sink down until he could rest his head on the back of the chair. His eyes were closed now, and a bit of the strain went out of his breathing; apparently, the physician's herbs did him some good. He looked like he might sleep.

He didn't, however. Without opening his eyes, he murmured, "Where?"

The physician stopped to listen.

"'Where,' my lord?" asked Ribuld.

The Tor's fat lips tightened around a spasm of pain. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. Then, tightly, he asked, "Where is Nyle?"

Where is Nyle. Where are Eremis and Gilbur and Vagel. Where is their laborium. Where is the High King. Terisa resisted an impulse to curse herself.

Geraden squeezed her, then left her to approach the old lord. Controlling himself grimly, he said, "We've been wrong, my lord. Terisa and I. He was never here. We just assumed he would use Esmerel." Geraden glanced at Terisa. "I guess Nyle made the same assumption. He told Terisa Eremis was here. But he wasn't."

Clenching his courage, Geraden concluded, "We've brought you into a trap we can't get out of."

The Tor inhaled weakly around his hemorrhage. "Where?" he repeated.

"Somewhere close." Geraden seemed to be speaking to Terisa as well as to the lord. "Close enough for High King Festten to attack us. Close enough for Eremis and Vagel and Gilbur to find their way here through the snow. If I had to guess, I'd say the first thing Eremis did after he decided he wanted to rule the world—maybe even before he found Vagel—was build a secret stronghold for himself. Somewhere in these hills." Somewhere in this maze. "But it could be anywhere. Even if it's just on the other side of the valley rim, we can't get to it."

The Tor exhaled thinly, a constricted sigh. "What will you do?"

"About what?"

"What will you do"—the Tor made an effort to be clear—"when Master Eremis decides to use Nyle against you?"

Terisa was glad that the old lord couldn't see the flush of distress in Geraden's face, the flinch around his eyes.

"I don't know," Geraden murmured.

"Maybe," she said without thinking, "maybe we can find them. The snow will cover us. It's almost night. Maybe we can sneak out through that ravine and find them."

Geraden shook his head. "Snow and night will cover him, too. They'll cover his guards. If we don't get lost and freeze to death, we'll probably be captured."

All right. All right. It wasn't a good idea. But we've got to do
something.
We can't just sit here and watch—watch—

Watching the lord's struggle to breathe made Terisa feel sick and wild.

At that moment, she heard voices outside the tent: a bark of command, a muffled acknowledgment.

The tentflaps were swept aside, and King Joyse strode in.

He startled Terisa so badly that she nearly stumbled to her knees.

He was filthy. Clots of mud clung to his battle gear—his breastplate and mail leggings, the protective iron pallettes on his shoulders, the brassards strapped to his arms. His mail had been cut, hacked at by swords. Blows dented his breastplate. Blood stained his thick cloak and the leather under his armor; black streaks marked the tooled scabbard which held his longsword. Grime filled his beard, caked his hair to his scalp.

Nevertheless he entered the tent like a much younger man. He strode forward with strength in his legs, authority in his arms; and his eyes flashed a blue so deep that it was almost purple.

When he saw Terisa and Geraden, he grinned like a boy.

"Well met. Better to come late than not to come at all, I always say."

"My lord King," Geraden breathed, gaping. He was too surprised to bow, almost too surprised to speak. "Are you hurt?"

"A few scratches." The King's grin broadened into the smile Terisa remembered, the smile of innocence and pleasure, the sunrise which lit all his features and made him the kind of man for whom people were willing to die. "Nothing my enemies can pride themselves for."

He might have gone on, but the Tor stopped him.

Hearing King Joyse's voice, the old lord jerked up his head, snatched open his eyes. Urgently, almost frantically, he hauled his legs off the stool and blundered to his feet like a surfacing grampus. Around the vivid bulge of his hemorrhage, his bare skin looked as pale as disease, tarnished with frailty and need.

Tottering, he caught a hand on Ribuld's shoulder. "Prince Kragen," he gasped. "Summon the Prince."

Then he plunged to his knees as if the ground had been cut out from under him.

Ribuld started to help the lord, but King Joyse's presence daunted him.

Bowing his face to the canvas, retching for breath, the Tor panted, "My lord King, I beg you."

King Joyse's smile turned to ashes on his face.

"I beg you. I have brought your guard and your Congery and all your friends to destruction. Tell me I have not betrayed you."

"Betrayed
me?" The passion in the King's face was wonderful and dire. As if he had no arthritis and no years, no weakness of any kind to hamper him, he caught hold of the Tor's arms and raised him to his feet by main strength. "My old friend! If you have put all I love and all my force in the path of ruin, you have not betrayed me. If you have sold my kingdom to the Alend Contender, so that I have nothing left to rule, you have not betrayed me. You are
here
—
here,
where the fate of the world hinges." Tears trailed through the grime on his cheeks. "My lord Tor, I have used you abominably. I considered you an obstacle, your loyalty a stumbling block. And you have served me better than my best hope."