“Glass and splinters!” Geraden groaned. This was too much: he was wrong again; everything he thought he understood was wrong; Eremis was too far ahead of him. Hope was nonsense. He couldn’t hold his head up, face the older Imager. There was nothing he could do to save Terisa.
“This surprises you,” observed the mediator thoughtfully. “Not Master Eremis’ suggestion, but rather its failure surprises you. Geraden, you amaze me. You had already considered this idea for yourself, when no other member of the Congery had so much as imagined it.”
Eremis was playing with him, playing with all of them, using them in an elaborate and insidious game they couldn’t win, a game from which they couldn’t even escape because they didn’t know the rules. Like Prince Kragen in his audience with King Joyse, forced to play hop-board. At the mercy of his opponent.
But Master Barsonage was still speaking. “You have disguised yourself for years as Geraden fumble-foot,” he said in a tone of admiration, “and now at last I learn that your talent is prodigious. You are able to do translations which diverge from the Image in your mirror. Ideas which astonish us are familiar to you.
“Is there more, Geraden? Does your talent encompass other wonders as well?”
Geraden hardly heard the mediator. He was thinking, Oh, prodigious. Absolutely. They tremble when I walk into the room.
He was thinking, A riot against Castellan Lebbick.
Eremis wanted to preserve Orison for Cadwal. And no man could defend the castle better than Lebbick. And yet Eremis had sent his own lover to get beaten nearly to death, simply to generate a grievance against Lebbick, simply to make a riot possible, simply to make it possible for a riot to enter the laborium, so that Geraden’s mirror could be destroyed. All that risk for nothing except to dispose of Geraden’s only weapon.
Were Eremis and Gilbur and Vagel really that badly afraid of him?
It sounded ridiculous. But—
He took hold of himself, did his best to steady his heart.
But they knew his talent better than he did. Why else had they gone to such lengths to distract him, confuse him, demean him, kill him? Master Gilbur had guided – and studied – every moment of his mirror-making.
They knew his talent better than he did.
They feared it for reasons he didn’t yet understand.
The same kind of argument had helped move him into action while Houseldon burned – and yet he had made no progress toward understanding it. Why had Eremis needed to attack Houseldon? Or Sternwall, for that matter? Why wasn’t the destruction of Geraden’s only mirror enough?
Suddenly – so suddenly that he couldn’t pretend he had been listening to the mediator – Geraden said, “Havelock.”
Master Barsonage blinked. “Havelock?”
“He’s got all those mirrors.” Geraden was already on his way toward the door. “Come on.”
Mirrors which had helped Terisa escape from Gilbur. Mirrors which didn’t belong to any Imager except the Adept – mirrors Geraden could take chances with.
Outside the mediator’s quarters, he began to hurry; in a moment, he was almost running. Nevertheless Master Barsonage caught him, got a heavy hand on his arm and slowed him to a fast walk.
“What do you hope to accomplish with the Adept’s mirrors? Will he permit you to touch them?”
A manic laugh burst from Geraden. “Oh, he’ll let me touch them. He is certainly going to let me touch them.”
Moving as rapidly as he could with Master Barsonage clasped on his arm, and refusing to answer the mediator’s first question, refusing even to think about it for fear that the possibilities would evaporate if he did, he headed toward the lower levels of Orison, down toward the only entrance he knew of to Adept Havelock’s personal domain.
During his one previous visit there, the circumstances had been very different. For one thing, Orison’s extra inhabitants hadn’t arrived yet; the depths of the castle had been deserted. And for another, he hadn’t been paying particularly close attention: most of his mind had been focused on Artagel, suffering from a chest full of corrosive black vapor. As a result, he was momentarily flustered by the realization that he now didn’t know how to get where he was going.
Fortunately, Master Barsonage knew.
At least some of the Adept’s secrets had been exposed when Castellan Lebbick had followed Master Gilbur and Terisa into the room where Havelock kept his mirrors. As a matter of course, the Castellan’s discovery had eventually been reported to the mediator of the Congery. And Master Barsonage had gone so far as to visit that room full of mirrors himself, in part to see it with his own eyes, in part to make one more painful and ultimately futile effort to communicate with the Adept – specifically, to persuade Havelock that the Congery as a whole should be given access to these mirrors.
The memory caused Master Barsonage to shudder whenever he thought of it. Adept Havelock had responded with a gracious bow, had taken his hand as if to congratulate him, had kissed each of his fingers like a lover – and while Barsonage was distracted by this odd performance, Havelock had urinated on his feet.
Occasionally, Master Barsonage dreamed of beating the Adept senseless. Although he would never have admitted having them, he enjoyed those dreams.
Nevertheless he didn’t hesitate to take Geraden to the Adept’s quarters.
He and Geraden approached through the storeroom full of empty crates – crates, apparently, in which Havelock’s mirrors had been brought to Orison. A door in a niche at the back of the room let them into a short passage. Unexpectedly, Geraden stopped.
Pointing at the impressive array of bolts and bars inside the door, he asked, “Doesn’t he ever lock this place? Does he let people just walk in whenever they want?”
Master Barsonage sniffed in distaste. “I cannot say. I have come here three times. Twice the door was sealed, and he would not open it to me. Perhaps he did not hear me. The third time, the door was open. I found him snoring in his bed. And when I roused him, he was” – Barsonage grimaced – “unpleasant.”
After a moment, he added, “For my own peace of mind, however, I have insisted on guards in the outer hall. Men dressed as ordinary merchants and farmers marked us before we entered the storeroom. If you had not been in my company – or if you had not been recognized – you would have been halted.”
Geraden was scowling. “Does Havelock know anything about that?”
“Perhaps. Who can say what the Adept knows? Perhaps he neither knows nor cares.”
Geraden was thinking about Terisa. Maybe she could have been saved – maybe everything would have been different – if guards had been placed outside the storeroom earlier. If Adept Havelock had had any idea what he was doing.
Snarling to himself, Geraden headed down the passage.
Almost immediately, he and Barsonage reached the room where Havelock’s mirrors were kept.
It had been dramatically changed.
The difference was unmistakable: the room was tidy. Someone had dusted the tables and floor, the mirrors; swept the broken glass from the stone; arranged the full-length mirrors around the walls, displaying them as well as possible in the relatively constricted space. Someone had set up the small and medium-sized mirrors on the tables and adjusted them so that they caught the light of the few lamps and gleamed like promises.
That someone must have been Adept Havelock. Geraden and the mediator spotted him as soon as they entered the room: he was in one corner with a feather duster, crooning over a glass which had been restored to pristine clarity after decades of neglect.
He had made the chamber into a shrine. Or a mausoleum.
Just for a moment while Geraden and Master Barsonage stared at him, he failed to acknowledge their arrival. Then, however, he wheeled to give them a bow, flourishing his duster as though it were a scepter. His eyes gaped in different directions; his fat lips leered. “Barsonage!” he cackled. “You honor me. What a thrill. Who’s the puppy with you?”