“Because I can.”
Almost at once, she was sure that he was gone.
For what felt like a long moment, she didn’t move. She had given King Joyse to his enemies. Queen Madin’s abduction was her fault. She had gone to Eremis in the dungeon and told him what he needed to know and let him command her to betray Geraden and how could she have been so stupid? And Geraden didn’t know the secret of the oxidate. He couldn’t fight the Master. He couldn’t find her in the dark.
Hope was out of the question, really.
Never mind that. She probably didn’t have room for hope anyway. Her yearning for Eremis’ blood was too big: it squeezed out everything else. It made the kind of concentration she needed impossible. She was powerless precisely because her ache for power was so intense.
The chain left her room to move around the bed. Grimly, she pulled up her trousers, tied the sash tightly, and began to rebutton her shirt.
“Unfortunate,” the rattling voice muttered.
She froze.
How many people were watching her – people she couldn’t see?
“I see well without light. Darkness conceals no secrets from me. But opportunities to witness such nakedness have been rare in recent years.” The speaker’s voice sounded like pebbles on glass. “A woman with such proud breasts, and yet so full of fear. A tantalizing combination. And there is time. Eremis will be away for some little while. Festten will question him narrowly before allowing him to go ahead with his plans.”
Terisa wanted to finish buttoning her shirt, but she couldn’t make her fingers work. How many people—? Until now, she had only been afraid of Eremis, not of the dark itself, not of the place where he had left her.
“Sadly, however, Eremis does not like used meat. And I do not like any meat enough to risk my alliance with him. Hide your breasts – or flaunt them – as you choose.” She heard relish as well as scorn in the rattle. “They will not sway me.”
As if she had been waiting for his permission, she fumbled at the fastenings of the shirt.
At last, her eyes were adjusting to the dark. When she peered hard, she was able to discern the outlines of a figure near where she guessed the doorway to be. The voice came from that direction.
Clenching her teeth for courage, she stood up and tested the chain.
She was able to swing her arms before she came to its limit. Following it to its anchor, she found that it was stapled into the wall at the head of the bed – nearly ten feet of it, enough to let her perform almost any conceivable gymnastic feat on the bed, but not enough to let her evade the dim figure in the doorway. Nevertheless she was comforted to have that much range of motion. If everything else failed, she would at least have a chance to hit Master Eremis before he touched her again.
Deliberately, she wrapped some of the chain around her fist to give it weight. She placed her back against the wall. Then she faced the figure with the rattling voice.
“You’re Vagel.” She didn’t need confirmation: she was sure. “The famous arch-Imager. The man who drove Havelock mad. Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Put up with him. You call it an alliance, but he probably treats you like a servant. You’re the arch-Imager. The most powerful man anybody has ever heard of. Why are you serving him? Why isn’t it the other way around?”
The outlines of the figure suggested a shrug. “Power,” he said like stones scattering against a mirror, “is more often a matter of position than of talent. He told you the truth, in a way. The whole world hinges on the little discovery which enables him to translate glass through glass. But that is not his real power.”
“Really?” She couldn’t stifle her impulse to goad Vagel. She was too frightened and furious for any other approach. Apparently, Vagel had been listening – watching – while Eremis had her naked. “What is?”
“His real power,” rattled the arch-Imager, “is that he is irreplaceable to all his allies – because of his talents, of course, but also because of his position, in the Congery, in Orison. What access do I have to his resources, his freedoms? Gilbur, I grant you, has also been favorably placed. But there it is his talent which is replaceable. He is only swift – uncommonly swift – rather than brilliant. And he hates everyone too much to form bonds – everyone except Eremis.
“No, Eremis’ real power is that he can have his way with anyone.
“He has his way with me, although my Imagery far surpasses his – and although I am the link which allowed him to begin his dealings with Festten, years ago when he rescued me from renegade destitution among the Alend Lieges. He will have his way with Festten, despite the High King’s taste for absolute authority. He will have his way with you” – Vagel let out a malign chuckle – “until the only thing which prevents you from begging for death is that he does not let you speak.
“He will even have his way with King Joyse in the end.” Now Vagel’s tone suggested hard things – broken things with sharp edges. “For that reason I do not care how utterly I serve him.”
Unexpectedly, Terisa had stopped listening. The Alend Lieges. The way he said those words triggered a small leap of intuition, fitted an odd, minor detail into place. In surprise, she said, “Carrier pigeons.”
Vagel was silent, as if she had startled him.
“You’re the one who brought carrier pigeons here. You gave them to the Alend Lieges.”
“Those mucky barons,” growled the arch-Imager. “Their squalor and their petty ambitions nearly drove me mad. They demanded – demande— Power. Imagery. I had to satisfy them to keep myself alive, me, the greatest Imager they had ever known. And yet they were satisfied with birds that could carry messages. I would have destroyed them long ago – I would have required that of Eremis – if they weren’t such little men.
“For that also, for the humiliation they cost me, Joyse will suffer.”
“Revenge,” Terisa muttered. Her attention shifted back to Vagel. “He and Havelock beat you back when you thought you were about to become the master of the world, and you can’t live with it. Now you don’t care who has the power. You don’t care how much Eremis humiliates you. All you care about is hurting the people who showed you you were wrong about yourself.
“What Eremis is doing to you is worse than anything King Joyse ever did.”
“Is it?” Vagel’s voice purred like a fall of small stones. “How strangely you think. Your defeat becomes less and less surprising, despite all the nearly unguessable implications of your talent.
“Eremis’ manner is demeaning, but the rewards he offers are not. Do you believe that either Joyse or Havelock proved themselves better men than I am – more able or deserving, more powerful? No. They only proved that they were more treacherous. And you have seen in the decline of Mordant and the collapse of Orison that there exists nothing so desirable, worthy, or powerful that it cannot be betrayed. I was beaten, not by a good Imager or a good king, but by a good spy.”
She expected the arch-Imager to advance, but he didn’t. “Do not despise revenge. Unless I am much mistaken” – he was sneering at her – “you yourself have no other passion.
“In your case, however, revenge must fail. You do not serve any man who can make glass from the blood-soaked sand of your desires. Eremis will have his way with you, and then the truth of you will be proven absolutely.”
“It’s the same for you,” she retorted, fighting back so that what he said wouldn’t crush her. “He’s using you – having his way with you. And when he’s done, he’ll just discard you. You won’t get your revenge after all. He wants all the fun for himself.”
Vagel made a sharp, hissing noise. After that, there was a long silence. Terisa tightened her grip on the chain, although the vague figure hadn’t moved.