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.
“Then I will release Nyle. I am not as harsh as you think me – I do not torment him gratuitously. He will witness what becomes of you while we await your rescuers.” The raw-edged pleasure in his voice went through her like a chill. “And when I am ready, I will send him out to tell them what I have done to you.
“Then Geraden will begin to understand what a burden he has undertaken by opposing me.”
No. Never. Never.
Concentration. Focus.
“You bastard.”
He was near enough to touch her now. He could have hit her. She felt his presence, the pressure he emanated; she thought she could smell his lust. Yet he didn’t hit her. “Come, my lady,” he said as if he were sure of her. “Is that how you speak to the man who will master you?” His hand reached out; one finger stroked the line of her cheek. When she didn’t flinch, he cupped his hand around the base of her neck inside her shirt. Slowly, his grip tightened. “Must I use force to teach you humility?”
A blank space; a gap between them. She was vanishing into the darkness, groping farther and farther away from him; groping—Her mind was full of Images, all of them insubstantial; wishful thinking.
“No,” she said from so far away that he would never be able to possess her. “Take my chain off. Let me show you what I’ve learned from Geraden.”
She made no effort to sound seductive or helpless, to conceal her distance from him.
The trap she set for him was like the one he had prepared for his enemies. Obvious. And irresistible. How could he doubt that he was more than a match for her? that he could control her, coerce her, defeat her whenever he chose? Resistance would only make her final submission the more appalling to her.
Chuckling, he took hold of her arm and clicked the fetter off her wrist.
Because she was so far away, she did nothing to betray herself. And because she was so full of anger, she didn’t hesitate.
Before he could secure his grip, she swung her leg with all her strength and kicked him in the crotch.
He gasped as much in surprise as in pain; recoiled violently from her.
Almost at once, he caught his balance, recovered from the shock and hurt. She wanted to hear him cursing in agony, frothing at the mouth; but he didn’t oblige her. The oath he spat at her was simply vindictive, a promise that she had pushed him too far and was going to suffer for what she did.
Quickly, he jumped forward to capture her, punish her.
But not quickly enough. While he was still on his way toward her, she touched a moment of eternity.
It was hardly longer than the space between one frightened heartbeat and another – yet it was enough. Images coalesced, took on light and shape: dozens of them; chaos and fragments everywhere. She only needed one, however, the sharpest Image, the one with details so precise and unalienable that they might have been acid-cut on her mind.
A sand dune poised in the timeless gap between high winds and nonexistence.
She had no idea where she might have seen that Image before. She didn’t care. As soon as she saw it, she knew it was hers
—and a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel slid straight through the center of her abdomen.
Eremis was grappling for her, trying to catch her by the shoulders and strike her at the same time. Only an intuitive reflexive leap enabled him to pull himself out of danger as she faded from him and fell backward into the wall.
Into the light of lamps; onto the floor so heavily that she knocked the breath out of herself.
For a long moment, she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t do anything except gape back up at Adept Havelock, Master Barsonage, and Geraden, who were staring at her as if she had tumbled out of a coffin.
FORTY-THREE: THE ONLY REASONABLE THING TO DO
The light was extraordinary, as life-giving as sunshine. While she waited to breathe, she was content to simply lie where she was and accept the glow of her escape.
Then Geraden let out a whoop and seemed to pounce on her. Oblivious to the fact that she couldn’t inhale, he swept her up into his arms and began to whirl her, crying and laughing, “Terisa! Terisa!” spinning her into a dance of wild joy. His happiness burned so brightly that she clung to his neck and didn’t care whether she was able to breathe or not. If Master Barsonage hadn’t immediately clamped a massive hug around both of them, forced Geraden to stop, he would have carried her careening into the mirrors, shattering glass in all directions.