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 palettes 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.”
Hardly able to bear what he heard, the Tor clamped his hands over his face and shuddered as if he were sobbing.
King Joyse glanced up and down the Tor’s frame; at once, his expression darkened. To the astonished physician, he snapped, “How was he injured? How severe is his hurt?”
“A kick, my lord King,” the physician fumbled out quickly. “The High King’s Monomach. He bleeds inwardly.” The man faltered, then forced himself to say, “If he does not rest, he will die. And even if he does rest, I cannot vouch for his life. He has used himself” – the physician seemed unaware that he was aping the King’s words – “abominably.”
“Then he will rest,” King Joyse replied in a tone which no one could have ignored. “You will give him your best care. If he dies, you will justify yourself to me.”
Without waiting for an answer, he eased the Tor back into his camp chair. The Tor collapsed against the chair back weakly.
Geraden put a hand on Ribuld’s arm. “Prince Kragen.” He spoke in a whisper; but his tone was like the King’s, irrefusable. “And Master Barsonage.”
Ribuld went out of the tent in a daze.
“Now.” King Joyse faced Terisa and Geraden. He stood slightly poised, as if he were ready to spring, and his eyes blazed blue. “You have a great deal to tell me. Before Prince Kragen comes. Begin from Gart’s attack in the hall of audiences.
“Where is Castellan Lebbick?”
His intensity was so compelling that Terisa almost started to answer. Geraden, however, had other ideas. He shifted a bit away from her, a bit ahead of her, placing himself between her and danger. Folding his arms on his chest, he said firmly – so firmly that Terisa was simultaneously amazed and proud and frightened – “You’ve been fighting your enemies, my lord King. I can decide better what to tell you if you’ll tell me who gave you your ‘scratches.’ ”
The King’s eyes narrowed. “Geraden,” he said harshly, “do you remember who I am?”
Geraden didn’t flinch. “Yes, my lord King. You’re the man who abandoned the throne of Mordant when we needed you most. You’re the man who brought us all to the edge of ruin without once” – his anger stung the air – “having the decency to tell us the truth.”
Instead of retorting, King Joyse studied Geraden as if the younger man had become someone he didn’t know, a completely different person. A moment later, he shrugged, and the peril in his gaze eased.
“Your father, the Domne,” he said evenly, “has given me many gifts, both of friendship and of service. His greatest gift to me, however, is the loyalty of his sons. I trust you, Geraden. I have trusted you for a long time. And I have given you little reason to trust me. You will answer me when you are ready.
“I have been fighting, as you see” – he indicated his battle gear – “to rescue Queen Madin.”
Rescue Queen Madin. Rescue the Queen. Terisa didn’t understand how that was possible – the distances were too great, the time too short – but his mere statement filled her with so much relief that she could hardly keep her legs under her.
“Doubtless,” King Joyse explained, “you have been told of the strange shapeless cloud of Imagery with which Havelock broke Prince Kragen’s catapults. That shape is a creature, a being – a being with which Havelock has contrived an improbable friendship.
“I must confess that when you told me of the Queen’s abduction I became” – he pursed his lips wryly – “a trifle unreasonable. It was always my intention to lead whatever forces Orison could muster myself. I meant to beg or intimidate an alliance out of Margonal. I could coerce the Congery somehow. For that reason, my old friend” – he nodded toward the sprawling Tor – “had no place in my plans. I did not know that I would need him.”
“That’s my fault,” Terisa said abruptly, unexpectedly. Geraden had placed himself between her and the King for a reason, a reason she ought to respect. Nevertheless she couldn’t keep still. “You were doing what you had to do. You hurt the Tor and Castellan Lebbick and Elega and everyone else so they wouldn’t realize your weakness was only a ploy. So they wouldn’t betray you. But I already betrayed you. I told Eremis” – the thought of her own folly choked her – “told Eremis you knew what you were doing. That’s why he took the Queen.”
King Joyse looked at her hard, so hard that she blushed in chagrin. Yet his gaze held no recrimination. After a brief pause, he said, “My lady, you were provoked,” and returned his attention to Geraden.
“As I say,” he continued, “I became unreasonable. I abandoned you. Though he pleaded with me to reconsider, I forced Havelock to translate his strange friend for me, and that shape bore me to the Care of Fayle as swift as wings. At the debris of Vale House, I found the trail of a motley collection of the Fayle’s old servants and soldiers attempting to pursue Torrent and the Queen. That trail led me eventually to Torrent’s – eventually, I say, or I would have returned to you a day or more sooner – and so to Torrent herself and the Queen.