“My lord King,” he said with as much urgency as his phlegmatic manner could convey, “you’ll want to see this. Something’s going to happen.”
So quickly that he may have been trying to escape the questions Terisa and Geraden wanted to ask, King Joyse left his chair and followed the Castellan out of the tent.
Elega hesitated momentarily; she thought she ought to say something to Terisa and Geraden – or even to Myste and Darsint. But her heart was with her father, with the battle and Prince Kragen; she couldn’t remain behind.
Outside, she hardly noticed that the rest of the people in the tent joined her only a moment later.
The valley was full of midmorning sunshine. Only midmorning, after all that had happened—Above the ramparts, the sky was immeasurably blue, as clean and complete as springtime. The air was turning subtly but unquestionably warmer, and under the sunlight the night’s thick snowfall had gone slushy. Where the army had trampled the snow, a few small stretches of dark, wet dirt were beginning to appear. The stream down the center of the valley ran more loudly, taking in water from the snow-melt.
Like King Joyse and his companions around the pennon, every Mordant and Alend from the valley foot to Esmerel watched what could be seen of High King Festten’s army.
The Cadwal forces appeared to be withdrawing.
No, not withdrawing: dividing. The High King parted his men into a new formation, half on either side with a space of clear ground between them as wide as the valley itself.
“Does he think he can lure us out there?” Norge inquired. “Does he think we’re crazy enough to let him hit us from both sides?”
“No,” King Joyse snapped, unintentionally brusque. “He is making room.”
“Eremis is going to translate something,” Terisa breathed to Geraden. “If I go down there, if I get close enough—If I can figure out the Image, the way I did at the crossroads, I might be able to break his mirror.”
She wasn’t talking to the King, but he heard her anyway. “You will not, my lady,” he said at once. “If you fail, you will be the first victim. That risk is too great, even for me.”
Geraden put his arm around her. He may have been trying to reassure her. Or maybe he was making sure she didn’t sneak away.
Anticipation and dread knotted the atmosphere. King Joyse had said, They will attempt something extravagant—Everyone who had ever heard stories of the old wars knew that Imagers were capable of atrocities which could freeze blood in the heart.
Nevertheless when the next attack came no one was ready for it.
Because she was expecting something, concentrating hard, Terisa felt just a suggestion of the visceral cold of translation. Eremis’ mirror was focused too far away to touch her strongly. She tightened her grip on Geraden.
In the clear space between the sides of the Cadwal army, a monster appeared.
She had seen it before. Every member of the Congery was familiar with it.
Huge eyes, insatiable and raging. Teeth dripping poison in a maw big enough to swallow houses. A vast, slug-like body. Slime-streaked sides.
Once, during the old wars, that beast had destroyed an entire village, eaten it hut by hut. The worm was too big to be killed, too big even to be hurt. Given time, it could have consumed anything. But King Joyse had captured the mirror from which the monster came, and Adept Havelock had translated the beast back to its cave in the Image.
Now Master Eremis had the mirror, and the beast was furious.
The creature gave a roar of hideous outrage, howling so fiercely that the walls of the valley rang. Then it slithered forward and began devouring the rubble that blocked High King Festten’s approach, attacking the mounds as if piled rock offended it.
In spite of training and experience, determination and courage, the King’s army broke into panic.
The monster’s teeth among the rubble were as loud as detonations, inescapably destructive. Already the archers hidden in the mounds had to leap and run, risk snapping their legs or backs to get away. And when the rock was gone, the creature would enter the valley—
It would consume the entire army itself. Or it would drive guards and soldiers to the walls, where High King Festten’s men could crush them at leisure. Or it would force them out of the valley, where the Cadwal army could fall on them from both sides. Something extravagant— This was extravagant, all right. But it wasn’t desperate. It was a masterstroke, completely unanswerable; defeat as stark and terrible as the creature’s teeth.
Helpless to save themselves, the Alend and Mordant ranks came apart like water and began spilling in all directions. Their cries were everywhere; hoarse and frantic; doomed.
The sight set King Joyse afire. “Death’s hatchetman, Eremis!” he roared in a voice that seemed to match the monster’s, “this is foul!”
But he didn’t waste time on indignation. Wheeling to Norge, he barked like a trumpet, “Find Kragen! Rally the men! Retreat! That beast is no danger yet! We must stop this panic!
“Bring my horse!”
Galvanized by the King’s shout, Norge raced for his own mount while two dumbstruck guards hauled Joyse’s suddenly frightened charger forward.
In a moment, both men were gone, spurring their horses into the face of an army transformed to tumult and chaos. King Joyse didn’t rage at his enemies; he didn’t shout at his men. He simply rode hard, rode conspicuously, straight for the foot of the valley, with his sword bright in his hands, so that as many soldiers and guards as possible would see him and think he wasn’t beaten.
“There’s got to be something we can do,” Geraden repeated, fretting at his helplessness like a boy.
Terisa chewed her lip. “I said that already.” She hardly heard him, however. She was listening to the sound of the monster’s teeth in the rubble – a savage, crushing noise which seemed somehow louder than the army’s panic – and trying to think about several different things at the same time.
Choose your risks more carefully.
I want you to defeat Master Eremis.
Problems should be solved by those who see them.
I’ve got the strongest feeling—
And something else; something that refused to come clear. There was too much noise, too many people were shouting around her, too many people were going to die—
Something so stupidly obvious that she was going to kick herself as soon as she figured it out.
Master Barsonage was at Geraden’s side. His eyes had a wild and aimless stare; he looked like a man who had wandered here after having his brains baked out in the desert. “Now I understand,” he said, not – apparently – because anyone was listening to him, but because he had to say something, needed to hear a reasonable voice. “When we rescued you from the ruin of our meeting hall, Eremis used that glass to help clear away the stone. I thought his choice was odd, but now I understand. He was making his beast mad, teaching it to hate stone.”
Something—
“Why did none of us realize that he must be the maker of that glass? Or an Adept?”
In spite of herself, she stopped to absorb what the Master said. He was right: Eremis must be an Adept. Or he had been working against King Joyse longer than anyone realized; had conceived his ambitions at a younger age. Unexpected abilities—
“But how did he get possession of the mirror?” asked the mediator. “I thought it was among those broken when he shattered Geraden’s glass. He must have captured it then. That must have been one of the reasons for his attack on the laborium.
“Why did none of us think to see whether all the mirrors we lost were among those broken?”