They passed more doors: storerooms, cells, guards’ quarters. Terisa thought they must be near the chamber where Master Eremis had his glassworks. Unless it was in the opposite direction. What was the “Image-room”? Where was it?
At the fourth door, Geraden stopped. He wrenched it open: a storeroom, apparently; bedding and pillows. More roughly than he intended, he thrust Nyle inside.
“Hide!” he hissed. “Let us do the fighting! All you have to do is stay hidden, so they can’t threaten you.”
Nyle gave his brother a look of dumb, helpless anguish. Then he stumbled into the dark, and Geraden jerked the door shut, catching it just in time to make it close softly.
Pale and extreme, he faced Terisa. “I hope to the stars,” he panted, “we know what we’re doing.”
She grabbed at his hand and drew him into a run again, on down the corridor.
Know what we’re doing.
I want you to defeat Master Eremis.
Artagel wouldn’t last much longer: she knew that. Yet she and Geraden were still alive because of him. And Eremis didn’t know they were coming. Maybe King Joyse and Prince Kragen had already been crushed. But she had promised in her heart that she would kill Master Eremis. The men who had treated Nyle like that were going to die.
The cot leg in Geraden’s fist looked too short, too weightless, to do any good. Nevertheless he held it like a man who intended to find a use for it.
She needed a weapon of her own; she didn’t have anything to fight with except her empty hands.
She had no idea how big the stronghold was, how to find her enemies. She and Geraden kept running anyway, beyond the range of Artagel’s valiant struggle, around corners, along passageways. Geraden no longer seemed to be breathing hard: he had settled into a state of exertion where nothing could stop him. She saw suggestions of the Domne in him, hints of Tholden, as if he had all his family’s strength. Her own lungs were being torn open, but she didn’t care. Details like that had lost their importance; she had left them behind with her father.
Then the corridor opened into a place of more light; a room with many windows, full of sunshine.
A large, round room, as large as the Congery’s former meeting hall in Orison; high, with its domed ceiling encircled by clerestories so that the bright morning shone in from all sides; reached by several entrances around the walls, as if this chamber were the center of the stronghold, the hub around which all Master Eremis’ activities turned; and full of mirrors.
The Image-room.
Tall mirrors of many kinds stood in a wide circle around the center of the chamber, meticulously spaced ten or so feet apart, and facing inward, so that they could all be watched – so that they were all ready to be used – by the men in their midst.
Master Eremis.
Master Gilbur.
The arch-Imager Vagel.
Terisa thought that she and Geraden were running loudly, panting like engines. Apparently, however, their approach was relatively quiet. None of the men noticed them. Eremis and Gilbur and Vagel were all studying a flat glass which stood with them in the middle of the circle.
That mirror showed the great slug-beast as it entered the valley of Esmerel.
The mounds of rock which had blocked the creature’s advance were gone, devoured; now the monster squirmed along its slime into the valley foot.
Almost directly under the beast’s jaws rode King Joyse, holding his sword up like a banner. From this perspective, he seemed already in reach of the vast, venomous fangs. He was shouting commands or appeals which didn’t convey anything through the glass. Small with distance, he looked at once extravagant and pathetic, like a weather vane dancing in the onset of a hurricane.
“Do your best, Joyse,” growled Master Gilbur. “Withdraw your men. Rally them if you can. Then it will be Festten’s power that actually destroys you, rather than ours.”
Terisa and Geraden had slowed, almost stopped. He raised a finger to his mouth, urging silence; she nodded. They crept forward behind the Imagers, into the ring of mirrors.
The first mirror they saw from the front showed the side of a rocky mountain. The slope had a dark scar across it, as if a landslide had recently taken place. This was the source of the avalanches Eremis had used against Vale House and the Congery’s chasm.
Grinning like Artagel, Geraden issued his challenge to his enemies by swinging his cot leg at the glass.
The mirror shattered like a cry; glass sprayed singing to the stone.
At the sound, the three Imagers spun.
Only Master Eremis showed any surprise. He may have had a secret liking for surprises: they tested him, gave him new chances to exercise his abilities. His expression when he saw Terisa and Geraden bore an unmistakable resemblance to joy.
“Astonishing,” he murmured. “I did not believe that such talent existed in all the world.”
Unlike Eremis, Master Gilbur had only one reaction to the unexpected. Clenched like his back, his features brandished their old scowl, their black and unalterable fury. One powerful fist dove into his robe, brought out a dagger as long as Terisa’s forearm; the dagger which had killed Master Quillon. Deep in his contorted chest, he snarled curses like a hunting lion.
The arch-Imager’s mouth hung open, but he didn’t look surprised. He looked hungry, avid for some bloody sustenance he had been too long denied, insatiably destructive. His chin was wet with drool, and his eyes smoldered like the eyes of a lover lost in cruelty.
Before any of the Imagers had time to move, Terisa pushed the nearest mirror onto its back. As it fell, she saw a bitter landscape running with lava. Then the scene broke into splinters and ruin.
“If you do that again, my lady,” Master Eremis said amiably, “I swear I will rip Geraden’s balls off and make you eat them.”
“Try it,” retorted Geraden. He sprang to the next glass, clubbed it to shards.
Roaring, Master Gilbur charged at him.
Geraden dodged behind another mirror, pulled it over. Unfortunately, that left him open to Gilbur’s attack. The dagger stabbed for his heart.
He saved himself by staggering to the side, slipping on chips of glass, crashing to the floor in a splash of slivers. Master Gilbur sprang after him, hammered the dagger at him. He rolled away, scrambled his legs under him, scuttled toward the wall – just out of reach. He had lost his club; he was weaponless against Gilbur’s tremendous strength, the Imager’s long blade.
“Stand still and die, dogshit!” Master Gilbur panted.
He drove Geraden backward.
Terisa faced Eremis and the arch-Imager alone.
She knew how to fight them: without thinking about it, without planning anything, she knew. She could never break enough of their mirrors to save King Joyse. They would kill her long before she did that much damage. And she would accomplish nothing if she shifted the Image which showed the King’s peril. Nevertheless she had glass to oppose Eremis and Vagel with, mirrors at her disposal which they couldn’t see. All she had to do was stay alive.
And concentrate—
I want you to trust me.
—concentrate on the flat glass in Havelock’s rooms, the mirror with the Image of the sand dune. If she put this scene, this room, into that glass, the Adept could see it. He would see it, if he hadn’t fallen completely victim to his insanity. And then he could translate both Eremis and Vagel to Orison.
Trust me.
Eremis would lose his mind. And Vagel would be in Orison, with no way back here. He might use one of Havelock’s mirrors to avoid capture, but he would cease to be a threat.
All she had to do was concentrate.
She stood still. Instinctively, she raised her hands as if to show Master Eremis she was no longer a threat to his mirrors.
The way he looked at her made her blood labor like sludge in her veins.
To keep himself from being pinned to the wall, Geraden had to retreat toward one of the exits. Apparently hoping to draw Master Gilbur after him, he turned suddenly and fled, running hard down the corridor.