Grinning, Master Eremis raised his hands to ward off the babble. “Master Barsonage, please. I did not come to you for flattery. I am precisely aware of my own virtues, and they do not merit this praise.”
“Really?” the mediator returned. “I think you are too modest.” His eyes were as bland as bits of glass. “But if praise is offensive I will cease. Of course you did not come for flattery. How may I serve you?”
“I am well rested now, as you see,” Eremis answered. “And another matter which required my attention has come to an end. It is no secret that the maid Saddith was my lover.” He spoke with admirable sincerity. “After I recovered my strength, I spent much of my time with her. She needed friends—”
He grimaced. “Sadly, she would not give up her hatred of our good Castellan. There was nothing I could do with her.” Grief wasn’t his best pose, but he projected as much of it as possible. As if he were putting Saddith and her death behind him by an act of will, he said, “Master Barsonage, I am ready.”
The mediator raised an eyebrow. As his skin dried, it looked more and more like cut pine. “ ‘Ready’?”
“I have heard that the Masters are busy – that since Quillon’s death you have rediscovered your sense of purpose. I am ready to rejoin the work of the Congery.”
“Our work?” Master Barsonage’s features reflected nothing. “What work do you mean?”
Master Eremis had difficulty suppressing a smile. The mediator was almost ludicrously transparent. Fixing him with a glittering gaze which was intended to express indignation as well as penetration, Eremis replied slowly, “So it is true. I am still not trusted. That is the reason I have not been summoned to any of your meetings – to any of your labors. I have saved Orison from a quick fall to Alend. I did everything any man could do to keep Nyle alive – and I was the only man here who so much as made the attempt. I have been striving with unmatched diligence to find some means to avert Mordant’s fate. It was not I who disbanded the Congery. And I am still not trusted. That murderous puppy, Geraden, casts a few groundless aspersions on my good name, and suddenly nothing I can do is enough to redeem it.”
“Oh, no, Master Eremis.” Barsonage put up a thick hand in protest. “You misunderstand me. You misunderstand us all.” In a tone as bland as his expression, he explained, “You fail to grasp, I think, how high your standing has become. The man who refilled the reservoir – the man who did so much to save Nyle – is not someone who can be ‘summoned’ to meetings like an Apt. He cannot be put to labor like a packhorse. You have been much involved in your own concerns – and you have earned the right to be. The Congery does not distrust you. We only respect your high standing – and your privacy.”
Firmly, Eremis resisted a giddy temptation to snort, During a siege? With Orison’s fall tied like a noose around your neck, and no hope anywhere? Can you truly believe me silly enough to swallow that lie? The mediator, however, didn’t look like a man who had an opinion about Master Eremis’ silliness, one way or the other. He looked – his blandness itself betrayed him – like a man who had spent some time preparing for this encounter.
Master Eremis sat forward in his chair; his relish for the conversation sharpened.
“Perhaps,” he said in a skeptical drawl. “You will forgive me if I reserve judgment on that point.
“It remains true, does it not, that there have been meetings to which I have not been invited? That there is work in progress which I have not been asked to share? That the Congery has rediscovered its purpose?”
Master Barsonage nodded. “Indeed.” Something about him – perhaps it was the way his eyebrow bristled – suggested an intensification which his mild gaze contradicted. “I am glad to say that is the case.”
“Am I permitted to ask how it came about?”
“Certainly. At last we are able to see clearly that the lady Terisa is an Imager.”
Eremis scowled to conceal the fact that he didn’t like what he heard. “Master Barsonage, that is an answer which explains nothing.”
“Well, perhaps not.” Apparently, the mediator had prepared himself quite well for this encounter. “A man of your assurance and ability may have difficulty understanding men whose chief talent lies in their capacity for doubt.
“Nevertheless in practice – as distinct from theory – the great stumbling block for the Congery has been the question of the lady Terisa. What does she signify? What does her presence among us indicate? Is there a reason for her unexpected appearance, or was Geraden merely the agent of a monumental accident?
“If she is an accident, then all Imagery is accidental in the end, and our research, like our morality, is only foolishness. Geraden’s role in the augury has no meaning.”
Master Eremis nodded as if the truth were obvious to him.
“But if,” the mediator continued, “there is a reason, then two conclusions are inescapable. So inescapable,” he commented without discernible sarcasm or humor, “that even our most contentious members have accepted them. First, the responsibility she represents falls upon us. Imagery is our demesne. Second, since the problem she represents exists it must have a solution. What one Imager can do, another can understand and counter.
“It has been demonstrated,” he concluded, “that there is a reason. She is an Imager. We can regret that she has chosen to ally herself with Master Gilbur and arch-Imager Vagel, but we cannot shirk either the responsibility or the hope which that knowledge implies.”
“Yes, very well.” Master Eremis made an impatient gesture. “That is all reasonable as far as it goes, but you have not yet explained it. How do you know she is an Imager? What evidence has she given? Lebbick reports that Gilbur freed her from her cell. He killed Quillon. He took her to the room where Havelock’s mirrors are kept. Lebbick found them there. After Gilbur felled Lebbick, he and she disappeared from Orison. What does that demonstrate? Gilbur’s ability to come and go is as well established as Gart’s – and as unexplained. There is no reason to attribute Imagery to her.”
Master Barsonage shrugged, scratched his chest. As if to compensate for his baldness, his chest was matted with yellow hair. Water clung to it like beads of sap. “That is true,” he replied without hurry or hesitation. “On the other side, it could be argued that Master Gilbur and the arch-Imager would have no reason to free her – just as the High King’s Monomach would have no reason to kill her – if she were not an Imager. Speaking only for myself, I have examined that argument and found it persuasive. In fact, it persuaded me to accept the position of the Congery’s mediator once again.
“Since then, however, we have been given evidence instead of argument, the kind of evidence you and several of the other Masters require.”
Maddeningly, he halted and gazed at Eremis as if he had said enough.
Master Eremis forced himself to take a deep breath, relax, stop grinding his teeth. When he had recovered his nonchalance, he said, “You say that you do not distrust me. Do you trust me enough to tell me what that evidence is?”
Once again, Master Barsonage replied, “Of course.
“The Castellan is a hard man, hard to defeat. He was already coming back to consciousness when the lady Terisa and Master Gilbur left the storeroom of Adept Havelock’s mirrors. He saw that they did not depart together.
“The lady Terisa vanished into a glass. Master Gilbur was too far from her to have translated her. He left the room the same way he entered it, along the corridor.”
The mediator favored Master Eremis with a smile as bland as milk.
Eremis prided himself on his restraint. Nevertheless he betrayed some surprise as he protested, “That is not the story Lebbick tells.”