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Better late than never..... - Sorry for the delay folks.
This really turns out to be a pivitol chapter in the story.
We get the "real story" about Joyce's plan, we find out a litle bit about the "real" traitors, and we see Terisa find the beginnings of her "real" talent.
Terisa is visited (man, she gets a lot of visitors for a prisoner....) by Master Quillon, who proceeds to try to explain & justify his & Joyce's actions. Joyce is faking weakness in order to draw the traitors to him, and therefore save lives. Sounds like a great plan, unless you happen to be Lebbick, Geraden or the Tor.
I am surprised to hear Terisa's questioning of Quillon regarding Lebbick - the man who has imprisoned her, beat her & even assaulted her with a kiss "as hard as a blow".
Once again SRD has tried to make us sympathise with an otherwise unsympathetic character, through the eyes of the victim."He doesn't have any choice, and it's killing him." Sudden pity surged up through her bitterness. The man Lebbick had once been would probably have treated her with nothing more terrible than detached sarcasm or kindness. But the entire weight of King Joyce's policy had come down on his shoulders, and now he could hardly refrain from raping or murdering her.
"Don't you see that? What you're doing is expensive, and you're making him pay for all of it." Without warning, she began to weep again. Her distress and the Castellan's were too intimately interconnected. "You and your precious King are destroying him."
Even Quillon knows the cost being exacted on Lebbick.
Enter The Castellan:"We didn't know this was going to happen. We thought he was stronger."
Quillon desperately tries to get Terisa out of the cell, dragging her to the next, where he trips a hidden door, narrowly escaping a highly agitated Lebbick."Lying slut!" howled the Castellan. "I'll have you gutted for this!"
They exit to the place where Terisa had been attacked previously, and they press on through the translation point with Lebbick howling behind them. Terisa cannot warn Quillon in time to stop the maniac Gilbur from spitting Quillon with his dagger.
She manages to out run Gilbur, ending up in Havelok's quarters. She desperately tries to get him to help her, but he is too far gone from his earlier exertions against Kragen.
He calms as quickly as he was enraged and says simply:"Don't you think I want to be sane? Don't you think I want to help? He was the only one who knew how to help me. But I used it all up! This morning - against those catapults! I used it all up!"
OK then, our lady seems to be in some serious trouble now, right?????"Today I can't help you, he murmured to the blank checkerboard, "Go deal with Gilbur yourself."
She encounters Gilbur in the "mirror room" and after a little verbal sparring, some glass throwing and a good blow to the Castellan's head, she realizes she knows what to do to escape & actually surprises Gilbur by what she does to the mirror behind her. Before he can react, she steps backward into the darkness of translation.
This is a very fast paced chapter, and really ties up some loose ends for me and creates a bunch of new storyline possibilities. I'll say it again - this is the kind of writing that makes me a SRD fan!!!