). Blame the Democrats.Terisa, having just explained to the Castellan how Geraden cannot possibly be his brother's killer--albeit without providing any hard evidence whatsoever--still languishes in the dungeons of Orison. She's given Lebbick everything she has: every detail of the plot to make Geraden look like a murderer and traitor. And now, everything hinges on whether Artagel can identify the mangled corpse dressed in Nyle's clothes as his brother. Terisa knows she hasn't saved herself; that she will have to face Lebbick again. Lebbick, teetering on the verge of sanity, worn to nothing but anger, desire, and fear, desperate to use her as his body and rage desire, and terrified of what he will become if he does.
Trapped between what she knows to be the truth and what she can actually prove, Terisa contemplates Geraden's talent. She contemplates what will happen to her if Artagel cannot identify the Imagery-ravaged carcase found in Eremis's rooms as his brother Nyle. She even begins to contemplate the possibility that Geraden is guilty, but--"The implications were intolerable, so she tried to close her mind to them." She starts counting the bricks in the wall of her cell, reflects on the nature of Dungeons, and begins to worry about the Castellan again.She wondered whether the places where people suffered were always made stronger by the residue of pain. And--not for the fiorst time--she wondered how many different kinds of pain it was possible to feel.
When [Lebbick] came back, whatever he did would be out of her control. She had used up all her weapons...And somewhere between the poles of love and violence Castellan Lebbick had lost his way.
Eremis interrupts her.
He tells her that he's tricked the guards watching over his exertions at the reservoir and come to visit her via a secret passage that leads from his workrooms in the laborium to the dungeon. Terisa has only two thoughts: Escape, and...What does Eremis want?"Deep in thought, I see, my lady, " said Master Eremis. "It makes you especially lovely."
She turned, her heart thudding in her throat, and saw him at the door of her cell. With one hand, he twirled the ends of his chasuble negligently. His relaxed stance suggested that he had been watching her for several minutes.
"You are quite remarkable," he continued. "ordinarily, cognition in a woman produces only ugliness. Were you thinking of me?"
Terisa, for the first time, uses her new weapons of reason and perception against Eremis, standing up to him directly. The spell of his charisma is broken. She finally begins to understand: Eremis and Gilbur recognized Geraden's talent from almost the beginning, and have feared it almost as long. Arguing for his acceptance into the Congery was meant to confuse him; the translation of the Champion was, among other things, an opportunity to get him killed 'accidentally." Eremis's offer of escape is an attempt to set a trap for Geraden, using Terisa as bait.
Terisa's final insistence that all Eremis's tricks and red herrings have been made out of fear of Geraden is finally too much for the Master's conceit of himself, and his irritation at having been so misread stings him into honesty.
Eremis explains why he didn't send Gart against the Lords of the Cares during their secret meeting (it was too soon to reveal his intentions)--thereby admitting that he is in league with the High King's Monomach. He explains why he and Gilbur translated the Champion (the mirror faced the towers & halls where the Lords and the Alend Contender were staying, and the Champion's rampage could have decimated what was left of Mordant's power structure)—thereby proving himself undeniably a traitor.Abruptly, Master Eremis swung his own fists and hit the bars so hard that the door clanged against its latch. "It was not fear. Are you deaf? Do you have the arrogance to ignore me? It was not fear!
"It was policy."
And suddenly, Terisa realizes that once again she’s left herself completely vulnerable. She can’t even protect herself by playing stupid. She goes for naïve, instead. She tells Eremis to prove that he doesn’t fear Geraden by leaving her to rot in the dungeon and finish saving Orison. His reply—that he knows what she wants better than she does, that she should join him and become the highest lady in the land, covered with jewels and pretty clothes—rings false to her somehow. He’s too insistent that she come with him: here she is, powerless and alone in a cell to which he has the key, and he’s trying to talk her into escaping with him. Why doesn’t he just take her?
And Eremis calls her bluff, and genially opens the door to her cell, and admits himself more than willing to apply a little force, if that’s what she’d really enjoy the most.She shook her head, hardly hearing him. Any explanation he gave was automatically false. Still for her own benefit, she went on, “You’re not just afraid of Geraden. You’re afraid of me.” She felt a growing sense of wonder and dismay. “You’re trying to trick me for the same reason you’ve been trying to have me killed. You’re afraid of me.”
As soon as he takes the first step, Terisa yells for the guards. And then yells for them again. Footsteps sound in the distance, and Eremis disappears with a final curse.
When the guards arrive, Terisa asks for the Castellan. She now has something more to offer him. He arrives shortly, filled with anger. He didn’t give permission for her to have visitors, yet both the Tor and Artagel—who can barely drag himself out of bed—have been to see her. His paranoia is at a high point; the machinations which are only now becoming perfectly clear to Terisa have tied him in knots.
So angry he cannot even hear reason, so lost that doesn’t know where to turn, he takes the only action that is even remotely clear to him, that requires the least thought; the only action that proves that he has control over something Terisa does. “…He caught his arms around her and began to kiss her as if he had been starving for her so long that the pressure of his need had snapped his self-command.”“What are you plotting? Did they tell you what to say to me? They must have. I half believed that dogpiss story about Eremis and Gart. You couldn’t make that up yourself—you don’t know enough. No, you’re doing this together. Those riders with the red fur came from the Care of Tor. Artagel is Geraden’s brother.” Convulsing with anger, he twisted her shirt so that it tore down one seam to the hem. What are you plotting?”
Terisa once again finds her refuge in fading; her instinctive reaction to the immediate anger of authority is to go away inside herself, where she’s safe. This time, fear doesn’t prevent her from drifting away. But she chooses not to fade anyway, because as Myste once said to her, ”Problems should be solved by those who see them.” And there simply isn’t anyone else left in Orison able to see the problem facing them. So it’s the importance of the place around her, and the people she’s come to know, that brings her back from fading. It might almost be a sense of duty—an odd thing for a terminally passive person to find themselves with.
Terisa talks around Lebbick’s kisses, and talks around him when he threatens to hit her. She tells him that Eremis came to her in the dungeon, that she can prove Eremis a traitor, that Eremis faked the strain of his exertions in the reservoir, and that Eremis has a secret passage from the laborium to the dungeon. Lebbick proves that he can still think coherently when he asks why Terisa didn’t leave with Eremis—and Terisa answers that she didn’t want to be used against Geraden.
Terisa nods, and suddenly breaking away from her, the Castellan runs off in search of the secret passage. She has a chance to take a breath, to examine the damage done to her shirt, to sit down. And then Master Quillon, “inexplicably standing outside the bars of her cell,” informs her that there is no secret passage; that Eremis came and went by translation; that when the Castellan fails to find the passage, he’s likely to kill her out of anger and betrayal.”So if you’re telling the truth”—for the first time since she had met him, he sounded like a man who might weep—“Geraden has always been true to King Joyse. True, when almost nobody else is. And you’re true to Geraden. And I’ve been hurting my King by distrusting you—by trying to protect him from you.”
Terisa starts to cry.
I haven't reread this chapter yet but doesn't Eremis say that he put something in his wine that makes him sweat thus fooling Lebbick and the guards re: his so called "exertions"?
Thanks, and it's cayenne pepper.
