Well I found a little bit of free time so lets at least discuss the attack of Imagery that besets our intrepid duo as they ride through the lava pits.
Yet the surprise itself may have been what saved her. She had no time to be frightened, paralyzed. Instead, she yelped a warning and flung herself to the side, out of the saddle, out of the way.
The fangs missed her. They came so close, however, that they snagged her shirt at the shoulder, nearly tore it off her body.
She hit the ground awkwardly, wrenched her knee, fell flat on her face. Desperately, she scrambled her legs under her and pitched to her feet--
--just in time to see a gnarled black spot the size of a puppy get up on it's limbs and come scrambling toward her. Its savage jaws took up more than half her body: they stretched for her, ravening.
Due do her yell Geraden barely avoids being munched by yet another one of these nasties that appears out of nowhere from the invisible edge of the translation. It does, however, rip his horse's head off and proceeds to eat throught its entire body straight at him. Then two more hit the scene and one of them doubles up on Geraden as Terisa stuggles, armed with all she has: a kitchen knife, with her original assalliant. She somehow wrests free of it's rage and unconciously, intinctively stabs it in the side.
Geraden rips through his saddle bags and, finally tosses cornmeal into the "face" of his attacker, who has almost devoured the horse right up to his groin. Fortunately it must have some nasal capacity because it sneezes itself almost into oblivion with a mouth too big for its body. Just then as Terisa's second and Geraden's "corn meal buddy" monsters are really ready to tear their heads off they're impaled by crossbow arrows.
A moment later, the three men halted in front of Terisa and Geraden. They peered down from their high seats. Snarling one of them demanded, "What in the name of goatshit and fornication are those things?"
To make a long story short, Geraden explains that they are creatures of Imagery and to reach saftey they need to move a hundred yards out of range. Somehow the word "Imagery" spurs the Temigan's men to action and the rescue party rides to the gates. Meanwhile Terisa equates these creatures as the type capable of doing the damage, back in Orison, to Lebbick's guards and Nyle, or was it really the physician Underwell? The soldiers refuse to let them in Sternwall unless they identify themselves. Geraden introduces himself as a son of the Domne, known as a lifelong friend of Termigan. But when he identifies Terisa of Morgan as arch-Imager and augered champion one of the men quickly cracks her on the neck and knocks her out!
I really like this chapter for a couple of reasons, 1.) The action
really begins to pick up here and then zooms along until you're done with the book, and 2.) The Termigan himself. Aside from the champion he's probably my favorite (Mordant bound) character. In a way, he reminds me of my Dad. Donaldson's description of him in this chapter is, kinda, nondescript, but I personally, and from his earlier visit to Orison, envision him as a burly bear of a man. A no-nonsense guy who can be the greatest friend you can imagine. He seems the type fused with common sense and detests anything done with "smoke and mirrors". And with good reason: in fact, he abhors Imagers.
As Terisa, battered and bruised, eventually comes to he makes this abundantly clear to her. His loved ones and his people have been killed by Imagers. He joined Joyse's cause, after his father died-presumably at the hands of his Care's border enemies: The Alends, for the sole purpose of rounding up as many Imagers as possible and negating their power. In fact he wouldn't even allow Havelock within his walls, back in the day. He doesn't, necessarily dislike Terisa-perhaps he too can't understand her role in anything, but feels that if she indeed
is an Imager she has been infected by power lust and will, eventually, seek the total domination of others.
"The Imager I trust is one who kills himself." Looking back its hard to believe the Termigan could even control himself during the clandestine meeting of the Lords of the Cares with The Alend Contender and Eremis.
He even puts that together by infering,
'no wonder he (Eremis) was the only one who could control you'. Terisa is hard pressed to explain to him that she's really not an Imager, or at least had no idea she had the 'talent' until just five days ago, and that Eremis and Gilbur are behind the Imagery attacks in Orison, Houseldon and here. That they're tying to kill her and Geraden because they know that they have untapped Imager power and they know too much. She beseeches him to support their cause and aide King Joyse and says that even though they're both new to Imagery they are trying to harry Eremis and to discover the means within them to stop him. To the Termigan it's just an Imager's war for power and has nothing to do with him.
A soldier appears in the room and informs the Termigan that a huge new batch of lava is pouring out of the translation and that part of the wall is crumbling.
A sting of alarm when through Terisa. Half involutarily. she said, "That's because we're here, we're too dangerous."
And because they were approaching the crisis--the point where Master Quillon said Eremis would be vunerable. So that he would attack here. The point at which King Joyse intended to strike back. If in fact he had ever had the policy Quillon ascribed to him--or if he were still King enough to carry it out. Eremis needed to kill or paralyze the King's allies before that moment, so that King Joyse wouldn't have any force with which to strike.
It was probably true--although the thought made her sick--that Eremis wouldn't try so hard to kill her and Geraden if she hadn't convinced the Master that King Joyse knew what he was doing, that the King's choices were deliberate, purposive, rather than passive or accidental.
"We'?" asked the Termigan. He sounded fatal--too calm for the extremity of his outrage and dismay. "One new Imager and a failed Apt? I don't believe it."
"You should." Terisa couldn't bear it. Sternwall was going to be destroyed. Like Houseldon. Because of her and Geraden. "He's and Imager, too. He's even more powerful than I am. Let him make a mirror, and he'll get rid of the lava for you."
"Eremis wants us dead. He can't take the chance we'll talk you into helping us."
Terisa expects the Termigan to explode and throw her in irons at this point, instead he does nothing and has Gearden brought into the room. She tells him that she has told the Termigan he's an Imager, but instead of a reaction Geraden is ready to spring into action and build a mirror. Even so, the Termigan wants to believe in the son of the Domne and his loyalty to King Joyse,
In a ragged voice he said, "No even if you're telling the truth. I won't have it. I won't have Imagery here."
His own severity cost him this hope.
Geraden blew a sigh; but he didn't hesitate. "Then my lord," he said clearly, "there is only one thing you can do for your people." Terisa marveled at him--at the strenght of his voice, at the certainty with which he met a dillemma that confounded her. "Evacuate Sternwall. Get your men together. Go fight for King Joyse. Before it's too late."
It didn't work. "'Evacuate Sternwall'?" the Termigan spat as if he had discovered a piece of glass in his food. "Leave my people? Abandon my Care?" Softly, but so intensely that it seemed like a cry from his heart, he demanded, "
For what?"
"For Mordant," answered Geraden. "For peace."
The Termigan didn't respond so Geraden went on, "Orison is under siege. Prince Kragen has brought the Alend army against us--at least ten thousand men. And Cadwal is marching. The High King's army is even bigger--I don't know hold long the Perdon can hold out against it. Right now the Alend Monarch may be in the strange position of defending Orison from Cadwal.
"I don't think you can do anything about that. I don't think you've got enough men.
"But you could attack Eremis directly." He released Terisa's hand so that he could move closer to the Termigan, face the lord more squarely. "He is in league with High King Festten. But Cadwal has to fight Alend and Orison. So the place where Eremis keeps his mirrors is vunerable--the place where he does translations like this one, the one destroying Sternwall. The place where he and Gilbur and Vagel hid to do their plotting and shape their mirrors."
"You could attack him there. In the Care of Tor. In his home. Esmerel."
Terisa is shocked at this and wonders about Eremis' father and brothers. Geraden informs her they died in a fire years ago. Another lie and now she's really ready to grind him into a bloody pulp. Geraden informs the Termigan that he might not be able to save Sternwall in time but he can save King Joyse. And why in the Hellfire should he? Joyse allowed this to happen without consulting him? Allow Mordant to be attacked from both sides? He had reason?!!! Perhaps he should sleep in the bed he made...
"
Brilliant. Destroy your friends to save your enemies. Completely brilliant."
Again Geraden pleads with him to help Joyse in his time of need by attacking Esmerel. To which the Termigan roars "
no" and slams the door.
"
Do you mean," (Geraden) asked, that if we simply survive this experience I'm supposed to consider it a success?"
The Termigan doesn't see them again or even throw them in the lava pits. With his anger directed at Joyse, Terisa and Geraden may have, somehow, won a tiny part of his heart. At least they purposed a course of action, any action, in lieu of his impossible postion. That combined his lifelong loyalty to the Domne and a method of ridding Sternwall of Imagers as fast as possible; he surprises the pair by feeding them the next morning and equipts them with horses, supplies and a map to the Care of Fayle.
"But he didn't do anything to help King Joyse."