Facing Gart’s sword in the stone-walled corridor, Artagel felt that he was looking down the throat of death.
Artagel, having successfully distracted Gart from Terisa & Geraden’s rescue of Nyle, quickly finds himself fighting a losing battle. He comes to the fatalistic realization that in order to help Terisa & Geraden win this war, he needn’t truly win his own battle—he need only make it last long enough to keep Gart from going to the rogue Imagers’ aid. As though a decision has been made, he loosens up, flashes his characteristic fighting grin, and starts letting Gart win.
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Geraden—having attempted to lure Master Gilbur away from the mirror room—realizes that Gilbur didn’t follow him as he’d hoped. Geraden makes his way back to the mirror room just in time to see the Master preparing another treat for Joyse’s army: the killer cockroaches that had been used against him, Terisa, and Artagel in the basements of Orison. Eremis, Vagel, and Terisa are nowhere to be seen, and Geraden knows that they’ve “taken her to rape and torture her, just like Nyle, just like Nyle… His choice is clear, and so is his decision. He can either try to help Terisa—without knowing where Eremis has taken her, or who he’d have to fight on the way—or he can stay and do what he can to stop Gilbur from destroying King Joyse.
Like Artagel, Geraden is faced with the realization that all he can do now is buy time. He does what Terisa has done herself so many times: he starts using logic, starts talking, in order to stall. He informs Gilbur that since he knows he has no chance of saving Terisa, or even of winning the war, that he might as well start breaking mirrors. Yes, Gilbur will be able to stop him eventually, and yes, Gilbur will kill him, but how many mirrors will he have broken by then? Momentarily distracted by the battle mirror, in which it appears that the massive slugbeast has collapsed, Geraden doesn’t notice that Gilbur has reached another mirror until the translation has started, and a ravenous black pacman has launched itself at his head.
Apparently the slugbeast has indigestion. Wonder what brought that on.
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Eremis finally has Terisa right where he wants her. He takes her to his own room, with its one large bed and copy of the flat mirror showing an Image of the battle, and relishes his plans for her utter debasement at his hands. As far as he’s concerned, he has won, barring a few details (like the fact that Joyse isn’t dead yet). Gilbur will kill Geraden, Havelock is a nonentity, and Terisa is now his, to do with exactly as he likes.
Terisa seems to both aware of, and utterly numb to, her defeat. Her questions, when she starts to speak, seem almost automatic. She asks about the red-furred creatures. She asks him if he can still possibly believe that Images have no independent existence, and he laughs in her face and tells her only morons believe that things in Images aren’t real. What’s false, he explains, is Joyse’s insistence on refusing to use them anyway.…He thought that she would be more satisfying than any woman he had ever destroyed.
Saddith’s death had been satisfying, of course: deft, inescapable, and almost infinitely clever. Nevertheless it had lacked the personal touch. He hadn’t destroyed her himself; he had only arranged events so that she would suffer and die.
Tired talking, Eremis has every intention of beginning his destruction of Terisa, but notices that in spite of looming rape and torture, she appears to be more interested in the battle mirror. In spite of himself, he turns to glance at it, and watches in actual shock as the slugbeast collapses. “That is impossible,” he says. “You doddering old fool, that is impossible.” And then he only just sees that the edges of the Image have begun to waver before turning on Terisa and belting her across the face.
The best moment in this scene is where Eremis says that the callat were willing to negotiate because in their own world, they’re in danger of extermination by what he “can only describe as groundhogs. Very large groundhogs.” SRD always lets Eremis have the best lines.
And why did he want Saddith to suffer and die? Die, I can see—she had a big mouth and knew an awful lot. But “suffer”? Why???
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Artagel is losing his battle against Gart, but swords aren’t his only weapons, no matter how often he protests that he’s not the smart one in the family. He goads Gart with questions about why Gart serves—why should the most feared man in the world, with an army of Apts of his own, serve weaker men? Doesn’t the High King’s Monomach have any ambition? Any dreams?
And with that, Gart launches into a furious attack, and this time it’s Artagel who has to parry his opponent’s rage as well as his sword. Artagel, realizing that “the fun part of the fight was over,” turns and runs—to give himself room to face Gart for the last time.”Oh I have dreams, you fool. I have dreams. I dream of blood.
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Geraden ducks instinctively, and the black pacman flies over his head. Gilbur translates more and more of them, until Geraden can only concentrate on staying away from them. Running behind a mirror, he decides to go for his Plan B (Plan A being winning right away), and start breaking as much glass as possible before dying. But just as he’s about to push the mirror over, he sees the Image reflected there and realizes he has a Plan C. Just as the first of the pacmen coming rushing at him, Geraden opens the mirror in his hands—and translates it. And the next one, and the next.
Gilbur, furious, starts translating spiny wolves. Geraden has an attack of conscience.
So Geraden won’t use mirrors to translate the danger away from himself; and because he can only used regular (not flat) glass, he can’t use mirrors to translate himself from danger. But he can use other people’s mirrors—as he had in Havelock’s mirror chamber—and he stops Gilbur mid-translation. A spiny wolf is caught in the glass, which shatters, and Gilbur, in retaliation, translates a thunderstorm. Into the room. Inside. Crazy.No, this was wrong, it was wrong, he had no right to do it. These creatures, and the wolves, and anything else Gilbur might produce were only malignant because they had been translated, only because they were out of place. In their own worlds, they didn’t deserve to be slaughtered. And no one else deserved to be slaughtered simply because Geraden was desperate.
Lord knows Geraden couldn't have done things any differently and still be Geraden--and I love him for it--but this is one of those times where I can't help but feel Dark Helmet was right: Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb.
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In spite of the attractions of a defeated Terisa, Eremis finds himself distracted by the battle reflected in his mirror. Now that the slugbeast is dead Joyse’s forces are rallying, and while there’s no doubt that Cadwal’s superior numbers will eventually overcome Mordant’s defenders, Eremis knows that unless Imagery wins the battle, his own chances of holding any serious influence over High King Festten are small. So he watches as Joyse, Kragen, and “the unanticipated Termigan” almost miraculously pull Mordant’s army back together, and he waits to see what horrors Master Gilbur will inflict next.
Terisa, apparently stunned with loss and his earlier blow, prompts him into talking about what she sees as his failings as an Imager, and we’re treated to still more exposition concerning how and why Eremis laid his plans as he did. The details are torturous, and if they make anything clear, it’s that Joyse’s plan to make himself a target was quite possibly the only one that might have worked to defeat his enemies. In the course of conversation, Eremis reveals what will be his crowning glory—no matter what happens during the battle, whether Joyse wins or loses, at the crucial moment, Eremis will translate the King of Mordant and Prince Kragen away into his fortress—and madness.
As always, reflecting on his own genius excites Eremis, and his attention is once more focused on Terisa.
-----------------------------------She continued to gaze at him with her curious blend of absence and hunger. She had her back to the windows and the sunlight; perhaps that was what made her eyes look so dark, her beauty seem so fatal.
Huskily, bringing the words up from far down her throat, she said, “Let me show you what I can do.”
With one hand, she reached out and gently touched her fingers to the unmistakable bulge in the front of his cloak.
He felt like crowing.
Artagel, knowing he’s lost, spends his final parries and thrusts silently asking Geraden and Terisa for forgiveness. With blood streaming from multiple wounds, stinging his eyes, he doesn’t even see it when Gart’s last strike shatters his sword. He clears his eyes just long enough to see a door open behind the High King’s Monomach; just long enough to see Nyle come through, the chain from his manacles swinging at Gart’s head; just long enough to see Gart dodge the blow, taking it on his shoulder instead; just long enough to see that in raising his sword to cut off Nyle’s head, Gart has given Artagel one last chance. Using the very last of his strength, Artagel strikes with his broken blade through the armhole of Gart’s armor, and the two brothers collapse on Gart’s corpse “as if they had become kindred spirits at last.”
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In the mirror room, Geraden feels as if he’s been flattened by the storm Gilbur translated. But somehow, the fact that he can barely breathe, that he has undoubtedly lost everything, that even if the storm did stop he would be eaten by spiny wolves and ravenous black pacmen, only makes his determination to stop the Master stronger. Using his talent he fights against Gilbur’s translation and destroys the mirror containing the storm. Gilbur, cursing, goes to yet another glass and start yet another translation: this time, it’s an earthquake, and Geraden realizes that the Imager has gone completely mad. Yes, the earthquake will destroy him, Geraden—but it will also destroy the mirrors, Gilbur himself, all of this hidden fortress, and probably the valley of Esmerel, where Joyse is fighting for all their lives, as well.
Once again, Geraden reaches out for the mirror, and meets Gilbur head to head in a battle of pure willpower and talent. But it’s more than that. Through their mutual connection with the glass, Geraden can suddenly see Gilbur’s entire life, all of the twisted and horrible things the Master has undergone, all of the twisted and horrible things the Master has done. Geraden doesn’t flinch, though—he’s been through twisted and horrible things himself. In the end, the battle between the two Imagers comes down to strength, not talent, after all: Gilbur’s raging heart gives out on him. Artagel and Nyle arrive from defeating Gart just in time to save a stunned Geraden from the last of the spiny wolves. Then they go to find Terisa.
For editorial comment on Gilbur’s death, see the “Crappy Deaths in Book 2” thread in the Mordant’s Need Discussion Forum.
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Once again, Eremis finds himself distracted from Terisa by what’s happening in the battle mirror. He grabs her arms to keep her away from him—he hasn’t forgotten that she once kicked him—and while he’s contemplating why her eyes seem so dark, wondering where she has gone to escape her fear, he sees that Joyse’s army has cut Festten off, and that the two Kings are finally meeting in battle. Cadwal’s armies are obviously demoralized; they don’t know that they are almost completely useless, that Eremis can translate Joyse and Kragen and the Termigan away into madness almost—but not quite--as quickly as a thought. Joyse, Kragen, and the Termigan don’t seem to know it either: they fight as though they are going to win, and it begins to look as if they could.
His attention once more drawn to her, he realizes that the battle, in itself, means little to him when he knows he can win it so easily. His most intriguing challenge stands in front of him—and it doesn’t seem to care. Forcing Terisa to look at him—at him—he strips so that she can “see the size of his passion against her.”Terisa cleared her throat. Softly, but precisely, so that each word was unmistakable, she asked, “Do you hear horns?”
She ignores him.
He tries another tack—he’s ready to kill her with his bare hands, his fury at her unconcern is so strong. A movement catches the corner of his eye, and Terisa’s head turns, and his gaze follows hers involuntarily to the battle mirror.
At the center of the scene, facing Eremis, stood a tall, naked man with a nose that was too big, cheekbones that sloped too much toward his ears, a thatch of black hair too far back on his skull. Despite their usual intelligence and humor, the man’s eyes were wide, almost gaping.
His arms held an unattractively dressed woman. Her body sagged against him as if the last of strength had faded away…
He was seeing himself, and her; that was his own Image echoed in the flat mirror. It had a luminous quality, a precise perfection, which startled him like a revelation, as if it were all he needed to know…
The last thing he felt before his mind vanished into eternal translation was a sense of complete astonishment.
