Mordant's Princesses

[Cord Hurn]

Myste by a mile.

[Cord Hurn]

I'm really not surprised that Myste's been winning this poll by a landslide over all these years. She has the best philosophy: Problems should be solved by those who see them. If there's one line in all the pages of Mordant's Need that I best remember, that's the one!

[Cord Hurn]

I think I might want to revive this thread once more, and provide some quotes about the three princesses of Mordant that we meet. Chronological order of the quotes will not be a serious concern, though, because I think I would like to start with Torrent first.

[shadowbinding shoe]

go for it

[shadowbinding shoe]

go for it

[Cord Hurn]

Will do!

[Cord Hurn]

Will do!

[shadowbinding shoe]

lol.
Lol!

[Cord Hurn]

I'll get to it pretty soon, I promise!

[Avatar]

We'll be here.

--A

[Cord Hurn]

Terisa turned in time to see King Joyse and Queen Madin's second daughter close the door behind her and approach the fire.

Torrent's carriage and downcast eyes and demure gown conveyed two impressions almost simultaneously: first, she was so shy that she made Myste and Elega seem as extroverted as mountebanks; and second, despite her shyness, she was nearly the image of her mother. She could have been Queen Madin's shadow: they were as alike as reflections of each other. Only her mother's decisiveness was missing, her mother's assurance.

"Torrent," the Queen said, "here are Geraden and the lady Terisa of Morgan. They have a great deal to tell us. She has done something all the Masters of the Congery together could not do. She has made him an Imager."

Torrent paused among the chairs. The gaze which she raised beneath her lashes was at once so hesitant and so full of wonder that Terisa blushed involuntarily.

"Under the circumstances," Geraden muttered humorously--perhaps for Torrent's benefit, perhaps for Terisa's--"I don't think that's much of a compliment. The only benefit I've gotten from the change is that now people want to kill me.

"My lady Torrent," he went on, "I'm glad to see you. When you and the Queen left Orison, I didn't think I'd ever have that privilege again."

"Oh, 'privilege,' Geraden." Torrent spoke as if she, too, were blushing; yet her cheeks remained pale, untouched. "You're making fun of me."

Before he could reply--perhaps so that he wouldn't have a chance to reply--she came abruptly toward Terisa. Facing Terisa as if holding her chin up were an act of courage, she said, "I'm sure Mother has made you welcome, my lady, but let me welcome you also. Grandfather--the Fayle--told us everything he knew about you, but it only made us more curious. I'm afraid we'll exhaust you with questions."

"Please." Terisa had no idea why she was blushing. She made a special effort to speak calmly, comfortably, to put Torrent at ease. "Call me Terisa. Both Myste and Elega do."

That brought a smile to Torrent's face, a lift of self-confidence. "Do you know Myste and Elega? I suppose you must, since you've been in Orison. Are you friends? How are they?" After an instant of hesitation, a quick glance at Queen Madin, she asked, "And Father? How is he?"

"Torrent," the Queen said both kindly and firmly, "we must sit down. If we do not, Geraden and the lady Terisa will remain standing all night."

In a convincing imitation of a woman with no will of her own, Torrent immediately sat down in the nearest chair.

Meeting Torrent like this for the first time, she seems to have little self-confidence. Yet I think the clause a convincing imitation of a woman with no will of her own tells us that Torrent is capable of being very determined when she is convinced that she's right. She has doubts about her father's actions, and doubts the wisdom of staying away from Orison, but doesn't doubt herself as much as I first assumed. She just needs more facts than other characters in order to arrive at a decision.

Torrent's lack of self-aggrandizement makes her more appealing to me than Elega, because Torrent does not rush to judgment, proclaiming her opinions as if they were undisputable facts. Instead, she tries to get the facts before making a judgment.

Nevertheless, Torrent lacks Myste's level of passion for believing in the good side of people, which makes Myste seem more visionary and courageous than Torrent, at least at this moment in the story. It's still no surprise to me that Myste is winning this thread's poll quite easily.

[shadowbinding shoe]

Also, Torrent doesn't actually blush. Her cheeks remain pale, untouched.

Does she take on girly mannerisms and implements (her famous toy she still sleeps with) as a gesture of support for her mother? Maybe this is too conspiracy theoryish though.

[Cord Hurn]

Torrent is tougher than she first appears to be, that is for sure. I think showing support for her mother is one of the most important goals for Torrent, though I don't know how her having dolls shows that; I am unable to see the connection.

[Cord Hurn]

Torrent's quick to take responsibility for something that's not her fault. It seems kind of admirable and kind of crazy at the same time.

"Oh, Father." Torrent was so distressed that she watched Geraden's face openly, without shyness, without self-consciousness. "What have I done? I should have stayed with you. Like Myste and Elega."

"No, Torrent," Queen Madin tried to speak as if she had no tears spilling down her cheeks, no grief in her chest. "We would have broken his heart. It was a hard thing for him to drive us away and fail--and so lose the chance to save his kingdom."

"But he's caused all this pain"--sitting, Torrent looked small and helpless, too little to understand or be consoled--"and we left him to endure it alone. I left him. He has no wish to cause pain. His heart is broken already, or he wouldn't have done something so desperate--"

Despite her own hurt, the Queen gave her daughter a comforting response. "Hush, child. Do not be in a hurry to call him desperate. Your father has always been given to risks. We must not believe the worst until it is proven."

[Cord Hurn]

In addition, Torrent was fascinated by the personal side of Terisa and Geraden's story. Before she finished her soup, she was so caught up in what she heard that she forgot to be shy. She was indignant at Master Eremis' manipulations, horrified by Master Quillon's murder. Terisa's repeated rescues from Gart thrilled her. She grieved for Castellan Lebbick, and yet couldn't refrain from shuddering at the things the Castellan had done to Terisa. Artagel's injuries and Nyle's unhappiness touched her heart. The discovery of talent in her guests filled her with wonder. She heard about the destruction of Houseldon and the danger to Sternwall with parted lips and flushed cheeks.

Unwittingly, un self-consciously, she helped make the meal as pleasant as possible for her guests.

One of the qualities I admire about Torrent is that she has a wealth of empathy that could rival Myste's. Even her being a recluse was because of caring, not a deficiency of caring.

[Cord Hurn]

Does she take on girly mannerisms and implements (her famous toy she still sleeps with) as a gesture of support for her mother? Maybe this is too conspiracy theoryish though.

I propose a counter conspiracy theory: Torrent holds onto her dolls as an act of defiance toward her mother. I can't prove it, but I have this mental image of Madin nagging Torrent about her dolls repeatedly.

Torrent gave a stifled gasp. "A moment," she said quickly. "I have forgotten something." Before anyone could react, she hurried back into the manor.

Softly, so that no one except Terisa and Geraden heard her, the Queen breathed, "Probably one of her dolls. She does not like to sleep without her dolls." Her tone was affectionate, but it suggested that she didn't know how she had managed to produce a daughter like Torrent.

Torrent's biggest vulnerability, as I see it, is her capacity for self-recrimination, a capacity which almost undoes her in the moments after her mother's abduction.

Then hooves danced on all sides of her, thudded the dirt, hammered at her life, and she couldn't do anything except cling to herself and clench her eyes shut until the horses either killed her or backed away.

They backed away. Geraden was on his feer: he yelled at the horses, slapped at them until they retreated. At once, he reached down and pulled her to her feet.

"The Queen!" he panted as if he had broken something in his chest. "What happened to the Queen?"

At the same time, another woman cried from the bottom of her heart, "Mother? Mother!"

Staggering, Terisa turned; she dragged Geraden with her.

Torrent stood amid the ruins of the porch as if she had never been touched. Her arms were locked and rigid at her sides; one of her hands clutched a knife. She didn't look down into the hollow, at the horses, down at Terisa and Geraden; her face was lifted to the sky.

"Mother!"

Terisa stumbled in that direction, out of the confusion of horses, trying to reach the Queen's daughter before Torrent went mad. With Geraden behind her, she clambered among the slintered and canting remains of the porch.

"She wasn't killed!" she answered Torrent's wail, shouting to make herself heard over the memory of thunder. "They took her! She's been kidnapped!"

Master Eremis had sprung another of his imponderable traps. But this one changed everything. Alends--! He was in league with Alends? As well as Gart and the High King? What in the name of heaven was going on?

Terisa's shout snapped Torrent's head down, brought her frantic gaze out of the sky to Terisa's face.

"What?"

And Geraden demanded fiercely, "What? Kidnapped?"

"Soldiers came." Terisa could hardly distinguish between her own voice and the long, deep rumble echoing inside her. "Alend soldiers. They took her. That's why this happened. So they would have a chance to take her."

"Alend soldiers?" Geraden began to snarl uncharacteristic obscenities, ones Terisa had never heard him use before.

"Why?" Torrent asked softly, as if she were being split apart.

"Because she
s so important!" Geraden rasped at once. "King Joyse will do anything to save her. He'll surrender Orison and the Congery and every one of us to save her."

Softly, Torrent raised her knife, stared at it. "It's my fault." Terisa was amazed that Torrent wasn't weeping. The Queen's daughter sounded like she was weeping. "I wanted to take a knife. So I could help defend us. Elega would have been ready for that. Myste would have been ready. But I forgot. I ran to the kitchen." She turned the blade from side to side as if she had the idea of stabbing herself. "If I'd been with her--if I hadn't forgotten--I could have saved her. I could have tried to save her."

There was no doubt about it in Terisa's mind: Torrent was going mad.

If she had gone to her bedroom as her mother had expected, instead of to the kitchen, she would have been killed almost instantly.

"No!" Terisa replied as loudly as she could, trying to convey conviction through her mounting sense of horror. "None of us could have saved her. They took us by surprise. The horses caused too much confusion. The men--"

Abruptly, she pivoted away to see what had happened to the groom, the servant, the Fayle's men.

The dawn was brighter now: it didn't raise much color, but it showed everything clearly.

A hoof had crushed the groom's head: he lay in the dirt as if he were abasing himself. One of the Fayle's men clutched at an incapacitating wound in his left shoulder; the other had been hacked to death. Dead and dying horses had been sprawled everywhere, some of them still quivering. Perhaps ten of the beasts remained alive, but of those at least half showed injuries of one kind or another.

In the middle of the carnage, Queen Madin's servant knelt beside his mount, whimpering for his life.

Swallowing nausea, Terisa whipped herself back to face Torrent. "None of us could have saved her," she repeated hoarsely.

[shadowbinding shoe]

Mother-daughter conflict. That's very possible. A mundane explanation to fit the little cottage backdrop. With no distractions to keep them busy they might needle each other. Queen Madin is a doer. She chose to isolate herself from the larger kingdom but surely surely the forced idleness put a strain on her temper.

The books showcase the aspects of Joyce each daughter inherited but what did they inherit from their mother? The right and duty of women to partake in the political decision-making, their right to judge, to autonomy. The utter belief and insistence on finding the perfect Love. Marriage on equal grounds with their partner. Their insistence on making clear-cut moral judgments rather than tolerate moral flaws. What else?

[Cord Hurn]

What else? From both parents, Torrent inherited the courage to do what must be done.

"Then"--Torrent's voice shook wildly, but she drew herself up as if she had become a different woman--"we must rescue her."

Terisa stared at her, shocked by the strange sensation that she could see King Joyse in Torrent's eyes.

"How?" With a visible effort, Geraden forced himself to speak gently, reasonably. "We don't have any weapons--and there aren't enough of us. By the time we get help from Romish, they'll be long gone. They'll have plenty of time to hide their trail."

Torrent shook her head. "Not Romish." She took several deep breaths as if she were hyperventilating, with the result that she was then able to control the wobble in her voice. "You must get help from Orison."

Both Geraden and Terisa gaped at her.

"They will not hide their trail from me. I will follow and make a new one behind them. I am helpless for everything else, but that I can do. He"--she indicated the man with the badly cut shoulder--"will get support for me from Romish. But you must ride to Orison. You must warn Father."

She had lost her mind. There was no question about it.

Torrent couldn't entirely stifle her rising hysteria. "Do you not understand? It is his only hope!"

Terisa and Geraden stared at her, gaped, held their breath--and suddenly he gasped, "She's right!" He grabbed at Terisa's arm, wheeling toward the horses. "Come on! We've got to get out of here!"

Terisa froze; she couldn't move at all. Get out of here. Of course. Why didn't I think of that? Ride like crazy people halfway across Mordant to Orison, while she goes after those Alends and her mother alone. You've done this once before. Don't you remember? You sent Argus after Prince Kragen, and he got killed. And stopping Nyle didn't do us any good.

"Terisa," he demanded. "I tell you, she's right. It's his only hope."

"What--?" She couldn't make her throat work. An avalanche had come this close to falling on her. Like the collapse of the Congery's meeting hall. "What're you talking about?"

In response, Geraden made one of his supreme and unselfish efforts to control himself for her sake. Intensely, he said, "His only hope is if he finds out what happened to her before the people who took her know he knows. Before they can tell him. Before they start trying to use her against him. During that gap--between when he knows and when they know he knows--he can still act. He can do something to save her. Or himself."

"Yes," Torrent breathed. "It is the only thing I can do."

Abruptly, she climbed out of the ruin of the porch, heading toward the horses. Her knife was still gripped in her fist.

As if she were her mother, she commanded the injured man, "Take a horse, ride to Romish. You'll be tended there. Tell them what happened. Tell them I require help. I'll leave a trail for them." Then her tone softened. "You're badly hurt, I know. There's nothing I can do for you. I must attempt to save the Queen--and my father's realm."

As if she were accustomed to extreme decisions--not to mention horses--she chose a horse, untethered it, and swung up into the saddle.

Terisa would have tried to stop her, but Geraden's acquiescence held her. "Geraden--" she murmured, pleading with him. "Geraden--"

"Terisa," he replied, so full of certainty that she couldn't argue with him, "she's right. I've got the strongest feeling that she's right."

"Farewell, Geraden," Torrent broke in, "Farewell, my lady Terisa. Save the King.

"Do that, and together we will rescue Queen Madin."

Geraden turned to give the King's daughter a formal bow. "Farewell also, my lady Torrent. This story will fill King Joyse with pride, whatever comes of it." A moment later, he added, "And both Myste and Elega are going to be impressed."

That almost made Torrent smile.

Alone, she rode out of the hollow on the trail of Queen Madin's abductors.

Terisa put the best tourniquet she could manage on the wounded man's shoulder. Gritting his teeth, Geraden slapped a measure of sense into the Queen's whimpering servant, then instructed him to make sure the Fayle's man reached Romish.

After that, they selected the two best horses, packed a third to carry their supplies, and started toward the Demesne and Orison.

Torrent becomes an even more sympathetic character to me when I see how she shows compassion towards the wounded servant from Romish.

[Cord Hurn]

So they were married in high summer, in the great ballroom of Orison, the hollow hall which had seen no use for years until the Masters had turned it into a staging area for supplies during the march to Esmerel.

As if regretting the waste of those joyless years, King Joyse made the ballroom festive for the occasion: the walls were decked with banners and streamers; fragrant rushes were strewn upon the floor; fires in fine braziers gave the air a sheen of gold, while flames in the huge hearths took the chill out of the stones; musicians arrayed themselves along the balconies, practicing flourishes and dances until every corner of the place seemed to sing and tremble.

All this was organized by the lady Torrent. She was still shy--the dangers and privations she had endured to help rescue her mother hadn't changed that--but she had discovered in herself a reflection of her mother's firm will, as well as the organizational skill to make people and objects come together at the right time. Like her sister Myste, she had rapidly become Terisa's friend, and they had spent many happy hours planning the wedding, to Geraden's alternating chagrin, amusement, and delight.

Nonetheless she was still baffled by her new status: she hardly knew what to do with the fact that King Joyse had proclaimed her his heir and successor. Her talents, he declared, were the ones Mordant would need most when he was gone. Publicly, she demurred, claiming that she only wished he would live forever. Privately, however, she found that she had a number of ideas about how Orison and Mordant should be ruled.

Torrent's accession surprised me, too, but we already know by this point that there's more to Torrent than her shy, self-effacing exterior. She will probably do well as a ruler.

[Skyweir]

Very much enjoying these posts Cord.. please continue