The Mirror of Her Dreams

STEPHEN DONALDSON :

MORDANT'S NEED 1 - MIRROR OF HER DREAMS

"Steeped in the vacuum of her dreams,

A mirror's empty till

A man rides through it."

—
John Myers Myers, Silverlock

Terisa and Geraden

THE STORY OF Terisa and Geraden began very much like a fable. She was a princess in a high tower. He was a hero come to rescue her. She was the only daughter of wealth and power. He was the seventh son of the lord of the seventh Care. She was beautiful from the auburn hair that crowned her head to the tips of her white toes. He was handsome and courageous. She was held prisoner by enchantment. He was a fearless breaker of enchantments.

As in all the fables, they were made for each other.

Unfortunately, their lives weren't that simple.

For example, her high tower was a luxury condominium building over on Madison, just a few blocks from the park. She had two bedrooms (one of them a 'guest room', fully furnished and entirely unused), a spacious living room with an impressive view west, a separate dining room which contained a long, black, polished table on which candles would have gleamed beautifully if she had ever had any reason to light them, and the kind of immaculate and modern kitchen displayed in remodelling catalogues.

Her home cost her father what the people she worked with would have called 'a fortune', but it was worth every penny to him. The security guards in the lobby and the closed-circuit TV cameras in the elevators kept her safe; and while she was living there she wasn't mooning passively around his house, gazing at him and his business associates and his women with those big, brown, calf-eyes that seemed too inert, or even too stupid, to intend what he read in them: the awareness of unlove that saw all his pampering and expense as a form of neglect. So he was glad to be rid of her.

And she thought she was glad to be living where she was because the bills were paid, and she could afford to work at the only job she felt herself competent for, the only job in which she thought her life might count for something: she was the secretary for a modern-day almshouse, a mission tucked away in a small ghetto only a fifteen minute walk from the shining windows and reflected glory of her condo building; and she typed letters of mild explanation and appeal, vaguely desperate letters, for the lost old man who ran the mission.

Also she thought she was glad to be living where she was because she had been able to decorate her rooms herself. This had been a slow process because she wasn't accustomed to so much freedom, so much control over her environment; but in the end what it came to was that her bedroom, living room, and dining room were decorated completely in mirrors. Mirrors had a seductive beauty which spoke to her-but that wasn't the point. The point was that there was virtually no angle in her apartment from which she couldn't see herself.

That was how she knew she existed.

When she slept, her mind was empty, as devoid of dreams as a plate of glass. And when she was awake, moving through her life, she made no difference of any kind to anybody. Even the men who might have considered her beautiful or desirable seemed not to see her when they passed her on the street, so blind she was to them. Nothing around her, or in her, reflected her back to herself. Without dreams-and without any effect-she had no evidence at all that she was a material being, actually present in her world. Only her mirrors told her that she was
there:
that she had a face capable of expression, with brown eyes round with thwarted softness, a precise nose, and a suggestion of a cleft like a dimple in her chin; that her body was of a type praised in magazines; that both her face and body did what was required of them.

She was completely unaware of the enchantment which held her. It was, after all, nothing more than a habit of mind.

As for Geraden, he was in little better condition.

He was only an Apt to the Gongery of Imagers-in other words, an apprentice-and he had been given a task which would have threatened a Master. In fact, the opinion of the Congery was sharply divided about his selection. Some of the Masters insisted this task belonged to him because all their auguring seemed to imply that he was the only possible choice, the only one among them who might succeed. Others argued that he must be given the task because he was the only one of their number who was completely and irredeemably expendable.

Those who claimed that the act of bringing any champion into being was inherently immoral were secretly considered toadies of that old dodderer, King Joyse-and anyway they were only a small minority of the Congery. Apparently, all auguries indicated that the realm couldn't be rescued from its peril without access to a champion brought into being through Imagery. But how that translation should take place-and, indeed, who that champion should be-was less sure.

The Masters who considered Geraden expendable had good reason. After all, he wasn't just the oldest Apt currently serving the Congery: he was the oldest person ever to keep on serving the Congery without becoming skilful enough to be a Master. Though he was only in his mid-twenties, he was old enough to appear ridiculous because he had failed to earn the chasuble of a Master.

He was so ham-fisted that he couldn't be trusted to mix sand and tinct without spilling some and destroying the proportions; so fumble-footed that he couldn't walk through the great laborium which had been made out of the converted dungeons of Orison without tripping over the carefully arranged rods, rollers, and apparatus of the Masters. Even rabbity Master Quillon, who had surprised everyone by casting aside his self-effacement and speaking out loudly (as King Joyse might have done, if he weren't asleep half the time) against the immorality of wrenching some champion out of his own existence in order to serve Mordant's need-even Quillon was heard to mutter that if Geraden made the attempt and failed, the Congery would at least gain the advantage of being rid of him.

In truth, this capacity for disaster rendered moot the central ethical point. Normally, the Master who had made that particular glass could have simply opened it and brought the champion into being. But Geraden had again and again shown himself incapable of the simplest translation. He would therefore have to do exactly what King Joyse would have demanded: he would have to go into the glass to meet the champion, to appeal for the champion's help.

His advantages were a willing heart, ready determination, and a quality of loyalty usually ascribed to puppies. His short, chestnut hair curled above his strong brow; his face would have well become a king; and the training of being raised with six brothers had left him tough, brave, and little inclined to hold grievances. But his expression was marred by an almost perpetual frown of embarrassment and apology, occasioned by the petty mishaps and knowledge gone awry that harried his heels. His instinctive yearning towards the questions and potential of Imagery was so potent that his unremitting dunderheadedness left a gloom on his spirit which threatened to become permanent until the Congery elected by augury and common sense to send him on the mission to save Mordant's future.

When that happened, he recovered his ebullience. Where he had formerly worked for the Masters with a will, he now laboured in fervour, doing the things their art demanded- mixing the sand and tinct with his own hands so that the glass would welcome him, stoking the furnace with wood he cut himself, shaping the mould and reshaping it a dozen times until it exactly matched the one that had made the mirror in which the Masters watched their chosen champion, pouring the hot liquid while blood hammered like prayer in his veins, sprinkling the especially ground and blended powders of the oxidate. At every failure of attention, error, or mischance, he groaned, cursed himself, apologized to everyone in sight-and then threw himself back into the work, hope singing to him while sweat soaked his clothes and all his muscles ached.

He had no more idea than Terisa did that she was under an enchantment. And if he had known, he might not have cared, so consumed was he by the opportunity the Masters had provided -an opportunity which might be a sentence of maiming or even death.

She wasn't the champion the Congery had chosen.

In theory, at least, Geraden's mirror would have had to be entirely different.

BOOK ONE

1 Calling

THE NIGHT BEFORE Geraden came for her, Terisa Morgan had a dream-one of the few she could ever remember. In it, she heard horns: faint with distance, they reached her through the sharp air over the hills covered with crisp snow like the call for which her heart had always been waiting. They winded again -and while she strained to hear them, again. But they came no closer.

She wanted to go looking for them. Past the wood where she seemed to be sitting or lying as if the cold couldn't touch her, she saw the ridge of the hills: perhaps the horns-and those who sounded them-were on the far side. But she didn't move. The dream showed her a scene she had never seen before; but she remained who she had always been.

Then along the snow-clogged skirt of the ridge came charging men on horseback. As the horses fought for speed, their nostrils gusted steam, and their legs churned the snow until the dry, light flakes seemed to boil. She could hear the leather creaking of their tack, the angry panting and muttered curses of their riders: the ridge sent every sound, as edged as a shard of glass, into the wood. She yearned to block out those noises, to hear the horns again, while the three men abruptly swung away from the hills and lashed the snow towards the trees-directly towards her.

As their faces came into focus for her, she saw their fierce hate, the intent of bloodshed. Long swords appeared to flow out of their sheaths into the high hands of the riders. They were going to hack her into the snow where she stood.

She remained motionless, waiting. The air was whetted with cold, as hard as a slap and as penetrating as splinters. In the dream, she wasn't altogether sure that she would mind being killed. It would bring the emptiness of her life to an end. Her only regret was that she would never hear the horns again, never find out why they spoke such a thrill to her heart.

Then from among the blaek-trunked trees behind her came a man to impose himself between her and the riders. He was unarmed, unarmoured-he seemed to be wearing only a voluminous brown jerkin, pants of the same fabric, leather boots-but he didn't hesitate to risk the horses. While the first rider swung his blade, the man made a sidelong leap at the reins of the mount; and the horse was wrenched off balance, spilling its rider in front of her second attacker. Both horse and rider went down, raising clouds of snow as thick as mist.

When a low breeze cleared her sight, she saw that her defender had snatched up the first rider's sword and spitted the second with it. He moved with a desperate awkwardness which showed that he was unfamiliar with fighting; but he didn't falter. In furious assault, he stretched the first rider out against the trunk of a tree before the horseman could strike back with his long poniard.

Watching, Terisa saw the third rider poised above the young man who fought for her-mount firmly positioned, swordhilt gripped high in both fists. Though she understood nothing of what was going on, she knew that she ought to move. In simple decency and gratitude towards her defender, if for no other reason, she should fling herself against the rider. He wasn't looking at her: surely she would be able to reach his belt and pull him out of his saddle before he struck.

But she didn't. In the dream, a small, vexed frown pinched her forehead as she regarded her passivity. It was the story of her life, that mute nothingness-the only quality she could ascribe to her uncertain existence. How could she act? Action was for those who didn't seriously doubt their presence in the world. During the more than twenty years of her life, her opportunities for action had been so few that she typically hadn't recognized them until they were past. She didn't know how to make her limbs carry her towards the rider.