The Mirror of Her Dreams (32 page)

A handful of men around the circle promptly indicated their assent.

Master Barsonage sighed. 'It will take a moment to have the glass brought here. Masters, we do not vote on this. Any of you has the right to make such a demand-if the demand is seconded.'

'I wish to see the glass,' one of Master Quillon's supporters said at once.

'And I,' said another.

'Very well.' The mediator nodded towards someone Terisa couldn't see; the sounds of the door as it opened and closed carried distinctly through the chamber.

No one spoke while the Congery waited. Perhaps this was part of the Masters' protocol. Or perhaps none of them wanted to commit himself until Quillon's request had been satisfied. Master Barsonage stared beyond the circle. Master Gilbur ground his big hands together as if he were practising breaking things. Master Eremis leaned back on the bench and gazed nonchalantly at the ceiling like a man whose good manners kept him from whistling. Master Quillon appeared to be making a conscious effort not to twitch his nose; but he didn't succeed. The other Imagers exhibited varying degrees of impatience, curiosity, assurance, and alarm.

Terisa had the impression that she ought to be more worried. There were undercurrents in this debate which she was able to sense but not define. They might be dangerous. People were plotting-and plots meant harm. What she felt, however, was a small, hesitant eagerness. She wanted to see the augury which had led Geraden to her.

It was brought into the chamber by two Apts, carrying it between them on a beautifully polished wooden tray nearly five feet on a side. As the Apts passed near her on their way towards the dais, she saw that the tray was covered with pieces of broken glass. These pieces had all been laid flat on the wood, and none of them touched each other; but they didn't appear to have been arranged in any other way.

So softly that no one else could hear him, Master Eremis murmured to her, 'Perhaps Apt Geraden neglected to explain how auguring is done, my lady. There are two arts-to create a flat glass of the proper kind, accurately focused-and to interpret the outcome. In simple terms, a flat mirror is made that shows some person, place, or event from which the augury is to be extrapolated. For example, if we wished to determine whether our future contained a war with Cadwal, we might attempt to create a glass focused on Carmag-a glass in which High King Festten could be seen. Mirrors show places, but it is people who cause wars. Then the mirror is dropped. If it has been correctly made, it breaks into pieces which show pieces of what will come from the Image on which it was focused.

This glass was created by Master Barsonage.' He smiled sardonically. Tor that reason, none of us ask whether it was correctly made.' Then he added, 'The other difficulty, as you will see, is to interpret the results. I have always suspected, my lady, that augury exists primarily in the mind of the interpreter.'

Once the Apts had set their burden down on the dais, most of the Masters left the benches and crowded around it. Only Gilbur and his most outspoken supporters apparently felt no need to look at the broken glass again. Everyone else cast at least a glance at the augury. Taking her arm confidently, Master Eremis guided Terisa among them until she stood at the edge of the dais.

The Apts had stepped back: the tray of glass was clearly displayed in front of her.

The mirror had broken into dozens of fragments.

Each of them showed a different Image.

And all the Images were moving. When she first looked at them, they seemed to be groping blindly towards each other, as if they aspired to some kind of wholeness.

Pieces of what will come.

The sight made her momentarily dizzy: it seethed like migraine. She felt that she was going to fall. But she closed her eyes and pushed down her queasiness. When she looked again, she held herself steady by concentrating on one or two Images at a time.

-
of what will come.

At first, she was startled by how many of them she recognized -and by how precise they were, despite their small size. In one, King Joyse hunched over a game of hop-board, a game which had collapsed into chaos, the men scattered everywhere. He stared at it as if he were determined to make sense of the confusion, and his hands moved aimlessly over the board. In another, Geraden had begun to step into a mirror; but his body blocked the Image within the Image. In another, he appeared again, this time standing surrounded entirely by mirrors, all of them reflecting scenes of violence and destruction against him. And in yet another, the armoured warrior in the alien landscape fired his weapons past the edge of the glass.

But in fact those were only a small handful of the Images. The others reached beyond her experience. One shard showed a castle-she guessed it to be Orison-with a smoking hole torn in one side and a look of death about it. Several pieces of glass held Images of battle: men on horseback hacking at each other so vividly that she could see the blood in the wounds; figures that looked like kings rampaging; soldiers on foot spitted by spears; corpses trampled; carnage. Smoke blotted out the sun. And other Images were of things which could only have come into existence through Imagery: rocks falling from the sky as if off the side of a mountain; monsters so hot that whatever they touched caught fire; devouring worms. Villages were razed; castles fell; crops burned; men, women, children died.

And yet here and there in the squirming mosaic were scenes of peace, perhaps even of victory: a plain, purple pennon fixed on a hillside; a celebration that might have been a wedding, taking place in a high ballroom; farmers planting a field still scarred by battle.

Then another Image caught her eye-

Three riders. Driving their mounts forward, straight out of the glass, driving hard, so that the strain in the shoulders of their horses was as plain as the hate in the keen edges of their upraised swords. Fixed on her across the gulf of augury and translation, and riding hard to hasten the moment when she and her future would come together.

The riders of her dream.

Of course.

At once, a wonderful and ludicrous calm came over her. It lasted for only a moment; but while it endured she lifted her head, half expecting to hear the heart-tug of horns. Of course. Why hadn't she thought of that before?

Not the riders. She didn't know what they meant. She hardly cared. But the
future.
Mirrors didn't simply span distance or dimension: they had the capacity to span
time
as well.
Pieces of what will come.
That was why she had been able to see the same Image in two different seasons, the same scene in spring and winter: time. What she had witnessed wasn't proof that the mirror which had brought her here was false; she had seen only another demonstration of the potential which made augury possible.

And that meant-

From across the dais, Master Quillon asked blandly, 'Does this shed any light for you, my lady?' as though he were inquiring only out of politeness. 'I confess that it baffles me.'

The secret of interpretation, my lady,' Master Eremis murmured, 'is to read the flow of the Images. Their movement is not random. There is a-perhaps it might be called a 'current'- which runs from crisis to action to outcome. Unfortunately, this current is not easily discerned. We see Mordant's danger. We see the importance of Geraden. He is in august company-King Joyse, High King Festten, the Alend Monarch. And he is the only individual who appears twice. The champion we thought he would bring to us is here. Also, we see scenes we do not understand.' He pointed at Geraden surrounded by mirrors. 'And we see outcomes-ruin and hope. But how the Images flow is harder to determine. Does Apt Geraden lead to hope, or to ruin? What does King Joyse meditate upon while his enemies ride against him?'

'In brief,' Master Gilbur rasped from his seat, 'nothing has changed. The augury tells us only what we have already seen.'

'When we decided that Apt Geraden should attempt to translate our champion,' explained Master Barsonage, overriding Gilbur, 'the logic of it seemed plain enough. He clearly could not be the cause of ruin. Ruin confronted us already. Therefore he must be a source of hope.

'Now,' he sighed, 'the interpretation is less obvious.'

'Oh, forsooth.' Master Gilbur was growing steadily angrier. ''Less obvious', indeed. Nothing has been more obvious. The Apt's involvement in our plight
is
the path which leads to ruin. Only the champion you see before you offers any hope.'

Through his teeth, the mediator replied, That is what we must decide.'

For another moment or two, the Imagers stood around the dais. Some of them whispered among themselves. Others pointed out details of the augury which their companions might have missed. Then, slowly, they returned to their benches. Still holding Terisa's arm, Eremis steered her back to her seat.

But when the Masters were in their places again, a silence fell over the Congery. Everyone except Gilbur seemed lost in thought -perhaps frustrated that the augury didn't provide a clearer answer, perhaps hesitant to consider the drastic solution Master Gilbur had proposed. And he continued glowering about him as if he were determined not to speak first.

At last, an Imager Terisa didn't know asked, 'Is there no middle ground? Must we either do nothing or risk doing too much?'

'No,' another muttered. The King has not left us that choice.
Our plight
is extreme. By governing Mordant like a madman, he has made the situation too grave to be met on any 'middle ground'.'

'I have heard a rumour,' said a third Master portentously. 'It is said that the Perdon came yesterday to speak with King Joyse. He reported an army of thirty thousand Cadwals mustering against him beyond the Vertigon, and he demanded reinforcement.

'He was refused.'

The shocked expressions of several of the Imagers showed that this story hadn't reached them. Master Eremis smiled vacantly.

'Nevertheless,' Master Barsonage put in more loudly than necessary, trying to shore up a weak position, 'he is the King. That decision was his to make. We do not know what reasons he may have had for his refusal.'

True,' retorted Master Gilbur. 'And I, for one, do not care. When an assassin tries to strike a knife into my heart, and the man who is sworn to protect me steps aside, I do not ask for his reasons. First I fight the assassin. And when I have defeated him, and have bound them both in irons, and perhaps broken a few of their limbs for good measure,
then
I ask my sworn protector what his reasons may have been.'

'Master Gilbur.' The mediator swung his bulk to face Gilbur squarely. A combination of anger and fear stained his skin. 'How have you become so savage? Your arguments I understand, but not the tone of hatred in which you utter them. Whatever else we may say of him, we must say that King Joyse created the Congery. He made us who we are.'

''Who we are',' sneered Gilbur. 'Divided and useless.'

Grimly, Master Barsonage continued, 'We cannot make our decisions now on a basis of blind passion. What causes your loathing of him, Master Gilbur?'

Master Gilbur clenched his hands together until the knuckles whitened.

'Personally,' drawled Master Eremis, 'I believe that good Master Gilbur once had the insolence to ask for the hand of one of the King's daughters in marriage. Quite understandably, King Joyse laughed at him.'

A few of the Imagers might have been tempted to laugh; but Master Gilbur silenced them by surging to his feet.

'Am I savage, Master Barsonage? Do you hear hatred in my voice? Do I display loathing? I have cause.

'As you know, I was one of the last Imagers brought into the Congery in the days before the defeat of the arch-Imager Vagel. But the story of how I was brought to the Congery has never been told.

'
I have given my life to my researches, and in those days no other question interested me, although of course I knew of the King's invitation to all Imagers to leave their private laboriums and join him in Orison. I did not know, however, that another Imager had moved secretly near to my lone cave in the Armigite hills. This corrupt wretch coveted my research-and he attacked me, seeking to wrest what I knew from me. I defended myself, but he had taken me by surprise, and I could not win. In our struggle, a portion of the ceiling of my cave collapsed, pinning me under a block of stone I was unable to shift. My attacker snatched what he desired of most of my possessions and fled.