Stephen R. Donaldson - Mordant's Need 01 by Mirror of Her Dreams

Author:Mirror of Her Dreams [Dreams, Mirror of Her]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-15T16:11:42.362000+00:00

BOOK TWO

14 Out of the Rubble

CASTELLAN LEBBICK suspected that he was foundering inside. Of course, life in Orison had been going from bad to worse for some time now; but suddenly the purpose of his life had sprung leaks in all directions.

Because of Congery's gamble, he had several crises to deal with at once. But they were only symptoms; they weren't fundamental. As he strode to face them, he was smiling like a hawk; and only his wife-and perhaps King Joyse-had ever known him well enough to realize that this smile was a bad sign. To other people, he probably looked like he was in his element, eager for the conflicts of disaster which would provide an outlet and a justification for his rage. Only his wife and his oldest friend could have understood the particular ferocity of his grin.

Unfortunately, his wife was dead-miserably dead, killed by a long, hacking illness that cut her life out as effectively as a knife in her lungs. Nearly a year had passed, and he still missed her so acutely that it seemed to make his guts tremble.

And King Joyse had cast him adrift-

He had refused to hear the Fayle. One way or another, he blocked every vital act, interfered with every hope.

The Castellan clenched his teeth tighter, stretched his smile thinner, and refused to think about it. King Joyse was his reason for living. The passions which had led to the founding of Mordant, the ideals which had inspired the creation of the Congery-these things were the blood in his veins, the air in his chest. He was the King's hands. The King had rescued him-

Now the King had refused to hear the Fayle. He had abandoned it all to die, Mordant and passion and purpose, abandoned it to die miserably, hacking its life out while Castellan Lebbick cradled it in his arms and couldn't let go.

No, he was definitely not going to think about that. He had too many other problems in front of him.

That woman.

To himself, he chewed out a long, scathing curse. She was in everything somehow. The connections were there, if he could find them: she was doing this to Orison and Mordant somehow.

And she made the back of his throat ache with a desire he hadn't felt since the days of his wife's best beauty.

He wasn't going to think about that, either. He was going to do his job, cling to it until he recovered what it meant.

For a start, he was going to sort out the consequences of the latest catastrophe perpetrated by those pig-brained Imagers.

His task had the advantage of being both dramatic and subtle. All the crises were linked together in some way.

First in point of time, if not in degree of urgency, there was the matter of Prince Kragen's dead bodyguards.

Clearly, they had been killed for some reason. And they couldn't have shed all that blood themselves. Furthermore, it seemed unlikely that they were responsible for tracking their own blood away from the places where they lay dead.

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