A Man Rides Through Read Online Free PDF Page B

had released her without warning, she would have fallen.
     
    Nevertheless when she spoke all she said was, "Please don't do this. Please." The way he held her muffled her words in his shoulder, but he could still hear them. "I'll beg now, if that's what you want. Please don't do this to me."
     
    For a moment, the gloom in the cell grew unexpectedly darker. It rose up around the Castellan, swept over his head; it made a roaring noise like a black torrent in his ears. Then it cleared, and the back of his hand hurt. The woman was slumped on the floor; the wall barely braced her up in a sitting position. Blood oozed like midnight from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes seemed glazed, as if she were scarcely conscious.
     
    "The lady Terisa is too polite," someone else said. "I will not speak so courteously. The next blow will be your last. If you strike her again, I will not rest until you are sent to the gallows."
     
    Staggering, Castellan Lebbick turned and saw the Tor at the entrance of the cell.
     
    "My lord Tor—" The Castellan croaked as if he were choking. "This isn't your concern. Crimes committed in Orison are my responsibility."
     
    The old lord was as fat as a holiday goose and as pasty-faced as poorly kneaded dough. Yet his small eyes glinted in the lamplight as if he were capable of murder. Under his fat, there was strength which enabled him to support his immense weight. "Then," he shot back, "you will be especially responsible for crimes you commit yourself. What if she is innocent?"
     
    "'Innocent'?"
     
    Lebbick was ashamed to hear himself cry out the word like a man who was about to start weeping. With a savage effort, he regained control of himself.
     
    "'Innocent'?" he repeated more steadily. "You weren't there, my lord. You didn't see Geraden kill his brother. I caught her helping him escape—helping a murderer escape, my lord Tor. You have strange ideas of innocence."
     
    "And your ideas of guilt have cost you your reason, Castellan." The Tor's outrage sounded as acute as Lebbick's own. "You accuse her of helping a murderer escape, not of shedding blood herself. When I heard that you had brought her here, I could hardly believe my ears. You have no right and no reason to punish her until King Joyse has judged her guilt for himself and given you his consent."
     
    "Do you think he'll refuse me?" countered Castellan Lebbick, fighting to shore up his self-command. "Now, when Orison is besieged, and all his enemies are conspiring against him? My lord, you misjudge him. This" —he made a slapping gesture in that woman's direction—"is one problem he'll leave to me."
     
    Without hesitation, the Tor snapped, "Shall we ask him?"
     
    The Castellan had no choice; he couldn't refuse. In spite of the way his bones ached and his guts shook, so that he seemed to be dying on his feet, he turned his back on that woman and went with the Tor to talk to King Joyse.
     
     
     
    When Lebbick demanded an audience, the King answered in his nightshirt.
     
    Instead of admitting the Castellan and the Tor to his presence, he opened the door of his formal rooms and stood there between the guards, blinking his watery old eyes at the lamplight as if he had become timid—as if he feared he might not be safe in his own castle in the middle of the night. He hadn't been asleep: he had come to the door too promptly for that. And he neglected or forgot to close it behind him. The Castellan saw that King Joyse already had company.
     
    Two men sat in front of his hearth, looking over their shoulders toward the door.
     
    Adept Havelock. Of course. And Master Quillon, the recently designated mediator of the Congery.
     
    Master Quillon, who had accidentally contrived to help Geraden escape by tripping Lebbick. Master Quillon, who had mistakenly given that woman time to help Geraden by sending the guards away from the rooms where the mirrors were kept.
     
    The Castellan ground curses between his teeth.
     
    King Joyse gaped at