Mordant's Need

The Mirror of Her Dreams

First edition cover
Author	Stephen R. Donaldson
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Mordant's Need
Genre	Fantasy novel
Publisher	Del Rey
Publication date	1986
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	626 pp (first edition, hardback)
Followed by	A Man Rides Through

Mordant's Need is a fantasy two-part book series by Stephen R. Donaldson, comprising the novels The Mirror of Her Dreams (1986) and A Man Rides Through (1987).

It tells the story of a woman named Terisa who travels from our modern world to a medieval setting through a mirror, where political and military struggles are entwined with the power of Imagery, a form of magic based on mirrors. The Mirror of Her Dreams, the first volume, was published in 1986 and A Man Rides Through, the second volume, was published in 1987. The books deal with themes of reality, power, inaction and love in the context of a fantasy adventure. This series is much lighter in tone than Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever or The Gap Cycle.

Terisa Morgan opens the series living a vacant life, supported by her father from afar and volunteering at a mission for lack of anything more purposeful to do with her time. She fills her apartment with mirrors so as to see her reflection, and thus be constantly reassured of her existence. Geraden, an apprentice Imager (magician) from a land called Mordant appears in her apartment, searching for aid against a powerful enemy who has been plaguing Mordant with monsters translated from other worlds. As mirrors are inextricably linked with magic in Mordant, Terisa's home decor convinces him that he has stumbled into the lair of a powerful sorceress. He persuades her to accompany him back to the Castle Orison, where she finds herself embroiled in a morass of intrigue and danger from both the political plotting of a corrupt court and from the frightening magical creatures that appear without warning and can't seem to be defended against. As she soon finds out, the mirrors of this world show anything but what is in front of them; in fact, mirrors are gateways to other worlds (or to a different point in the same world) and could be manipulated in a variety of ways to effect what amounts to magic.

Terisa is suddenly the center of attention, a position that she has never before held, which is not easy because Geraden is held in little regard at the castle; so court opinion naturally is divided on whether she should be taken seriously as a potentially powerful ally, threat, or treated as an object of ridicule and proof of Geraden's perceived incompetence. She must deal with the ever-earnest Geraden, the senile King Joyse and his headstrong daughters, the mad Adept Havelock, the inimical Castellan Lebbick, Geraden's mostly-well-meaning brothers, the lascivious Master Eremis and the rest of the disorganized group of Imager masters Geraden belongs to known collectively as the Congery.