“These, yes. Hundreds of them. Running free all over Kharax Plain. It was a bloody terrible task, my friend, tracking those creatures down and slaughtering them. Our Coronal owes me something for it.—But do you have a place ready for these fellows, Septach Melayn? A very secure place? They are some samples of what I encountered there.”
“I have one, yes. In the royal stables, it is. Will this wagon of yours pass through the gate, though?”
“Through this one, yes. Not through the Dizimaule, which is why I arrived at this side of the Castle.” Gialaurys turned to his men. “Here, now! Get that wagon moving! Into the Castle with it, now! Into the Castle!”
It took an hour to convey the creatures to the hold that Septach Melayn had prepared for them and to settle them in, each in its own cage, safely locked away behind sturdy bars that would not be easily sundered. Septach Melayn had found a disused wing of the Castle stables: a great stone barn deep down beneath the ancient Tower of Trumpets that must have been employed for housing royal mounts a thousand or two years ago, in Lord Spurifon’s time, or Lord Scaul’s, when this part of the Castle was more frequently used than it had been of late. Craftsmen working with great speed had transformed it under Septach Melayn’s direction into a receiving chamber for Gialaurys’s pleasant specimens.
When the job was done, Gialaurys and Septach Melayn dismissed Akbalik and the others who had helped them with the work. Just the two of them remained behind. Septach Melayn said, staring in wonder and horror at the baleful things pacing and snorting within their cages, “How would we have fared in the war, I’d like to know, if Korsibar had succeeded in turning such atrocities as these loose against us?”
“You can thank the Divine that he never did. Perhaps even Korsibar had wisdom enough to know that once they were set free to attack us, they’d continue on through the world, a menace to everyone ever after.”
“Korsibar? Wisdom?”
“Well, there is that point,” Septach Melayn conceded. “But what held him back from using them, then? I suppose it was that the war came to an end before he could.” He peered into the cages and shuddered. “Foh! How they stink, these beasts of yours! What a pack of monstrosities!”
“You should have seen them when they were wandering about all over Kharax Plain. Wherever your eye came to rest there was something hideous to behold, snarling at something even more hideous. Like a scene out of your worst nightmare, it was. A lucky thing for us that the plain is closed on three sides by granite hills, so that we were able to drive them into a trap, and even get them to set upon one another, while we were picking them off at the edges.”
“You killed them all, I hope?”
“All the loose ones, one by one, until none remained,” said Gialaurys. “Except these, which I brought back as souvenirs for Prestimion. But there are hundreds more still in their pens that never broke free. The keepers have no idea what they are, you know. Having no memory of Korsibar, or of the war, how could they? All they understood was that out there in Kharax—and a gray ugly place Kharax is, too, my friend, not a tree for miles—there was this huge pen of horrors, which are supposed to be kept under guard, only something went wrong and some of them got out. Do you want to hear their names?”
“The names of the keepers?” Septach Melayn asked.
“Of the animals,” said Gialaurys. “They do have names, you know. I suppose Prestimion will want to know them.” He drew from his tunic a dirty, folded scrap of paper, which he pondered in a laborious way, reading not being one of Gialaurys’s great skills. “Yes. This one here”—he indicated a long white bony thing like a serpent made of a string of razor-sharp sickles welded together, that lay writhing and fiercely hissing in the cage on the far left—“this one’s a zytoon. And this, with the pink baggy body and all those legs and red eyes and that disgusting hairy tail with the black stingers in it, that’s the malorn. Behind it we have the vourhain”—that was a green, pustulent-looking bear-like creature with curving tusks as long as swords—“and then the zeil, the min-mollitor, the kassai—no, that’s the kassai, with the crab-legs, and that one’s the zeil—and can you make out the weyhant back there, the one with the mouth so big it could swallow three Skandars at once—” Gialaurys spat. “Oh, Korsibar! You should be killed all over again for having even dreamed of letting these things loose against us. And we should find the wizards who made them and eradicate them also.”
Turning away with a grimace from the caged monsters, Gialaurys said, “Tell me, Septach Melayn, what new and interesting things have happened at the Castle while I was off among the zeils and the vourhains?”
“Well,” said the swordsman, grinning wickedly, “the Su-Suheris is new and interesting, I suppose.”
Gialaurys gave him a perplexed look. “What Su-Suheris do you mean?”
“Maundigand-Klimd is his name. We met him, Prestimion and I, in the midnight market of Bombifale. Or, rather, he met us: saw through our disguises, walked right up to us, greeted us for who we really were.” Once more the wicked grin. “It will amuse you to learn that he’s Prestimion’s new court magus.”
“He’s what? A Su-Suheris, you say? I thought Heszmon Gorse was to be head magus here.”
“Heszmon Gorse goes back shortly to Triggoin, where he’ll rule over the wizards there as adjutant to his father, and eventually succeed him. No, Gialaurys, this Su-Suheris has been awarded the job at court. He impressed himself upon the Coronal at once, that night in Bombifale market. Was summoned to the Castle, a day or two later, at Prestimion’s express order. And now they are fast friends. It’s not just that he’s a master of his arts, although evidently he is. Prestimion is captivated by him; loves him as he loved Duke Svor, I think. It’s plain, Gialaurys, he needs someone about him that has a darker soul than yours or mine. And has found one now.”
“But a Su-Suheris—” Gialaurys threw up his hands in bewilderment. “To have those two repellent snaky heads looking down at you all the time—those cold eyes—! And the treacherous nature of the race, there’s a consideration too, Septach Melayn! How can Prestimion have forgotten Sanibak-Thastimoon so quickly?”
“I must tell you,” the swordsman said, “that this one is a different pot of ghessl from Sanibak-Thastimoon. There was the reek of evil about that other one. It came boiling up from his pallid skin like a noxious fume. This man is steady and straightforward. Dark he is within, yes, I suppose, and very sinister to behold; but that’s the nature of his kind. Still, one is tempted to put one’s trust in him. Why, he even shows Prestimion the secret of his geomantic spells.”
“Does he? Can that be so?”
“Yes, and makes it seem so mathematical and pure that even Prestimion is impressed, skeptical of mind though the Coronal is, beneath all his pretended acceptance of sorcery. I, too, as a matter of fact, must admit that I—”
“A Su-Suheris in the inner circle,” Gialaurys said, grumbling. “I like this very little, Septach Melayn.”
“Meet the man, first, and judge him afterward. You’ll sing a different tune.” But then Septach Melayn frowned and said, taking his sword from its sheath and drawing its tip in a thoughtful way across the earthen floor of the old stable, making idle patterns that were something like the mystic symbols of the geomancers of his native city of Tidias, “There is, I must say, one bit of advice he’s given Prestimion already that makes me a trifle uneasy. They were speaking yesterday, Prestimion and Maundigand-Klimd, of the problem of Dantirya Sambail; and the magus came forth with the idea of restoring the Procurator’s memories of the war.”
Gialaurys started at that.
“To which,” continued Septach Melayn, sweeping serenely onward, “the Coronal responded quite favorably, saying, yes, yes, that might very likely be the right thing to do.”
“By the Lady!” Gialaurys howled, throwing up his hands and making half a dozen holy signs in one feverish blur of incantation. “I leave the Castle for just a few weeks, and madness instantly takes root in it!—Restore the Pro
curator’s memories? Prestimion’s gone unhinged! This wizard must have sprung him entirely free of his wits!”
“Do you think so, now?” came the Coronal’s voice just then, echoing across the huge stables toward them from the rear of the room. Prestimion stood by the entrance, beckoning. “Well, Gialaurys, come close, and look me in the eye! Do you see any vestige of lunacy lurking in my gaze? Come, Gialaurys! Come, let me embrace you and welcome you back to the Castle, and tell me whether you still think I’ve gone mad.”
Gialaurys went toward him. He saw now the Su-Suheris, looming behind the Coronal: a towering formidable figure in the richly brocaded purple robes, shot through with bright golden threads, of a magus of the court. His long, forking white neck and the two hairless elongated heads that it bore rose above his heavy, jewel-encrusted collar like an eerily carved column of ice. Gialaurys, with a quick hostile glance at the alien, opened his arms to Prestimion, and held the smaller man tightly for a long moment.
“Well?” Prestimion said, stepping back. “What do you say? Am I a madman, do you think, or is this the Prestimion you knew before you went off to Kharax?”
“You speak of restoring Dantirya Sambail’s memories of the war, I hear,” Gialaurys said. “That seems very like madness to me, Prestimion.” And glanced sullenly, again, at the Su-Suheris.
“Seems like madness, perhaps, but whether it is is yet to be determined, I think,” said Prestimion. The Coronal paused and sniffed and made a face.—“What a fetid offensive stench this place has! It’s these pretty animals of yours, I suppose. You must show them to me in a moment or two.” Then his face took on an easier look. “But introductions are in order, first.” The Coronal indicated his companion. “This is our newly appointed magus of the court, Gialaurys. Maundigand-Klimd’s his name. I assure you he’s made himself more than useful already.” And to the Su-Suheris he said, “And this is our famous Grand Admiral, Gialaurys of Piliplok. Though surely you must know that already, Maundigand-Klimd.”
The Su-Suheris smiled with the left head, nodded with the right one. “In truth I did, lordship.”
Prestimion said, “We’ll talk of Dantirya Sambail later, Gialaurys. But the simple essence of the thing, I tell you now, is the issue we’ve discussed before amongst us—our inability to put a man on trial for crimes that he can’t remember, that indeed no one in the world knows anything about save us. Who is to stand up in court as his accuser? And how, once accused, can he plead his cause? Even a murderer’s entitled to defend himself. Then, how can he repent, once we find him guilty? There’s no repentance when there’s no cognizance of guilt.”
“We already know of these problems, Prestimion,” said Gialaurys.
“So we do. But we’ve found no solution to them. Now Maundigand-Klimd proposes that we put a counterspell on him that undoes the obliteration, so that we can try him while he’s in full consciousness of his deeds. And then, afterward, wipe his memory clean again.—But, as I say, we’ll talk of all that later. Show me your precious lovely creatures, now.”
“Yes,” Gialaurys said. “Yes, I will,” but made no move toward the cages. Something else had belatedly occurred to him. After a little pause he said, in the bleak, ponderous way by which he communicated high displeasure, “It seems evident from what you tell me, my lord, that your new magus has been made privy to knowledge of the obliteration. Which, as I understood our compact, was not to be made known to anyone, not to anyone at all.”
Now it was Prestimion’s turn to be silent for a time.
Plainly he was abashed. A touch of ruddiness came to his face, and uneasiness to his eyes. He replied, finally, “Maundigand-Klimd had already worked out the secret for himself, Gialaurys. I merely confirmed that which he suspected. Technically it was, I agree, a violation of our oath. But in fact—”
“Are we to have no secrets from this man, then?” Gialaurys demanded, with some heat in his tone.
Prestimion held up one hand in a soothing gesture. “Peace, Gialaurys, peace! He is a great magus, is Maundigand-Klimd. You understand much more of the arts of the magus than I do, friend. Surely you know that keeping secrets from a true adept is no simple matter. Which is why I thought it wisest to bring him into my service, eh?—I tell you, Gialaurys, we’ll speak of all this afterward. Let me see what you’ve brought back for me from Kharax.”
Gruffly Gialaurys led Prestimion to the front of the cages and showed the Coronal his prizes, drawing forth his tattered slip of paper and reading off the monsters’ names, explaining to Prestimion which the malorn was, and which the min-mollitor, and which the zytoon. Prestimion said very little. But it was obvious from his demeanor that he was appalled by the surpassing ugliness of the things, and the pungent, acrid smells that came from them, and the aura of menace conveyed by their various fangs and claws and stingers. “The zeil,” Prestimion said, half to himself. “Ah, there’s a nasty one! And the vourhain—is that what that pestilent bloated one is called? What sort of mind would devise such things? How loathsome they are. And how strange!”
“These were not the only strange things I discovered in the north, your lordship. I must tell you: I saw people laughing aloud in the streets.”
Prestimion looked amused. “They must have been happy, then. Is happiness such a strange thing, Gialaurys?”
“They were alone, my lord. And laughing very loud. I saw two or three who were laughing in this fashion, and not a happy laugh, either. And one other that was dancing. All by himself, very wildly, in the public square of Kharax.”
“I’ve been hearing more such tales myself,” said Septach Melayn. “Odd behavior everywhere. There’s more madness abroad in the land these days than ever there used to be, I think.”
“You may well be right,” Prestimion said. His voice held a note of concern. But there was a certain remoteness in his tone, too, as though his mind was focused on three or four things at once and none held his full attention. He moved away from the others and walked up and down before the cages, shaking his head, solemnly murmuring the names of the synthetic killer-beasts to himself in the manner of an incantation. “Zytoon…malorn…min-mollitor…zeil.” There could be no doubt he was strangely affected by the disagreeable shapes and unquestionable ferocity of the odious beasts that Korsibar’s mages had devised for use in the war. By the overwhelming hideousness of their appearance, by the very needlessness of their mere existence, they seemed to conjure back to life the spirit of the terrible war itself.
He stepped back from the cages after a time, and gestured with his head and shoulders in a way that indicated he wanted to clear his mind of what he had just seen.
“What do you say, Prestimion, should we destroy the lot of them, now that you’ve had a look?” Gialaurys asked.
At first the Coronal seemed not to have heard the question. Then he said, speaking as though from a great distance, “No. No, I think not. We’ll keep them, I think, as reminders of what might have been, if only Korsibar had lasted a little while longer.” And, after another pause: “Do you know, Gialaurys, I believe we can use these things to test the valor of our young knights.”
“How so, my lord?”
“By setting them up against your malorns and zytoons in straightforward combat, and seeing how well they cope. That should show us who the really resourceful and courageous ones are. What do you think? Is that not a splendid idea?”
Gialaurys could not find the words for a response. The idea seemed grotesque to him. He glanced toward Septach Melayn, who offered only a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of his head.
But the thought seemed to amuse Prestimion. He looked off toward the monsters’ lairs for a moment, smiling strangely, as though in the eye of his mind he already saw the lordlings of the Castle facing these hissing horrors in the arena.
Then the Coronal returned from whatever strange place he had entered and said, in a far more businesslike tone of voice, “Let’s address this so-called epidemic of madness, now, shall we? Perhaps we have a problem here
that bears closer investigation. I need a first-hand look at the situation, I suspect.—Septach Melayn, what progress has been made on arranging that processional for me through the cities of Castle Mount?”
“The plans are nearly complete, my lord. Another two months and everything should be in order.”
“Two months is a very long while, if people are laughing by themselves and dancing crazily in the streets of Kharax. And hurling themselves from upper-story windows, too—has there been any more of that sort of thing, I wonder? I want to go out and have a look at things right now. Tomorrow, or at worst the day after tomorrow. Get new disguises made for us, Septach Melayn. Better ones than last time, too. That wig was atrocious, and that preposterous beard. I want to go to Stee, I think, and then Minimool, say, and maybe Tidias—no, not Tidias, someone will recognize you there—Hoikmar, it’ll be. Hoikmar, yes. That lovely place of the quiet canals.”
A great howling and bellowing came from the cages. Prestimion looked around.
“The weyhant, I suspect, would like to eat the zeil. Do I have the names right, Gialaurys?” Once again he shook his head. Revulsion was plain on his face. “Kassai…malorn…zytoon! Foh! What monsters! May the man who devised them sleep uneasily in his grave!”
10
Coming into the Free City of Stee by the landward route around the face of Castle Mount would have been an impracticably protracted journey for Prestimion and his companions; for so great was Stee that its outskirts alone took three days to traverse in that fashion. Instead they went overland only as far as golden-walled Halanx, not far downslope from the Castle, where they boarded the snub-nosed thick-walled high-speed ferry that carried travelers down the swift River Stee to the city of the same name. No one paid the slightest heed to them. They were dressed in coarse linen robes, dull and flat in hue, the sort favored by traveling merchants; and Septach Melayn’s hairdresser had ingeniously transformed their appearances with wigs and mustaches and, for Prestimion, a sleek little beard that ran tightly along the line of his jaw.